Select Budget Committee 10418 Public Hearing

Good evening, everyone.

Good evening, and thank you for being here.

I'm Sally Bagshaw.

I chair this special budget committee, and I'm very glad to have you here in City Hall with us tonight.

So this is the first of two public budget meetings.

Mr. Zimmerman, would you please not wave your sign?

Thank you very much.

So the second one is October 23rd, it's also here in council chambers at 530. These meetings are in response to both public demand, but also we are required by state law to have two public meetings on our budget.

So thank you again for participating in this.

So we are reviewing the mayor's budget.

Most of you know that that was submitted to us at the last Monday in September.

So it's now our job to go through and take a look at it and make changes to it.

You know that we have to have a balanced budget, that short of having new revenue sources or deciding to bond against something with a sustainable source, we have the money that we have in our general fund that we're dealing with here.

So, for the next month, City Council will be holding our Budget Committee meetings.

You can find that on my website.

There's also on the City Council website a whole section that is dedicated to the budget and the special meetings.

On November 7th, we will propose from the council a budget package and changes to that that will go back to the mayor.

So unless there are changes to it, which there certainly will be, the mayor will see a budget from us again beginning on November 7th.

So now we're going to get going for public comments.

I believe everybody that wants to speak has been given a number.

I'm going to ask you to line up.

I'll call your names and numbers.

I'm going to ask you to line up either down this row or down over here.

And please help yourself to a piece of candy.

That's for you with thanks from me that you are here tonight.

So, with that, let's get started.

We've got, we're going to have two minutes a piece, unless you're a group, and then you can have five minutes as the group.

And we very much appreciate you keeping an eye on the time when the red light goes off.

Please stop, because that'll make it available for the next person.

This gentleman looks like he's looking for us.

You're number one.

Thank you so much.

Is it Mr. Finch?

So after Mr. Finch, we're going to have Glenn Williamson, Elizabeth James, and Betsy Pito is number four.

So may I please ask you four to get in line so that we're not waiting between people.

So number two can come over here if you'd like, three, four, however you want to do it.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

And I want to say thank you to Jodi Schwinn from our clerk's office.

She'll be doing the timing tonight.

Please introduce yourself and thank you.

Distance um and you can do the other one too if you want My name is Alex Finch, and I'm a member of share wheels board of directors I have been with share wheels tent city three for over a year, and we are south 129th and MLK way south 217 that's the exact number of share wheel beds that the mayor's budget cuts on the last day of June 2019 217 when interim director or interim Human Services Director Jason Johnson says that all the shelters that were paid for on a one time basis last year are now permanent.

Don't believe it.

Look at page 169 of the mayor's budget.

It cuts those shelter beds halfway through the year.

217. When you subtract 217 from the 500 brand new beds the mayor claims that are coming online, you have 283. Over 3,000, that is the estimated number of people sleeping outside every night in Seattle without shelter after all the shelter beds are full.

What sense does it make to cut 217 beds when so many more people need them, especially with the 92 deaths outside or by violence in the homeless community this year?

If they were expensive, that would be an argument.

But share wheel beds cost less than $10 a night.

They are the best value in town.

If they didn't have case management, there would be an argument.

But share will shelters have case management that is just as successful as comparable shelters.

A lot of the shelters that are part of the 500 the mayor wants to start up don't have case management.

Many of the others are three or four times as expensive.

That is how many of the percentage of the people who left share shelters from January to June this year went into permanent housing.

That's four times the average HSD claims go into permanent housing from basic shelter.

217 cost effective self-managed shelter beds.

Please return share wheels indoor shelters to the budget as you did last year.

Thank you for your consideration.

And number two, Glenn.

Ladies and gentlemen of the council, thank you.

It is my personal opinion that the lack of funding towards any affordable housing of any sort while making huge allotments for emergency services shows the city's lack of commitment to solving the problem that's creating the need for the sweep teams in the first place.

The McKenzie study that you did earlier this year says that it would cost $360 to $410 million to effectively end affordable housing crisis here.

And that $700 million has been allotted for emergency services.

If being displaced from your home isn't an emergency service, I don't know what is.

It is my opinion also, for what it's worth, that the city needs to do better.

The cost of the crisis is estimated to cost the economy according to that same study, which I would add was done to downplay the crisis at about $1.1 billion.

Sometimes I feel like appealing to your sense of numbers in the budget.

If anything else, it's a numbers game.

Even if we can eliminate these faces that are here, or people such as myself that utilize these services, that it would be a numbers game at that point.

So hopefully that you guys can do the right thing, do better, step up and acknowledge that you are willing to do something about the crisis.

Thank you.

Thank you, Glenn.

Elizabeth, James, then Betsy.

And then after that, at number five is a group.

It looks like Chanel.

I'm not going to try to read the next.

So five, six and seven, you're a group.

If you'll please line up behind Betsy.

My name is Elizabeth James, and I am from Speak Out Seattle.

We are now experiencing an epidemic of addiction, and it is not just opioids.

It is also meth and other drugs.

We are losing people.

We are losing them at young ages.

we need to do something about that.

The mayor's budget as proposed had $1.3 million set aside for drug consumption sites.

Those are facing a lot of challenges with location, with the federal government that is looking at seizing those funds or assets used that way, and also I-27's appeal.

That money's sat there for a year.

Let's not let it sit there another year, and let's put it to work to provide treatment, real treatment on demand.

We have people lined up waiting for treatment, and you have a very small window when someone is ready.

I've had a daughter go through it.

I've had a husband go through this and treatment is is difficult and it's not a one-time thing.

So you can't just give medication assisted treatment and then no wraparound services to support that.

So I hope that you guys will do some harm reduction this year and and put some that money to good use.

Thank you very much Elizabeth.

My name is Betsy Pito, District 6. The proposed budget says the first funding priority for new revenue is expanding services for the homeless, and that's great.

I think we need to spend more money for homeless services and for law enforcement.

But I think that even with more revenue sources, we can't keep funding every single advocacy group and provider without accountability.

What works is getting the homeless into temporary shelter fast, then into transitional and then permanent housing.

What works is getting them services according to what they need, not according to whatever happens to be around.

Now what will work is coordinating efforts and making sure the services provided lead to desired results.

We need to see better performance and accountability.

We should only fund groups that work with the HMIS, Homeless Management Information System.

Groups that are not able to track intake or outcomes need to understand that the days of blindly throwing a lot of money at the problem are over.

What will work for Seattle residents is enforcing laws against theft and providing the sanitation that huge numbers of homeless people require.

We are awash in the homeless, substance abusers who must steal to support their habit, the mentally ill who are easily preyed upon, families who've lost homes, commit no crimes, and simply need a hand to get back into housing, and lastly, outlaws who make their living anywhere in America by theft.

I beg you to work with the city attorney not to criminalize homelessness, but to enforce the laws.

It defies common sense to welcome thousands of people you cannot provide for, or who are able but unwilling to live by the basic laws of society.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming.

Then our group, and just a moment please before you get going, Megan Murphy, Graham Pruce, and Number 10, whoever that is.

OK, after this group, Megan.

My name, hello council, Talofa.

My name is Joseph.

I'm from New Horizons.

I'm the director of youth services and I'm in full support of the Seattle Human Services budget recommendation portfolio.

But I'm here today because I'm specifically concerned about the apprenticeship programs that are offered to our homeless young people.

We get young people when all of our systems fail and when they land at our center, they're usually folks youth of color, trans identified young people, folks with disability.

And so our apprenticeship program is really serving our young people that are really have no safety network.

And so we strongly urge the council to consider funding apprenticeship programs with homeless youth providers, where the biggest impact is really the mentorship that is being performed with young people where they're able to fail and be able to stand up again, and we coach them and we coach them until they're able to fight for themselves in the employment market.

And you all know it's a very white city, so it's a very intimidating city for our youth of color and our trans-identified youth.

So the apprenticeship programs are so significant and they have such a value for young people.

And so I want to introduce some of our young people.

Introducing Damazi.

Thank you.

Hi.

My name is Damazi.

I used to be an apprentice at New Horizons Ministries.

It was a very good, very start for me because I just came from becoming homeless, but they gave me a job.

So it's very good, and it was a very good experience for me.

They gave me the utilities that I needed just to actually start a job.

They helped me when I was able to not able to cast a check.

I had like no ID and stuff.

They set a bank account up for me.

They was able to give me all types of stuff.

They gave me all these resources to the point where it was unwanted help, but you needed it.

So, yeah, it's real good.

It's a real good thing to have for like people around our age bracket from 18 all the way to 25. Yeah, we're all usually out here.

You wouldn't even tell, but yeah, we all try to work, you know.

Yeah, thank you.

Thanks, Imazi.

Introducing Nathan.

Hello, my name is Nathan Dominick.

Nice to meet you guys.

So I think you already seem to have heard the benefits, so I'm just going to explain my story and where I come from.

I originally come from the state of Oklahoma.

So I come from a completely different background than what is used to the city.

And for the most part, I've never really gotten a big hang on what is new and what is here in the city.

So to have an apprenticeship program like this is very beneficial because, one, coming from a system where, you know, things are a little bit different.

to say the least, it gives me that bit of edge and it also helps me push myself further.

To know that I have that stable footing to be able to rely on is more beneficial than anything when it comes down to trying to get out of this.

I feel like more programs like this are definitely needed and more funding for said programs are needed also because I'm really a great example to show on why this system and why this idea could actually work.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for coming.

And introducing Chanel.

Hi, my name is Chanel, and I'm not a part of the Apprenticeship Program, but I am working to become a part of it.

And the reason why is because it gives you an opportunity that you don't get much if you're not from a great background.

And it helps you set your career goals.

It helps you set your life goals.

And it kind of just gives you a better vision of what you want to do with your life.

And really, no one really wants to be on the streets.

If you do, I'm sorry, but quite frankly, you have problems.

And I feel like that this apprenticeship program should be around because for the people who genuinely don't want to be on the streets, it's there for them.

Thank you for your time, and I really do hope you take this into consideration.

Thank you, Chanel.

Thanks to all four of you for coming.

I urge the City Council to consider funding the apprenticeship program.

It's with New Horizons and Youth Care.

We're trying to double our numbers from last year.

At New Horizons, we currently serve 40. We're looking to serve 80 next year.

So that's 40 more lives that we're looking to serve.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And seriously, thank you very much for coming.

We know what good work you do.

Megan, before you get started, I'd like to call Graham Proust, please.

Number 10, it says budget something.

Budget for justice.

Oh, thank you.

Budget for justice.

I'm not sure who's speaking.

And then.

Number 11 is also a budget for justice.

And then Evelyn, it looks like, Corrid.

Please, Megan.

Hi.

Yeah, thanks for letting me speak.

I have a really bad cold, so I encourage people to wash their hands frequently.

If you are homeless, Because if I cough and it gets on your hands and you touch you you could get sick if you're homeless You don't have access to wash your hands And you're in someone would be a really vulnerable position to get really sick and they could also be without medication Maybe need drug treatment Maybe they're elderly or they have a disability they need services.

So I encourage the budget to address those needs My friend from Transit Writers Union said to and I agree to please fund the wheels women's shelter and Shares indoor shelter network and then another friend from Washington Community Action Network said please have funding for tenant outreach and legal services so I think the safe consumption site, I would hate to think of someone being alone and injecting themselves outdoors without a nurse present.

At least they would have a place to go and maybe get support.

I also think that people who have an addiction should have permanent shelter, so if they want to go to meetings or take medicine, because they're really vulnerable people.

And just because We are at a different table where we pay 13% tax and we don't pay 3% like billionaires.

I think we deserve to have state of the art society.

Because I know the president we have right now isn't really state of the art.

And just, I think we deserve to have these services.

Just because we are of the 99%, I think we deserve to have all these things that we dream about together, about what our society could look at.

And if we work together for this, I know that we can make the state of the art ourselves instead of having it dictated to us.

Thanks.

Thanks very much.

I hope you get better.

Sorry about your cold, Megan.

Graham, then speaker 10 and number 11, budget for justice, if you'd line up, please.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

As you know, over half of the unsheltered people in Seattle and King County, 53% to over 3,300 people are sleeping in their vehicles.

And I just want to take the opportunity to thank the Mayor for proposing and encourage the Council to approve funding for the Safe Parking Pilot Program.

I've been an outreach provider to vehicle residents for over two years throughout the City of Seattle and strongly support this work.

As a former homeless youth and teen parent, I applaud the Mayor and the Council for work that meets people where they are.

These sorts of spaces can connect hundreds of people who inhabit vehicles in our public parking with the emergency shelter and services that end homelessness.

I hope we will see that this program grows to include all people and vehicles in our social services.

Thank you, city council members, for your commitment to incorporate vehicle residents in our community of care that works to end homelessness for all.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming.

Budget for Justice, looks like you've got some wonderful colleagues here.

Love those signs.

You've signed up as number 10 and number 11. Are you all just one group?

Yes.

Okay, great.

They're on two five-minute slots, I think.

Two groups, okay, great, please, five minutes per group.

Hello, thank you for giving us this opportunity.

Last year we were here asking you to support our work with youth exposed to violence and at risk of the justice system.

We're back this year in a different alignment.

We still want to tell you about what we're prepared to do, but this time we're part of a community alliance called Budget for Justice.

Budget for Justice is a village of providing community ambassadors actively building alternatives to jailing youth to a formal criminal justice system.

We will be supporting each other's work as well as our individual efforts.

We are one example.

tell you about the work that Community Passageways is doing.

That was hard.

I like speaking from the heart and not from a script.

My name is Keith Hedgepeth, and I'm a community ambassador and CPFIT coach for Community Passageways.

And we've gotten a lot of help and support from the Budget of Justice group, which we have here with us.

When we talk about evidence-based, I think our program, and I believe that everybody behind the desk of where you sit knows about the awesome work that our program is doing.

But not only the effects of what this program is doing for our youth and the great successes that we have, the many success stories that we have, but what it's doing for me as a community ambassador and CPFIT coach, I'm from Chicago, Illinois.

I have 52 retail theft arrests in my background, been shot in the head at a drug deal gone bad, and I'm still standing here today.

I've spent time in five Illinois prisons in the Illinois prison system.

I've been homeless and a crack addict for 33 years of my life.

I moved to Seattle two years ago and started working with Dominique Davis.

He gave me a chance to work with this organization and entrusted me with all of these youth.

I work with these people every day, close, from sunup to sundown.

And I'm also faced with challenges, because I'm still gonna be a drug addict till I die, but I choose not to use today.

And whenever I feel like I wanna go to the other side, because I have those days, I'm gonna be honest with you, I think about these kids.

and the looks on their faces when they succeed, and they come to us and tell us about their successes.

So Community Passaways and Budget for Justice is just not giving me an opportunity, but it's helping me to help them.

So how much more evidence do we need that we need funding so that we can continue our work?

How you doing?

Good job, big brother.

How you doing?

My name's Kashon Adams.

I'm one of the youth that have been through the program.

And basically, I want people to realize that this program isn't average.

It's not the normal program that everybody's thinking about.

We're not asking for money because we want it.

We're asking for money because we need it.

We got a lot of youth like me who did not have a lot of parent help growing up.

I didn't have any parents.

And having Keith, having Dominique Davis, having them, Man, help me, man.

It's emotional, you know what I'm saying?

Because I ain't have nothing growing up.

And to be able to have a job now and to be able to And to be able to not have three felonies that I should have on my record because of the crimes that I committed.

Having a father figure like Dominique Davis to come in courtrooms with me and tell the judge, you know, I deserve a second chance.

It's made me feel personally that I do deserve a second chance.

And I've been working hard ever since I got that second chance.

And everybody in this program has been working hard since they got that second chance.

And that's all that we're asking for is a second chance.

Thank you.

Look mom I'm on TV But yeah, like like my brothers all in serious like my brothers were saying um, especially in Seattle I feel like this is super needed especially a program for young men of all the uh all races all types because here in Seattle we're like kind of people are suffering on the edge of opportunity we have all this great tech stuff that's going around here and back where we're from in the city area the city we leave I know what time is that but I just feel like community passageways is something that's so needed because it's helping people find their own idea of successes and helping people not just become worker beings, but becoming thriving men with morals and things, you know, things that really, like, things that really men are made of.

Like, it's really making great men.

So, thank you for your time.

Before you get started, first of all, thank you very much for speaking.

Is there another group that's coming up, or are you the second part of group one?

Okay, thank you.

We've got another group then, please come up.

Gentlemen, thank you.

You can join the second group, those of you who didn't get a chance to speak.

Hi, my name is Andre Brewer.

In junior year of high school, I wasn't really focused in school, wasn't really going to be on track to graduate for my senior year.

And that summer, I was hired as an intern for community passageways in their summer program.

And what they were learning was very, I was supposed to be taking data on what the kids were learning, if it was effective.

And what they were learning was affecting me to where I wanted to be a part of the group, even though I never had any felonies or any of that.

I just never really.

stuck my mind into school, so that showed me that I actually should be doing something with myself.

And starting my senior year, I enrolled into pilot school, and I graduated high school, and I graduated pilot school with the equivalent of AA degree, and I just need to further pilot school and I don't know just this program is just to help kids whatever they wanted to do and I think if you would give us funding it would be helpful for kids who need to still finish school and you know do the dreams that they want to do it would be very helpful because we have the support for whatever the kids want to do.

Thank you.

I just wanted to say that lack of opportunity is the reason why the youth make the decisions that they make.

So we all know that the system is designed for us to fail.

So when we come in from a street background, we end up making the wrong decisions based on the lack of opportunity that we have to give.

So it's like basically we're committing crimes, we're doing this, we're doing that because we don't have nothing.

the further to you understand we don't we don't have a father figure we don't have a place to stay so we're gonna we're gonna make bad decisions based upon our situation for me and as I would say it's the pond condition community patches ways is old as I say it's full of OG's who I've changed their life around who is helping the youth make better decisions so they don't make the same decisions that they made thank you

The Budget for Justice is a coalition of organizations that speaks with a unified voice to increase safety and justice in our city.

We aim in the 2019-2020 biennial city budget process with the goal of making Seattle safer by divesting the city and county from punitive systems and reinvesting the savings in more effective and less harmful community-based solutions.

We're developing specific investment proposals with the organizations that are part of our coalition as we speak.

The places that we have identified for divestment are to reduce Seattle Municipal Court probation and to renegotiate the jail contract.

The reinvestment options that we are looking at are restorative justice practices for youth and communities to foster peace and reconciliation like what you heard about from community passageways, trauma-informed healing-centered arts instruction, workforce development, and expand the rights of non-citizens to avoid disproportionate immigration consequences.

We are trying to represent a fiscally responsible approach to these investments.

You can't just spend new money if you can't discontinue old practices that have had their day and are no longer needed.

We're trying to do the hard work of identifying those.

One is probation.

There is a national movement that in many ways Seattle's ahead of the curve on criminal justice reform, but not with respect to probation.

We invest heavily in overseeing people failing because They don't have the resources that they need to complete requirements and succeed.

And we're saying that it's time to get in line with national trends.

There's a statement by prosecutors around the country, including our own city attorney, Pete Holmes, and King County prosecutor, Dan Satterberg, calling for the radical downsizing of probation and investment in community-based alternatives.

That's exactly what Budget for Justice is about.

We're proposing to reduce probation to 10% of its current size over three years.

So 30%, 30%, 30% reduction.

Reinvest those savings and the kinds of programs you've heard about tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Over the coming days, you'll receive concrete investment and divestment plans that will be a reflection of the coalition's genius and commitment to the reinvestment in communities, uplifting those individuals who represent neighborhoods who have been eagerly awaiting their turn to participate in contributing to the development of services that they're able to see the need for in a unique way that no one else can.

Budget for Justice is the perfect opportunity, and now is the perfect time to give voice to and support the self-determination, engagement, and empowerment of citizens working towards trauma-informed, justice-focused, and culturally relevant services that will heal present and future generations.

Thank you.

Next on our list we have Evelyn, number 12. Number 13 is Patricia Hayden, 14 Michael Quinn, and 15 Jen.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Councilmembers.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

My name is Evelyn Correa, and I'm here on behalf of Youth Care.

We want to commend Councilmember O'Brien and his staff, as well as HSD, for their efforts to convene stakeholders and produce this report on human services wages.

I know that staff compensation doesn't always inspire the same sense of urgency and interest as other issues, but that doesn't make it any less important.

In fact, I would argue that it is interdependent with many of the issues that we care about.

This is an issue of equity, of sustainability, and of the capacity of this sector to provide consistent and high-quality care.

We are all aware of the rising cost of living in this city, rising costs that are coupled with low wages and are pushing more and more people to the edge of homelessness.

That includes people working in the human services sector.

When staff make low wages doing difficult work, when they qualify for food stamps, or when they can barely make rent themselves, it becomes very hard to recruit people to this field and even harder to retain them.

Youth care's turnover rate hovers at around 35% per year and every turnover represents a setback.

It's a financial setback for the agency as we estimate that it costs us over $4,000 per employee for turnover.

It's a setback for staff who must figure out how to provide quality care and meet high performance outcomes while they themselves are under-resourced and economically vulnerable.

It's a setback for our young people who are destabilized when they lose that caring and consistent relationship in their lives, which is a cornerstone of their stability.

We recognize this issue is complex.

and that we're dealing with market forces, different funding streams, and multiple budgets and contracts.

But change has got to start somewhere.

And we are urging you, the city councils, to start it here.

We urge you to include a 3.5% inflation rate on all city contracts and to ensure that you prioritize equitable, livable wages for contracted human service agencies.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Patricia, nice to see you.

And may I ask Michael Quinn and Jen, number 15, and then Allison Isengard to line up at the microphones.

Good evening members.

My name is Patricia Hayden and I'm the chief program officer for the YWCA of Seattle King and Snohomish County and co-chair of the Seattle Human Services Coalition.

SHSC members are here this evening along with allies from communities across Seattle to urge you to increase the scale of Seattle's investments in solutions up to the scale of the challenges our communities are facing.

Seattle's economy is roaring along for some, but middle and lower income Seattle residents aren't getting the benefits.

You have the resources and the power to address this structural inequity.

The Mayor's proposed 2019-20 budget fails to maintain the level of community health and human services currently provided.

The Mayor's budget will cut overnight shelter.

The Mayor also includes less than half of the funding for inflation adjustment needed to maintain the current levels of service.

and cuts funding for grassroots advocacy to bring state resources to Seattle residents.

Half measures are not solutions.

We urge you to take a decisive step forward now as you create this budget, restore the proposed cuts, and include the full portfolio of the SHSC recommendations.

The members of SHSC thank you for your leadership you've shown in the past for social justice.

Invest in these next two years to move us closer to becoming the just and thriving community we know you want Seattle to be for all residents, not just a fortunate few.

Thank you.

Thank you, Patricia.

Michael?

Michael Quinn is next.

Number 14, Jen Allison, and then Maria Bariola.

Hi.

Hello.

Thank you.

My name is Michael Quinn.

I'm the Director of Social Services for Plymouth Housing Group, and I'm here to support SKICH and the Seattle Human Services Coalition's budget recommendations around affordable housing investment and investment in the frontline workers that make those housing programs functional and successful.

For a long time in the DESC shelter conference room, there was a quote posted by Dr. Kenneth Minkoff, who's a national addictions and mental health expert.

It states that the best path to lasting behavioral change and healing is a long term relationship with a consistent provider.

All this work is relational.

And that's not possible in this local direct services economy.

Direct services staff and housing and human services are bouncing off of positions and leaving the fields because they can't afford to live on the wages informed by current city grant levels.

Even when we're fortunate to hire someone with the experience and chops to do this difficult work, we know that it's most likely destined to be a transitional experience for us and for them, and more importantly, for our tenants.

In the past 26 months, we've experienced an 84% turnover in housing case management staff, 19 of those 23 left for financial reasons.

We're in the work of housing stability, but the instability of our workforce has a direct impact on the folks that we serve.

It denies formerly homeless individuals the enduring relational work that creates stability and possible change.

This work requires, what's happened now is that permanent supportive housing is a safety net for all of the failures of the mental health and the addiction treatment and assisted living systems.

This requires a public investment that is commensurate with the weight of that need that is held in that net right now.

Our tenants, formerly homeless individuals, and your constituents deserve to have qualified and experienced quality of care as we all come together to respond to the state of emergency.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming tonight.

Jen, Jen, thank you.

Allison Isinger, then Maria, and then Tracy Gillespie.

Good evening, Councilmembers.

My name is Jen Musee.

I'm the Executive Director at the Ballard Food Bank, and I'm also the co-chair of the Seattle Human Services Coalition's City Budget Task Force.

Every day, I see the challenges our city is facing, and for our neighbors that are housed and unhoused, the city is becoming more and more difficult to live.

I work with clients who are seniors, families with young children struggling to stay in their homes, pay their bills, have food on their table, and we work with adults and children living without a home.

I firmly believe we need to invest in the solutions that will move us forward as a community, which is why I'm here to urge you to support the recommendations brought forth by the Seattle Human Services Coalition.

The proposed SHSC recommendations are the solutions we need to address the issues that our community is facing.

These recommendations were created by providers with a vision for what is needed in every district and across human services.

We need to look at holistic solutions that address the needs of the whole person, our youth, our adults, and seniors.

It is our responsibility as providers, government, and community to work together to face these challenges.

We must not make any cuts.

I ask that you support a budget that includes a 3.5% inflation adjustment to preserve current services and the new investments recommended in the Seattle Human Services Coalition's budget package.

I greatly appreciate your leadership and trust that you'll help make this happen.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Jen.

Allison, I know I saw Allison.

Where are you?

Allison, you're next, and then Maria, and then Tracy Gillespie, and Katie Hurley.

Good evening, Councilmembers.

Allison Isinger with the Seattle-King County Coalition on Homelessness.

We support the Budget for Justice recommendations, the Seattle Human Services Coalition recommendations, and I'm here with just the top three recommendations, two fewer than last year, that we are asking you to integrate into the next biennial budget.

The first one is to buy down rents and build homes for 350 more men, women, and children without them.

by adding $20 million to open at least one more supportive housing project each year, and by adding a $3 million a year rental subsidy that will deepen rental supports for people who don't need permanent supportive housing.

Our second key point for this budget is no cuts to shelter capacity.

We don't want to have to spend a lot of time on making the case that you all know very well.

217 men and women need to be inside, not out on the streets.

And third, we support human services wage increases to meet the cost of living that is increasing, as everyone knows, dramatically.

I just want to draw your attention to two documents, if I may, very briefly.

The first is Daniel Malone's excellent October 3rd op-ed in the Seattle Times in which he highlights the 4,000 units of permanent supportive housing and that gap.

and then notes that not all homeless people need that level of service.

So our $26 million recommendation would address both that 4,000 unit gap and the something like 16,000 unit gap for others.

The second document I have copies for all of you of, it is the Seattle Office of Housing Notice of Intent to Apply for Funding.

It is a total of $270 million worth of projects.

And there is something like 40 to, thank you, 40 to $55 million available to fund those projects, which means that currently, if we are lucky, we will get two permanent supportive housing projects a year.

I urge you to do more than that.

I thank you for what you have done already, and we stand ready, as always, to work with you to make this budget work.

Thank you.

Thank you, Allison.

Maria?

Maria and then Katie Hurley and the Saira Hi, thank you so much.

It'll be a break because I'm not asking for millions I'm here on behalf of El Centro de la Raza for the Beacon Hill neighborhood.

I serve as the environmental justice coordinator at El Centro We are here for an emergency request for a quantitative air and noise study by the University of Washington with accompanying multilingual community engagement.

As a quick FYI, Sea-Tac is proposing to double international flights, triple air cargo, and increase the passengers from 47 million to 66 million, and they're putting out an EIS, an environmental impact statement, This is from their own website, and Beacon Hill is a small, yellow community here.

These are flights going out, but coming in, 70% of the flights come over Beacon Hill at 3,000 and or 2,000 feet up.

This is hardwired.

And there is no other alternative that is proposed.

So we're wanting this quantitative air and noise study because the air monitor that we have in Beacon Hill is located in the golf course, and it shows that we don't have, quote, bad air.

We're also very interested in ultrafine particles because these have impact on the education and testing of our children.

So, I appreciate the select committee so we can present to all of you, and I super appreciate Councilwoman Teresa Mosqueda and Councilman Bruce Harrell for leading this, and I hope everybody co-sponsors it.

We're an environmental justice community with 80% people of color, 44% immigrant and refugees, and 36% don't speak English well, with one out of five as poor.

Thank you so much.

I know you've got plenty on your plate.

Thank you, Maria.

So, Tracy Gillespie, and then Katie Hurley, and then Nasaira.

I'm Tracy Gillespie.

I work for the Public Defender Association.

I'm the project manager for the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Program.

So I know you all know what LEAD is.

We, of course, divert people who are committing low-level criminal offenses due to unmet behavioral health needs into intensive outreach-based harm reduction services.

So, first of all, I just want to thank you so much for your support in the budget season last year.

It was incredibly meaningful.

With that extra funding, we were able to not only bring better saturation to the neighborhoods that we're already serving, but also expand into quite a few North Precinct neighborhoods, including Ballard, the Aurora Corridor, and the U District.

So, thank you very, very much for that support.

However, we of course are nowhere near reaching to scale and we're nowhere near reaching the community needs that we all know our neighborhoods are experiencing.

So since we've, especially within Ballard, Pioneer Square, and the Aurora Corridor, So since LEAD has expanded up into the North Precinct just a few, three months ago, we've already been overwhelmed with referrals and we've actually met our need for the year within three months.

We're serving people who are living in their cars and RVs along Leary Way.

We're inundated with referrals off of Aurora with people who are engaged in sex work or being sexually exploited.

Those referrals in particular are highly vulnerable because we, of course, have an HIV outbreak.

They are more susceptible to violence and addiction.

So they're a very high needs population and, of course, that neighborhood is deserving of those types of interventions.

We also have been really trying to bring our services within the Pioneer Square.

Obviously, we have been in the West Precinct for several years, and many of our clients are, of course, frequenting Courthouse Park, and we know that that has been a high-profile neighborhood.

And instead of business as usual and just arresting our way out of the problem, SPD and the community worked with us intensely in order to do a huge concerted effort in order to refer quite a number of those people into the LEAD program.

And I don't know if you've all been down there in the last few months, but it definitely has made a marked improvement and we are very, very happy for those referrals.

We're hoping to do another big heavy lift within the Ballard neighborhood of a similar sort.

So we're meeting with the Ballard library in order to really facilitate a lot of referrals from that neighborhood as well.

So in order really to have a good impact on community safety and really meet the needs that the community is experiencing, we need an additional million dollars and we need additional support.

We are nowhere near full scale.

We are nowhere near being able to reach all of the needs that the precincts are experiencing.

And we also aren't able to really meet our goal of being incredibly racially equitable because we, of course, are only operating in the East, West, and North precincts.

So additional funds would help meet the needs of the areas that we are already in and also really support expansion into more communities of color.

So thank you for your support and please consider us within this budget season.

And I would just like to add that we are often hosting people from across the country, if not the world, to replicate the LEAD program.

And we talk about how amazing and incredible these case managers are.

But when they ask, what could you do to make this program better, they say housing.

So we do think that LEAD could go much further, faster with additional housing.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

So, Katie Hurley, and then Nisaya Ra.

Katie, hi.

Hi.

My name is Katie.

Where's Nisaya?

Am I pronouncing that correctly?

It's number 20. No, hold on a second.

We'll give you your full time.

20. And then 21 is Anna.

And Patricia Sully is 22. 20 is not coming.

Okay.

Please.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Katie Hurley.

I'm an attorney with the Department of Public Defense.

I'm one of our policy and practice directors in the director's office.

I'm here today as part of the Coalition for Justice, which, as you've heard, is a consortium of community groups and institutions in our county that are asking for us to reexamine the amount of money that we spend in the adult criminal legal system and to look at reinvesting those resources into the community.

This is part of a larger nationwide movement as communities are stretched for resources.

They've examined where reinvestments can be made and one area that's been examined is the area of probation because studies have shown that long periods of probation don't assist individuals and they don't promote community safety.

We're asking that these resources be reinvested in the sorts of community groups like community passageways and creative justice that we've seen today that assist individuals in addressing their underlying needs and help reduce recidivism in the future and allow us to be the community that we want together for our young adults and for those individuals that struggle and need extra support.

There are other areas that we're asking for the council to look at for reinvestment, for divestment and reinvestment, but the one area that I wanted to focus on today was the probation area.

We're asking for you to look into this as we think it can make a really big difference in the lives of our communities and also promote community safety, the lives of our clients and also promote community safety.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for coming.

Anna, Patricia, and Krista, all of you are talking about safe consumption.

You want to come up as a group and get?

Okay.

Go ahead, please.

Then Anna, then Patricia, then Krista.

Hello.

Hello.

My name is Anna, and I'm here today to urge you to save lives and improve community health.

I urge you to use the funding that has been set aside to fund and implement safe consumption spaces now.

People are dying every single day, and families are being torn apart, and we can't delay any further.

In this case, delays mean death, and I strongly urge you to fund safe consumption spaces.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming.

Patricia?

Krista, do you want to come up closer to the microphone so that we're not walking back and forth?

And then after Krista, we've got Annie Benson and John Lombard.

Please, go ahead.

Hi, I'm Patricia Sully.

I'm the policy director with the Public Defender Association.

Last year, you all put $1.3 million into safe consumption spaces.

It was the right decision then, and it's the right decision now.

The city failed to spend a single one of those dollars last year.

And as a result of that failure, not only have yet more people died of preventable overdoses, we also have new problems, like a cluster of HIV outbreaks in the North End.

We are seeing the public health effects of the failure to act.

That failure isn't yours.

It rests at the feet of the mayor and her failure to implement a safe consumption space program.

But in her budget address, while she is keeping that $1.3 million, she has stated that it's not enough.

So we're asking that you all step up and fund more, that you fully fund so that a site can open and operate in 2019. There are challenges.

It is difficult to cite a safe consumption space.

And we do have an oppressive federal government that has threatened to shut a safe consumption space down.

And yet, we see jurisdictions all across the country continuing to fight to move forward because it's the right thing.

If we had stopped fighting in the 80s and 90s to open syringe exchanges, we would have seen even more massive death.

And that is the situation we're in today.

We are seeing an unparalleled crisis.

More people are dying today of overdoses than near anything else.

It is preventable and our city can work to prevent it.

We do need treatment and that is the county's responsibility and a responsibility the county has stepped up to.

The county has increased funding for treatment and they are doing a wonderful job expanding it.

But people who die never get to go into treatment.

So we ask you to maintain that 1.3 million and to add to it, fully fund, open and implement the Safe Consumption Space Program in 2019. Thank you.

Christa, then Annie Benson, and John Lombard, please.

Hi, please go ahead.

Hello, my name is Christa Demuth, and I am actually here today as a community member of the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

I fully support safe consumption sites here in Seattle, and I genuinely feel that City Council needs to again hear how desperately increasing harm reduction funding is needed.

Every day in my neighborhood, I see an abundance of community members who are suffering in our streets without adequate support and access to community health resources.

Considering it has been two years since the Opioid Overdose Task Force recommendations were released and the sixth year in a row that overdose deaths have risen, I urge you again to make safe consumption sites funding a priority.

To put such a heartbreaking, complex, and rapidly growing problem simply, delays mean deaths that could have otherwise been avoided.

This is an emergency that requires immediate action on City Council's behalf.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for coming.

Annie Benson, John Lombard, and Kelly is number 26.

My name is Annie Benson, and I am the directing attorney for the Washington Defender Association's Immigration Project, and we are a member of the Budget for Justice Coalition.

Thank you for the opportunity to talk with you tonight.

I know you are legally required as a council member.

But nonetheless, thank you.

I'm still grateful for the opportunity to talk here.

So I imagine that you know that 20% of Seattle's residents, that's one in five people, are immigrants here, which means a far greater number of them are children of immigrants.

And you certainly don't need me to talk to you about the horrors and the fear of what's happening now.

I will just throw a few numbers at you because I think they matter.

Last year, there was a 67% increase in the number of people who were apprehended by ICE.

There was a 30% increase in the number of those people who were actually deported.

So the impacts of what's happening here are as terrifying and terrible as we expected they would be, and they're not over.

So I think it's important to acknowledge that the work that you all did, that we all did, right in early 2017. And Seattle became a national model that many other places are trying to catch up with.

And so I want to say thank you so much for all of that.

And I like to say it's time for Sanctuary 2.0.

And it's time to continue expanding the capacity to use all of our local power and resources to protect immigrants.

And one of the most essential ways that we can do that is by supporting the Budget for Justice coalition and these community-based alternatives, because those are actually meaningful steps that keep people out of the system, and being in the justice system is the greatest place of risk for people.

So I want to encourage you to support that, and thanks again.

Thanks, Annie.

John Lombard, Kelly, and then Elizabeth Carpenter, looks like you're talking about the Seattle Public Library Foundation.

Hi, John.

Hi, Councilmember Baxton.

Good evening, council members.

My name is John Lombard, and I'm the lead organizer for the D5 Community Network.

Tonight, I'm not speaking on behalf of the network, but I am drawing on my involvement with the network to highlight two key budget needs in District 5. First, Aurora needs sidewalks.

Based on the city's own pedestrian master plan, this is the most glaring need for pedestrians in the entire city.

As this handout that I'm providing shows, the densest area, along North Aurora in the Bitter Lake area is precisely where Aurora lacks sidewalks.

This also is the location of the region's busiest bus route, Rapid Ride Line E. It's right in the middle of an urban village that has been growing very rapidly with a large population of immigrants and seniors, and it's two blocks from Ingram High School.

Second, please support the Mayor's allocation of an additional $3 million for a new Lake City Community Center, as recommended by the Parks Department, and join Councilmember Juarez in seeking sufficient funds to complete the job.

Even with this new allocation, we still have at least $5 million to go.

And on a related note, please correct the mistake that's carried over from the last budget document, which identifies this project as renovation of the current community center.

As the budget document itself indicates elsewhere, and as the mayor and the department have repeatedly assured the community, the city's intention is to replace the current facility.

That's not what the page on this project actually says in the budget, as I've highlighted here.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Kelly McKinney.

I live in the Bitter Lake neighborhood.

It is time for the City of Seattle to recognize that the city limits are now set at 145th Avenue North, not 85th Avenue North.

Highway 99, also known as Aurora Avenue, lacks sidewalks along many stretches of the highway.

There are many areas on Aurora that are unsafe for pedestrians.

If Shoreline, Snohomish County, and Everett can put sidewalks along 99, so can Seattle.

I support rebuilding, not just renovating the Lake City Community Center.

North Precinct is 40 percent of the city.

It is time the city recognized that.

I support adding a crime prevention organizer to North Precinct, ensuring that North Precinct has its fair share of CSOs.

And I continue to support LEAD in North Precinct.

Lastly, what was done to Department of Neighborhoods was a travesty.

I support restoring the neighborhood district community engagement coordinators.

Community building is worth doing for its own sake.

Thank you.

Kelly, Elizabeth Carpenter.

Good evening.

I'm Annie Searle.

I'm a 41-year-old library card person.

I'm here to represent the tens of thousands of people who use our libraries on a regular basis.

There are about 5 million of them a year, about 14,000 of them a day.

So the mayor has done a great thing in increasing the security that will help make all of our facilities better in the coming year, create a safer environment.

At the same time, we're absorbing a half a million dollars in cuts, and we're about a year away from the levy ending.

So I'm here, Rona's gonna talk about something else.

I'm here to talk just basically about the fact that the library's current budget, 27% of it is levy-based.

And as we look at the drop-off there, we see the need to renew that levy.

I'm here to say that we have many people in the community, across the community, willing to help and assist.

And we have, let me get the formal name, will be happy to work with you on a statement of legislative intent as well.

Thank you very much.

My name is Rona Zevin and I'm representing the Friends of Seattle Public Library and we have two small requests for the library budget.

One is for additional custodial staff and I encourage all council members to take a trip down the street and go to the library and check out the restrooms sometime in the late afternoon.

The library is one of the very few places that have open access to restrooms and increasingly there are people who have no other choice but to use those restrooms and for many things they were not intended for.

like washing themselves, washing their clothes.

They've really become a problem for every library user.

So one of the things that the library would like and was not funded in the budget this year is two additional custodial staff so they can maintain the restrooms in a usable condition because really not.

I work there every Friday and I won't use the restrooms because they're just the only place that many people have to go.

The second thing is that we have seven Carnegie libraries that are on the unreinforced masonry list, neighborhood libraries.

Nobody has any idea what it would take to make those libraries even safe enough for people to get out of them in terms of an earthquake, let alone to maintain the structural integrity of the buildings.

The library is able to look at a few of those buildings, but we would like to be able to do a study and come up with rough cost estimates on what it would take to do both a minimal and then a more structural improvement to the building so that they would be safe and all the children in our libraries would be safe around the city.

So that's another budget request that we have that I think it's capital.

It could probably be funded out of the real estate excise tax.

And just one further little note from the friends, like many nonprofit organizations, we were forced out of our space because of rising rents.

And we have to have a very big space to collect all those books that we have for our big book sales every year.

So we were lucky enough to find a space at still a little bit below market rent.

But we don't have the same amount of money to give to the library every year to support some of the library's operations.

So there is close to $100,000 that the library will not get from the Friends because we just don't have it and it's just going into our rent.

And the only alternative was to close down and not have the book sales, which as I think most of you know are very popular community events.

And one thing we forgot to say, I don't know how I forgot this, is that the library is the most democratic of our institutions and that we hope that you will understand and appreciate from your own use of the libraries the important role we play in many of the problems that are being discussed tonight.

Good, thank you very much.

So we're going to submit a letter with a draft statement of legislative intent and a lot more detail on these items that we mentioned here today.

So thank you for your time.

Great, thank you.

Now, what's your name?

Okay, so Elizabeth Carpenter not here?

She got in line for us.

All right.

So now we have Generations Aging with Pride.

Do you have a group?

Yes, we have a group.

Nice to see you all.

We'll have five minutes.

And then after this group, Jimmy Lee Wright and Tracy Arendt.

Please.

Good evening.

Good evening.

My name is Karen Fredrickson-Goldson, and I'm the lead author of the report, Aging and Community, Addressing LGBTQ Inequities in Housing and Senior Services.

And I want to thank Councilmember Gonzalez for providing and securing the funds so that this report could be commissioned by the City of Seattle.

And I would like to make available the executive summary.

So, last week, 150 LGBTQ seniors came to hear the findings of this report and to express their many unmet needs.

I also want to thank Councilperson Herbald for being at that event.

So the 150 people, what did they hear?

What needs did they express?

What did we find?

First of all, the majority of LGBTQ elders live alone.

They experience significant health disparities, those that live in Seattle.

They have higher rates of disability.

They're vastly underserved.

About 75% do not have access to an AFIRMI senior center.

They're at risk of losing their housing and they're at risk and underserved.

They have a high risk, they have housing elevated risks in terms of housing, especially they experience housing cost burden and paying higher rates of renters.

So they are at risk both of premature institutionalization and premature death.

Yet they are pioneers that built these communities.

But yet the city of Seattle itself is falling vastly behind in serving LGBTQ seniors.

I'm on a project, and we're across every census division in the US.

San Francisco now spends $6 million for distinct services for LGBTQ older adults.

Aging and disability services in Seattle spends under $145,000.

And there is no new funding for this at-risk and underserved population in the mayor's proposed budget.

San Francisco has a funded LGBTQ senior center and two LGBTQ housing units, as does Chicago, as does New York.

Atlanta has many more funded services than we have in Seattle.

So we asked the City Council to prioritize the needs of this underserved population.

And the priorities that were identified for the LGBT seniors themselves were fund a senior center, a hub, to address their distinct needs so that they can obtain services that are reflective and can address their needs.

And this center also has to be able to provide training to reduce biases in housing and increase housing stability and get information about housing to these seniors.

And to be able to provide technical assistance to other senior services and other centers that so they too can.

address the needs of these seniors.

Meeting these needs now will actually reduce public cost and again, reduce premature institutionalized, premature institutionalization.

I appreciate your support.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Maureen Linehan and I'm a board member on the, for the board of Generations Aging with Pride.

Disorganization originated from the concerns raised and challenges identified by older LGBT individuals in Seattle.

Among these were a lack of access to services, high rates of poverty, inadequate housing, victimization, and lack of culturally competent care by aging and health care providers.

Generations Aging with Pride and Aging with Pride University of Washington have created an LGBT-affirming senior center on Capitol Hill, the first such center in Washington.

We are here before you tonight to request funding to more fully realize the vision of older LGBT individuals in Seattle for an age-friendly community hub where all older LGBT individuals, their allies, and caregivers can gather and improve their health, well-being, and independence, and stay actively engaged with our community.

We currently have a small offering of programs and services, including information about resources, evidence-based exercise programs, and cultural awareness training.

We are skilled and effective in using evidence-based engagement techniques, and we provide outreach to seniors who are geographically and socially isolated.

But we are just beginning to realize our vision.

Through a more fully funded senior center, we will expand our current services to include specialized social work services to help seniors with resources for housing, health, and to address health and financial security.

We would like to offer a lunchtime meal program, which is a keystone service towards improving nutrition and decreasing social isolation.

Most importantly, we want to more fully develop an inclusive safe space for older LGBT individuals in Seattle.

Thank you.

Can Beatrice just say one thing real quick?

I'm sorry, we're getting five minutes, right?

Okay, thank you.

Thank you very much.

Jimmy Lee Wright and Tracy, and then Rebecca Morrow.

Hello, good evening members of our city council.

My name is Jimmy Wright.

I currently stay at Sheriff's Maple Leaf Shelter, which is located in the Wedgwood area.

I would like to express why I feel shared shelters should not be eliminated.

Shared shelters provide a safe and secure and stable place to stay.

They give people a very stable environment to live in, to get up on their feet.

I know bureaucrats need to label everything.

They have labeled shared shelters basic.

Right now there are downtown shelters that have a thin mat on the concrete floor.

You get in at 9 p.m.

and leave out by 5 a.m.

Besides a bathroom and a blanket, that's all you get.

You might be sleeping next to someone who is heavily on drugs or intoxicated.

But shared shelters provide sobriety.

I appreciate it.

I also like the innovative self-management system, which means we, the shelter residents, work hard to run the shelter ourselves.

The Maple Leaf Shelter has a separate room for socializing and meetings, which is the fireside room.

It has a plasma TV and also has a beautiful kitchen, microwaves, two refrigerators.

We can keep things clean and it has lots of cabinet space for our ability to keep our foods.

We do sleep in one room, but it has a lot of space with carpet.

It's very quiet.

There is storage for personal belongings.

There are separate bathroom for men and women.

We mostly, importantly, we got two showers which provides privacy that cuts down on trips we have to make to public hygiene centers.

The exit time in the morning for our shelter is 8 AM.

Many Sundays there are groups that come in and make meals for us.

Then they serve meals to us.

Usually that's at the last Sunday of the month.

We stay in the holidays and the church leave us food often.

Maybe this is basic to a bureaucrat, but we appreciate it.

We truly appreciate the church for what they've given us and they give us a very nice place to stay.

Please, I hope.

You know, follow the mayor's plan to defund my shelter and 10 other shared shelters like in June.

Thank you for your consideration.

Please, if you can, help us.

Remember, shared shelters save lives because without people, I mean, without shelters, people die.

Thank you, Jimmy.

Thank you very much.

Tracy and then Rebecca and Anitra Freeman.

Good evening, my name is Tracy A. Rant and I've been a member of the WHEEL organization for several years.

Eighteen years ago, the city of Seattle approached the women of WHEEL, which were homeless and formerly homeless, and asked them to open a shelter, a low barrier shelter for the women of Seattle.

And since then, It's done a lot of good work.

I don't know how else to say it.

When I first became homeless, I stayed at the shelter.

The other models didn't quite work for me for times and other things that I just couldn't fit into the shelter model.

And now, today, I work for the shelter.

And I'm able to, as the program says, share your experience, strength, and hope.

We share it with the women that are there now.

It's moved several times.

The women always find us.

We, it's, it's a beautiful thing, it really is.

And I get emotional about it because we really, I mean, these women come in, they break your heart.

And they've all got a story, and when you think that, you know, seven years ago, eight years ago, I was one of these women.

And now I'm not homeless anymore, I'm working a job, and I'm able to pass on, to give back to the community that saved me.

And I really do believe that without this shelter, that I would have died.

out there because I, you know, didn't have my head right.

It's, I get it all jumbled in my head sometimes.

We've been able to offer case management this year for the first time.

So we're helping out, we're helping the women try to get in, try the ones that want to get into housing, we're helping them get into housing.

The church community, the church and the community around, we're at Trinity Episcopal right now.

They prepare meals for the women once a month, and it's a community dinner.

We all get together, and they actually, you know, they sit down and they talk to us.

You've got really, I can't, I don't know if I can stress the importance to you, that without the shelter, women are gonna die.

And it'll happen sooner rather than later.

And so I just really urge you, please, refund the shelter.

Keep it going.

There's a need for it.

It's not filled anywhere else.

Tracy, thank you for coming and thanks for your story.

Rebecca, then Anitra, then Mr. Zimmerman.

Good evening.

My name is Rebecca Morrow.

I am a resident of Seattle.

I was heading home one night a few weeks ago, and I was approached by a woman at a bus stop.

She was a nice lady.

She could have been my aunt, my mom.

She was asking for help.

I didn't understand what she was looking for in the beginning.

Somebody from another shelter had tried to send her to a shelter in Belltown.

from the International District area.

She was trying to find the shelter, but she didn't understand the city and the layout and the directions that she was given.

I tried to help her find the shelter.

We did find it.

They didn't serve single women, so she got sent away.

So I tried to take her to another shelter that was near that shelter.

She got sent away for the second time.

But we got told, go up to Trinity.

So I took her up to Trinity.

And she was accepted there.

She walked in immediately.

And I barely got a thank you and a goodbye from her because she was so happy.

The biggest reward I got was the biggest smile on her face when she entered because she actually saw that they still had space for her.

And they welcomed her right over to the table to sign in.

One of the ladies met us actually coming off the bus and she's like, oh yeah, there's room for you.

Come on, let's go.

You know, because we weren't sure exactly where we entered.

We just were told to go up to Trinity.

one of the ladies helped walk us in and I stayed for a few minutes just to make sure that she actually had a spot and one of the ladies that was working there came over to make sure that I knew she was going to be okay and I want to make sure that you know if other people are trying to find shelter that there is funds you know to keep these places open because had that lady not approached me and asked for help and I engaged and actually tried to find her a place.

Who knows what it would have happened to her?

You know, if that was somebody that I knew out on the street, you know, I wouldn't want her to spend the night out on the street or riding buses around all night, because that's not a place for people like that.

So please fund them.

Thank you very much.

And thank you for that story.

I really appreciate you, Rebecca.

Anitra.

And then after Mr. Zimmerman, Alison Jerkovich.

Good evening again.

My name is Anitra Freeman.

I stayed at a SHARE self-managed shelter from October of 1995 until I got into housing in February of 1996. I have stayed involved, as you know, with SHARE and WEAL.

Over the years, I've had the opportunity to go to conferences all over the United States, and ShareWheel is unique in the entire country.

Seattle should be proud of ShareWheel.

I am personally evidence that people in ShareWheel shelters get into housing.

I am evidence that Share Wheel is a community.

A community that will support you when you're in shelter and afterward.

A community that will help you grow.

The most important thing about a shelter is not whether it's basic or enhanced.

It's that it's there.

It's not a promise of something nice sometime down the road.

It's a safe place to sleep tonight, like Rebecca just talked about.

So while you're debating over how many promises you can afford to keep, please don't take the reality away from anyone.

Fully fund the Share Wheel Network of 11 shelters and the life-saving Wheel Low Barrier Shelter.

Thank you, Anitra.

Thank you.

Alison, then Melissa Barnett, and Celestial Campbell.

Start Mr. Zimmerman's time, please.

Hi, my lovely Dory Fuhrer, our best people friend, a crook, a criminal, and killer.

My name is Alex Zimmerman and I come to this chamber every day for many years.

I have right now number 33. It's very symbolic number because my ancestor, Jesus Christus, in 33 bring something what has changed all planet.

So I right now speak to 700,000 emerald degenerate Seattle idiot who right now don't have one minute of happy life.

700,000 all not happy.

So why we cannot doing nothing about this?

700,000, this care only 65 coming, but 700,000 not happy.

Why is this people not happy?

Because it's crook.

A criminal, a killer, destroy all us life for last few year totally.

And nothing future will be better.

Tomorrow will be same like yesterday.

And after yesterday will be tomorrow like today.

This will be again and again and again before we not stand up.

700,000 people and change this Dory chamber in 1919 totally.

It's only one way what is we can bring something back.

America, Seattle, us constitutional right be happy.

So I speak right now to 700,000 people who live in this city.

Stand up, wake up, and go to 19 election and clean this Dory chamber totally from this Nazi pig, from this killer.

Alison, please step up.

Thank you very much.

Melissa Barnett and Celestial Campbell.

Hi, good evening.

My name is Allison Jurkovic, and I'm a staff member at LifeWire, East King County's domestic violence agency.

I'm also here on behalf of the Board of Directors for the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence, and as a domestic violence myself for over 10 years.

I want to start by saying that we support the Seattle Human Services Coalition's full budget.

In Seattle, an estimated 132,000 women and 86,000 men experience some form of intimate partner violence.

And we know that due to the impacts of cultural and historical trauma and oppression, families of color, refugees and immigrants, and those marginalized by other identities are at high risk for experiencing DV and experience much higher risk of low barrier access to help.

My colleague is going to be speaking about access to legal services, but for many survivors seeking help, a call to a specialized domestic violence hotline is actually the entry point for housing, legal assistance, support groups, and other services.

For survivors who experience those barriers, unless we have fully staffed a dedicated DV hotline, they oftentimes aren't able to get through for the 15,000 calls that we experience every year.

And one survivor actually said that when you call to ask for help and you can't reach anyone, it feels like there is no one out there.

You feel stuck and frustrated, and you end up staying with your abuser.

Sometimes you feel suicidal.

There is nowhere to go.

Having a coordinated helpline would increase access to services for folks in person, as well as access to talented individuals that can provide services over the phone for folks who either aren't ready to come in, aren't able to come in, or aren't interested in coming in.

The county's already dedicated funding and we're asking for the remaining $500,000 annually from the city of Seattle.

And without a commitment, at least half of that for 2019, the entire project for a coordinated helpline is at risk.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Appreciate you coming and nice shirt.

Melissa Celestial and then Jen Oxley.

Good evening members of the Seattle City Council.

I'm staying at Sherr's University Lutheran Shelter right now and I object to Mayor Durkin's recommendation to shut all 11 Sherrville indoor shelters down in the middle of next year.

I think you should know some things about the advantages of shared shelters compared to other basic shelters.

The numbers I am sharing with you came from the HMIS Clarity Database and yesterday's HSD PowerPoint presentation.

The HMIS data says that only 4% of the people in Seattle's basic shelters move into permanent housing.

That's 4 out of 100 people.

That database includes share wheel shelters in our case 31 of the 196 people who moved out of share shelters went on to permanent housing.

When you do the division that means share had a 16% exit rate to permanent housing.

That is four times the average for other basic shelters in the first six months of 2018. Our bed night cost in both 2018 and 2019 is less than $10.

And using the numbers that the city provided in the PowerPoint presented to you yesterday, other basic shelters' bed night cost is around $25.

The share will system of shelter is not as expensive and has placed a much higher percentage of people into permanent housing.

That's other than the basic shelters that the mayor isn't cutting.

And if you prefer less costly and more effective, you'll fund share wheel shelters past June.

It would save the city money and get more people into permanent housing.

So what's not to like?

Please, restore share wheel shelter funding.

Thank you, Melissa.

Celestial, Jem, then Darren.

Good evening, members of the Seattle Council.

My name is Celestial Campbell, and I'm staying at the Cherwell Lutheran Shelter in Councilperson Rob Johnson's district.

I would like to explain what I like about Cher shelters and why I want you to keep them in operation.

Right now, the mayor proposes to shut them down at the end of June 2019. First, I feel respected at Cher's University Lutheran Shelter because we're self-managed.

Being able to report to my peers makes me feel respected and valued.

There isn't a boss or supervisor who gets paid.

There aren't many shared staff.

They mostly make sure that we're doing all right and have what we need.

Having been homeless themselves, they know what we're going through.

University Lutheran Church is one of two women's shared shelters.

Men are not allowed.

I do feel safer because of that.

SHARE also has two shelters that are men only, and with the rest being men and women, there is something for everyone.

I know that SHARE shelters are called basic.

Let me point out to you that we have a kitchen that we can use at any time.

We can stay in the shelter space on Saturdays, and in winter, that will be especially important.

The Elizabeth Gregory Day Center is also at University Lutheran Church, and it is open on weekends.

They're a great advantage.

In conclusion, please keep my shelter and the 10 others' shared shelters open past June.

I know that what I'm speaking to you is just words, but I know that words have power, and I hope that you will take mine very seriously.

Thank you.

You spoke very well.

Thank you.

Jen, nice to see you.

Darren, and number 39, oh, I'm going to slaughter your name, Reedhi.

And then after, Tanika Thompson.

Hi, I want to thank, can you hear me?

I want to thank you all for staying and listening to us.

My name is Jen Oxley.

I'm what Councilwoman Gonzalez calls a privileged voter.

I'm not just a privileged voter, I'm an angry privileged voter.

Contrary to the Councilwoman's assertions, I do not hate the homeless, I do not hate addicts, and I do not want to see them die in the streets.

To use her word, I find that very much nauseating.

My concern today is the nearly $1.5 million that the mayor has in the budget to fund the so-called safe injection site.

Council, there's nothing safe about injecting deadly poisons into your bloodstream over and over again.

By funding such a site, you are encouraging sick and vulnerable people to play a twisted game of Russian roulette, or should we call this version Seattle roulette.

This is not some kind of a health spa we're talking about here.

It is some kind of a macabre death spa.

I do not want one red cent of my money going to fund this.

Instead, I want that money redirected into something, anything that will bring about health and hope.

And I heard testimony today from amazing programs.

Plymouth Housing, I know they're doing great work.

They're helping with recovery.

That mentorship program that the group was talking about to start this meeting sounded fantastic.

I want to see our money go to fund health and hope and life, not death.

Please, use that money for something better.

Thanks.

Thank you, Jen.

Darren, Reedy, and then Tanika.

Very compelling stories tonight.

My name is Darren Knee-Neighbor.

That's how you pronounce it, Knee-Neighbor.

I represent People and Otters, which is a nonprofit to protect nature, and I'm also its attorney.

I used to be a local government attorney, a city and a county, for 17 years.

And I'm here to comment on the CIP transportation section.

And I want to thank you, public servants and people that work.

I know it's a very difficult job, it's a Rubik's Cube, and I totally respect that.

With regard to funding for transportation, it's our position that it's inadequate.

And here's the consequence of not having adequate funding for infrastructure.

And I have a map, an aerial photo for your clerk.

If there's inadequate housing, Prices go up, people flee.

They flee to the suburbs.

They flee to Mount Vernon.

They flee to Olympia.

That's inadequate housing.

If you have more housing for everybody, prices come down.

But the biggest threat to nature is sprawl, because if you lay down pavement, way out in a rural area because they couldn't afford a place in a city, the forest never comes back.

So there are many ways to solve this problem under the GMA inadequate transportation provisions.

One way is to increase housing supply for all people, including families.

But for everybody, everybody.

Thank you.

Thank you, Darren.

Riti, and would you pronounce your name for me, so I'm saying it right?

Riti Mukhopadhyay.

OK, very good.

Thank you.

And then Tanika.

And after Tanika, Frank Miranda.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

My name is Reedy Mukopare.

I am the YWCA's legal director for their sexual violence legal services program.

I am also a board member of the coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence.

I'm urging you to support the Seattle Human Services Commission's full budget portfolio recommendation.

And as a part of that recommendation, I'm asking the council to renew funding for attorney and legal services for sexual assault and domestic violence survivors.

We know the numbers.

One in three women will have experienced a sexual assault in their lifetime.

One in six men.

in their lifetime.

This can actually increase depending on demographics.

Nearly 100% of Native American women will experience a sexual assault in their lifetime.

The chances of being sexually assaulted increases if you are a black woman, if you identify as trans, if you identify as gender nonconforming.

Nearly 90% of our homeless youth have experienced a sexual assault while being homeless.

The impact is devastating, emotionally, psychologically, physically, and the legal consequences are many, from protection order, immigration status being under attack, employment being under attack, not having access to proper education.

The civil legal needs study showed that the average sexual assault survivor experiences 19 legal issues, whereas the average low income individual experiences seven to eight legal issues.

In recognizing this, the council made funding available last year.

It is not a part of the mayor's budget this year, and how our city values are reflected through how the city prioritizes its budget and funding, and therefore, I'm asking for the council to renew the funding for sexual assault survivors.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for coming.

Taneika, are you all a group?

Oh, yeah, they're just here with me.

They're not speaking.

OK, good.

They're just supporting me.

Nice.

It's great to have the support system.

So just a moment, Frank, then Christopher Anderson, and Sarah Jane.

Good evening City Council.

My name is Tanika Thompson and I am the organizer of the Food Access Team at God Green.

I just wanted to remind you that for the last couple of years I have been advocating for the community by bringing awareness to the food security gap.

The food security gap is made up of working families who are not able to put healthy food on their tables because of the cost of rent and bills.

And I thought that we had handled this matter when the sugary beverage tax was passed and that it stated that a majority of the revenue was going to go towards closing the food security gap.

But what I see in the mayor's budget, it looks like it's good.

But what surprises me is how she can take the money that is beyond what was projected in revenue and put it in general funding when we have yet to even attempt to close the food security gap.

That program has not even started.

It should start at the beginning of next year.

We've been planning on implementing that program all year long.

And so that, to me, does not seem fair.

Not fair at all.

Just because it's beyond what someone else projected, we don't know what we can do until we attempt to do it.

And we cannot do that unless we have those funds.

I've been working really hard to get the community to be behind the sugary beverage tax.

They feel like it's regressive.

I'm steadily telling them that it's not regressive when it can go back into their pockets since it came out of their pockets by way of healthy foods.

It's not like it's a bad plan.

It's a very good idea.

And I think that she should just let us have the opportunity to see if it works before taking money away from the program.

So I urge you to stand with me again in attempting to close the food security gap with the revenue from the sugary beverage tax.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Frank, before you get started, Frank, I'm going to ask Christopher Sarajan and Joseph Wendell to please come close to the microphones.

Thank you, council members.

My name is Frank Miranda.

I'm here tonight on behalf of Solid Ground and supported by the Seattle Food Committee, an association of food banks that operate in and around the city of Seattle.

These bodies support the full SHSC budget recommendation portfolio, including the minimum 3.5% annual inflationary adjustment for human services funding in 2019 and 2020. In particular, I'd like to tell you about the recommendation to increase capacity for food delivery to local food banks.

This recommendation is important because regular delivery of basic food to food banks is a vital resource that is not being served equitably to all agencies in the City of Seattle.

There are actions we can take that will strengthen our communities though.

The recommendation to increase capacity for food delivery to local food banks is one such action.

This recommendation will allow more agencies to leverage economies of scale to receive basic food services, which will then allow those agencies to focus on increasing the amount of nutritionally dense foods available to the communities that they serve, as well as the need to tailor their services to the unique needs of those communities.

For example, I want to share the experience of North Helpline, an agency that provides food to thousands of community members on a monthly basis.

According to Jeremy Kay, Food Bank Director at North Helpline, with our current vehicles, we would be making six separate trips to South Seattle, which would probably be full day support of staffing, having a large vehicle transport the food all at once helps us to be as effective as possible.

For these reasons, we urge you to fully fund SHSC's budget recommendations, including its recommendation to increase capacity for food delivery to local food banks in the amount of about $35,000 in 2019 and 2020 respectively.

Thank you for your time.

On a personal note, I do also just want to support the request of the lady right before me.

I do think that an unexpected increase in funding of SBT should also result in an increase in funding for the programs that they support.

Thank you.

Thanks very much, Frank.

Christopher?

Sarah Jane, after Sarah Jane, Joseph, and then Heather, it looks like Villanova.

Hi.

Thanks, hi.

My name is Christopher Anderson.

I've been with SHARE for about a year, and I'm living in a SHARE shelter in South Seattle, Martin Luther King Jr.

Way, in Juneau, called The Bunkhouse.

Our night shelter has a capacity of 25 participants.

Those screened in as participants in a self-managed facility of men and women who are seeking housing and employment in Seattle.

The mayor's budget would close this unique successful program on June 30, 2019. That is when the funding for all 11 share and wheel shelters funding is cut by the mayor's budget.

It's on page 169. I've seen amazing success stories and attach that we will be emailing to you.

is an interview that I gave with Nicole Brodeur, which the Seattle Times published several weeks ago.

For the record, the successes I've had are the result of both the Recovery Café and Cher's Bunkhouse.

Both my time with the café and a sober place to stay have been essential in my progress.

I'd like to quickly mention a man who came into the bunkhouse in the spring of 2017, a gentleman also a member of the cafe.

At first, he kept coming in and out.

He liked the place, he liked the people, but he struggled with the obligations and the sobriety.

Now he is in permanent housing in South Lake Union neighborhood.

And he would tell you that he needed the bunkhouse rules and expectations to settle down.

Our insistence that he follow those rules and do his share, but also the willingness to give him second and third chances is what led to his success.

You're welcome to visit the bunkhouse.

I'd be glad to show you myself why it works.

And what a terrible mistake it would be to take shares indoor shelters out of the budget.

Thank you.

Sarah Jane, Joseph, and then, thank you, Christopher, thank you.

Sarah Jane, Joseph, and then Heather Villanova.

Hi.

Good evening and thank you so much for being here.

I'm Sarah Jane Siegfried.

I'm with Seattle Coalition for Affordability.

livability and equity which you know well is a coalition of 29 neighborhood groups that has appealed the MHA environmental impact statement will be a year in November.

We appealed the MHA because it is a one-size-fits-all up zone that delivers precious little affordability, no livability and displacement rather than equity.

Last year's Mayor Murray budget removed neighborhood planning from the budget.

This year's mayor's budget again eliminates neighborhood planning despite its being part of the 20-year comprehensive plan.

The citywide upzone ordinance, if it's adopted, has language overriding any conflicts with the comprehensive, with the neighborhood plans, although I don't really know if this is legal, if you can legislate in an ordinance to change the comprehensive plan.

This year's Mayor Durkin budget projects instead of neighborhood planning, it doesn't use the word, it's just not in there, which is just neat.

It rather awards equitable development initiative projects to ethnic cultural centers similar to El Centro to stabilize specific cultural communities.

While I support these and they're terrific and valuable, these community projects should not be confused with neighborhood planning, which are grassroots efforts to direct and guide growth while preserving livability.

So what is livability?

It's everything that was left out of the 65 recommendations of the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda, the HALA.

Please, ask each neighborhood what it needs to be livable.

This is just basic.

So perhaps livability is noise mitigation and air quality.

Perhaps it's sidewalks.

Perhaps it's the tree canopy which is dwindled.

Perhaps it's preserving historic neighborhoods of craftsman homes.

Perhaps it's preserving an intact block of unique small businesses that disappear with development.

We'll never know unless we ask the neighborhoods what they need.

Thank you, Sarah Jane.

Thank you for coming.

Joseph is number 44, Heather is 45, and Josh Castle is 46.

Joseph hello hello, I'm Joseph Wendell, and I'm a registered voter of district 7 council members I would like you like to thank you for hearing our concerns tonight as you could probably guess by the Extreme amount of purple.

I'm rocking that yes I'm from here, and I'll tell you what I'm not the slightest bit happy about the fact that my home has become so unaffordable to live in it's Unfathomable to me that anyone who claims to be a Seattleite wouldn't support the head tax that was recently overturned As a native Seattleite, I can tell you that we have a unique subculture here.

And regardless of where one comes from, the difference between someone who merely lives here versus someone who truly represents this great city's ideals is that the former thinks that the problem with homelessness is the burden it places on our tax dollars.

Whereas a true Seattleite knows that the true problem is that we're not doing enough to help them.

There's a lot of money in the city.

Neglecting to provide adequate funding for organizations such as SHARE, who provide stability and an opportunity for recovery from trauma of homelessness, isn't just despicably inhumane, it's flat-out stupid.

The state of Utah has shown through their incredibly successful Housing First program that the state can actually save money by providing stable housing for the chronically homeless because it results in less trips to the emergency room, less arrests, and less time in jail.

I implore you, don't just use your heart.

Use your head and get behind the people's budget that is being pushed by Councilmember Sawant.

Tax the rich.

Stop the sweeps.

House the homeless.

And on a very closely related note, we don't need a new youth jail.

The school-to-prison pipeline is really just a continuation of white supremacy and a war against people of color who already are suffering from a disproportionately high rate of poverty, and to come full circle, they are also the population that is suffering most greatly from gentrification that is ongoing and continuing in Seattle.

Thank you, Joseph.

Thank you.

Heather?

Ms. Bagshaw, I vote.

Heather, and after Heather is Josh 46, Andrew Kidd 47, Tracy Roberts 48. Thank you.

Good evening, council members.

My name is Heather Villanueva.

I'm here on behalf of 45,000 caregivers united in SEIU 775. Thank you for continuing to lead the nation in combating wage theft by supporting the Office of Labor Standards in this budget.

Passing the Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights was a victory for caregivers, nannies, house cleaners, and gardeners in Seattle.

Workers organized, spoke out about the abuses and poor working conditions they've endured, and advocated for protections to improve their lives, like minimum wage and rest and meal breaks, protections afforded to all other workers.

To ensure this law has meaningful impact on workers' lives, we need strong outreach, education, and enforcement.

Compared to other workers, domestic workers face unusually high rates of wage theft.

They are disproportionately women, people of color, and immigrants.

because these populations have often been locked out of higher-paying opportunities and expected to take on the labor of care.

This makes domestic workers uniquely vulnerable to discrimination and harassment at work.

And there are also complex power dynamics at play that contribute to keeping workers silent.

Domestic workers are isolated in private households and have little recourse or support.

There are often language barriers, fear of retaliation, and the fact that filing a complaint is an intimidating process.

Many employers and domestic workers have told us they don't know their rights or their obligations under the law.

The proposed budget provides funding to the Office of Labor Standards to hire additional staff.

dedicated to the enforcement of domestic worker rights, and we urge support for those needed staff.

However, the unique conditions in this decentralized and invisible industry require a targeted approach to proactive outreach and enforcement.

Organizations with existing connections to the community are more likely to reach and establish trust with workers.

As a domestic worker Bill of Rights is implemented, those organizations will also need additional resources to effectively reach domestic workers and employers and help them understand their rights.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming.

Josh, good to see you.

Andrew Kidd, 47. Tracy Roberts, 48. And then Lisa, 49.

Good evening.

Good evening.

My name is Josh Castle.

I'm the Community Engagement Director with Lehigh.

We are very disappointed with the proposed severe cuts in shelter beds.

169 people died on the streets last year, and this is a recipe for more suffering and for more death.

One of the navigation team's biggest challenge is having shelter beds to actually refer people to.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to increase the size of the navigation team while at the same time cutting beds.

Lehigh, the NAV team, and others need places to refer people instead of just having people swept and making them fall even deeper into desperation.

We also understand from a recent city auditor report that people are more likely to accept shelter in our tiny house villages or enhance shelters than other options.

We are set to open our 10th tiny house village later this month in South Lake Union, but that will only include a fraction of the beds and houses that we actually need.

They are cost effective.

The tiny house villages are 12.5% of all shelter beds and yet make up less than 3% of all homelessness investments by the city.

Help us fulfill the mayor's campaign pledge of 1,000 tiny houses to get more people out of the danger and isolation of homelessness and onto a path of safety, civility, and permanent housing.

We are grateful for the increase in case management for the villages, the funding for it.

That's a critical bridge to getting people out of the trauma of homelessness and into a safe and secure tiny house community, and then stabilize and transition into housing, employment, treatment, and other services.

Lastly, as you know, the King County Council recently passed $165 million for affordable workforce housing and services for homeless youth.

It's critical this funding is not allowed to lag or be pieced out.

but we get it into the pipeline right now.

There are many affordable housing projects ready to break ground.

We have over 12,000 homeless right now.

That doesn't include the great number that will become homeless in the future.

It is urgent that we treat this as the crisis that it is.

Please reach out to your fellow King County Council members.

to request that they free up this funding immediately to address this crisis.

This is especially urgent as the mayor also proposed zero new funding for affordable housing.

We urge that the council correct this, please, and add at least $20 million to open at least one more supportive housing project each year.

Thank you for your leadership and your time.

Josh, thank you for coming.

Andrew.

After Andrew is Tracy Roberts, 48, Lisa, 49, and Susan Seagal.

Hello.

My name is Andrew Kedda.

and I'm the transportation team lead for 350 Seattle.

Thank you for being here this evening.

I'm here to urge you to fund bus lanes.

Bus lanes are created with red paint, so they're quite cheap.

They allow buses to come frequently and regularly.

They move people quickly through the city.

Bus lanes are the one affordable, effective, ecological way of moving many people through the city.

More people are riding buses in Seattle, and they get a lot of side benefits.

They bike or walk to the stop, and it turns out that's really good for them.

They get to enjoy the views of the stunning region we are blessed to live in.

Research confirms that active transport is good for mind and body.

Bus riders are also good for communities.

They patronize local businesses, chat with neighborhoods, neighbors.

These local connections make our communities friendly and resilient.

People walking to and fro buses are also eyes on the street, deterring crime.

Seattleites are beginning to love transit, and our growth in ridership is exceptional in the country.

But this enthusiasm could fade because we still lack effective, rapid transit in much of the city.

Buses are crowded, stalled, they bunch up, they arrive late.

There is reason for this.

They are stuck in traffic.

And that's kind of ironic.

If more people could move more quickly in bus lanes, then we could reduce congestion.

We can fix this.

In fact, the city has promised to fix it.

We were promised bus lanes with rapid ride implementation.

And now that those shiny new buses are delayed for several years, the city is backing away from bus lanes.

And there is no budget item this year for painting these bus lanes.

Why the delay?

Did the city run out of red paint?

If so, please put it in the budget, along with instructions for painting bus lanes.

Thank you.

Thank you, Andrew.

Tracy, Lisa, then Susan Seagal, number 50.

Hi there.

My name is Tracy Roberts.

I'm a Belltown resident.

I'm also on the Healthcare Workers Coalition for Supervised Consumption Spaces, and I now volunteer for Hope Crew, which serves homeless people with the emphasis on substance use disorders downtown each week.

So 1.3 million has been sitting in a bank unused, meanwhile hundreds are dying needlessly of overdoses and it's really frustrating to know that SCS pilots have been approved and we're just sitting and waiting and people are dying and getting infected with HIV, Hep C every day.

We just want I mean, it's out of your control because you've already approved this, but we really want you to not only give us the 1.3, but we want you to increase it because it's not going to work with 1.3.

If we're going to do it, let's do it really well.

Let's get the right budget for the job.

It's going to help many, many people and communities can be served because not as many people are going to be using on the streets.

They're not going to be visible and you're not going to see the syringes.

So how much is a person worth?

Consider the costs to respond and treat and take care for someone who overdoses, the fire truck, medic and the ambulance responses, ER, the drugs, the admission for infections, abscesses, multiple surgeries, amputations, OT, PT, medical equipment like wheelchairs, crutches, prosthetics and cardiac procedures.

And not long ago I met with a nurse who works in a cardiac unit and she said they do cardiac procedures on somebody who uses IV drugs every day.

That is thousands and thousands and thousands.

And I just heard someone earlier today say they don't want their tax dollars spent on supporting the SCSs.

They're already supporting people who are using drugs because they are not working and they don't have the money for insurance.

So the costs are huge in if we add the costs to jail the people who are addicted, who get used, who steal stuff, I'm sorry I'm going to finish right now, um I mean that's addition to it and then these people get out and because they've not used for a while their tolerances are down and they use and those are the ones who are going to overdose.

So It's cost effective, if not humane and ethical to open the SESs now.

Let's get more money in there.

I will gladly volunteer to save some money.

Please, these people cannot be reached if they're using on the street, in a home, in the room, but they can be in an SES.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming, Tracy.

Lisa, then Susan, 49 and 50.

Hi, I'm Lisa Kuhn, and I'm asking about a line item for surveys of historical properties and areas.

I'm also asking about an item for neighborhood planning in accordance with the comprehensive plan.

Why are they not in the budget?

And I'm asking, why not listen to the neighborhoods instead of consistently trying to force through legislation which leads to appeal after appeal?

It would be such a savings to the budget.

So I'm asking if you can find $20,000 to complete the neighborhood historical surveys.

And I'm asking for real neighborhood by neighborhood planning.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Susan, 50, and just one sec before you get going, we've got.

And it's actually just going to be me, and I'm sorry, I'm not Susan.

Susan wasn't able to come tonight.

My name is Victoria Orcutt.

And are you representing whom?

Susan, well, I work with Susan.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for that.

Hold on just a second.

There's Keishon, do you say?

Sorry?

There's a, I'm just wondering if Keishon, it looks like Adams, is she part or part of you, your group originally?

No.

Okay, well.

Keyshawn 51, Chris Neerup, and then Imogene Williams is 53. Go, please.

I'm sorry to interrupt you.

Take your two minutes.

OK.

Thank you.

So my name is Victoria Orcutt.

I work for New Beginnings as a domestic violence survivor advocate at our shelter.

And first, I want to say that I support the full recommendations of the Seattle Human Services Coalition, because they're humane.

And the mayor's proposed budget will, as some other people have said, will cut 217 overnight shelter beds.

And it also only includes half of the funding for inflation adjustments needed to provide the same level of services.

This disproportionately harms people of color, LGBTQ people, and survivors of domestic violence, and especially harms LGBTQDV survivors of color, because intersectionality.

Many people call our hotline every day looking for shelter, and we have to turn them away.

We don't currently have enough shelter resources for the people who are calling now, and funding should be increased, not decreased.

A common question that people ask about DV survivors is, why does she stay?

And there are many valid reasons, but one of the common reasons is there's no safe place to go.

So I urge you to increase the funding for shelters and for affordable housing.

And speaking just for myself, not necessarily New Beginnings, Washington State has the least progressive taxes in the United States.

There is plenty of money in Seattle and anything that you can do to make our tax system less regressive would be appreciated.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for coming.

Keyshawn Adams here.

Keyshawn Adams, number 51. So I think Chris, you'll be next.

And then Imogene.

Chris, come on up.

Chris, you're up, and then Imogene.

Yes, you are.

We just leapfrogged because Mr. 51 is not responding.

So go ahead.

Thank you.

Don't go too far.

So I'm Kristner Epp.

I'm a resident of Seattle and I'm here to speak in favor of safe consumption spaces and I know that you've heard a lot so I'm not going to belabor the issue but I just want to point out a couple of things and some of which is I know that you've all heard this before but we are really in the midst of a major epidemic both nationally and locally and The rate of overdoses over the last several years, both locally and nationally, has been skyrocketing.

We're now at a point where over one person a day is dying locally of overdose.

We are at a point where 200 people a day are dying nationally.

One person every seven minutes is dying of an overdose in the United States.

For the last three years in a row, More people have died of fatal overdoses in the United States than died, than we had U.S. fatalities during the Vietnam War.

And for the last three years, the number of people dying nationally of overdoses has exceeded the number of deaths at any point of the HIV-AIDS epidemic.

So that's just sort of the background for that.

And I want to transition at this point to sort of take you back in time to 30 years ago during the AIDS epidemic.

In August of 1988, a guy by the name of Dave Purchase in Tacoma, Washington, took a card table and a folding chair and went to downtown Tacoma and started doing syringe exchange.

Everyone thought that this was crazy, that it was illegal, that the feds were going to come in and shut him down, and that it was going to be awful.

But what he did was he opened the floodgates, and within months of Dave Purchase doing that in Tacoma, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other cities came on board.

I know that you have funded safe consumption spaces in the past and that the council has expressed your support for it.

What I'm asking you to do this evening is to make sure that it's fully funded in next year's budget and to send a message that this is an absolute priority for you as a council and that the city move forward and open one up.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Chris.

After Imogene, we have Debbie Carlson, 54, Stephen, 55, and Kelly Martin, 56.

I'm speaking for the Transit Riders Union.

We ask you to restore funding to Wheels Women's Shelter and to Shares Indoor Shelter Network.

This is low-cost shelter.

This is shelter operated on a self-managed model.

This is shelter operated in partnership with churches.

The contributions of the faith community should be celebrated, not insulted by cutting funding for these programs.

It's unacceptable to cut funding.

It's unacceptable to cut shelter funding in the middle of a homelessness crisis.

It's been almost three years since Seattle and King County declared a homelessness state of emergency.

The mayor's budget has no new funding for housing.

How can we expect to lessen homelessness without investing in housing?

It's impossible.

Adding more money for sweeps will not help.

And it's cruel because there's not enough shelter or housing for the people.

Please restore funding to wheel and share.

Fund housing and shelter, not sweeps.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming.

Debbie Carlson, Stephen 55, Kelly Martin 56, and then Catherine Cavanaugh, 57.

Thank you, council members, for being here so late.

My name is Debbie Carlson.

I'm the executive director of LGBTQ Allyship, and we work on housing and economic equity issues in King County and Washington State.

And what I wanted to do is kind of frame one of my concerns.

Nationally, what's happening is that the administration has eliminated LGBTQ mention on the Department of Health's website, on HUD's website, and in fact, we're not fully being counted in the 2020 census.

And this elimination of our lives and ghosting of our lives will have an impact for the next 20 years.

So our hope is in local government.

Our hope is being counted and served by local government.

And after skimming the 600 plus pages of the budget, I saw one mention of LGBTQ funding that was included around HIV.

Nothing directed towards housing services or outreach to LGBTQ communities around homelessness.

housing, economic development, and especially a concern of mine, some of you were there, and thank you.

It was a survey that just came out around aging and community inequities, LGBTQ inequities in senior housing and senior services that just came out.

There were some really clear recommendations of how LGBTQ marginalized seniors can be addressed and their concerns can be addressed, and there was no money actually in the budget to address this.

This is alarming.

There were several organizations that mentioned LGBTQ people, but if we are not mentioned in like, I mean, I don't want to call organizations out, but even in a call to fund homes for men, women, and children, it doesn't mention gender nonconforming or trans.

If we're not called out, it means we're not being served.

And my ask is that we can figure out ways that we can fund the work that's already being done by trusted LGBTQ communities to really serve LGBTQ seniors, homeless youth, and marginalized renters here in Seattle.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for coming.

Debbie, do we have Debbie's contact information?

Okay, great, thank you.

Stephen, then Kelly Martin, 56, Catherine Cavanaugh, 57.

Good evening.

Good evening.

I'm Stephen Knipp, the Executive Director of Generations Aging with Pride, or GenPride as we like to call ourselves.

I'm also a 56-year-old gay man who survived an AIDS diagnosis when so many died with little support.

You've heard from my colleagues earlier about the startling statistics of the unique needs of older LGBTQ citizens.

I'd like to bring to life one of those statistics.

Recently, a 78-year-old gay man who just lost his partner moved into a assisted living facility.

He didn't know anyone.

He was totally alone.

He decided he was gonna stay in the closet, not tell anyone about his sexuality because he wasn't sure what the environment was like.

So he did this.

It lasted for a day or two.

And as it turns out, he was an eligible bachelor.

A lot of the women there were very interested.

And so he was kind of fending off these advances.

And finally, he had to tell them, hey, I'm a gay guy.

Sorry.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Well, he thought that would be the end of it, but as it turns out, they rallied together and really caused a harassment kind of a scene, and the guy left because he was just not feeling welcome.

This was his home, right?

So I think this is really a tragic scenario, and this is happening all over.

People of color are having the same kind of situations within their own communities.

They're being rejected by their families.

Some of us who are lucky to survive AIDS are reliving the scars of neglect.

We ask that the council add funding to the budget for LGBTQ seniors.

Let's not repeat history.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Kelly Martin, 56. Catherine Cavanaugh, 57. Thor Dodson, 58.

Thank you, council members.

I'm totally unprepared, but I had to be here because of what is going on.

in my neighborhood.

First of all, I'd like to say that everyone, every speaker that I heard tonight prior to this is more important than what I have to say about or what I'm requesting to have looked at.

In my neighborhood, there is a move, there's a issue about closing off a block on Melrose Avenue to accommodate what they're calling a promenade.

To do this, they have disregarded the fact that this particular street, this block, is one block away from I-5 northbound.

They would apparently like to somehow disregard the needs of many hundreds of drivers who have to access I-5 northbound and exit I-5 northbound at Olive Way.

What I would like the city to do is if and when the time comes up that you are reviewing the budget for the levy to move Seattle, please take note if you see an item mark Melrose Promenade to please disregard it.

I can think of better ways to spend four million dollars of taxpayers money than closing off a block just for loitering.

It has no other purpose.

You've heard all the speakers, you've heard all the needs, all the money that is needed, and yet, with this levy to move to Seattle, they have chosen to squander $4 million.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming.

Catherine Cavanaugh?

Catherine Cavanaugh, number 57. Next is Thor Dodson, 58. Rita Smith, 59.

I'm Rita Smith.

I'm an old lesbian, and we hang on to the bitter end.

I'm here, so many of the things that we've heard about tonight are issues that I've been involved in at one point or another in my history and it's taken me a while to realize that I am 74 and I am old because there are still so many things to do.

But in particular now, I'm looking at my sisters and brothers, and very concerned about our needs.

And so it's time for us, at the same time as we're still very involved in the community, to also be looking at our own futures.

I have some friends in their early 60s who recently had to move into a facility because one of them is experiencing severe memory loss.

and her partner is in the independent living part of the facility and has experienced extreme harassment simply for being a woman who has a woman partner.

Now, she's gone to the administration and the administration supports her, so she's got the law on her side and she still is living in a very uncomfortable setting.

There are many situations like this, and one of the things that we face is a lot of isolation because we don't have as many families of origin and neighborhoods in many, many cases.

Some we do.

I don't want to paint the picture worse than it is, but our sense of percentage is higher.

And so I'm here to say that having a community center that really is vibrant and provides resources and also just a place to go to is really important for us.

We've just begun to do that with Gen Pride in terms of having the space.

but with city funding to actually make that viable and be able to have activities going on and do a better job of resourcing all of the other organizations in our community that can provide resources.

It's a crucial task that needs to be done.

And so I asked for you to take another look at the Senior Center proposal and keep us old lesbians around.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for coming, Rita.

Lisa Sawyer, good to see you.

After Lisa is Tiffany, number 61, Dan Otter, 62, and Nicholas Arndt, 63.

Good evening council members and some you guys know me, but some of you guys are new.

My name is Lisa Sawyer I am a real change vendor and a member of the resident action project I'm here to tell you a story a story about a homeless person, which is including myself I I'm with a boyfriend who is also an Air Force veteran.

Right now we are staying outside in a tent on Beacon Hill where the King County veteran and the veteran hospital are actually working out with the homeless community that are actual veterans.

Right now there is people capping in their vehicles and people capping in their RVs.

There's also a few tents there.

The Jefferson Golf Course is actually allowing collecting garbage once a week from us if we put it in black trash bags and they'll pick it up.

We're actually keeping it clean and we haven't had no complaints from any members.

But due to the rest of the community, they're getting swept up and getting pushed into the jungle.

We have always said that the jungle is very dangerous, and yet people are coming back in there.

What happens to when we have a whole bunch of people living outside on the streets, when we said we want to invest in affordable housing?

What is affordable?

Some people can't even manage living off a $1,350 studio apartment, which was a year from the 30th of September that I had an apartment.

Now, I am looking for a place and trying to find a stable disability to call home.

It's hard to find a place where you have no caseworker, no one to work with you because you have no drug abuse, no mental illness, or anything on top of it.

What we do, we need to sponsor some more funding to homeless services and for case management.

Thank you guys.

You guys have a good evening.

Thank you for your time.

Thanks, Lisa.

Tiffany, Dan Otter, 62, and Nicholas Arndt, 63.

Thank you.

My name is Tiffany McCoy.

I'm the lead organizer with Real Change.

At the budget meeting hearing yesterday, there was discussion on the navigation team.

Councilmember Mosqueda asked about more outreach workers for the navigation team instead of a focus on police.

I'm paraphrasing, of course.

The panel answered that they are good on outreach workers.

That's not where the navigation team is falling short.

Tiffany Washington from HSD said that if you have outreach workers and know where to place people, then the outreach you can do is limited.

The number of outreach workers that they have match the number of places that they have developed to move people to.

From what I understand, the purpose of the navigation team's focus is outreach, and it seems then that they are stifled because there's not enough places to house folks.

We need you as the City Council to fund more 24-7 shelters and more permanent supportive housing with this budget.

I heard a lot of really great ideas from many of you on the dais yesterday and I really hope that I see those ideas come out in green sheets in the next couple of weeks so that we can get behind it as we all change and support them.

I want to say, switching gears, that we fully support safe consumption spaces.

We need to cite a location and get that going.

The mayor kept the $1.3 million in the budget from last year that you all worked so hard to put in there.

We want full funding to open and operate a location in 2019. The county funds treatment, not the city.

The city needs to fund drug user health.

I also just want to say that we support fully the sketch budget and it just doesn't make sense to me again, I'm saying this again this year, it doesn't make sense to add beds but then also to cut beds of share wheel that are operational and housing people right now.

Let's keep those open until we have better for those individuals.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming, Tiffany.

Dan Otter.

Nicholas is 63. And then Jean Darcy.

Dan?

Dan Otter is 62. One more time.

Nicholas, 63. Nicholas here.

Jean, looks like you're better up.

And then Beatrix is 65. And Katie Wilson, 66.

Yeah, good evening.

Another marathon for you.

My name is Jean Darcy.

I've been an activist for a long time in the area, particularly of homelessness.

There are so many gaps in the mayor's budget, I hardly know where to start.

Some of them are big.

And some of them are not so big and I think should be pretty easy to restore.

One is to restore the funding for the share wheel shelter system.

Don't throw away the gift that the faith community gives to this city so willingly by letting that funding lapse.

Please restore that gap.

I want to echo what Allison Isinger said after the seven hour marathon yesterday.

The elephant in the corner that's not going away is we don't have enough affordable housing, low-income housing or services for people.

So please put that in the budget.

That's probably a big one, but I think there are some alternative Ways of building houses that you might explore, like the modular housing that Vancouver is looking at.

That sounds kind of interesting.

I think we ought to try that.

Good.

So do we.

I'm glad to hear that.

People in vehicles, still shortchanged.

Half the unsheltered homeless are in vehicles.

They're getting very little positive treatment from the city.

They're getting swept regularly now.

I was shocked at 58 vehicles impounded in the last few weeks.

I'm willing to bet you a lot of those were occupied.

What happened to those people?

Yesterday, I didn't hear that the NAV team was approaching the people in vehicles.

If there were tents there, yes, they would come in and offer services to them.

But I didn't hear that the services were being offered to people in vehicles.

And finally, contrary to what some people may think, that safe consumption spaces are dangerous.

They're not.

They save lives.

And even more, they are a gateway to treatment.

If anybody knows what happened in Portugal when they legalized drugs, they said clearly you have to have treatment combined with the places for people to use drugs.

Otherwise, don't do it.

Great.

Thank you, Gina.

Thanks for all the work that you've been doing over the years.

Really appreciate you.

Beatrix and then Katie Wilson.

Hello.

Hello.

Thank you guys for being here.

My name is Beatrix, and I call Capitol Hill my home.

I find it surprising, as progressive as Seattle is, that it does not provide funding for LGBTQ senior centers.

And I believe that funding training providers and LGBTQ senior centers will help all generations of my community, current and future, including my own.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming and thank you for staying with us.

Thank you.

Katie Wilson.

Hi, council members.

Thank you for sticking it out to the end.

My name is Katie Wilson.

I'm here representing the Transit Riders Union.

Imogene did a great job earlier, so I don't need to totally repeat what she said.

But Daniel Malone had a really good op-ed in the Seattle Times, I don't know if it was today or yesterday, about why we need housing first.

And all of the investments that we make in shelter and treatment only go so far when we don't have housing.

We need housing.

We need shelter.

At the very least, we need not to be cutting shelter, so please restore funding for wheel and for share.

And also, I'd like to register our support for raising wages for social workers.

In fact, I think they should also have transit passes, all these city-funded social work contracts, and perhaps that could be found somewhere in the transportation budget.

I would also like to say something about the transportation budget.

There are some things that we like about the mayor's proposed transportation budget, but we also believe that we can do better.

We can take bigger steps toward realizing Vision Zero, towards fulfilling Seattle's climate goals, and towards creating a transportation system that is safe, green, and equitable.

We can do more to mitigate the period of maximum constraint starting next year.

and make it possible for people and goods to move around downtown and throughout Seattle.

We can do much more to fulfill the promises of the Move Seattle levy.

We can do much more to prioritize right-of-way for people walking, biking, and taking public transit.

The Transit Riders Union and some of our multimodal and environmental allies are working on a letter, which you'll be getting at some point in the not-too-distant future.

And we look forward to working with you all to improve the transportation budget over the next two months.

Thank you.

Great, Katie.

Thank you very much.

All right, this is the last call.

Is there anybody that would like to speak to us that didn't sign up?

Okay, well, I want to say thank you all for coming.

Thank you to my colleagues, and we will have another public hearing on October 23rd, 5.30 again, and this one is adjourned.