Community Economic Development Committee 9/21/21

Thank you, Sun.

Good afternoon, everyone.

The September 21st, 2020 meeting of the Community Economic Development Committee will come to order.

It is 2.03 p.m.

I'm Tammy Morales, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Juarez?

Here.

Council Member Lewis?

Council Member Peterson?

Here.

Council Member Sawant.

Present.

Chair Morales.

Here.

That is for present.

Okay, thank you.

I don't see Council Member Lewis yet.

If he is able to join us, I'll make sure to take note of that.

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

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

Thanks for being here today, everyone.

Today's agenda will be pretty full.

We've got presentations from the Office of Planning and Community Development.

The Equitable Development Initiative team will be here to give us an update on the latest round of funded projects, as well as some status updates on other work that they're doing.

We've got a few reappointments to the Seattle Women's Commission.

And then we will have a presentation from the Office of Arts and Culture on their Race and Social Justice Initiative work.

We will be voting on the creation of the 15th Avenue Business Improvement Area that we have talked about in committee two weeks ago.

And then we'll be discussing Council Bill 120180, which provides protection against discrimination based on citizenship or immigration status.

So we've got a full agenda looking forward to hearing from folks.

At this time we will open up the remote general public comment period on items related to this committee.

I will ask that everyone please be patient as we operate this online system.

We're always looking for ways to fine-tune the process and to make sure that we allow for participation from the public.

It remains our strong intent as a council to have public comment regularly included in our meeting agendas.

However, if the council, we do reserve the right to modify these public comment periods at any point, if we deem that the system's being abused, or if it's unsuitable for allowing our meetings to be conducted efficiently.

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

Public comment period is open for 20 minutes.

Each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

I'll call on two speakers at a time in the order in which they registered.

If you have not yet registered.

Are we good?

Did recording stop?

We are recording.

There was no interruption.

Okay, sorry, I thought I heard that.

I will call two speakers at a time.

If you've not yet registered but would like to, you can sign up before the end of the public comment period by going to the council's website at Seattle.gov slash council.

And the public comment link is also listed on today's agenda.

Once I call the speaker's name, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt of you have been unmuted will be your cue that it's your turn to speak.

You do have to press star six before speaking.

Please state your name and the item you're addressing.

If you you will hear a chime when you've got 10 seconds left, please wrap up your comments so that we have time for the next speaker.

And then once you've completed your comment, we ask that you please disconnect from this line.

And if you want to continue following the meeting, you can do so at Seattle Channel or the other listening options that are on the agenda.

So the public comment period is now open.

It looks like...

We have four speakers signed up, but only two are present.

So Alan Jones and Michael Malini, I show you listed as not present.

If you would like to speak, please make sure that you are calling in.

So we have Ross Kling, who will be followed by Sydney Day.

Ross, please go ahead and remember to push star six.

Ross, you may have your own device muted.

If you push star six and make sure your microphone's on, we can hear you.

Okay.

Why don't we move to Sydney?

Ross, we will come back to you.

Sydney Day, if you want to press star six, you can please go ahead.

Hello can everyone hear me.

Yes.

OK.

Hello.

My name is Sydney Day and I'm calling to speak on agenda item CB 120162 the ordinance establishing a new 15th Avenue BIA.

I just wanted to say that I personally utilize the Broadway BIA for the building I manage and it's been really great to have a single point of contact for waste garbage and graffiti that tends to build up around our building as of late.

And the Broadway BIA is very quick to respond to incidents and have helped me as a property manager keep our building cleaner and safer for our commercial tenants and their customers.

They saved us money and time.

And as a building manager I think they provide a vital service to our community and have been especially helpful as things have become tougher throughout the pandemic.

So that is my public comment and thank you for your time.

Thanks very much.

I do want to note that Council Member Lewis has joined by phone.

So we will go back to Ross Kling.

Ross, if you are here, you need to press star six so that we can hear you.

I am here.

Can you hear me?

Yes, please go ahead.

Great.

My name is Ross Kling.

I'm the owner of Rainbow Natural Remedies on 15th Avenue East.

I'm speaking again also to CB 120162. A small group of us about eight years ago started the 15th Avenue Merchants Association.

And we're successful.

We did some sidewalk festivals.

We pulled some money together for some group marketing.

We did some trash pickup as a group a couple times.

But we also recognized that we needed a more sophisticated organization so that we can organize our efforts.

And we looked at the DIA models around town and thought that that would fit really well for 57 and East.

We liked it because it keeps the funds directly in our micro community.

And we also really liked it because we thought we could attract a wider diverse group of participants, specifically Kaiser and Safeway, who themselves normally wouldn't come to a merchant meeting.

So we presented this to our merchant group meetings informally, and there was unanimous support to go forward with it.

And this last meeting we had was about 14 months ago.

And it took about 14 months from there to today to get where we are now asking for this vote.

Nobody wants to spend extra money, but we all recognize we want to be proactive as a community.

And by proactive, it's creating, again, like I said, a more sophisticated organization.

to address what will better 50th Avenue East.

So I'm certainly in support of this, and I know many merchants are, and I ask for council's approval.

And that's it.

So thank you very much for this opportunity to speak to you all.

As a citizen and as a business owner, I take this privilege with honor and respect.

So thank you.

Thank you very much, Ross, for calling in.

Colleagues, I still see Michael Malini and Alan Jones as not present, and we don't have any other folks signed up to speak.

So I'm going to go ahead and close out public comment and ask Darazel to please read item one into the record.

Item one.

Office of Planning and Community Development Equitable Development Initiative update for briefing and discussion.

Great, thank you very much.

We are, I'm very excited to be joined today by the Equitable Development Initiative team, Uba Kadere, the division director, Michael Bloomson, who is the fund manager, and of course Rico Quirindongo, who is the interim director of OPCD right now.

So thank you all for being here.

I'm really excited to hear about the work that you have been doing, particularly about the projects that you have funded through this latest grant round, and also just to hear more about what you have planned for the Strategic Investment Fund.

all of course with the goal of doing everything we can to prevent the displacement of our neighbors and small businesses and to support a much more equitable investment in the kinds of anti-displacement strategies that we know are so important to make sure that we keep communities rooted in the city.

So I will go ahead and hand it off to you and look forward to hearing what you've got to share with us today.

Thank you.

I don't see Rico.

Hopefully, he can join.

Again, my name is Obah Kadere, the Air Convoy Development Division Director.

And today, we will talk to you about briefly the EDI background, who are we currently funding through EDI.

The role of the advisory board, which is important, an update on the strategic investment fund, which most of you already have seen it, but it's just going to be a quick update on where that is.

Moving forward, what the payroll tax looks like, and then the 2022 work plan.

Next, Michael.

EDI is an inside-outside program that was born out of inside-outside strategy, and the advisory board always holds us accountable to make sure that we talk about the origin story, both in the guidelines and any presentations that we do.

So about five years ago, South Core, South Communities Organizing for Racial and Regional Equity, the Race and Social Equity Task Force, a coalition that was formed to create, inform, and implement the economic development implementation plan, and OPCD and Office of Civil Rights partnered to come up with the program that's now called the Equitable Development Initiative, that I said is about five years old.

And then at that time, the Center for Social Inclusion also offered or provided some consulting and capacity building for the Race and Social Equity Task Force.

Uh...

As you know, or it's going to be a refresher for some of you and new to some of you, the Economic Development Initiative started with an equity analysis that was done in 2016 as a companion to the Seattle 2035 Comprehensive Plan that informed the growth strategy.

There was also a partnership with PolicyLink where there was race and social equity goals and policies in all of the different elements of the Comprehensive Plan.

And then once we got the equity analysis data, we were directed to come up with the economic development implementation plan, which was followed by a financial strategy.

Next.

As I said, the origin story is important, but also so is the history.

This is the redlining map from 1930 for In Seattle, where it shows investment decisions made by the previous generations, contributed to and continues to contribute to the inequities communities experience today, especially communities of color.

If you look at the areas that were graded, definitely declining or hazardous, these are the same areas right now that EDI is focusing on.

Next.

These are the maps that were produced from 2016 equity analysis, which shows the risk of displacement and access to opportunity, and is the framework that we use to make decisions, make funding recommendations, and the neighborhoods that we focus on.

The map in the left is the high-risk displacement neighborhood.

The red areas on the map is where we normally focus on.

And then the one on the right shows low access to opportunity, and that's the brown areas.

We also obviously focus on other considerations around proximity to significant planned or recent investments, for example, transportation or parks, and also very We will make sure that we do not intentionally just focus on this map as the interim advisory board in 2017 told us.

You're looking at this map and you don't even see any neighborhoods that is specifically for indigenous communities.

So we have to make sure that we are intentional in how we are defining those geographies.

Next.

So this is the equitable development framework with the dual goal of achieving racial equity that we need strong communities and strong people.

And that means community stability and resilience in the face of displacement pressures, and also making sure that communities have access to great neighborhoods throughout the city with equitable access for all.

These goals require more public investments above the current levels, and all these goals have outcomes.

The drivers have outcomes that are associated with it, which I'm not going to go through that right now, but it's just the framework that helps us advance the work we're doing.

The first one is around economic mobility.

promoting economic opportunity for marginalized populations and not focusing only on residential, not focusing only on economic development, but also providing access to quality education, training, and living wage jobs.

The next one is around displacement, making sure that we are enacting policies and programs that allow marginalized populations businesses and community organizations the ability to stay in their communities.

Again, not just focusing on the affordable housing or residential piece, but also cultural displacement and commercial displacement and how is it impacting these communities that we focus on.

And then they're building on the local cultural assets of those communities.

These equity drivers are designed to be deployed together.

It's not like just focusing on economic development or just prioritizing investments in affordable transportation in one area, but just making sure that we are deploying this equity drivers together.

And a lot of the EDI projects that we fund have at least three of the equity drivers in the projects that they propose.

Next.

As my colleague Michael always explains to folks that call us nationally and want to know more about the EDI program, And they focus a lot on the real estate piece.

He once described it as EDI being an anti-racist program that happens to do real estate projects.

And it's a values-based program where we focus on centering communities most impacted by displacement and valuing efforts that focus decision-making processes into the structures of community development with clear accountability to the communities impacted.

We focus on community-driven strategies and believe in community self-determination, influence, and leadership, and know that communities are resilient and resourceful, as we saw in the last 18 months, and that tapping into their own collective cultural cornerstone of curbing displacement is key to ownership of initiative and projects.

We believe in broad-based community development and value organizations that reflect the complexity of community needs such as economic development, affordable housing, cultural development, education, health care, food sovereignty, all those different broad-based community development aspects.

And then most importantly, acknowledging historic injustices and valuing efforts that are explicit about addressing systemic racism and the institutional barriers that exist for these communities that are predominantly communities of color, We also value accountability and support efforts which are most likely to bring improvement to the lives of those most impacted by displacement and lack of opportunity, and support efforts that leverage community resources and support existing assets available to low-income communities that are not typically recognized or valued in community development processes.

We also value flexibility and interdependence, knowing that communities strive to create processes that reduce barriers to participation while providing a fair structure for all communities, and seeking to participate in the EDI.

And finally, a systemic change approach, which the EDI fund and investments and programs are intended to advance projects and communities that imagine the development process in a way that prioritizes long-term benefits and capacity for community members.

Next.

Another way of looking at the map is we focus on place-based targeted strategies, prioritize neighborhoods that exhibit high level of chronic as well as recent displacement pressures.

historically, racially, have suffered from racially driven disinvestments.

These neighborhoods have significantly population of marginalized communities and communities of color, you know, focus on neighborhoods that have community strategies created through inclusive community engagements.

As you might know, the first five demonstration projects came from these community strategies.

And then, as I said earlier, focusing on areas that have major transportation or park investments, recent park investments that sometimes, if not looked from our RSGI lens, will lead to displacement.

Next.

Uba?

Yes.

I just want to stop this for a second.

Man, there's a panic.

I just want to thank you.

I think the last two slides are so important that you took time to walk through the values that this program are rooted in.

This is a really different way for the city to operate.

And I know we've been doing this for several years now, but it's really important to acknowledge that what you're trying to do is something so different from the way as a city we have operated in the past when it comes to real estate and making decisions about how our neighborhoods are going to change and grow.

And I think what's crucial about this and why you're getting calls from across the country is because this really is about acknowledging the harm that the city has done in the past and really working in a in an authentic and systemic way to start to repair that harm.

So I just want to thank you and your team again for taking the time to walk through that.

Yeah, thank you.

And I just want to thank the advisory board for always holding us accountable, making sure that we're telling the story and not taking credit for the work that they worked so hard to accomplish.

We're just the vehicles for that.

And speaking of the advisory board right now, I mean, we have 11 of the 13 represented right now.

And we have two appointed by board vacancies right now that we are going to be filling soon, this application out.

But I'm not sure how long it's going to take for folks to apply or how long.

It looks like maybe early next year, we're going to come back to you with the new two.

We looked at the gaps, you know, as far as geographies is concerned or demographics is concerned.

And right now what folks are really looking at as far as the gaps are concerned is folks with some real estate or in funders perspective.

And we just have one.

Native American representation.

So just making sure that we have more than one, you know, and what will it look like to have someone that, you know, has already suffered from displacement and doesn't live in the city, but still works in the city and their cultural anchors and things like that in the city.

So the advisory board did an analysis and they're trying to fill these two vacancies based on what the gaps are.

Next.

This just talks about the role of community leading the work, starting with the RSGI 2004 launch and EDI just being, just leaving and coming from, you know, that history.

And the city being charged to create racial equity by what you just said, council member, around explicitly naming and addressing the historic and current impacts of institutional structural racism in our policy procedures and programming and making sure that we are operationalizing that.

We're just not in talking about it, but we're just making sure that we are making those investments and programs in partnership with community.

And as I mentioned earlier, OPCD and Office of Civil Rights worked with community to make sure that the EDI is just not another city program, but it's a program that is co-designed with the impacted communities.

Next.

I'm going to have Michael take it from here.

Michael Blomson, you're it.

Thanks, Zuba.

Hi, everyone.

So this is more of a deep dive into the RFP process that we just completed.

So please feel free to stop me if you have any questions, but I'll try to sift through this pretty quickly.

The request for proposals that we release has the core criteria that UBA sort of walked through, and that's the high risk of displacement, the connection to the equity drivers, the connection to the program values, and what it means to be engaging with community members who are most impacted in a meaningful way that upholds the values of the Race and Social Justice Initiative.

And so those are the things that are sort of baked into the implementation plan.

And one of the things that we asked the review committee to do is look at all of those core criteria, make sure that those are met, but also really look at how the money can be used in the most strategic way.

And so that means, you know, are we engaging with partners who may have never been able to access capital funding before?

And this requires a stretch to say, You know, this is one of those areas where institutional and systemic racism play in the ability of smaller organizations to get funded.

So, you know, what does that look like?

How, as you mentioned, that the displacement maps don't adequately address the experience of the, you know, the Native American and their urban Native communities here.

So how does that play?

Similarly, questions of intersectionality with the LGBTQ community, right?

That's not a place, it's not easily reflective in place-based strategies, but we need to be thinking about that.

Similarly, you know, how EDI is one of the only non-residential capital funding sources that the city has.

So how are the resources that we have being strategically used, especially for types of projects that may have no other options for funding sources through regular RFP channels?

And that doesn't necessarily mean that EDI won't fund those things.

but looking at the recommendation that comes in as an aggregate whole and trying to ensure that we're not grouping in one way or another in any particular way.

And that they're really trying to bring as broad of a cross-section as possible on any given year forward of the types of projects that are being used.

And certainly there are questions about as, you know, Uber talks a lot about balancing shovel-ready and shovel-hungriness, right?

Like, there are certain projects that they need to be funded this year or lots of things go wrong.

But similarly, if we only do that, then projects that are in the visioning stage would never have a chance to move forward.

And so where is the balance in that?

folks really have to kind of struggle through what are a very large pool of great applications to try to come up with something that best reflects some of that balance.

So here's kind of a map of what has happened previously, and you can kind of see the distribution of projects all over and some of the previous awards.

So this year, We've put out a pretty sizable chunk of money.

So about $9.8 million was the remainder of resources that you had previously allocated last year from the Mercer Mega Block.

$5.2 of that had been spent in 2020. And we released the rest and allocated it this year.

$6.8 went out in the spring.

And then 3 million was added to the RFP cycle this year, which is why we were ultimately able to make 9.8 million in awards instead of the baseline funding.

And that logic was, why would we make everybody go through yet another RFP when there's so many going on and have everybody write applications?

Is there a way we could consolidate some of these processes and make them easier for applicants?

But so you can see there's been a lot of different kinds of projects in a lot of different areas, but by and large, all pretty well focused on the high risk of displacement areas scattered throughout the city.

And then here's the awards distribution for this year.

And again, you can kind of see a pretty decent similar spread of projects.

And again, you know, one of the things they're looking at is geographic distribution.

Are we actually making sure that A lot of different high risk displacement areas are getting some level of investment.

And if you think about, you know, areas like North Seattle where there isn't maybe the same level of established nonprofits who have been doing this work in the past, it's important to kind of keep an eye on some of those places and make sure that we're resourcing them as well, given that the vast majority of applications tend to come from, you know, the communities in Rainier Valley and the Central District.

And so you can see that they still get a lot of distribution but that there was intentionality around making sure that funds were thoughtfully distributed in a citywide manner.

And then one of the other features of EDI, and this somewhat connects to the shovel-ready versus shovel-hungry, but is also really fundamental to how we think about some of the anti-racist work, is that organizations need to be supported as organizations as well as just capital projects.

can we as a program support organizations both as they develop to be able to successfully develop and then manage those projects, as well as having the capital resources to ultimately complete the building, complete the project, or acquire sites.

So this list are projects that are either only asked for capacity building, which you can see are the ones that didn't have anything in the requested line, And then some that requested both capacity building and capital, but we were only able to at this time award the capacity for, and hopefully, you know, we'll be able to continue to support them in the future with other funding.

And then capital projects is another similar list.

There's a couple here that are listed as not publicly announced and they were not in the press releases either.

And those are two projects that are actively looking for sites and in negotiation.

And so we're trying not to disrupt their negotiations with property sellers by saying like, Hey, we just awarded all this funding.

This is what you should, this is what you should be charging to help them get the best price and make sure that public dollars are used as efficiently as possible.

So as soon as those are completed, we'll be able to tell everybody and what they're doing.

And again, there's a pretty decent spread of different types of projects throughout the city, the demographics, the geography, the types of programming that are intended to be used in those facilities.

And okay, before we go on, does anybody have any questions about that?

Colleagues, any questions for Michael?

or for Uba about the EDI portion of this conversation.

I don't see any hands, so please go ahead and continue.

Yes, and this year the EDI team also played under Julia's leadership a role in leading the strategic investment fund.

a $30 million one-time fund, and a committee representing communities at risk of displacement outside of the review committee or the advisory board.

There was some of them that were involved, came together.

They're representing the eco-environment experts who initially met in 2019 to refine the focus of these funds and which kind of projects should be funded.

And the criteria they came up with actually meted some of the EDI criteria, but responding to immediate displacement pressures, creating long-term impact by strengthening relationships and community wealth building was the key.

And then also, again, combining affordable housing and other community benefits, such as commercial space, affordable commercial space, public open space, cultural space.

Again, going back to those six equity drivers, you see that this program also had really focused criteria.

And also, this strategic investment fund focused on filling the gaps in existing funding for community development.

The projects that we got, the 13 projects, which are not public because, again, it's real estate transactions, but we, Julia and I, earlier this week presented in an executive session about the project.

But, again, those projects are located all over the city, in high-risk displacement or low-access to opportunity areas, proximity to significant planned or recent investments in parks and transportation.

And the group that also worked on coming up with this, and again, represented the black, indigenous, and people of community, people of color, community leaders, again, equitable development experts.

So the 13 recipients that were recommended for awards, and I have come up with a lot of different public benefits, including affordable housing for families and seniors, child care, community space, small business incubation and preservation, historic preservation, to name a few.

And five years ago, almost five years ago, when I took this job and you asked me what In five years, where do you see EDI or the EDI fund?

I would never have guessed that by this time, we will move close to $80 million to communities and neighborhoods that have previously been not part of the development process and things like that.

give kudos to the amazing EDI team that has worked with these communities and projects in the last five years, continue to offer them technical assistance.

And what gets me out of bed every morning, including the three kids that I'm in charge of, is just knowing that we are working with communities that have you know, opportunities to really anchor themselves in place and projects that lead to economic development outcomes and racial equity outcomes.

Next, I want to quickly, you know, talk about in starting next year, the EDI funding is also going to increase with about 9% of the jumpstart funding coming to the economic development program, so continuing to support those projects that we currently support and new ones is an exciting thing that we're looking forward to.

And then the next thing is our 2022 work plan, you know, continuing the fund coordinations, both the strategic investment fund and contract management for the EDI.

We'll continue to do that.

working with the advisory board around evaluation and just we co-create our work plan with them.

So continuing that work with the advisory board, figuring out how the comprehensive funding strategy, you know, this piecemeal, you know, the short-term rental here, the strategic investment there, the payroll tax, but also looking working with the other city departments that invest in these communities and making sure that we're threading that needle, and also working with other funders to ensure that the projects that are getting funded or the ones that do not get funded have opportunities to get funded.

I just recently found out that there's a lot of also statewide local groups that are looking at EDI as a model to fund projects.

We are going to be working with the advisory board to establish a compensation model for community and consultants.

The ordinance does have resourcing folks for their time, but what does it look like to put that on paper?

We will be supporting the success of the indigenous planner position, elevate the indigenous Seattle program that has been part of the EDI program that Michael has been holding.

And working with King County Communities of Opportunity and other real estate programs to continue to work, not only giving people funding, but, you know, invest in the real estate capacity of these groups and continue to support our and other interdepartmental and like Office of Civil Rights and other departments in the work that they're moving forward, including some of the in a department that are part of the Community Economic Development Committee.

And I know I see that my director came in and he went off the cam.

He wasn't here initially.

So I just want to give him an opportunity to add to it, and then we can answer any questions that you might have.

I apologize for missing opening comments.

Council Member Morales and everyone that's present on the call, you are in good hands with UBA and Michael Blumson, so I am available for questions for sure.

This is a huge amount of work that both the EDI team and our community advisory group and the EDI board have done this year in terms of trying to get this money out into communities or community-led projects.

I'm just really excited for where we are today.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks to Michael and Ubach for the presentations.

You may not be prepared to answer this yet, but I am really curious to know at least what your process will be for the comprehensive funding strategy conversation, because as you mentioned, Ubach, we've got lots of different pots of money that we're excited about.

having and implementing and really being intentional about setting aside funding for community-led projects.

But I can imagine from your end, it's probably a little clunky.

So I would love to hear if you have anything you're prepared to share yet about at least how you plan to try to sort all that out and make it a little bit more useful for you.

And if you need help from us as we're looking at how we are structuring things, certainly aren't intending to create more work for you.

Uba, do you want to go first?

I have a couple of thoughts as well.

Yes.

So in 2020, we ended up doing a funders roundtable.

Once we made the decisions for the EDI round, And there was a lot of projects, again, that we didn't have enough money to fund or just didn't meet the eligibility criteria, or they had a gap or something like that.

So strategically, we bring review committee members who are also funders that, for example, last year, there was two projects that we didn't have enough funding for, but Enterprise ended up funding them because there was somebody at the table at the time reading those applications, and they knew that.

and the process is coming up.

So how do we bring all these different funders from Seattle Foundation to, and Rico and I recently met with the new LISC director, and then also internally, the different departments that are touching all these neighborhoods, how are we making sure that we are coordinated in our approach in meeting the needs of these communities?

Now especially that EDI is five years old, it's just that next step of making sure that we're not piecemealing funding, but making sure that we are bringing a lot of different unusual suspects to the table.

And not the city is not the only source of funding, but other sources that are out there.

So that's one of the, and we're gonna be doing hopefully another funding round table 2.0.

to bring folks together again and to work on a strategy, more comprehensive strategy to funding these projects and neighborhoods.

And then also we've been focused a lot on the project space.

What I'm hearing from the project managers within EDI, it's like we really need to focus on also in catalyzing and working with the other OPCD staff members who are working on neighborhood level and planning.

and implementation and making sure that we are bringing the resources that we have within EDI to these communities.

So they are at the table too and pulling, like making sure that the planning that they're working with is representative of what they see in their communities.

So within OPCD, within the city and then within the bigger ecosystem in the King County and other funders is what we're thinking about.

Rico, did you want to add anything to that?

Well, you know, Ubud has spoken very well about the structure that we have in place and how we want to implement moving forward.

I think that part of the takeaway is understanding how important public-private partnership is to getting to investing in community in a way that is both holistic, well-rounded, consistent, and predictable.

I would say that one of the things that we've started a conversation about, having gone through the EDI process this year and the strategic investment fund, we have a very good understanding today of a huge number of projects and a huge number of organizations that are trying to do good work.

And while the dollars that we're talking about right now are huge, there's a huge unmet need.

And so I think that, I mean, if I can project, like, looking at 2022, like, I think that part of what one of the strategies that we want to be able to talk about is, you know, how do we, how do we be intentional about supporting organizations that we know that are out there doing good work already.

We don't have to start from scratch.

We already have.

We've already started a bunch of conversations that we want to be able to support next year.

And I think that Uber spoke to this already as well.

Like, you know, we've got projects, tier two projects, we call them in the process, that didn't make the cut for funding this round, but that we know are ready.

Right.

Great.

Well, I think it is important that you're and I'm glad to hear you're talking with.

the ecosystem as Uma described it, talking to LISC.

That was my first job in Seattle, 20 something years ago was working at LISC.

So I'm glad to see that they're back in the game.

Okay, well, I do wanna give my colleagues an opportunity if anybody else has questions or comments for our OPCD folks.

I am not seeing any.

So I want to thank you all.

You're doing incredible work.

And I'm really, really proud of the ability of the city to be making some intentional strides toward equity and mitigation strategies when it comes to anti-displacement work.

So thank you all for being here.

And I look forward to hearing from you again shortly.

Okay, we are going to move on to agenda item two.

Well, we're going to go items two through five.

So, Darazel, will you please read items two through five out of the record?

Agenda items two through five, appointments 2035 to 2038. The reappointments of Dia Kana and Whitney Nakamura as members to the Seattle Women's Commission for terms to July 1st, 2022. the reappointments of Jamila Williams and Min Peace as members of the Seattle Women's Commission for terms to July 1st, 2023 for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Great, thank you very much.

So colleagues, we've got these only four appointments this time around.

I'm looking forward to hearing from Marta, who's going to share a little bit with us about our appointees, all of which I believe are re-appointments.

So Marta, please go ahead.

Thank you and good afternoon.

My name is Marta Edowu.

I'm with the Seattle Office for Civil Rights, and I manage the Seattle Women's Commission and the Seattle Human Rights Commission, and I'm their Civil Rights Advisory Commission liaison.

So what I'm going to do is talk about the commission, their work, and then talk about each one of the four reappointments.

folks today.

So the Women's Commission is composed of 21 accomplished individuals who come together as individuals to research, analyze, and make recommendations to the mayor, city council, and city departments on issues facing women in Seattle.

Eight commissioners are from the mayor, eight from the city council, and four from the commission seat.

Commissioners are appointed for two years of service and serve without pay.

The 21st member joins as the Get Engaged program, which is a leadership development program for 18 to 29 year olds.

The Seattle Women's Commission meets monthly to address a broad range of issues, including economic opportunity for women, race and social justice, women's health and disparities in health outcomes for low income women and women of color, affordable and high quality child care, women's roles as caregivers, violence against women, and the unique challenges immigrant women face in our community.

The first person I'd like to talk about is Dia Khanna.

She's a reappointment, and Dia's just been a worker bee.

She helps draft and work on letters and op-eds.

She helps on events and is just anything that someone needs help on, she just puts her hat in and says, hey, I'll be happy to help with this project and help carry it through.

And so she currently works on the communications committee with Jamila and loves the work that she's done on the commission and hopes to be able to continue to do that to get the commission just back where they want to be since they just had to take a seat back because of COVID and all the things.

And so they're really want to make sure that they'll be able to do in-person events again and all that kind of stuff.

But we are always saying safety first.

The next person I'd like to say a few words about her.

She sent me some information that I'd like to share with you is Whitney Nakamura.

Whitney has an extensive background and deep commitment to supporting women and girls.

Most of her paid and volunteer roles has been in social service setting, supporting students, low-income individuals, and young people and families experiencing homelessness, eager to grow her voice, advocacy, and engagement with issues affecting her life, community, and clients.

Whitney joined the Seattle Women's Commission right before the pandemic.

She appreciates how the commission has been realistic and empathetic and understanding our current situation and how women are being impacted right now.

She remains committed to the commission and eager to continue learning and growing her involvement and appreciative of this opportunity to promote the interests, needs and brilliance of local women.

Whitney is currently on the outreach committee and she's also on the events and communications subcommittee and looks forward to the day where we will be able to plan in person events and activities and she values this opportunity to bring her perspective and experience as well as those of her communities to support and advance the work of the commission in our city.

Next person I'd like to say a few words about is Min Peace.

She is also another brilliant commissioner.

She has worked on the eviction support report that came out a couple of years ago losing home.

She has been a co-chair and has worked with Jamila, who I'll talk about a little bit later, as a co-chair.

And they have taken part in speaking at events, doing amazing work as co-chairs, and just leading and strengthening the commission over the years.

So we really appreciate them for their service.

And Min is currently serving on the communications committee.

And she again hopes to continue to work with the incredible women she works with on the commission.

So thank you to men for that.

And Jamila, amazing.

She just wanted you all to, wanted to share a few things about her.

She actually also helped with the eviction report, collecting data, communications outreach, presenting the report before the city council and things like that.

She has helped coordinate, organize, and host the meet and greet with the incoming commissioners and the incoming new city council members like Council Member Tammy Morales.

She has taken part in several events like the Speak Out, Women and Homelessness events, and candidate forums.

She just feels it's an honor and privilege to have served as a co-chair And she too has done an amazing job in her office and in the service.

She also maintains the commission's Facebook and Twitter accounts and just is very, very grateful for being able to have this opportunity.

And with that, I will move these four commissioners to be reappointed.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Marta.

I'm excited to know that they are all eager to continue in their roles and really appreciate their willingness to continue to serve the city.

Colleagues, are there any questions for Marta?

I don't see any questions.

Marta, thank you very much for being here to present their reappointments.

I move that the committee recommends confirmation of appointments 2035 through 2038. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointments.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Juarez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Councilmember Peterson?

Yes.

Councilmember Sawant?

Yes.

And Chair Morales?

Yes.

That's five in favor, none opposed.

Terrific, thank you very much.

Thanks, Marta.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the appointments be confirmed will be sent to the September 27th City Council meeting.

Okay, we're going to move on to agenda item six.

Darazel, will you please read item six into the record?

agenda item six, office of arts and culture, race and social justice report 2021 for briefing and discussion.

Terrific.

Thank you very much.

Um, so I'm excited to have folks here from the office of arts and culture.

Um, as we've been talking about the work of this department, particularly as it relates to the intersection with economic development, um, I've referenced often the work that the Arts Commission, the department, and folks in the arts community have been doing over the last few years to really highlight the need for centering racial equity in the work that they do.

And so I'm excited for this presentation and really want to thank everyone in the department for all of the work that you're doing to make sure that we are bringing our racial equity lens into every department and to everything that we do.

So I am going to pass it to Kalandra Childers, our interim director.

And Kalandra, I ask you to introduce your team and hand you the presentation.

Thank you so much, council member.

My name is Kalandra Childers.

I am the deputy director at the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, and I am so pleased to be joined by five of my very brilliant colleagues today.

I'm just going to share my screen really quick and get our PowerPoint up and running.

Is that working?

I think so.

Great.

So I am joined today by my colleagues Alex Rose, the Creative Economy Advocate, Tina LaPadula, our Arts Education Project Manager, Matthew Richter, our Cultural Space Liaison, Diana Falchuk, our Creative Strategies Initiative Manager, and Mai-Tuan Nguyen-Akbar, our Impact and Assessment Manager.

And what we're going to go through today is not an overview of everything that the Office of Arts and Culture does, but do a couple of deep dives into five particular projects that we really wanted to showcase that were that have really gone through a lot of development in the last year.

And really you know we try and we try and fuse race and social justice into the work that we do across the whole department.

But these particular projects were ones where it really shines through and we were really proud of the impacts we were able to make.

So wanted to take a moment to share that with you and thank you for your time today.

I'll just jump right in here.

We're going to start.

These are the five projects that we are showcasing.

The cultural and creative workforce development, creative advantage, the cultural space agency, public development authority nomination process for the council, shape of trust, and an overall presentation of our demographic and investment data for the whole office.

So we are going to start off with Alex Rose and our cultural and creative workforce development.

I'll turn it over to Alex.

Thanks, Calandra.

All right.

Well, I'm really excited to share this example with you all, in part because it's an interdepartmental effort through the Office of Arts and Culture and the Office of Economic Development.

So in order to address a need that has become clearer and clearer through the research that our offices have done, to create stronger pathways to creative careers, particularly for BIPOC young folks.

Last year, our two offices launched this cultural and creative workforce development program.

And it launched at the beginning of 2020. It was meant to be an in-person program.

And while most internship programs simply canceled and postponed their opportunities, this program quickly pivoted to become a virtual program.

and it's still operating that way.

So this program is for young people ages 16 to 26. We have additional support besides from the program administration coming from the Northwest Folklife.

We have the Vera Project that helps with onboarding employers and getting supervisors prepared.

as well as Teen Tix, which works with young folks who maybe for them, this is their first work experience, so doing a little bit of extra training and onboarding.

This program provides hands-on experience in creative and cultural work.

We have additional elements of social capital and or or network building, including bringing in guest speakers who are industry professionals who can provide some mentorship and and follow up.

And then lastly, a really important part of this program is that youth voice is continuing to evolve the program and, and in turn, to inform the sector.

So I want to shout out really quickly, civic designer Rachel Cicero, who worked with us to do some co design sessions with with our interns.

Throughout their internships, the young folks work on developing skills such as event production, graphic design, social media, marketing, and media making.

And I'll go to the next slide.

So we've got some numbers to share, just to give you a sense of the scale, the scope and scale of this program.

We've got, to date, 37 interns.

And the vast majority of them identify as BIPOC, so about 80%.

We've got folks in the 16 to 21-year-old age range as the majority of the interns taking part in this program.

Hey, Alex?

I'm sorry to interrupt, but I think we're still on the previous slide.

So can we go to slide four?

Sorry, I'm trying to get it to advance and it's not letting me.

I might need to exit out and re-present it.

Okay, that's all right.

I'm sorry to interrupt.

Please go ahead.

No, thank you.

While that is getting pulled up, I'll just let you know we've got about 21 partner sites who are offering internships and work experiences for young folks.

And that includes both private sector companies like Millie and Converge Media, as well as nonprofit partners like Ground Zero Radio, Penguin Productions, Wanawari, Nifty, and the CD Forum.

We, the majority of those employer sites have mentors or supervisors who are reflective of the interns who are taking part in this program.

So that's a really important element.

The average internship is a few months long, three to six months, but a good number of interns have extended their internships or leveled up to take on more responsibility and new assignments.

And then a few of them have also gone on to become employees of their employer's worksites.

So those are some really great successes that we're proud of.

And here we've got some quotes from the interns themselves who, in some cases, really enjoyed learning how a small business works or connecting to opportunities outside of their internships.

And then the one here in orange is really just An example of how a workplace can develop skills and awareness beyond what we think of as cultural and creative.

This is particularly looking at accessibility and design as one of the areas of learning that this program supports.

And then the next slide is a graphic that was created by one of the interns.

That just kind of celebrates the positive experiences that not only the interns have, but that their supervisors do as well.

Sorry, we're still having some technical problems here.

And you can learn more about the program on Northwest Folklife's website.

nwfolklife.org slash CCWD internships.

Alex.

Thanks, Alex.

I will now turn it over to Tina to talk about the creative advantage.

And Tina, I'm just going to navigate from the sidebar since that seems to be working better.

You're muted, Tina.

Of course.

Hi everybody.

Thanks for having us.

My name is Tina LaPadula and I'm the Arts Education Project Manager at the Office of Arts and Culture.

I use she and I'm good with they pronouns.

The Creative Advantage is a big part of my work.

It is an investment in Seattle's students and our community's creative future.

It is a citywide education justice initiative to establish equitable access to arts education.

This initiative has been sort of brewing and solidifying since 2008. Seattle Public Schools and the Office of Arts and Culture have really been collaborating since that time to increase student access to quality arts education especially in high need schools and neighborhoods.

In 2012 this initiative really kicked into high gear.

And it started with a very large report from the Wallace Foundation, where there was really a needs assessment done with Seattle Public Schools.

And at that time, the report showed, not surprisingly, but much of what the community and families and students have been saying for a long time, that access to arts education was not equitable in our city.

And that actually arts education is predictable based on race ethnicity free and reduced lunch special education or English language learner status as a student.

And that's true nationally as well.

To address these inequities the Seattle K-12 arts plan was created and that really laid out specific strategies to address these issues and ensure that all students have equitable access to high quality arts education.

creative advantage was born out of that plan.

And really, it solidified our collective impact partnership between Seattle Public Schools, the Office of Arts and Culture, as sort of the backbone or management structure, the Seattle Foundation as a fiscal agent, as well as more than 100 community arts organizations and cultural organizations, and individual teaching artists.

There is so much research that talks about why the arts are important.

I mean, I could talk about that from a spiritual perspective, from, you know, a social and emotional perspective.

These are some of the reasons why, and they're research-based, the creative advantage is restoring access to the arts for young people.

We know that about the need for increased academic success and that the arts can support that for more engaged learning, for school and college enrollment, for civic engagement, to learn things like 21st century skills, which is just the term for things like critical thinking, creativity, communications, collaboration, those kinds of things that we know the arts teach.

And that it is a racial equity and social justice strategy, especially when you're thinking about who has access to those kinds of high quality learning.

environments and the kinds of benefits that those bring to young people.

And we need to make sure that all of our students have that access.

We can go on to the next slide, please.

So, you know, when talking about racial justice and arts education, that can look like access, and that's a big part of what we're concerned about, making sure that all young people have access, can also look at the look like the pedagogy of what's going on in a classroom, and what classrooms look like and feel like.

It's really the how, like who's doing that teaching, what it feels like, are students represented in the curriculum, do they feel like it's culturally responsive to their lives and their identities, and all of those are important parts of the creative advantage.

key to these things are these goals, that all young people have high-quality arts education, no matter what their race, socioeconomic status, or neighborhood is, that they get instruction from certified arts teachers, that they get art integrated into other subject areas, and that they have community-based partners who are also working in the schools that look like them, that are bringing art forms that aren't present currently, and that they have these kinds of connections like my colleague Alex is working on around connections to careers in the arts.

So part of what we're doing is pulling together pathways of schools.

We're looking at racial equity data with them.

We're pulling the data of who has access, who's participating in arts classes currently, and we're helping those schools in those pathways create arts plans.

We're giving them three years worth of funding to start, that aligns with looking at those gaps in who's participating and who's not and what other kinds of art forms they could be bringing that maybe cultural partners can help with.

After they use their three years of funding up, there's sustainability funds that are available for them to continue or try new things as well.

And we have lots of evidence that shows that this initiative is working.

We are currently in 81 schools as of this year.

And we've been rolling out neighborhood pathway to neighborhood pathway, starting with the highest need schools.

And we're expanding.

We will be in the entire district, which is 55,000 students within the next year or two, depending on these COVID times and how schools maybe feel ready to take up their arts planning or not.

But during COVID times, we were able to support partners with remote learning, Creative Advantage online arts videos that were created with some of our community partners in the arts to keep the arts alive during this time.

Thanks so much for this opportunity to share.

Creative Advantage is working, and we look forward to completing this phase of it and continuing to support schools beyond right now.

Thanks, Tina.

That was great.

I will now introduce Matthew Richter to talk about the Cultural Space Agency and the way in which the community brought forward the slate of council members.

Thanks, Clinder.

Hi again, Councilmember.

Thank you to all the Councilmembers and guests.

I'm Matthew Richter.

I'm the Cultural Space Liaison in the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture.

I am also one of the people who's helping shepherd the launch of the Cultural Space Agency.

I'm actually the Interim Director now of the Cultural Space Agency as well.

The Cultural Space Agency, as I think everyone on the call knows, is a new public development authority launched by the City of Seattle this last year.

It is a values-based, mission-driven, cultural real estate development company.

It is a strategy for both community wealth building and anti-racism.

It uses the instrument of cultural space to build on both of those strategies, both of those initiatives.

I'm going to talk very specifically about a process that we recently went through for the creation of a slate of nominees.

to the Governing Council of the Space Agency.

When you hear Governing Council in your mind, when you hear Governing Council in your ears, I guess, you hear Board of Directors in your mind.

Governing Council is to a public development authority what a Board of Directors is to a typical non-profit organization, which is the form most people are more used to.

I'll talk about what typically happens in a public development authority.

In a typical PDA, city council gets to appoint unilaterally a certain percentage of the governing council members.

The mayor's office, likewise, gets unilateral placement of governing council members.

And then the governing council themselves come up with nominees for their own replacements for the remaining seats, typical of a nonprofit board of directors as well.

We wanted to ensure that the governance of the Cultural Space Agency was rooted in the communities that the organization was designed to serve and that the leadership emerged from those communities as well.

We're talking about communities that have been the most impacted by displacement, the communities that have been most impacted by the racialized aspects of displacement by institutional racism, and by the, the work that this organization is designed to address.

The city's been running a program called Build Artspace Equitably, or the BASE cohort.

It's a year-long cohort where we bring together about 20 folks every year.

Again, it's folks who've been most directly impacted by the racialized aspects of displacement and cultural displacement in Seattle.

And we work through a curriculum that's focused on this intersection of community development and commercial real estate development.

After finishing that year-long program, one is BASE certified, and one of the things that that now means for those folks who have been through the program is that they're eligible to serve in the constituency of the Space Agency.

So the constituency is sort of the central leadership and advisory group of the Cultural Space Agency, and one of the main things that they do is nominate everyone who sits ultimately on the Governing Council.

And so all of the nominees come from this group of community members, city council, mayor's office, anyone in the community is welcome to nominate anyone else to that process.

It's an open application process.

The application is open now.

It's open 24-7.

There are periodic reviews by the constituency to look at those applicants and decide who to move forward as nominees to the governing council.

The criteria that they apply are all listed here.

There's a sort of members must, a members should, and a members could section.

We're talking about how folks connect to the agency and its work in the members must.

How they connect to community and how we ensure that the work of the agency stays rooted in communities most impacted by the issues we face and by the work of the organization.

And then the members could is really about professional backgrounds that we seek for folks joining the agency.

The applications.

portal remained open for about three months.

We worked with community to make sure that folks knew about the opportunity and hosted a series of informational sessions and reached out.

I should say that for the last year, there's been a group of six community leaders from across Seattle who volunteered to serve as the interim governing council as this whole process was stood up.

So the organization had leadership, had governance over the course of the last year from the interim group.

Constituency nominated nine community members to join those six interim governing council members.

And the next slide shows the results of that process, who those nominees are.

These nominees then still went through the mayor's office and through this committee, CED, and then through full council for approvals.

And so it travels the same path, but the nominees are all generated by the constituency.

What you see there is the six interim governing council members in yellow highlights on the left, and I should point out that Vivian Phillips in the middle on the left in the headscarf, we are thanking her for her service.

She's retired and is the first person to step off the council from that interim group.

The remaining nine are the new governing council members who join the interim group, and there will be a second batch of nominees that will be presented towards the end of this year from the constituency again.

So, again, to community members who might be listening or to anyone on the call who wants to pass this opportunity on or nominate someone else, at culturalspace.agency, which is the URL of the organization, you can find the path to applying to be in the next round of the governing council.

And that's how that process ran and will continue to run.

And I believe I now hand off to Diana.

Hey, everybody.

Thanks so much, Matthew.

It's really great to be here with all of you.

I'm Diana Devorah Falchuk.

I use she, her pronouns, and I am the Creative Strategies Initiative Manager.

I'm going to share a position between Office of Arts and Culture and Office for Civil Rights.

And the work that we do in the Creative Strategies Initiative is using arts, culture, mindfulness, and embodiment to actually change how we do our work as government for the purpose of building racial equity and social justice.

And the project I'm gonna share about is The Shape of Trust.

We were here in 2019 sharing a little bit about that, and we've had another iteration and evolution that we're really excited about that we wanted to share.

So in 2017, ArtsSOCR and Seattle Department of Human Resources, with support from many other departments, came together to begin this partnership that we've called now The Shape of Trust.

And it's a multi-year project that roots government and organizational anti-racism work and the undeniable reality of our interdependence, our collective health, our creativity, and our drive to belong.

In 2019, we produced an original performance written and directed by playwright Sarah Porkalob based on stories from the women of color in the city's workforce.

Over 1,200 people saw the live free performance in three different packed shows.

at Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute, Act Theatre, and Benaroya Hall.

And our team was really proud to be recognized by the City Management Association with a Leadership Award for that part of the project.

And now, this very week, we are releasing the Shape of Trust Video Facilitation Guide, which is nearly 80 pages of resources, reflective questions, activity spotlights, frameworks, and tools and other supports that accompany the streaming video of the Shape of Trust performance.

The guide is designed to be used by experienced racial equity, social justice, and anti-racism facilitators to support individuals, teams, and organizations of all kinds seeking anti-racist frameworks, activities, and practices that strengthen the inherent ties between collective health, interdependence, belonging, racial equity, and social justice.

The Shape of Trust project emerged from over a decade of organizing for racial equity within the city of Seattle workforce.

And I think some of you have been involved in that workforce equity work for many years now, particularly that organizing led by black, indigenous, and people of color women, those who are most impacted by racism, sexism, and other intersecting forms of oppression.

And their stories reveal the patterns of pain and resilience struggle and strategy, disconnection, collaboration, leadership and change that are true and that we need to pay attention to.

And they show how it's real and what's possible depend on our institutional culture, the ways of being norms and practices that actually uphold our decision making and policy processes.

We either consciously work toward together creating a culture of equity and belonging that supports policies and procedures designed to build racial equity, racial justice, or reinforce consciously or unconsciously the culture that maintains the system of white supremacy in which we're all socialized, in which we all live.

So while the project has grown out of these experiences within government, its tools and resources are actually intentionally designed to be used by organizations and groups of many kinds to make changes that affect teams, that affect entire workplaces, and that ripple out to affect how we are in our engagement of and our work with the community.

The project contributors, designers, and facilitators include artists, cultural organizers, healers, and others who work in a variety of settings from government to grassroots community.

And the project components integrate arts, culture, mindfulness, and embodiment as vehicles for learning and as practices to support supervision, management, and all forms of decision-making, including policies, programs, and procedures.

Through a partnership that we have had for several years now with our Bodie project and their embodying, belonging, and co-liberation frame, the Shape of Trust anchors in a living systems approach, one that centers people of color and community-based birth-centered ways of being and knowing, not always included in traditional racial equity, social justice, and anti-racism work.

And works by artists from our city's civic art collection are used throughout the project.

We're really proud to share these past and current components of The Shape of Trust.

I look forward to updating you on its evolution and hope you'll check out the guide, which is being shared this very week.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you.

Hey, Diana, can I ask a question?

Yeah.

Is part of the intention or is that part of the possibility that this, I mean, I haven't looked through it yet.

I'm eager to get my hands on it.

Will this be used for our own city departments or initiatives or any of our internal work that the city should be doing?

Absolutely, yeah, that is the intention.

We don't have a specific plan.

There was going to be an HR forum that used it, but that has been postponed.

But so really, we're getting the resource out now and looking for opportunities for people who say, yeah, I'd love to use this in my department in these ways, or, you know, HR leadership team using it across the city.

Our project partners are the Workforce Equity Team at HR, and it's sponsored by WEPAC, the Workforce Equity Planning and Advisory Committee.

So I imagine those ideas will be forthcoming.

Great.

Good to know.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Great.

And we will wrap up our time today by looking at our data.

And I'm going to bring on Mai-Tuan Nguyen-Akbar.

Good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Mai-Tuan Nguyen-Akbar, and I'm Impact and Assessment Manager at the Office of Arts and Culture.

And I go by she, her pronouns.

I'm a qualitative and a quantitative researcher.

So I apologize if primarily what I'm focusing on in this particular movie trailer version of the larger picture is primarily quantitative information.

I'll have you put aside the table for a second because I want to step back and talk a little bit about how we've evolved our demographic data collection policy over the years.

And I just want to preface this by saying that demographics aren't going to tell the whole story about how we've gotten in terms of our racial, race and social justice work here at the Office of Arts and Cultures.

But it's one of the tools for us to continue to be monitoring, assessing, and being transparent about where our investments are going, especially towards communities most impacted by structural racism.

And I think the theme of this particular portion is alignment, alignment, alignment.

And so our, Racial categories are now office-wide more so aligned than they have been in the past.

We're using the same terminology and categories across teams and applications so that we can compare communities to themselves in terms of number of artists being supported, cultural organizations, events, festivals, so that we're doing an apples-to-apples comparison as well.

The taxonomy is consistent.

And I think that is a huge step in the right direction in terms of this body of work.

Just so that you're all aware on our applications, our forms, intake forms that are community facing, we require that race, gender, and place or geography are collected as required.

And then optionally, some of our programmatic work also incorporates questions around education, homeownership, rental status, housing, unsheltered housing status, languages other than English, and so on, just because sometimes we want a fuller picture of who we're able to support.

And just so that you all know, this is all voluntary information that's anonymously, aggregately shared, and it's based upon self-reported data.

Any information we get about students is from third parties from our Seattle Public Schools.

For instance from the Creative Advantage.

And so we aggregate this information by grantees public artists for instance teaching artists cultural organizations and we are evolving what it means to identify organizational demographics.

That's a whole new body of work for us but we're getting there.

But we also want to make sure that our staff and commissioners reflect the communities that we're trying to center when it comes to representational diversity.

So how is this information being used?

So if you're a part of a selection process, which is how we primarily rely upon making decisions about who gets awards and opportunities, So a panel of experts and jurors are presented with aggregate data about the communities that are reflected in the outcomes pool.

We're also using this information to inform our outreach, right?

How well are we doing this work?

And we're also using this information to inform our office-wide measures, how it informs our strategic work plan, and newer emergent work on organizational demographic.

So I've got three examples, but only one slide that shows those in applied practice.

So this table here shows our investments aggregated by racial categories.

And it's a mixture of individuals and organizations or groups.

Sometimes they're informal groups and teams or networks.

And you'll notice that One divergence we have is that we want to know about Middle Eastern, North African.

That's a departure from the 2020 census.

This information isn't provided for.

So this is our information that we coded last year based on the previous year's investments.

And it was a pretty labor-intensive process, which is why there is a bit of a lag time for this information being available.

but nevertheless it's a really important exercise that we've refined it and we're doing it now for 2020 and for 2021 there's just always a little bit of a delay in in the annual reporting but available upon request obviously and so we we know that we want to do better by most of our communities of color but especially we want to name that there could be some more support for certain groups that are not showing up in these receipts here.

I want to specifically flag Native Hawaiian Pacific Islanders communities, Samoan communities, Middle Eastern, North African communities.

Obviously, there can be a lot more support there, but the resources are what they are.

The second example and the third example I'll provide, and I'll just kind of briefly read off instead of showing you the actual data tables that are on my view, Has to do with the creative advantage the program that Tina my colleague here just talked about with the community arts partnership with Seattle Public Schools.

We do feel very confident knowing that our teaching artists are primarily BIPOC teaching artists.

They're the people who are teaching your young children arts education like visual arts performing arts theater all of these things.

And we want to know that young people are seeing themselves reflected in who is before them in the classroom.

So 12 out of 14 of the individuals were BIPOC teaching artists.

And if you include those who are part of cultural organizations, 15 out of 23 were BIPOC teams of artists.

We separated out the individuals from the organizations just to make a fair comparison.

and with the kind of questions that we pose.

So that's one of the ways, one of the many tools at our disposal to try to understand which communities are being served and which are not.

Obviously, we also have that information segmented by race.

I'm not gonna go into it too much, because I think I'm the last presenter here.

The same applies to other bodies of work in our office as well.

So public art, who is getting these commissions, and public art is a very unique field.

It's heavily majority white in the nation, and there's been many studies about representation in the field of public art.

But we know that our representation among BIPOC artists has doubled between 2019 and 2020. Opportunities have also increased, but we know that some of our representation is fairly consistent, even though opportunities have also increased.

So that's another way of knowing for us.

So that's kind of a really brief snapshot.

Obviously, the qualitative stories also really matter.

And place matters, gender representation matters.

For the purposes of this presentation here, I'm keeping it really targeted, but I'm also available to answer any questions that you might have.

And thank you for this opportunity today.

Thanks Mai-Tuan.

I think we really wanted to wrap up with the impact and assessment work because as you probably noticed from the first four presentations we do, the Office of Arts and Culture does a lot of varied work.

And so we've taken a lot of time over the last several years to really figure out how we can do sort of assessment work across the whole office so that we can present a slide to you like this that really demonstrates the investments across all of those different kinds of programs.

So this is really the result of several years of work of alignment internally and really gives us a good snapshot of where we are overall and where we can we can make those improvements that Mike was talking about.

Thank you so much to all of you.

I really appreciate having this, having the information and the work that went into creating this so that we really can have a better understanding of how we are allocating resources.

But also just want to take a minute to acknowledge the incredible work that the Office of Arts and Culture is doing across an array of issues and sectors in the city from from the base program and the cultural space PDA, you know, the economic development, real economic development work of the city to arts education, to workforce development, to, you know, our own internal policies, city policies and practices.

I think it's really important to acknowledge the role that the arts and artists and the creative sector play in that wide spread of things in the city and really how they really contribute to the health and well-being of our students, of our neighbors, and of the city as a whole.

So really want to thank all of you for the work you're doing and for helping us get a better understanding of the the breadth of the work that you do.

Colleagues, I'm going to open it up if there are any questions for our folks here about the work that they're doing.

I do not see any hands, so I'm going to thank all of you for being here, and again, just really appreciate all that you're doing and look forward to seeing that facilitation guide and how that's implemented as well.

Thanks, Council Member.

We'll get that right over to you.

Thank you.

Have a good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you.

Okay, we are going to move on.

We've got two items left on the agenda.

So, Darzell, will you please read item, where are we, item seven into the record?

Agenda item seven, Council Bill 120162, an ordinance establishing a new 15th Avenue East business improvement area levying special assessments upon owners of commercial property, multifamily residential property, and mixed-use property within the area, providing for the deposit of revenues in a special account and expenditures therefrom, providing for a collection of and penalties for delinquencies, providing for the establishment of a BIA advisory board, providing for an implementation agreement with the program manager, and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

And I'll be sure next time to ask you to read the short title so you don't have to go through all of that.

Colleagues, this is the bill, as you know, that we discussed in the last committee meeting on September 8th.

We heard from the proponents of the BIA and had a public hearing on September 8th as well.

At that time, I indicated that I'd be working on an amendment to clarify some of the programs, especially as they relate to trying to preserve small business and ensure that commercial tenants are included on the board.

So I have asked central staff to craft an amendment, and then we took it to law, and there was one minor change they suggested.

So I'm going to hand it to Yolanda from Council Central staff.

to describe the changes on the amendment.

Right.

Yolanda Ho, Council Central staff.

And so Amendment 1, which Version 1 is attached to the agenda, but I circulated this morning Version 1A, which had a minor technical clarifying change.

But the intent is that Amendment one would amend program areas to add economic development activities that are allowed as per state statute towards efforts to prevent small businesses from being displaced and would also require that at least two of the BIA advisory board members be business tenants subject to a triple net lease.

So just the difference between version 1 and 1A for clarity is that the program activities to prevent small businesses from being displaced should fall within the allowed uses of BIA assessment revenues as described by the state statute.

But still, the intent remains the same.

Thank you, Yolanda.

Colleagues, are there any questions about the amendment?

I wanted to make sure everybody had a chance to hear from Yolanda.

Thank you again.

OK, so again, just to try to clarify that the intent is there to address economic development, to try to encourage preservation of small business, but wanting to keep in line with what the state requires.

So if there are no questions, then I am going to move to adopt the proposed Amendment 1A, that was recently distributed.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend adoption of Amendment 1A.

Any comments?

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of the amendment?

Councilmember Juarez?

Aye.

Councilmember Lewis?

Yes.

Councilmember Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Sawant?

Yes.

And Chair Morales?

Yes.

That's five in favor, none opposed.

The motion carries and the amendment is adopted.

So we now have the amended bill before the committee.

Are there any further comments about the bill to create a 15th Avenue business improvement area?

I do not see any hands going up.

Okay, in that case, council members, I'm going to move that the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 120180 as amended.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill as amended.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill?

Council Member Juarez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Sawant?

Yes.

Chair Morales?

Yes.

That's five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you, colleagues.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation that the bill pass as amended will be sent to the September 27th City Council meeting.

Okay, last item for us is item number eight.

Will you please read, Darzel, the short title of item eight into the record?

In the item eight, Council Bill 120180, an ordinance relating to human rights, including protections against discrimination based on citizenship and immigration status, adding a definition of race for certain purposes, and amending the various sections of the Seattle Municipal Code for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, I am going to hand this over to Asha.

As I understand it, we do have a little bit more work to do on this bill, so we will not be voting on it.

But I did want Asha to give us the context for this so that we can be preparing for a December vote once our budget process is over.

Asha, please go ahead.

This is Asha Venkatraman on your Council Central staff.

So as Council Member Morales mentioned, this is Council Bill 120180, and it's a bill that is adding several protected classes that were added to the Washington Law Against Discrimination in 2020 to Seattle's Municipal Code.

So currently, the Office for Civil Rights enforces against violations of the law protecting a variety of classes.

And so Seattle's protected classes are much more numerous than what is in state protection.

But that allows the Office for Civil Rights to enforce a variety of a variety of violations.

So in 2020, the state legislature passed several bills, both House Bill 2602 and Engrossed Senate Bill 5165 to amend the Washington law against discrimination.

And those bills added in protections based on citizenship and immigration status, as well as including a definition of race specifically to include protected hairstyles.

The last piece of state legislation was to allow an exemption from those laws when other laws require discrimination based on things like citizenship or immigration status.

And so the Washington Law Against Discrimination, including those protections, are enforced at the state level by the Washington State Human Rights Commission.

So this legislation, it would incorporate those protected classes and that definition of race into the Seattle Municipal Code, and specifically into Titles 3 and 14, which are the titles that the Office for Civil Rights, that give the Office for Civil Rights jurisdiction and describe their jurisdiction to enforce these protections in the areas of housing, employment, public accommodations, and contracting.

And so the addition of these protected classes to the city's code will allow the Office for Civil Rights to enforce against violations.

If we weren't adding, if the council doesn't pass this bill and end up adding these protected classes to the Seattle Code, that leaves only the state Human Rights Commission to be enforcing violations of the Washington law against discrimination.

Well, I'll pause here in case there are any questions about the content of the bill itself, and then I can move into the piece around any fiscal considerations.

Colleagues, any questions up to this point?

I do have some questions about the considerations, but please go ahead, Asha.

OK.

So one of the things I noted in the memo is whether council wants to consider adding some funds to the Office for Civil Rights to be able to do education and outreach.

And so some of the information mentioned in the memo just describes how when the council has previously passed legislation that creates new protections that the Office for Civil Rights is going to enforce, it has adopted some one-time outreach and education funds for the Office of Civil Rights to update materials, to do some education in the community so that people know that they have rights.

So because of the way enforcement works at the Office for Civil Rights, it's a complaints-based system.

And so people essentially need to know their rights to be able to exercise them.

And so the outreach and education piece can be important.

And so the memo just highlights that it's something for the council to consider during the budget process for the 2022 budget to provide, for example, something like $50,000 to do one-time outreach and education.

Currently, it's not really clear what the caseload increase is going to be like for the enforcement division, and so it doesn't necessarily make sense to add enforcement staff at this point.

But if it turns out that this protection, in combination with the other protections that the council has passed over several years, increases an enforcement workload, the council may want to consider at some future point adding enforcement staff as well.

So I'll pause at that point for questions on this piece.

Yeah, I have some questions about that, Asha.

So as you said, there are, I think, currently 18 protected classes.

We're now considering adding, I don't know if this counts as two or three more.

And I do know that every time we add a new protected class, it does increase the work for the folks at OCR.

And so what I'm trying to understand is if we have any sense of the, I mean, I know you said we don't know yet what the impact will be, the degree to the impact, but do we have a sense of what the typical impact is when we add a protected class for enforcement and for investigation when there is more things for the folks over there to be doing?

Excuse me, yes, so in general, for every increase in a protected class, it does add investigations, it does add enforcing cases.

The difficult part to figure out is at what point it requires a whole new person.

And so some of the analysis that we'll do during at least the budget process, we'll look at what things like enforcement backlogs are and see if those have increased over what the average is over the past couple years.

And it'll take a look at things like what the caseload is for enforcement staff and if that is something that is, has been increasing to something that's an untenable load or it stayed relatively constant.

And so that's information that we'll get when the budget comes in on Monday through some of the pre-budget questions that we typically ask from year to year about that piece.

So I will have more information about that piece of it once the answers to those questions come in next week.

Great, and then this is probably a bigger discussion for offline, but I am interested to know, you know, given that when we do something like this, we do need to also include funds for education and outreach, particularly in different languages, so people are aware that they have this new protection.

And given that this is currently a complaint-based system, I would be interested in understanding a little bit better what an alternative is to a complaint-based system.

And if there's anything like that now at the city level, and if that's something we might want to think about moving toward at some date.

Absolutely.

The one that comes to mind off the top of my head is the Office of Labor Standards, which can do things like, I believe they're called company-wide investigations.

And so they initiate investigations into companies based on information they have or based on some testing.

And so that's not the model that the Office for Civil Rights currently has, but we can certainly discuss what it might require to either add in that kind of department-initiated investigation and what kind of resources it would take to do that.

Thank you.

Colleagues, anyone else have something for Asha at this point?

Not seeing anything.

Okay, please go ahead.

Okay, the last piece I'll just mention is, as Councilmember Morales mentioned, this bill in its current form does cover Titles 3 and 14, which are the sections that the Office for Civil Rights has jurisdiction over, but in reviewing the bill, It came up that there are other places in the code where we protect a variety of protected classes against discrimination.

And so the thought is to do a comprehensive review of the code to make sure that we add these protections in.

in the other locations in the code in which it's appropriate so that the protections are consistent throughout the municipal code.

And so because it's likely that that will require a title change to the bill, I will be working with the city attorney's office to identify the other locations within the bill where these protected classes are mentioned and then draft a bill that appropriately adds these new protected classes wherever it's applicable and appropriate to add them.

And given that the budget process is coming up, that's more likely than not going to be something that will be ready for discussion in December rather than sooner than that.

Right.

We're about to get a little busy.

OK, very good.

Thank you so much, Asha.

Colleagues, are there any questions about what we've discussed and why we will not be voting on this bill today?

OK.

Very good.

Thank you very much, Asha and Yolanda from central staff.

If there are no comments or questions about this, then I believe we have gone through our agenda.

So, colleagues, I want to thank all of you for being here.

Thanks to the central staff, to our IT team, and thanks to our Office of Arts and Culture and the Office of Planning and Community Development folks for being here as well.

And to Marta Itawu from the Office of Civil Rights for presenting our reappointments to the Women's Commission.

As I said, the things that passed out today will be on the full council agenda for Monday, September 27th.

This concludes the September 21st meeting of the Community Economic Development Committee.

It is 3.53.

Council Member Juarez, we're getting you out seven minutes early.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

We are adjourned.

Thank you very much, everyone.