Seattle City Council Finance & Housing Committee 6/4/21

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Let's get a chance here.

Recording in progress.

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you very much for joining the Finance and Housing Committee.

Today is June 4th, 2021. I'm Teresa Mosqueda, Chair of the Finance and Housing Committee.

The committee will come to order.

The time is 9.33 a.m.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Chair Bosqueda?

Present.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Here.

Council President Gonzalez?

Here.

Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Strauss.

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Council President Peterson.

I'm sorry, Council Member Peterson.

Madam Chair, that is four present and two excuse.

Freedy, I am here.

My apologies.

No problem.

Madam Chair, that is five present and one excuse.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

And colleagues, I want to let you know that Councilmember Strauss is excused.

We wish him well on his adventures today and know that he will be following up with this presentation.

Colleagues, we do have a packed agenda here today.

I want to briefly make sure that we have a chance to talk about a letter that I circulated in support of contract negotiations that are currently occurring at IBEW 46. We'll have public comment and we'll also include a full agenda from Allie Panucci of Central Staff along with Julie Dingley talking about the American Rescue Plan Act and our Seattle Rescue Plan proposal that we will have the chance to walk through in detail today.

We will then move into a briefing discussion and possible vote on the independent contractor and worker protection ordinance that we were talking about regarding transparency for our discussion.

We will discuss amendments and have a possible vote on the substitute as well.

And we will conclude with a briefing on the housing levy annual report and a discussion of proposed changes to the levy administration and finance plan and housing funding policies.

That is just for briefing and discussion today, and there's no official legislation.

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

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

Colleagues, before we begin a public comment, as you saw yesterday, I circulated a letter from our office in support of IBEW 46. We know that IBEW 46 members, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, is engaged with the Puget Sound chapter.

of the National Electrical Contractors Association.

Key issues that they're currently working on include negotiations for making sure that there is improved safety provisions, making sure workers have PPE on the job, expanded parking and transportation premiums, overall economic stability, and pay time off and quality of life.

We had offered to send a letter of support as an individual and being a body that believes in collective organizing, they asked us to see if there was any other council members that would like to sign on.

I know that this is a relatively new topic for some folks who might not have been following it, but if you did have the chance to review the letter, we'd love to have you sign on.

If you need more time, no problem.

I'm sure IVW 46 would be happy to chat with folks later.

and just wanted to use this as a public forum to offer any additional council members the chance to sign on if you've had the chance to review it.

Council colleagues, any questions about the letter that I circulated yesterday?

Okay, wonderful.

At this point, Madam Clerk, if you don't mind, please call in the roll so that we can identify if there's any other members of the Finance and Housing Committee, which, by the way, includes external labor organizing and negotiating issues within our committee.

It seemed like a good opportunity to bring it forward.

If you don't mind calling the roll to see if other council members would like to sign on to this letter in support of IBEW 46 labor negotiations, that would be great.

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Council Member Herbold, that didn't come quite through.

Council President Gonzalez.

Council Member Lewis.

Yes.

Council Member Morales.

Council Member Morales.

Yes.

Madam Chair, that is a five in favor.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

And before we begin with public comment, Council Member Herbold, as the sponsor of the resolution related to why we are all wearing orange today, did you want to say a few words before we start with public comment?

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate the opportunity to bring awareness to the fact that we are, in fact, all wearing orange today.

Today is Wear Orange Day, an observation of efforts to prevent gun violence in our nation.

This is the seventh annual observation of that day and of the efforts of advocates and community members everywhere who have been touched by gun violence to ensure that that policymakers work with community to pass common sense gun law legislation.

And so Wear Orange is in honor of the efforts of community members and loved ones and family who came together in the face of the loss of a young person to gun violence.

And every year since then we wear Orange on June 4th to observe and honor those efforts.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Herbold.

Colleagues, at this point, we are going to go ahead and go into public comment unless there's additional comments Councilmembers would like to make about Wear Orange Day.

Okay, thank you.

I do see you wearing your orange, council members.

So thank you again for bringing that up and appreciate the call for action and attention on this issue, Council Member Herbold, that you have put in front of the council with your resolution again this year.

Okay, colleagues, we do have quite a few folks signed up for public comment, and we are very lucky to have with us Farideh Cuevas, who always staffs us in the Finance and Housing Committee, along with Aaron House.

Welcome back again, Aaron House.

Due to the large number of people who are signed up for public comment, We're going to have some folks help us with reading through the public comment names as we get oriented to who's all on the list here.

We want to make sure that we hear from everyone and we have about 45 minutes allotted for this.

So folks who are signing up for public comment, please note that you will have one minute.

To provide public comment today, and there will be many more opportunities to provide public comment in the upcoming 2 meetings, plus the upcoming full council meeting at this time.

We do want to open up remote public comment.

We know that time is restricted, so appreciate you getting in your high level points and then following up with us with any additional information.

You may want to share at Seattle.

at council, excuse me, at council at seattle.gov.

The public comment period will go for 45 minutes.

We will call on three speakers at a time in the order in which they are registered.

If you are not yet registered but would like to speak, you can still sign up at seattle.gov backslash council.

We would like to have your public comment speak to the items on today's agenda or our work plan for the Finance and Housing Committee.

Once we call a speaker's name, you will hear you have been unmuted, but that's your prompt.

So you hit star six on your end, make sure your own phone is off of mute, and then you'll have the chance to speak for a minute.

You'll have the chance to speak and you'll hear a chime at the end of the 10 seconds.

This is your indication that it's your time to wrap up.

Please begin speaking by saying your name and the item that you're addressing.

And as a reminder, when you're done speaking, please do hang up on the listen in line.

This is the number that you should have received.

as confirmation when you signed up for public comment.

So if you're watching on Seattle Channel or on the web services, make sure you call in to the number that was allocated so that you'll be present when we call your name.

After you're done, please disconnect and then follow on Seattle Channel or the other listen in options.

The public comment period is now open and I will kick us off by reading the first three names and then our team, Buddy Day and Aaron will help us read through the next three names.

The first three people who are present are Sage Wilson, Kim Wolfe, and Joe Thompson.

Good morning, Sage.

Good morning.

I'm Sage Wilson with Working Washington here in support of the contractor ordinance before you today, including the timeline to move forwards on pay up policies to raise pay, protect flexibility and provide meaningful transparency to gig workers.

You know, because council is considering passing a labor standard today, I'm sure you're hearing from voices saying that the law isn't reasonable, that it's unworkable, that it's moving too fast and that it will have all kinds of horrible impact.

So it's useful to recall about a year ago what was being said when the council passed hazard pay for food delivery workers.

You may remember that Instacart sent messages to customers, issued statements, and even took out a full-page ad in the Seattle Times saying that opposing that bill was about saving grocery and pharmacy delivery in Seattle because hazard pay would make it impossible to sustainably operate in the city.

It even threatened 5,500 people with the loss of work and said that access to same-day grocery delivery was at risk.

Of course, it became law.

It's been enforced successfully.

Tens of thousands of workers have been getting hazard pay over the past year with each delivery.

And, yes, Instacart is still here.

In fact, last week, they announced a new trial of a 30-minute grocery delivery, and they were rolling it out in a handful of their biggest and most important markets, including Seattle.

And so, with that context in mind, they are due to move forwards and pass this contract ordinance today and advance payout policy this year to raise pay, protect flexibility, and provide transparency.

Thank you so much.

The next person is Kim Wolfe.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Kimberly Wolfe.

I'm part of the Pay Up campaign.

Gig workers are really...

I didn't have it prepared.

We're exploited in a lot of ways.

Controlled, underpaid, all types of things.

Even though this isn't the specific bill that we want to go forward, it's a good start because in this bill, it's transparency.

And transparency is the first step to be able to know what's actually happening and when the companies are doing something just not that great.

They're crying and whining every time we do something like this, that they're going to lose business.

But during COVID, they gained.

many, many, many more profit, many more dollars, much more profit than they did before.

None of that came down to the gig workers.

So this bill, what I like about it is that it's starting the transparency, putting that in motion, and that we can get a commitment from the council on the future pay up standards.

Thank you so much.

The next person is Joe Thompson.

And as I'm looking for Joe to come online, the next three speakers are Mackenzie Chase, James Thompson and Randy Banneker.

Do we have Joe with us?

I am.

Can you hear me now?

I can.

Yes.

Thanks for waiting.

Hi.

Hi.

My name is Joe Thompson and I am the president of Mercy Housing Northwest and Mercy Housing Northwest serves families.

who are at area median incomes of below 60% in Seattle.

And I want to thank the council for including $2 million in funding for resident services for non-permanent supportive affordable housing.

This funding will be essential towards our mitigating the impacts of the pandemic and the economic downturn for our residents.

Our residents have been hit extremely hard by the pandemic.

Resident services are critically important to the folks who call our buildings home.

They leverage the power of housing to serve as a platform for assisting residents to build better lives for themselves and their families.

Our residents have been hit hard by the pandemic, and resident services align well with the funding priorities of ARPA, such as connecting people hardest-hit to jobs, health care, and educational opportunities.

Thank you again.

Thank you.

And the next person is Mackenzie.

Good morning, Mackenzie.

Do we have Mackenzie with us this morning?

Okay.

Good morning, Chairman and members of the committee.

My name is Mackenzie Chase, and I'm here on behalf of the Seattle Metro Chamber to speak about the independent contractor legislation.

As currently drafted, this legislation applies to any independent contractors from electricians to hairstylists to independent coders.

It also applies to every commercial hiring entity, including small cafes and stores with one or two employees.

Given the number of professions impacted, City Council should pursue extensive outreach with all the impacted sectors to ensure that the effects on different industries are properly understood.

This sweeping legislation fails to consider the differences in industries and assumes that a hiring entity always has the expertise and power in a contracting situation which is not true.

The legislation could create liability concerns for businesses resulting in problematic unintended consequences.

Not everyone wants a traditional employment opportunity and we should maintain avenues for people who want to be independent entrepreneurs.

We have a lot of concerns about the legislation that's currently drafted, and we urge you to slow down consideration of the bill and do the necessary outreach to address harmful unintended consequences.

Thank you.

The next person is James.

Good morning, James.

Good morning to all.

My name is James Thomas.

I'm in your house to support the independent transparency of the contractor bill.

from work in Washington failed.

Incomes, the process that is used is a despicable business practice which externalizes the costs while internalizing all the profits.

And the profits have been monumental since COVID.

Income inequality is a damaging the entire thought of raising up a great and fair economy where families can strive to do more and receive more by doing so, not getting less.

There are people out there right now on the platform that are complaining that they are making zero with the time they're spending and all the costs that it's costing them.

So thank you in advance for moving forward.

Have a great day.

Thank you so much.

You too.

Randy Banneker will be followed by Mary Ellen Stone, Terry Holm, and Brandi Flood.

Good morning, Randy.

Thanks, Madam Chair and members of the committee.

Randy Banneker here on behalf of the Seattle King County Realtors commenting on the independent contractor legislation.

Appreciate the opportunity to speak.

I'm following up on a letter we sent requesting that persons performing real estate brokerage services as defined in RCW be added to the exemptions in the independent contractor definition section.

Reviewing the ordinance, it's clear that there are specific types of independent contractor relationships the legislation seeks to address in advancing or better protecting vulnerable workers consistent with OLS enforcement priorities.

A real estate broker is not a vulnerable worker and the independent contractor relationship is not opaque in the real estate sector.

It's defined by state law.

We seek to avoid confusion for real estate brokers and firms.

And beyond our sector, we believe there's value in a bright line in the ordinance, a clear direction to the executive, clear for hiring entities that may be misclassified and clear for vulnerable workers.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Good morning, Mary Ellen.

I see you, Mary Ellen.

It looks like you need to hit star six one more time, please.

OK, great.

OK, here I am.

OK.

Perfect.

This is Mary Ellen Stone, King County Sexual Assault Resource Center.

I'm speaking in support of the six hundred thousand dollars that has been recommended as part of the recovery funding that the council will be addressing later today.

$600,000 for gender-based violence services.

Prior to the pandemic, our organizations were severely strained with very dramatic increases in demand for services, sexual assault, domestic violence, and other forms of gender-based violence.

That was beforehand.

For example, KSARC was up 19% in terms of demand for service.

Now we're seeing dramatically increased caseloads far more challenging situations that victims and their families are facing, backlogs related to the courts, and a very complicated situation.

We're asking that the committee support the request for $600,000 for gender-based violence in this upcoming allocation.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

The next person is Terry.

Good morning, Terry.

Yes hi it's Terry Holm.

Can you hear me.

Yes.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much today for hearing my testimony.

I'm speaking today as a member of the Rainier Valley Coalition of the Seattle Neighborhood Greenways and Safe Streets.

Inspired by last year's Keep Moving Streets pro pilot programs on Lake Washington Boulevard.

We are advocating for long-term changes in use by motor vehicles between Mount Baker Beach and Seward Park.

Details of our work can be found at stayhealthystreets.org slash Lake LWB.

The Lake Washington Boulevard keep moving street has been a huge success as demonstrated by surveys petitions conducted by SDOT the Seattle Times and Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.

Seattle Neighborhood Greenways is advocating that the Seattle Department of Transportation and Seattle Parks and Recreation proceed with a robust community engagement to co-design permanent Lake Washington Boulevard improvements.

Please include this funding in the Stay Healthy Street program that you're looking at today.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Terry.

The next person is Brandi Flood, and then we'll have George Scarola, Tiara Dearborn, and Daryl Smith.

Good morning, Brandi.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Can you hear me?

Yes, thanks.

Hello, my name is Brandi Flood.

I'm the lead program manager managing our clinical case managers in the REACH program doing lead work in the community.

I want to advocate to the council to use the ARPA funding to maintain the capacity of the lead program to do this work.

Over 50% of my board of directors are BIPOC, 27% of my case managers are Black, 12% of my case managers are Latinx, and multiple members of our team identify as LGBTQ and have personal experience in recovery.

from addiction, mental health, homelessness, and trauma.

We have been doing this work throughout the pandemic.

We have not been working from home.

We have been in the streets working with some of the most vulnerable people in the community.

And this work has become harder and harder with the contextual natures of how COVID is showing up in lives of our clients.

More domestic violence, harder to get housing paperwork done, higher crimes for survival just to make it out here due to the pandemic.

And we have been doing creative things to remove those barriers.

And especially for our BIPOC, and our Black clients.

And as a Black service provider I just want to be on record that I want to be acknowledged as a Black service provider serving the most vulnerable Black people in our community in need of intensive case management.

And we all want to abolish prisons.

We want to change the narrative of community safety in our communities.

But as long as we have White supremacy in our institutions Black people will always be at the intersection of crime and behavioral health.

And our case managers refuse to leave those people behind just because you know people are against the police right now.

We want to be in the streets with those people, making sure that we're carrying them through these terrible times and keeping them covered.

So please use that funding to maintain LEAD case management so we can continue to do the work and do the work with people who reflect the communities that we serve.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

The next person is George.

Thank you so much.

Do we have George with us?

OK.

Good morning, Chair Mosqueda, members of the committee.

I'm George Scarola.

I'm working with Lehigh and many community partners, individual council members, to rapidly expand tiny house villages, what we're calling It Takes a Village campaign.

I urge the committee today to support using $9.1 million in ARPA funds to build nine more tiny house villages this year.

Once open, they can help more than 500 people every year leave the streets, get the services they need, and move to stable housing.

This homelessness crisis has gone on too long.

This is our moment to deal with the crisis at the scale it deserves.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next person is Tiara.

Morning council members.

My name is Tiara Dearbone.

I'm a project manager for LEAD in Seattle.

I'm here to ask that you allocate our funding to fill the large 2021 LEAD budget deficit.

Because of the council's adoption of the gatekeeping proviso last year we've been able to continue to hire people with lived experience in order to serve and to offer alternatives to policing for Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color who have been most marginalized and harmed over time.

As you know, our most vulnerable neighbors have been hit hard by COVID and continuing to provide intensive street-based care during this time has been exceptionally challenging.

But LEAD case management has done it and they won't stop if we don't make them by layoffs.

An overwhelming number of community stakeholders are starting to request and prefer a LEAD-like response instead of traditional enforcement.

Please stabilize the work that is now so critical during a time like this and is finally starting to be accepted and preferred as the response to addressing public order concerns.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Daryl.

Good morning, Madam Chair and Council Members.

Thank you for the opportunity to be heard.

I am calling in to address the $22 million request from the Office of Economic Development for Neighborhood Recovery Projects and Direct Support to Small Businesses, CB 1200393. In April of 2020, Homesight was fortunate enough to raise about $250,000 in direct support to BIPOC and women-owned small businesses in a three-zip code area here south of the Ship Canal.

We were really happy to do that work and proud to be a part of that, but unfortunately, our heartbreak was that we had enough money to award 30 businesses in the first round, and we had over 250 applications, much to be said of the same in the second round as well.

So we know that our small business communities here in South Seattle and beyond are truly hurting during the pandemic, and I really urge the council to support this request from the Office of Economic Development to help us continue to recover from the pandemic.

Thank you so much.

Thanks so much.

The next three speakers are Benjamin Hunter, Brahim Lamar, and Lauren Schwartz.

Good morning, Benjamin.

Do we have Benjamin with us?

I see you, Benjamin.

Just need to hit star six to unmute yourself.

Looks like you're still muted on my end.

Star six one more time.

And after Benjamin will be Brahim, if we can see it Brahim.

Brahim, why don't we go ahead and go to you.

Good morning.

You can hit star six.

Okay, there you are.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Brahim Lamar.

I'm a lead case manager and I wanted to speak of the ARPA fund.

I just wanted to start by saying that I absolutely love the work that I do.

Serving severely vulnerable individuals who suffer from mental health concerns and extreme oppression is something that greatly and will greatly continue to impact the community for the better.

Most of my clients are BIPOC individuals who suffer from severe trauma due to the injustice of the legal system.

being able to go ahead and connect with those clients and make longstanding relationships with those clients to go ahead and make their life better and stop them from being involved into the criminal legal system will ultimately better affect all of us in general for the better.

So I was going ahead and speaking on that.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time today.

The next person is Lauren Schwartz.

Good morning, Lauren.

Good morning.

This is Lauren Schwartz, and I'm here to ask you to provide funding to make the Alki Point keep moving street into a permanent stay healthy street.

Alki Point is the most used stay healthy street or keep moving street in all Seattle, according to two separate SDOT studies and one citywide SDOT survey, over 1,200 people have signed a petition asking for Alki Point to become a permanent stay healthy street.

In addition, Alki Community Council, West Seattle Bike Connection, and SPD Captain Grossman have all endorsed making this street permanent.

It's been a successful experiment with many positive outcomes, including safety, accessibility, health, and sustainability.

So we recommend first making this street permanent and then building on the solid foundation.

Please provide funding for us to do so.

Thank you so much.

I'm just going to go back to Benjamin Hunter real quick, and then the next three speakers will be.

Clint, Fiona, Van, Zane, Finch, and Ellie Holman.

Do we have Benjamin with us?

Benjamin, I still see you, but you're on mute if you can hit star six.

OK.

I'm going to keep going then.

Sorry about that, Benjamin.

Can you hear me now?

There you are, Benjamin.

Go ahead.

All right, technology.

Good morning, Council.

My name is Benjamin Hunter.

I'm a musician, educator, arts and cultural advocate in the city.

I sit on the Seattle Music Commission, the Columbia Hillman Arts and Cultural District, and have served the city's creative industry through my nonprofit, Community Arts Create, the recently closed Hillman City Collaboratory due to rent spikes, and Blackington Hall.

I'm calling to advocate that that legislation have written directly into it money specifically for arts and culture as the hardest hit industry in the city.

It was the first to close and it will be the last to fully reopen.

Arts and culture have taken a significant hit, especially BIPOC creative communities in particular, who have not only been hit hard by the pandemic, but were already bearing the burden of structural inequities and are underrepresented across the creative economy and have struggled pre-pandemic and exacerbated by the pandemic to afford to live in the city.

It's good that money is being directed to the hotels and venues but we need to allocate it.

Okay thank you so much.

Sorry about the echo.

Clientiona.

Good morning.

Good morning Clientiona.

Can you hear me?

Okay great.

I can see you're off mute.

but I can't hear you.

You can just check your line to make sure that it's not muted on your end.

Okay.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Now I can.

Thanks so much.

Good morning.

My name is Cassandra Van.

I'm a lead case manager and a woman of color.

I'm here to advocate for the ARPA fund to maintain capacity of the lead program.

My assigned area is courthouse park.

I have personally had the opportunity to house five clients who have spent an average of five years living on the streets.

I'm extremely grateful to be a part of that, but overwhelmed and angered at the lack of services available to those camped at Courthouse Park.

Every day I see the effect of individuals deprived of basic human services, the criminalization of homelessness, and how disproportionately these individuals are people of color.

Encampments at Courthouse Park are not communities.

They are dehumanizing displays meant to humiliate folks suffering from homelessness.

We have the means and resources to stop normalizing dehumanization.

At our current capacity, we are only able to help a select few who qualify for leave.

This is unacceptable.

We need the capacity.

Clintania, I apologize for mispronouncing your name and also for the short time.

Please do send in the rest of your comments.

Thank you very much.

Zane, I see you listed as not present.

Zane Finch, just letting you know, if you want to dial in, we'll still come back to you.

Ellie Holman, you are up next.

Good morning.

Can you hear me, council member?

I can.

Thanks so much.

Wonderful.

I'm Ellie.

I'm calling on behalf of child care workers in the city of Seattle.

Child care workers are educators who are providing a critical service for the public good in the city.

And to this point, there has been an in cape or excuse me, I'm just speaking.

not enough public funding to help support that public good.

Child care workers are overwhelmingly women and disproportionately BIPOC women.

The compensation that is paid to these workers is just above minimum wage, and every time we try to increase that, minimum wage climbs and equals those gains.

We need additional funding in this sector.

Child care centers are not able to keep up because we cannot pass these costs on to the families because they cannot afford And so we're asking the council to reaffirm that commitment that you've made to invest in child care and continue that on as a first step.

Thank you so much.

And speaking of child care providers, Angie Hicks-Maxx, you are next.

Hello, my name is Angie Hicks-Maxx and I am the CEO of Tiny Towns Development Center.

Thank you, Madam Chair and to the council.

Childcare programs stayed open when the K-12 system shut down.

Childcare workers are essential and on average earn $16.28, while kindergarten teachers earn over $30 per hour.

Childcare staff have not been compensated for the hero they are, providing care in a pandemic, literally putting their lives on the line.

Please fund the $2 an hour wage increase.

Show us you care.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you very much.

And the next person is Mason.

Good morning, Mason.

Mason Sherry.

Good day.

Good day.

Can I be heard?

Yes, thanks.

Honorable council members and council chair, I'd like to thank you for your time.

I'm also calling on, well, actually to raise a red flag for our arts community and cultural community.

My name is Mason Sherry.

I'm the theater manager for STG and I'm calling on behalf of everyone in the arts community who's been decimated since March 11th when we closed our doors and have not been able to bring in any dollars since.

This goes from everyone from the person at the door to the cooks, to the bartenders, to the artists, We really need you to look into supporting our community with funds from AARP.

We're completely desperate at this point to be able to restart.

We're the heart and soul of the city and what draws people back.

We need your support for the proposal that was floated for $20 million that directly pays to artists and venues.

Thank you very much.

The next three speakers are going to be Zane Finchigan, solicit is not present, Susan Boyd, and then Zanar Finch.

Let's see.

Go ahead, Susan.

I don't see Zane with us.

Great.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, committee members.

Susan Boyd, CEO of Bellwether Housing, commenting on the ARPA allocation plan.

I know you've heard from me and a number of other leaders of nonprofit affordable housing organizations expressing the great need for supporting the resident services programs that are so vital to the health and well-being of Seattle's lowest income people.

And I I really am just calling to thank you for creating an allocation plan that so clearly prioritizes the needs of Seattle's lowest income people and in particular Thank you for responding to our request for support for the resident services programs that are so vital for our residents.

We think this goes a long way to getting us to the level of services to adequately support our current residents.

We know you're gonna face a lot of pressure in the coming weeks and we just ask that you maintain that allocation for us

Thank you very much, Susan.

Appreciate it.

We do have a Zane Finch listed four times.

So I'm going to ask if there is anybody on the line with the last name Finch.

If you are dialed into the number that was sent on the confirmation email, it is your turn to speak.

We've called twice already, but it looks like you were not present.

So just want to double check.

And after Zane Finch, we have Will Washington and Nikita Gilbrono.

Good morning, Will.

I don't see Zane popping in.

Let's go ahead and go to you.

Just a star six to unmute yourself.

Perfect.

Hello.

My name is William Washington.

I believe I was just called upon, but I'm nervous that I wasn't.

You're right.

We'll restart your time here.

No problem.

We'll go ahead and restart your time.

Thank you.

And thank you for having me.

I appreciate it.

So I am a resident here along Naukai Safe Street, Keep a Moving Street.

And I'm advocating for the proper funds to make this permanent, but also to make changes to the street.

I'm a longtime advocate, African American, lived here for about 12 years.

And prior to the Safe Moving Street designation, we've had a long standing struggle with safety based upon surely the geography and the nature of the street.

So we're asking for changes like bike lanes.

For those who don't understand what's going on, basically it's a park, a street, and then a residential area.

And what's happening is we're getting a lot of traffic, both bicycles and cars, and we're having a conflict between the two.

And there's not much regulation as to keeping the neighborhood and the people who use the park safe.

And so we're asking those funds to be distributed in this direction, and thank you for taking the time.

Thank you for calling in.

I still don't see Zane, so we're going to move on to Yaquita.

Yaquita Gilbrono, it looks like you are also listed as not present, so I'm going to move on to Manaz.

And Yaquita, if you are able to call in, we'll come back to you.

Good morning, Manaz.

Sorry, Manaz, if you can just push star six to unmute yourself, then we'll be able to hear you on your line.

It looks like you're still muted over here.

And while she does that, we have Tyler Miller and Lawanna Wright, and then Amarita Torres after that.

And Manaz, good morning.

It looks like you are still muted.

If you can hit star six on your end, that'd be great.

We're happy to come back to you as well.

I'm going to come back to you in a minute here.

If you can try and hit star six, we'll keep you up on the screen so that we can come right back.

Tyla Miller, good morning.

You are up next.

Star six, unmute yourself as well.

Good morning.

My name is Tyla Miller.

I own the Comfort Zone Restaurant along with my daughter.

We are African-American.

We are really grateful for the help that we received from OED and Homesite to support our business during this pandemic.

But if we're able, if we're to continue with our restaurant, we're going to need more help and support.

So I'm calling about the Neighborhood Recovery Project and Direct Business Support, CB12-0093.

I'm hoping that you guys will support that and approve that because We just won't be able to make it without it.

We sometimes sit in the middle of being eligible for things, and it's really hard.

I don't understand sometimes why we're not eligible for support.

But when we look at our numbers, if we don't have it, we won't be there.

And there's so many of my contemporaries who are having the same issue.

And the price of food is going up.

We're being held hostage.

We can't pass that on to our customers.

My oil prices are three times as high as they were.

Thank you very much for calling in today.

And please do send in the rest of your public comment.

The next person is Lawana Wright, and then we'll go back to Manaz.

Manaz, if you want to hit star six to unmute yourself, that'd be great, too.

Good morning, Lawana.

Good morning.

Can you hear me?

Great.

We'll go to Lawana, and then we'll go back to Manaz.

Good morning, Lawana.

Good morning.

My name is LaWanda Rice and I work with the LEAD Program and I'm here today to advocate for the ARPA funding to maintain our capacity at the LEAD Program.

I don't as you know we don't have a lot of time so I'm just going to say that excuse me I got nervous.

Please understand that with COVID our work did not stop.

It was only made more necessary it's been more intense.

It made our services more in demand.

Currently we are very near or at capacity as far as our case manager workloads.

And we don't want to increase our caseload to a point where we don't have a personal life or we suffer in our personal lives because of the work we do.

Where would that leave our BIPOC community if we are overworked.

Our community, the BIPOC community, is getting beaten up by this oppressive system.

And it would just be a mistake, in my opinion, not to invest.

Thank you very much.

Lawana, good morning, Manoz.

Good morning, Council Members and all.

My name is Manoz Eshatu and I'm the Executive Director of Refugee Women's Alliance.

I'm here to advocate for prioritizing permanent housing, tiny house villages, and also for refugees and immigrants.

Refugees and immigrants have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19, and we think that, and also the lack of permanent housing and emergency housing.

I would like to advocate that majority of the funds should be prioritized for the acquisition of existing properties or building of new affordable housing.

The city is proposing $28 million.

I think $50 million is more appropriate.

We also need to diversify affordable housing options to add for permanent housing.

I also would love to advocate for tiny house villages.

We are partnering with Lehigh to provide behavioral health and employment services.

Thank you very much, Manas.

The next three speakers are Amaritha Torres, Karen Salinas, and Aline Richards.

Good morning, Amaritha.

Hi there.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Amarynthia Torres, and I'm speaking on behalf of the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence in support of the $600,000 in recovery funds allocated to programs that support survivors of gender-based violence.

We work with over 40 community-based and culture-specific orgs towards gender equity and an end to all forms of gender-based violence, such as sexual assault, sex trafficking, and domestic violence.

This funding supports what we already know works, survivor-driven mobile advocacy with flexible financial assistance.

I, myself, have worked as an advocate with survivors of sexual and domestic violence survivors for over 18 years, both in the queer and trans communities and in the rural South.

Advocacy centers the expertise, dignity, and self-determination of survivors.

They know what they need and how to use the resources they have.

Mobile advocacy meets survivors where they're at, both literally and figuratively, meeting survivors at court hearings, libraries, waiting rooms, and meeting them at whatever stage they're in as they rebuild self-determination and safety.

flexible financial assistance is way more than just rental assistance.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

The next person is Karen.

Good morning, Karen.

Karen, if you can hit star six to unmute yourself.

Okay, Karen, just star six unmute yourself.

And then after that, we'll have Aline Richards, if we want to TF Aline, that'd be great.

And Karen, it looks like you're still muted.

So I'm going to go over to Aline while we get you hitting star six unmute.

Good morning.

Oh, good morning, Karen.

I see you unmuted.

Please go ahead.

Oh, okay.

Cool.

Thank you.

My name is Karen.

I work with the REACH Lead Program, and I wanted to provide a quick update on the Everspring.

A year later, we are still working with these folks to varying degrees of what is measured as traditional success.

One of our clients and her child just got her first apartment after many years playing the DV situation.

Another who is in his 60s and has never had permanent housing has secured an apartment and finally went to his first counseling session, a goal that he had stated for himself a year ago when we first met.

And others are still struggling due to unmet behavioral needs that we don't have appropriate resources the time or the capacity to help them with or waiting in limbo for a housing opportunity on a year's long waiting list.

This group of predominantly Black engaging in survival behaviors people who use drugs got to roar in a lot of different ways but all rooted in systems of oppression that we know to traumatize our clients and increase behavioral health needs.

Many of these folks are from the same district gentrified out of their communities and marginalized for their substance use and penalized for their trauma.

It took hours of outreach patients loving hard talks and their own hard work

Thank you so much.

Please do send in the rest of your comments.

And good morning, Eileen.

Perfect.

Hi, good morning.

My name is Eileen Richard.

I work at REACH and was a lead case manager for over two years.

I'm asking the council to consider allocating the ARPA funds towards LEAD.

Working through the pandemic has put a multitude of strains on our clients and on our staff.

Last year most drop-in sites closed as well as libraries and other public access sites.

Shelters reduced their numbers.

There were less places for people to use the bathroom or even to get a meal.

We're still feeling the effects of this.

Lack of resources has also meant more risky and unsafe behaviors employed in order to survive.

Much of my caseload are black and native women who have told me repeatedly that they have never had a case manager before.

It may not seem like much, but to the women I work with, it means someone who will help them find housing, get into treatment programs, help them reconnect with their children and take care of their legal matters.

I have a client who thanks to LEAD has been able to stay in a motel room for many months and reconnect with her three-year-old daughter.

Thank you for your work, and please do send in the rest of your testimony.

The next three speakers are Lois Martin, Sarah Wilke, and Angela Castaneda.

Lois, I see you listed as not present, so please dial in, and we'll come back to you.

Sarah, that means you're up next, and I do think that Zane is back, so I'm going to come up to Zane afterwards.

Good morning, Sarah.

Hi.

Good morning.

This is Tara Woelke.

Thank you.

I'm so grateful for the support for the arts and culture and the creative economy that you all have put into the ARPA Recovery Bill.

You've been tremendously supportive of the sector.

And the arts and culture sector has not only been severely impacted by COVID but faces structural barriers to equitable distribution of past recovery funds due to our sector's business model.

And we ask that arts and culture be identified directly in CB120094 and that a portion of funds in CB120093 be dedicated to the arts and distributed equitably through an entity that understands our sector.

So we're not asking for more funding, we're just asking to be having those funds more effectively and efficiently reach those in our sector that need them the most.

So thank you for that.

Appreciate it, thanks so much for dialing in.

Let's go back to Zane.

Zane, are you with us?

Excellent, I see your line.

And just star six to unmute yourself.

Perfect, good morning.

Yes, hello, how are you?

My name is Zane U. Fitch II and I am the oldest son of Zane K. Fitch, Sr.

My father is the founder of Dayspring Fitch Funeral Home that's been here in Seattle for over 35 years.

I'm simply here to request funds to be invested in not necessarily my company, but in all minority-owned companies within the south end of Seattle area, Martin Luther King Business Association area.

A lot of these businesses are just simply disenfranchised for over the years.

And now that we've got a light rail and things like that coming into those sectors, we'd like to see that people simply get a chance to enjoy whatever services that these black businesses can offer.

It's simply not about a legacy, but it is all about longevity.

Thank you so much.

Take care.

Thank you so much for coming in.

And we are going to go back to Angela, and then we'll go to Lois.

Good morning, Angela.

Just star six to unmute yourself.

Perfect.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Angela Castaneda.

Director of the Beacon Business Alliance, and I'm advocating today as a community development consultant with partner CBOs serving the Southeast Seattle small business community to ask City Council to fully support the neighborhood recovery projects and direct business support, the CB 120093. Neighborhood CBOs serving Seattle's equity districts play a vital role in building trust and connecting resources to our cultural and vulnerable communities.

We are concerned with an equitable recovery for our small business communities.

That includes entrepreneurs, independent contractors, brick and mortar, cultural artists, This work is not a speed race or a supersize me effort as we know.

And through OEDs only in Seattle initiative.

Thank you so much.

And the next person is Lois Martin.

Good morning, Lois.

Good morning.

Good morning, Madam Chair and council members.

My name is Lois Martin and I am the director owner of a center in the central area.

I'm here in support of Council Bill 1293, specifically Section 10.6, allocating funding for child care staff wages.

Having an influx of fiscal support gives providers the ability to increase compensation for our amazing educators and other staff.

Child care staff never stop providing safe and consistent spaces for our community children during this ongoing public health crisis.

providers and staff stood by our families and opened our doors to the children of frontline workers.

The funding in this bill is a down payment on what I trust will be ongoing support of an industry that is part of the foundation of our city's economic recovery.

Thank you for allowing me to share, sorry for my technical difficulties, and please vote this funding through committee.

Wonderful, thank you so much.

Folks, we have about five minutes left of our allotted time for public comment, and we do have six speakers.

I think we'll be able to get through everybody who is present.

I'm going to read the names of the next six speakers present, and I'm going to let folks know who's listed as not present as well.

The next three speakers will be Fabian Fecadu, Kirby Velasquez, Hector Herrera, Brock Howell, Naomi See, and Michael Wolfe.

And the folks that are listed as not present are Karen Salinas, Marisa Phillip, Calvin Linder, Teresa Holman, Tyla Miller, Hattie Rhodes, and Lula Gerbenene.

So let's speak.

Let's go for the folks who are here.

Fevin, you are up next, followed by Kirby, and then Hector.

Did Fevin already speak?

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Fabian Fokadu.

I am a lead program supervisor at REACH.

And as a black service provider, I'm here to advocate for council to use the ARPA funds to maintain the capacity of the LEAD program.

I want to be acknowledged as a black service provider, providing services to the most vulnerable black people in our community in need of intensive case management and legal advocacy.

It is important that we maintain the staff who bring diverse experiences and expertise.

Our staff have worked creatively and endlessly to provide care to the most vulnerable population in our city.

During the pandemic, many things went virtual.

I work with a client who is an elderly Black man who has legal obligations but is technology illiterate.

I would meet with him and I would provide him with a laptop, Wi-Fi, and advocacy.

to make sure he stayed out of the criminal system.

With the support of LEAD, he was able to meet the obligations, remain sober, obtain employment and housing.

The service we provide is essential.

Sorry that we weren't able to hear the rest of that.

Please do send it in.

Thanks so much.

The next person is Kirby Velasquez.

Good morning, Kirby.

Good morning.

My name is Kirby, and I'm here to advocate for the ARPA funds to maintain the LEAD program.

Working through the pandemic, I've seen our clients have less access to resources, bathrooms, and shelters, all while navigating homelessness and a global health crisis.

There are success stories, and I would like to share one.

Recently, one of my vulnerable clients was put in a tiny home.

This is a young woman of color who is now in a safe space, stabilizing while we work on getting her permanent supportive housing.

On the other side, I have gone to jail to meet clients who would have benefited from a LEAD worker before they ended up in jail.

Funding for the LEAD program is imperative because we are trying to interrupt the impact of the criminal justice system on our population while also reducing the cost of incarceration.

These funds will directly impact my team by reducing caseload numbers and guarantee continuity of care as we address chronic homelessness, harm reduction, and advocacy for our most vulnerable community.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your testimony.

The next person is Hector.

Good morning, Hector.

Star 6 to unmute.

And Hector will be followed by Marissa Phillip.

Hector?

Star 6 to unmute.

Okay, I'm going to pull up Marissa.

Oh, good morning, Hector.

Go ahead.

Oh, good morning.

Thanks for your time.

Hi, my name is Hector Herrera, and I'm one of the supervisors of the LEAD program at REACH.

And I am here to advocate very strongly that you use ARPA funds to ensure that our capacity at LEAD remains stable.

LEAD was founded on the idea that folks who are marginalized and oppressed by the white supremacist racist system need folks to come out and meet them where they are and to tell their stories.

And that's what we're doing here today.

And the amazing thing is now that we are bringing these stories to you.

I mean, Kirby told stories, and Clintonia told stories, and Phoebe told stories.

And the ball's in your court now, because the power to make these decisions that affect people's lives is with you.

And we want to know that the city council has our back.

So we advocate strongly that the ARPA money be used to maintain LEAD funding.

Okay, thank you.

The next three speakers, and the last three speakers present are, I'm sorry, we said we'd go back to Marissa.

Marissa, and then we'll be Brock Howell, Naomi See, and Michael Wolfe.

Marissa, please go ahead and start to unmute yourself.

Good morning, committee members.

Can you hear me?

Yes, thank you.

Thanks for your time today.

My name is Marissa Phillip.

I'm the executive director at Kids Club After School Program, and I'd like to speak to you about the use of ARPA funding to fund the pandemic wage increase for child care workers.

Childcare workers were designated as essential workers by Governor Inslee at the beginning of the pandemic.

And more than a year later, we continue to support our families and youth in our communities, ensuring that they can go to work and our economy can begin to recover.

We risked our own health to care for school-age students in person while the school districts remained remote.

Please use the American Rescue Funds to fund the pandemic wage increase of $2 an hour for child care workers, including centers caring for youth birth to 12 years of age, family homes, and school-age care centers.

Thanks for your time today.

Thank you so much.

The next person is Brock.

Good morning, Brock.

Over the past year, I led the effort by King County Public Health to develop the state's Healthy Business Streets Guide that provided guidance to cities on how they can implement outdoor dining and can calm other streets for the pandemic like Seattle's Stay Healthy Street Program.

As we move out of the public health emergency of COVID, it is important that we recognize that we will continue to live in a public health emergency of traffic fatalities, physical health problems, and climate change.

I urge you to include funding for making permanent and expanding three state healthy streets for Green Lake Park, Lake Washington Boulevard, and Alki.

These are regional parks that serve people of all backgrounds.

Speaking to Green Lake specifically during the pandemic, the Parks Department banned people from walking clockwise and biking on the inner path, which forced people onto a narrow rutted outer path along Aurora's 40 mile per hour traffic.

Estat, Washtenaw, and Parks have approved repurposing a Parkside northbound travel lane on Aurora.

The Seattle Park Bicycle Advisory Board, Green Lake Community Council, and Friends of Green Lake all support the project.

I request that the funding for the Seattle Rescue Plan, that there be funding within it to be included for the Green Lake project and those of Alki and Lake Washington Boulevard.

Thank you.

Appreciate you calling in.

Naomi C., Naomi, you are up next.

Can you hear me?

Now I can.

Yes, thanks.

OK, great.

Thank you.

Hi, all.

My name is Naomi Fee with the Low Income Housing Institute.

I would like to express our support and gratitude to the council for rapid acquisition funding, $5 billion in capital dollars for early learning facilities and resident supportive services.

Lehigh has been able to identify buildings across Seattle right now that we could quickly acquire at a per unit cost significantly less than new construction, like the Clay Apartments.

Right now, we have an unprecedented opportunity with the current market to deliver these units.

Please consider forward funding the second tranche of funds or placing temporary funds in OH's bridge loan account so that we can acquire these buildings during this market and use later funds to take out the loan.

Thank you also for your commitment to early learning facilities.

Lehigh is partnering with the Refugee Women's Alliance to provide a sixth classroom preschool on the ground floor of a 154-unit affordable housing building at Othello Light Rail Station.

This will serve families, homeless households, and youth.

Thanks.

These funds are critical for allowing housing and early learning to coexist.

Once again, thank you for your investment.

Okay, thank you so much.

Folks, we did have a few more people call in.

I'm just going to let you know there's just three more people left, so let's try to get through everybody here.

If there's no objection, we will extend for another five minutes to hear the last three people.

Hearing no objection.

The last three are Teresa Homan, Tyler Miller, and Michael Wolf.

Good morning, Teresa.

Hi, my name is Teresa Homan, and I'm the Tiny House Village Program Manager at Lehigh.

We are asking you to allocate $9.14 million from the ARPA funding to help us open nine more tiny house villages.

Our villages change lives.

They can be built quickly, they provide warmth and safety, and they take away the threat of theft, the threat of assault, and the threat of rape.

They allow our villagers a safe place to think and grieve and heal.

Once settled, our villagers can begin to look ahead to the reality of permanent housing.

Tiny House Villages come with case managers who provide services to help our villagers connect to all kinds of assistance.

They even help our clients move.

We provide 24-hour staffing, which keeps everyone safe.

Please allow us to continue to serve this way.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, and Tyler, good morning, Tyler.

Good morning.

You already let me speak.

I spoke to the Neighborhood Recovery Project and Direct Business Support, CB120093.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate you hanging in there then to remind me.

I appreciate that.

Thanks for calling in today.

Michael, you are the last speaker.

I appreciate it.

and Michael, you just need to hit star six to unmute yourself.

Great.

Hi, this is Michael Wolfe.

I'm the Executive Director of Drive Forward.

I'm calling to, first of all, thank Council and members of these committees and their staff for listening to Drive Forward and our concerns on the Independent Contractor Protection Ordinance.

And I want to urge that the committee adopt the proposed substitute bill and proposed Amendment 1. A drive forward does support those, that substitute bill and proposed amendment one and we're passage or vote on to full counsel of that substitute and that proposed amendment.

Those protections are necessary for the independent contractors that are our members, the gig workers that we do represent.

So we would like to have you support those substitute and proposed amendment.

And again, thank you for your help in addressing our concerns on this bill.

Excellent.

Well, thank you very much, everybody.

And thanks for your extra patience today, colleagues, to get through everyone who called in.

We had about 50 people who dialed in today.

And as you can tell, our agenda is packed, both with worker protection bills, housing bills, and the federal relief dollars.

So let's get right into it.

And Madam Clerk, could you please read item number one into the record?

Madam Chair, would you like me to read item one and two together into the record?

Yes, thank you, Madam Clerk.

I forgot that we were going to do that.

And before you do, I just want to let folks know Council Member Sawant was also watching our hearing and would very much like to sign on to the letter in support of IBEW 46. So I'm just acknowledging that in a public forum so folks know that she will be signing on to that letter as well.

Madam Clerk, let's do items one and two, please.

Agenda item number one, council bill 120093, and agenda item two, council bill 120094, an ordinance related to the city's response to the COVID-19 crisis for briefing and discussion.

I see many of our friends joining us on the screen here.

We have Julie Dingley from the City Budget Office, Allie Panucci from Central Staff, who's been leading the team, who has been helping us create the Seattle Recovery Plan.

We also have Amy, Yolanda, Brian, and Jeff from Central Staff joining us today.

And I think I also saw Tracy on there.

And maybe I'm missing somebody else, so let me know.

Thanks so much to the entire team at Central Staff and the City Budget Office.

Colleagues, I want to call your attention to a few things that are on the agenda today.

You see a presentation.

You also see a memo from central staff.

This is our opportunity as the City of Seattle to apply much-needed American Rescue Plan dollars to the City of Seattle.

I want to thank all of you for your participation in this process.

as we have sought to create a transparent, inclusive, and really expedited process to disseminate these much-needed federal dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act.

The Council passed Resolution 31999 in March, outlining the values, the visions that we would like to see applied to these dollars for federal use and since then we have had four committee meetings to address and discuss the ARPA distribution opportunities, had a chance to learn the details about what the federal government was allowing within these dollars, made sure that we included the voices from community partners organizations directly rooted in and working with organizations and individuals who have been disproportionately impacted by the consequences of COVID.

We've also had a panel discussion with other cities, learning how they were helping to apply an equity lens to their dollars and to try to find harmony, especially across progressive cities and how we would apply these dollars.

We've had various interactions with community members, both through public testimony, roundtable discussions, and making sure that we centered our recovery efforts through the voices of those most impacted.

My office and the mayor's office, along with the council president's office, have had the chance to have dozens of conversations with stakeholders.

And I know every council office has as well.

And that is where these priorities have come from, rooted in community needs.

So today, we have bills in front of us that help appropriate the much needed first tranche of the American Rescue Plan Act dollars.

Again, as a reminder, this is only $116 million.

We are pairing this with $12 million from the Home Investment Partnership Program.

And I say only because $128 million is still not enough to address the profound needs in our community and the incredible hardship that so many have faced, both with the loss of lives, the loss of livelihood, the trauma that people have been experiencing over the last year.

And starting from an unequitable footing as well is something that we want to acknowledge as we try to invest these dollars in creating a more equitable economy.

But $128 million alone is not enough.

So this is the beginning of a path forward towards creating a more equitable Seattle as we seek to recover from the consequences and the harms of COVID.

Colleagues, I want to call out again the importance of the way this bill was put together.

Instead of division, this bill was built off of collaboration.

Instead of individual priorities, this bill really attempted to focus on the common good.

And instead of politics, this bill focuses on policy.

This focuses on things that we can agree on are much needed in our city and reflects genuine engagement and discussion that we've had with various community members, recognizing that not one single council person, no one from the executive's office and everyone from the community acknowledges that this bill cannot completely address all of the hardship that folks have been experiencing due to COVID and even before, but we are beginning to respond to the trauma.

We are beginning to respond to the health and economic needs the housing and the child care needs, the direct assistance for both individuals and small businesses through this bill.

And through this bill we're really trying to make sure that we're centering our support on those who have been most dramatically impacted by COVID.

Those who have been covered in the headlines as basically bearing the brunt of the consequences of COVID as frontline workers, as small business owners, as folks who already were dealing with inequitable health systems, and the trauma that this crisis has created in the last year calls on us to act with urgency and make sure that our dollars are going directly into the hands of those most impacted.

So we've written in language that I know Ali and the central staff team will highlight, but I wanted to highlight a few of the pillars as well.

We wanted to make sure that the council prioritizes, that we wrote in language that makes sure that the city prioritizes and works with local community-based organizations that are culturally relevant, that are historically rooted in and founded by the individuals that they work with, by those who are disproportionately impacted by COVID and have organizational leadership and board members and staff that really reflect the community they serve.

This is something that we have heard from other organizations and cities across this country.

The mayor spoke to it at the release as well about the importance of getting those dollars directly into organizations and into the hands of individuals.

who've been disproportionately impacted.

So there's a lot to really highlight in this bill that I'm proud of, but I know that there's going to be many more things that we would like to see, and that's what this legislative process is about.

We're going to have a conversation today about what's in the bill.

You'll have a chance to ask various questions, and we'll have a chance to consider possible amendments that we do hope will be self-balancing.

We'd like you to identify those possible amendments by next Tuesday at noon so that we have a full week for central staff to be able to work on those amendments with you, collect stakeholder feedback, and also give us and the public a chance to really understand what's in those amendments so we can come back on June 15th.

We'll have a discussion on June 15th and we will either vote on June 15th or June 16th.

We'll have an extended meeting to make sure that we get a chance to go into the details of all of the proposed amendments.

And before I turn it over to central staff, I'd want to thank again my team, Sejal Parikh, who's been leading the effort along with central staff, Allie Panucci, and her team that I mentioned, especially Jeff Sims and Tracy Raskliff and so many others that I see on the screen right now, along with Julie Dingley and the city budget's office.

and Cody Reiter from the council president's office, and the council president herself, who has, along with my office and the mayor's office, been in weekly discussions about this bill to reflect council priorities and community priorities.

Council president is with us today, and I know is a huge proponent of the need to move on with the conversation as well, but wanted to just offer those words on our behalf, but also see if she had anything else to add before we turn it over to central staff.

I will turn it over to Ali Panucci and as we do, folks from our communication shop will be putting out infographics so that people can follow along with the details of the Seattle rescue plan and to see in a visual way what's incorporated in this important bill.

and members of the public as we seek to make sure that those ideas are reflected in the final bill that's passed before the end of the month.

Thanks so much.

I'll turn it over to Allie and welcome again to our panel.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Good morning, committee members.

I'm Allie Panucci of your council central staff.

Since the chair introduced or noted all of the presenters and the central staffers on the line to help answer questions, I think I'll just jump in if that's okay.

Today, we will brief you on the proposed spending plan in the first two bills that would implement the Seattle Rescue Plan.

We'll provide some background and context on the development of the proposal, and then we'll walk through each of the proposed spending categories.

And then before I get started, I just also wanted to restate some of what Council Member Mosqueda said.

I wanted to thank the City Budget Office, and particularly Julie Dingley, who's co-presenting today, the Mayor's Office, Sagel Parikh in Chair Mosqueda's office and Cody Reddard in Council President Gonzalez's office for the collaborative work and the entire central staff team for all of the work and input and good thinking along the way.

And so with that, we'll jump in if we can move to the next slide.

So the city is expecting to receive about $300 million of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act from the federal government.

The legislation that we'll discuss today is two bills that will be the first of several ordinances that will accept and appropriate funds from the American Rescue Plan.

The first bill, Council Bill 12093, accepts about $116 million coronavirus local fiscal recovery funds and $12.2 million of home grant funds.

And then in July, we're anticipating accepting and authorizing about $28.7 million of targeted aid from the ARPA bill for rental assistance and about 7.4 million that will support seniors.

And if other targeted aid is available or that the city has received, that would be included in those bills as well.

Next slide, please.

So this slide just provides links to the two pieces of legislation that comprise the Seattle Rescue Plan 1. I just generally described what is included in the two bills.

The first bill accepts the funds and authorizes about $103 million of expenditures and provides $25 million of revenue replacement.

The second bill authorizes $25 million for direct cash assistance program, and it is a standalone bill.

It provides the city with greater flexibility in how that program is implemented.

So we move to the next slide, and I will turn it over to Julie to provide some context on state and county funding.

Hey, thanks Ali and just obviously want to echo all the comments so far from the chair and from Ali about the collaboration.

It's been a real pleasure to participate in this process.

So thank you for having me this morning.

So again, so just want to provide some context with the overall ARPA allocations that are coming out.

for all the different levels of government.

So this is a $1.85 trillion package from the federal government.

So they are sending out money across the entire country to every state, territory, to every county, and to every city.

And so our allocation of these funds is in that broader context and ecosystem of sources of funding.

So what we wanted to show here was Although Seattle is receiving an incredible amount of money, overall anticipated some 300 million across various funding sources for the next two years from ARPA, potentially more.

It does pale in comparison to what the county and what the state are receiving, but we are tracking those closely.

So on the next slide, we'll be able to show you a bit more in the comparison across the different levels of government.

So this is a bit more detailed view of what you just saw on the previous slide, intending to show you that we do have areas of high alignment in our priorities across the city, the county and the state and how we're choosing to invest all of the funds that are coming from this overall ARPA bill from the feds.

Many of these funds have not yet been allocated from the county or the state.

They have high level allocations.

But we still expect, as the city is a component of the county and the state, we expect many of those dollars will actually flow through the city.

So in building this package, we were really wanting to make sure we were strategic about how we were allocating our flexible dollars.

So looking at where the state and the county had significant investment, we maybe didn't want to put as much of our flexible dollars toward that, knowing that the state would have those targeted dollars to apply to that area of need.

This is just a bit of context setting overall, just hoping that that can help provide a window into all the moving parts across all the different levels of government.

Next slide.

Thanks, Julie.

As just was described, there are significant resources that the state and county have provided to support COVID response and recovery efforts.

Consistent with Resolution 31999 and the work with the mayor's office, the plan is intended to leverage those shared resources and ensure that the city's response is addressing gaps in service as well as expanding the city's financial partnership with King County.

So this is just a few highlights of what is in the county's proposal, just to illustrate some of those areas of investment.

So for example, funding for vaccination efforts, the city has provided funding and other bills to support vaccination efforts.

But in this case, there's a significant investment from the county.

So with this first tranche of flexible dollars, the city didn't identify a need to invest additional dollars in that in that area.

As a different example, there was an opportunity to partner with the city on the use of $7.5 million of funds to establish a new targeted homeless outreach and shelter program.

So the city's funds will match the proposed spending at the county level.

I'll also just note on this slide that we highlighted the county's recent appropriation for rental assistance as $100 million.

The number is actually $145.1 million for rental assistance.

And that's funded through a combination of an allocation King County received from the state, as well as direct allocation they received from the Federal Consolidated Appropriations Act that Congress passed in December.

And you'll recall that the city recently passed an ordinance authorizing about $22 million of funds that the city received directly from that December ordinance.

And so, you know, I'm happy to talk with council members individually on other places where there is alignment with the county's proposal offline.

But with that, I think we'll start moving into describing the development of the plan.

Sounds good.

I just want to chime in and talk about the importance of that alignment.

We've talked a lot about various programs that overlap with the county's priorities as well.

And, you know, what we really wanted to do in this proposal was not take a approach that said, oh, the county's got that handled.

Instead, we wanted to say, where can we bring programs to scale if there is city dollars that are needed through ARPA to really serve the deep needs that we see across our city?

recognizing that many of these issues don't recognize boundaries or borders of the city and they're regional in nature and stepping up to provide assistance in many of those areas was really important.

and the degree that we saw that the county was providing X amount and that relieved us from necessarily needing to provide all of the dollars, that allows us to do additional support directly within the city where the county's dollars are potentially not going to filter to.

So I really appreciate April Putney, specifically the chair of budget, Council Member Cole-Wells, and executive Dow Constantine for their proposal that they released last week.

And just passed recently.

So I think it's a really good partnership and I look forward to doing that as we continue to make investments and recovery efforts.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

You are already off mute.

I'm already off mute.

Just want to highlight, I'm not sure if it's on this page or on another slide.

My notes have slide numbers.

I don't see slide numbers here.

Slide four shows that the county invested about $51.5 million in arts and culture recovery.

But we don't have a lot of detail on how those dollars are being invested.

I do want to share with the committee and the public what I have learned from the Seattle Arts Commission about the King County investment.

In meeting with Commissioner Dr. Quentin Morris, I've learned that while King County is investing at a high level for the arts, their allocation focuses on large and independent music and movie venues.

And the concern is that they will leave out many small small and bi-public organizations.

20 million of this funding is specifically for large arts and cultural organizations and independent music and movie venues.

Only 5.8 million countywide is earmarked for individual offerings.

artists in small and mid-sized cultural organizations, and $3 million for film infrastructure, and $2 million for art events and festivals.

So just wanting to flag that as it relates to the generous and very helpful county investments in the arts, but also wanting to identify a gap that I'm looking forward to seeing how our investments in artists and cultural workers in this package can help.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And we will continue to seek additional information from the county's proposal as well to see where there's harmony.

Thanks for that clarification.

I do want to also orient folks to the presentation in front of us as we dive more into the details.

You will see hopefully those I do see the slide number council member.

I do.

Oh, good.

Okay.

You will also see as we continue forward that there's a color-coded grid that corresponds with the category of investment.

So what I'm going to ask folks to do is hold your questions until the end of each of that color-coded category, obviously starting with housing and homelessness first, and then we'll continue with the other proposals as you saw outlined in the summary page and also provided in the opening comments here.

So hold your comments to the end of each of the color-coded sections, and then we'll do questions by section.

And to orient you to the timing for today, we have about an hour for this, which leaves 30 minutes for the other two items on our agenda so we can adjourn by one.

Okay, not seeing any objection, let's go ahead.

Thank you guys so much.

So I wanted to highlight a little bit further.

I know the chair had already outlined this at the top, but a little bit more about the development overall of the Seattle Rescue Plan, what we're calling Seattle Rescue Plan 1, because we anticipate there being additional bills to come through.

So Chair Mosqueda, Council President Gonzalez, and the mayor jointly developed the Seattle Rescue Plan, which is what we're using to kick-start Seattle's recovery.

This proposal was informed by City Council's Resolution 31999, which outlined the Council's priorities and principles for use of the federal funds.

We also gathered significant input from stakeholders during listening sessions and walking tours organized by the Mayor, focusing mostly on downtown businesses, small businesses, unions, community organizations, non-profits, and then, of course, City staff.

We had community panel with and community organizations with community organizations in other cities, as the chair mentioned, and also the council public hearing on May 4th public comment and committee meetings in April and May.

Thanks, Julie.

So in developing the plan, some of what became clear after the council adopted the resolution with the priorities, that there was a lot of alignment in the spending priorities between the council and the mayor and what both bodies were hearing from the public.

So the rescue plan really is focusing on shelter and housing to support for those who are currently unhoused, small business and nonprofit recovery, neighborhood recovery, direct assistance, and other supports to community.

as well in like education, reopening city services and other human services.

So we just wanted to highlight or restate again the sort of alignment between what we were hearing from the public, the mayor and the council.

So before we jump into going into each category that's within the rescue plan, we just wanted to highlight some of the policy intent that is meant to guide the investments in all categories.

So there's a lot of focus on trying to maintain programs and services that have supported the city's public health response and recovery, trying to address both the short and long term economic and social impacts of the pandemic.

And really building on some of the investments that were funded in the jumpstart COVID relief plan last year and other COVID response efforts that the city took up last year.

And then consistent with the federal guidance, the legislation provides direction for implementation of the resources that it's really focusing on those that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 in all of the services and direct assistance that is funded in this plan.

as well as prioritizing opportunities to partner with local organizations that are reflecting the communities that they're serving as well as having a staff and leadership that reflects the communities they serve.

Next slide, please.

So as Chair Mosqueda mentioned, the rest of the presentation is color-coded.

So each of the categories, housing and homelessness, community and small business recovery, community well-being, community assistance and programming, and reopening city programs and services.

We'll walk through each of the details of those plans and then pause for questions at the end.

And with that, I will hand it over to Julie to start describing the proposed investments in housing and homelessness.

Great.

Thank you, Ali.

So overall, looking at a proposed investment of 49.2 million in housing and homelessness targeted towards investments in permanent housing and then resources for emergency housing shelter and services.

So I'm going to do the first part in permanent housing, we can go to the next slide.

Great, thank you.

Permanent housing capital is proposed at $28.5 million.

These would be funds to acquire and build an additional estimated 300 permanent affordable housing units in the course of 2021 and 2022. We're anticipating significant leverage of state capital dollars and state O&M and services dollars from the most recent past budgets from this most recent session at the state.

So we do estimate that our dollars plus these state dollars combined could create about 300 units overall looking to target those in acquisition.

So I'll talk a little bit more about policy intent, which I believe is on the next slide.

So here we're looking to provide at least $40 million for permanent affordable housing capital, either acquisition or development in 21 and 22. So this bill doesn't have that full 40, so we will need to put another small, well, small, depending on what your definition of small is, relatively small investment relative to the total size of the package in 2022 to get to that $40 million total.

We're looking to prioritize the acquisition of multifamily rental housing projects that are already under construction.

Seeking acquisitions that will result in new units of permanent housing, including permanent supportive housing, or PSH, and housing serving incomes at or below 50% of area median income.

We're also prioritizing working with local community based and nonprofit organizations that are culturally relevant and historically rooted, particularly when that area is in high risk for displacement and have staff and board members that reflect the communities they serve.

And these prioritization areas are highly in line with the guidance that came out from the Biden administration as for the interim final rule for these funds overall.

So we'll just also note that in the housing area, these are a mix of the CL coronavirus local fiscal recovery funds and the direct targeted assistance dollars from the home grant.

Next slide.

I'll be picking up for this.

Thanks, Julie.

So, the next bucket in this, sorry, the next piece of this larger bucket is rapid rehousing the focus overall with this investment is to across the few 1000 shelter spaces that currently exist in the city.

to create throughput for families that are in households and individuals that are a good match for rapid rehousing so that they can move into permanent housing, creating more access.

And that would be a faster response than trying to go through the process of creating either a new tiny home or new enhanced shelter, something along those lines.

We estimate that the $6.7 million would serve approximately 185 households, assuming that every household, for formulation purposes, we assumed 12 months of assistance, though obviously that would vary based upon the household.

The next item in the bucket diversion is not is somewhat similar in that it's supposed to create throughput in the system overall, rather than trying to Spend the time necessary to create those new enhanced shelter or shelter beds with diversion.

The city has at times provide distributed those funds as a centralized pot.

So at the moment that a of a household begins to experience homelessness, that the type of intervention, like the mediation or financial counseling, or maybe some amount of financial assistance to prevent that household from becoming homeless, or even within the 30 days, which is the other approach the city has taken of entering a shelter, allowing a family or a household or an individual to stabilize and identify the means that they could quickly move out and providing those funds so that they are not experiencing long-term homelessness.

So those are the first two pieces and we'll move to the next slide for our next two.

It's already been mentioned that the county is going to be undertaking an RFP process to support a model that has been similar to what has been piloted by Just Care.

As you can see here, this package puts forward the matching seven and a half million dollars along with what the county's put forward for that proposal.

The next section is setting up a safe lots for what we estimated would be 25 RVs spread across two different locations.

And assuming six months of case management, basic hygiene needs, on-site safety services, things like supports like that to make these lots function.

And that was, this estimate has largely been developed based off of prior experience with the city from 2016 when RV safe lots were initially piloted.

Go to the next slide now, and we'll cover our last two pieces of the homelessness bucket.

As council members are aware, the state has provided some capital funding, $2 million worth to expand our tiny home villages.

And this package provides $400,000 to support the operations of those tiny home villages.

You can almost think of this in terms of that it costs a certain amount of money per month to operate a tiny home village.

If you are mixing and matching, you can maybe support Two villages for three months or three villages for two months.

Obviously, once the villages became operational, but that's the, this, this funding is to match what's provided by the state to bring online those villages and provide the initial operations, knowing that we need to identify some ongoing operational costs.

And then finally, there would be capacity building for agencies.

As council members have already heard, even in this committee, the capacity of our homelessness service providers and human services agencies is really being stretched.

And so these funds would serve both our permanent supportive and non-permanent supportive housing providers to expand their staffing and capabilities so that they can take on some of these added investments and actually bring them to fruition as rapidly as possible.

That will wrap up the housing and homelessness section, which I believe is when I wanted to pause for questions, but I'll turn it back to her to manage that.

Thanks, Jeff.

Yeah, we're happy to take questions on the homelessness and housing section.

Wonderful.

I see a few folks who popped online.

I will just say I'm really, really excited about the initial investments here in acquisition and development.

One of the things that we specifically heard from community partners, both who work in housing and homelessness and actually.

those who are fighting for greater economic stability, especially for our BIPOC community, was capacity building.

They want additional assistance that will be lasting, not just for a short-term investment, but in the long haul.

And I think that we've all been on this council fighting very hard to make sure that there's more additional funding in housing and using this as an opportunity, like the county has as well, to acquire buildings that are ready for either non-congregate shelter usage or permanent affordable housing usage.

Great opportunity to make sure that our communities revitalize.

There's a few pieces in here as well related to safe lots.

I think that when I've talked to some folks who've been working on safe lots, that's a scalable amount, especially if we look at partnerships with the county and also recognize that there's different models of how much assistance is provided on site.

So that's a potentially scalable number that I'll be looking to drive up.

And thank you, Jeff, for summarizing that that $400K for tiny houses is actually leveraging the $2 million.

So again, we're looking at, by the end of the year, three new tiny house villages to be paired with the other investments we've made.

So I just wanted to offer those pieces of clarification.

and again recognize this alone is not enough to address the crisis that we're seeing in terms of housing and homelessness, but this is a good overview of the type of investments that I hope we continue to build upon.

So I saw council members Morales and Herbold and Lewis come off screen and I will go to my chat function to see if there's any hands raised, but I'm going to call folks in the order that I just saw you pop in the screen here.

Council Member Morales, did you have a comment?

I have several questions for this section.

Should I just read them all or do you want me to go one by one?

Why don't you do that?

Okay.

So, well, a couple of them were already answered and I'm realizing are now on the slide.

I did have a question about how many people we thought would be served by rapid rehousing.

I think.

I'm glad to know that the intent there is to be able to provide it for up to 12 months.

I think that's going to be the key piece if we keep something like this in, because as we all know, providing vouchers for a month or two when rent is so high isn't really that helpful.

So I'm really happy to see that we are going up to about 12 months to be able to provide support for folks.

So I will just move on then to the capacity building.

I'm interested to know what that means, what kind of support, and this is kind of a lot of the questions I have throughout this presentation, what kind of service or support are we offering how many providers would be able to access the funds and how do they access the funds.

And I'll just say right now a big concern I have with the way this seems to be laid out is that we know especially small organizations in communities of color struggle with having to apply repeatedly for small amounts of money that don't really have a huge impact for them.

So that's a question and then the last question about the tiny house villages.

There are 2 budget actions from 2021 that are listed Jeff.

Could you could you tell us what those 2 budget actions are for?

Certainly, those are the two budget actions the Council added in 2021 to expand tiny home villages.

One of them added one new village that's going to be up in University Village, and then the other one added two new villages, one of which is, I believe, going to be on the north end, probably in District 5, and I don't believe we've identified a final location that's likely we're going to be expanding Interbay Village.

So my question around that then is, first of all, I guess why those funds aren't already allocated.

And I worry here that they're being repurposed for something else, which is really the root of my question.

And it's only June.

So if they're being repurposed when we know that the groups that are requesting the funds are still waiting, I'm trying to figure out what's happening there.

Sure, thank you for raising that.

It's helpful to really delve it to provide clarity.

I can see where I caused some confusion there.

Both of those budget actions, when we formulated them, assumed the full $600,000 in startup costs for a village, across three villages, and a full year, $800,000 worth of operations for a village.

As the council knows, none of them came online on January 1. Two of them are still in the process of coming online.

And so that's, there is unallocated funds around, we're halfway, almost halfway through the year, that it's not that they, there hasn't been activity to move forward on that.

The villages are actively being stood up, but since we provided operational dollars for January, February, March, those funds presumably will be available to further support the city's portfolio of tiny home villages.

Okay, I will probably follow up with you on that.

We've just been in conversation this week with the group that is requesting access to those funds so that they can stand up and they have not been able to get very far in that conversation.

So I'm just worried to see here that it might be getting used for something else, but I'm happy to follow up on that later.

Um, I'll dive into unless I trace it.

Do you want to you want to.

1st, talk about the, um, the capacity building pieces as they relate to permit supportive housing providers.

I'm sure I can take a I can say a little bit and then Julia or Tracy likely have more more to add here the capacity building the $4.3 million is split between the Human Services Department and the Office of Housing.

So some of the funds will go to support homeless service providers or human human service providers in in HSD and it's meant to provide capacity building and to stabilize staffing.

So my understanding is that implementation would be somewhat flexible to support the needs of the different organizations.

And Julie may be able to speak a little bit to the implementation, but in general, when we have an existing contract with an organization, it is sometimes easier to get the dollars out the door as we're expanding an existing contract rather than doing a new new RFP process.

The other half of the funds would go to the office of housing to provide assistance to housing providers.

And that could include both support for staffing and capacity billing, as well as some of the enhanced services that those providers are increasingly needing funding, funding for both in terms of permanent supportive housing, but even non-permanent supportive housing providers who have had to increase the amount of services and support they're providing to the residents, particularly during COVID.

And I don't know, Julie or Tracy, if you have more to say there.

You nailed it.

I would just say our process is still to be determined.

Obviously, we don't know what the scale of this investment is going to end with as you all are discussing this package and making a future amendment.

But it would be going to current contract holders.

So people that we currently contract with in the city, we would be looking to make sure we could do that in the most streamlined way possible.

nothing to add.

Good.

Great.

I think that was the questions I noted down.

I think we answered them, but Council Member Morales, please let me know if I missed something.

I think that was all.

Thank you very much.

Great.

Thank you.

Great questions.

And I similarly had some questions about the allocation, so I appreciate you raising those.

I believe Council Member Herbold, you're next and then Council Member Lewis.

Thank you so much.

Similar to Councilmember Morales' approach, I'm just going to have three questions.

I'll get them all out at once.

One relates to how the Rapid Rehousing and Diversion funds will be allocated, which populations will be prioritized to receive Rapid Rehousing and Diversion, and which organizations will be given access to the funds to offer their clients.

Secondly, as described, it seems like the diversion funds are going to preventing homelessness, not to solving homelessness for people already receiving it.

Just with like a little clarity, there's a lot of complexity about how to appropriately use diversion funds to really use diversion funds for people who It may look like they might become homeless, but we don't have a lot of certainty that without those funds, they will become homeless.

And that's why, historically, diversion funds have really been focused at sort of that moment in time when somebody has just become homeless.

And then lastly, on the enhanced shelter and RV safe lots, I really appreciate that we are looking at this investment again several years ago.

the council did provide funding for RV safe lots.

Instead of using those funds for RV safe lots, we have instead stood up vehicle safe lots, which I'm very supportive of, and recognize the complexity and the cost associated with RV safe lots.

One idea that myself and council member Bagshaw were exploring a couple of years ago is In addition to looking at an RV safe lot for people who are living in their RVs, a transition from living in your RVs to permanent supportive housing could be an RV safe lot for just storage of the RV.

So that often people who live in RVs are people who have been unstably housed for a very long time and their RV is their most valuable possession.

And so the idea of going into housing from their RV is very risky if they feel that they're going to lose their most valuable possession and potentially they have legitimate concerns about becoming homeless again.

So I'm really interested in exploring whether or not we can also look at a place to store people's RVs.

People who have agreed to come inside as a way to give them some insurance and security that they are not going to lose their RV in this period of time when they're They're building trust in becoming a permanent housing resident and getting sort of that security that that is going to be a permanent situation for them.

I can feel the most of those to your first question Councilmember herbal regarding rapid rehousing and diversion and how will be awarded, and using emergency solution grant funding that was that was appropriated by the council in the 2021 budget, those were that was awarded through a limited competition and RFQ so to speak or request for qualifications.

to our existing providers.

I believe Catholic Community Services, for example, received the rapid rehousing dollars.

We hadn't delved into specific mechanisms for how this would go about, but I'm assuming that would be the pathway that HSD would, again, utilize as it allows expediency to get the funds out, but also as utilizing people and agencies with known expertise.

Your second question about diversion, I think, is highlighting what is, as you know, a national debate about when is the appropriate time.

That's actually why the city's dollars for diversion have, in the past, been provided to people that are in shelters already.

So there is no question that they were going to experience homelessness.

They are experiencing homelessness.

They're in a shelter.

And it allows for that assistance.

And assistance can be financial.

It could also be case management, mediation, things like that.

to occur within the 30 days of a shelter stay to divert that household from a longer term experience.

It has also been managed by, for example, a centralized pot that was managed by Building Changes in Africatown.

to do just before entering homelessness, as you know, and these funds don't, we have not specified which pathway would be followed with these funds.

That was not the level of detail that these conversations arrived at, only that utilizing this as a mechanism to create more of that throughput so households are moving into housing and not stagnating in shelters and being able to serve more households more quickly that way.

And then your third question regarding RV safe lots, the way that this approach was formulated did not envision an RV storage lot.

It was built off of the experience in 2016, which was rather brief, where about $25,000 was utilized to stand up a lot, and then there's a variety of services.

In this case, we assumed, which was eventually what has happened with or all of our sanctioned encampments, that there would need to be case management to support moving to housing, obviously your basic hygiene needs, things like that.

So it's obviously at the discretion of the council to explore using these funds in that way, but that's just not what had been prepared in this package at this point.

Thank you, Jeff.

I just wanted to thank Jeff for that and just put a pin, if not for these dollars, perhaps in a future, here I go, I'm going to say it, tronch, we could talk about that.

Because again, I see it as part of that spectrum of helping people who are living in RVs, moving to a safe lot, and then moving from a safe lot into permanent housing, and that that is a missing piece in that continuum that will make it more likely that people move out of their RVs when they're in a safe lot, which will then open up more spaces in a safe lot into permit housing.

Absolutely.

And I think this is especially important as we heard from folks at Rural Change and others who are concerned about the 72-hour policy and how that will be applied to making sure that there is a safe place for folks to go if they are asked to move.

And obviously, we want folks to be in healthy, safe places, and that ultimately is in housing.

So I appreciate the conversation.

I'm going to turn it over to Councilmember Lewis, and let's continue.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'm at the beginning.

I think I can share a little bit of context to responsive to some of Council Member Morales' questions about the tiny houses that were really good questions.

Honestly, it would probably be a good subject for this month's Select Committee on Homelessness to get an update on what's going on with the whole world of tiny houses.

There's been a lot of frustrating stuff with the three new villages that we funded last fall, some of which have been within the city's control, some of which have been due to other legal externalities, like a need to post SEPA at certain sites, for example, or a need to get approval from other governments.

But I can say that for those first three village sites, and my understanding, Jeff, is that the site in the U District at Roosevelt and 45th, the site up in North Seattle at the site of the old Black Angus Motor Inn, And then an expansion which is the equivalent and in terms of tiny houses to an entire additional village at at interbay that that those three are pretty baked in already as a response to an RFQ that was issued.

earlier this year, which HSD selected Lehigh as the operator for those sites.

My understanding is with these three, there's going to be a posting of an additional RFQ that will be open for application.

So it's not going to just be the same RFQ that's relied on.

So Councilor Morales, if you want to reach out, to my office, we're happy to try to make sure that folks that you're talking to that might be interested in that are aware of the timelines of that RFQ.

I don't think it's been posted yet, but we're happy to work with you to make sure that that's transparent and accessible so that everyone can benefit from that.

You know, the other thing I would say is, you know, I would frankly like to see a lot more tiny house villages.

We have resources and we have sites to put up more tiny house villages, and a lot of regional partners have been very, very helpful.

The Port of Seattle, Sound Transit, private landowners that we've made contact with through the DSA or the Chamber of Commerce.

We have tons of sites through my council office.

We've shared those sites with the Human Services Department.

One issue has been that we haven't really, because we're in the flux of this transition between The city managing all this and then in the future, potentially the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, there are capacity gaps and the team at HSD is very overworked to get this going.

But this is just my first question for central staff.

Is it still part of this package that we're going to include?

a requirement that the Human Services Department aggregate and start vetting these sites to be prepared as resource becomes available to add more villages as the money comes in.

Because one of the current problems that I have seen is the Human Services Department won't go and vet sites unless there's a council appropriation where there's definitely going to be a village on the other side of that.

But we could speed this up faster if there was just this iterative list of sites that the department was aggregating and working through.

So as money became available, we could just move more quickly instead of starting from ground zero and everything else.

So I worked with central staff to put some language in.

I just want to confirm that that's in the final package here requiring that iterative list to be created.

So that these sites are all getting collected on the executive side and ready to get implemented on as resource becomes available in the various budget processes that we've been doing.

So that's my 1st question.

I think it's for Ali.

Who I've been working with on that.

Yeah, thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Yes, the legislation does include the Council's intent and the request to, as they are doing their work that the Human Services Department assess and do some initial work to, with the assumption that no fewer than nine new county home villages will be supported by by the funds in this package, as well as additional future appropriations or through private donations.

I'll just note that it is a request that the department takes this up.

There isn't a mechanism for the council to require that specifically, but it is, I think, the intent, and it was included in the legislation.

It's in section 8K for those following along.

Thank you, and I will also just just assert publicly I mean my office has far more than nine completely suitable sites, as well as support from community organizations chambers of commerce.

So I just wanted to flag and Really looking forward to to working on developing that list and stand ready to continue to share those sites to continue building toward that and making progress on it.

I did want to ask 1 more question, Jeff and or or Ali.

I don't know who this should be phrase to.

But I recently took a tour of the inner base site with commissioner Bowman from the port of Seattle to take a look at where the expansion will be.

And on that tour for the 1st time, I heard that the least change will potentially require council action.

And I just want to make sure, you know, whenever a bottleneck comes up with one of these villages that we're doing everything on our end and the legislative department to resolve our bottlenecks as quickly as possible to keep things moving.

And I just wonder if we're in a position to maybe inquire and spur along whatever legislation would be required.

to accommodate that expansion because the port is ready to move pretty quickly on this.

We had some press availability with Commissioner Bowman.

I think that was on Wednesday.

And she's very excited about just getting this expansion rolling.

So anything we can do on the city side to make that faster, especially here in the ledge department for the part that we're responsible for, I want to make sure we're on top of it.

And I wanted to just ask that question while we're here.

I'll have to get back to you on that Council Member.

I'm not aware, we have not had received anything at this point requesting that and that would normally come from the executive or be a mayoral generated piece of legislation.

So I'll need to connect with HSD and find out the status of that and what steps are going to be necessary.

Great, thank you so much.

So, you know, with that, Madam Chair, I want to make a few closing comments here, but I don't have any more questions for central staff.

You can go ahead.

Thanks, Council Member.

All right, thank you.

So, you know, I do just want to say, you know, I think one of the issues with the homelessness investments in this package is some of them aren't going to be going online until kind of the fall or the late summer.

And so there could be potentially a sequencing issue in two regards.

And for this, I'm talking mostly to, I mean, all the folks that called in from the provider community today, particularly our friends at LEAD and CoLEAD and the issues that they're experiencing.

You know, I think that there's some capacity building issues that are more near term for the struggle that a lot of those organizations are seeing.

I think that there's also a lot of pressure.

For those organizations to deliver around certain mandates and plans around the reopening, in particular of downtown for work that we're seeing will end for for tourism for that matter.

We know that cruise ships are going to be returning in July.

And there's really a big push.

To make sure that we can access resources, particularly hotel-based sheltering for a lot of our neighbors experiencing homelessness in the core of the city, who should be in enhanced shelter with the resources and privacy that they deserve as people, instead of being forced to live in tents.

So the reason I'm bringing this up now is I think that we need an interim strategy before a lot of this stuff comes online and I've talked extensively about wanting to lean more into just care.

The council approved in the winter, the late winter.

unanimously $12 million of spend authority.

The original intention behind that being that that money would go out the door and later be federally reimbursed through FEMA or some other kind of federal plan.

I don't believe that that spending authority has been taken advantage of by any city authority to this date, but that spend authority is still there.

Um, since that time, we've gotten a lot more guidance, uh, from, uh, our federal and state partners and there's other potential sources.

of funding coming down the line that could potentially reimburse that 12 million of spend authority.

So I'm just announcing today that on Monday I'm intending, it hasn't been fully drafted or distributed yet, but I'm intending to amend that spend authority in order to make it more flexible so that we can get it out the door And then plan as a council to potentially reimburse it through several additional things we weren't aware of in the winter that are now becoming possible so, you know, increase general fund revenue from the, the recovery of the general fund above what we'd planned for.

There is a state reimbursement gap filling measure that was passed in the session that can help fill in what we think is FEMA reimbursable but might not ultimately be FEMA reimbursable that we could apply for.

There is underspend in a couple of other areas in the budget that potentially could be used to fill the gap.

There's a bunch of other options that we have as a council.

I'm going to update that spend authority and try to work with stakeholders on the executive side and the county side to see if we can get that out to providers that are doing some of this work.

on a faster basis because that is spend authority that's currently available.

The council doesn't have to wait for anything to come through.

That spend authority could be used anytime by our partners on the executive side if we loosen it up a little bit more.

I just wanted to flag that here that I think that would be a good opportunity for some of these requests that are coming through that are more short-term for things that have to really start now.

before a lot of the reopening in the summer to really lean into things like Just Care and the capacity gaps with LEAD.

So I just wanted to flag that my intention to introduce something like that on Monday and to move forward to see if we can front load a little bit more resource separate from this entire package, a lot of which won't be coming online until like early August or even in the fall.

So I just wanted to make that Thanks for indulging and letting me take like a lot of committee time on that, but I think it is important.

Just given that we had so much public comment from our partners that lead in particular and that there is another resource and there's ways we can innovate around getting that out.

I think it's also a good reflection of the comments we were and so we're going to be looking at various revenue streams to continue to make investments in all of these categories, but specifically in housing.

Council Member Herbold, I see your hand.

I just want to offer one update on the agenda today.

Speaking of housing, I want to thank our folks from the Office of Housing who have generously offered to do their presentation for briefing, discussion, and possible vote instead on the We will have them in our committee meeting next time so we can spend a little bit more time on the ARPA discussion here today.

talking about housing and homelessness.

And as I transition out of the update from the Office of Housing, I do want to note that within the Office of Housing's presentation, you'll see also similar level of policy change investment in making sure that we are allowing for the Office of Housing to have more acquisition authority so that we can purchase more of these buildings that can be used for either non-congregate shelter and then permanent supportive housing.

And I'm really excited about that additional acquisition authority, but we'll talk about that on the 15th.

Again, thanks to Director Alvarado and the team from Office of Housing and Tracy Raskliff, who spent a lot of time working on that presentation.

Take a look at it in the meantime.

So we're gonna wrap up our conversation here on housing and homelessness, but are there any last questions on this section?

councilmember Herbold, please go ahead and then we'll go into the next categories.

Thank you.

I did want to follow up on the comments that councilmember Lewis just made because I am supportive and I understand his interest in bringing back the legislation that we past while ago in order to deal with some of the sequencing questions around FEMA reimbursement, whether or not FEMA reimbursement is necessary, and supporting those funds to help more with hoteling investments in tiny house villages.

I did hear him say right at the end there, he referred to the public comment that we heard today from LEAD and we're all, we have all received a request from LEAD around their 2021 budget needs associated with, you know, greater greater demand on their services during the COVID-19 pandemic.

And I just wanna understand, Council Member Lewis, are you suggesting that we address that additional identified need in the other bill?

That's a good question, Councilmember Herbold.

I think what I was suggesting is we could explore that for sure.

I think it would be an eligible use of that spend authority.

I think there's a number of different things we could do.

Honestly, I don't want to bring it up necessarily here, but we also have those Proviso police salary savings.

And it seems like it is a caseload shift that LEAD is seeing in that a lot of the traditional criminal legal system structures, I mean, like the jail and like other things that would have been open, but for COVID, has been a caseload transfer to LEAD, which is why they're experiencing more cost and why other institutions like the jail or, you know, or other places, I mean, you know, where we're finding budget savings.

So, you know, maybe there's a way to be nimble to and do a right sizing to reflect what the demand during coven was from some of those accounts as well.

But I think there's the number of different places we could.

find the resource, but I think that some of that could get cleaned up when we're doing the budget in the fall, but we could just front load it with that spend authority we approved in the winter, potentially, just to make everything right size now and then figure out what funds and accounts we want to use to settle it later.

I'm trying to keep us moving folks.

Yeah, I just want to clarify that I'm asking about this now is because I'm exploring with central staff, whether or not this is an eligible lead funding is an eligible use for this particular bill so I don't want to if.

Councilmember Lewis has another plan.

I want to know about that, but I am very interested in exploring how to use the resource that we have before us now in ARPA to address some of the lead needs.

So, thank you.

Yeah, I mean, then I would just say, you know, if doing it through ARPA is cleaner, like, I'm not opposed to doing that.

I'm just saying that I think there's multiple options, and it's also going to be important what our partners on the executive side are interested in, too.

So I was just putting out some ideas.

Okay.

Appreciate the discussion.

Thank you so very much.

And thank you again for the heads up.

And I think you can see very much agreement across the council members in terms of wanting to seek resolution here.

So looking forward to having those discussions maybe through another committee meeting.

And let's go on if there's no more questions on housing.

community well-being, which is our catch-all category.

So don't be surprised by the sort of breadth and importance in here.

We tried to find a category that really incorporated so many important ways to respond to the trauma that folks are experiencing.

But I'll stop talking, Allie, and let you take over this section.

Thank you.

And I'll just want to note, I'm happy to talk more with you, Council Member Lewis, Council Member Herbold, offline on the the sort of combination of strategies included in this package that are both trying to address like immediate needs, rapid rehousing and diversion, get dollars out quickly and longer term strategies like investments in permanent housing.

So moving on to the community wellbeing category, this bucket includes about 41, over $41 million for investments in things like direct cash assistance and other support services to help our impacted residents.

So if we could move on to the next slide.

The biggest portion of this category is a proposal for $25 million for direct cash assistance.

This program would be set up to contract with a third-party provider to provide the direct cash assistance to qualifying residents.

And the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs would partner with community-based organizations to conduct outreach, assist with applicants and provide in-language assistance.

And this really is building off the success of the program that was funded through the Jumpstart COVID Relief Plan that was focused on providing direct cash assistance to immigrants and refugees.

This program will be available to a broader number of applicants, but it will be prioritizing those communities that have been most impacted by COVID-19.

And as just an example of how far these dollars could stretch, Our rough estimates is that it could provide over 10,000 households with an average of $2,000 in direct cash assistance, allowing people to really make their own decisions about how best to use those funds.

And that number was chosen just as an example, but it is about the average allocation that was provided to households through the OIRA's program.

So moving on to the next slide.

This investment would provide $5 million to support.

child care facilities.

So this would be capital dollars to support developing or expanding new community, excuse me, new child care centers or child care facilities.

Right now, the city already operates a child care bonus program that is primarily funded through the city's incentive zoning dollars.

The Human Services Department is already aware of approximately 15 centers that are in early to mid planning stages that are seeking funding.

And so there's certainly a need for these dollars.

So it could support both the capital investments as well as supporting pre-development investments for communities that sometimes have experienced barriers to capital and this should help result in more childcare options in communities throughout the city.

Moving on to the next slide, this is also focused on childcare.

This would provide cash assistance or recognition pay to childcare workers, recognizing the essential services that they've provided during the pandemic.

So this could be available to childcare workers, providing in-person care to children and families, caring for children, attending school online, and that has enabled parents and caregivers to participate in the workforce.

And so $3 million will provide about $1,000 to 2,500 childcare workers, but depending on how the program is ultimately implemented, you know, will impact how many child care workers are actually reached.

Moving on to the next slide.

These two investments at $600,000 proposed to support gender-based violence response services and $600,000 to fund services in mental and behavioral health services.

So these dollars are meant to expand existing contracts and work the city is already doing to support these services in the community.

And then finally, there are some funds to provide support to restaurants who have been preparing free meals to those in need while supporting local farmers and producers.

in building the long-term supply chain relationship.

So these are restaurants that have been part of the mutual aid work that has been going on in our community and preparing and providing free meals to those in need.

As well as a relatively small investment, $225,000 to support organizations such as Westside Babies to increase diaper distribution.

And this investment is estimated to provide about a million diapers to be distributed in the community.

And I will pass it over to Julie to round out this category.

Great.

Thanks, Allie.

So these are investments in digital equity.

So looking at about $800,000 to support digital equity investment programs such as the technology matching fund and increasing affordable internet connectivity in high needs areas, and also providing computers and subsidized Wi-Fi to individuals disproportionately impacted by COVID.

Next slide.

This next one is to restore hours at Seattle Public Libraries.

The 2021 anticipated budget, as part of needs to meet the anticipated budget shortfall, shortened the hours in 2021, not understanding that we would be so good at vaccinating people.

So we have, because of our success of our vaccination program, we are ready to restore to pre-pandemic levels sooner than we had planned in the 2021 budget.

So that's what this year represents.

Next slide.

Next is an investment in Seattle Promise.

And here, looking at investments to really meet the, oh, I'm sorry.

My computer just froze.

So sorry.

Oh, there it goes.

OK, sorry.

Recognizing the impact of COVID-19 on student access and wanting to create a new supported pathway into UW.

So looking at sort of two buckets of investment.

First is enhancing student financial assistance, looking at equity scholarships, enrollment fees, sustaining enrollment overall, and then the Washington State Opportunity Scholarship Investment.

And then increasing support for students transitioning into and out of the program and for program completion.

So looking here at readiness, academic bridge, completion commitment, transfer support to four-year colleges, enhanced support for students as overall, and program staffing support.

Here we have youth employment, so this is for $500,000.

This would provide mini grants to community-based organizations for pre-employment summer programming targeted at BIPOC youth.

And this is just rounding out that category overall, so we will pause to take questions here.

Thank you very much, Julie and Allie.

Council Member Morales, you are up first for questions.

Thank you.

Sorry, I'm gonna find my notes here.

Dang it.

Okay, so this is great.

I love to see that there's, you know, especially most of these items seem to be what I would think of as direct aid, which I think was the whole intent of the ARPA funding, so I'm really glad to see that.

I think these are the kinds of things that would be most impactful in terms of how we decide to allocate these resources.

I have a question about the digital equity.

Again, I'll just read through them for your answers.

So I'm interested in what kind of investments we're talking about here, and especially because these will be one-time investments.

Whether the kind of, are we talking about devices?

Are we talking about, you know, what kind of support are we intending?

And will that support be permanent?

Will it provide permanent access for whoever receives this support?

That's one question.

And then regarding the youth equity, you know, I agree that the Seattle Promise is a really important way for us to ensure that we are supporting the access to higher education for our young people.

But given the impacts of COVID and some of the disruption that it's caused for our young people who are trying to navigate their education right now, I'm also interested in figuring out how we support youth who are transitioning to adulthood who don't plan to go to college.

We have a lot of folks who, you know, have family obligations, who have their reasons why they aren't pursuing a path to secondary education.

And I think it's going to be important that we not kind of overemphasize education at the expense of their, you know, lived experience that some of these folks are bringing and their obligations in their families.

So I want to understand how we're supporting entry into the workforce to get good paying jobs so that they can support themselves and their families.

And so that leads me to the mini grants.

I'm interested in what that is, what pre-employment means, how many organizations can we support, and what kind of outcomes.

If we're talking about 500,000 over, you know, several organizations, I worry that there won't be, you know, these would be small investments.

I'm curious about whether the funding is supposed to be distributed this summer or next.

How will make sure that it's equitable, access to it is equitable?

But I think for me, the sort of bigger issue here is, you know, as Ali's memo listed some of the policy considerations for us as we're thinking through how to do this.

To me, this is an example of the challenge with using a big infusion of federal money in a way that has a really meaningful impact on individuals.

And I wonder with this piece, if there might be a bigger impact that we could have if we use that funds and those funds in a different way.

You know, still for young people, but maybe not for for many grants to organizations, but getting the money directly to the young people instead.

And that I'm sure will be a conversation that we have over the next week or so.

I just want to signal that this this particular piece is.

I'm having I'm having a hard time with it.

Great, thank you, Council Member Morales, I'm going to take up the questions first on digital equity.

and may ask Julie to add in there or Yolanda if she has additional information.

But in general, this proposal is to split these funds between our Seattle IT and the Office of Economic Development.

So about $500,000 would go to Seattle IT, and that would support some of the digital equity programs they already have, like their technology matching fund, where there's about $330,000 worth of projects that were proposed by the community to address community needs that, but for, like, if there had been enough funding, they would have been, they did well and would have been prioritized for investment.

So that is one area.

And that helps increase affordable internet connectivity, excuse me, as well as providing assistance to residents, needing help with basic use of computers, internet, and as well as devices in some cases.

And so I think it's a combination of, you know, longer-term and one-time types of support, right?

So affordable Wi-Fi, those funds only would support affordable Wi-Fi in some cases for so long if it's helping with paying a bill or that sort of thing.

Then there would be $300,000 to the Office of Economic Development.

And this would be specifically to provide computers and subsidized Wi-Fi to individuals.

So again, both some permanent assets like a computer as well as And I think you are addressing the policy consideration we've been grappling with as we've been in these discussions of sort of investments that really need ongoing support to have a long-term impact and an opportunity to try something or expand some programs that the city is already doing with these one-time funds.

And I think that is just a difficult choice for you policymakers to have to grapple with in the coming months.

the coming weeks.

And then I will also just note that both through the work that the Black Brilliance Research Project did and the Equitable Communities Initiative, digital equity is something that is coming up as a high priority for investments for use of the $60 million, about $60 million of combined funds that the city authorized to support those proposals.

And then in terms of the mini grants for the pre-employment programs.

I'm going to see if Julie or Yolanda have any additional information on that piece.

I think we maybe need to get back to you, it looks like.

Sorry, my computer is really angry when I try to go off mute.

So on the mini grants, really looking to fund internships in either city or private organizations for low income, could be Promise students or other students.

This hasn't been, this isn't fully dialed in at this point, but that's the program work that's sort of to date.

And then I would just say, I wanted to note that It's a testament to the fact that we have worked so well and closely together that I have nothing to add to Allie's answers on the other items that she's provided so far.

So thank you, Allie, for those robust and very accurate descriptions.

Councilmember, thank you very much for those questions and I appreciate the cross-reference back to some of the recommendations that are coming from the Black Borough Lands Research as well and making sure that it's a meaningful investment.

Councilmember Herbold, I see your hand.

Thank you so much.

Just one comment about this category generally and then a question.

Just want to say that I'm really appreciative that we have a significant investment in community well-being.

I am concerned about what has been called the shadow pandemic with restricted movement, social isolation, and economic security increasing.

everybody's vulnerability to violence and self-harm in areas of domestic violence and sexual assault, in areas impacted by senior isolation, and in mental and behavioral health needs and diaper needs.

So really, really appreciate the focus here and am interested in doing more as we move to the second tranche of funding.

I do want to lift up that as part of this is signaled, our intent is signaled in this legislation.

I did our resolution that identified what our priorities were for ARPA funding lifted up.

senior isolation related investments.

There is no actual money in this bill related to that particular commitment, but that is because I understand that we are intending to allocate 1.5 million to address senior isolation and other impacts of the pandemic and older residents as part of an upcoming $7.4 million investment in seniors.

expected from the state later this summer.

So just want to lift that up as a future investment that we're still committed to doing.

And then as it relates to my specific question, moving to the direct payments section for addressing priority investments that is on financial assistance for small and micro businesses.

The priority investments resolution that we passed, Resolution 31999, does reference artists in this area.

We know that artists and workers in the arts and cultural sector had been among the hardest hit by the economic downturn.

Earlier I talked about the impact to arts organizations.

I want to now focus on the impact to artists themselves.

local arts and cultural organizations furloughed staff over the last 14 months.

According to a recent Arts Fund survey, 81% of local BIPOC artists reported a loss of income in that same survey.

And according to Washington State's Unemployment Security Department's summary, The highest percentage of losses in employment in King County have been in arts, entertainment, and recreation, of 55% or nearly 15,000 jobs lost.

Americans for the Arts report that 37% of arts and cultural workers have been unable to access or afford food at some point during the pandemic, and 48% have not visited a medical professional due to an inability pay.

So I want to just really make sure that these direct cash assistance funds are available and accessible to artists and arts and cultural workers as a priority group impacted by COVID.

The Seattle Arts Commission is recommending that we focus a significant portion of these dollars on artists.

But I think a really good place to start is by ensuring that the organizations that we are charging with getting these dollars for direct assistance out the door are really able to serve this particular need as well.

I think As it relates to the Directive Assistance Funds, we've in the past supported Wellspring getting out the dollars for hospitality workers.

We've supported OARA on getting out those dollars for that priority population.

I want to know how we're going to do that for artists as well.

Thank you.

I'm going to turn it over to councilmember Herbold.

≫ Great.

Thank you very much, councilmember Herbold.

And Ali, if you had anything to answer on that, that's welcome as well.

I just wanted to point to the language that we included I believe in section 8 in the overarching directive to channel these dollars exactly as councilmember Herbold specified and in conversations with some of the folks from the arts as the term that they preferred for those who are directly artists, musicians, et cetera.

But your point is still valid.

We need to make sure that those dollars truly go to those organizations rooted in those communities and that those, especially who've been disproportionately impacted by COVID, which include our creative economy workers, that they are getting those dollars in hand.

So appreciate you lifting that up.

And we know it needs to be a follow through on the intent is there and we need to follow through on that.

So I wanted to emphasize your point.

All right, Ella, did you have something else on that?

Yeah, I just wanted to note that the legislation for the direct cash assistance program doesn't specifically call out artists or people working in the creative industry.

But if that is a priority for the council, I'm happy to work with you, Council Member Hurdle, to add some language.

I will just note that as we were looking at the total package and the cash assistance, it could get very big or smaller depending on how targeted or not targeted it is.

And so at some point, I think there will need to be some clarity as the department's implemented on really what is the highest priority in terms of who to focus on and community organizations to partner with, because that might change how implementation occurs.

So happy to talk more about that and come up with some options for you all to consider.

Great, I see a thumbs up.

I also do want to emphasize, though, that Section 8 is guiding language for the entire bill.

So while it might not be specifically in housing or cash assistance, that entire section is supposed to be the statute's directive of how we hope every allocation is channeled.

if we need to continue to emphasize that or clarify that anyway, would look forward to doing that with all of you.

But that is my hope.

Yeah, and because it's in two separate bills, I think it probably was my loss in not carrying the same language into both bills at York.

I think that was your direction, but I may have dropped that ball.

Okay, I see what you're saying.

So perhaps the Section 8 replicated in the home dollars as well.

Okay.

Thank you for that clarification.

I actually missed that thread as well.

So thank you.

Okay, folks, we got 27 more minutes on this.

And we have three more sections, which I'm going to ask to be presented in two.

So let's do the next section, which is community and small business recovery.

We'll take questions, and then we'll do the last two remaining items together, categories together.

Michelle Estrella, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT That for this category, the funds are to prioritize those who have experienced barriers to accessing other financial assistance and supporting you know opportunities for new businesses.

launched by BIPOC workers who lost their jobs or were forced to quit jobs as a result of the pandemic.

And so the funds are meant to be used for several different types of investment strategies.

One are grants to small and micro business and nonprofit organizations.

So this is sort of building off of the work around the Small Business Stabilization Fund, but looking at some modifications or perhaps some flexibility in sort of size of grants and and that type of thing.

And just as a point of reference, the Small Business Stabilization Fund already has distributed over $10 million in grants to about 1,500 small businesses and economic opportunity nonprofits.

If we could move on to the next slide.

As well, so the funds can also be used to provide financial support for arts and cultural organizations.

and technical assistance for small and micro businesses, as well as recovery grants to support neighborhoods and downtown activation events and other neighborhood-specific economic development priorities.

I'll note that I've had several questions from council members about exactly how these funds will be allocated and what the relationship with the Office of Arts and Culture will be.

I know that the Office of Economic Development, once they saw where the final number Michelle Gibeault, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT whether or not that is consistent with your priorities in terms of how those funds are allocated.

But the folks in the Office of Economic Development have put some thought into it now that they have seen the size of the initial proposed amount for the investments.

And then moving on to the next slide.

Oh, I would also, sorry, just note that the Grants for Neighborhood and Downtown Recovery will be focusing on what the Office of Economic Development calls equity neighborhoods.

And this has been consistent with their investments through the Only in Seattle program, where they've really, over the last several years, focused on those equity neighborhoods that include areas like Beacon Hill, Rainier Beach, Lake City, and the list goes on.

And then finally in this category there's a million dollars proposed for job training and investments.

This includes $500,000 to support pre-apprenticeship and retention programs for displaced workers as well as $500,000 for a partnership with the Port of Seattle.

to provide youth employment and paid internship opportunities targeting BIPOC youth.

I just wanted to note there that that has been a proposal that I've been talking to Council Member Morales' office about for some time.

I just wanted to lift that up.

At a really high clip, that was the community and small business recovery section.

Happy to take questions.

Thanks so much.

I see a hand from Council Member Morales.

That is a short summary of a lot of information that I think was actually covered here.

So would love to see that slide a little bit more delineated, and especially in the downtown and neighborhood recovery concept.

But thank you for that presentation and for the details that you offer.

Council Member Morales, please go ahead.

Thank you.

So this is obviously a very important section for me.

I think it's really, there's a lot of really good stuff in here.

Having the technical assistance, able to leverage the technical assistance is going to be really critical to the recovery, especially for our very small, you know, micro entrepreneurs.

We've heard over and over again that real leverage, the real push for those small businesses is to get more technical assistance to help them stabilize and to help them grow.

So really excited to see that.

I have also had conversations with OED and with the folks in the planning department.

So I'm curious about this affordable commercial space piece.

It is obviously really important for Black and Brown business owners to have affordable commercial space.

We know that folks are getting pushed out already.

But when rent is $10,000 a month, I'm curious about what the impact here could be.

And whether this is meant to be a rent subsidy, my understanding from speaking with the Office of Economic Development is that they're really the scale of what we can offer is really not big enough to be able to do something like that.

So I'd like a little more clarity on what that means.

The Small Business Stabilization Fund was hugely important to helping our small businesses in the last year.

I'm really glad to see that it includes artists and arts organizations.

And we know that it was already understaffed to try to move this kind of money out.

They don't really have contract managers and grant specialists on staff.

So I'm a little bit worried about their capacity to move twice as much money out the door, not something that can't be resolved.

I just I do think it's important to flag that they they don't they lack the capacity to do this right now.

And then I don't want to quibble, but I do think that if we if what we really want to do here is leverage this one time infusion of federal dollars into building community wealth.

We do need to see, I believe, more money supporting acquisition by community members so that they actually own some assets.

We're talking about tenant improvements.

We're talking about renters.

Someone else owns the property and therefore the community wealth that comes with it.

I would really like to see us move, increase the pot a little for more acquisition for our community-based organizations so that they can really drive the kind of development that happens in their neighborhoods and so that they can actually own that in stewardship for community benefit.

That's all I have.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Well taken.

Comments or answers to Council Member Morales?

I think I heard a couple of sort of questions in there, but it is really about getting into the details of how the I think the different dollars will be allocated and so we.

haven't had an opportunity to really look at or dig into what the Office of Economic Development may be proposing for the allocation.

So we'll get those details and we'll get the information out to all of you as quickly as we can to inform any potential amendments you want to make or in terms of providing more specific guidance to the department about how those Those funds, those funds are allocated.

I think in terms of the commercial affordability, I do think it is a challenge in terms of the size of that investment and how far those dollars can stretch, but one of the pieces that have been discussed is also looking at.

support for, including legal support for long-term lease acquisition.

So while it doesn't quite provide the same long-term community wealth in terms of owning the asset, it can help stabilize that business in terms of having, you know, knowing what the terms of the lease will be and not having their rent and those sorts of other things changed over time, but point well taken.

And so we'll get you more details that might inform how you consider providing additional guidance to the departments on this.

Thank you very much.

I also wanted to just echo your I know that we're going to have a preview soon of the housing related acquisition side and how we're lifting the cap on what acquisition dollars are available to the office of organizations to be able to have space in there and for BIPOC communities to be able to have space.

So I think that they kind of go hand in glove, especially in the ANF plan, how we have reduced some of the barriers in the past to partner, or I'm sorry, to pair Office of Housing Dollars with Office of Economic Development Dollars so that both housing and those culturally relevant spaces can be created together.

Tracy, I'm not sure if you had anything else to add there in terms of the acquisition language that we'll hopefully be seeing in two weeks, but how that might pair with this conversation I think is important.

It's not the answer to how we broaden the plot for overall acquisition, but I think it's an important component that we should think about together since that bill will also be in our committee simultaneous to this discussion in two weeks.

Nothing to add as it relates specifically to the acquisition of commercial properties, which I think is what Council Member Morales is most interested in on not necessarily the housing portion.

And but what I'd love to do, Tracy, in advance of that meeting in two weeks is to just have a quick refresher for me and maybe for others about the ways in which we have tried to make sure that there wasn't barriers to pairing, that we've reduced barriers to pairing the Office of Economic Development dollars, especially related to EDI, Equitable Development Initiative efforts with those housing dollars, because we know we need a both end.

I would also just add in here, Council Member, that there was, I think, an announcement today of the $30 million that the Council included in the 2021 adopted budget for the Strategic Investment Fund, which could be paired with some of the dollars in ARPA, as well as housing dollars, and really looking at those opportunities for community spaces and

And also recognizing that the EDI got an additional allocation of Mercer proceeds to do additional acquisitions similar to some of the money that the Office of Housing got and that was also allocated to the strategic investment fund.

So there are acquisition funds, and they're in a couple of different pots.

I don't have a jurisdiction over the EDI acquisition funds, but I do know that those can be used for that purpose as well.

Great.

Again, another area where I think there's a lot of cross-interest among council members and trying to thread those Connect those dots will be important as we talk about what's possible with these funds and other resources as well.

But I really appreciate what you've been elevating, Council Member Morales.

Okay, I don't see any more hands.

So let's do these last two items together, which are a little less dense and equally important.

But I will turn it back over to the two of you to get us through the rest of the presentation, and then we will take additional questions.

Great, thank you so much.

All right, so this category is community assistance and programming here.

We're looking at 7Million.

I'll just go ahead and go straight into the details in the interest of time.

1st item here is for 2.8Million overall 2.5 to make permanent 20 of the 26 miles of the stay healthy streets.

and 300,000 to offer safe start outdoor dining and retail permits for another year.

This has been hugely popular, so wanting to continue those.

And then a note here that ordinance 126339 extends these permits to May 31st, 2022. Next slide.

Several investments for the Parks Department, $3.15 million overall.

First, $1.4 million looking to support scholarships for child care services at SPR-related facilities in the summer and fall, and then opening eight wading pools seven days a week from the end of June to Labor Day.

This is another area similar to the item on libraries and restoring opening hours, where the proposed budget simply did not, we did not plan for this, for the rate of vaccination that we have achieved.

And so wanting to make sure that we open up these services much sooner than had anticipated.

In that same vein, 1.25 million to also support enhanced maintenance and custodial cleaning efforts at parks, at community centers and other facilities experiencing high use over the summer and fall.

And then 500,000 to support expanded activations at parks that could build community by providing cultural and recreational activities, support artists and small businesses, which I know has been an area of big interest today, including food trucks or food carts or other vendors as they're rebuilding.

And then this effort could serve as a model to be funded with future jumpstart economic resiliency funding down the road.

So something to pilot here.

Also looking at activation support for Seattle center and arts.

So 200,000 to center to support outdoor movies and other public events on that campus.

And then arts activation, which could, which would go to support creative, created commons.

I always want to say creative, so sorry, created commons, which would employ artists to provide cultural performances and activate public spaces in downtown and other neighborhoods.

This is a very exciting category for people like Ali and myself.

So, impact analysis and evaluation, looking at 500,000 as the initial investment here, there would be a tail to this investment in 2022 and beyond here.

We're looking to measure and evaluate the impacts of the city's recovery investments.

As has been noted today, this is a historic investment for the city, and we want to make sure that we're making a difference with these dollars and that we can measure that difference.

So we would be using, we would be establishing rather, an equitable recovery evaluation pilot.

So we would be looking to use data disaggregation by race and ethnicity to determine the appropriate investment priorities overall, working with our partners to set citywide best practices for disaggregating data in line with city data privacy principles.

Implementing a cohesive common application tool that reduces time and effort for residents to find and apply for recovery funds.

There's been a lot of innovation from the private sector over the course of COVID that we want to leverage.

So that's where that's coming in.

That's a very exciting opportunity.

And develop a report on pilot program strategies for broader application across city programs.

So I'm going to just roll right into the next category per the chair's request this last category is reopening city programs and services at 7.6 million.

So getting right into the details again, looking at about 6 million to support technology upgrades.

We have a need to support flexible work by upgrading technology.

for teleworking and onsite work and other IT needs that were reduced due to 2021 budget cuts.

No one had envisioned working in this remote environment for as long and none of our, we have many city programs that are intended to be used onsite and in a remote environment leaves us vulnerable to cybersecurity and other concerns and so have just a whole host of issues that we need to address through our friends at IT.

And then we also have a need for return to work preparations.

So as we get ready to welcome employees and the public back to the campus later this year, sorry, made you fly, just flew in my face.

Working to make sure that the buildings are ready.

So deep cleaning for buildings, PPE, signage, air filtration, space reconfiguration as needed, wayfinding, et cetera, in that category.

So that concludes those two buckets, I think.

Great.

Ali, why don't you just do this wrap-up slide and then we'll take questions.

I see Council Member Harbold, in case anybody else wants to get in the queue.

Great.

Thank you.

I just wanted to take two minutes to flag that there are some questions that we identified as I mentioned earlier, as we were going through the process to consider as the committee considers the proposed Seattle Rescue Plan and that we were using as we were considering the proposals to put the initial package together.

The memo attached to the agenda provides more discussion on that, and this reflects many of the questions I think council members were asking today.

So I won't spend a lot of time on this, but I just wanted to flag that it was there and there's more discussion in the memo for the committee's consideration.

Happy to take questions.

Great, thanks so much.

I do see Council Member Hurdle, please go ahead.

Thank you so much.

Just two points I'd like to make in this section here.

The first relates to the transportation investment for the stay healthy, making permanent some of the stay healthy streets.

I wanna lift up that there is, as we heard during public comment, and I think we probably have some emails as well, there's a lot of interest in also So we're going to be experimenting with ways to make permanent some of the keep it moving streets and hope that we could discuss funding for that purpose as well.

I understand from inquiries my office has been making as it relates to the $1.25 million for enhanced maintenance, that some of that will be used by the Parks Department to contract with the King County Sheriff's Office to assist in nighttime closures at Alki and Golden Gardens during the summer.

And I'm just curious, is contracting with the King County Sheriff's Office the continuation of an existing relationship, or is this a new arrangement?

Thank you.

I believe they did contract with the sheriff's office last summer as well when they were having challenges with those beaches being closed and resistance to those beaches being closed and fires being put out and things like that, or fires not being started.

That's my understanding.

If you could check that, because that is not my recollection, but I would just love to just double check that.

Happy to.

Thanks.

Thank you so much.

I also will flag that I'm interested in additional information per the communications that we've been receiving and part of the public testimony today about the full extension of the safe streets and wanting to either expand our safe street program completely and or if there's concern about one or two areas.

Make sure that we have the funding included that's necessary to do the community outreach.

That's I know folks had wanted to do in certain areas, but having frequented the Alki point out there, I know how busy that space is and how how much it's been appreciated, especially.

As we were teaching our little one how to walk, she learned how to walk on the street there.

So we have fun pictures of that.

But I think it's a really important way to make sure that folks have a safe place to play and learn and exercise.

So let's try to see what we can do to expand the miles so that all of those miles are covered.

And if there's certain barriers, I'd love to hear more about that.

Thank you, my understanding is so the proposal in this, in this plan doesn't include the those stay moving streets, or I might be using the wrong term, but and my I think it would take two to three, maybe more million dollars to do the permanent investments and there may be a mismatch and sort of.

eligibility for use of these funds, but we can explore a little bit more and I can give more numbers, but it would be at least probably at least doubling the size of the investment in that area to make those investments.

So just as a piece of information as you're considering how to balance these things.

Okay, great.

So we'll get some additional clarity then on the difference between the two types of safe streets that we've offered and the eligibility under ARPA.

And then overall, I know as we've continued to say, there's so many pressing needs.

There are just more that can be accomplished with just the ARPA and HOME funds alone.

So if it is not in there, I think just signaling an interest and want to make sure that we're addressing that in 2021. we will have the opportunity for a supplemental discussion with a fund source.

there will be trailer bills in July related to additional federal assistance that is coming specific to some of the areas that Councilmember Herbold noted trying to respond to isolation and abuse that folks are experiencing.

federal dollars coming down specifically for that.

we will have the opportunity for a Allie, did I cut you off on this next step slide anymore?

Anything else you'd like to add?

No, I think you covered this all in your opening remarks.

I would just restate the deadline request for amendment proposals by noon on Tuesday, and that we are asking for those to be self-balanced.

So if you want to increase or add a new spending category, I'll need to understand what you want to decrease or eliminate from the proposal.

and I think that's all I have.

All right, well thank you again to the presenters today, everyone from central staff, Ali Panucci, who led our team.

Julie Dingley, thank you so much for all of the work that you've done with the legislative branch as well and all of your team as well and the city budget's office.

I want to thank Council President Gonzalez, who's the co-sponsor on this legislation and her team, Cody Ryder, I know this is going to tee us up for a more robust discussion on possible strategies and amendments that you'd like to see included, if not just additional direction for how to allocate those dollars.

I heard that is a central theme across councilmembers today.

And Councilmember Lewis, I want to, again, thank you for previewing the bill that you're planning to bring forward on Monday.

Again, really appreciate you removing any concern or perceived obstacles so that we don't have a set aside of money that could be used right now to address the crisis that we're seeing in our streets.

So we will take that up with you on Monday and look forward to seeing how that continues to pair with these types of investments.

to create a more equitable economy.

Thanks so much to the community members who have continued to call in.

And now you have the whole package in front of you.

We've had the chance to walk through.

Do let us know what your thoughts are.

Again, council members are going to need to consider amendments by noon next Tuesday.

So we look forward to hearing your feedback.

And again, really have appreciated your ongoing feedback.

in the drafting and anticipation of the introduction of this bill, which we hope you see elements reflected.

And we also know that the entire ask for many of those items is not fully incorporated, but you, I hope are hearing a commitment from us.

We will continue to build on these critical priorities to create that more equitable economy post COVID.

With that, thanks so much for walking us through it.

We're just on time.

Council Member Herbold, we have 32 minutes to go through our now, I think, third or fourth time that we've talked about this bill here in committee.

Appreciate your leadership on this.

And Madam Clerk, will you read item number three into the record?

Agenda item number three, Council Bill 120069, an ordinance relating to the independent contractors in Seattle establishing labor standards requirements for independent contractors working in Seattle for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you very much.

Karina Bull here is with us from the central staff lead on everything labor and business related.

We really appreciate your work on this and your very impressive work on the substitute and amendment that are attached in today's agenda, along with the presentation and the memo.

I'll turn over to Council Member Herbold very quickly for some opening remarks, and then we will walk through what is in front of us and attached on the agenda today.

so much.

Very quickly, this policy recommendation originated from the Labor Standards Advisory Commission in response to a resolution that the council passed back in February 2019. That council resolution asked for recommendations about what it is that the council could do in policy passage around the problem of misclassification.

The Labor Standards Advisory Commission said, well, rather than taking on the whole issue of addressing misclassification, why don't we still just first focus on the issue around transparency for people who are being defined as independent contractors and just start there as a building block.

So LSAC sent the recommendations to council in May of 2020. We were able to begin taking up this proposal in the beginning of this year.

My staff and central staff attended the February 24th LSAC meeting where this policy recommendation was discussed and approved.

And there was further discussion, as Madam Chair mentioned, in the Finance and Housing Committee beginning on April 6th with legislation being introduced in April, May.

And again, this committee on May 18th discussed a draft bill.

Since the May 18th committee, we've continued to meet with stakeholders as well as the Office of Labor Standards and have incorporated much of the feedback that we've heard into the bill before us today.

Since Karina's presentation covers the substitute bill that's before us, Madam Chair, I'm wondering, may I move that proposed substitute so we can get it before us?

Let's do it.

All right, great, thank you.

I move to adopt the proposed substitute bill as listed on the agenda.

second.

It's been moved and seconded to have the proposed substitute of Council Bill 120069 in front of us for the purposes of discussion.

And we will go through the central staff presentation.

Are there any comments or questions?

Okay, great.

It's been moved and seconded.

The bill is now in front of us.

I think we will go ahead and oh, excuse me, that's correct, right?

I don't need to do anything else now.

We're going to go ahead and have Karina walk us through the substitute bill, and then we will have a discussion, and then we're going to consider any additional amendments.

And Karina?

Thanks again for all of your work on this.

I'm going to turn it over to you.

Thank you.

It's my honor to work on projects like this.

Everyone, I am Karina Bull with Council Central staff, and I have prepared a presentation that provides an overview of this substitute bill.

As a reminder, the introduced legislation that was discussed at the last Finance and Housing Committee on May 18 included a bill that would require commercial hiring entities to provide all independent contractors with pre-contract disclosures, timely payment, and payment disclosures for services that were valued at $600 or more.

This law would become effective on March 1st of next year and would be implemented by the Office of Labor Standards.

In the substitute bill, there are a little more than a handful of revisions, and I'll go over each one now.

The first is that there would be a revision to independent contractor coverage.

where the law would explicitly state that there would not be coverage of independent contractors where the only relationship with the hiring entity is a property rental agreement, such as an agreement to lease workspace from the hiring entity.

An example of this kind of arrangement would be if an independent contractor hairstylist had a relationship with the salon where the only relationship between the salon and the hairstylist was renting a booth for workspace.

Another kind of example could be a shared workspace that any contractor could rent space from.

If that is all that is happening, those independent contractors would not be covered by this ordinance.

Arguably, they wouldn't be covered just by nature of them not being hired.

But just to make it very, very clear, this law is carving them out explicitly.

If there are any additional questions or issues, then Office of Labor Standards could address those in a Q&A an administrative rule.

Next, the value of services, which again is the amount of compensation that is either proposed or expected or actually $600, would be adjusted to reflect the amount of money that is required by the IRS reporting form for non-employee compensation.

Right now that IRS 1099 NEC form, as it's known, requires businesses to report all non-employee compensation that is $600 or more.

So the value of services in this legislation was intentionally aligned with the reporting requirements for that form and would be adjusted if changes are made to that form in the future.

Office of Labor Standards would determine these adjustments and file a schedule with the city clerk.

And of course they would do their part in communicating any adjustments to the public.

Next, this law covers platform gig workers, also known as app-based workers, and that is made very clear in the definition of independent contractor.

The introduced legislation had a number of provisions that were specific to platform gig work.

And Council Member Herbold, did you want to jump in?

I see your hand is up.

I think if you could explain first, and then I just want to say a couple words about this one.

Okay.

So platform gig workers in the substitute bill would still be covered.

However, the specific provisions that would only apply to platform gig work will be removed and office of labor standards could handle issues relating to those provisions or to those requirements by rule Q and A and the pay up legislation might propose similar provisions in the future as well for council's consideration.

So the removed provisions would be the requirement to include an estimated tip and or supercharged distribution in the pre-contract disclosure.

Those are situations where a customer of a third-party app might indicate what they plan to tip the worker, and then that would need to be included in the online order for work.

But that will be removed, and that can be handled by OLS or in other ways.

The other removed provision would be the requirement to provide a pre-contract disclosure at the time of hire and for each online order for work, the requirement to provide a payment disclosure after completion of each line order for work, and also the very specific requirements to provide disclosures and notice of rights in an electronic format, specifically a smartphone application or online web portal.

So that is the overview of this change.

And Council Member Herbold, you had some words you wanted to say?

because I was asked to by Council Member Strauss who could not be here today.

This was his contribution to the substitute.

We had discussed having it be included as an amendment, but we instead decided to roll it into the substitute because there is broad support for this amendment given the fact that We are intending to address many of these issues in a subsequent conversation associated with working Washington and the pay up campaign.

And Councilmember Strauss and Councilmember Lewis are also going to be part of that effort moving forward.

Thank you.

And Councilmember Lewis.

uh...

yes uh...

thank you uh...

uh...

chair pro tem kareena uh...

let me know if it's just a just a second here to you know to follow up on uh...

council member for both comments just now uh...

you know i i i just want to say that i'm really really looking forward to digging into the work around the campaign that working washington has done uh...

pay up I think it is a logical follow-on to the work that Councilmember Herbold and I did last year regarding hazard pay for app-based driver workers, a term I'm trying to use more than gig worker, because we know that a lot of the folks in this workforce who are the platform-based driver economy are folks that are doing this as full-time employment, that are supporting families doing this work, and that are facing an ever-ongoing increase in the demands that they're facing and a decline of pay and benefit.

You know, we heard a lot of complaints last year from a lot of the platforms and that hazard pay conversation about, you know, how, you know, they wouldn't be able to afford it, how they were going to have to leave the city.

You know, all of those folks are still here.

Those workers are getting paid and those platforms are still profitable.

So there's a way that we can take this work on and all of these additional components around transparency.

are going to be tackled through that process and I look forward to taking that on and increasingly working to make sure that this segment of our economy is equitable and that these workers are treated with dignity and that we are doing everything we can to extend the work we've done in other segments of the economy around minimum wage, around benefits, to extend to these different types of arrangements where these workers have not had those same benefits.

So I just wanted to echo Council Member Verboldt's comments and say that that will definitely be in the scope of work as we take that project on in a bigger way.

Thank you.

Thank you both for foreshadowing more work to come.

And I think also identifying sort of the narrow lane that this bill really is scoped to address so that there can be future conversations.

I'm going to ask that we hold the rest of our comments and questions till the end just to get through the presentation to see the breadth of the substitute in front of us so that we can ask questions all together.

OK.

Thanks, Karina.

The next amendment addresses enforcement, and there are two changes here.

In the enforcement section, there would be explicit language clarifying the OLS director's discretion to prioritize investigations of workforces that are vulnerable to violations of the ordinance.

That kind of discretion is already within reach of the OLS director.

It's a standard practice that the office does, knowing that there are many violations of all of the city's labor standards and the office needs to know how to prioritize where it puts its resources.

But since this legislation is so vast and covers so many parties, this makes it very clear to the public that the OLS director does have that discretion.

And the other amendment is that the director also has more discretion to develop the new complaint procedure and navigation programs.

In the law, there were a number of the director shall do this and shall do that.

And those words have been changed to may just to recognize that the director is authorized to do those things, but not necessarily required.

Next, the effective date of the labor standards in the introduced legislation is March 1st of next year, and the substitute bill would change the effective date to September 1 of next year, giving more time for Office of Labor Standards to prepare and more time for the public to prepare as well.

There will be a new non-codified section that addresses Office of Labor Standards funding during the last Finance and Housing Committee meeting.

I shared information about Office of Labor Standards estimations about how much it might cost for them to implement this legislation, this legislation according to their perspective, and that was over $600,000.

So this non-codified section recognizes that there is already a process that is memorialized in law.

It's in Seattle Municipal Code 3.15 that recognizes a way for OLS specifically to address their funding needs and that is something that is very unique to the Office of Labor Standards.

So this process is already outlined in that law and it is basically restated in this section where the Office of Labor Standards director would certify the annual minimum contribution that the director believes is necessary for enforcement and outreach, and would include that amount in a letter to the mayor and council by September 1st of this year for next year's budget.

And then the mayor would reflect that minimum annual contribution in the budget submitted to the mayor and council.

And that would be a way to recognize OLS's estimation of their funding needs.

Next, the platform gig worker legislation, also referred to in this meeting as the pay up legislation, is still in that non-codified section.

The timeline has also been extended, and originally it was develop and vote on that legislation by late September, which would be before budget deliberations, and in the substitute bill, that timeline has been extended to the end of 2021. And that is it for an overview of the substitute bill.

Okay, great.

I'm not seeing any hands right now.

I do want to take a second to ask folks if there's any questions or comments on the underlying substitute bill that's in front of us.

I will make a few comments then.

I want to thank Karina for her really intense work to do research with council members and to try to incorporate feedback that we've heard from various stakeholders.

And also to work to address some of the items and desires that we had heard from the Office of Labor Standards.

I want to thank Director Marchesi for their work, along with the Office of Labor Standards staff for helping to identify strategies to, as you saw in item number four here, really make sure that there was prioritization and investigation into areas where we know that there's potential violations.

So I think that this is very helpful language that Council Member Herbold, as a prime sponsor, has written into the legislation.

I appreciate that.

And we also want to reiterate for folks who may be just tuning in now, this is not a bill that changes anybody's independent contractor status.

This is really about the transparency requirements that Council Member Herbold noted at the beginning and has noted in the previous meetings as well, trying to make sure that there's additional transparency for all parties.

and this is not a change in independent contractor status.

We know that there are bona fide independent contractors who have called in with potential questions and concerns and want to make sure that folks know this is not changing anybody's status currently, but truly a transparency vehicle for making sure that all parties have access to the same information.

So with that, I wanted to see if there was any additional comments or questions.

Council Member Herbold, anything else before we consider the amendment you have?

Not seeing any, wonderful.

Karina, anything else you'd like to add on the substitute?

I believe that is all, thanks.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks for the walkthrough of that and making it really easy to understand the seven points in the document in front of us.

And I believe that you heard folks calling in and testifying about their appreciation for seeing some of the items of concern that they raised addressed in the substitute.

So with that, Council Member Hurdle, do you have amendment number one?

Do you want to move it to put it in front of us?

Indeed, I move to amend the proposed substitute by adopting amendment one as listed on the agenda.

I will second that.

It's been moved and seconded.

Council Member Herbold, would you like to describe Amendment No.

1?

Absolutely.

So this amendment was developed in collaboration with the Office of Labor Standards and also to address some of the issues that we heard in public testimony today.

The amendment itself is, ensures that the Office of Labor Standards director is empowered to issue rules exempting certain classes of independent contractors and clarifying that the rules, the director's rulemaking is discretionary.

We provide some some criteria for how we expect the director to use that authority, but we have heard from certain categories of professional independent contractors who are making the argument that there isn't a problem within their industry, but I think it's most appropriate for the Office of Labor Standards to sort of make the determination of whether or not there should be specific exemptions.

Thank you.

Karina, do you have anything else that you'd like to add to the summary of Amendment No. 1?

You are on mute as well.

So the amendment would do three things.

It would do exactly what Council Member Herbold has just described and just to give a more information about the criteria that the OLS director will use when considering exemptions.

The director will be required to consider whether any class of exempted contractors has adequate bargaining power in their relationship and also would not be allowed to exclude independent contractors who are prone to misclassification, have limited English proficiency, are unlikely to volunteer information about possible violations and other criteria that the director would develop.

Also, this amendment would would keep the exemption for attorneys, but would also remove the exemption for licensed medical professionals as further research uncovered that a number of licensed medical professionals are also misclassified themselves, which happened often when I conducted more research into hiring situations of many different classes of independent contractors.

So a bad exemption would be removed from the legislation, it could be further contemplated by the OLS director, but the legislation would begin from the standpoint that those classes of independent contractors are not included.

And last, the legislation would further make clear that the Director has rulemaking authority to issue those rules.

They would have the force and effect of law, but any rule would be discretionary.

So rules are not required to implement the law.

They are discretionary.

And that is it.

Council Member Herbold, I'm not seeing any additional questions on this.

Anything that you'd like to say in closing comments before we consider amendment number one?

Okay, thanks so much.

Amendment number one is in front of us, has been moved and seconded and described.

I will be supporting this amendment.

Thanks again for your work to work with the Office of Labor Standards and other stakeholders in identifying ways to address the issues that you raised in describing the amendment.

I think this is a carefully crafted amendment to get at some of those concerns.

And I think that it will also give us a greater insight into the areas where we do have a lot of concern, which is what this bill is intended to address.

So with that, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on amendment number one?

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Madam Chair, that is fine in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

The amendment passes and we now have in front of us substitute amended Council Bill 12069. Are there any additional comments or questions?

Council Member Herbold, I'm not seeing any additional comments or questions.

Do you have any additional comments that you'd like to offer?

Sure, I'll say just a couple quick words.

I'm just trying to be sensitive to Madam Chair's timekeeping demands here, or not demands, requests.

Really want to thank everybody who's been involved in crafting this legislation.

As I mentioned in my opening remarks, I have had a long and strong interest in addressing some of the problems that we're seeing around misclassified workers, and I think this is a really good way to begin to empower people who are classified as independent contractors.

doesn't mean that they're all misclassified, but by empowering independent contract, all of them with information about their remuneration, the expectations within pre-contract disclosures and after the fact with payment.

that's really taking sort of a first step in empowering this workforce to be able to start identifying for themselves whether or not they are being properly classified as a contract worker or misclassified.

And that this legislation will not Well, not address that for those workers who feel that they, after getting this information, that they are misclassified.

But it will help make that group of people stronger as we look at this issue further with campaigns like the Pay Up campaign.

And so this is really about allowing people to have knowledge of their rights and expectations and empowering them to ask for them.

And it's, you know, again, it's a long time coming.

The LSAC recommendations were made back in 2019. I really appreciate the indulgence of the chair in letting me bring this forward in her committee.

I'm looking forward to partnering with Councilmember Lewis and Strauss on the minimum compensation conversation with Working Washington.

Really appreciate that the gig platform representatives are now committed to be at the table.

We have our first meeting on that effort next week.

also very appreciative not only of OLS and LSAC and helping get it started and OLS and providing some of the refinement on the legislation, but really want to thank, again, Corinna Bull on our Council Central staff for all the hard work that she's been doing on this bill and shepherding it through.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Council Member Herbold, and thank you again, Karina.

Okay, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the passage of Substitute Council Bill 12069 as amended?

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Madam Chair, that is five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

The motion carries, and the Committee of Recommendation that the bill pass as amended will be sent to the Seattle City Council, full council, for a vote, because it is Friday when our meeting is taking place.

This bill will not be recommended for a vote until the June 14th meeting.

Congratulations, Council Member Herbold, and thanks again to all of the community that has been involved in this effort.

At this time, folks, we are moving the fourth item of business into our next meeting.

Again, thanks to Office of Housing for their presentation today.

Please take a look at their presentation.

Really great overview of what is to come on a document that is very meaty.

They have distilled it for us.

And some more to come on that on June 15th, where our next meeting will be held at 9.30 a.m.

We'll have a briefing, a discussion, and possible vote on the Seattle Rescue Plan Act.

If you have amendments, again, please do remember to send those to the central staff team by Tuesday, June 8th at noon.

Always happy to help have conversations about any questions any member may have as well.

I want to thank you in advance for all of the work that you've already done on the ARPA bill and Council President Gonzalez's We appreciate the ongoing feedback that you've provided our offices as we crafted this bill with the mayor's office.

So thanks again for your conversation today and for the forthcoming discussion on the 15th and 16th.

Council members, again, as a reminder, you are welcome to attend this meeting.

If you are not a Finance and Housing Committee member, we will be sending out a memo that summarizes how non-members of the Finance and Housing Committee can offer I'm happy to help be a conduit of that to make sure that your items do get included in the Seattle Rescue Plan Act before it gets to full council.

So please look for that memo coming forward, but we are trying to make sure that everybody knows this is an inclusive process for all council members to offer that feedback and amendments.

We will have a additional time for public comment at the June 15th meeting.

And folks, if we don't wrap up our discussion at the June 15th meeting, we will continue the June 15th meeting in a subsequent meeting that will continue over to June 16th, and that will start at 2 p.m.

Hoping to have this out of our committee and into full council voted on before the end of the month, so either on the 21st or the 28th.

Thanks again to everybody for your time today.

And we'll note as well, in addition to the housing levy and administration plan on the 15th, we're gonna have an update on the grocery worker hazard pay and a panel discussion there.

a great weekend thanks so much to all who made today's meeting possible four minutes before 1 p.m.

I didn't think it was gonna be possible but we did it so thanks for hanging in there with us and have a great weekend thank you very much to the clerks and IT communications and Seattle Channel have a great weekend everyone thanks buddy