Seattle City Council Finance & Neighborhoods Committee 6/26/19

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for coming to the Finance and Neighborhoods Committee today.

I'm Sally Bagshaw, chair of this committee, and with me is Council President Bruce Harrell.

Thank you so much for coming.

We have a very long agenda today, unusual for the Finance Committee, and if there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

No objection?

The agenda is adopted.

So the five items we have on today's agenda include first a briefing and discussion and possible vote for an ordinance landmarking aspects of what was the old spaghetti factory on Elliott Avenue.

We will hear from our friends in the Department of Neighborhoods.

Next, we're going to have a community panel on the sweetened beverage tax and how that tax can be used to increase access to food in communities most impacted by the tax.

We're going to follow that up with a discussion that will be led by our central staff person, Yolanda Ho, on potential considerations for the ordinance, whether to create a dedicated fund.

Some of the options are yes, no. and after the 2020 budget.

So we'll hear more about that.

We're also, after that, going to have a second panel and conversation on the importance of the Equitable Development Initiative, EDI.

We know that this is important to all of us.

We're also dealing with a balanced budget and how we're going to approach this in 2020 and 21 thereafter.

We're also then going to have an opportunity to hear from our Parks Department friends.

We are going to lift a proviso for one of my favorite projects, that's City Hall Park and Yesler Crescent.

We put money in the budget last year, but provisoed it until we could see a budget on how the money would be spent.

We've been meeting with parks and our friends across the street in King County since the beginning of this year, so today I'm hopeful that we'll lift the proviso.

and approved parks proceeding to spend the money according to the plan.

And finally, we are going to have another briefing discussion and possible vote on the appointment of Bobby Humes as the Director of Seattle Human Resources Department.

So I want to thank Bobby Humes for all of his work.

We had asked him a number of questions at our last meeting, and he supplemented his resume.

He had answered the additional questions.

So I am very excited and hopeful that we can move forward with his vote today, this afternoon.

So we have public comment time now on items that appear on today's agenda.

We've got eight people.

I'm going to ask you, I'm gonna call your names and I'm gonna ask you to step up to the microphones and be ready and prepared to comment so that we can move forward.

We'll have two minutes each.

Kathleen Hussfeld, it looks like Julia, Prosciutto, Marin, Kasuhan.

I'm sorry if I slaughtered your names.

So Kathleen, please.

And if it's Julia, would you kindly go over to the other second microphone now?

So we're just ready to go.

Maren, if you'll just move up to the front row.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And if you'll state your name, please.

I am Kathleen Hossfeld, and I am the Executive Director of Homestead Community Land Trust, and I'm here to strongly endorse Councilmember O'Brien's proposal to create a dedicated fund for EDI.

The Equitable Development Initiative is an embodiment of the intent that brought Homestead into being and compels us in our work today.

Homestead was founded more than 25 years ago by citizen activists to address the rapid displacement occurring even then in the Central District.

And our current priority is one anti-displacement strategy, which is community-owned, permanently affordable home ownership.

Because we believe that the everyday heroes who contribute to our quality of life should be able to remain in the communities that they make great.

One of our purposes is to share our skills and experience with organizations like those bettered by the EDI fund in low and moderate income neighborhoods and communities to enable, encourage, and support improvement of housing and land in ways that lift up those communities.

So although EDI funds do not support Homestead's work, we support EDI's focus on community-initiated project grants.

With a great deal of respect for those who make difficult budget choices between competing priorities, I maintain that investments in new projects and anti-displacement must not only be protected but be strengthened.

The need for new projects is urgent.

We must accelerate the growth of community-initiated projects focused on anti-displacement and equitable access so that all might benefit from our city's tremendous growth and prosperity.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming down today.

Julia, Maren, and then Lindsay.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Julia Pasciuto, and I'm a policy analyst at Puget Sound SAGE.

I'm also a member of the Race and Social Equity Task Force, who helped create the Equitable Development Initiative, and sit on the EDI Advisory Board.

Over the last few years, we have seen displacement pressures grow significantly in our cities.

Families, workers, cultural and religious institutions, and businesses are getting pushed out of our city at rapid pace.

The EDI is the only fund that addresses a comprehensive anti-displacement strategy using a racial justice framework, and we need to grow and protect this important fund.

The last two years of the fund, we have received over $30 million of eligible asks for community-driven development that roots people and institutions in place.

And this year, we're seeing less money than was allocated in the short-term rental tax regulation.

We need to secure the $5 million from the short-term rental tax for EDI grants for 2020 and beyond before this year's budget cycle.

We urge you to support this program by putting Councilmember O'Brien's legislation to a vote later this month.

And we also support the same demand for the sweetened beverage tax as well.

Thank you for coming, Julia.

Meron, and if I'm saying your name wrong, would you please, for the record, say it correctly, and then Lindsay.

Hello, my name is Meron Casahun.

I am the Community Development Manager at Homesight, also a member of the Race and Social Equity Task Force.

Displacement is occurring at a rapid pace and disproportionately impacts people of color and low-income folks.

Holistic community stabilization through community-driven development is the only effective strategy to prevent displacement, and the Equitable Development Initiative is the only tool the City has to address the multiple equity drivers that prevent displacement.

As a grantee of the EDI fund, leading the development of the Othello Square project, HomeSite will be able to leverage the $1.5 million investment from EDI tenfold for their project.

We urge you to schedule a vote for Council Member O'Brien's legislation to create a dedicated fund for both the EDI and sweetened beverage tax by the end of this month.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

We have Lindsay, then Violet, then Simone.

Good afternoon.

I'm Lindsey Hovind.

Lindsey, hold on just a second.

Can I ask Violet to come on up?

Thank you for that.

And Simone next, please.

Thank you.

I'm Lindsey Hovind with the American Heart Association and the Seattle Healthy Kids Coalition.

As I shared at this committee's last meeting, we were proud to support the passage of the initial ordinance that established the sweetened beverage tax, and we're proud to support Councilmember O'Brien's proposed ordinance to create a dedicated fund for SBT revenue.

This could increase transparency and ensure revenue is invested in a way consistent with Council's original commitment to community to grow and expand food access and early learning programs.

The tax is off to a promising start.

It was designed to improve health by raising the price of sugary drinks to deter consumption and to raise revenue to be reinvested into community health and well-being.

We've seen declines in sales from similar taxes in Philadelphia, Berkeley, and Mexico, and the University of Washington evaluation of the Seattle tax is underway and due this fall.

Importantly, diverse communities in Seattle are already benefiting from meaningful investments in food access and early learning.

Though actual revenue happens to be higher than projections, which were based on assumptions since there was no historical basis, let's not divert funding from the spirit of the original ordinance and the commitment made to community.

Please ensure all sweetened beverage tax revenue is used to expand food access and early learning programs in communities that need it most with passage of this proposed ordinance.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming.

Violet, Simone, Patience,

This one would be better.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Violet Labatay.

I am with a lot of organizations, but I'm the director of the Tenant Union of Washington.

I'm also on the board of Got Green.

I'm here to speak on the EDI and the sugary beverage tax.

We know right now that the displacement of tenants, of citizens in the City of Seattle is at a rapid pace.

And we want to protect these fundings that were allocated to help people in displacement.

I'm here to speak about also the sugary tax beverage.

And what we're trying to do is we come to you, Sally, council members, to urge you to schedule a vote for Council Member O'Brien's legislation to create a dedicated fund for both the EDI and the sugary tax.

I actually just got my vouchers for the sugary fresh bucks and I'm happy about this because it helps me to buy fresh fruits and buy carrots and stuff like that because I'm qualified to get fresh bucks.

And so this these these important important you know, funding does go to communities of color, people that look like us and low income.

And we ask that you we urge you, Sally Bagshaw, Council Member Bagshaw, to schedule a vote for Council Member O'Brien's legislation again to create a dedicated fund for both the EDI and the sweetened beverage tax by mid-July.

Thank you, Council Members.

Thank you for coming, Violet.

Simone Patience and is it Quan?

Please come on up.

Okay.

Hi, my name is Simone Adler, and I'm the organizing director of Community Alliance for Global Justice, and we are a member of the coalition to close the food security gap with Got Green and other organizations.

And I'm speaking to strongly support the ordinance to create a fund for the sugary beverage tax to ensure that the revenue for this tax is being used as intended, especially in to be accountable to communities of color and low-income communities that are impacted by the tax and in line with what the tax was intended to do in the first place, to expand community-driven food access programs.

As community organizers and people that are working on the ground and educating about the benefits of this tax, there's been a lot of work that's happened, door knocking and otherwise, to get people to understand and support the tax.

And so making sure that the revenue follows through on those commitments is important both as community-based organizations, but also for the city to be accountable and transparent with how it's using the funds.

And so we really push for the ordinance to be created to make sure that that happens.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for coming.

Patience.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Patience Malaba and I am the Policy Manager at the Housing Development Consortium.

I am here to speak in support of Council Member O'Brien's legislation to ensure that there's a dedicated fund for the EDI.

And I will echo a lot of the voices that have already spoken of how key this tool is and really getting us to a place where we are achieving our equity goals as a city.

The gap between the $30 million in application and the $5 million in actual dedicated funds is one that's telling of the deep need for a dedicated fund source And I think it's important that we move forward in ensuring that the portion that was allocated in the short-term rental ordinance is actually being placed in that dedicated fund for the EDI.

And in the future, we look forward to talking about other sources of actually extending the fund because the need continues to be very visible with many communities of color, low-income communities.

really being affected by displacement in the most disproportionate manner.

And I thank this committee for your work in getting us to a place of where there is an actual legislation that will be passed.

So we look forward to seeing the legislation move forward and be passed.

Thank you.

Thank you, Patience.

Please, our last speaker.

State your name, please.

Yes, hi.

My name is Quinn Pham.

I'm with the Friends of Little Saigon.

I'm also here to urge you to support the dedicated fund for the equitable development initiative and the sweetened beverage tax.

I'm here to really speak on Little Saigon and our pressures and challenges that we're facing right now.

Earlier this month, we lost another small business, Seattle Deli, to a private developer.

they had to close their doors after almost 30 years of being there and Their family not only on the deli that but they also own the property that they were on and they opened doors to other small businesses and now we've lost out on that property and Without this fund.

We wouldn't be able to continue to advocate for Resources so that the community can remain in place and own and control our own properties.

We don't want to see future businesses and properties that are owned and controlled by the community lost again because of all the development pressures happening in our neighborhoods.

The EDI also supports the Friends of Old Saigon in our ventures to acquire property and develop something that we can also provide to the community to anchor the neighborhood.

And so without this dedicated source, we wouldn't be able to do that.

So I do urge you to continue to support that, to push for the $5 million to be dedicated to EDI.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

So that ends our public comment period, and I would like to move on to the first item of business, which is our landmark project.

So if you'd like to come up, Sarah, and would you like to read this in, Allison?

Thank you.

Item number one, Council Bill 119540, an ordinance relating to historic preservation and imposing controls upon the Ainsworth and Dunn Warehouse, a landmark designated by the Landmarks Preservation Board under Chapter 25.12 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Thank you very much.

So, would you just like, we'll start introductions up here and your name and where you're working.

Sure.

I'm Joel Eslenian with Meriwether Partners, the company that redeveloped the Hainsworth and Dunn building.

Great.

Thank you.

Jessie Claussen, McCullough-Hilderry.

Sarah Sote, Department of Neighborhoods.

Thank you all.

So, Sarah, are you kicking this off?

Yes, I am.

And I do want to say thank you all for coming.

And if you feel rushed today, I apologize for that.

We've got a lengthy agenda, so we may be moving on.

That's OK.

So I'm here for the Ainsworth and Dunn Warehouse Building at 2815 Elliott Avenue North.

It was designated on August 20, 2014 under standards C, D, and F.

I won't go over what those are today.

The controlled features are the exterior of the building and some of the exposed interior heavy timber structural system on the first floor.

and a portion of the site adjacent to the west side of the building.

The building was built in 1902, and the architect was Stephen Alston Jennings.

It was constructed in 1902 by the salmon packing firm Ainsworth & Dunn for use as a warehouse.

The thing that I find really interesting about this building is that it was built to operate in tandem with a pier that was built across the...

across West Alaska, Alaska Way.

And there's still some other buildings along the waterfront that are owned by the original owner that also owned the pier.

So it's just kind of an interesting pattern that's occurred.

That's all I'll say.

Well, what I want to say, the most important thing is that this is the old spaghetti factory.

So if anybody really wants to know where it is and what we're talking about.

Yes.

That is true.

Jesse, did you have comments that you wanted to bring in?

I'm speaking for the owner, and the owner can also speak for himself.

But we're excited to be here.

We're supportive of the designation.

And interestingly, we're close to, after this ordinance is passed, we will be before the landmarks board to get transfer of development rights certified by the board to sell off the remaining development rights from the landmark building.

So it's one of the only incentives that is available to landmark buildings to kind of, I guess, make some dollars off of the property that's been landmarked.

And we're really excited to do that.

How many stories for TDR purposes do you get credit for?

We're getting 70,000 square feet so you can tell me how many stories.

Well, it's as if I guess the opportunity that we don't have by preserving the building is building a new six-story building.

Okay, that's what I was looking for with six stories.

Thank you.

The construction is coming along.

I saw the new windows going in recently.

It looks really quite beautiful.

Thank you.

Those are the new old windows.

Those were all rehabbed and put back in place.

They look really good.

Thank you.

So anything you would like to add about this?

No, only that the TDR program that Jesse referred to is really an important incentive to help fund what is an increasingly expensive endeavor to preserve these historic buildings.

Well, and this one in particular, I think, adds so much just to the character of the community on the north end of Alaskan Way.

So I want to thank you, all of you who are involved in this.

Any other questions for my colleagues?

Okay, if not, I would like for the committee to consider passing Council Bill 119540. Second.

Okay, any other comments?

Okay, well it's been moved and seconded.

If there's no further discussion, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

None opposed, no abstention, so thank you very much.

It passes and I appreciate your coming today as quick as it's been.

Have a good day.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Very good.

Okay, Allison, if you would kindly read in our second item, which is one of the reasons I think my council colleagues say thank you, Council Member O'Brien, Council Member Gonzalez, Council Member Pacheco for joining us.

So the next item, please.

Item number two, Council Bill 119551, an ordinance related to creating a fund for sweetened beverage tax revenues.

And who all is coming to the table?

We've got Kelly Brown.

Thank you.

Yolanda, thank you for being here.

Excellent.

Yolanda, I'm just going to ask you to start off with introductions.

And as we go down the line, if you will state your name and with whom you're working.

Yolanda Ho, Council Central Staff.

Tanika Thompson, Scott Green.

Kelly Brown, Executive Director of North Helpline.

And my name is Lika Suzumura, and I'm a community advisory board member.

Thank you very much.

Yolanda, do you want to start off with, or someone else doing this?

I think we're going to start with the community panel just to talk about how this tax will impact them directly.

OK.

Very good.

So who would like to start?

I can start.

I do have some just general like reviewing the budget recommendations that we made as well as the fund itself.

Do you have a preference of where I start?

No, I think that we've got about 20 minutes or so for this item.

So we'd just love to hear from you about what your involvement's been and what's important to you going forward.

Okay, then I think I'll start with our budget recommendations for 2020 because we just submitted those earlier this week to give context and then I'll speak about the separate fund.

So this year we, or just recently, we made our 2020 budget recommendations for the council and the mayor.

And this was after a process of gathering community input.

We had two meetings for the community where over 60 community members attended, and that was at the beginning of May.

And from those, the information that we gathered, we then developed our recommendations.

inclusive of those, the community voice.

So some of the highlights that I want to point out is that for 2020, we focused solely on the unallocated funds as well as the one-time funds.

And this was very intentional in order to maintain any of the current programming that was happening.

We did not want to take any funds out of current programming because we recognize how important that is. for programs to really establish and be effective.

And so among the funds that were unallocated, we wanted to really make the focus of the investments go into community-led activities.

So similar to what we saw with the innovation fund with the food access that went out through an RFP process, we want to expand that to the early childhood education component of the tax as well as expanding that for the food access.

And in addition to that, we allotted more funds for FreshBooks because we know that that has been a hugely successful program and there is more community members that can be reached if that is expanded.

We also were proposed from the budget office that there was interest in having money go towards food bank renovations from what I understand.

And so we also unanimously voted on approving that as well.

And that seems like a good win for everyone.

There's also funds that we expanded for evaluation, because one thing that we consistently heard from the community is that people really want to know if this is working.

They want to know, are people getting more access to food?

Who is being reached through the tax funds?

And who is providing those services?

And so we recognize that evaluation is a huge endeavor.

to be able to do and that really requires establishing what is being determined as success for the programs and then making the system to be able to gather that information.

So we put additional funds into evaluation on top of what was already allocated for 2019. There's also the funds that were for the counter-marketing that had gone in for this year and recognizing that in order to do that well and effectively, we wanted to put more funds into that.

And then lastly, with the one-time investments, there are funds that are going to be going towards an assessment for the Seattle Public Schools Nutrition Services.

As you may know, there is a new nutrition director who is very interested and skilled, has experience in transferring a system into scratch cooking.

So before we jumped into putting money into infrastructure, we really wanted to do an assessment to fully see what was needed to do that effectively with a long-term vision for that to be successful.

We also heard from community members that in order to do some of the programs that are existing, for example, the Fresh Bucks program, distributing food to preschools and community centers, as well as the after school and community meal programs.

They need more things like refrigeration, large equipment to be able to process foods, and so we put money into that as well.

So that's in a nutshell our recommendations.

And just moving into the separate allocated fund that has been proposed by Council Member O'Brien, all of the council members or the community advisory board members are also very much in support of that.

For the main reason being transparency with the use of funds and holding accountability to the original intent of the ordinance of expanding and growing the existing programs and not having it be displaced to other programs.

And so in order to protect that and really have accountability, and transparency to the community, we all are in support of having that separate fund for the sugary beverage tax revenue.

Thank you for coming today.

I really appreciate you taking your time.

Kelly Brown, please.

Hi, I'm Kelly Brown from North Helpline.

We operate two food banks in Lake City and Bitter Lake and I'm here to kind of talk about what an expansion of funds would look or how that would look at North Helpline as opposed to the supplanting of funds which happened this past year.

Through the SBT funds there was a wonderful study which was presented to council examining the needs of food banks and food access throughout the city.

And their findings was that we report funding difficulties at food banks to be able to meet the needs that we're seeing in our pantries and food banks.

The needs for funding are for staffing, for vehicles, for food, for space.

and then just general funding.

We need to have the staff to be able to deliver our services.

Personally at North Helpline, we have community groups approach us quite frequently looking to add a pop-up site at a school or at a housing development or different things like that.

And we just simply don't have the staffing to meet that need right now.

within our current staffing structure.

So that is something that could be possible with the expansion of funds, is expanding that staffing to be able to do that, as well as purchasing culturally appropriate and healthy, fresh food.

That's the best way to deliver food to folks, is being able to purchase things.

We have wonderful partners who give lots of donations of foods and things like that, but really having that purchasing power to supplement and to be able to provide the full complement of nutrition to the communities that we're serving is super important.

And so, yes, expansion of the funds would provide those opportunities, and we definitely support the legislation in front of us.

Can I just go back to something, Lika, you raised, and it went by me fairly quickly, that the board recommended additional funds for food banks this year?

Because I know there was some discussion last year.

I just want to make sure I understood what you said.

Correct.

My understanding that it's specifically for infrastructure.

infrastructure being what Kelly's talking about or for more food itself?

I'm confused.

I think it was for capital, for rebuilding or doing improvements to the space or different things like that, which are needed across the city as well.

Okay.

So different capital projects.

Thank you.

Yes, please.

On the infrastructure investment recommendation, is the intent to pursue more of the food pantry grocery store model that I know that many food banks and food pantries are heading in that direction?

Yeah, that's a piece of it.

My understanding from what they presented to us that there was a need for the Ballard Food Bank and then Northwest Harvest also needs some infrastructure support and then that would be about half of the funds that they allocated and then the other half would be going out through an RFP process so that other food banks could apply for those funds.

I've heard, and I'm definitely not the expert on this, but maybe you can help, that some of the way that food is flowing through the system to folks at food banks, there's a need for refrigeration, more refrigeration on site because of the, I believe if I hear correctly, there's protein showing up in a way that is great, and yet when it comes in big waves, you can't just sit down on a shelf, it needs to be refrigerated.

And so that was one of the needs that I had heard identified that food banks need.

Yeah, definitely cold storage is gold in the food bank.

Just being able to have our fridge to put produce in to stay fresh.

We have wonderful donations coming in from community gardens and pea patches and being able to store them safely and get them out to the folks who need them as well as if the meat donation comes in, being able to put that in the freezer, and so that the supply is something that can be relied upon by the people that we're serving, rather than have a bunch at one time, like, oh, this one day, we got a bunch, so everybody gets it.

And being able to accept more of those donations so that we're able to serve our communities.

Thank you.

To add and clarify, that is part of the one-time investments that we put in specific for things like refrigeration?

Thank you.

It's very helpful.

Tanika, and welcome.

Thank you.

My name is Tanika Thompson.

I am the Food Access Organizer at Got Green.

Going to a food bank is a little different for the work that I do.

We aim to reach families who are in the food security gap, and those families are families that are working and they make what is considered a living wage.

Yet, because of the cost of rent in Seattle these days, they're unable to provide healthy food for their families.

They will not go to food banks, and so the FreshBucks and FreshBucks expansion programs are very important.

for these families.

They won't go to food banks because they think that food banks are for people who are not working or are low income, and they don't see themselves in that category.

And they say, well, let's save that food for someone else who needs it more than I do.

So, right now, we have been able to reach, I think, 2,000 families, enroll 2,000 people into the FreshBucks voucher program, but I just realized that we can do so much more.

The waiting list is so long.

If we had the revenue, all of the revenue from the tax from last year, we could have reached So many more families.

Do you have numbers on that, Tanika?

I only have numbers for God Green.

I know that there's a total of 2,000 families enrolled.

Between eight organizations, we all had the opportunity to enroll 150 individuals apiece.

And then there was a public site that enrolled 1,000 people.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

And so God Green was able to reach demographics of people who are 60 or older, 53 people who are 60 or older, and seniors are having a hard time having access to healthy fruits and vegetables.

We were also able to reach a lot of African-American individuals.

And like I said, a lot of the people, the majority of the people who were enrolled were families in the food security gap.

They don't have access to benefits like EBT and SNAP.

And so we really didn't want to reach out to too many of those individuals because they do have access to the FreshBucks program.

I just wanted to say all this to say that I think that it's really significant that we have more money to be able to go towards the FreshBucks expansion program because there is such a great need.

The waiting list shows that need.

Thank you, Tanika.

You're welcome.

Any comments or anybody want to respond?

Okay, well, Yolanda, that brings it up to you.

And you've written an excellent memo.

Thank you for that.

And I've also distributed to all of you a letter that our budget director, Ben Noble, sent down about 45 minutes before this meeting started.

So I want to make sure that all of you had a copy of that.

Okay, so as we provided some background a couple weeks ago about the history of the sweetened beverage tax, and so I run through a quick summary in my memo about the things that the revenues can be spent on, and based on some of the conversation here, we might want to think about amending that to allow for capital project investments for food banks, because right now that's not in the list.

Right now it's only Seattle Preschool Program capital projects.

That's something to think about.

And just kind of reviewing what had happened during budget last year, which...

impacted our 2019 adopted budget in regards to the use of the unanticipated excess SBT revenues to supplant to general fund and in specific programs.

I also lay out just kind of identify the programs in which that occurred primarily in the Department of Education and Early Learning.

and HEMA Services Department, specifically things like food banks, a parent-child home program, child care vouchers, and a nurse-family partnership.

So...

And then also note where last year during budget we, there was a green sheet sponsored by council members Juarez and O'Brien to provide some additional funding for food banks last year, one time, the 270,000 in excess ongoing funds.

And so that leads us to the legislation sponsored by Council Member O'Brien, Council Bill 119551, which we briefly discussed at the last committee meeting, but made a couple of changes that I want to talk about.

So again, we are creating a dedicated fund to track revenues and expenditures by city departments.

and also establishing financial policies with regards to the SBT revenues, specifically where one thing is to codify the policies, so have them in the Municipal Code so people can see them easily instead of having to try to track down the ordinance.

So we would be adding a new section to the Municipal Code in Chapter 5. and increase the flexibility for the allocation of funds to one-time or limited-term expenditures.

So instead of dedicating 10% specifically of the SBT proceeds to these uses, we could allow up to 10%, just kind of providing a little more flexibility.

Last year, we amended the the original policy which had been initially 20% to 10% given the higher than anticipated projection.

So we could cover the obligations that were outlined under those and in that category I think much more quickly than had been anticipated.

and specifically the endowment for the Seattle College's 13th year Promise Scholarship Program and the 1.5 million for job retraining and placement programs for workers who may be adversely impacted by the tax.

And- May I understand?

Yes.

So the discretionary flexibility from 20 to 10, that's like during the budget process that we can play around with all the other revenue streams, whether it's City Light SPU or general sub fund, but for this particular fund, we could only modify that within 10% as opposed to

Right.

Higher amount.

Well, so initially in the original ordinance, so there was 20% had been allocated to these one-time or limited term expenditures, and then 80% to the ongoing programs.

And so that had been based upon the conservative projections.

of making sure that we can cover the $5 million endowment for the Seattle College's 13th-year Promise Scholarship and the $1.5 million for the job retraining, as well as the one-time cost for administering the tax.

So there is that kind of allocation.

And then because the money was more than anticipated, the revenue was greater than anticipated, they could lower that 10%.

The portion that went to the community-based fund, the, I can't remember the name of the group, what's the name of the group that had some discretionary funds?

The CAB.

The CAB, I'm sorry.

The CAB membership, I didn't mean to offend you.

That, how does this 10% proposal affect the amount that goes to the CAB?

So that was in the beginning.

More or less or?

So what had happened was when the tax went into effect and then we began collecting revenues, but there was also the idea of creating the CAB to help provide recommendations.

They had not been appointed yet, the members, to the CAB.

So the thought was that there was initial kind of take of, okay, we have this certain, you know, the projections, we're going to allocate a certain way, but we're going to hold, I think it was about 2.7 million.

for this body to allocate as they see fit once they are fully up and running.

And so that was then what they did.

And so that happened last year was that 2.7 million was then distributed as the CAB had recommended.

And so, but then the idea was that ongoing the CAB would provide as, we have heard that kind of every year recommendations on how the SBT revenues be allocated.

So it was the idea was that they were going to provide recommendations to the council and the mayor on how all of the revenue shall be allocated over time.

So there isn't a reserve every year for the CAB.

It's more like they are recommending.

And in this case, they have made recommendations about the unallocated revenues.

And so there's, yeah.

So the 2.7 we set up, for them to have some discretionary use.

Moving forward, they will have an advisory role on the full fund, but three years from now, they're not getting another 2.7, another 2.7, 2.8, that they just get to advise.

So we're not earmarking a sub fund for them in the future.

Okay.

I didn't realize that.

I thought that the way we had set this up, that in perpetuity they would always have their discretionary fund outside of it, but that was short-lived to 2.7.

Thank you.

Okay, thanks, Shalonda.

And just to clarify, we only recommend.

We've never had full power over any of the funds, and so we recommended for those 2.7 and now making recommendations for all of the funds.

I had a misunderstanding of that.

I thought the way we set that up was that 2.7 was for the community to decide and we'll play around with the other and look at our parts.

I didn't realize that that was just again a recommendation.

I thought you had more power, if you will, on that.

My take on all this was that we were going to start collecting revenue in that first year while we were still establishing the Community Advisory Board.

And so, and we didn't want to not make investments while that board was being formed and working together.

And so, based on the guidelines that we had set for the CAB in the legislation, said, here are a chunk of things that we think we want to do, and then we'll leave some a pool of money likely to be for the latter half of the year for the CAB to recommend.

But in future years, the CAB would be able to give us advice on the entire budget because they will have been formed at that point.

And that's what you spoke to today was not just a chunk of it, but here are the sets of investments that we think you should consider in time for the mayor to consider in the mayor's budget and for us to consider.

And I imagine we will see you and members of the CAB throughout the budget process talking about what your expectations are.

Thank you for that.

Good.

So, a question?

Yeah, just really wanted to clarify that on pages two through three of your memo, Yolanda, you sort of lay out the SBT revenues that supplanted And then listed out the programs.

And the programs that I'm focusing in on are the parent child home program, the child care assistance program, and the child care program, and the nurse family partnership.

And I just, and those are high priorities.

for me and I think for the city council in general.

And I guess what I don't see in the memo and what I'm not tracking very clearly is if Council Member O'Brien's proposed changes would eliminate funding for these three programs, four if you include CCCP.

So the, well, I think the intention is that, well, there are options obviously that can be taken, but the intention is that there would potentially be other funding for these programs where the supplantation had occurred, right?

So that is about 5.7 million that had happened last year.

And so the, So that would, of course, require finding additional revenue sources or cuts.

But it would not be about, you know, so I think that we're just identifying where the money, where the supplantation had occurred.

But it would not necessarily cut it.

I think that, yeah, I don't want to speak for them.

No, I mean, I think the technical answer is that, and I'll give you my policy answer in a second.

Right.

I mean, there's a difference between the intent and what the bill actually does.

And you drafted the bill, so I want to know, what does the bill do?

Right.

So, the bill would not cut the funding at this point.

So, I think it kind of accepts what has happened to date.

Now, if, say, there's a supplemental budget that comes in for this year that does supplantation after the effective date of the ordinance, then you know, that would be counter to the spending policy of no supplantation of general fund.

But it does not undo what has been, it's not retroactive.

Well, yeah, I know it's not retroactive because we've already spent the money.

So unless we're planning on billing people to have them pay us back, I don't see that as an option.

But, I mean, I suppose my recollection, and, you know, I would have to go back to read the enabling ordinance, but my understanding is that these programs were within the spending intent to begin with.

So I'm not, so I'm not, tracking why they would be on the chopping block with sort of the understanding that, or sort of the theory that they somehow are outside of the contours of what is acceptable expenditures.

Well, so none of these programs were outside of the acceptable expenditures.

That was not, the issue was not that.

It was the issue that some of these were supported by general funds up until, and then the SBT was used to free up that general fund for other priorities.

Right, because we created a sugary beverage tax in order to fund, stably, these programs.

in part, these programs.

My intent on creating a sugary beverage tax was to augment these programs.

And so we said, you know, there are programs that already exist that are doing work around healthy food access and early education.

and 13-year promise, too.

And we want to do more of that, because that's going to support these communities that are impacted by the sweetened beverage tax.

They're disproportionately impacted.

And so we go and collect a bunch of money.

My intent, I think it's pretty clear in the legislation, the original legislation, was that this would be additive.

But what happened during the budget process was they said, well, we're going to spend this money on these things that are allowed, these types of programs, but then we're going to take the general fund money that was previously used to fund it and spend it somewhere else.

And we don't know exactly where that was spent, but that's the problem I have is that We said to community members, yes, certain communities, Tanika, the people you were talking to on the doors in your community, yes, to the extent you're consuming sweetened beverages, you're gonna pay more for those because of this tax we're implementing.

But the programs you're getting access to, whether it's Fresh Bucks or a preschool program, there will be more spots because we're adding money to that.

And that's not, that is not what happened.

They took that and said, we're gonna take some of that money and use it to fund other programs.

I don't know exactly what programs they were.

I think loosely it was probably homeless, but we can't really track the color of money once it left that door.

And that's the challenge is that we added, we collected, you know, 20 plus million dollars disproportionately from certain communities, but we didn't increase spending for those communities by 20 million dollars.

So if I apply that intent, one is I appreciate that clarification because that wasn't clear to me from the text of this memo.

I was concerned that what we were talking about was either maintaining this minimal funding or utilizing other funds besides sugar root beverage tax to continue to fund these programs, which would be a major concern of mine.

But to apply your theory, so in other words, if we look at the Parent-Child Home Program, which is within the contours of acceptable expenditures for the sugar root beverage tax revenue, We spent $1.113 million on that, correct?

And so the question is, is how much more should we have spent on that but for the fact that there was this general fund supplementation gimmick that was used?

Correct.

Okay.

And do we know sitting here today what that number should have been but for that budget gimmick?

I don't.

It's okay to say no.

No, I don't think so.

I mean, I think the CAB had some recommendations on how the allocation should have been last year.

And, you know, and including the programs that had been supplanted, it was kind of roughly, I remember, if I recall, like you might, you will have a better sense of your recommendations and how they matched up with uh the actual budget but um so I don't think it was to the detail you know to the detailed over the exact programs but there was kind of a general distribution that had been hoped for with the full amount not expecting the supplantation.

I was at that asking Allie to join us as well.

Thank you very much.

Allie Panucci, Council Central staff.

I just thought I would uh jump in here.

I don't have all the details of the numbers in front of me, but I think in the simplest form, had the supplantation not happened, that $1.13 million of sweetened beverage tax that was used to supplant could have been used to expand.

So I think if you look at all of that as the money that was used to supplant, the general fund funding instead could have been used to grow those programs is one way of thinking about it.

The challenge is that the other programs that would have needed to be cut in order to achieve that, because we were still trying to fill a funding gap for other programs.

And can you describe a little bit about what those other programs were?

I know we talk about permanent supportive housing, but I think it's going to be really important for us to get into the detail about what this bill would do, and particularly when we have an endorsed budget last year.

I know all of us want, we have the same values here, we want to support these programs and my concern at this moment is to make sure that we've got all of the detail on where the money went last year and what other programs might have to either be cut back or eliminated if we move forward?

I think off the top of my head I can't identify specific programs but what we can do is look at programs that were funded with one-time funds in 2018 and 2019 and highlight those as potential areas that would need to be eliminated because in some cases Council is in a difficult situation during budget of wanting to fund a variety of programs.

We are only able to identify one-time cuts or a one-time revenue source.

So for that year, the budget is adopted to fund a program that really will need ongoing resources with one-time funds.

So I think in the context of this conversation for the Sweetened Beverage Tax, I think that they, and correct me if I'm wrong, Council Member O'Brien, the thinking is to not go back and try to unwind everything that was done in 2019, but moving forward to make sure that additional programs that are currently funded with other resources aren't, Sweetened Beverage Tax isn't being used to fund those existing programs and instead are only being used to expand programs that are already funded with Sweetened Beverage Tax revenues or to fund new programs that are consistent with the policies outlined in the Sweetened Beverage Tax Fund Ordinance.

Thank you, Allie and Yolanda.

This is definitely, we're digging deep into the complexity of the budget and we're It's hard for me because I haven't turned my budget brain part of that on that comes on at the end of September.

What are you talking about?

That's on all year long.

All the time, okay.

I want to go back to kind of the root of my concern because I think we've touched on some of that stuff.

It's hard to tell because it's, it all, you know, once it becomes general fund money it just goes in a pool and no one says which You know, did this come from property tax, or did this come from sales tax, did this come from B&O tax, whatever it was.

But we know that there's a lot of needs within the community.

And so, and the mayor, and we have challenges to meet those needs.

We can use permanent supporter housing as an example.

If you like, I don't know if it would be appropriate to say, but those are probably types of programs that may have been funded in part by one-time funding before, and they're looking for sustainable solutions.

That is a budget challenge that we have and will have going forward, and we absolutely need to struggle with that to figure out what is the best way to do that.

It may be that we have to cut programs, or it may be that we need to raise additional revenues.

My perspective of what happened last year is we chose to raise additional revenues, and we raised those additional revenues by using the sweetened beverage tax, which we knew was a disproportional tax on low-income communities and communities of color.

And that's the heartburn that I have, is that if we need additional revenues to pay for these, you know, the people that are consuming more Coke and Pepsi because they're marketed to or live in neighborhoods that don't have access to healthy alternatives shouldn't be disproportionately responsible for solving the homeless crisis to fund it.

If we want to fund the homeless crisis, if we need more money for permits, more to housing, that's a hard call for us.

We'll have to go find revenues, but let's find a tax source that is more equitable than this.

The only reason I supported the sweetened beverage tax was because we would be investing that back in those communities along the guidelines that we laid out here.

And when the supplantation happened last year, I felt, and I largely heard from community members who felt that, hey, this was not what we sold to our community members when we said you should support this tax on you.

But it's okay because while it's a tax on you, you're going to get more benefits back through fresh bucks, through early education, through food banks, whatever that set of investments is.

And that's not what's happening.

So I, you know, the intent of this legislation is to go back and honor that.

There's language in there that talks about supplantation.

It's a little bit tricky on how we do that, but I think the language in there is as strong as it can be.

And that leaves other budgetary challenges.

How do we find enough general fund budget to fund all the programs we have including the base amounts of some of the things we're talking about here?

And that's what I think we're asking the mayor to do today is as you're forming your budget for 2020, Don't take from the sweetened beverage tax.

Figure out other sources.

If you have to make cuts here and there to do that, and that's what you want to propose to us, then we'll consider that.

If you want to find additional revenues somewhere else, we will also consider that.

I will say right now, if those revenues are disproportionately falling on low-income people to fund broad citywide initiatives, I'm unlikely to support that.

But that is what the mayor's job is between now and September 25th, and then we take over that job for the following six weeks and come to some conclusion.

Thank you for that.

Any other comments?

Yeah, I mean, I would just say that, you know, for me, it's really important to make sure that when we're talking about the expenditures, we are acknowledging the commitments that we made when we all voted in favor of this, that we recognize that this was a regressive tax that was disproportionately going to impact low-income communities, primarily communities of color.

And that as a result of acknowledging that disproportionality, we have an obligation to reinvest the dollars back into the most disproportionately impacted community members.

the concerns that Council Member O'Brien has expressed with regard to what appears to be a diversion from that commitment and that intent that was originally laid out when we first legislated this particular tax and would like to see a path for us to get back on the right track in terms of how we are gonna fulfill that commitment to community.

And I would also say that when we're talking about the supplantation issues, You know, I think it's really important for us to be clear about what the impact of this bill as proposed by Council Member O'Brien will have on some of the policies that I see, some of the programs as I see clearly within the rubric of commitments that we made to community, right?

And it is very clear that the individuals who greatly benefit from programs like the Nurse-Family Partnership Program, the Child Care Assistance Program, and the Parent-Child Home Program same exact populations that are being disproportionately taxed in this area.

And so, you know, I feel strongly that we need to continue to make really clear that we're not backing away from those investments, that in fact what we're doing is wanting to protect those investments as sort of one of the priority investment areas that we consider to and debated and made policy choices about during the deliberations of the sugary beverage tax.

And so I was a little concerned when we first started this conversation that there was some moving away from those programs that created anxiety for me.

And so having a better understanding of the true intent here is really.

really helpful.

Yeah, and I would like to apologize because I assumed that we were all on that same page and understood that I was speaking about being able to reach 2,000 families when there's actually 122,000 families who need that assistance.

And taking away from that revenue really did not help what we were trying to do.

Yeah.

Please, Council President Hero.

I'll simply say I didn't hear anything that Council Member O'Brien said that I disagreed with.

I fully agreed with everything you said.

It's sort of simple as that.

So my interest going forward is going to be to really understand, acknowledging the commitments that we made in last year's budget, what programs might be cut or what are we going to have to backtrack on that we had committed to last year?

And I don't know that at this point.

If it turns out that we have a lot more money than we anticipated and we can fulfill all of the commitments that we made last year, I'm going to feel good about moving forward with that.

At this point, I'm not sure what programs were supported by the money that was actually supplanted.

What are those programs with specificity?

I'm going to ask Yolanda and Allie to work with me if we know.

And if we don't know, then we need to ask the budget office for that so we've got a real clear commitment.

I think I would just note that it was anything funded with the general fund, frankly.

So the choices in terms of what is not funded or finding a new revenue source would really be anything that was funded with general, I'm gonna call it general general fund, because the sweetened beverage taxes is also was in the general fund.

And I think that therein lies the challenges that we can identify all of programs that were funded with one time ads or cuts, and that might help narrow the universe of programs.

But I think the hard, the good and the bad is that it is anything that was funded with the general fund.

It seems to me that the irony here is that the The question posed by Council Member Bagshaw is the question that we're all struggling with, but is the one question we can't answer because we don't have a dedicated fund that allows us to do that kind of accounting and the tracking.

So that's, to me, that's the...

the irony of the situation and the conversation, and I think the reality is that we have to make difficult decisions in budgets all of the time.

In this context, we made those difficult decisions when we considered the creation of the sugary beverage tax and defined clearly what the investment priorities were going to be.

So anything that was funded outside of those spending priorities as adopted by the City Council are the things that were likely inappropriately funded.

Yeah, I mean, that were that were inappropriately funded in the sense of it fell outside of the rubric of what we said the sugary beverage tax revenue could be used for.

So, I mean, I think I think I think it's almost you have to inverse it and say, like, what are the things that we did fund?

based on the revenue, were they funded at the appropriate level but for supplementation?

If the answer is no, they weren't funded at the appropriate level but for the supplementation, then it almost doesn't matter what other things were funded because we know that the things we said we were gonna fund didn't get funded.

Yeah, those programs, so.

And so I, if I could jump in.

Please, yeah.

Council Member Bakeshaw, it would be, I think the question you ask is a very appropriate question, and I don't know that there's a real answer for that or that we're ever going to get one.

I mean, I think my sense is the answer is that's the budget process.

It is the entire budget document that shows all the mix of things we spent on, and there's no way, I mean, you know, the mayor could come forward and say, no, those specific dollars went to this program.

And that may be accurate or not, but it's somewhere in the budget, and we don't really know, and it all got mixed together.

My concern, again, is that we made a commitment, or at least I made a commitment, to community members that we were going to tax them, but that that tax would be dedicated to additional investments in their community, and we didn't do that.

Again, I want to be clear, the mayor didn't go buy a new car with this money.

She's investing in other things that we really care about.

I just don't think it's fair to tax these particular community members to make those investments.

We could sit here and talk about this for the next four months, but I don't think we're going to get any more clarity.

And the question I'm asking my colleagues to consider is, if you agree that this population that's disproportionately taxed by the sweetened beverage tax should not be funding the broader funding, then let's put that money in a bucket and reserve for the general budget.

You know, we will have plenty of hard discussions during the budget, as will the mayor as he proposes the budget, but let's take this pool of money off limits for that.

And I really appreciate you all being here today.

I appreciate you being here a couple weeks ago.

I appreciate your ongoing engagement for the months before.

I really want to do whatever I can to let these people get back to doing their work and not keep dragging them back here.

The question before that they're asking me is, and in the next panel too, this money was intended for us, do we have to come here and keep defending it?

And I want to say no, we want to block that off.

We'll have a big budget fight over, you know, what else we want to fund in a couple months, but let's block this money off today and let these people get back to work and we'll resolve that other questions as we work through the budget.

And I just, I'm going to end this because we have other items and we will continue this conversation.

Yeah, thank you.

First of all, I want to completely respect and say I appreciate so much the heart that I hear from you and have heard from you.

all along, Council Member O'Brien, you are committed to living up to your promise.

So I want you to know that I appreciate that.

Where I'm coming from is not inconsistent with that, but I feel that we made some commitments to our budget last year.

I want to know what that is.

If it's permanent supportive housing, if it's the nurse family partnership, if any of that is going to be implicated, I want to hear from our budget office, but we can do that after today.

So, Council President Harreld, do you want to put any final words on this?

No, I'm just, again, I'm fully supportive of what you're trying to do.

And quite frankly, I think we all sort of felt that when we articulated.

I had a lot of heartburn to even support the tax.

And then because of what you said is where this money, that's why I was so passionate about the 13th year, the 13th year program.

is near and dear to me, because quite candidly, black and brown people are the beneficiaries of that, the impediments of going to a school.

And so that was real, those are real dollars.

Only for five years, by the way, but I figured we can get the program up and running, and then we can figure out other ways to do it.

So, sort of, I like the concept of that sort of sacred money, so to speak, that we're going to really try to pump back into the community.

We'll probably have some arguments about you know, you know counselor Gonzales, for example mentioned child care assistant program and there's family partnerships certain customers were just passionate about that bucket to in a good way, but I like the concept of of keeping it in the community, quite candidly.

I think we all sort of articulated that.

The ordinance states where the money is supposed to go.

Council Member Beksha, I would love to get a sense on timing on this because I'm ready to vote on this and at least lock down where the money that's collected from the sweetened beverage tax goes because Whether that money is being used for permanent supportive housing or more public safety or expanded community service or community center hours, regardless of what you put on that list, I'm going to say no, it should not go forward if it's not on the list.

So I don't need to fill in that blank.

We're committed to bringing this forward on July 10th for a vote.

Okay.

So I have signaled multiple times here, we will continue to look at what would not be spent or what programs would be defunded or reduced if we move forward in 2020. If you're talking about wanting to make sure we've got the ordinance in place in 2021 and thereafter, we still need to consider about what that looks like.

But I think we've got two weeks.

We'll vote on the committee on July 10th.

I appreciate that commitment.

And I don't, just to be clear, we can ask the mayor what she will defund, but I think we'll hear that on September 25th, or what she'd like additional revenue for.

I agree, but I really would like us to have some information about that within two weeks, so that we're not just left with somebody saying, oh, you've got a $5 million hole in October.

We need to be thinking about this as we're going forward.

So we'll have this opportunity in the next two weeks to have more clarity.

from the budget office about what the implications are.

And what happens if the city budget office doesn't provide us a satisfactory answer?

We have an opportunity to make our decision then.

All right.

Well, thank you all for coming.

Really respect all of the work you're doing.

And again, I just want to acknowledge that, you know, Council Member O'Brien, you're pushing this for all the right reasons.

I have one clarifying question.

What I was going to ask was, none of, I thought part of your proposal was, some of it would go toward that, but during the first round, we came up with that money from one-time sales of other property, where it's like $15 million or something like that.

Go ahead.

I have two separate ordinances.

Okay, so that's...

And the next ordinance we'll discuss is about EDI.

But I've talked about them out of the same side of my mouth multiple times.

Okay, so that was confusing me on this one here.

Okay, gotcha.

All right, thank you.

So thank you for coming, and if you'd like to read in the next item, which is EDI, and we'll ask the next panel to come up.

Thank you.

Item number three, Council Bill 119402, an ordinance related to funding for the Equitable Development Initiative and affordable housing, creating a fund for short-term rental tax revenue.

And I believe we have Colleen Echo-Hawk was...

Oh, she's in the back.

And Ali again.

Here.

Thank you.

Colleen, welcome.

Thank you.

And we have Nora.

Yeah, and I think Nora has a tie constraint, so we might want to start with her.

OK, I think.

Oh.

OK.

She got through security.

Yeah, right.

She made it.

I didn't realize you could do that.

Yeah, well, here.

Just walk around.

Live.

All right, so Ali, why don't you introduce yourself.

Colleen and Nora will go right down the line.

Allie Panucci, Council of Central Staff.

Colleen Echo-Hawk, Chief Seattle Club.

Nura Yunus, African Women Business Alliance.

Thank you.

OK.

So do you want to introduce this, or shall we do what we did last time, which is to start with Colleen and just talk about the implications for you, what you're planning to do with money.

Congratulations again for your Chief Seattle Club and the Lazarus Day Center Construction Project.

We're very excited to be partners with you on that.

Well, yeah, thank you so much for having me.

I'm really honored to be at this table again to tell you about our project and to really highlight how the EDI Fund has been so important for us.

Just some setting of the context is that, as you all know, American Indian and Alaska Native people have the highest rates of homelessness in our city.

The last point in time count, which was a more accurate account than our past counts have been, that's a whole nother topic, showed us that 10% of the population within our homeless population, yet we make up less than 1% of our total population.

So that race disparity is highly incredible.

I believe it is...

disheartening and something that we as a city should do better at.

And so I'm happy to talk about the EDI funds and how that has created an opportunity for us to really provide housing for our native community that is experiencing homelessness.

The EDI funding came to us and it was a surprise.

It was something that we weren't, we didn't know very much about.

And I just wanted to honor the people who have initiated this much, way before I was ever involved.

And they had the foresight to recognize that the displacement was happening and happening quickly.

And they set up a beautiful, fund for us.

Of course, it is way limited because the dollars are not as much as we'd like them to be.

However, for our project, a small organization like the Chief Seattle Club that did not have a huge amount of assets, it was incredibly helpful for us to get going.

We received $750,000 of that funding that went all to pre-development.

And that was so essential for us because we just did not have the experience.

We had the gutsiness and we had the passion to like move forward because we knew that we had to do something.

But those dollars were just imperative.

We just wanted to say huge thanks to OPCD who worked with us to try to figure out how to get us the dollars.

That was hard because we hadn't done this kind of work before.

I'm really excited to say that we go to construction in November.

So we will be creating this beautiful building of 80 units of housing.

One thing we really love about the building is that we believe it'll be one of the first buildings in our downtown quarter that's named a Lushootseed name.

So it'll be the all building, which means home.

And we hope everyone thinks and talks about that name because that is part of changing what has been the norm in Seattle for the past many years.

And English has been a prominent language, but part of equity in our city is to understand that we are in the Coast Salish territories.

I could talk to you forever about this project, and I've talked to almost everyone.

I will be in Councilmember Pachangelo's office soon, so you'll hear more from me on Friday.

But I just want to thank everyone around the table, and especially Councilmember Bagshaw, for your continued support and love for the project.

We just see it and feel it.

Thank you.

Colleen, can you, I'm really excited about your project.

I know it's been years in the making, this is awesome.

The EDI money gets paired with Office of Housing and other resources to build this whole project, but the EDI money, what piece, it's typically not going towards the housing itself, but there are other, what part of the project is it funding for your project?

Barasa was funding the early architecture issues we had.

We had to understand the site, so we did geosurveys, we did water surveys.

We wanted to build a basement in Pioneer Square.

Well, we used those dollars to realize, bad idea.

We're not going to do a basement in Pioneer Square.

And so we used those dollars to get all the pre-development work done.

It has been huge.

The other thing I'd say, too, is it helped us with just capacity.

Our organization has grown, so 75,000 of it was just, let's get Chief Seattle Club staffed up appropriately to do this project, because it is, you know, a big undertaking.

But it's also, I think that what is amazing about this funding, too, is that people of color organizations that have not been really have not been allowed to by government to build housing, this is remarkable because we're doing it.

And I had a friend who's done a lot of development and said, Colleen, it's not rocket science.

And I always hear that in the back of my head, yeah, that we have the knowledge, the ancestral knowledge as well to know how to do this.

Thank you.

I just cannot heap enough praise on you and your board for the work that you've done.

And I also want to acknowledge how much support you've gotten from Pioneer Square, from your neighbors, from people that are there.

And also I want to say thanks to SDOT.

I appreciate the fact that SDOT has been willing to look at the whole Fortson Square and the approach because one of the things you told me early on was that you wanted to be able to use that property out front as a community gathering space, a welcoming space, and also as essentially a job training opportunity if you had the cafe, if you were able to sell native jewelry on site.

It is that kind of development we were talking about, so well done.

Thank you, we're excited.

I'm very excited about how things are going.

Thank you.

Would you like to proceed, please?

Yes, please.

I'm so honored to be here as well.

And kudos to saying ancestral language, I mean power to the community.

I'm coming from African Women Business Alliance.

We are strength-based, data, mission, and community driven focus for black women diaspora in business.

Our mission is to provide black women diaspora with holistic approach and culturally responsive tools required to start, to grow, and scale a business through holistic approach model that focuses on training, one-on-one coaching, marketplace, and seed capital.

And I cannot, I personally as a founder and executive director of African Women Business Alliance, I was on the verge of giving up when this funding came to us.

Just like you, surprise.

I was not expecting it because it was mainly self-funded and I mainly started it because I saw a tremendous amount of potential in my community, not just Somali community, but I'm talking about African black women diaspora who have been doing businesses for years in this city, but they stay stagnant.

And for me, from an equitable lens, that is unacceptable because we live in the most beautiful, progressive city, Seattle.

But talking about the Equitable Development Fund and what it did so far, it has helped us, it gave us two things.

The stability to remain on the course.

and push forward and really rely on the resilience and strength of our community and use that to move us forward.

And another thing it did was to really instill the faith that I have and we have with the board and the community members themselves that for us to close both gender and racial gap in business development for black women diaspora, We have to work authentically and intentionally with other service providers, with our institutions currently in progress, financial institutions, academic institutions.

And the funding that comes from the city does give us that faith that we're not alone.

And it's a, I don't want to say small because it has done tremendous amount of benefit to us.

We got funded through the capacity building, so we received 75K.

in partnership with, for Marketplace, in partnership with Muslim Women Business Network.

So that's currently in progress.

We decided to have our own Marketplace and they will also fund their own Marketplace because they're really based on the North End as well and our demographics so far it's It's a bit diverse, so we want to make sure that they get the strength they need to be able to do the marketplace, and we want to get the strength that we need to do that.

But so far, the funding has really benefited us in hiring a program manager for the first time, being able to fund my salary as well because I worked for free almost for two years.

And what else?

Our market, sorry, our commercial space for black women-owned businesses in Seattle.

So that's currently in progress, and we're working to make sure that we get that at some point.

Oh my God, I'm so sorry.

Can I add something?

Absolutely.

One of the best things that we are currently doing so far right now, I'm talking about closing both the gender and racial gap, is really sharing the narrative of black women in business.

And we realize that yes, we can do technical support.

Yes, we can focus on hiring people.

But honestly speaking, from doing this work and from my own personal experience as a black African woman diaspora or immigrant and a mother, is that people are not aware of the value black women diaspora are bringing to the table.

And thankfully, we got 10K from the funding to be able to develop a beautiful short film that is going to take, we're going to show it in October sometime, in partnership with Diego Lynch, who's our great filmmaker.

And we're able to tell these stories and talk about data, because we are really focused on data, talk about gentrification, because majority of our women members have been gentrified.

It's been so sad, like, sometimes I find myself crying dealing with these women who, like, I've dealt with them five months, and then you go visit them, they're gone.

And so the problem is rapidly increasing, and we don't have enough capacity or resources, rather, to, like, address things.

However, collectively, I do have the hope that somehow we can come to some equitable conclusion.

Thank you very much.

Any questions?

Council Member O'Brien, do you want to?

If I could just jump in before Ali starts because I really appreciate the two of you being here today and talking about how you've accessed the Equitable Development Initiative funding.

The anti-displacement, and I also really appreciate that the EDI came at a time that it was like, wow, this is an amazing resource and that people have been doing, trying to find these sources for years.

And there's been some amazing work that helped inform the council getting behind this.

The anti-displacement work takes so many forms in our city and I think it's really easy for me to lose sight of what that always looks like.

Affordable housing is a huge piece of that because we know people are being displaced because they can't live here.

And we have a bunch of tools for that, not enough, we need more.

But it's not the only reason and the only tool we need to have.

And the way you have both described here today as this flexible pool of funding that can support housing like it did for the Chief Seattle Club, but can also support other initiatives that are anti-displacement initiatives is really just great to hear and great for me to kind of internalize too.

So thank you for that.

Okay.

Ali, do you want to address some of the financial issues here?

Sure.

So I will describe Council Bill 119402 that would establish a fund and financial policies for short-term rental tax revenues and describe some potential options for the committee's consideration.

And thankfully, this is a little more straightforward than the previous revenue source.

As was discussed at committee on June 12th, the original intent for the short-term rental tax was to generate ongoing funding for the equitable development initiative for grants made to communities.

And the goal was to generate at least five million dollars that would be available for grants.

So as Council President Harreld mentioned, originally the equitable development initiative Grant funding was provided with one-time funding with the Interfund loan based on the sale of the property across the street.

Then following that, there was a commitment that the council would identify an ongoing revenue source, and that led to development of the short-term rental tax.

So the initial intent was to support equitable development initiative project grants and then as a secondary goal to provide additional resources generally for affordable housing and to provide a resource to pay the debt service on the bonds that were issued for affordable housing.

The spending plan in the 2019 and 2020 budget supported several council priorities, broadly speaking, related to EDI and affordable housing.

However, the proposed budget swapped short-term rental tax proceeds for general fund resources to fund the Office of Planning and Community Development staffing and consultant services that were previously supported by general fund dollars.

with some expansion and to direct money to support permanently supportive housing operations and maintenance and a rental assistance programs.

These swaps, while were consistent with general council priorities, were not consistent with the original intent for this revenue source.

In response to the Mayor's proposed budget, Council Bill 119402 was introduced last fall during the budget deliberations to create the fund and adopt the policies that would have restricted use of those funds.

However, because Council was unable to find the ongoing resources to fully align the proposed spending plan with the original intent, And at the request of the Central Budget Office, the Council did not act on the bill at that time and instead adopted Statement of Legislative Intent 1-5-B-1 that asked the Budget Office to prepare legislation and proposed financial policies by March.

When that was due, instead of transmitting legislation, they submitted a letter suggesting that they agree that a fund should be established, but they would propose legislation when they transmit the budget in the fall of 2019. Because that legislation wasn't transmitted, Council Member O'Brien requested that central staff work to identify any necessary changes to Council Bill 119-402 to allow Council to act on that legislation prior to budget deliberations and to establish policies beginning in 2020 and beyond.

So what I have done in the memo is outline three potential options that Council could consider in modifications to Council Bill 119-402.

The three options would all establish a fund for short-term rental tax revenues so we could be clear about where those dollars are going.

And it would amend the bill as introduced to have it put in place in January 2020 rather than January 2019 since we passed that date.

The first option that is on pages four through eight of the bill, if you want to see the details, would establish financial policies that direct spending of short-term rental tax revenues exactly the way it was originally intended when the council adopted the local tax.

However, if adopted, it would be inconsistent with the 2020 endorsed budget, and it would require likely cutting resources for the permanently supportive housing or finding additional cuts or revenues to support the ongoing operations and maintenance.

It's about $3.3 million dedicated for that, as well as identifying about $1.1 million to provide funding for the staff and consultant services and OPCD.

Option two, which is on page nine through 13 of the memo, would establish financial policies for 2020 that are consistent with the 2020 endorsed budget.

So it would provide about $4 million for EDI grants.

It would provide about $1 million to support staffing and consultant services and would continue to allow spending on permanently supportive housing and to pay the debt service on the bonds issued for affordable housing.

And then beginning in 2021, it would go back to the policies that were in the original, that was the council's original intent.

That would again require, because the funding for permanently supportive housing is an ongoing need, it would require likely finding other resources at that time.

So it would essentially push the challenge down the road and potentially provide more time to identify new revenue sources.

Option three would, similar to option two, for 2020 would establish policies that are consistent with the 2020 endorsed budget for 2020. And in 2021 and beyond, the financial policies would first prioritize paying the debt service and bonds issued for affordable housing, direct the next $6.1 million in revenues to EDI.

This would include $5 million for grants made to community and $1.1 million for staffing and consultant services.

And then for anything above that would provide more flexible use of any excess revenues that could include additional funding for EDI grants, including the affordable housing component of those projects, or to support affordable housing generally, and that could include payments for ongoing resources for operations and maintenance for permanently affordable housing.

These could be, you know, mix and match or additional options should be included, but I wanted to lay out some alternative approaches for the committee's consideration.

Council Member O'Brien, you wanna dive in?

That actually is much more clear than, it's much less complex, I should say, than the last one, so I don't have much to add.

I'll just, similar, I think that this, these sets of investments, I can't remember the exact number, but I think there were over 20 applicants for the pool of money last year, and we funded a fraction of them.

And we know that every year, as more and more organizations get more and more familiar with this, I expect to see more and more applications for it.

And so I imagine this is a pool that we want to grow, not to shrink.

And so, you know, I'm looking for support from my colleagues and happy to have discussions between now and the 10th of July on how we can get as much money funding into this.

It's a little, I mean, one of the tricky parts we're in right now is we really don't know what the, We don't know how much money we're going to receive from the short-term rental.

We're receiving the money, but maybe you can tell us a little bit about the status of it.

The data coming over is a little complicated, and it hasn't been totally digested yet, so we don't really know if we're on target, ahead of target, behind target.

Yeah, so the state began collecting revenues at the beginning of this year, and it is, it's a convention center tax, so it goes to the convention center, and then any money, any revenue generated in the city of Seattle comes to the city.

So there is a delay in us knowing what the revenues look like.

To date, I think initially the budget office had thought we might be looking at less revenue than we had originally projected.

It looks like we think we are on track to stay close to the $10.5 million that was proposed in the adopted 2019 and 2020 endorsed budget, but we really won't know until early next year how much revenue is generated and, you know, hopefully we'll all be pleasantly surprised and there will be excess revenues and that could help some of these problems, but going into discussions of the 2020 budget, we won't have enough information to really know if there'll be excess revenue.

And so what my hope in that situation would be to do, so in last year's budget, the proposed budget that came with the mayor, only included $4 million for grants and then $1 million for staffing.

And we were able to boost up that $4 million to the $5 million in grants as committed without cutting anything else because we found, I think, community development block grant money, which is somewhat restricted and not great, but it got us through 2019 budget.

There's a mix of proposals in here between your options, and I would be really interested in figuring out how we can make sure for 2020 we can also get five million in grants.

And so that's a conversation that I would love to try to put some parameters around, you know, with this legislation recognizing we may have to continue to work on that in the budget.

Perhaps some version that talked about, you know, a chunk going to the bonding, a chunk going to what was in the 2020 endorsed budget, but then the next, you know, if in fact the revenues are coming in slightly higher than we think or above what we budgeted for, that that would go towards the EDI.

And then any surplus to go to that too.

So, I mean, that's an open question.

If it turns out, you know, because this is a relatively new revenue source that we still don't have our hands around, I would love to put some language in there that really strongly pushes, you know, any money above the 5, the 1.1, and the 2.2, whatever that adds up to.

8.3 maybe, something like that.

7.3.

That sounds about right.

8.3.

You know, if we get money above that to try to dedicate as much of that as possible to EDI because at least for the next few years I think that's going to be an important source or important place to invest.

Great.

Anything else?

We still have two more agenda items to move through today.

Thank you very much.

Thank you both for taking your time to come and join with us, and I wish you the best with all the work that you're doing.

Thank you.

Thanks for coming.

I've hit my word count for the day, so I'm going to excuse myself.

Yeah, that was a lot for you.

I was wearing more appropriate shoes today.

Very good.

I can't see my toes.

I can't see your toes.

All right.

Would you like to read in the next item?

Thank you.

Item number four, Council Bill 119552, an ordinance related to Yesler Crescent improvements, amending Ordinance 125724, which adopted the 2019 including the 2019-2024 Capital Improvement Program.

Excellent.

Thank you.

And Christopher Williams, welcome.

Tracy Ratzlaff, thank you so much for all of your help.

So are you going to introduce it, Tracy?

Surely I can.

Tracy Ratzlaff, Council of Central Staff.

So, Council Members, during the 2019-2020 budget discussions, you added about $470,000 of additional funds to the Yes the Crescent Improvement Project.

This is a CIP project that was actually funded to the tune of about $500,000 by the Executive in the 2019 budget.

You, wanting to understand perhaps how that $970,000 of total funding might be spent, put a proviso on that money and asked for the Parks Department, the Executive, working with other departments as well in the community to come back with a proposed spending plan.

And so what you have in front of you is the ordinance that releases the money, and also attached to the fiscal note is a description of how the funds will be spent.

Great.

Thank you.

It's one of the best summaries ever.

And Christopher, I'm going to...

Pass it to you, but I want to acknowledge and say huge thanks to you and your team.

You are always so gracious and have been very involved.

And I also just want to say for my colleagues, this isn't just about parks.

This is the King County building across the street.

We've been working with them.

DESC, Sound Transit across the street, big focus on the community engagement.

But what you are doing in City Hall Park and Yesler Crescent is making a huge difference.

And I want to acknowledge that and say thank you.

Thank you very much.

So maybe I'll jump in there.

We're proposing a set of intentional people-centered strategies to make City Hall Park essentially work better.

The strategies build on the success of the prior year.

People-centered strategies focus on people versus our traditional focus on built environment.

We want people to use the park.

The goal is to create vibrancy in the park, increase public use while increasing the public perception of safety.

Research shows that people report feeling safe in parks when there's lots of activity and activation going on.

So part of these expenditures are divided into capital and operating.

We will spend over the next two years roughly $306,000 to invest in operations.

That's activation and a whole series of things I'll go through later.

And then over the next two years, we'll spend about $664,000 in capital investments in the park.

So the first $58,000 will go to enhance activation in City Hall Park including music, art, food trucks, the replacement of concrete benches and chairs.

These features have already been improved by the Pioneer Square Preservation Board.

I should note that any changes to Yesler Crescent or City Hall Park need to go through the Pioneer Preservation Board.

This includes the activation of Dillingsway.

We will feature eight lunchtime concerts in the months of July and August.

Over the nine to ten weeks of activation, we will be using two well-worn tools to get the public out, and that includes activation as we look at kind of the hierarchy of what's effective, safety, Enhanced maintenance and activation.

We know that activation and bringing the public out works the best So we'll leverage those tools against creating a better public experience in City Hall Park The second thing we'll spend money on is roughly $50,000 on enhanced site maintenance including cleaning of the globes adding additional lighting Tree pruning and all of the enhanced maintenance features.

That is the other part of that three-legged stool it was This also includes revamping the lighting in the Jefferson Alley.

This is the lighting that, rather, this is the alley space between the park and the courthouse.

We already have cafe-style lighting.

The goal is to get more of that lighting, perhaps across the street to the Sound Transit Station.

And I'm told that we could have that in place as soon as next week or the week after.

That is so great.

And I really want to acknowledge Victoria Schoenberg, too.

She's been wonderful at responding to questions.

Your whole team, Christopher, has been great.

Last summer when it first came up that we needed to be doing some things differently, you had the trees pruned and those globes cleaned and King County colleagues there with Carolyn Whalen and our team of judges that were so worried about safety.

You've all really stepped up.

Great can-do attitude by Lisa Nelson and a bunch of folks at Parks.

So the next tranche of funding will spend $75,000 of King County levy money to transfer money from King County Levy to D.O.N. so that D.O.N. can work with the Pioneer Square Alliance to develop design guidelines for any future changes to City Hall Park or Prefontaine.

Ultimately, again, any changes would need to go through the Pioneer Square Preservation Board.

And can you talk a little bit about how that money, or maybe another category, a bucket of money, will be used with our friends with the Pioneer Square Alliance?

Because I know they're putting in $100,000 that they've identified through a grant source.

So how does this work together so that we're not duplicating?

So that's kind of on the capital side.

and we will work in coordination with the Pioneer Square Alliance to explore options for connectivity and activation between City Hall Park and Prefontaine Fountain.

This includes hiring a consultant to work with the Preservation Board.

This funding will support kind of a comprehensive look at options for Prefontaine Fountain with a focus on connections and connectivity.

I liken it to an example of moving furniture around in your living room to see how you create sort of the best fit for people.

The idea is that what comes out of these recommendations will be funded as hard capital investments in 2020.

Yeah, great.

Thank you.

Moving right along here.

We will transfer $75,000 from the SPR operating budget to the Pioneer Square, I'm sorry, to deal in to work with the Pioneer Square Alliance to map out those design guidelines so they can connect with any physical changes we want to make down the road.

We're also planning to assist in the public life study.

This is another effort being led by SDOT, and it really looks at how people use public spaces in Pioneer Square.

And again, the idea is that recommendations that come out of the public life study could be funded next year with the $364,000.

We're setting ourselves up to do that.

And I'd like to acknowledge Lena Thibault in my office and Brian Chu who is working with SDOT and your staff.

They got 43 volunteers to come out last month and do those public life study counts.

And it really is helping because we have for the first time some data to know where people are and what's going on.

Wonderful.

So we'll work with SDOT to complete the public life study.

We're actually transferring $50,000 to SDOT to complete that work.

We're also looking at Fortson Square planning and design.

This is for SDOT and the Office of Arts and Culture to propose solutions for Fortson Square.

And then...

Just to throw one more thing in your way, Colleen Echo-Hawk and her design team have been fabulous.

So we're there hand-in-hand with them.

Yeah.

And then I've mentioned the $364,000 which will be deferred to 2020 to implement recommendations out of the Public Life Study.

Great.

Very good.

Thank you.

All right.

So anything else?

All right, so any other questions for my colleagues?

This has been really important to me personally and I thank you for your support.

So I move that the committee pass Council Bill 119552. Second.

Any questions?

Discussion?

All right, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

And nobody's opposed and there's no abstentions.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thanks again, Tracy.

Okay, our Final item today, Bobby Humes, if you would please come up.

How are you, buddy?

How you doing?

Good.

Thanks for being here again.

Deputy Mayor Mosley, Ms. Deborah Smith, did you want to join?

You're welcome to.

Very good.

Thank you.

Well, I suspect Deputy Mayor Mosley will start with you and both of you will give us your names for the record.

But I do want to say thank you, Bobby.

You answered supplemental questions from our last meeting.

I also appreciated your additional resume information because it's so rich with things that we all wanted to know.

So thank you for doing that.

My pleasure.

Please.

Thank you.

Yes, David Mosley, Deputy Mayor.

Just nice to be back with you again.

We had a robust discussion at your last committee meeting and very pleased to be back before you again today to have Mr. Hume provide any supplemental responses that the council would like.

I would like to simply notify the council that I've got a hard stop at four o'clock, so I may need to pass out, not pass out,

I know you won't, but we'll excuse you in 17 minutes.

Chair Bagshaw, I also have a hard stop at four o'clock, so I just wanted to let you know for voting purposes.

Very good, thank you.

Well, this may be the shortest meeting in a long time where we have talked with a director-to-be, but Lena, would you please read that in for me?

Item number five, appointment number 01370, appointment of Robert Humes as director of Seattle Department of Human Resources.

Okay, well, why don't we just dive in, Bobby?

Okay.

Because we had a wonderful meeting a couple of weeks ago where we grilled you quite extensively on your background.

And there were some additional questions.

And I think that these have all been given to my colleagues.

So I think when we last left it, there had been some queries made about your The time between jobs that you've had, my understanding based upon people I've talked to is that they say, yep, it's true that he changes jobs every two years, but it's because he's been so good, he has been tapped to move on into other jobs.

So I don't know if the two of you would like to discuss that further or, but I think it'd be a good starting point.

I think the sentiments of the blessing I've had to be able to come into roles and make critical impacts in timely fashion, critical impacts that still create value in the places where I've worked, and to be able to be selected to compete for other opportunities has just been consistent.

And you will note that They're in systems, so as I move, I'm moving within a system, specifically with the United States Army and then with the state of Washington.

And then even my last role in another system at the Kent School District.

And I know that you were working as HR director in our parks department.

Yes.

And were tapped by the mayor to come and take over as the interim director.

Do you want to talk a little bit about what has your experience been in this interim role?

Absolutely.

My experience in the interim role has been shaped by the opportunity that I see within the department to leverage key skill sets that are already there.

We have a great customer service, value-driven approach to how we do work, and I think there's an opportunity to leverage more inclusive action.

bringing more folks to the table as we make decisions to create that.

And so that's been my focal point.

Also, is to focus externally in how we're building partnerships across the city to do the work that we're required to do through the lens of race and social justice first.

And then to couch our value in project-driven, results-based work.

Council President Harreld, would you like to pursue any line of questioning from the last time?

No, I'll just make a comment.

I've had the pleasure of meeting with Mr. Humes separately between meetings and I'm ready to support him affirmatively.

I think I made my expectations very clear that I expect from this position and from him personally just to be a leader.

I think it's important for us to be able to have a place in inclusionary thinking and diversity, that part of the vision for our workforce.

And I think sort of tapping the potential of that office that has been probably underutilized citywide.

And so we've had our discussions and so I'm certainly ready to

Council Member Gonzales?

Ditto.

Okay.

Well, in honor of the fact that it's been three minutes since you sat down, you would like to leave in 14 minutes.

If there's no further discussion, I would like to move the appointment of Mr. Bobby Humes.

Second.

Any further discussion?

All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

None opposed.

And we have no abstention.

So congratulations.

Thank you.

I also understand that you're going to be out of town.

Yes.

So we are going to send this to the full council on July 15th, if that's all right with everybody.

That's my understanding, yes.

Okay.

Very good.

All right.

Well, congratulations.

Thank you very much.

I've never seen three minutes, but I'm really proud of you.

And I just want to say, just finally, Bobby, it's been my pleasure to work with you on our City Employees Retirement Board, on the things that you and I have discussed, just about looking down the road to benefit employees with other opportunities to work.

And I'm very grateful.

Likewise.

Thank you for your time.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor Mosley, for coming and sitting through our first four items.

Very good.

Okay, well, this motion passes.

The committee has approved this recommendation.

So our next meeting of the Finance and Neighborhoods Committee will be Wednesday, July 10th.

We will take up again the sweetened beverage tax, the EDI conversations.

I've already submitted questions to the budget office saying let's figure out what, if anything, is going to be impacted.

so that we can come back to the table with the full information we want.

Understood.

Okay.

Okay.

Very good.

Thank you both for coming.

Thank you.

All right.

The meeting's adjourned.

Thank you, Lena and Allison, for being here.