Seattle City Council Briefing 5/4/2020

briefing meeting will come to order.

The time is 9.35 a.m.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Sawant?

Here.

Council Member Strauss?

Present.

Council Member Herbold?

Here.

Council Member...

Thank you.

Council Member Juarez?

Here.

Council Member Lewis?

Present.

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Present.

Council Member Peterson.

Here.

Council President Gonzalez.

Here.

Nine present.

Thank you so much.

Council members, the Council rules are silent on allowing electronic participation at Council briefing meetings.

To continue participating remotely, I'm going to move to suspend the Council rules through May 31, 2020, to allow this meeting to occur while participating through electronic means.

Of course, this is in reaction to the recent announcement by Governor Inslee extending his stay home, stay healthy order for the state of Washington.

And so to be consistent with that and to be consistent with Mayor Durkan's communication related to the same issue and extending telecommute opportunities and telework opportunities for all city of Seattle workers, including those in the legislative department through May 31st, 2020. I'm now also extending those policies through this rule suspension.

So if there's no objection, the council rules will be suspended to allow electronic participation at council briefing meetings through May 31st, 2020. Hearing no objection, the council rules are suspended and council briefing meetings will be held with council members participating electronically through May 31st, 2020. Thank you, colleagues.

If there is no objection, the minutes of April 27th, 2020 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

Again, quickly moving to President's report.

I'll make it really short, consistent with the memo I sent out yesterday.

The Legislative Department's teleworking practice has been extended until May 31st, 2020. The timeline is compatible with both the governor's stay home, stay healthy proclamation and the mayor's teleworking policy for executive departments.

If any of you have any questions or concerns regarding this ongoing practice, you can let me know.

We can't expect additional detailed updates.

I think we have a lot of work to do as we move forward about how we hope to be able to look at and start framing potential return to city hall to start thinking through a plan for the need to potentially reopen council chambers and also for the need to address the potential return of some individuals to the second and third floor of the legislative department.

So more to come on that.

There's been no decisions.

I want to make sure that I engage with all the folks that need to be engaged with before we make decisions about formalizing any sort of reentry to work opportunities and look forward to ongoing conversations with you all and with our operational staff around how to best accomplish that in a way that is consistent with ongoing public health recommendations in this space.

So that is the conclusion of my president's report.

Happy to take any questions about that.

We are going to move right into preview of today's City Council actions and work on regional committees.

I'm going to call on all Councilmembers as established by the rotated roll call for City Council meetings.

So first, we'll hear from Councilmember Sawant, then Strauss, Herbold, Juarez, Lewis, Morales, Mosqueva, Peterson, and then I'll conclude the agenda discussion.

I'm hoping we can get through today's presentation as quickly as possible, because I know that there are some lingering legislative items that need to happen between now and noon.

So I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to Council Member Sawant for your report.

The floor is yours.

Thank you, President Gonzalez and good morning, everybody.

There are no items on the city council agenda, sustainability and renters rights committee on Friday, May 1st, which is International Workers Day, May Day, my office.

community organizations and activists and a very successful socially distanced car, caravan, and bicycle protest to support the tax Amazon legislation and the tax Amazon movement that we have brought forward.

I would really encourage council members to watch the video of the demonstration that we live streamed during the event.

And you can also find it on my council office's YouTube channel, Facebook page.

The speakers who spoke at the rallies, online rallies, talked about why the Amazon tax is so necessary for our communities, not only to provide cash assistance to workers, but to establish a public jobs program, to hire tens of thousands of people to build affordable homes, and to carry out Green New Deal, building retrofits and other programs.

And also, I think the paramount point that was made by speakers is that given the cities and states' dubious distinction of the nation's regressive tax system, not only is it unjust that working people have shouldered the burden of raising public revenues, but now we are going to face an even brutal math question, which is that, you know, when we have widespread joblessness, as we have already seen, and we're, you know, seeing projections are that we're heading into a deep recession with massive joblessness.

For a regressive tax system that implies a plummeting of public revenues, that's an inevitable mathematical consequence.

And so any refusal from the political establishment to tax big business and the wealthy will automatically imply austerity for working people because it will mean budget shortfalls and it will mean budget cuts unless we shore up public revenues and in fact increase public revenues.

And I was really struck by how many people participated.

I saw many new faces and the incredible energy in the demonstration.

And at the same time, overwhelmingly, the serious approach to maintain social distancing to keep communities safe.

It was a good example of how we can have democratically organized protest actions, but in a safe way.

Just last point, we're also beginning in the movement to organize district-based virtual town halls.

that community organizers are leading from each council district.

And I know that UAW 4121 and others have invited council members Peterson and Lewis for a district four and district seven town hall, community town hall tomorrow at five, sorry, May 5th at 6 p.m.

And I believe at large council members Gonzalez and Mesquita have also been invited.

So I would urge council members to attend to hear from working class constituents as to why this tax is important.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant for that report.

Any questions or comments on Council Member Sawant's report?

Okay, hearing and seeing none, we'll go ahead and move through the rest of the list here.

So next up is Council Member Strauss.

The floor is yours.

Yes, good morning and my apologies for the technical difficulties.

I'm participating by phone while when a computer audio is not working as well.

There are zero items from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on the agenda and there are zero items from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on the introduction and referral calendar.

I held another round of weekly office hours over the phone this last week and have held meetings spoken with or scheduled with everyone who has requested a constituent meeting this year.

We've also, this last week, made changes on how we respond to emails and phone calls we receive so that we are proactively offering them a meeting with me.

As you may remember from last week, my staff worked with small businesses, groups, other interested parties, and all of the council offices on a letter to state and federal officials regarding the ways which those levels of government can step up to support our local establishments.

I did have one question for Council Member Peterson that I'll follow up with after this call.

And then we will send that letter around again, and we look forward to bringing that to full council for signature this afternoon.

My office continues to provide direct support and guidance to small businesses and nonprofits on how to best navigate the existing support programs that are involved.

Another update from the Ballard Commons Park.

As of this weekend, there was notice posted for an encampment removal.

This notice was posted less than the 72 hours.

The guidance about encampment removals requires that notices provided no fewer than 72 hours or no more than seven days before the encampment removal.

This occurred within 48 hours of the encampment removal that just occurred.

Encampment removals that push people around our community without addressing their underlying situation is not in line with my values.

My calls for urgency and resources, shelter, housing, and management over the last several weeks and before the COVID pandemic began are because I also understand the need of adjacent residents to have relief from living next to an unmanaged encampment.

We need to manage this public space, and we had an initial success with increased police presence, increased access to hygiene, and a cleaner and better maintained park.

These are all the steps we need to take as we refer people into shelter.

The navigation had moved 17 people out of the park into 24-7 shelter as of last Wednesday.

We need to manage this public space, and we had initial success with this police presence, access to hygiene, and a better maintained park.

Where we failed is providing law enforcement the tools they need to address and intervene in problematic and predatory behavior as we deploy the necessary resources to stabilize the people who are trying to get off the streets.

Again on Saturday May 2nd, a notice was distributed indicating an encampment removal would occur this morning, Monday, May 4th at 9 a.m.

And this did not meet the notice requirements of providing notice no fewer than 72 hours or more than seven days for an encampment removal.

Encampment removals were stopped in the 11th week of this year due to the pandemic.

In the first 10 weeks of this year, there were seven encampment removals within a half mile of Ballard Commons Park.

Simply put, this means that every week we push people from one place to another without addressing their underlying issues.

And this is not in line with my values.

Pushing people from one place to another into our green spaces and our industrial areas and other residents' front yards only exacerbates the problem we are trying to address and does not provide meaningful interventions.

I can guarantee that by the end of this conversation, there will be more tents on Shellshall Avenue, on Seaview Avenue, and in our green spaces.

Again, we need to use strategies that do not require us to come back week after week to push people around.

Because pushing people from one place to another is, again, not in line with my values, or provides a meaningful intervention into the underlying issues people are facing and our community is facing.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss for that report and those are really important words.

Are there any comments or questions for Councilmember Strauss?

I see a couple hands going up.

I also want to add something, but I will wait in queue.

I'm going to allow my colleagues to go first.

So Councilmember Herbold, followed by Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Herbold, the floor is yours.

Thank you so much.

I also understand Council Member Strauss, thank you, first of all, for that update in your engagement on the issue and letting us know where you stand.

I've also heard over the weekend that prior to this action on behalf of the city to begin the steps necessary to undertake an encampment removal, that prior to that decision, there was an agreement both on the part of COLEAD, which is the LEAD program that is focused on COVID-19 responses, and the community that they were going to engage the residents of the encampment.

And it actually have secured significant resources to house people as well as their state-of-the-art case management services.

What can you tell us about that?

I don't know where that conversation stands with other parts of our city government.

What I can say is that we need to provide solutions at the scale of the problem that we're facing.

And that means bringing people inside with low or no barrier shelter that is connected with case management.

If that means, and I have called previous this to this for the ability to bring people into hotel rooms and provide them case management.

And this I believe is the solution that we should be taking.

I believe that prior to the avail themselves and allow the community to avail itself of the services of COLE to help the individuals.

And now because of the encampment removal decision, that agreement is no longer in place and those services will not be provided to this cohort of individuals.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold, for those questions, really important line of inquiry.

Council Member Lewis, I'm gonna go ahead and hand it over to you.

Thank you so much, Madam President, and thank you, Council Member Strauss and Council Member Herbold for your comments.

So I did send an email this morning in advance of briefing, making inquiries to the mayor's office on some of the details of this removal.

I have received some information that I just wanted to relay to inform the conversation.

First, that everybody who's been contacted at Ballard Commons has been given an offer of shelter in an enhanced shelter, so that's the first thing that I wanted to relay.

There was no announcement on whether this represents a broader shift from the stated parameters of where the navigation team stands at this time.

But I'm going to continue to make inquiries.

Obviously, my most urgent inquiry was, what's the nature of shelter that is being offered to people being removed?

I've been assured that there is capacity for 100% offers of folks at Ballard Commons for enhanced shelter.

But of course, throughout today, I'm going to continue to follow up to get more information.

Um, I, uh, I learned about this removal for the first time via, um, via Twitter.

So, uh, I think we're all in a place where we are, um, working to, um, to catch up to it.

I can say that I did personally visit, um, the Ballard Commons a couple of weeks ago.

Um, that particular encampment was, um, in a really, uh, um, difficult state in terms of posing public health challenges to the rest of the neighborhood.

So some kind of intervention there was certainly warranted.

I have had similar conversations to what Council Member Herbold alluded to with the co-lead program and have been talking extensively with Lisa Dugard.

That's just to say that I think that we have to really revisit some of the conversations that we've been having as a council.

I know that Councilmember Mosqueda, Councilmember Herbold, Councilmember Strauss and I have been talking about the possible expanded use of hotel rooms, casework, other kinds of strategies to reduce the ever-increasing number of on sanctioning encampments throughout the city and get people inside, get people services, get people in a place where they can be living with dignity and actually practicing the public health guidelines that they have been told to follow from the governor and from the city.

So I'm gonna work today to get more information on this removal, the top line, that I have gotten so far is there are universal offers of shelter being made, so I did just want to relay that.

And as I get more information, I will certainly circulate and share to council colleagues.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis, for that additional information.

Colleagues, anyone else have any questions or comments on the issue that was flagged by Councilmember Strauss?

Councilmember Solano?

Thank you.

I appreciate Councilmember Strauss mentioning this in briefing.

I know that Councilmember Strauss talked about hotel rooms and other solutions which of course all of which I would strongly support based on the track record of my Council office.

I also think though that if we're talking about honestly talking about We cannot really address this problem, one, without the Council taking a strong position against sweeps of our homeless neighbors as a whole.

But most importantly, without addressing the need for affordable housing, rent-controlled, publicly-owned affordable housing at the scale of the problem that we face.

And that's why I think a lot of these questions that are coming up are going to converge on the question of to make that funding available for affordable housing and other services.

was I just have a couple of questions and I want to see if you've posed these questions or if you have any additional information around these particular points.

So the Human Services Department in a post dated March 17th, 2020 on their website, You know, went through the process of providing an update on what the city's efforts would be around expanding shelter, hygiene, and outreach to individuals experiencing homelessness.

specifically in the context of the coronavirus disease.

So I think it's really important for us to root the comments that you have made, Council Member Strauss, not just in the sort of ordinary, you know, day-to-day context, but the reality is, is that this sweep is being done during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Human Services Department on their website made representations to us and to the general public about how they would be approaching unsanctioned encampments in the specific context of COVID-19 and this pandemic.

And in that context, they say two things, and I'm gonna read directly from the website, because I think it's important.

They say, first, the navigation team, along with Seattle Parks and Recreation, Seattle Police Department, and other city partners, will continue to pause 72-hour removals and will pause obstruction operations to prioritize COVID-19 outreach.

The team will continue to remove waste, garbage, and debris from unmanaged encampments to reduce public health risks in unmanaged encampments.

The Post continues to say, no such removals will occur during the public health emergency unless, unless needed for an extreme circumstance that presents a significant barrier to accessibility of city streets and sidewalks and is an extraordinary public safety hazard that puts people living unsheltered or others at risk.

Individuals in all of these cases will be offered shelter.

So I guess my question is, and I heard from Council Member Lewis, that the executive is making a representation that 100% of the individuals at Ballard Commons Park have been offered shelter.

So perhaps if we're looking at these, is factors or criteria being met, that one, their claiming has been met.

But do you have any information, Council Member Strauss, around what efforts the navigation team made to, quote, continue to remove waste, garbage, and debris from unmanaged encampments to reduce public health risks in unmanaged encampments at Ballard Commons Park?

That's my first question.

Second, do you have any information from the executive about what set of facts they are claiming that rise to the occasion of saying that this is an extreme circumstance that allows them to sort of deviate from their stated policy of no removals in this period of time.

Sort of what facts have they given you that this has risen to the case of an extreme circumstance that presents a significant barrier to accessibility of streets and sidewalks And that is an extraordinary public safety hazard that puts people living unsheltered or others at risk.

Thank you, Council President.

What I can say and what I said earlier in my comments is that this could have really been a success story for the navigation team.

Because for the last 10 days, they have provided direct referrals into shelter.

And as of last Wednesday, there were 17 people referred into 24-7 shelter.

This was inclusive of doing debris removal, sanitation, removing, servicing the trash cans and the garbage at a higher rate.

And so I wanna frame this as a month ago when we began this conversation about Ballard Commons Park, the hepatitis A spike, and what is occurring across our city, that the situation at Ballard Commons Park was untenable.

And with the city's resources coming in to address that sanitation, getting people inside, and increased police presence, we were able to make a marked difference.

And the navigation team in its best role is set up with the resources it needs, which is access to shelter and the ability to refer people into shelter.

I do not have, as you requested, facts regarding the extreme circumstance.

What I can say is that we also have not provided our law enforcement the tools that they need to be successful in this situation, because we need law enforcement to be a partner in our diversion programs so that people are able to walk through the steps that they need to do to intervene and provide them the support and the resources they need to have success.

And there is a law enforcement aspect to that.

And we need to have programs that tie our law enforcement with with our diversion programs, and that's where we failed in this situation.

So I think, you know, I appreciate that additional information, and I guess what I'm concerned about is that we have the multidisciplinary administrative rules around encampments that exist during normal times, which I think are officially over and have been for a while.

And we have now seen a policy put out, a shift in policy put out by the Human Services Department that modifies that original policy to require something more extraordinary than what we normally see in some unsanctioned encampments, whether it's Ballard Common Parks or anywhere else.

I guess I'm concerned that based on the information that you have shared and the information that Councilmember Lewis has shared so far, I have questions about whether there was compliance with the by human services department with the newly stated policy that they claim is now in place.

And I think as a city council, we are charged primarily with the role of oversight and policy direction.

And if there has been noncompliance with a stated policy, then I think it's incumbent upon us to hold the executive accountable to the policy they claim to have in place.

And the consequences here are severe, as you've articulated.

The reason we have the multidisciplinary administrative rules around unsanctioned encampments is in order to strike a balance between people's constitutional right to exist in an environment where they don't have appropriate shelter.

and balance that out with some of the needs of those in the surrounding community.

And those are important constitutional principles that we have to uphold.

And if there has been an issue with that, as it relates to either this encampment at Ballard Commons Park or anywhere else in the city, then I think it's important that we put our finger on the pulse of that and begin to dig in on how to correct course so that we are funding and supporting the use of more appropriate diversion tools that will actually address the needs of the people who are experiencing homelessness in these unsanctioned and unmanaged encampments.

I agree and I share your concerns.

Thank you, Council President.

Council Member Lewis, I see that you have raised your hand.

Thank you, Council President.

And to be clear, a lot of the same inquiries that you just articulated and that you posed to Council Member Strauss, I've formally written those questions to the executive to try to get those answers.

And once I do, I will certainly relay them to the rest of the Council.

I mean, I can just share anecdotally from having gone to Ballard Commons Park, probably at the peak of the situation there prior to the initial 17 offers of shelter that Council Member Strauss alluded to earlier.

I don't know that I don't know that it would be that difficult for the executive to have made a determination of an extraordinary circumstance based on what I saw, but I do want to learn more about what that process is going to be like, how those determinations are going to be made, and then also how the council and other stakeholders are going to be informed when those decisions are made.

I will make sure that the council is duly apprised of that and we can assess where to go from there.

surrounding neighborhood.

I think those concerns are real and have been longstanding.

And so I'm not, my comments aren't designed to sort of negate the reality of what the environment looks like at Ballard Commons Park.

I am very familiar with what it looks like.

I get it.

I understand it.

I see it.

My bigger concern is that if the human services department is making a commitment to quote, continue to remove waste, garbage and debris from unmanaged encampments to reduce public health risks in unmanaged encampments.

Was that, was that not done to the level that it should have been done in order to avoid disruption and spreading of this encampment during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is, which is, which is, you know, in even more extreme circumstance than, than in a non-pandemic setting.

And that's my concern, is did HSD and others fulfill their obligation to do sort of that hygiene work at the level that they needed to be doing it as they saw the conditions evolving in a way that we could say was done in good faith to avoid the necessity and the need to post the notice that they just posted.

appreciate that.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold.

Super quick.

This may have been mentioned, I got bounced off the call or I bounced myself off the call.

But I also want to add that the CDC has issued guidance about this particular topic of how local government should be handling on sanctioned encampments, and the CDC guidance is that encampments should not be moved during the coronavirus crisis to keep everyone healthy.

So it's not just our own department's policy that we're asking about whether or not there is fidelity and adherence to, but it's also the CDC guidance that I think is really important to center our inquiry on.

That's a great point.

And again, I think that, um, I think it's important for the general public and particularly for, uh, constituents in district six to hear from us that we, we, this isn't an issue of us not understanding what the conditions are at Ballard Commons Park.

It's a matter of figuring out what are the best tools to implement during the COVID-19 crisis to make sure that we are not exacerbating those public health conditions by virtue of engaging in a removal when CDC and our own HSD department is saying.

we're going to put a pause on these because we need to really address the dangers of coronavirus that may exist at those particular sites.

So I appreciate that fine point.

So I've gotten a flag that Council Member Morales has a question.

So Council Member Morales, the floor is yours.

I apologize, you're not on video today, so I couldn't see you raise your hand, so I want to call on you now to ask your question, please.

Thank you.

Yeah, we were having some technical difficulties this morning as well.

So I want to thank Councilmember Strauss for doing his best to deal with this situation.

You know, I think we've all been struggling for quite a long time to figure out how to deal with the fact that encampment removals are not a long-term solution to dealing with this crisis, with the homelessness crisis and with the after effects for the folks who are actually being moved.

As Councilmember Herbold said, the CDC weeks ago issued their statement saying that this is not a good strategy, that it actually increases exposure, the risk of exposure for people.

I think the challenge with the mayor's policy is that it isn't enforceable.

an administrative decision and that's why our office has been working on legislation to really try to deal with how these encampments, encampment removals occur and be very prescriptive about how, you know, what constitutes an extreme risk and a real legitimate reason for why folks might be moved So we are hoping to have that legislation ready soon so that we can actually make a permanent policy what the mayor has proposed through her administrative process.

And my hope is that we'll have something in the next week or so that we can move forward.

Thank you.

Okay, any other questions or comments for Councilmember Strauss from either those on the phone or those on video?

Okay, so hearing nothing, no further questions.

I have a question.

For the other Councilmembers that have received any feedback, we often measure whether or not somebody has been referred to shelter services.

Do we have any confirmation on how many individuals actually were admitted into shelter services?

And whether or not we know what happened to the rest of those?

So I saw Council Member Strauss raise his hand first, and then Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

The data that I have is dated of last Wednesday, because the navigation team, again, was out there referring people into shelter.

As of last Wednesday, 17 people had been placed in shelter at both Lakefront and South Lake Union.

I do not have updated information since that time.

Councilmember Lewis anything to add?

Right I would just add Councilmember Mosqueda that my understanding is that like the removal itself is occurring pretty much like right now I think it started at 9 a.m.

this morning so that the final data and information on that should be available I would expect I would imagine early this week and that's another one of my that I've sent along to the executive.

So once I get that information, I'll relay it out.

Great.

Thank you for that, Council Member Lewis, Strauss, and Mosqueda for that additional information.

Any other questions or comments before we move forward?

Okay, looks like we are ready to continue through Councilmember reports.

So next up is Councilmember Herbold.

Please, the floor is yours.

Thank you.

The Public Safety and Human Services Committee has no items on the full Council agenda today, nor is the committee meeting.

There are three bills that I am sponsoring, and I know Councilmember Juarez will have additional information to share because she is also co-sponsoring those bills.

The bills on the full council agenda today that I'm sponsoring are Council Bill 119780, 119781, and 119782. Those three bills are related to the work associated with Fire Station 31, a replacement for Fire Station 31. Again, there are three bills.

The first bill authorizes a lease for the temporary location of Fire station 31 to a parking lot across the street at Epic Life Church.

The second bill authorizes FAS to purchase property for the permanent relocation of Fire Station 31. And the third bill does a number of things.

It creates a limited tax general obligation bond fund.

And then it also authorizes an inner fund loan to place into that fund.

The inner fund loan is 8.1 million dollars and it comes again it's a loan from the construction and inspections fund and will be paid back at a later date by a by an LTGO bond.

Those again those three bills are considered necessary and routine, and Councilmember Juarez will be talking about them shortly and sharing some support that we have received from local 27, and specifically related to the that we are not going to be able to do that because of the crisis necessity associated with the conditions at fire station 31. Other items that came up last week for me, I chaired the watershed resource inventory area 9 meeting.

I recently become a co-chair of that regional committee.

virtual meetings with constituents from 2 to 6 o'clock.

And as far as items that I want to talk about coming up, well actually these are more last week items.

I'm really happy to announce that the West Seattle Farmers Market reopened last week using social distancing protocols that were The mayor's office, nearly 1,000 people attended the Sunday farmer's market.

Also, last week, participated with councilmember Peterson on our biweekly client group meeting.

with Seattle Department of Transportation about the West Seattle Bridge.

And then also, late last week, I sent a letter to Washington State Ferries requesting that they consider directing some of the traffic between Vashon and or Southworth to downtown Seattle and consider trips from Fauntleroy to downtown.

I recognize that accommodating this request would not be simple given the shortage of slippage space at Coleman Dock.

But given that the bridge may not reopen, it's really important to consider operations or options that have not been deemed feasible before.

We know that during previous years, in 1981, 1993, and 2002, eastbound ferry traffic was diverted to downtown instead of going to Font Le Roy on a temporary basis.

So again, there will be probably over the next couple weeks a series of requests to various jurisdictions who have the ability to help West Seattleites in identifying new transit needs to help to mitigate the impacts of having the bridge closed, and you'll be hearing more from me on my efforts there.

So thank you.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Herbold.

Any questions or comments on Councilmember Herbold's report?

Okay, hearing and seeing none, we'll go ahead and move through the roll call.

Next up will be Councilmember Juarez.

The floor is yours.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Okay, and thank you for being so patient with me earlier last week.

I'm learning to use my mute button better, I apologize.

There are three items related to emergency services for today's council agenda.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold for going over the specifics, items four, five, and six that relate to Fire Station 31, the replacement project up in the north end.

and that would be located at 113th and Meridian.

We really have been working closely and we have been for the last years, I'd say, with FAS and more recently with Mr. Goins and Chief Scoggins regarding the replacement fire station, Fire Station 31. You should have in front of you, we just sent, went out this morning, a letter from Kenny Stewart, President of Firefighter Union IAFF Local 27. It should be a letter that you have that outlines the history of Fire Station 31. the health and safety and the protection of the people.

It's a long history, and I think Kenny did a good job of outlining it for my colleagues and certainly for the public.

So I'll give you an opportunity to look at that, and if there's any questions, we can discuss them this afternoon.

In regards to park and rec, a park and recreation, the Parks Weekly Report is still being collected for last week, and once it's complete, I will make sure, like I did last week, to send the updates to my colleagues.

This has been really important for us.

I really want to thank the superintendent, Aguirre, and Paula, working closely with Nagin in our office.

We've been in contact with them once, twice a week on just about everything regarding parks, opening safe streets, and getting their data distancing in their collection and information of what parks are used the most and how they're using that data to model what parks can be open and how we implement more programs has been really valuable.

So I want to thank the superintendent for that.

So in regarding, this may seem I'm not the chair of transportation, but I think Mr. Councilor Peterson can help me out on this one as well.

We've been working closely with SDOT Parks in Seattle Greenways on the Stay Healthy Streets.

As you know, the Seattle Department of Transportation will open 11 more miles of Stay Healthy Streets.

And the new ones are Lake City, Aurora-Licton Springs, Ballard, Delridge Highland Park communities, will be able to access essential services and more space for safe recreation.

These locations should be open by the end of this week, and the program will be open 24-7 until further notice.

I'm going to loop back to that in a minute.

I want to talk quickly about a program that was successful on Capitol Hill that we replicated up in the north end.

A big shout out to Chris Leperson, formerly of Lake City Future First, who is now the project manager at Build Lake City Together, along with our friends at Children's Home Society, North Helpline, Sound Generations, and many community organizations, they started the Food is Love Project.

And it was very successful in Capitol Hill.

And so now we are doing this in the North End, and donations are made to the Food is Love Project to pay local restaurants to prepare meals that are delivered.

And these meals are delivered by build Lake City together, volunteers to over 30 families in need in Lake City and Northgate.

These are families where we know they have free and reduced lunch.

And we've been out there, we've taken pictures, it's amazing.

We basically have all the rest, many, many small businesses and restaurants, cooking food every Wednesday, loading it up and taking it out to these families.

I can't thank Annette at Coffee Clatch, Mt. Bow, So An, Inat, Jose's Taqueria, and Lake City, Via Verde, and Beyond the Bowl, and many, many more.

I'm leaving out a lot of small businesses, and we're expanding it along North Gateway and over to Aurora.

Again, this is a food islam, and the success on Capitol Hill has been phenomenal, and I really want to thank Chris Leverson and all those volunteers and small businesses and restaurants that are using and making food, loading it up, and delivering it to our families.

I had a great meeting with a handful of small businesses last Wednesday.

Anyway, it was great.

We had an opportunity to talk about how it went with who got grants, who is applying for SBA loans, some of the processes we all know has been frustrating, payroll protection, what the future looks like, and we have been very, very We've opened up our newsletter to more than just a newsletter.

I want to thank Dean.

He's been a phenomenal editor of getting the voices in the North End of success stories, of people helping people, remaining active, staying connected to our humanity, trying to know that this is the new normal and how we react to each other and how we care about each other.

So we had a great meeting, I said I was going to loop back to this, with Seattle Greenways, more specifically Gordon Paddleford, the executive director, and Clara Cantor.

And the reason why this is important is we've been talking to them, and they've been assisting us, and we've been working with parks to talk about how we have more safe streets.

And they presented some plans to us, and I'm guessing that they have met, my understanding is that they've met some of my colleagues as well.

Basically talking about the three strategies or phases strategies about harm reduction, how we can start reducing dangerous crowding on our sidewalks, trails, and our parks.

and adaptation, how we can start looking at arterial sidewalk extensions.

A lot of small businesses want SDOT to lift some restrictions so they can start putting small tables outside, having a better way to be able to serve, pick up food outside, that they have car-free recreational routes that reduce speeding.

So it's just been great meeting with them and getting their ideas and then sitting down or talking to, not sitting down, talking to the superintendent about how we can incorporate some of these ideas.

Now that we know we are going to be quote unquote sheltering in place for all of May and the weather is getting better, more than ever, we have to open up more space where people can get out and move around, particularly those children that are not in school.

So one of the things that we looked at, and I want to thank Nageen for this, is we looked at Oakland, California as leading the nation with 74 miles of open streets.

Obviously, we would like to strive for more open streets and working with parks on that.

We continue to work with parks and share our information on the high use at Alki, Cal Anderson, Gas Works, Golden Gardens, Green Lake, and Volunteer, and looking at, of course, the Healthy Street Expansion.

Again, SDOT, along with parks, is still collecting data on user streets and satisfaction, I can't say it, satisfaction, sorry.

I'm happy to say, though I did get a chance to walk down there, that two blocks away, we now have a street that's closed in my neighborhood that's a safe street, and it was wonderful to see a lot of families out there this weekend, runners, people with their strollers, walking.

I did not know there were so many dogs and children in my neighborhood.

Now I know.

And that, let's see, I think that's it except for the fire station.

I want to thank Councilmember Herbold, thank you so much for staying on top of this.

And just on a more side note, I know this has all been difficult for all of us trying to do our jobs from home, but I think we're doing a good job.

I'm really proud of my colleagues who call and check on me and get information and send us information.

I'm really thankful.

to Director Arnstead for getting me information and for the clerk's office, particularly when we do public comment.

I want to thank the clerk's office for getting us a sheet of all the people that sign in.

So if we're listening, we at least have a sign in sheet and we know who's speaking and where they're from.

So I want to thank you for that.

And I think that's all I got.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez for that report.

Just really quickly, colleagues, I do want to note that Tom Mikesell is on the call with us this morning.

If folks have any questions about the council bills related to Fire Station So, Tom, I know you're muted right now.

Do you want to unmute?

And is there anything that you'd like to add to the Fire Station 31 council bills that hasn't already been addressed by my colleagues?

Good morning.

Thank you, Council President.

No, I don't think, I think the both council members pretty much touched on the salient issues.

Great, thank you, Tom.

Any questions for Tom or Council Member Herbold or Juarez on the Fire Station 31 council bills that we'll be considering this afternoon?

All right, sounds like they knocked it out of the ballpark with their briefing this morning.

So thank you, Tom.

Thank you, Tom, for being available this morning.

I appreciate you hanging tight through the reports in the event that folks had questions.

Of course, they can still reach out to you between now and two o'clock if they have any questions that come up, but this was sort of their shot to have you available in this less formal setting to ask any questions.

So thank you, Tom.

You're free to go and get on about your day if you need to.

Thanks for being with us, really appreciate it.

Okay, any other questions or comments for Council Member Juarez on her report?

Okay, I don't see or hear any, so we are gonna go ahead and move along to Council Member Lewis.

The floor is yours.

Thank you so much, Madam President.

Not a whole lot for me today.

There's no items on today's agenda from the Select Committee on Homelessness Strategies and Investments.

I can say that last week I chaired the first meeting of the Council's Audit Stakeholder Committee.

It went really well.

We do have a public listen line, so if people want to get in there and hear what's going on with performance auditing and listen to David Jones, listen to our Inspector General, Office of the Auditor, it's a good opportunity for the public, so just flagging that as we go forward.

All the information for that group is posted on my council website.

I look forward to engaging with that stakeholder group.

I engaged in a weekly call of Seattle's BIAs, business groups in neighborhoods throughout the city, where we got a presentation from King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg on some of the actions that their office is taking.

Part of that included a briefing, and this was covered a little earlier, a briefing on the COLEAD program as it relates to assisting folks who are being released from King County Jail.

King County Jail did reduce their population to allow for social distancing from 1,800 to 1,300 inmates.

A lot of the folks who have been released are engaged with COLEAD, have been receiving services.

And it was an interesting program that might have some scalability to address some of our ongoing issues around engaging with folks experiencing homelessness and in unsanctioned encampments throughout the city.

I'm not sure if I will be attending the town hall tomorrow night relating to the payroll tax legislation at 6 p.m.

I'm not sure if my office is formally RSVP.

and I appreciate the invitation.

Otherwise, Madam President, I don't have any further updates at this time, given that a lot of the other updates were provided during Councilmember Strauss' presentation.

Great.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Lewis.

Any questions or comments on Councilmember Lewis' report?

All right, seeing and hearing none, we'll go ahead and continue on with reports this morning.

So next up will be Council Member Morales.

Floor is yours.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez.

There are no items from the Community Economic Development Committee on today's agenda.

I will be introducing a bill to prevent COVID-19 related housing discrimination following this emergency.

and would certainly appreciate my council colleagues voting to put it on the calendar for discussion.

For weeks, we've all been hearing from our constituents who are worried about eviction.

And we know that as it stands, many folks will be facing eviction once the moratoriums we have are listed.

A new Pew Research study shows that nearly half of low-income Americans have experienced income loss due to the COVID-19 pandemic and, of course, the resulting economic crisis.

Hundreds of thousands of Washingtonians have filed for unemployment, and many of them are right here in Seattle.

This crisis shouldn't haunt people for the rest of their lives, as we know can happen if somebody has an eviction notice on their record.

So, my legislation would do two things to make sure that doesn't happen.

It would bar landlords from denying housing to tenants who have faced an eviction during the mayor's emergency order and the six months following.

That includes eviction notices and excludes evictions that result from a threat to the health or safety of neighbors, the landlord, or the tenant or landlord's household members.

The second thing is it provides a cause for order of limited dissemination, which would hide an eviction from a tenant screening companies.

Additionally, I think this legislation really complements the eviction defense legislation that Council President Gonzalez is sponsoring that we will discuss this afternoon, which I support.

And it does that by adding an additional layer of protection following any appearance in court.

So I look forward to the discussion once we have it on.

I also do want to thank Council Member Sawant for co-sponsoring this.

And if there are other council colleagues who would like to co-sponsor, please be in touch.

Let's see.

The last week, moving on to the district, last week I helped Wablock Washington Building Leaders of Change helps that team feed the beach.

Twice a week, they go out and provide free hot lunch for folks in the community.

So I want to thank them for letting me come together to assemble food packages for our neighbors.

And I also want to thank Super 6 for the delicious wraps that they provided.

We also met with SDOT last week to hear about plans for mitigating the impacts of the West Seattle Bridge on the Georgetown neighborhood.

For traffic mitigation and impacts, they're focusing on four neighborhoods, Georgetown, Soto, Westwood Highland Park, and South Park.

And they're working with Department of Neighborhoods and OSC to put maps together for the neighborhoods where different projects will be happening.

So, and these are for neighborhood residents.

They'll be doing this for, for cyclists and for maritime and freights, um, and prioritizing the projects with the communities.

So, um, we understand that they will have a draft plan in about two weeks.

Uh, they do have information on their website for now.

And then, um, this Friday we will be meeting, having a community meeting with Georgetown neighbors to share what we've learned and to hear directly from folks who will be impacted by by the change.

We also will begin, will continue virtual office hours on Friday from 10 to noon.

So if constituents are interested, you can sign up for office hours by visiting my council website.

And that is all I have.

Great.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Any questions or comments on Council Member Morales' report?

Okay, seeing and hearing none, we'll go ahead and move through the list here.

So next up is Council Member Mosqueda.

Good morning, Council colleagues.

Good morning.

First, I want to note, last Friday, May 1st, we had an opportunity to show support for workers across not just our region, but the world, and a number of low-wage workers who are considered essential workers now took courageous action to call attention to the issues that they're still facing in their workplaces, notably lower wages, lack of PPE, lack of sufficient time off, either sick leave or medical leave, and just a real desire to call attention to those who have often been paid the least, now being deemed essential workers and wanting to make sure that in a post-COVID world, as we think about what recovery looks like and what workforce development and investments look like, we think about how we lift up and protect these workers.

really showed a lot of courage in stepping forward and calling attention to these workplace conditions.

We also had the chance to participate in a international webinar, or I should say a national webinar with Representative Ilhan Omar, who has put forward legislation in Congress to protect renters and to protect from eviction, or I should say, mortgage payments.

When we're in a crisis of people not being able to pay rent, we know that also affects small landlords who might not be able to pay for their mortgages as well.

And in order to support tenants and those who are small landlords or housing authority leaders and also nonprofit housing associations, we wanna make sure that there's actual support for those entities.

So thanks to Representative Ilhan Omar and Local Progress for organizing this call.

We had the chance to join with council members from Denver, Minneapolis, Louisville, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and I spoke about the need not just for these temporary measures to protect folks from the imposing cost of rent and mortgages, but also to make sure that we are building the infrastructure we need to address the ongoing crisis of affordable housing across the country, especially in larger cities like Seattle.

provide immediate protections now and the call for the federal government to double down in their investments in capital projects to support affordable housing.

We're at a 40-year historic low for federal funds, and so it's important that we talk about both in the same breath.

Council colleagues, today the first item on the agenda is actually a public hearing.

This is a bill that would allow for the annual action plan and includes details for the city to spend its annual entitlements for four federal grants.

One, the Community Development Block Grants, or CDBG funds.

Two, the Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS, or HOPWA dollars.

Third, the Emergency Solutions Grant, ESG.

And fourth, the Home Investment Partnerships Program, or the HOME funds.

I drafted this plan based on our best estimates of how much funding we would receive and the 2020 adopted budget.

was heard in the Finance and Neighborhoods Committee in December of 2019. We have now received notice of the actual grant amounts, so council needs to adopt the final plan for submittal to HUD.

One small technical piece, the plan was originally transmitted, this plan that was originally transmitted has been updated by the executive.

So there's now a proposed substitute, which reflects the very latest information on the grant funds and the projects that they support.

you will find all of that information linked in the agenda to the proposed substitute.

The plan includes over $25 million of funds to support people in Seattle, including $3.4 million to provide emergency shelter operations and case management to move people into permanent supportive housing, $7.8 million to provide housing for persons living with AIDS and their families, $1 million to improve fire safety at the Seattle Housing Authority 6.4 million for affordable housing preservation and development, and 2.8 million for small business stabilization.

While most of these funds were included in the 2020 budget, the plan reflects that we've received more grant funding than anticipated.

These funds were added to the affordable housing program and the small business stabilization fund.

This portion of the agenda, again, I want to repeat, is a public hearing and is not for vote.

The council provides opportunities for people to comment on the revised plan.

by either registering to speak at the public hearing today, as the council president has noted, through public comments link, which is again at seattle.gov slash council slash committees slash public hyphen comment.

You can sign up for public comment beginning today at noon.

And there's also a link in today's city council agenda.

If you're not able to participate in today's public hearing on this element, you are also able to send your comments to council at seattle.gov.

Again, Council Colleagues, today is not scheduled for action on agenda item number one.

This is our public hearing to comply with the requirements, but our hope is that the vote on this plan will take place on May 11th.

Council Colleagues, the next big item for us is item number two, Council Bill 119783. This is a continuation of the bill that we got a briefing on last week from the Office of Housing, from the Mayor's Office, and most notably, Director Ben Noble and the CBO in the budget office.

This is our opportunity for us to consider and accept the first round of funding from the federal government.

And as we do so, as I noted last week, this helps set a tone for how we're going to be allocating and distributing funds to support those in this crisis that is COVID.

Colleague, there's an amendment that has been sent around for your review prior to our full council meeting today.

This is an amendment that was sent by Amy Gore, just after 10 a.m.

I want to thank Amy for her ongoing work with our office, with the CBO, and with members of the public as we reviewed the proposal that was sent down.

I want to thank Director Ben Noble for working with us as we consider possible amendments to this as well.

I'll note that this is a point-in-time amendment and give you a few updates on what we anticipate to happen today and hopefully happen over the next week or so.

We know that we're in a critical time to respond to this economic crisis, and so that is why you see in the proposed use of funds in front of us things like support for small business stabilization fund, for funding the building stability fund, which is rental assistance, which you all discussed in detail last year, for assistance for homeless prevention and rental assistance.

We also know that it's critically important for us not to just respond to the economic crisis that's been presented in front of us due to COVID, but to act with urgency due to the public health crisis that is still present in our community, especially among our community that is the most vulnerable, those with existing health conditions, those who are homeless or housing unstable, and to make sure that we are providing the necessary assistance via food support, shelter assistance, getting folks into individual rooms so they don't contract the virus, and to make sure that those who are providing services in our community have the staffing and support that they need in order to respond to the ongoing public health crisis.

So the amendment in front of us attempts to walk a fine line with attempting to share these resources, these initial dollars, allocating funding for the healthcare crisis, as well as the economic crisis.

What you see in front of us is adding additional support for, for example, the Building Stability Fund, Also making sure that we're clarifying that these federal dollars, if available and if appropriate, can be used for food support for unsheltered persons using the ESG funds, allows for us to be able to do meal delivery to those who are in permanent supportive housing using the OAA funds, if appropriate.

And we have Amy Gore on the phone who can help walk us through any amendments or any concerns that you all have as well.

I'll be very brief and then perhaps turn it over to Amy if that's okay with you, Council President, to walk us through any potential questions on the amendment in front of us.

But one of the big things that you'll see from us in the amendment is a desire to hold back about $1.4 million in use for right now.

Our desire is to engage in a conversation over the next few days here with the CBO office and HSD to talk about the real pressing issues that we see from homeless service providers.

As the DESC director wrote in an email to the city last Friday, the COVID-related crisis is coming into focus now since we've had two months of experience taking action to prevent the spread of the virus among our clients in the broader community.

But he goes on to talk about the real pressing issues around meal delivery, needing to put individuals who are currently in congregate shelting into individual rooms, the cost of hotel rooms potentially, and the cost of staffing to make sure that those services are ongoing for individuals and meals can be delivered.

I think that in the next few days, I'm optimistic that we will be able to engage in a robust conversation with HSD, with Office of Housing, with the CBO's office, and most importantly, the folks on the front line providing services to those who are in shelters right now and talk about the need for us to quickly allocate existing funds out of the door to de-densify the remaining individuals who need individual rooms to ensure that there's sufficient support for food assistance to those who are living in various places, for the meal delivery, to supportive housing and to those that are most vulnerable and to ensure that there's sufficient funding for staff.

So with the support and I think agreement from the executive, our amendment would hold back 1.4 million of the CBBG funds allocated in this round of the CARES Act to ensure that there's engagement with the homeless service providers, to understand what the funding needs are that they have for COVID response, and to identify the sources to meet those needs.

And with that, perhaps I will pause to allow for Amy Gore to walk through any of the amendment details, if that's desired, since it came in this morning at 10 a.m., and then I'll close with some closing comments around the value statement that I think that this amendment helps articulate today.

Thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda.

I'm going to go ahead and ask Amy, who is on the line, to walk us through the amendments and then take perhaps some questions from Councilmembers about the amendment or the substance of the bill.

Ms. Gore, please.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Can you hear me okay?

We can.

As Council Member Mosqueda mentioned, I sent around a substitute Council Bill 119783 about 20 minutes ago.

The substitute bill does three things.

First, it adds food support for unsheltered persons to the uses of funds for the emergency services grant monies that we are accepting and appropriating.

The second thing that it does is adds meal delivery to permanent supportive housing to uses of funds for the Older Americans Act grant money that we are accepting.

The original bill just talks about meal delivery to individuals who are participating in the congregate meal programs, but doesn't discuss the potential of those deliveries going to individuals who might be homebound in permanent supportive housing.

So it just changes the use of the funds a little bit to allow for that action.

The major change that the substitute bill does is change the funding allocations for the, or appropriations for the CDBG funds.

It accepts all 5.6 million of the CDBG funds, but takes 1.4 million of those funds and does not appropriate them.

and then redistributes the appropriation for the remaining activities that are funded through CDBG.

So that would be a reduction in homelessness prevention from the proposed $1.5 million in appropriations to approximately $705,000.

It would reduce rental assistance that is going to the home-based program that is being administered by United Way.

It would reduce that appropriation from 1.5 million to $705,000.

It would increase the Building Stability Fund, which is the rental assistance that will go to the Office of Housing, Affordable Housing Portfolio of Buildings to cover lost rent.

That appropriation would change from approximately 1.1 million to 1.4 million.

And then finally, the Small Business Stabilization Fund would be reduced slightly from 1.5 million to 1.4 million.

And the 1.4 million that is not appropriated, the idea is that after the discussions that Council Member Mosqueda mentioned, that Council would appropriate that 1.4 million in future action.

Thank you so much, Amy.

Council President, if I may just also summarize some comments on this.

And I know a few council members have some questions, but that might help fill in some details here.

Actually, can I just open it up for questions really quickly?

And then and then you can sort of do cleanup if you need to.

So Council Member Bulde, I saw you raise your hand, please.

You're on mute.

First off, I want to thank Councilmember Mosqueda and Central Staffer Amy Gore for fulfilling one of the things I was trying to figure out how to do, but was unable to figure out how to do it that you guys have.

And that's namely to fund some meal delivery to We had been looking at the ESG source and found that that was not an allowed source of funds for that purpose.

So glad that you were able to figure out how to do that.

As it relates to the decision to hold off on appropriating some of the funds The CDBG funds, I do have some concerns, particularly the reduction in rent assistance.

We know that the funded home based program took.

7,000 applications in 48 hours a couple weeks ago and they're only anticipating being able to to fund about 2,000 households out of 7,000 people who applied in a 48-hour period and I believe that was based on the anticipation of the allocation of CDBG funds to add to the home-based program.

So I appreciate that the intent is not to never appropriate them, but to have a conversation about whether or not it is the best appropriation of them.

But I am concerned because I feel like we have already earmarked We haven't gone through the legislative process, but through an application process for home base, we have a sense of how great the need is for these funds.

And so I'm concerned about delaying the availability of these funds while we have another conversation about whether or not it's the best use of those funds.

I think trying to figure out who would be most appropriate to answer the question.

So I'm going to, Council Member Mosqueda, do you have some additional information about that or would you like Amy to address it?

Sure.

I'm happy to, if that makes sense.

And Amy, if you have anything else to add, that'd be helpful too.

Council Member Herbold, thank you for articulating that.

And as you said, we know that there's pressing needs from everything from food assistance to rental assistance, small business assistance, and also as we're hearing from the frontline care providers for those who are trying to de-densify the shelter services, the ongoing need for folks to get moved into individual rooms, and trying to strike that balance is exactly the concern that we came up with.

In talking to some folks who were working on trying to get people into individual rooms and the meal delivery services.

I also raised the concern that you did about rental assistance and that being a big priority for us, the entire council.

One of the things that I think is important as we think about holding back those dollars and not as a way to say that it won't be used, ideally we would be allocating these dollars in the next week as we see the next round of the 130 that's coming from the federal dollars as we see the $13 million that's going to be going out from the state dollars as we have ongoing conversations about how to reallocate these funds.

We've also heard that there is possibly funding at HSD already to be funding de-densification strategies within shelters.

and as a way to sort of ensure that the conversation continues in a very expedited way in a hybrid approach, if you will, between us and the CDO's office, it was suggested that we hold back the 1.4, don't allocate it specifically to dedensification, which was my initial desire, but to hold it back so that we can have these ongoing conversations with A, knowing that there's eviction protections and other rental protections in place, and B, that there's still ongoing philanthropic funds, but then to quickly move forward with any additional rental assistance that we can get out the door, ideally on Monday, but to know that we do have the 1.4 just in case things don't come together over the next few days here to ensure that there's de-densification.

The real important issue, and I know the executive's office is aware of this as we talk to our county partners, is a desire to make sure that we identify the funding that's needed.

And if we need the 1.4, then I think we all need to have a conversation about where that should probably go.

But my desire would be that the 1.4 ultimately go back into rental assistance, as we've talked about here, knowing it's one small piece of a larger pie.

But when we look at the folks that are in shelters still, we know we have about 500 individuals who need to get into those individual rooms.

We have a need for ongoing meal assistance and personnel support.

And when I hear that there's potentially funding already existing at HSD, I think that's really positive and would want to work with the executive to release that 1.4 quickly.

but I think they and we have a shared desire that we get the rental assistance dollars out the door as soon as possible but we also want some assurances that if there's not that funding or if the conversation doesn't materialize that we help move people out of the congregate shelter settings as quickly as possible.

One report that I heard late on last week as we were waiting for some of the questions to be answered that we submitted on Monday was that we're about two weeks away.

We're two weeks behind in seeing some of the data points that we've seen from long-term care facilities already.

If individuals don't get moved into individual beds or individual rooms, we're getting to a crisis point.

where people may start contracting COVID at a much higher rate.

And I wanna applaud all of our human service provider organizations on the frontline who have kept the numbers relatively low.

But we also recognize that the folks who are in shelters still having them six feet apart in beds and assuming that people are gonna stay six feet apart and not contract COVID at some point in the day is just not working out.

And so we're playing with a little bit of a fire here as we think about how we get folks as quickly as possible.

into that individual room setting and away from congregate shelters.

But you have my commitment, Council Member Herbold, and I know it's a concern shared by other council colleagues that we get as much funding out in rental assistance as possible and that we do it with urgency.

Great.

I know that we also have Tracy Ratsliff and Jeff Sims on the line related to this particular bill, so I wanted to certainly give them an opportunity to add anything that they think is important to this conversation at this point.

So just just for clarification, United Way does have a million dollars of funding that we actually already provided, and we did that through reallocation of some of the future housing levy.

So they do have a million dollars that they can use and are using to meet the needs of city residents who have applied so far.

Obviously the legislation as it is proposed would provide another $700,000 in the short term to allow them to continue to meet that need.

So just so you all know that.

Great.

Jeff, anything you'd like to add?

No, not at this time.

Okay.

So I think Council Member Mosqueda, I want to appreciate the work that you've done with the executive to get more information and sort of zero in on this particular appropriation need.

And I think what you're hearing from Council Member Herbold, which I think you agree with and are also aligned with, which is that we don't want to create any sort of undue delay or or delay certainly that would result in negative consequences to the people who are relying on these programmatic services through the funding of the city of Seattle.

And I am hearing you say that that's not the goal and that really, we need to see some motivation on behalf of the executive to go ahead and advance this conversation and do haste to come up with a clear solution here to get these dollars out the door.

So my hope is that that will be able to be accomplished and that we'll see a good proposal for appropriation of these dollars come forward pretty quickly.

And so I just wanted to give hear from you, Council Member Mosqueda, sort of your thinking around how quickly you think the turnaround on this could be or hope that it will be.

Thank you, Council President.

My hope is that we will have clarification by the end of this week.

I know that the CBO's office is committed to engaging with service providers this week.

It was Friday when folks began to receive a number of comments about the reality on the ground as it relates to those who are trying to provide services that are still in congregate shelters.

And as the reality is shared and people realize the tight constraints that people have, you know, potentially not even being able to operate within the next month.

I know that that's a real concern for the city at large, so I believe that within the next few days we should be able to have these ongoing conversations and hopefully report we're back on Monday, the conversations we heard.

Again, if the council is satisfied with the outcomes of the engagement with the service providers and the funding identified for decent dedensification, PPE, staff costs, meal services, cleaning, I think we can move really quickly on the 1.4 allocation.

and released it appropriately as we all desire.

And I want to thank folks who are working creatively right now to identify fund sources that are available.

This would be a complement to the hotel services and other de-densification services that the county is running, which are really focused on isolation and quarantine or IMQ.

We want to make sure that those beds are saved for those who might be experiencing COVID, showing symptoms, are contagious themselves.

That is different from the effort to try to really be preventative and to get some of those individuals who are still in congregate settings into individual rooms.

Again, when we spend money, if we are able to get folks into individual rooms, a lot of that funding, three quarters, is potentially reimbursed later.

So identifying other sources outside of the CBDG funds is the fine conversation to engage in.

I appreciate that because we all want to be smart with these dollars.

use as much opportunity as we can to get reimbursement from the Fed.

So my hope is that we will be able to come back to all of you on Monday next week and talk more about the release of the 1.4.

I'm feeling pretty optimistic at this point in the morning, but I know that there's pressing need, so we'll keep you all updated.

Thank you.

Councilmember Herbold, you had another question?

I do.

My question is related to, you know, I really support the underlying goals as expressed by Councilmember Mosqueda to use city funds to promote de-intensification in congregate settings, specifically not into new congregate settings, but into individual hotel rooms.

And similar to the other issue that I raised earlier, I was sort of going down a little bit what felt like a rabbit hole in how to have those conversations.

about the need to shift our de-intensification approach away from de-intensifying from shelters into other congregate care settings, but instead from shelters into hotel rooms, and had been thinking about reallocating some of the funds Specifically, I was interested in in reallocating the funds for for the council's Homes for Good program because the executive was is is proposing in this in this bill to back out the general fund dollars that the council provided and instead use some of the federal relief dollars for that program as a way of making the program funding more sustainable.

But I was thinking, well, we've already funded that program.

Let's earmark $750,000.

for a de-intensification program focused on providing hotel rooms.

But the thing I'm struggling with is I don't see, like we could earmark the money, but if the executive doesn't want to spend them that way, I don't see a willingness on the part of the executive to buy hotel rooms for this purpose.

Every time we've asked, they've said, oh, that's what the county's doing.

So have you in your conversations with the executive heard a willingness to start buying hotel rooms for this very important purpose?

Council Member Herbold, you're exactly articulating the concerns that I have as well.

And I think the, understanding of why these individual rooms is evolving for the executive.

I think that there is a difference between what they believe there to be open rooms available from the King County program and defining those King County rooms as I and Q is very important.

We do need isolation and quarantine rooms, but that is very different from what you and I are talking about with kind of a more preventative strategy.

I will say that I think that they are aware of the concerns now more than ever, especially because of the ongoing conversations that we've had over the last four days about the amendments that I was originally intending to put forward.

I think that the service providers, specifically DESC and others who've been weighing in since Friday, have provided a more robust picture of the reality on the ground.

I'm hoping that that means that between now and the next few days with HSD and the executive's office being involved in conversations with people who have painted this reality picture for us, we will see a movement towards purchasing rooms on a short-term basis.

Yes, it is resource intense, as has been described in the Seattle Times over the weekend, but it also helps save lives.

And I think that that's the biggest thing that people are really concerned with right now.

If in the next three to four weeks, we can allocate additional funds that ideally will be three quarters reimbursed by the feds and we save lives.

That would be a win-win.

So my hope, Council Member Herbold, is that between you and me, and I'd love to involve others on council as well, that we continue to sort of underscore and make the push for these dollars to be used exactly as you've just described.

And I would say that there's probably more of an understanding of what the need is now, given the providers weighing in in the last four days.

And that's exactly why we wanted to bring forward the amendment.

And at this point, at least hold back the 1.4 so that those conversations are ongoing, and we have some assurance that if they don't come to fruition, we do have 1.4 at least as a down payment.

But you're right, it's tough decisions that we have to make, but these issues, I think, in the last few days have really painted a new stark reality for our friends in terms of where the allocation should go.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments on Council Member Mosqueda's presentation?

We do have Council Central staff with us, so any other questions for them or Council Member Mosqueda on this particular bill?

Okay.

I don't hear any.

Thank you to Council Central staff, Amy, Tracy, and Jeff for being with us this morning and for your work in the background leading up to this.

It seems that there's no more questions or comments about this particular bill.

The three of you are free to go about the rest of your work for today.

I really want to thank you again for taking the time to call in this morning.

Really appreciate it and all of the work that you are doing.

Council Member Mosqueda, anything else on your report or can we continue?

We can continue.

Thank you very much.

And I want to echo the appreciation for central staff, especially Amy Gore.

Thanks for all of her work over the weekend.

Great.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Okay, we're going to go ahead and move on through.

We are close to being done.

Council Member Peterson, the floor is yours.

Good morning, colleagues.

On this afternoon's full City Council agenda, there are no items related to the Transportation and Utilities Committee.

In addition, our Committee for Transportation and Utilities is canceled for this week.

This past Wednesday, I joined a conference call with nearly 20 District 4 Community Council leaders representing our neighborhoods in District 4 from Eastlake to Wallingford and Magnuson Park.

Priorities they discussed included crime prevention, pedestrian safety, public input on real estate development projects.

Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic, homelessness, the U-District BIA, business improvement area, city budget, bus service.

concerns about up zones, concerns about displacement, economic displacement.

Normally our office, just like many of the other offices, will attend these community council meetings each month, but social distancing requirements necessitated this conference call.

And it was great to not only hear from them, but also they were able to hear each other's concerns, which is great to build support for each other across communities.

We will continue to have our virtual office hours every week with individual constituents who would like to reach out.

Just sign up on the council website.

I do have some amendments to council.

President Gonzalez will organize how we discuss that this morning.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Any comments or questions for Councilmember Peterson on his report?

All righty, hearing none, we're going to go ahead and move to the final report, which is mine.

So I'll go ahead and start going through that.

We do have Asha Venkatraman on the line with us who will be walking us through the council bill that I have on the agenda.

So the Governance and Education Committee meeting that is regularly scheduled for May of 2020 is canceled, consistent with the Governor's Stay Home, Stay Healthy order.

I do have two items on the agenda this afternoon.

The first item appears on the introduction and referral calendar.

Council Bill 119762 is now reintroduced as Council Bill 119788. to reflect a bill title change to my rental payment plan bill.

It's my hope that the full council will take final action on this reintroduced bill next Monday, May 11th, but wanted to alert colleagues to the fact that we had to do a reintroduction of the bill for a bill title change after crosswalking it with the governor's proclamation.

The second item is Council Bill 119784. And again, we do have Council Central Staff Policy Analyst Asha Venkatraman with us today to walk us through the substitute bill.

And then she'll be available to answer questions regarding the various amendments.

Before I hand it over to Asha, I wanted to share a few things about this bill.

On March 3rd, Mayor Durkan declared a civil emergency in response to the global pandemic of COVID-19, and by March 14th, she had declared an eviction in a moratorium on residential evictions.

Governor Inslee declared a similar moratorium on evictions on March 18th.

Both eviction moratoriums have been extended now to June 4th.

In those early weeks in March, it became really clear to me that this crisis would have a widespread lasting impact.

And so my office began the work of identifying two areas of tenant protections that the council could enact now to help people stay in their homes throughout this pandemic and in the aftermath of the pandemic.

So while neither of these bills prohibits nor puts a permanent moratorium on evictions, Both of the bills that I have introduced are intended to help tenants have more time and flexibility to ultimately stay housed as they get back to business.

Today, we will consider Council Bill 11974, which would create an additional defense that those in eviction proceedings may utilize, similar to the defense tools we have in our pre-existing Just Cause eviction ordinance.

I do have some amendments for consideration today, one of which is I'm going to ask Asha to walk us through the substitute bill and then address the various amendments, and then we'll go ahead and take up some questions.

I do want to thank, before we do that, I want to thank Councilmember Herbold, who, as we all know, has been a tireless advocate on behalf of tenants for many, many, many, many years.

And she has been just really helpful to me in thinking through how to craft this bill in a way and the other bill as well in a way to make sure that it has maximum protections for tenants while also balancing the needs of property owners in this context.

So I certainly want to thank her for all of her good thinking and her partnership on many of the changes that are reflected in the substitute bill that will be before us now.

So I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to Asha to have her sort of walk us through the changes in the council bill and then the amendments, and then I and Council Member Peterson will address our amendments respectively.

Asha.

Good morning.

Good morning.

So as the council president described, this is a substitute bill for 119762, and it does a couple things.

The changes between this bill and the previous bill are, there are four major things that changed.

The first is that we have moved the, when this defense would be available from the, from during and within six months after the civil emergency to only kick in six months after the end of the mayor's moratorium on residential evictions.

And specifically since that, that moratorium has now been extended to match the mayor's, assuming that there aren't any more extensions, it would start June 4th.

If there are additional extensions of the moratorium, then this defense will kick in six months after those end.

So that's the first change, and that is one of the items that required a title change, which is why we are using the substitute bill.

The second major change is that the original bill had required that the failure to pay rent be linked to a financial hardship related to the COVID-19 emergency.

This bill removes that piece of causation and essentially just says if you are required to vacate within the effective period of the bill, you can use this defense.

The third major change is more of a technical correction in that the original bill had referenced some 10-day pay or vacate notices as the basis of the eviction action.

Due to some changes in the state legislature that occurred in 2019, 10-day notices are no longer associated with the failure to pay rent.

So all of those references have been corrected to refer to 14-day pay or vacate notices.

And then the last change is not necessarily a major one, but there were several sections in the original bill that had asked the governor to instate a statewide eviction moratorium, which has now already been done.

And there have been that related to the effective of an additional ordinance, which was the winter evictions bill.

But since that, since introduction of this new bill, that is no longer a concern because that bill has now gone into effect.

So those are the major changes.

We also made several additions to the new bill.

The first is to require that any eviction notice that goes out has to have specific information on it that lets tenants know about their rights in terms of their ability to raise this defense to eviction.

If the notice does not properly contain that information, it allows the sales department of construction and inspections, SDCI, to let the landlord know that that notice is not valid and they would have to reissue it before moving forward.

Secondly, it includes attorneys fees, essentially signaling to the court that if left to their discretion, that attorneys fees should not be awarded to landlords in this situation.

The court does have some discretion about whether to award those or not.

So this bill doesn't require that there are no fees, but makes it very clear to the court that the preference is that those fees not be awarded.

There are some updates to the recitals and legislative findings, primarily making just some grammatical corrections and then updating the bill in terms of when it was originally introduced to developments that have occurred since then.

So things like the expansion of the eviction moratorium and extension of the governor's stay home, stay healthy order.

It includes a severability clause just to cover our base in case anything, any specific provisions of the bill are struck down in court, the remaining provisions of the bill would still be in effect.

And it also included some language about the court providing installment plans after, excuse me, after the tenant was able to successfully assert defense, but that we'll talk a little bit more about that in relation to one of President Gonzalez's amendments.

So the amendments that you have for your consideration, the first one is sponsored by Council President Gonzalez.

As she mentioned, it is primarily to make grammatical corrections, revise some references to dates, add in legislative findings that we are in compliance with the governor's order on the open public meetings act.

The second is sponsored by Councilmember Peterson and would carve out an exemption for landlords.

The third, which is currently designated as 3A or 3B, which is more of a procedural issue in terms of whether the second amendment passes or fails, requires that the tenant engage in a good faith effort to access rental assistance funds.

which could be something like the home-based funds or something else.

And then proposed amendment four, which we circulated on Friday, would remove that installment plan addition that I just mentioned is in the bill, and that is sponsored by Council President Gonzalez.

And lastly, I'm working on finalizing one additional proposed amendment from Council Member Peterson about some reporting requirements.

that would ask SDCI and the Office of Housing to report back on the use of this defense and as well as other, the number of evictions that are being filed in court during this time period.

Thank you, Asha, so much for that presentation and for the memo that you circulated describing the bill as you've just presented about.

So thank you for that.

So I'm going to go ahead and just walk us through some of my amendments.

I'm happy to take any questions about those.

I know that Councilmember Peterson has some amendments and I'll let him sort of describe his amendments and then I'll happily share with you all colleagues my position on Councilmember Peterson's various amendments.

As Asha described, Amendment 1 is largely technical changes.

As she described those, I don't think those are controversial, and we'll sort of leave it at that.

I also have a second amendment.

It's Amendment 4 on the published agenda.

This amendment is, as Asha described, would remove sort of the requirement to have court-ordered payment plans in large part because we engage with some of the lawyers who do representation in the eviction defense area and they shared insights about how some clients particularly those who are most vulnerable and would need the greatest level of protection would really experience a negative impact as a result of this particular amendment.

So we want to sort of let our payment plan bill stand on its own.

If a court sees that they have access to different types of relief for the tenant, then we want to allow the court to use whatever those reliefs might be, including waiving back rent or pursuing some other type of relief on behalf of the tenant.

But we want to sort of allow for that to occur.

I'm happy to take any questions about my amendments in particular.

Any questions or comments on my amendments?

Okay.

Hearing none, I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to Councilmember Peterson who has a few amendments of his own.

Colleagues, I appreciate what Council President Gonzalez has done with this legislation and taken the extra time and care to work out the detailed proposals.

And I agree as a city government to prevent evictions and the harm that comes with those.

I'm proud to join my council colleagues and the mayor to support multiple relief programs with more relief programs coming.

even with the bill that we're voting on today regarding the CARES Act as several million dollars in additional eviction prevention and rental assistance.

And I want our compassionate policies also to be sustainable and constituents have contacted my office both in favor of the legislation that opposed to it.

And to reconcile those opposing views, I put forward these amendments, which I believe will enable us to look at the data along the way.

And even if these amendments do not garner sufficient support today, I think it's important to air these ideas, to discuss them respectfully, I think it's really healthy that we're able to have this discussion, especially when we're restricted from having certain public meetings, having the public come in to the meetings.

Just want to air these issues in the form of amendments.

They're very specific.

The three amendments, as Asha had said, I want to thank central staff for their work on these.

It's very similar to what we did for the ban on winter evictions where we exempted small landlords.

These are landlords who own four or fewer units.

The second amendment on the good faith effort, this is to show that tenants are making a good faith effort to try to access these rental assistance programs that we are providing for this purpose because the whole point is to prevent the eviction and not just you know, have it as only a defense later, but to prevent it in the first place, I am, um, we are amending this.

We are revising this amendment to add an additional, uh, path for, for showing something similar to this, which is to, um, self certify or self declaration that the person is suffering financial hardship.

Um, so that, that will make the amendment before you right now, much more flexible for the tenants.

That language will be circulated by ASHA very shortly here.

We're just working on the final details this morning to allow a self-certification, sort of like we're doing for the utility discount program.

The other amendment is a reporting requirement, basically asking the executive to come back in a couple of months.

in the middle of the six month period and report on the implementation of the ordinance to provide as much detail as they have in terms of the data they have available on it.

Just so we're tracking it, we see the effect it's having.

So those are the three amendments.

Happy to answer questions and Asha's here as well.

Colleagues, before I open it up for questions, just wanted to sort of cue up my reaction to some of these.

On Amendment 2, which would provide a small landlord exemption by exempting landlords with four or fewer properties from this bill, I am not supporting that amendment.

In large part because I believe that given the severity of the crisis in the pandemic, we know that all tenants, all people who are required to pay their rent during the month may be suffering from financial hardship that makes it difficult for them to pay rent.

And so I think that that is true regardless of the size of the complex and the size of the unit.

And my goal here is to really make sure that this defense, which is time capped in nature, is accessible to the greatest number of people possible.

Again, we're creating a pathway for tenants to be able to argue in court that the reason that they're unable to pay rent is because they have encountered financial economic hardship as a result of the economic crisis that we're currently experiencing.

And I really want to make sure that as many tenants as possible are able to access that defense.

So unfortunately, I can't support amendment number two for those reasons.

In terms of Amendment 3A, 3B, as we're sort of referring to them, I have not yet seen the language as described by Council Member Peterson.

I'm interested in a softening of that language and would not be opposed to a option for people to declare that they have suffered a financial hardship and therefore were unable to pay rent.

We did check in with a tenant advocate specifically, folks over at the King County Bar Association's Housing Justice Project who mentioned and told us today that in effect, people will, tenants will be making this argument about financial hardship in court if they access this particular defense.

And so there wasn't a strong opposition to Council Member Peterson's proposal to pursue Uh, that particular amendment.

So, uh, again, I still have to see have yet to see the language of the amendment.

I'm interested in seeing it.

Um, and, um.

and am looking forward to receiving that language before I take a final position on whether or not I can support the amendments around access to rental assistance, or as an alternative, a certification of financial hardship that makes it difficult to pay rent.

My concern around the rental assistance programs is that not everybody is able to access rental assistance programs as defined by the federal government and by the state dollars.

There are swaths of categories of people who've been categorically excluded from benefiting from those types of programs.

And I want to make sure that we're not sort of tying ourselves to those qualifiers.

and thereby having the result of locking out swaps of the same categories of people as primarily undocumented immigrants from accessing this defense if they're unable to ever say that they've been able to, that they've in good faith tried to get rental assistance, if they are inherently not ever able to access rental assistance because those dollars and programs are unavailable to them.

Then I don't want to have the unintended consequence of them not being able to access this as a defense in the in the course of an eviction proceedings.

So that's my underlying concern about the amendment as it was introduced, but am happy to take a look at any revisions that sort of soften that up and create an alternative pathway for other folks to consider.

On the amendment five, I think we've all been pretty consistent in wanting to get data and evaluating the effectiveness of many of our policy choices and have no objection to having the executive departments that are responsible for enforcement and monitoring of this program create a report.

So that's where I'm at on the amendments as proposed and I'm happy to open it up now for questions and comments from my colleagues.

Any questions or comments?

All right.

I'm hearing none.

So We will go ahead and look for that additional mandatory language from you, Councilmember Peterson.

Looking forward to seeing it, and we'll continue to work with you between now and 2 o'clock to finalize that particular language.

One last thing, colleagues, from me is a really exciting opportunity to sign up for a proclamation.

So this week, the week of May 3rd through May 9th, is Municipal Clerk's Week.

The city clerk is the charter public office that subscribes to professional code of conduct and oath of office, which together with the City of Seattle Ethics Code, serves as a foundation upon which the Office of the City Clerk stands.

So this is an opportunity for us to recognize the tremendous work that all of our employees in the Municipal Clerk's Office do day in and day out to provide the very important services to the people of the city of Seattle and to each of us.

So many of us interface and interact with the city clerk's office on a daily basis.

They are invaluable to our operations and are absolutely critically important to making sure that the public has access to us and that that we are being held accountable to the public.

So I'm going to be moving forward a proclamation, presenting a proclamation this afternoon to our city clerk staff.

And that draft of that proclamation has been circulated to all of you, I think, within the last hour.

and consistent with past practices.

We're just gonna do a quick little roll call for those of you who would like to sign, have your name added to the proclamation.

You could signify by saying aye.

Any questions about the proclamation before I go through the roll call?

Or have the clerks go through the roll call?

All right, great.

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

I just want to say, give my compliments to our city clerks.

I find their service to be amazing and impeccable, and I just really appreciate Amelia, Jodi, and Monica so much.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Council Member Strauss, for saying that.

They do amazing work.

So let's go ahead.

Clerks, if you can get your pencils ready, we're going to call the roll on having Councilmembers add their names to the proclamation recognizing Municipal Clerks Week.

Councilmember Sawant?

Aye.

Councilmember Strauss?

Emphatically, aye.

Councilmember Herbold?

Aye.

Councilmember Juarez?

Aye.

Councilmember Lewis?

Aye.

Councilmember Morales?

Aye.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

And Council President Gonzalez.

Aye.

Nine in favor.

Awesome.

Thank you so much colleagues for entertaining signature of that proclamation.

Really appreciate it.

That is the last item on our agenda.

So we are officially adjourned and we'll see everybody at two o'clock.

Thank you.