Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee 10/14/21 Session I

There we go.

Good morning.

Welcome to the Select Budget Committee meeting.

Today is October 14th, 2021, and it's Thursday.

We are beginning our session one of day two of three of our city council issue identification for the upcoming 2022 budget.

The time is 9.32 a.m.

The Select Budget Committee meeting will come to order.

I'm Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Lewis.

Morales.

Here.

Peterson.

Here.

Salant.

Present.

Strauss.

Present.

Council President Gonzalez.

Here.

Herbold.

Here.

Chair Mosqueda.

Present.

Eight present.

Wonderful, it's great to see you all again.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to meet with you on this day two of three of our issue identification.

Conversation with central staff.

Central staff has spent the last two weeks poring over the proposed budget that was transmitted from the mayor's office and is identifying issues of significance, either increases or decreases in expected funding, changes in revenue utilization and changes in possible policy.

I look forward to having a conversation with all of you about the issues that have been identified from the central staff's deep dive, and that will lead into our conversation in two weeks, talking about potential amendments.

Look forward to our discussion today.

Our agenda includes the Office of Planning and Community Development, an overview of the OPCD issue identification.

We will also have the human services and community-led investments.

That will conclude before 1 p.m.

and we will recess and come back at 2 p.m.

for the homelessness investments presentation.

I want to welcome Councilmember Lewis to the forum here.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Lewis, for joining us.

We have our full house here today.

If there's no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

Colleagues, at the beginning of each meeting for the Select Budget Committee, we've committed to having public testimony until the 10 o'clock hour.

I look forward to hearing from those who signed up to provide public testimony.

As a reminder, you will have today two minutes to speak.

We have about eight people signed up for public testimony, so we should be able to give you the full two minutes and get through everyone who is on our list.

Speakers, you will hear a 10-second chime at the end of your allotted time.

That's your indication to wrap up.

Your microphone will be muted at the end of your two minutes.

If you did not get a chance to speak today or you didn't get a chance to share everything that you'd like to, please go ahead and email us at council at seattle.gov.

Once it is your turn to speak, you will hear a prompt that says you have been unmuted.

That is your indication on your line to hit star six to begin speaking.

please begin speaking by stating your name and the item that you are addressing.

And as a reminder, all public comments should relate to items on today's agenda, which include the 2022 budget.

At this time, I am going to open public comment with the first two speakers on the list.

And as a reminder, when you're done speaking, please do disconnect and continue following us at Seattle Channel or on the listen in options posted on today's agenda.

And I hear you Trevona Thompson-Wiley.

Thanks for being here with us.

Following Trevona will be Camille Gix.

Good morning.

Hi.

Hello.

Good morning.

Apologies.

There's a fire alarm going off in my building.

But my name is Trevona.

I'm a resident of District 2. I'm calling in support of the Solidarity Budget and its blueprint for food sovereignty to create a healthy community citywide.

I'm not afraid or ashamed to speak about my experience receiving food from food banks.

My grandmother still to this day relies on food from food banks.

She was priced out of her home in the Central District and she lives outside the city and money is tight.

So she goes to the food bank quite often.

The solidarity budget offers food support and food sovereignty by investing $17.7 million for the survival of our most vulnerable residents.

Food insecurity has been exacerbated by COVID-19.

and the climate crisis that's making it harder and harder for BIPOC producers to grow food for local communities.

Our community has been suffering and struggling.

The pandemic is far from over, and the impact of receiving resources is hurting BIPOC folks.

The UW just put out a blog post in July about how Washington residents continue to experience a drastically higher level of food insecurity, from 10% before the COVID-19 pandemic to now 27%.

How can we close that gap?

Well, we can do that by actually looking at the recommendations from the solidarity budget.

The mayor's budget does not have a dedicated section for food access or food sovereignty, indicating perhaps this is not a priority for the city.

Food access is sprinkled throughout the budget a number of times, making it difficult to determine exactly how much is being budgeted specifically for food access.

With just under 5% of the proposed STD budget, we could fund the entire a food access program from the Solidarity Budget Plan.

Should we fund COPS or feed people?

Should we fund more STD violence or house people?

Should we fund more new COPS or provide child care to working families?

Show your support.

Show that you care and support the recommendations from Solidarity Budget.

And I relinquish the rest of my time.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And good morning, Camille.

Camille is followed by Tyler Harmon.

Hi there.

This is Camille Gix.

I am with the advocacy team at Real Change and I would like to address the agenda items on homelessness investment and housing and human services.

So I'm calling in first of all to request that the budget committee considers allocating $80,000 toward the Seattle Street Sink Program.

We want to continue expanding the Clean Hands Collective and fund some vendor maintenance jobs.

We weren't able to do this with the first round of funding due to the cut that we experienced from 100,000 to 60,000 in this past year.

And if we want to continue this essential program in 2022, we will need this funding in order to cover maintenance, staff time, and construction of new sinks.

And we would also like to point out that the city standards for our program have been very different from those of their own program, as outlined in Erica Barnett's article in Publicola published in February.

Additionally, we would like to call on the members of the council to co-sponsor council member Morales's budget amendments involving funds to allow tenants to purchase their building, permanent toilets downtown, and the acquisition of buildings for social housing.

Yesterday, I, along with some of my, or with one of my colleagues on the advocacy team, spoke to several vendors about their priorities regarding the city budget, and we were met with a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of vendors expressing a lot of importance for public toilets and also the increased social housing.

And in the words of one of our vendors, who when asked what he thought the top priorities of the city should be in the 2022 budget, the only two words he said were permanent housing.

And with that, I relinquish my time.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And good morning, Tyler.

Tyler's followed by Mary Ellen Stone.

Good morning, Tyler.

Good morning, Councilmembers.

Thank you so much for having me and thank you so much for your time here on Council.

My name is Tyler Harmon.

I am a college student at the University of Washington, specifically with the College of Built Environments and their planning department.

And for David Bloom Studio 498, right now, we are conducting a feasibility study with the Elizabeth Gregory House into taking a look at what it would take to create a shelter within the U District.

U District is a very underserved area, District 4 specifically, for Council Peterson.

There are no shelters within the area at the current moment, so we were taking a look at it.

I just have a very simple question, actually.

It seems through my team's findings that funding is available to try and conduct research within to what is causing the homeless crisis.

There's also a lot of funding going towards facilities such as Harborview as well as UW Medical Center when it comes to training staff facility and to how to not succumb to compassion fatigue when dealing with individuals experiencing homelessness.

However when it comes to actual money being allocated to housing there just simply is not enough.

The question that I have for council why is this such an unpopular issue.

It seems very popular that we can fund research and we can fund acute clinics yet when it comes to actual housing there just is never funding for that.

Why is this such a politically unfavorable topic.

Housing.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Mary Ellen is followed by Susan Samuelson.

Hey, Mary Ellen, I see you on the screen.

If you can hit star six one more time to unmute.

Hi there.

That works.

Thanks so much.

Hi there.

Thank you.

Thanks for taking my testimony.

I'm from King County Sexual Assault Resource Center and speaking today on behalf of the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence, asking the council to support our request of $3 million to fund what we know already works, which is survivor-driven mobile advocacy with flexible financial assistance.

The mayor's budget doesn't allocate any new funding for expanding these services, and I'm asking you to consider that today in your budget package.

You know, we know, and I know you know, domestic violence and sexual assault are some of the top precursors to homelessness, housing instability, mental health issues, and substance abuse.

And we see this every day.

And now is not the time to underinvest in these services.

I will say from KSARC, we are seeing record high numbers of survivors from the city of Seattle, numbers that we have never seen before, like 20% over last year and the year before.

So the demand is considerable, and the demands on our organizations to be able to meet these needs is very high as well.

So asking you to support this additional request, and we'll be happy to answer more questions at a later time.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Excellent, thanks for calling in.

Susan Samuelson followed by BJ Last.

Good morning, Susan.

Good morning.

My name is Susan Samuelson and I'm here to speak on the issue of early learning funding.

I live just north of the University District and I'm current chair of the Board of University Heights.

I want to thank you for your commitment to increasing early learning opportunities, especially for families who are lower income.

As you know, the lack of available childcare has been a major problem for many families even before the pandemic.

Since the pandemic, there's been a 30% reduction in King County early learning slots.

I understand also that nearly one in five parents has turned down a job offer or a promotion due to childcare issues, especially among BIPOC communities.

Nearly half of unemployed parents cite child care issue as a barrier to their employment.

University Temple Children's School, an early learning program in the U District for 50 years, lost its home when the University Temple Church was demolished.

The U Heights Board has been so gratified to be able to welcome the school to its historic school building, but we need to make several capital upgrades to obtain our DCYF child care license, and thereby save 70 early learning slots.

50% of those places will be allocated to low-income families who otherwise could not afford child care.

Please consider the cost of these capital upgrade needs in the city's budget.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And BJ, BJ will be followed by Jenny Falls.

And good morning, BJ.

Good morning.

My name is BJ Last.

I'm a Ballard resident.

I'm calling in support of the solidarity budgets, housing and food access recommendations, along with the people's budgets recommendations to fund additional tiny house villages and RV safe lots with wraparound services and to place provisos on these funds to ensure that they actually get spent on these programs.

This year has really shown how important protecting funding is.

And, you know, it's October and we finally had our first tiny house village open despite them being funded since the start of January.

And as someone that does mutual aid, like building housing and safe shelters, like tiny house bilges, so my unsheltered neighbors can come in from outside, is somewhat personal.

Like it means Grandma C, not freezing to death in her tent this winter.

It means Paige has somewhere to go to get away from the next round of wildfire smoke, which causes issues with her asthma.

It means Bill not being assaulted by sheltered community members yet again, because they don't like seeing a tent.

It means Jose and Mike don't have to worry that a sheltered community member is going to throw all of their belongings in the trash while they're at work, yet again.

It means Patrick doesn't have to spend half of his morning trying to find a bathroom that's open to him, as large portions of Seattle really are public bathroom deserts.

So I really urge you to support those items.

Thank you, and I yield my time.

Thank you for calling this morning.

And the next two speakers are Jenny Falls and Douglas And Douglas, it says you are enlisted as not present, so if you dial in before the end of our public comment session, we'll get back to you.

Good morning.

Jeannie, and if you can hit star six for me.

It shows you still muted on my end over here.

Maybe one more time, star six.

Okay, Jeannie, last call.

Oh, there you are!

Oh, I'm sorry, I was hitting it on the launching.

So sorry, I was having trouble figuring out how to actually get in here.

Hi, my name is Jeannie Foles.

I'm the Executive Director of the Pike Market Senior Center and Food Bank, two of the human service agencies that support the downtown area.

And I'm calling in today to support including The Human Services Wage Equity Study that's been proposed to the council for $750,000 to create to do a study that will sort of help us determine what wage equivalents are for non-profit positions.

Our board of directors is committed to promoting wage equity and a fair living wage for people living in Seattle.

And I've had a lot of success finding on the Internet information about what is a living wage here.

There have been some studies done.

But it's very difficult to find anything that is an equivalent for, say, a case manager's position working in human services.

What is that?

What is the value of that position, which has been traditionally underpaid?

How do we figure out what a real wage is that this person should earn?

that values their work.

And I know the council's interested in wage equity, and so I urge you to support this addition to the budget.

Thank you.

Well, thank you.

I appreciate it.

And Douglas, we're still seeing you listed as not present.

So I'm just going to wait one more second to see if there's anybody in the waiting room.

We know that there's a lot of people who called in on Tuesday night, and some of them were not present.

So I just want to make sure nobody's in the waiting room that has an unidentified number.

Give it a quick second.

Douglas, thanks for signing up to provide public testimony today.

It doesn't appear that you are in the waiting room, so we will look forward to getting your public testimony at counselatseattle.gov.

Okay, that concludes our public comment for today.

Thank you all for your generous testimony this morning.

And again, tomorrow, starting at 7.30 a.m., you can sign up for public testimony.

We will provide the opportunity for folks to provide public testimony up until the 10 o'clock hour, as we have committed to the first half an hour being for public comment in every meeting.

So good morning, everyone.

I want to make sure that we get the chance to have a robust discussion today.

We're going to have with us central staff.

Do do make sure to take notes of your questions.

Depending on how quickly we move through the presentations, we will have the opportunity to ask questions during the presentation.

Some of the presentations themselves are shorter in terms of slides, but the content is heavy.

If you can correspond with the memos that have accompanied those slides, that would be very helpful.

I also want to take a quick second to remind folks that this is a conversation to help identify questions that are still existing, have an opportunity for you and your staff to look into a few more areas that you'd like to consider for amendments.

Amendments that are due on Monday at noon do not have to be fully that's exactly what the deadline is for, so that those amendments can get submitted on Monday, and central staff then works with all of the council members over the following week to make sure that the amendment idea is refined, and then it is submitted so that we can have those amendments posted and a full discussion on the 26th, 27th, and 28th.

So again, please don't feel pressured to have all of the details worked out, and we can work with central staff on the exact dollar amount.

If you have a ballpark range, it's obviously very helpful.

But just the concept is what we're looking for for those submittals.

Thanks to central staff in advance for all of your work and thanks to all of your offices.

We know that many offices have been very busy working on amendments for consideration and look forward to those discussions on October 26th, 27th, and 28th.

And thank you for submitting those concepts on Monday at noon.

At this time, let's move into the first item on the agenda.

Madam Clerk, can you please read item one into the record?

Agenda item one, Office of Planning and Community Development for briefing and discussion.

Okay, wonderful.

Well, it is great to see you, Lish, and I want to welcome you to City Council Presentation, Issue Identification Day 2. Thanks for heading up the discussion today, and I think some folks have had the chance to read your memo already in addition to the slides.

I want to say how important this policy development memo is and making sure that folks really get a chance to read some of the incredible work that was put into this.

I'm going to lift up some quotes as we go along, especially at the top of page three for context setting in that memo, where it says, according to the U.S.

Census, Seattle was the third fastest growing large city in the United States between 2010 and 2020. increase in the number of housing units that we need to address the population in total.

wealthier, but wealth inequality also grew.

So looking forward to hearing more as you provide the context for why OPCD's work is so incredibly important, given that the housing, the cost of housing went from around 400,000 in 2010 to now over $850,000.

This is the context in which we received the OPCD information and really appreciate your presentation here today.

Please go ahead and get us started, and then we will turn it over to Council Member Strauss for the first comments and questions.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Patty, can you move to the next slide?

So the Office of Planning and Community Development is in charge of citywide planning and community-based investments in equitable development.

It has five divisions, equitable development, community planning, land use policy, urban design, and long-range planning.

With the infusion of payroll tax funding to support equitable development projects and other changes, the budget increases in 2022 by 127% to $31 million.

Staffing increases from 42 to 46 and a half FTE.

Three positions are added to support equitable development initiative or EDI grants.

One indigenous planner position is added, a position is added to manage the Duwamish Valley projects.

And a position is transferred to the Seattle Center.

They were doing most of their work with the Seattle Center.

In addition, there's reclassification of vacant positions to lower level positions to better provide a range of skills and expertise.

Key initiatives in 2022 include the update, major update to the comprehensive plan, planning for regional growth centers, light rail station area planning, the environmental impact statement for the maritime and industrial strategy, implementation of the Duwamish Valley Program, which includes $2.5 million for projects in Georgetown and South Park, and the Equitable Development Initiative, which will have $19.5 million for grants in 2022. As mentioned on page 3 of the memo, I discussed some of the growth trends in the city.

OPCD's planning work is occurring in the context of significant growth.

Employment grew faster than population growth.

Median income grew sharply over the last 10 years.

And because income is not equitably distributed across races, black and indigenous households have borne the brunt of that growth.

And before I get into the issues, let's stop and see if there are any questions.

Thank you.

So we have with us Council Member Strauss, who's the Chair of Land Use.

and we will see if Councilmember Strauss has any comments and then Councilmember Morales as the chair of the person who has oversight over equitable development initiative, I'll turn it to you next as well before we get into issue ID.

Councilmember Strauss, is there any comments or questions that you'd like to put out there at this moment?

Good morning, Chair Mosqueda.

Yes, just real briefly, I was wondering, Lish, I know I may have asked several of these questions two weeks ago, but could you help me understand about the funding for the comp plan major update in EIS process that is forthcoming?

How does the funding levels that we have in the transmitted budget compared to prior years?

So there is.

There are two buckets of funding.

Outreach and engagement and consultant support for the environmental impact statement that's required as part of the plan update.

Outreach and engagement received $100,000 in 2021 and is budgeted for another $50,000 next year.

The environmental impact statement received $30,000 in 2021. The bulk of the funding is provided in 2022, $300,000.

And $95,000 is planned for 2023. That's a total of $425,000.

Looking at the last major update, in 2021 dollars, EIS work was budgeted at $500,000, so we're less than what was budgeted eight years ago.

And outreach engagement was significantly higher at that time.

Another example is the mandatory housing affordability work that was done following on the last comp plan update.

And that EIS was budgeted at $750,000.

And the outreach and engagement work for that citywide zoning effort was also $750,000.

Thank you, Lish.

Very helpful and I know that there are some efforts to make some changes to what has been transmitted.

Staying on the comp plan major update topic, are there other departments other than OPCD that need funding for this work?

So, Thinking about where the city has been challenged on previous environmental impact statement work, clearly historic preservation was a major issue with the mandatory housing affordability, EIS, and that analysis, because it So the city has a citywide survey of historic resources.

That citywide survey is not complete.

It doesn't address many of the areas with the highest risk of displacement.

And updating that survey to support historic preservation analysis in the EIS would cost about $125,000, and Department of Neighborhoods would be the lead on that.

Thanks, that's very helpful.

And you actually teed up my next question, which is, can you say more about this historic resources survey?

What are we surveying and how does it interact with the other plans that we have going on?

Yeah, the historic resources survey is sort of a first cut look at the structures in the city.

It's typically a windshield survey where historic.

historic preservation specialists will go through a neighborhood looking at buildings that are, because of their age, are potentially eligible for historic preservation and identifying which of those structures are actually likely to be That allows the city to basically prioritize their analysis on those structures that are most likely to actually have historic significance and rather than requiring analysis of all structures say greater than 50 years old.

Thank you.

That's very helpful.

Circling back, last question on the comp plan major update.

Can you let me know if the proviso that council has previously adopted in the past regarding the comp plan major update, is that still in place at this time?

So that proviso and it required two things of the EIS, the contract with the EIS consultant.

It required that the EIS look at an alternative that that looks at zoning changes in single-family areas, allowing a broader range of housing types in those areas, and another alternative that looks at other strategies to reduce the risk of displacement.

It is tied to OPCD filing a consultant contract this year for that work.

They appear to be on track for doing that, every conversation I've had with them, they plan on including those sorts of alternatives in that consultant contract.

So assuming they file the contract this year, then yes, it will be in effect.

And yes, the EIS will be including those alternatives.

Very helpful.

And last question from you this morning is just can you help me understand is the planning for the regional growth centers, is it Is the planning process for these regional growth centers, is that fully funded in the transmitted budget?

So the transmitted budget includes $150,000 for that work.

It covers six urban centers and The intent is to hire a consultant to update the plans for the six urban centers.

I'll get into this in just a minute, but I don't think it's fully funded.

OK.

Let's follow up offline to discuss that.

And that's my issue number two, so we can talk about it more in just a minute.

Fantastic.

Chair, those are all of my questions, and I'm happy to follow up with you offline as well.

Thank you.

I think that tees up the issue identification very well.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Council Member Morales, any additional questions or comments as it relates to EDI, equitable development initiative?

Well, just one question, sort of piggybacking off of Council Member Strauss's, and I'm sure Lisha's going to get there, but in terms of the regional growth centers, the Chinatown International District is not identified as one of those areas, but of course we know it is downtown, and so I'm interested in what the intersection is there.

I don't have other questions.

I have amendments that we're discussing in my office that I'm happy to talk about once we've gone through the issue ID.

Great.

Thank you so much.

I do have just a few questions on the memo.

I do want to call out the importance of the joint work the council did here with prioritizing equitable development initiative funding.

On page one of your memo, you talk about I am assuming that is largely if not solely thanks to jump start progressive Seattle payroll tax.

Can you confirm the resources behind that?

And then on page 2, where it says OPCD will receive $2.5 million to implement recommendations from Duwamish Valley, $2.3 million of that is coming from Jump Start.

And I just wanted to double check, like we did in our previous meeting yesterday, are the expenses that are being associated with the program specifically aligned with the implementation plan that the council has passed now twice?

Is this a sort of authorized use of those funds?

That's my understanding, but we will confirm that with you.

Okay, great.

And then midway through the page there when it relates to the maritime We know that there have been a number of stakeholders that have been working on those recommendations.

I'm wondering, are there specific policy recommendations from the mayor's effort on the industrial and maritime strategy that are baked into the budget here or any accompanying bills that we should be aware of that

Yeah, so funding for the environmental impact statement to study the recommendations of the Maritime Industrials Task Force were allocated in a supplemental budget this summer.

And so there is work going on right now on an environmental impact statement to analyze those recommendations.

And we anticipate getting final recommendations once the environmental review is complete next year.

Excellent.

Thank you for that reminder.

And then lastly, on the long range planning, this may be similar to the question that Councilmember Strauss started with, and I know it does lead into your issue identification, but when you look at the long range planning, And the work that is accompanying this, were we anticipating more FTEs were going to be built into this than the 0.5 noted in the memo?

Were we sort of surprised by the 0.5?

Were we anticipating more FTEs would have been allocated?

I personally didn't have an expectation for staffing changes.

More funding for outreach and engagement and consultant support for the EIS, I think, was what I expected to see.

Okay, great.

Well, we will let you continue with that thread.

I don't see any additional hands up right now, so let's take that into issue identification.

All right, okay, let's go to the next page.

So first issue, and we've touched on this, is the Comprehensive Plan Major Update.

As a reminder, the comp plan is a policy document that guides growth over a 20-year period.

It's a result of the State Growth Management Act, and under that law, the city is required to update its plan by June 2024. The new update will focus on accommodating new growth targets adopted into the countywide planning policies.

Under those policies, the city will plan for an additional 112,000 housing units and 170,000 jobs over the next 25 years, prorating that to the 20-year period of our plan.

That's approximately 90,000 housing units and 135,000 jobs.

This represents a 24% increase in the city's housing stock and 21% increase in employment.

It's slower than the growth we attracted over the last 10 years.

But if we do see this growth, it will use over 70% of the city's housing and job capacity.

So with these growth targets, we are getting close to the capacity we have to accommodate growth.

Consequently, this level of growth requires the city to reassess our strategy towards accommodating growth.

The update will require an EIS, Environmental Impact Statement.

The EIS will look at a range of alternatives.

We've talked about a couple of them.

Specifics of those alternatives will be developed through a public scoping process that will start soon with a scope to be developed in the first quarter of 2022. We talked about the budget a little bit, but there's a total of $150,000 for public outreach over three years and $425,000 for the environmental impact statement and hiring consultants to support that work.

Recent changes to state law encourage but don't require that we analyze zoning changes that implement the changes to the plan in the EIS for the comprehensive plan.

Studying those zoning changes at the same time as we study the policy changes would save time and money, but will require more resources up front and more community input.

And as mentioned, this work may require additional resources in offices other than the Office of Planning and Community Development, including Department of Neighborhoods Historic Preservation Survey work.

So I have three options.

They're not surprising.

Add staff to this work, including outreach and engagement support.

Increase funding for consultant work on the EIS and for historic survey work in department and neighborhoods.

And those are clearly not mutually exclusive.

And the third option is no action.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Morales, I see your hand up, and please go ahead.

Yeah, Lish, can you, I just want to make sure I'm understanding these processes right.

Can you share again the timeline for the EIS conversation about the comp plan, and the timeline for the EIS, I'm talking about the community engagement piece for the maritime industrial land, and This is outside of this conversation, but I'm trying to compare it with the timeline also for the West Seattle to Ballard light rail station planning or light rail planning, how those different processes line up.

Yeah.

So as a reminder, EIS is typically three phases.

The first phase is scoping where the city will go to the public to help identify and shape the alternatives that should be studied in the environmental impact statement.

The second phase is publication of a draft environmental impact statement that allows the public to weigh in on the analysis that's been done and recommend changes or identify deficits in that analysis.

And the third phase is the final environmental impact statement, where often, but not always, a preferred alternative is chosen based on the impacts that have been identified.

So talking about the three different processes that you laid out, scoping for the maritime and industrial study happened this year.

They anticipate publishing the draft environmental impact statement, I think, later this year or early in 2022, and then publishing a final environmental impact statement mid-year next year.

So that's moving very quickly.

For the redirected to the comp plan, we're looking at scoping being completed first quarter of 2022. Publication of a draft EIS in 2023 and final EIS and sending recommendations to the council in 2024. And the Ballard to West Seattle Environmental Impact Study I think would follow that.

I'm not as well versed in the timeline for that and I will provide those dates to you.

Thank you.

Thank you for the question Council Member Morales.

Are there any thoughts or comments?

The ideas that the issue identification is really bringing up for folks as it relates to this first one, the major comprehensive plan.

I know council member council members, plural, but including council member Strauss this morning has already mentioned interest in that.

Would you like to weigh in on any of the thoughts this brings up for you?

I'll go ahead and weigh in then.

Council Member Morales, I see you coming off mute.

Your screen is frozen for me for some reason, but I do see you coming off mute, so please go ahead.

Thank you.

I just will say that part of the point I was trying to make in my questioning with Lish is that For all of these processes, community engagement is the critical piece.

And since they all sort of converge in the Chinatown International District and Pioneer Square area, I do think it's really important we make sure that the community engagement piece of these processes is well funded, particularly since so much of what has to happen there for meaningful engagement will involve translation and interpretation services.

Thank you, appreciate that, well said.

I appreciate that this is clearly under resourced at this point.

I know there has been a joint expression of the need to make sure there is adequate funding for about how this engagement work has been funded in the past.

And I'm looking at the bottom of page four, where it said in the past years, EIS would have, excuse me, in the past years, EIS would receive $425,000, excuse me, in this year's budget, EIS would receive 425,000 for consultant assistance of the proposed budget.

Of those dollars, 30,000 were allocated in 2021 budget, 300,000 are in the 22 budget, and 95,000 are anticipated for 23. OPCD plans to contract with consultants to undertake that work.

However, the footnote says, I love the footnote.

Thank you, Lish.

The footnote says the contract for the EIS for the previous update plan was $437,000.

in 2016. In 2016, those dollars to 2021 dollars would have been at least $500,000.

So even if we just use the amount of money that was allocated in 2016, we are underfunding the investment work, excuse me, the outreach and engagement work that we knew we needed five years ago.

And now we're saying, in addition to the traditional outreach and engagement that we wanna do on the comprehensive plan, we wanna do so much more because we've been told to do it.

We've been told to do it because of the racial equity toolkit that I helped to sponsor in the 2019 year when we were building the 2020 adopted budget.

The work that we put into that budget required a few things to address exclusionary zoning, and displacement in that budget so that we could anticipate what was needed for the 2022 year.

It required a racial analysis tool kit on Seattle's growth strategy to ground the conversation on community experience and expertise.

It included policy options that would allow for us to have diversity across the city in the environmental impact statement for the comprehensive plan update.

And from those discussions, as we heard earlier this year in Council Member Straus' committee, OPCD did incredible work with Puget Sound SAGE, with PolicyLink, with community members across the region, especially in the South End, to have a conversation that was grounded in quantitative and qualitative data to show how when we embark on this process of creating a comprehensive plan, we must use the racial equity toolkit analysis to create meaningful options to address exclusionary zoning and combat displacement.

That this was supposed to be the ground setting conversation for 2022 so that we had really robust community engagement.

So not only are we underfunding to the degree that we had invested in in 2016, but we now have another layer of responsibility to respond to the results of that racial equity toolkit.

and we know, as Lish says on page five of his memo, that in second paragraph, the takeaway is it's more cost-efficient to do the EIS analysis along with the comp plan outreach and engagement as it relates to historic preservation.

I think that all of these are really leading to what Councilmember Strauss and Morales and others have talked about, which is a need for us to make sure that those upfront funds are available so we can be more cost-efficient in the long run.

and so we can really follow through on the initial conversations we've had with community about the need for this comp plan to be very much rooted in those who are experiencing displacement, have been historically priced out and pushed out of our city, and to make sure that we're more inclusive Seattle.

So I look forward to that conversation, and Alish, I appreciate all that you've done to outline the why this is important.

If I have misspoken on any data points, feel free to correct me, but I really appreciate the memo that clearly outlines this.

And also, it includes a reminder that we need to be building 4,500 units a year in order for us to reach our goal of creating the 112,000 new housing units to meet our goal over the next 25 years.

Gotta get to work.

Okay.

Unleash, of course, feel free to correct me if I've said anything erroneous.

Please go ahead.

You are on mute, Liz.

Sorry about that.

Sorry.

Let's move to issue two.

So we have heard from the Puget Sound Regional Council, which is the regional transportation planning body, that we need to update our six regional growth center plans.

Our planning documents call these urban centers.

The six of them are Northgate in District 5, University District in District 4, First Hill, Capitol Hill in District 3, and Downtown, Uptown, and South Lake Union in District 7. And to respond to a previous question, the Downtown Urban Center does include the Chinatown International District, along with Pioneer Square, Belltown, Denny Triangle, and the Downtown Core.

The update will require the plans to address regional collaboration and vision, environment and climate change, land use and development plans, housing, economy, transportation, public services, and racial equity.

Plans for each of these areas were adopted in the late 1990s.

Some have been updated, but many have not.

They don't address topics like racial equity or climate change.

The mayor's budget includes $150,000 in one FTE to do this work across all six centers starting in 2022. This will not allow for either deep community engagement or deep analysis of the issues in the updates.

So similar to the last one, your options are to add funding positions in OPCD to undertake this work, increase consultant funding to do the work, or no action.

Thank you, Lish.

Colleagues, are there any thoughts that this issue identification raises for you?

I'm happy.

Please go ahead, Council Member Juarez.

No, I'm just...

Thank you, Lish.

Good job.

You know that we've been planning for the 130th and the Northgate stuff, so thank you.

As usual, well done.

Thank you.

Well said.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

I see councilmember Morales' hand.

Please go ahead.

I'm sure we'll continue to have this conversation.

I'm just interested to know what it would take to do this well.

And if 150,000 isn't enough for all six areas, what might be.

I don't know if you have that number, Lish, or if that's a conversation that we'll be having.

So as a point of comparison, so this is funding for the first year.

As a point of comparison, I was just asked about the cost for the Crown Hill planning effort.

It was much smaller, smaller area, fewer residents, smaller scope.

Over the last four years, the city's dedicated about one and a half FTE, which is equivalent to about $240,000.

So I think in 2022, you could triple this amount of money and still be tight on cash.

I think that is a great question.

Thank you.

Can you repeat that last part?

Triple the amount of money and still they would be needing to stretch their dollars.

needing to be investigated.

I at this time don't have a preference between A and B, but just noting what Liz just said, if we tripled the amount that it would still be a shoestring budget, so just wanted to put that out there.

Excellent, thank you very much.

OK, I think I appreciate that Council Member and I don't see additional hands, so let's move on to the final issue identified by Central Staff here.

So council members are very aware of the Equitable Development Initiative and the Strategic Investment Fund, but very briefly, they fund grants for community-initiated projects intended to mitigate impacts from displacement on BIPOC communities and increase opportunities for those communities, black, indigenous, people of color communities.

EDI grants are funded through the payroll tax.

There will be $13.9 million.

of payroll tax funding going to grants, the short-term rental tax, $5 million in 2022, and the Community Development Block Grant, $430,000.

EDI staff are funded both through the payroll tax and general fund dollars in 2022. There's clear demand for equitable development funding.

The EDI program received 78 applications in 2021 for more than $50 million.

They were able to fund 21 of those projects with $9.8 million.

In 2021, there was one-time funding from the sale of the Mercer Mega Block for the Strategic Investment Fund, or SIF.

SIF.

Intent of that funding was to provide a source of funding for community acquisition of property.

The SIF received over 100 applications totaling over $500 million.

The city was able to fund 13 of those projects, totaling $30 million.

The SIF is not continuing into the future, but EDI funds can be used for the property acquisition activities that SIF was funding.

So your options are to add funding and staff for EDI projects, add funding and staff for some of the SIF projects not funded in 2021, or no action under either alternative A or B, the EDI advisory board would likely I think it's important to note that we are looking for additional funding to help to advise on the most equitable approach to allocating funds given that it's unlikely that we will have $530 million of additional funding to provide for these projects.

I will jump in with a quick thank you for identifying

the city council, does the city council sit in the position of saying, hey, all of these other grants from the Mercer mega sale were qualified but didn't make it, so we want to fund those pieces.

I know there's probably a lot of interest in doing that, but that's not typically the role that council plays.

So you're saying we could choose to increase staffing and increase funding to help support some of the projects that had were not funded, but still it would be up to the EDI board to help identify which of those still met X criteria, and they would have the final selection.

Is that accurate?

Yeah, that's how we've set up the EDI program today, and I would recommend continuing to rely on community expertise in terms of identifying most appropriate projects.

Okay.

And your memo in the presentation is helpful because I think initially when we had the departments present, there was some question in my mind of whether or not the proposed budget was proposing extending on an annual basis the Mercer Mega Sale, which we all know was due to a one-time sale of the large parcel of public land.

which we've since put in policies to help protect against doing wholesale sales like that in the future.

But as part of the commitment to community identifying 30 million, so it was one time in nature.

This is really a question of saying, hey, we have an opportunity to recognize that there's X amount of projects that didn't get funded, but the budget as we've received it, is it proposing to extend the SIF program?

Because I thought the answer was no.

No.

It slightly confusingly discusses the payroll tax funds that are being allocated to OPCD and OH as an extension of the SIF.

But the intent of the payroll tax is always to provide 9% of its funding for EDI projects.

And that's what you're seeing in the budget.

The theme continues.

So thank you very much for that.

Ali, I see you on screen as well.

Please go ahead.

Good morning, Chair Mosqueda, council members.

I just, yeah, I just wanted to add, because this came up in the general fund balancing analysis discussion yesterday and was noted in the paper.

And as Lish noted, it is somewhat confusing, all of these names of funds that were set aside, an actual fund that was established, like the Jumpstart Fund.

and different initiatives.

And so I think from central staff's perspective, what is less confusing is that these funds are part of the equitable development initiative moving forward.

The strategic investment funds from the Mercer sale were a one-time process in moving forward.

This money is really implementation of the jumpstart fund policies and the payroll tax spending plan.

And to avoid sort of confusion with all these buckets of money and how community engages and applies for funds.

I think moving forward, it would be simpler to just go with, this is part of the equitable development initiative, a portion of the funds described as SIF in the proposed budget are also going to the office of housing.

They're sort of supporting office of housing programs.

So I think it's simpler to just do away with that term moving forward.

I appreciate that.

I've been making a mark on my own documents as well.

This is really EDI.

Excellent.

Okay.

Thank you, Lish, for all of that, and I will call on Councilmember Morales first to identify other issues that might be in the OPCV bucket that you'd like to put on your colleagues' radar.

Sure, thank you.

Well, I will say first that I do support adding funding and staff for EDI projects, so I appreciate all that you're doing there, Lish, to help us understand what that could mean.

I did want to highlight a couple of other things that our office is working on for my colleagues to consider.

One is an amendment that really aligns the proposed funding for commercial acquisition with our community development strategies at EDI.

And so the amendment would shift funding that's dedicated to commercial acquisition at OED and add some additional CLFR funding and then moves it to EDI.

So we know that And I do want to say that I think OED, EDI, and the Office of Housing have been working together on these kind of acquisition strategies.

So I anticipate that that would continue.

But since EDI has the clear experience of getting money out the door quickly, as they demonstrated this year, and is really focused on that community development piece, I think it makes sense to move that direction.

And then another thing sort of in keeping with the conversation we've been having about community engagement and the need for new community plans, we also have a budget amendment to support the Chinatown International District who wants to create their neighborhood plan and did receive a little bit of funding in the past.

We will be trying to add some funding for that community engagement as we've been talking about requires a little more intensive support because of the need for translation and interpretation services.

But the amendment would allocate staff support that is currently at the Department of Neighborhoods to OPCD since the point here is to create a neighborhood plan that is accepted by the city as part of OPCD, and would also support the community in engaging a consultant to assist with the engagement work.

I do have a couple of – and I do want to just say one more thing, sorry.

We have also been working to get a better understanding of what our what it means to build an equitable economy, to build some coherent community wealth strategies.

We've invested as a city across lots of different departments to address the impacts of income inequality and restricted land use policies, especially.

So we are working on an amendment that would provide funding to do the research to help create a coordinated approach among our different departments that can really build a consistent ladder of strong neighborhoods, economic opportunity, and build toward a comprehensive community wealth building strategy for the city.

That one is still in the works, but wanted to give folks a heads up that we're hoping to get some support for that too.

That is all I have, thank you.

Thank you for flagging those Councilmember Morales.

Okay.

Well, I have received confirmation Councilmember Strauss doesn't have anything further as well at this point, so I want to thank you all.

If there's nothing else for us on OPCD, again, thanks for all of the time that you put into this memo, and I think we will We have to continue to ground ourselves on how we must act with urgency as we look at the data that you provided at the top of page 3. It's not just about planning community development.

It's not just about having a home, but especially in the wake of COVID, knowing that you need a place to call home in order to be healthy.

The stats are really compelling to look at the last 10 years and how we've changed as a city, our growth in the population, and the ways in which we need to act with urgency to catch up.

All right, let's go on to item number two.

Item number two in the record.

Agenda item two, human services department and community-led investments for briefing and discussion.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

And I see Amy Gore with us from central staff.

Thanks for being here today.

Look forward to the presentation here today on human services and community led investments.

And as a reminder, we will have a conversation on homeless services in the afternoon.

services and community led investments.

They are connected in many ways and for the purposes of our discussion here are separated especially because as we think about the homeless services largely being transitioned over to the regional homelessness authority we have bifurcated the discussions appropriately.

Herbold first as our chair of human services and public safety.

Do you offer any comments or questions as we wrap up the overview before we go into issue identification?

Welcome, Andy.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Mosqueda and council members.

My name is Amy Gore from council central staff.

As you mentioned, I am here today to present on the human services department and community led investments, specifically participatory budgeting and the equitable communities initiative.

Next slide, please.

As you know, the Human Services Department's mission is to connect people with resources and solutions during times of need so we can all live, learn, work, and take part in strong, healthy communities.

HSD performs this work primarily through contracts with community-based organizations.

However, they do provide some direct services, particularly in the Aging and Disability Services Division.

This first slide shows the summary of the 2022 proposed budget compared to the 2021 adopted budget.

Overall, the department's budget decreases from $301 million to $286 million.

This is primarily due to moving some grant funds as part of the transition to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, as well as the reduction of one-time ads in response to the COVID pandemic.

As you can see, this has the largest impact on the Homelessness Division, which, as you mentioned, Chair, will be covered by Jeff Sims this afternoon.

In addition, there's a slight reduction in the Preparing Youth for Success division.

The largest increase is funding in the Supporting Safe Communities division, which includes community safety programs, which will be discussed tomorrow during the Alternatives to Policing and Criminal Legal System presentation.

The general fund contribution to the department's budget decreases from $174.9 million to $171.3 million, while other sources of funds decrease from $126 million to $115 million.

And I'm going to discuss this in more detail in just a moment.

Next slide, please, Patty.

The second slide shows the 2021 and 2022 budgets for community-led investments.

As you can see, participatory budgeting increases from $28.3 million, which was one-time funds, to $30 million per year of ongoing funds.

Similarly, the Equitable Communities Initiative increased from $29.9 million of one-time funds to $30 million per year of ongoing funds, which was discussed yesterday during the general fund balancing presentation.

In addition, in the 2022 budget, there are 11.5 FTE to support these programs.

Next slide, please.

The third slide goes into more detail on the source of HSD funds.

As you can see, in 2019, the department's budget was $199 million.

with $125 million from General Fund and $74 million from the Human Services Fund.

The Human Services Fund is comprised of outside grant funding, mostly from state or federal programs.

In 2020, this increase, sorry.

We increased by over 25% in response to the COVID pandemic.

That included an increase of $15 million in general fund dollars, an additional $35 million from outside sources.

In 2021, this trend continued with an additional $100 million over pre-COVID spending with half of those funds coming from general fund, an additional 44 million coming from outside grants, and the addition of 4.7 million of sweetened beverage tax funds and 3.3 million of short-term rental tax funds.

The proposed 2022 budget has a slight reduction in general fund contribution from 174.9 million to 171.3 million.

In addition, the Human Services Fund, our outside funding sources, reduces from $118.5 million to $72.8 million.

This is slightly offset by an increase of $24.8 million from coronavirus local fiscal recovery funds, which we call CLIFR funds, as well as the addition of $9.8 million in payroll expense tax.

I do briefly want to correct an error that is in the HSD issue ID paper.

On page three, I wrote that as part of the reductions to the Human Services Fund, that the CDBG Community Development Block Fund grants were reduced by $31.6 million.

However, that was a total number I was looking at, and the actual reduction was $5.8 million.

So thank you for the opportunity to correct that.

On pages 4 and 5 of the memo, there is a brief overview of the notable changes in the department's budget.

I was not planning to walk through them all, but I did want to highlight one item.

The budget includes $4.6 million to increase existing contracts with providers, which is required by Ordinance 125-865, which was passed in 2019. However, the inflationary amount included in the budget 2.4% is less than what is required by the ordinance.

The increase should be 3.0% and that will be addressed in the errata amendment to the budget, which will add another 1.5 million for inflationary increases to provider contracts.

I will pause here to answer any questions on these slides or the HSD budget in general before moving on to issue ID.

Wonderful.

Council Member Herbold, would you like to offer any comments or questions on this portion?

Sure.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair, and thank you, Amy.

One of the things, it's very noticeable, but I'm not really seeing or understanding what the impact is of such a large reduction in revenues from the Human Services Fund.

What impact does that create for 2023?

Because, I mean, we can expect that some of the revenue sources that are making up part of the difference in 2022 will not be available anymore, for instance, the Clifford funds.

And so what will that do as far as creating a greater gap to fill in 2023?

Right.

Well, certainly,

it will be a reduction because there will be even less of the one-time COVID response funding.

However, some of these funds, even though they're adopted in a particular year's budget, can be used for multiple years.

So I can work, I don't have it on hand, but I can work on what that might look like in 2023, what the expected spending is of those funds for each particular year.

But I do think in general, it would without further changes or without further infusion of other outside funding would result in additional reductions in 2023.

And then can you go back one slide?

I guess maybe more than one slide.

That's the one, right?

So this represents 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 divisions.

And your issue paper highlights I think six of these seven and does not include promoting public health because you know I understand that's a that's an MOU with public health but there is a an increase of 19 percent there and would just really like to have more of an understanding.

And I think, not you, Amy, Central Staff is working on that.

But I really would like to have more of a conversation about our investments through our interlocal agreement with public health, particularly as it relates to mental health investments.

So just flagging that as an issue not identified, an issue identification, which I understand we're going to go into in a bit.

And I think those are my main comments on this portion of the agenda.

I will want to ask some other questions once we get into FUID.

Councilmember Herbold, you actually started working with your staff on that, so I definitely will be working more on some of the details that you're interested in.

I do want to flag that in the Promoting Public Health PSL, that's about a $2.5 million difference, and a million of that is actually just a transfer.

We put the increase provided by the council for the mobile crisis team previously was in the Addressing Homelessness PSL.

It's a million-dollar add that we made.

And it actually should be in the promoting public health one.

So that's about half of that is actually just a technical change.

It's not actually changes.

Got it.

And that's actually reminding me of a question.

Wondering why the mobile crisis teams, as identified on page four of the memo, is moved to the youth and family empowerment division instead of being moved to safe and thriving communities?

I believe that is because it is through, because that is funded through public health, that there's an alignment in that way.

Actually, the contract is not with public health there.

It's actually a contract with the county, the Department of Community and Human Services, Behavioral Health and Recovery Division.

And so I think that it's just a bureaucratic organization.

As you know, Council Member, It's basically one staff person that mostly has handled our public health contract for years, and that's been at various times in almost every BSL and every division.

So it has changed a lot, but I can ask more and make sure that there's nothing, there's no other details behind that placement.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

And then, just as long as we're in this area, I want to flag for the I'm going to go to the next slide.

I'm going to be listening public in case folks are concerned about this.

part of a county transfer, maybe not in that interlocal agreement, but perhaps, but the 1.2 million general fund for drug user health services and the 200,000 general fund for harm reduction services, the narrative says removal of one-time funding.

I wanna just clarify the reason why that is, is because we have transferred those dollars over to King County and they will be RFPing them soon.

Actually, the those funds just to give a broader history, you're very well versed and obviously the funds came from a set aside at one time funds that have been held in finance general last year was the first time that they were appropriated.

They were all one time dollars and so.

I think that perhaps the language is a little misleading there and that it was one-time funds, that there is not a continuing source for it to my knowledge at this point.

I can double-check that.

So that would be the change that's occurring there and why it's labeled as a one-time correction.

Yep.

All good.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

I don't see any additional hands.

I do have a few questions, too, and thank you for teeing up the questions around the removal of one-time funding, page 5, item number 4, as Councilmember Herbold noted.

I, too, was concerned about that, and so I just want to make sure I have a clear understanding of what's currently happening.

public health Seattle King County is currently working to get contracts out the door to fund community harm reduction strategies that are in compliance with existing law and are oriented towards public health interventions and treatment.

Those dollars will be able to be used in 2022. Is there any concern about those dollars being used in 2022, or we are all good to make sure that that funding does transfer?

You'd like to see it.

That sounded positive as it yes.

Affirmation that we have no concerns about those grants.

continuing to 2022. Okay, great.

And Jeff Sims, I don't know if you did introduce yourself for the record, but I just want to introduce you for the record, Jeff Sims, central staff.

Thanks for popping into the screen here with Amy.

The other two items in that category that were a little concerning to me, and perhaps they fall into the same vein of being used, but by somebody else, is there a continuation of the 33,000 for Native and Indigenous children and families?

and $200,000 for harm reduction programs?

Or are those going to have some form of a cliff?

I can speak to the Native American funding.

That is a one-time reduction.

There is an offsetting new addition of ongoing funding of $1.2 million for American Indian and Alaska Native communities.

And that includes, and I can tell you this right now, That is $1.2 million, which is broken into a few things, but should cover some of that gap of the removal of the $33,000.

Madam Chair, I was just going to say that $200,000 for harm reduction programs, it is my recollection is that these are not service dollars.

It was designed to be one-time funding to make In many cases, physical changes to the configuration of spaces.

We approved it in a prior budget action from the Harm Reduction Coalition, I think is who proposed it.

But again, I can give you more of a granular detail of what those dollars are supposed to be used for, but they are by design supposed to be one-time funds.

I think that is very helpful.

Thank you, Councilmember.

And Amy on the 33,000 for Native children and families, she'll just confirm for us later that that is indeed being picked up in all or in part in this other $1.2 million that has also been allocated.

You don't have to confirm right now.

I just mean we can circle back on that.

Okay, great.

And if we could go to slide number.

I have to ask this.

Can you confirm for us if the payroll expense utilization here is in alignment or is it out of

The payroll expense tax in the HSD budget is used primarily for homelessness.

The one exception of that is there is $403,000 for the continuation of the One Call Pilot Program.

That is a program that allows Seattle Police Department, Seattle Fire Department to call Crisis Connections to get help when they are dealing with a behavioral or mental health crisis.

And we'll discuss that a little bit more.

But again, with the remaining, you know, the balance of about nine point something million is for homelessness services that Jeff can discuss.

Chair Mosqueda, I would just note here about $3.7 million of the payroll tax revenue from the Jumpstart Fund that is in HSD's budget is what we identified yesterday in the discussions as, from our review, is inconsistent with the Jumpstart Fund policies.

It's funding homeless services and the crisis connections, one call that Amy just described.

about $6 million is used to, um, is the funding to pair with federal vouchers to provide services to, to housing units, which, um, you know, is, is open to interpretation, but the, the funding in jumpstart for housing include was inclusive of providing services at, um, at affordable housing, housing development.

And so we did, and we did identify that as consistent, but that is ultimately, um, your call.

I agree.

Thank you for noting the inconsistency there.

And then lastly, I want to double check on the orange, excuse me, on the a blue bar here for coronavirus local relief fund.

This is what we call CLFR.

This is the American Rescue Plan Act dollars and also known as Seattle Rescue Plan.

I am looking at a chart here that was just sent down on the amount of dollars that the city has expended I'm looking specifically at the human service department, and I'm pretty surprised to see that $0 of the total amount that we allocated for Clifford have been spent.

Am I reading this chart correctly?

And Amy, if you haven't had the chance to look at it, it is relatively new, but do you have any indication of how much has been spent from the Clifford funds that we've already allocated for things like diaper program and I know the chair and I will be diving into those details as well.

For just one other thing, I could just confirm, because it hasn't been identified as an issue, whether or not there's more information about the correction on the contract inflation consistent with Ordinance 125-865.

memo on page 5 suggests that will be corrected in an errata, but I'm not quite sure whether or not they need to take that up.

What I've been told by CBO is that they will be including that in the errata amendment that they sent down, and we'll double check that it's in there after that has been sent down.

Thank you.

Councilmember Herbold, I would just add, I'm working with the Director Noble to confirm that we have funds available to support that and in consideration of other council priorities.

So I think we are working on identifying a strategy to make sure that correction is made without impacting balancing and for other reasons.

Excellent, thanks.

Great, thank you so much.

Okay, issue identification, here we go.

Great.

So I have three issues to present to the committee.

The first is related to food access.

As noted in the paper, there was a significant amount of increased funding for food programs in response to the COVID pandemic.

from 16 point, the budget increase from 16.5 million in 2019 to a high of 28.6 million in 2020. The 2022 proposed budget includes a total of 18.6 million for food programs, for these key food programs.

To reduce the impact of this decrease, the proposed budget includes 2.5 million um, and coronavirus local fiscal recovery funds, the Clifford funds to provide what they call transitional, um, or ramp down funding, um, that those funds are used to kind of, um, make the, um, decrease a little bit more gradual, um, rather than, rather than being a more significant decrease this year.

The $2.5 million is intended to support $220,000 for the ethnic grocery bags, $1 million for meals in permanent supportive housing units and shelters, and $1.28 million for food banks.

In response to this, the council could choose to increase one-time funding to minimize service reductions in 2022. or the council could choose to provide ongoing funding to sustain increased investments in food programs and to fully restore funding to 2021 levels would require an additional $8 million or the council could take no action.

Council Member Hurdle.

Thank you.

I just want to express how concerned I am about this investment area and concerned that what, you know, what is being described as a ramp down is not going to meet the need in our community.

When we met with HSD during department presentations, we had asked whether or not there was information to believe that there's a decrease in need.

What we learned was not that there was a decrease in need that they could quantify, but rather that they believe that there is new state and federal resources coming for food and nutrition support through the Washington State Department of Agriculture.

But we're not, we don't know how much.

and how many dollars and how many people will be able to be served using those resources.

So just really wanting to flag that I'm interested in doing what we can to ensure that the 2021 levels of food and nutrition supports be funded.

I'm a member of the board of trustees.

I'm a member of the board of trustees.

I'm a member of the board of trustees.

I'm a member of the board of trustees.

I'm a member of the board of trustees.

I'm a member of the board of trustees.

I guess I should say a fourth option to what is proposed here, which would be to provide funding for six months worth of full funding for 2022, with a slide directing HSD to get back to us about what they expect in the state and federal funds, but also with a statement from the council that if those fund sources do not make the budget, the food and nutrition budget whole as compared to 2021 levels that we would take another look at filling those gaps.

So just wanting to put that out there.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold for signaling that.

And I am very appreciative of the work that you've done in the past to ensure food security during this time.

I know that this is part of how we address that shadow pandemic.

You talk about health, well-being, mental health, well-being, along with physical health.

You have to have access to healthy food.

So I appreciate that.

And the Human Services Coalition, I want to thank you for that.

It is a very detailed request for support in the food delivery and meal systems is incredibly compelling as well.

I look forward to seeing more of the issues that you are helping to identify here today and amendments.

I also wanted to flag along with that is the ongoing need for vans and vehicles to deliver those foods.

I'm not aware of any additional funding for that.

I think that is a great way to dive into this budget.

If there is not anything else, let's go to the next item.

The second issue relates to participatory budgeting.

The 2021 adopted budget included 28.3 million in one-time funds for participatory budgeting.

In June, the council allocated just over 1 million of this funding to the Office for Civil Rights and created three positions.

This funding and the associated positions were added to work with community to develop an issue, a request for proposal, to select a third-party administrator to negotiate and manage the contract, and to staff the participatory budgeting program.

It is expected that the positions will be filled and the request for proposals will be issued by late October.

Because the participatory budgeting process will likely not start until 2022, 27.2 million of funds both for the PB process and for the selected projects remains in finance general reserves.

The 2022 proposed budget includes $30 million of new ongoing general fund dollars for participatory budgeting.

Combined with the unused 2021 funding, this would result in a total of $57.2 million for participatory budgeting in 2022. Without additional changes, this would decrease back to $30 million in 2023. The council could choose to change the proposed ad for participatory budgeting from ongoing to one-time funding and state council's intent to identify an ongoing revenue source to support these investments in 2023 and beyond.

The council could choose to cut some or all of the proposed 30 million of general fund in 2022, recognizing that much of the 2021 appropriations for participatory budgeting will carry forward into 2022. and redirect those funds to other council identified priorities and reduce the impact of the drastic funding reduction in year 2 or 2023 of the program.

The third option is that the council could take no action.

Thank you, Amy.

This is a good continuation of our conversation from yesterday as well.

Colleagues, comments or questions, Council Member Morales?

Yeah, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I will admit I was going to talk about this tomorrow since I little confused about the HST, but whatever.

Thank you very much, Amy, for presenting this.

So what I will say about participatory budgeting, we know that it is beginning next year, the process will begin, and I think it's a really important decision by all of us to start to seeds and power and decision making and resource to our community.

But I want to talk about the fund source as we're having this conversation about $11 million of the participatory budgeting fund came from reallocating SPD's budget.

I think in keeping with our commitment to move towards funding upstream solutions and community investments that really work towards getting at the root cause.

of some of the community conditions that we have.

This is still a very important initiative for us to support and continue.

I am still interested in reallocating funding from SPD to help fund the participatory budgeting allocation for 2022. And I just want to say that as we start to consider some of these recent investments, I do think we also need to consider shifting our thinking on what baseline budgeting looks like.

We are trying to make some important structural changes like establishing participatory budgeting.

And I think it means that we also change where our baseline funding goes.

And so I hope my colleagues will consider a realignment in some of the funding that we have typically done so that we can support the important work that we've started at PB.

And I look forward to continuing this conversation.

Thank you.

And yes, absolutely.

If you'd like to bring up more comments about this tomorrow in our conversation around public safety, that would be welcomed as well.

I'd like to build on some of the comments that you said.

and agree that it's important that we make sure that the seeds that we began planting this year, that we continue to allow for those to come to fruition and be successful next year.

And I think similar to the conversations we had yesterday regarding the equitable community initiative task force, there is a large amount of funding that is underspent in 2021. You don't typically see that reflected in a 2022 budget unless I would love to do with all of you is look at how we can recognize that much of that 2021 appropriation has not been spent and will carry forward into 2022. we have to make sure that we are not overspending.

For example, if 25 million were unspent in this year, we would then true up the amount in next year's budget to add an additional 5 and I think it is in alignment with realigning those priorities.

I appreciate Councilmember Morales the call for us to also recognize this is a way for us to shift funding from traditional police responses into upstream investments and the continuation of that discussion from last year is going to be important.

we are going to continue to do that.

We are going to continue to have some iteration of the here for me and making sure that we true it up and keep it at a $30 million amount.

That the full investment commitment is maintained for 2022. That is something I will be interested in working with all of you on.

I would love to follow up with you about that.

Please, I was just I was going to respond very briefly.

I know that.

Council speaks a lot about the, um, kind of continuum of upstream funding as it relates to, um, community safety and rightfully acknowledges that a lot of our upstream investments in housing and, um, and food support and all of the things that we're talking about today really do impact, um, public safety and community safety.

Um, and so finding that dividing line between what are social services and what is community safety, is sometimes a judgment call, but certainly anything that we discuss today or tomorrow, all going to the same place.

So wherever the conversation takes place, we'll make sure to cover it and get it done.

Excellent.

Thank you.

And then the last comment I would make on this too is about having authentic investments in community I think also recognizes that you don't want to pull that rug out from anybody or create a cliff, whether that's I think it's important for us to recognize that we are either capping in half the amount of money or capping in half the amount of organizations that are able to receive awards.

As you know, the funding would not be available year over year at that elevated amount.

And I think that really wanting to set our community up for success and maintaining a commitment to that $30 million mark is something that I'm going to continue to center in these Let's move on to number three too.

Great.

The third issue, and we don't have to spend too much time on this since you discussed it yesterday.

Very briefly, the 2022 proposed budget establishes 30 million in ongoing funding for the equitable communities initiative projects, but does not identify a new revenue source for this investment.

These funds are in addition to the 30 million in project funding adopted by Council in September of this year, which are anticipated to mostly be expended during 2022. So as discussed yesterday, the Council could choose to change the appropriations to one time and engage with the ECI task force to identify an ongoing progressive revenue source.

the Council could cut some or all of the proposed appropriations in 2022, recognizing, again, that much of the 2021 appropriations will carry forward, and also engage the ECI Task Force to identify an ongoing progressive revenue source to support these investments in 2023 and beyond, or the Council could take no action.

Thank you so much.

Any additional comments to the discussion we had yesterday on this item?

Okay.

It was pretty pretty robust discussion yesterday and a continuation of similar sentiments that we just shared so.

We are very interested in making sure that we recognize that some of the funding here has been sent in 2021. what by the end of 2021, by December 31st of 2021, if we can make some well-informed estimates about what will be spent that year, really then truing up that spent cost in 2022 so that we're maintaining that $30 million investment is something I'm interested in.

I see Allie Panucci and Council Member Juarez.

Council Member Juarez, did you have, I saw a thumbs up.

I was just giving you a thumbs up, girl.

All right.

You know, we need it at this point in both budget and in Corona work from home world, so I appreciate it.

Allie, did you have anything else?

I just wanted to confirm that we are trying to get a better estimate of what funds will actually carry forward into 2022 and which funds will be extended before the end of the year.

Because even for those pieces where contracts have gone out the door, it may be anticipated that that contract will extend into 2022. So we're working to try to get a better estimate, and we'll follow up.

I'm just going to step in here.

Our Madam Chair Mosqueda is having a little bit of technical difficulties.

Just checking to see whether or not there are additional comments from council members on this particular issue ID.

And Amy and Ali, this is the last, I believe, item for this issue area and the last time on the agenda, am I correct?

We have a few more slides, not on issue ID, but on the budget legislation.

So just power through that.

Yes, sounds great.

Thank you.

So next slide, please, Patty.

So the final slides include information on three pieces of budget legislation, which impact the HSD budget.

There are no issues identified with these changes, but I wanted to briefly highlight the changes for council and the public.

First, the year in grant acceptance ordinance, which accepts grants of almost $400,000 for vaccine access and supports 1.9 and sorry, for vaccine access and support and 1.9 million from the Washington Department of Commerce for tiny home villages.

Next slide, please.

The second, the year-end supplemental makes changes to the adopted 2021 budget, including appropriating the grants discussed previously.

In addition, the council bill corrects errors and transfers funding between departments and divisions, such as transferring $8 million for rental assistance from HSD to Office of Housing and transferring $4.8 million of community safety programs from youth and family empowerment to the new safe and thriving communities, which again is just the continuation of the building up of that division.

Next slide, please, Patty.

Actually, sorry, next slide as well.

Finally, the 2022 recurring grant acceptance ordinance.

accepts $20.5 million in grants to support the 2022 budget, including $7.7 million from the Older Americans Act and $5.8 million in community development block grants, $3.1 million for housings for persons living with AIDS, and some other smaller grants, which again, support the 2022 budget.

And that is all that I had for the committee today.

So unless there are any other questions.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold as Vice Chair for stepping in.

I appreciate it.

Very good.

My computer shut down.

Thank you.

Are there questions on these list of legislative items that accompany the HSD, Human Services and Community Safety portion?

I have two questions very briefly.

I'm looking at 404 here, midway through as it relates to the HOPWA funds.

We know that from talking with folks at POCON, for example, that there's a lot of interest in capacity building for those who are working with folks in the community who have HIV, AIDS, and want additional support and services and want some capacity building.

Is there capacity building dollars associated with HOPWA?

I am not aware of capacity building specifically embedded in HOPWA, but I'm happy to check and see if that is an eligible use for those funds.

Great.

And I appreciate that.

And then just generally, is there anything you might point me to that has capacity building as a broad category for some of the organizations that provide human service programs.

I know that capacity building has been a big issue that has been coming up as we talked about deployment of Clifford funds, for example.

Is there anything specific to capacity building?

Do you mean specifically related to the federal grants that are being accepted?

Which one of those grants will provide funds for capacity building?

Yeah, I assume that the federal dollars are probably a good place to go for capacity building if it's one-time investment.

So that would be good to know if there's a whole category of organizations that may be eligible for funding.

I'm not aware of a specific category of capacity building.

Let me work on the eligible uses of those grants to see where that would overlap with capacity building.

I'm again, I can't think of any of those grants that have a specific line item related to capacity building, but I can let me look into that and find some answers for you and get back to you.

Okay, great.

Just have a quick.

We have had a number of community members who have reached out Does that mean that $4 million is part of our 2022 proposed budget and that the Seattle Safe Communities Initiative is being funded in 2022 or is not?

This reflects a change to the 2021 budget.

There was the community the safe communities initiative was funded with one time funding.

Um, and in the, this legislation moves it from one division to another in the 2021 budget, it was spent in 2021. Um, there is not an additional, um, and then there's no more funding for that in the 2023 budget, which is what we have been told by CBO.

And so even though this is transferring that money, it does not mean that that is ongoing funding through 2023.

But we're working to fix that.

And that is an issue that's identified for tomorrow as well.

Yes, the other bucket for presentations.

I'll save some of my questions on the last slide here as it relates to homeless services, but it does appear that there is at least, I saw Jeff pop in for a second, this is reflecting that the $2 million that we received from the state's capital budget and the $400,000 that the city allocated for operating services at those tiny homes, that this is being transfer potentially to the regional homelessness authorities so that the creation of those tiny homes and the operation could continue in a 2022 calendar year.

Is that accurate?

We can bring this up this afternoon, but I just want to make sure that that's what those two bullets reflect here.

You're looking at the first and the third bullet, correct?

Yes.

Yeah, that would be the case.

So there's been conversations with the regional authority on homelessness to undertake the work.

And actually, HSD is going to seek to supplement its existing contract that's already providing a small amount of funding to the authority.

So we'll just amend that contract to provide these funds to the authority in this calendar year, so 2021. And the regional authority intends to prepare an RFP I would like to make a motion to add three tiny home villages.

It does not seem likely that the villages would be operational in 2021. However, providing those funds and allowing the authority to write the NHDRP will allow it to occur faster than what would have otherwise been the case.

All right, thank you.

I think a preview of some of the web to untangle this afternoon as we talk about homeless service investments and great memo again by Jeff to come.

Amy, I have one more question for you on your great memo.

And Council Member Herbold, you may have spoken to this earlier and you have been leading on the sexual assault survivors investments.

We did hear public testimony this morning about concern about the sexual assault survivors outreach efforts not being included in this year's budget.

I just want to make sure when I'm looking here at the background pages on page two of your memo, can you clarify for us what is or is not included in this year's budget as it relates to sexual assault survivor program services and outreach?

Absolutely.

So in the proposed budget, there's an increase of two FTEs that would be added for victims' advocates who provide services for survivors of gender-based violence.

Those are, I mentioned at the very beginning that there are some areas where HSD does direct service and the victims' advocates would be an example of the direct service.

And that brings the total number of advocates to 14. In addition, the proposed budget adds $224,000 in general fund dollars for domestic violence sexual assault services for organizations that serve the American Indian and Alaska Native community.

I mentioned previously the $1.2 million for that specific community, and the $224,000 is part of that.

In addition, there is $875,000 in general fund for domestic violence sexual assault services, but I want to be clear that that funding replaces declining revenues from the Sex Industry Victims Fund.

So this funding will allow the department to maintain current levels of service, but does not represent an expansion of those programs or those contracts.

And that is what is in the 2022 proposed budget related to that topic.

Thank you, Council Member Harpo.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and you're doing such a wonderful job of giving me a platform to talk about some of my budget priorities.

Really, really appreciate that.

One of the issues that has been raised, as you rightly note, and we heard in public testimony, is that equity providers in our region are identifying the fact that Our state's nationally recognized domestic violence housing first programs found that mobile advocacy model for domestic and sexual violence services promotes long-term stability, safety, and well-being for survivors and children.

It's a flexible, model, and it's particularly suited to serving smaller, culturally specific by and for providers, recognizing that so many of our providers in our region are Black, Indigenous, and people of color-led organizations.

And this allows them to, this proposal, if supported by the council, will allow them to add capacity and provide housing and other forms of assistance without requiring significant capital infrastructure.

I appreciate your work on this and look forward to working with you and this council to address that issue.

Amy, I am not, oh, and Council Member Herbold, if you had any other items that you'd like to flag, you are more than welcome to use the time to do that.

Let's see, let me just take a quick look at my...

And that, colleagues, goes for anybody.

If you have any items specific to human services that you're interested in sharing with the council, you are by all means welcome to.

You're not required to discuss it, but happy to have you share some ideas.

Thank you.

So some of the some of the budget priorities that are in HSD are we're going to be discussing tomorrow as part of the community safety presentation.

But some additional needs include supporting the Seattle Human Services Coalition's I think that is a number one priority for a wage equity study.

Let's see, what is it called?

The East African Senior Center.

And this is a proposal coming out of the Area Agency on Aging.

They have a vision for developing a more robust senior center program for wraparound services and programs.

Currently, members of the East African community engage with the meal program that Sound Generation operates two days a week at Yesler, and then there's another program up at Northgate.

These programs operate in partnership with the Seattle Parks and Recreation Food and Fitness Program.

Parks supports expanding the program, but funding is really needed for staff to organize the programming and offer social services.

The program model could be similar to the successful model used by the Lake City Senior Center Program.

I'm hoping I'm checking a lot of boxes for Councilmember Juarez here.

That is another high priority investment that I'm hoping to get some support on.

I already mentioned food and nutrition investment.

And I think, you know, again, the many of the HSD, additional HSD ones we'll be talking about more tomorrow.

Thanks.

Thank you very much for sharing some of those.

I am not seeing any additional hands at this point.

I do appreciate all of the time that you've provided for us, Amy, and the walkthrough of this proposal.

As council members have said, this dovetails to so many other areas.

And so making sure that we're investing in the human infrastructure, as has been discussed in DC a lot recently, is incredibly important to make sure that we sustain We know that there is a lot of interest out there in making sure that funding gets out the door and I am concerned that the support of service for older adults We are in the middle of a pandemic.

We have not spent at all yet and looking forward to figuring out how we can get these dollars out the door in this moment when people are suffering and in so much need right now as we funded in June and early July.

Councilmember Herbold, last word on this?

potentially a particular council member really doesn't want to see it cut, but that funding, that investment area is funded with payroll tax.

perhaps not appropriately or not consistent with the council spending plan.

Are you looking for council members to propose a CBA to facilitate that swap?

Or is that a function that you as budget chair are going to be sort of leading.

I'm speaking specifically right now of one call, which I really want to make sure we keep funding in the budget for, but recognize that the funding source may not be an appropriate funding source.

And just wondering, do I need to propose a budget action, or are you kind of doing that sort of holistically for all the things that aren't funded correctly?

Thank you for asking that.

I know that's probably a question that other council members have as well, and I see Allie on the line.

I'll do my best to answer you from my perspective, from my office, and then Allie can talk about maybe the technical aspects from central staff as well.

I will be coming up to you all with a that we are trying to do is I will be coming up with an omnibus amendment that allows for us to do a different source of funding for items such as that.

So you don't have to do one for each specific item.

And I do know that there may be other items where folks would say, hey, I'm not interested in funding at this level, maybe this level.

That'll be, I think, a separate conversation.

But I'll be working on a large omnibus piece.

And Allie, anything to add to that?

The only thing I will add is we will be working, as the chair explained, with the chair to do that omnibus package and try to better align the spending with the fund policies.

The issue that we were sort of raising yesterday is finding an ongoing source of funds for those expenditures that are proposed to be either directly supported from the Jump Start Fund and or are benefiting from the increased amount of jumpstart fund monies that were deposited into the general fund, it's going to be problematic.

Or put another way, it is likely that if we are able to achieve this, a lot of it will be one-time funds for those expenditures.

And this is getting at the issue around our general fund expenditures.

for base services or expanded services in these areas is right now outpacing our general fund revenue projections.

And so while we will be working to do that, it will likely be a one-time fix, which means that absent sort of a cut to another ongoing service or a new revenue source, next year we would not be able to do this.

And so that is sort of, you heard Director Noble say in his presentation, it works this year, it doesn't work next year, that is likely the case unless there are significant other cuts to other city services and or we identify new revenues or general fund revenues increase significantly.

So there's a lot of different ways this can play out, but I just want to flag that issue as the question of sustainability is coming to a head here.

Thank you for that, Allie.

And appreciate the question, Council Member Herbold.

I also, you know, want to hear from you all as we go through this, if there's items that you see in the issue identification memos where there might be an area for us to reduce the amount of funding or shift priorities to something else.

If you see those, of course, let central staff know that as well as the additions that you all are thinking of that will be very helpful.

With that, Amy, I'm not seeing any additional hands and look forward to our afternoon discussion to carry forward on human services specific though to our investments in homeless service responses.

And we will have a full afternoon to discuss that.

I'm not seeing any objections.

So colleagues, if there's no objection, we're going to have an extra long recess today and we will go and reconvene at 2 p.m.

I hope you enjoy an extra long recess and we will see you all at 2 p.m.

Hearing no objection, we are adjourned.

Thank you.