Seattle City Council Finance & Housing Committee 7/20/21

Thank you very much for coming to the Finance and Housing Committee meeting.

It is July 20th, 2021. My name is Teresa Mosqueda.

I am the chair of the committee.

It is 9.30 a.m.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Chair Mosqueda?

Present.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Council President Gonzalez?

Council Member Lewis.

Present.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Madam Chair, that is four present.

Could you please call Vice Chair Herbold's name one more time?

Vice Chair Herbold.

Here.

Madam Chair, that is five present.

Wonderful.

Thank you very much.

And if we are joined by Council President Gonzalez, we will make sure to note her attendance as well.

Colleagues, I also want to note we may be joined by other members of the Seattle City Council today, especially as we have items that relate to the Seattle Rescue Plan Act 2. We also have items that TS up for our supplemental budget discussion.

And as we have earlier this year, we have invited other council members to join us.

If they'd like to be part of those conversations, absent having a full budget committee, they are welcome to join us.

So we'll make sure to note their presence when they come as well.

We have a full agenda for today.

Colleagues, I appreciate your extended time.

We are hoping to wrap us up at least by 1, 1230 at the latest, and wanted to make sure that you know what our agenda is.

We will begin with two new board appointments to the Domestic Worker Standard Boards.

We'll move into a briefing from the Equitable Communities Initiative Task Force.

We'll have a briefing from Karina Bull on the Domestic Worker Standards Board recommendations.

And then we'll move on to items that relate to our budget and out year's efforts to try to respond to COVID as well.

We'll have the second quarter grant acceptance and the mid-year supplemental ordinance.

We'll also have on our agenda the Seattle Rescue Plan 2 update if time permits.

I want to note for our colleagues who have joined us as guests today, we will do our best to get through public comment and to get to you, but we want to make sure that we honor our public comment period as well.

So if you want to sit tight and just note that those other items will not begin until 10 a.m.

I want to note for the record Let's go ahead and move on to public comment.

Appreciate the full attendance here today.

We were going to conduct the public comment in the following order.

We're going to give individuals one minute to speak.

At the end of your one minute time, you will hear a 10 second chime that notifies you to wrap up your public comments.

We are very interested in hearing from you, and if you are not able to finish your public comment in the time allowed, please do email us at council at Seattle.gov.

That will share all of your public comment with everybody on council.

If you'd still like to sign up to speak publicly today, you can at Seattle.gov backslash council.

And we want to make sure that we get a chance to hear you when you're on that line.

So use the same number that you've registered to speak so that we can recognize your number when you're calling in today.

You have to have used the same number that you registered in order for us to recognize that.

Once we recognize you on the line, you're going to hear a prompt that says you have been unmuted.

that's your indication to push star six to make sure that your line is unmuted and then double check your own phone to make sure that you haven't hit the mute button and that way we will be able to get to you.

I'll call three speakers at a time and that way you'll know when you're next up in the queue.

After you're done speaking please do hang up on the call-in testimony line and go ahead and listen in on the listening options on today's agenda including the Seattle channel.

public comment is now open and we will start with the first three speakers listed as present here.

Shamir Tenna, BJ Last, and Trevona Thompson-Wiley.

Good morning, Shamir.

Shamir, I see you listed and you are present.

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

Okay.

We're going to keep you on the screen there, Shamir, and I'm going to move on to the next person, but if I see you hit star six and come unmuted, we will go ahead and have you speak.

Can you hear me now, Shamir?

Can you hear me okay?

I can.

Thanks so much.

Can you hear me okay now?

Yes, please go ahead.

I'm so sorry about that.

No problem.

This is Shamir Tanna.

I'm a District 7 resident.

I'm calling to please ask Council to follow through on its unanimous commitment to transform public safety and invest the SPD's $13 million of salary savings in community health and safety programs.

Specifically, I urge council to invest in Just Care and expand funding for community safety capacity building grants.

Just Care provides housing and services for many of our most vulnerable unsheltered neighbors, decreasing the need for SPD's presence.

It is a proven program for public safety.

For example, there was a 39% reduction in 911 calls in the areas around the encampments it was serving.

Separately on the grants, over 70 organizations applied, but majority did not receive funding because the amount available was not enough.

Investing the salary savings from SPD in these grants will allow organizations to be funded and extend the duration of the grants.

Again, I think council, please follow through on your commitment to transform public safety and invest SPD salary savings in just care and community safety capacity building grants.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you for dialing in BJ.

Good morning, BJ.

Hello, my name is D.J.

Lass.

I'm a Ballard resident and small business owner.

I'm calling to ask council to use the supplemental budget to fund Just Care and HSD's Community Safety Capacity Building Grants.

Both programs have proven success and just need adequate funding.

Just Care has demonstrated that it is able to move our unsheltered neighbors into housing and increase public safety with the community reaching out to Just Care instead of 911. Over 70 organizations applied for the Community Safety Capacity Building Grants, demonstrating huge capacity.

Unfortunately, the majority of these organizations did not receive funding because the amount available for grants was less than a third of the $40 million the organizations requested.

And the organizations that did get grants only received funding for 18 months.

The Seattle Police Department is conservatively estimated to have $13 million of salary savings.

These savings should be transferred to Just Care and the Community Safety Capacity Building Grants.

Using SPD's salary savings to fund these programs will be another step toward Council following through on its unanimous commitment to transform public safety.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

And the next person is Trevona.

Good morning, Trevona.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, I can.

Hi, can you hear me?

Hi, this is Trevona.

I'm calling.

I'm demanding that the SPD's $13 million of salary savings actually goes into community health and safety programs that create true public safety.

Invest in SPD's salary savings and Just Care will provide housing and services for many of our houseless folks who are primarily BIPOC and they're black and indigenous.

Just Care has proven that they can increase public safety for the individuals in the neighborhood.

My own calls have dropped drastically.

Over 70 organizations applied for the community safety capacity building grants.

Unfortunately, the majority of those organizations didn't receive funding and the organizations that did receive funding only received funding for 18 months.

We do know that public safety is an ongoing issue and we need to make sure that we are literally giving folks the resources that they need to really help our community.

Please follow through with your commitment to transform public safety and invest SPD salary savings and the community safety capacity building grants and just care.

I yield the rest of my time.

Thank you very much.

The next three speakers are Peter Condit, Stephanie Ingram, and Raymond Williams.

Good morning, Peter.

Good morning.

This is Peter Condit.

I'm a District 6 resident.

I am also calling to ask Council to follow through on its commitment to transform public safety.

Right now, with the supplemental budget you are working on, you have a super easy way to enact positive changes.

At the end of March, Council Central staff estimated that SPD will have over $13 million of salary savings due to high officer attrition.

Please invest those savings into Just Care and into the Human Services Department's Community Safety Capacity Building Grant.

Just Care will provide housing and services for many of our most vulnerable, unsheltered neighbors, decreasing the need for SBD's presence.

More dollars for the HSC's Community Safety Capacity Building Grant will allow more of the 70 organizations that applied earlier this year to be funded and will extend the duration of the grant.

Please follow through on your commitments to transform public safety, defund SBD, invest in community.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you very much.

Stephanie, good morning.

Just star six, unmute yourself.

There we go.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi, my name is Stephanie Ingram.

I'm calling in to support council member Sawant's proposal for allocating funds to the Garfield Superblock.

This project recently submitted a petition with over 570 signatures collected in just a handful of days.

showing clear community support for this project.

The city should be supporting important community projects like this that uplift the community and support our public spaces.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for your time.

Raymond, good morning.

And Raymond will be followed by Beto Yarce, Brandy Flood, and Karen Salinas.

Good morning, Raymond.

Hello.

My name is Raymond Williams.

I'm a member of the Equitable Communities Task Force who worked on the health recommendations.

You know, as an educator, I had the opportunity to work with teachers who found that if you target students most impacted by our racist systems, in this case, black young men, you know, we saw improvement in their performance as well as an improvement in the performance of all students.

That's why I was interested in joining this committee.

You know I'd really like to thank council members for considering our recommendations.

I'd also like to thank the state staff who put in hours and hours of work to turn our ideas into actionable steps to fund programs that will improve the lives of our communities.

I especially want to thank the task task force members.

You know I had an honor to work with this diverse group of professionals and they represent for the diverse communities of Seattle.

These recommendations help immediate needs as well as let us look at long-term changes to these systems that have brought about health disparities and other disparities in our community.

So I hope you can vote for our project.

Thank you.

Thank you, and thank you for your work.

Thanks for calling in today.

Good morning, Beto.

Good morning, everybody.

Thank you for having me here.

Beto Yards, Executive Director for Ventures.

I'm a member of the Equitable Investment Task Force, and I'm here to ask the City Council to support and consider these initiatives.

As an immigrant who started their business 20 years ago with only $250 selling jewelry at Fremont Sunday Market, I do really think that this is a key opportunity to alleviate poverty and support individuals to move out of poverty and empower them with access to services.

This is only one of the pieces of the initiatives that we're presenting in small business.

This is something that is really close to my heart.

But it's other initiatives that they are going to make a lot of equitable investments in our community.

And I really highly encourage you to consider these investments.

One last thing that I want to share is like you can see one of our members in our community, Christy Brown, who has been working many, many years in the community, you can see her business communion is thriving thanks to all the support that we've been helping it from all these 20 years.

So this is the future of our investment.

So thank you so much for listening and I appreciate your work.

Appreciate your work as well.

Thanks so much Beto.

Good morning Brandy.

Good morning.

Thank you council members for taking the time to listen to me.

My name is Brandy Flood.

I'm director of community justice for REACH and I'm a Rainier Beach resident and homeowner.

I want to advocate to move the SBD salary savings to programs such as organizations that apply for community safety capacity building and expand it past 18 months and for more organizations to be a part of that.

I also love to use that money to fund programs like Just Care, who are working with the most vulnerable people in our city and reducing police contact for those folks and helping them move to housing and other sustainable resources.

I think that's the best use of funding if we're going to move to a city that is more focused on community safety than policing and surveillance.

Thank you very much.

I yield my time.

Excellent.

Thank you for calling in today.

The next three speakers are Karen Salinas, Angelica Chacero, and Haley Bell.

Good morning, Karen.

Good morning.

Good morning, my name is Karen.

I'm the director of outreach for the REACH program and I'm also advocating for the STD salary savings to be moved over into homeless capacity building.

I think that I just want to highlight that in a lot of the new legislation aiding at reform for first responders, particularly around police, that it leaves their hands tied in a lot of mental health crises that are clients that we work with the most.

It keeps them from being able to go hands on and ITAs, which is great in a lot of instances, but it can also create more gaps for those people who are in and out of jail.

So that's going to increase our workload and the kind of things that we respond to.

So moving those salary savings over into homelessness services is going to benefit everyone and allow us to increase our internal capacity to be able to handle and respond to those kind of needs that are going to arise with these further gaps in reform that are going to happen as we try to change what police

Excellent.

Thank you so much, Karen.

Good morning, Angelica.

Just star six to unmute.

And Karen, if you're still listening, I'm not sure if there was one more sentence or two.

I didn't want to cut you off, but if there was, please do go ahead and email counsel at Seattle.gov.

Angelica, it looks like you're still muted on my end.

If you could try and hit star six one more time.

And after Angelica we're going to have Haley Bell if we can tee up Haley.

Hi good morning Angelica.

Good morning.

My name is Angelica Chacero.

I'm a member of Ecomeralli Seattle a resident of District 2. I'm here this morning to echo others who have spoken and asked that during the supplemental budget you all move salary savings out of SPD and into funding community-based safety strategies specifically the Community Safety Capacity Building Fund at HSB as well as Just Care whom we just heard from.

A year ago during the height of the uprising triggered by the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor you all voted to move $13 million towards building community-based safety strategies that do not require police.

Your vote at that point followed two months of demonstrations in which SPD's brutal actions daily made their case for their own defunding.

Late last week 33 organizations out of the 70 that applied received word that they'd been funded through the investments you voted for.

Central staff has estimated that SPD will have at least $13 million of salary savings this year.

One year after the uprising we're asking you to take that $13 million and move it to immediately increase the Community Safety Capacity Building Fund to build lasting and durable public safety models and towards just care a proven public safety model.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you for your time.

And Haley thanks for calling in.

Just star six to unmute yourself.

Hi my name's Haley Bell.

I'm calling from Belltown in District 7. I'm also calling to urge the City Council to invest the $13 million of salary savings into the community as a means to create true public safety and improve community health.

One way the money should be used is for Just Care, who will provide housing and services for people experiencing homelessness.

Just Care provides a safe option for individuals and neighbors and provides a safe alternative to 9-1-1 and SPD.

Another way the $13 million could be used is to fund more of the applications for the Community Safety Capacity Building Grants Over 70 organizations applied but most were denied due to a lack of funding.

The money could be used to fund more grants or extend the time frame for grants that were already approved.

Last year the council passed CBA SPD 011-D-002 to transfer $5 million in SPD salary savings to participatory budgeting.

More than half of the $0 have been transferred.

So follow through on your commitments to public safety by investing SPD's value savings into community-based solutions with self-care and community safety capacity building grants.

Thank you.

Thank you for dialing in this morning.

The next three speakers are Andrew Vroom, Robert Stevens, and Reverend Carrie Anderson.

Good morning, Andrew.

Just star six to unmute yourself.

Good morning City Council.

Thank you for the public comment.

My name is Andrew Vroom.

I'm a South Seattle resident and I just wanted to request that the salary savings from SBT SBD be invested in community.

And I just really wanted to echo the comments of Trayvonna Thompson Wiley and I disagree with her 100 percent to invest in community.

Thank you very much.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

The next person is Robert.

Good morning, Robert.

And just star six.

Perfect.

Hello.

Good morning.

My name is Robert Stevens, Jr.

I'm a Central Area resident.

I'm the creator and curator of the Garfield Superblock Renovation Project, which was brought forth by a city ordinance variance and mitigation to the community to work with the city and the community to renovate the whole block.

The coalition has been holding down this project for the last 15 years, and all we're asking is for you guys to come back to the table so we can renovate this historical site so that it can be enjoyed by the present and future generations.

Thank you for your time.

Robert Stephens.

Thank you very much, Mr. Stevens Jr.

Appreciate your time.

Good morning, Reverend Kerry Anderson.

Thanks for joining.

My name is Pastor Kerry Anderson.

Good morning to everyone.

As pastor of First AME, we are one of the anchor institutions in the Capitol Hill Central District area since 1886. And I've been privileged to serve on the phenomenal Equitable Community Initiative Task Force, working with some wonderful people on the housing subcommittee.

And I strongly urge the city council to support the initiatives brought forth by our task force.

For example with the subcommittee on housing to reimagine home ownership and home buyer support.

That's going to lead to the family ideal of creating generational wealth for BIPOC residents that will keep underserved families in the city of Seattle and facilitate systemic positive change for a group that has historically been overlooked, left out, locked out, and looked to as the least, the lost, the left, and the not listened to.

So I urge the city council to metaphorically give the boots to the bootless so that we can lace up our boots by our own bootstraps.

Thank you for this opportunity, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Well, thank you very much for calling in today.

I appreciate your time.

The next three speakers are Sharon Kosla, Raul Tasalia, and Jacob Schur.

And Sharon, good morning.

Hi, good morning.

My name is Sharon Kosla.

I'm a Central Area resident, long time.

I'm asking you to please support the 500K funding request for the Garfield Superblock.

This community-led project is thoughtful, creative, artful, and functional.

Further, it is wildly supported, as you might have seen with the petition with almost 600 signatures that was sent out to all of you yesterday.

This project works to create a healthy, safe outdoor environment that will honor the cultures that have endured and thrived in the central area and gives the city a chance to fulfill a broken promise that was made 15 years ago.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for dialing in this morning.

And I want to note for the record that it still says Raul Tasalia is listed to speak next, but not present.

So we're going to move to the next person, who is Jacob.

And Raul, if you do want to dial in, we'll come back to you.

Good morning, Jacob.

I see you on the line here.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Jacob Scheer.

I'm an advocacy organizer for Real Change, and I'm calling in today on behalf of Real Change to ask that council invest the $13 million of salary savings from SPD's budget into programs that actually create true public safety such as Just Care and expanding funding for the HSD Community Safety Capacity Building grants.

As an organization that works with low income and unhoused communities we know the threat that SPD poses to our vendors through criminalizing poverty displacing and traumatizing people through our own cam and sweeps and racist violence.

We need council to support and invest in programs that meet basic needs and respond to structural causes of poverty and inequality.

The precise opposite of what the Seattle Police Department does.

Our unhoused neighbors don't need police and incarceration.

They need housing and services that meet their specific needs.

Investing in Just Care, a proven effective program that meets unhoused folks where they're at and reduces interactions with SPD, as well as investing in community-led solutions to public safety, led by black organizers through Community Safety Capacity Building Grants, are crucial ways that you can show us that council is committed to true public safety.

The demand from your community remains the same.

Defund SPD and invest in true public safety.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And I'm going to read the last four people actually.

Isaac, thank you so much.

I see you listed there.

Isaac DeMonte, Danielle Schlitt, Selena Green, and Jeff Paul.

I'll also note that Daniel Schlitt and Jeff Paul are listed as not present.

So if you do dial in, we'll make sure to get back to you.

At this time, I'll turn it over to Isaac.

Good morning, Isaac.

Hello.

Hello.

Hi, good morning.

Sorry.

Good morning.

My name is Isaac DeMott.

I'm a Green Lake resident here to also here to remind Council of the commitment to move salary savings into community investments.

I'm urging Council to follow through on their commitment to transfer the $13 million in SPD savings into health and safety programs like Just Care and increase funding for the HSD Community Safety Capacity Building Grants.

Council voting to move this money away from SPD will show our community that you value community-based, community-led, and community-backed programs that foster safety and health among our neighbors, rather than anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, violent policing.

Thank you, and whatever time I have left is yours.

Oh, well, thank you so much.

We will go ahead and give that over to Selena Green.

Good morning, Selena.

Hello my name is Selena and I work with Abundance Hope Center.

We are a local grassroots homelessness prevention organization.

I'm here to demand that supplemental SBD budget needs to be allocated to Black and Brown led homelessness organizations to serve our own communities which we all know have been historically systemically disenfranchised marginalized and overrepresented in homelessness.

We need services to go to communities that need it the most.

Racism is still dictating who gets the funds and who is served, and who does not, and who is not.

Black and brown communities are offered symbolic pacifications instead of the resources that we've been demanding for years.

You have the power to change it, so do it.

I yield my time.

Thanks so much.

And the last three speakers did not appear here, so I want to make sure to note their name for the record.

Please do dial in.

Excuse me.

Please do send in your comments, Raul Tasalia.

No, sorry about that.

Let me try again.

Daniel Schlitt and Jeff Paul.

Okay, that is it for public testimony today.

I want to thank everybody who dialed in.

That will conclude our public testimony, and we are going to go ahead and move on to items of business on our agenda.

We are about four minutes ahead of time, so thanks all for waiting on the line here, and I look forward to hearing the robust presentations from our guests today.

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

And Madam Clerk, you may be muted.

Yes.

Madam Chair, would you like me to read all four appointments into the record together?

Oh, that would be wonderful.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Yes.

Items one through four, please.

Agenda items one through four.

Appointments to the Domestic Workers Standards Board for Stephen Hooper, Marie Gabrielle Rosenbert, and reappointments for Sylvia Gonzalez and Elizabeth Hunter Keller as Domestic Workers Centers Board appointments for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Wonderful.

Well, thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

And Jasmine Marwaha is here with us from the Office of Labor Standards, along with Steve Hooper and Marie Gabrielle Rosenberg, who are our new appointees.

And we don't have a request for our reoccurring appointees to come to Council with us today.

So I will first turn it over to Jasmine from the Office of Labor Standards to walk us through what we are appointing folks to today, the Domestic Worker Standards Board, and a quick update on the work they've been doing and any background that you may have for these new appointees.

Sure.

My name is Jasmine Marwaha, as I mentioned, Chair Mosqueda, and I'm the Policy Analyst with OLS, and I'm the Staff Liaison to the Domestic Worker Standards Board.

I'm here to present, as you mentioned, two new council appointments and two mayoral reappointments.

As you may recall, the Domestic Workers Standards Board is committed to improving the working conditions of domestic workers by providing a place for workers, employers, organizations, and the public to make suggestions to enforce, implement, and expand on the Domestic Workers Ordinance, or the DWO.

The board typically consists of about half workers or their representatives and half hiring entities or their representatives.

And six of these appointments had their terms ending this year.

So you've seen me a couple of times already this year as we work to reappoint or fill vacancies.

We have one more appointment that will come before you in the next few weeks as the board works to fill their community representative vacancy.

But after that, we should be good for a while, hopefully.

And as you probably know, recently the DWSB submitted high-level recommendations on policy and budget investments for your consideration to further the mission of the board and the Domestic Workers Ordinance.

The board is excited in continuing this work to welcome Marie Rosenberg as a nominee who has extensive experience in domestic work, as well as Stephen Hooper, who has shown a lot of interest as a domestic employer and hiring entity.

I'm going to let them, I believe they've probably prepared a bit, so I'm going to let them speak a little more about their experience and their interest in the board.

But also before that, I want to just note that the board is also excited that both Sylvia Gonzalez and Liz Hunter Keller are able and willing to serve on the board for another term.

Sylvia is the co-chair of the DWSB and has been very active in the board and active generally as an organizer at Casa Latina and also continues to work as a domestic worker, as a house cleaner.

And it's just been an amazing presence on the board.

And as many of you recall, was instrumental in the advocacy around the Domestic Workers Ordinance a few years ago.

Liz Hunter Keller has also been very active since the inception of the DWSB and has used her extensive experience not only as a hiring entity but also as a marketer, public relations expert, and someone who's really attuned to organizing for the rights of women, particularly women of color.

She was one of the organizers of the Seattle's Women March a few years ago and has just continued to remain active in the community.

So yeah, with these appointments and reappointments, the board is almost at full capacity and I know they're excited to partner with the council to refine the recommendations and move the work forward.

So I guess we can turn it over to

That sounds great.

So we're going to start with Steve Hooper and then our hope is that Marie will be with us on the line as well.

I know that it sounds like she was here earlier and we may have accidentally lost some connection.

So we're going to double check to see if we can get her back into the stream here.

And with that, Steve, it's great to see you again.

Thank you again for all of your work.

on Jumpstart Progressive Revenue over the years and on this issue too.

I know that you've been weighing in over the years as we created the Domestic Workers Standards Board, especially from the hiring entity perspective.

So excited about your interest in serving on the committee.

Could you tell us a little bit more about your background and what you'd like to do while serving on the Domestic Workers Standards Board?

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, for your time, and Council, it's a pleasure to be here with all of you, and an honor to be nominated to such an important group.

Many of you may know me for my day job as the president of Evenstole Restaurants and as the president of the Seattle Restaurant Alliance, but I also manage a busy home life.

My wife is a an intensive care doctor at Swedish Hospital.

And so between the two of us, we have fairly busy schedules.

We have three young children and a household that needs a lot of support over time.

And so I began getting involved with Chair Mosqueda's legislation pretty early on and have supported it throughout as someone who believes in taking care of those who take care of you and those that are most precious to you.

But I do realize that there are people out there that don't always think the way that I do, and wanting to find ways to support individuals and their families, especially domestic workers.

One of the things that became very apparent to me during the pandemic in particular was the degree to which domestic workers were sidelined, much like many restaurant workers and others with not very many opportunities for employment and other things along the way.

And so I felt a real need to jump in and try and be a part of the change I wanted to see in the world.

So I'm here.

I'm humbly asking for the support and my nomination to the Domestic Workers Standards Board and look forward to working with the board to help enact good policy within the ordinance itself.

With that, happy to take any questions.

Well, thank you.

Let's hold on questions for now and turn it over to Marie.

Good morning, Marie.

Thanks so much for joining us.

And Jasmine gave a little overview of some of the work that the Domestic Workers Standards Board is doing.

And so we'd just love to turn to you for a quick second to tell us a little bit more about your interest in serving on the Domestic Workers Standards Board and anything that you'd like to share with the committee about your past work and what you're looking forward to.

I think we're looking just to connect the audio.

Can you hear me, Marie?

Yes, I can hear you perfectly fine.

Excellent.

Yes, great.

If you'd like to say hello, any comments, you're welcome to.

Okay.

All right.

Good morning.

My name is Marie Rosenberg.

I am new to this.

Are you able to see me a little better?

I see you great.

Yes.

I've been working as a nanny for almost 30 years.

And right now I'm at work, so my child has to sleep, so I can only introduce myself and then go back to work.

So I'm new at this.

I was introduced to become a CD main book counsel in Seattle by my agency, and she thought I'd be a great, I can put some input in a variety of things, domestic workers or any other issue that Seattle has.

I'm a giver.

I like to give to people.

I like to make people feel welcome and comfortable.

I just love people.

My job is to help and assist people all my life.

And if I can contribute to something that could have lasting impact on the community that I live, I would definitely like to add some good comments regarding that.

So I've been working pretty much as a domestic worker all my life.

I've attempted to go to school.

college I didn't finish because of my mom couldn't afford to pay for college for myself.

I did, I went as far as that, it's gone to three years and I had to quit.

So pretty much all my life is just working as a nanny and also as a nursing assistant.

So I carry my heart in my sleeve.

I'm a type of person that would give my last shirt to anybody who wants it.

So I would love to be part of something that will make me feel Really great.

So, yes.

Well, thank you so much for sharing that information and for sneaking away to do a quick call.

We all, there's a lot of us on the line here today who know the sort of the stress of trying to join a Zoom while a kiddo is sleeping and just getting that timing right is really challenging.

So I'm glad it worked out for you to be on the line here today.

And Steve, it's great to see you again.

Thank you for sharing your background.

and the work that you've done as a hiring family as well.

So I'm going to turn it over to our colleagues to see if there's any questions for Marie or for Steve.

Okay.

I'm not seeing any questions.

I will say that both of you, it sounds like, have done tremendous work already in giving back to the community, both in terms of feedback and ideas and suggestions for ways that we can be directly listening to those who are on the frontline as workers and as hiring entities.

And it sounds like you'll be tremendous assets to the hiring board here.

And Marie, it sounds it sounds like you're and you said you're new to this.

Just know that you are in good hands.

There's a lot of folks on that board who've done tremendous work coming with that lived experience of being providers as well, caregivers themselves.

And so I think you'll have a lot of great colleagues on the line there, along with Steve, who's been involved in some public policy making over the last few years that I've been working here as a good high road employer as well.

So I don't have any questions for the two of you, except for to say, please do reach out to us if you ever have any questions.

And Jasmine Maraha here from the Office of Labor Standards is a constant presence at our committee meetings and is also a great liaison to city government and look forward to working with you.

Marie?

I'll ask Jasmine to give me a call at her convenience sometime this week.

I'm out of work at 3.30.

She can give me a call around 3.30 and 4 o'clock.

I do have some questions.

There's some stuff I need to submit to her as well.

And I guess have a nice meeting.

I wish I could stay longer.

Well, we appreciate your work, and thank you for dialing in.

And colleagues, if there's no questions for our panelists, I think that we will just do a quick reminder here of the other two appointments.

Jasmine mentioned them at the beginning, and I also just want to note the importance of having their continued participation in our committees, excuse me, in our in the board.

Sylvia Gonzalez is a member of the Domestic Worker Standards Board will be up for another term to serve through February 28, 2024. And you'll remember Sylvia from the amount of work that she did with us when we passed the Domestic Workers Standards Board.

And Elizabeth Hunter Keller, as a member of the Domestic Workers Standards Board, would again serve through February 28, 2024 as well.

So are there any additional questions on these four individuals, two new appointments and two reappointments?

Okay, wonderful.

I'm not hearing any.

Marie, thanks again for joining us.

And you are not required, Steve or Marie, to be with us on Monday, but we're about to vote here in a second.

We'll take it forward to the next full council meeting.

So colleagues, with that, I would like to entertain a motion.

I move the committee recommends passage of the appointment of Steve Hooper and Marie Gabrielle Rosenberg and the reappointments of Sylvia Gonzalez and Elizabeth Hunter Keller to the Domestic Workers Standards Board.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you very much.

It's been moved and seconded.

Are there any additional comments?

hearing none, Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll on the appointments and reappointments?

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Madam Chair, that is six in favor and none opposed.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

So the appointments and reappointments have been confirmed.

That is appointment number one through four, and those appointments will be moved to a recommendation of the full council on Monday, July 26th.

Not doing my math well here.

July 26, I saw a thumbs up.

Thank you very much, Jasmine.

And congratulations, Steve and Marie on your new appointments and also to our team that is coming back to continue to serve on Domestic Workers Santa Board.

We're gonna come back to this item after we get to item, the third item that we'll come to here soon.

Thanks so much, Madam Clerk, let's go ahead and keep going.

Thanks for joining us today, Steve and Marie.

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

Agenda item number five, council bill 120131, an ordinance amending ordinance 126237, which adopted the 2021 budget, changing appropriations to various departments and budget control levels and from various funds in the budget for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Well, thank you very much, Madam Clerk, and thank you to all of our team members here on the line today.

We have a long list of esteemed community partners and members from the city.

family, so I'm just going to read their names into the record, and then we're going to let folks introduce themselves as you get to your presentation as well.

But just for the record, we have with us Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington.

Good morning.

Director Andres Montilla from the Department of Neighborhoods.

Dr. Sheila Edwards-Lang, President of Seattle Central College.

Sharon Marie Williams, Executive Director of the Central District Forum for Arts and Ideas.

Donna Modi, founder and CEO of Marjorie Restaurants.

Stephen Sawyer, executive director of Pocan, P-O-C-A-N, and Chris Lampkin, SEIU Healthcare 1199, all members today representing the Equitable Communities Initiative Task Force.

And as we heard from public testimony, there's so many more individuals who made today's recommendations possible.

I appreciate the willingness to have just a few folks represent today so we can really get into discussion and ask some questions.

But I know that many of us have had the chance to have a briefing from all of you.

So really appreciate the intense work that you've been doing over the last few months.

And thank you for being representatives here today.

And for all of the work that you've done, congratulations.

I know that it's been a tremendous amount of work to get to this point.

And we today will be going through the investments that you have outlined in the presentation that is linked to our agenda.

We also know that this is specifically focused on improving material conditions for our BIPOC communities in the city of Seattle.

And I love that you have identified the four categories or the four pillars for really showcasing how we can shift our investments and shift our cultural mindset to engaging and investing in what community safety really means.

Again, as a reminder folks, to folks, this is $30 million that were allocated to the Equitable Community Initiative Task Force paired with $30 million to the participatory budgeting process and the investments that we together have made into making sure that there was direct investments from the Mercer Mega Block Sale that's going into building housing for those that were disproportionately affected by displacement, and a handful of other investments totaling over $100 million in last year's budget.

After today's presentation, we will be having a chance to ask questions and really get into the details of the presentation.

And this is really a chance for you all to feature the great work that you've done.

And we're going to come back on August 3rd for a vote.

This allows for our central staff and community members to have the chance to go through all of the questions and make sure all the questions are answered and that we get a chance to really hear from you today and not get mired in the process of the bill, but really get a chance to feature the work that you've done.

So thank you so much for being with us.

And I think I'm turning it over first to Deputy Mayor.

Good morning, Deputy Mayor Washington.

It's great to see you again.

Good morning.

Thank you, council members.

Thanks for having us at the table.

I'm going to speak briefly because the majority of the presentation belongs to the task force.

As stated, we're going to discuss the community-led recommendations that will begin to address the disparities impacting communities of color.

So as we all know, last summer across America, Black communities took a stand and demanded once again that this country do more to repair the harm done through racist systems and policies that left us generations behind our white counterparts.

From this activism, Mayor Durkin committed and council approved under proviso more than 100 million to help improve outcomes for the black, indigenous, and communities of color.

To determine the investment areas, Mayor Durkin formed the Equitable Community Initiative Task Force.

As you said, Council Member Muscata, it's a group of community leaders that have decades of experience and expertise.

One of the things that wasn't in my note that I want to say that I'm super proud of is when the money first came out, it caused some division in the community.

And I am very proud of the folks that are on this call, the folks that are on the task force and the folks from PB and all the different organizations across the city.

they came together and decided that they were going to allow the hundred million to bring them together and not divide them against one another.

And so, um, what you're going to hear today is the work of community members that are, some are part of the task force, but the task force members that are here today, definitely engaged with their community to, um, develop these recommendations.

Once council votes to lift the proviso, the departments will immediately shift towards implementing the recommendations.

The goal is to begin releasing funds into the community by the end of the year.

And what you see here are all the members, I think, of the task force.

Nope, just, do we have a slide that has all the members of the task force listed?

No, there we go.

Those are all the members of the task force who worked tirelessly months and months, meeting some twice a week to develop these recommendations.

And so with that, I'm going to be quiet and I'm not sure who I'm going to hand it over to, but I will.

I'm sure it's Sharon.

It's either Sharon or Dr. Lang, but I will.

We're going to go into introductions quickly and then we'll go right into the into the presentations, Deputy Mayor.

So Donna will go first.

All righty.

Good morning.

My name is Donna Moody.

I own Marjory Restaurant and also am currently working at Community Roots Housing.

And I will pass it on to Dr. Sheila.

Good morning, everyone.

I'm Sheila Edwards-Lang, and I'm the president of Seattle Central College and was part of the Education Pillar.

Steven.

I saw Steven and I'm wondering if maybe it was an accidental button.

So we'll get to Steven as soon as he pops back in if the folks from IT can keep your eye out.

I have done that before when I've gone to hit unmute.

So maybe Chris then.

Hi.

Chris Williamson with SEIU 1199 Northwest.

We represent the health care workers who keep Seattle healthy.

And I was a member of the health pillar and I'll hand it to Sharon.

I am sharing that we Williams, the executive director for the central district for for arts and ideas, and I was part of the housing pillar.

and I am here to get this party started.

James Weldon Johnson said, lift every voice and sing.

What do you get when you put together 26 brown and black leaders from various sectors, various expertise, and various networks and communities?

You get a group of people that love Seattle, and more importantly, a group of people that love the Seattle community.

We, the Equitable Communities Initiative Task Force, respectfully present these recommendations.

We started this journey in December 2020, and over the past nine months, we met for hours with doing good for the community as our driving force.

The recommendation goes across four pillars, business development, affordable housing and land acquisition, education disparities and health disparities, to uplift these pillars.

There are nine recommendations with 18 strategies.

These recommendations are rooted in data and evidence on the current situation in the black and brown communities.

They are not by themselves sufficient to transform the conditions for black and brown communities and will require additional commitments to continue and sustain them.

With that said, I want to say thank you.

to you city council for your time and attention during this process.

Thank you to the mayor and the mayor's office and her entire team.

Thank you to council member Juarez for being there throughout the process and being a part of our task force.

Thank you to all the city directors and teams and their teams.

And thank you to the task force.

But most importantly, Thank you to the community who may not realize it, but that you and your stories that you've shared with us over the years is what fueled these recommendations.

Much appreciation and respect.

Now, and following the theme of lift every voice and sing, I respectfully pass to my colleague, Donna Moody.

Good morning, and thank you for taking the time to listen to our presentation today.

I would first like to start by clarifying my introduction.

My name is Donna Moody.

I own Marjory Restaurant.

Many of you may know me as someone who's been in the restaurant industry for over 25 years in the city of Seattle.

I've owned several small businesses.

What many of you may not know is that like many small businesses in our city, particularly those owned by the BIPOC community, I have struggled like many others.

I have maxed out my credit cards.

I've taken out loans that were questionable.

I have filled out form after form after form of paperwork to try to get money to support my business and to keep it afloat.

I feel like my business is an integral part of our community.

It paints a picture of diversity in our city.

It's a meeting place, a gathering place.

It's unique.

It's some place where people from all walks of life gather and meet each other and talk about community.

I think that this is representative of many small owned businesses in our city.

And I often wonder why they struggle so much.

What we devised in the small group pillar is a way to give businesses the money that they need to have dignity when applying and to also get support after they receive money.

It was our plan to try to give members of our small business community funds that would support grants also loans and also forgivable loans.

With the technical assistance that we want to take from the $7.5 million, $2.5 million for technical assistance, we wanted to not only reach out to people in our community to see if they could be someone who could fill out an application and get funding, but we also wanted to extend it to offer people support once they had the money in hand.

I think you'll find that A lot of the perspective that we looked at in gathering people that need money and trying to get it to them will yield people feeling more stable and having a stronger footing in the business industry.

We'll see business owners able to retain staff, and we'll also see business owners able to increase their revenue, creating generational wealth in our communities and having highly esteemed individuals.

And I'd like to pass it on to our next presenter.

Great, thank you, Donna.

As I said, I'm Sheila Edwards-Lang and I have been an educator in the Seattle community for over 30 years.

And I was joined by a group of other folks on the education work group who are just as experienced and just as committed to serving BIPOC youth in our community.

So we know that education is a path to equitable economic stability and civic engagement in our region.

BIPOC communities have historically experienced, though, inequitable educational outcomes.

And the three recommendations in this pillar are designed to address those inequities by prioritizing funding to community-based and culturally-based organizations that are closest to BIPOC youth.

The funding from the Ed Levy, as you all know, has been really good and prosperous for our community.

But most of that funding goes to larger organizations that have the capacity to respond to the city's RFP and front load funding.

I know, for example, with us, with Seattle Promise and the Seattle Colleges, we are reimbursed for services.

And so you have to have the capital up front in many of the instances to move forward with RFPs.

We propose funding in the form of a new Educational Equity Innovation Fund that uses an alternative RFP process that minimizes the hoops that organizations have to jump through for funding.

DEEL and HSF have done pilots like this with small amounts of funding, and we want to see more of that.

One example of a small community based organization that has outstanding outcomes for BIPOC youth is One World Now.

One World Now is an after school enrichment program that focuses on language and leadership skill development.

It seeks to increase the global experiences of BIPOC youth.

It has an annual operating budget of $750,000, serves 150 students, and 98% of their students graduate on time and go to college.

If you think about that, that is just outstanding.

It exceeds what we do in Seattle Public Schools and indeed in our state.

But despite these outstanding outcomes, the organization does not have the capacity to compete with larger organizations through a traditional RFP process.

With investment and CBOs like One World Now, we expect to see an increase in high school completion and college readiness and more racial diversity in our teaching staff.

We also want to see more funding for cultural organizations that do the important work of sharing the contributions of BIPOC communities to the building of this nation and our region.

We know that participation in culturally relevant instruction and participation in community cultural celebrations allow students to embrace their own identities and improve their self-esteem.

Finally, we want to see an investment in addressing the disproportionality of BIPOC folks in the criminal justice system.

Reentry programs with a focus on education and wraparound services can reduce recidivism.

This funding will ensure that formerly incarcerated folks gain the skills and knowledge needed to obtain long-term living wage employment and transition successfully out of the correction system.

So we hope that you will support these investments.

Thank you.

Next slide.

Hi, I'm Stephen Soy.

I'm the executive director of POCAN.

POCAN is a social service agency really focusing on health equity.

And we've been doing that work now for 34 years.

I myself have worked in the medical field and around health equity for more than 30 years.

And I'm here really to present our recommendations for our health and environmental justice.

Healthy families is a critical and vital part of thriving BIPOC communities.

Equitable Community Task Force, we recommend a $6.2 million to improve healthy food access, environmental justice, plus building a pipeline for culturally appropriate healthcare and careers.

through this process, we really did think about how can we really affect and have a positive effect on the health outcomes, particularly for BIPOC communities.

And we recognize first that starts with food and food access.

Oftentimes, communities of color, particularly BIPOC communities, have food deserts and other things that prohibit them from having healthy, nutritious food.

And so to address that, we created a strategy called the Healthy Food Fund, really investing $750,000 really to kind of help address the inequities, particularly when we think about food deserts and access to food.

We also created another strategy that's farm-to-table, allowing $200,000 to be invested in that area.

The goal really is to increase the number of children that have access to healthy food, increasing revenue to black and brown farmers, and reducing food waste, and increasing connection to farmers, to land, and to new food.

One of the things that the pandemic really did, it highlighted the deep inequities that we have, particularly for food access, for BIPOC communities.

Our agency is one of those small agencies that tried to respond to that need and were able to pass out over 2,000 boxes of food, particularly to our families and to our youth programs.

And what we saw is oftentimes they did not have access to food, or even when they did, when schools offered it and they were able to go to the schools, there were other things that really prohibited them from wanting to access that food.

And so we believe that this strategy really addressed this really immediate need.

And when we begin to develop these strategies, we thought about immediate need and long-term need.

Some of the other things that we really wanted to address and thought was critical to address was the environmental justice.

And so we created the Environmental Justice Fund that would invest $550,000 in the hopes of really tackling some of the critical issues around capacity building, air quality, green jobs, particularly in BIPOC communities.

What we know oftentimes, BIPOC communities suffer significantly from environmental injustice.

And so these funds would be to address that issue.

And so the last one really is one that's really near and dear to my heart.

The last strategy is really direct, culturally responsive, inclusive healthcare.

As a healthcare former healthcare worker and now working in healthcare equity, it's critical.

We know that statistics show us that when we can create a system where people can feel relevant, they can feel more than the number, they can relate to the individuals that they're coming in to serve them, that they get better health outcomes.

And so we created this investment really $1.5 million to address those issues and to build a team to really kind of think about what's the best way to bring health equity to Seattle.

Thank you very much.

Pass it to our next presenter.

I'm back.

Housing, we've asked for $8.8 million, and I have to admit that in being in Seattle for the last 21 years, which is where I grew up, basically, as an adult.

I didn't know what it meant to be on this task force, or I just knew I needed to be there.

And as an artist, we aren't often asked to be at these type of tables.

And so when discussing housing, it made me think back of what was my expertise and being able to bring that to the table.

And my expertise is this.

There was a time when I was a full-time artist and I remember clear as day when I started this organization called the Mahogany Project and we were on stage about to do our first show and I was on the cover of a section of the Seattle Times written by, I can't remember his name right now because I'm so emotional.

And I remember going home that night after having a great production and knowing that I was on the cover of the paper and my light was being off and having to sleep that night in my house when it was cold in my clothes.

I remember waking up the next day and having to go to my friend's house and eat.

It wasn't that I wasn't working.

I was working a lot.

I had about five different contracts that I was working on.

I just didn't have enough money coming in.

And so when I think of housing and I think of the opportunities and what we can do I think about why we as a task force wanted to do lease to own, because it's not, we understand that lease to own means that we put the power back into the hands of the community, that we remove the power from the developers who we love because you have to build the buildings.

We remove the power from the nonprofits, but we really want it to be about community ownership.

And we know where ownership comes power.

We also, in this pillar talked about technical assistance and apprenticeships and relooking at those systems of education that make it more accessible.

So apprenticeships, not just for construction skills, but also for contractors and then looking down the road to apprenticeships for health and business and artistry and education.

Different ways of doing things means that we uplift our community.

We also talked about retention, keeping people in their homes.

How do we keep them in their homes.

We talk about how we are siloed.

We have the housing department.

We have the health department.

We have the business department.

But what happens when we build a system with technology and those systems are connected?

So that small business owner like Donna Moody can not only have a small business, but be flagged for programs to let them have home ownership, to let them have good health care, to help them have educational programs, and to bring it all together.

So in the housing section, we definitely talked about creating a pipeline that feeds an ecosystem that speaks to one another.

And so we also talked about generational wealth, because our communities and our families have changed.

Things have shifted.

Our great and great grandparents who tried to buy that land to pass down from one generation to the next generation have passed away or are unable to continue to take care of their services.

So how do we instill and work with the city as a whole and the city help us in thinking more than just about the now when it comes to owning homes and generational wealth?

but to passing it on from generation to generation and building a training program that speaks to all of our pillars and all of the things that we need to make Seattle the place that we know that it can be.

So I say, forget about the silos.

Let's bring us together and lease to ownership, to apprenticeship, to generational wealth, to just making Seattle the place that we know and believe in, it could be.

Next slide.

So Council Members, here you can see the full outline of all the recommendations with detailed dollar amounts, which I know folks have been curious about.

And lots of the questions that we've been getting are When will this money be able to get into community?

We know folks are really struggling just to survive, not just getting the chance to thrive.

And so one of the things that we are asking you all is to work with us as the task force is committed to working with you all to help get these dollars into community to start doing good work as soon as possible.

So we can go on to the next steps.

I wanna ask if any of the council members have any questions for the task force.

Vice Chair Herbold.

Yeah, thanks.

Two questions and maybe this is going to be covered by Chris in next steps.

One, can you just give us a sense of the allocation that is included in this recommendation to deal with the actual implementation.

It looks like funds that are recommended total nearly the full $30 million, but just wondering how we're going to be covering the administrative cost to implement the proposed spending.

And then related to that, because as I understand it, expanding existing contracts is one thing that will reduce the administrative costs.

Do we have a sense of how many of these dollars can be allocated through existing contracts versus the development of new RFPs for new and innovative programs?

Yeah, thank you, Council Member, for that question.

Well, just point of privilege, you are my Council Member.

So we are blessed to be in Seattle, a city that is on the footing towards justice.

And many of our city departments already have programs that are trying to do this great work.

And as a task force, we've been working closely with city staff and the different departments to identify where there is already this work happening that we can supplement, and then identifying gaps where we might need to create something new out of whole cloth.

So your question was implementation costs because the city is already doing so great work.

Most of the funding is directed towards getting into communities and not towards having to stand new programs up.

But you can see in the different recommendations where there might be something like an RFP process or the need to hire a consultant to help create something.

But one of our principles was the most money for people as possible.

Chris.

Thumbs up.

Thank you, Vice Chair Herbold.

I'm not seeing Council Member Morales.

Please go ahead.

Thank you.

I do want to kind of follow up on Council Member Herbold's question a little bit.

But first, I just want to acknowledge and say thank you for including issues around food security in this work.

You may or may not know that I worked as a food systems consultant for about 10 years and so this is an issue that is near and dear to my heart.

And I will say that there is a lot of work that needs to be done, as you were saying, to make sure that we're connecting not just food access but culturally appropriate food.

You know, one of the organizations I worked with, the Rainier Beach Action Coalition, is doing a farm stand every summer.

And when it started, there was a lot of barriers to getting people to come to the farm stand.

I think in part, because there's this perception that farmers markets are only for wealthy people.

But even when we were able to attract lower income folks, folks from the neighborhood to come, You know, if they were from a different culture, we weren't necessarily able to access culturally appropriate vegetables.

If we were selling broccoli and they don't know what to do with broccoli, that's not a useful access point for them.

And then there were other issues around, you know, whether we could take WIC.

whether we could, our EBT card machine was working, if there was internet connection so that we could use the EBT swiper.

There's just a lot of infrastructure issues that come, challenges that come with trying to get people better access to healthy food.

So I'm really happy to see that this is part of the focus and I'm eager to help all of you make sure that you're getting that done.

My question as a follow-up from Council Member Herbold's question is, one of the first things you said was there's a real emphasis on making sure that we are providing this public resource to smaller organizations who may not have the capital or the capacity to really engage with all of these RFP processes.

And I know that there is a citywide effort in all of the departments to figure out how to do that better.

But if that's the goal and in terms of implementation, you're really thinking about starting with who you're already funding.

I'm just wondering if that's a mismatch or how because I think we do currently fund.

a lot of large organizations.

And as somebody who's worked with nonprofits for 20 years, I hear very often from small community organizations that they can't compete or that, you know, these big organizations get the money and may dole out little bits of it to the small organizations, but the folks who are on the ground really doing the work don't have access the way they need it.

So I'm wondering if you can just talk a little bit about that.

for lack of a better word that mismatch.

Thank you very much.

Council member for that question.

Um, one of the things that we've recognized in our work is that because of the disinvestment and being kept away for resources, many communities don't have the technical knowledge or just the staff to really, um, keeping compliance with grants or even go out and try to get into all the different programs that the city has.

And so as we've been working with city staff trying to start designing some of these RFPs, we've really made it a central point that we can't just do business as usual because we will get the same results.

We need to be designing these RFPs and providing the technical assistance to ensure that we can get as many people into this process as possible because we know we need as many hands on deck to reverse generations, if not centuries of chronic disinvestment and exploitation.

And if I could add one of the things that we talked about with deal and HHSC and arts, they've run pilots and of alternative ways of reaching smaller organizations.

And so we've asked them to identify the community based organizations who are already getting money from whether it's parks from any department.

And trying to put together a list of all of the community-based organizations that we know about, some of which may already be getting funding from the city.

And if there's a possibility to add on to those, that's great.

But really designing just a different way of getting money into those organizations' hands.

And we recognize that the initial funding may go to those small community-based organizations that are already doing some business with the city, but that the long-term goal is in the next to design this process that would make it easier for more of those small community-based organizations to be at the table.

And I'd also like to add that one of the considerations that we had with technical assistance in the business pillar was to use part of that technical assistance to actually seek out small businesses that might be in need so that the technical assistance wouldn't just begin once the applications were in and people received money, and we wouldn't just be guiding them on how to spend it, but we would actually use some of the proceeds from technical assistance to seek out small businesses that might often be overlooked when grants or loans are available, and also to help people fill out applications so that people that often think I really could use the help, but I don't even have the time or the wherewithal to fill out an application.

And sometimes the questions are daunting, or they feel like maybe a family emergency or a health crisis might get in the way of them having an acceptable credit score.

So we really wanted to use some of that to focus on outreach.

So not only what we get, but actually spending a little time finding businesses in need.

Thank you very much for that question and the series of answers.

I think, Donna, you mentioned it well in your comments at the beginning.

How do we also make sure that we are making these applications really simple and easy and not so time-consuming?

And Deal, you just mentioned, Dr. Edwards-Lang, about how you've been partnering with Deal.

And Deal, I just got an email from one of the child care providers, got a huge compliment.

It's never been so easy for me to fill out this application and it's never been so meaningful to receive the funding that they got from some of the Seattle rescue plans.

So this I think is like a continuation of that same mentality and how do we reduce the barriers and really streamline dollars directly into community.

So maybe with that, we should go into the next steps here and we'll see if there's any additional questions, but I appreciate Council Member Morales and Council Member Lurie.

Councilmember Lewis?

I think a couple of us have had our, we're using the raise the hand feature if that's not your preference, Madam Chair.

I'm happy to wave at the screen moving forward.

I see the hands now.

Okay, great.

So we will do Councilmember Lewis and Council President Gonzalez and I will keep this screen open here with the virtual hands.

And then we do want to make sure to hear the next steps as well to see if there's also questions related to that.

So Councilmember Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

This is very brief.

I would just be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to congratulate Dr. Sheila Edwards-Lang on her appointment as the next Chancellor of UW Tacoma.

I just wanted to make sure to get that out there.

Having known Dr. Edwards-Lang since my time as an undergrad at the University of Washington and really, really appreciating her leadership.

This seems like an appropriate time given that she is on our panel.

So thank you so much for your service and congratulations on that great appointment, Dr. Sheila.

Thank you.

The only bittersweet part is that I have to move to Tacoma.

It's a great opportunity, but I will be moving, relocating.

Congratulations.

A beautiful sister city.

Council President,

I just wanted to say thanks also to the work of the task force members.

I know this was tough, challenging work and it's been happening for many, many, many months amidst unique and historic challenges in terms of engaging in this task force work, which ordinarily happens in person.

I wanted to, I don't have a question, I just wanted to sort of especially acknowledge a lot of the acknowledgment in these recommendations about the need to build capacity amongst BIPOC communities to sort of build that infrastructure of resilience into communities so that they are able to actually be in a position to even apply for grants or ask for technical assistance.

And I think building that infrastructure is critically important.

To what I think is our collective long term vision around producing better community alternatives that are going to be better situated to produce equitable community safety within our broader community.

So really appreciate the.

Capacity building opportunities that are represented through many, if not all of the recommendations that we're seeing here and really excited about being able to learn more about the housing proposals as well, including the lease to own program and and really interested in making sure that we have an opportunity to hear more granular details about some of those specific recommendations as we continue to learn more about how to implement.

these recommendations as quickly and as equitably as possible.

So thank you, Chair.

Well said.

Okay.

Please go ahead, Chris.

Madam Chair, thank you very much.

Seeing that there aren't any questions, I know we've discussed coming back next week for additional questions if city staff needs more time to go through our proposals.

I would be inclined as a labor organizer to always ask for the urgency of the moment.

Community is in dire need and really looking forward to getting the chance for our city partners to be able to get these RFPs designed and in the streets, so to speak.

So it would be my preference to ask of you all as a committee to vote to lift to advance the proviso lift as soon as possible.

And knowing that the task force members are committed to staying involved in this process and being a resource for the city to help implement these recommendations, not just for this upcoming and current budget year, but going forward.

We know the work of undoing a legacy of oppression is not short, but it will be sweet.

Thank you so much.

Any additional questions or comments?

Okay, thank you for the presentation too and also the work that you did to walk us through the initial set of recommendations.

I know that we are able to now pair that information, the policy recommendations with the dollar amounts and to build that capacity as was talked about in addition to also making sure that we're not being unwise with people's time, respecting their time and how they fill out the applications and the work they've already done, not make them have to jump through a bunch of hoops.

I really like the aspect of streamlining this.

I don't anticipate that there's going to be questions that would require the task force members to have to come back.

I think that it would be as simple as having it on our agenda for the next committee meeting and being able to address any of those questions with you all in the meantime feels absolutely possible.

You're all very accessible.

Thank you for picking up the phone when we've all called and calling us as well.

And I will just see if there's any last questions from our colleagues.

Director Montillas or Deputy Mayor Washington, any additional comments from you?

Okay.

Well, congratulations again.

This is a tremendous body of work.

I think that there's already been some comments as well from all of you about the importance of continuing some of the initial investments that we have made in the wake of COVID, the way in which we've gotten dollars out the door directly into communities, whether it's small business owners or community affected disproportionately by COVID, childcare providers, and members of our arts and culture community.

creating housing stability now, capital investments that create capacity in the out years.

It feels like many of these building blocks are coming together very nicely and really appreciate the work that you've done to center your recommendations on the lived experience of folks who have been for so long demanding various investments and now is the time to do it to create that more equitable community in the wake of COVID.

Anything else?

Okay, please join me in thanking the committee for being here with us today, and please pass on our appreciation to your entire task force, and we look forward to working with you as task force member.

Lampkin has noted to make sure that these are implemented quickly and that we continue to build on these.

So thank you all very much.

Have a great day.

Let's move on to item number six, Madam Clerk.

Agenda item number six, Domestic Workers Standards Board recommendations for briefing and discussion.

Wonderful, thank you.

And colleagues, we have with us again, Karina Bull from Central Staff.

This is not the first time we've had the Domestic Workers Standards Board on our committee.

In fact, we've been meeting on this topic since 2018, when we passed the first citywide Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, providing labor standards to the workforce that's long been left out of the conversations and protections about minimum wages, benefits, and a voice and the job.

This is our opportunity to respond to the recommendations that the Domestic Workers Board has sent to us.

As you'll recall, we included in the requirements for the legislation that the Council respond to the recommendations, so it wasn't a report that just sat on a shelf somewhere.

Members of the Domestic Workers Board came to us with recommendations on May 18th.

Thanks again to the board for presenting and for the work that the Office of Labor Standards has done, specifically Jasmine Marwaha, who was with us earlier, for their work and service to make sure that we were hearing directly from workers and the hiring entities about what recommendations they'd like to see both here in Seattle, but also in our state as well.

Under the procedure outlined in the ordinance, we have a requirement to respond to those recommendations within 120 days of receiving them, which would put us into early September.

But my desire, folks, is that we try to do that a little bit earlier.

It would be ideal if we could respond to these recommendations before the August recess.

And with that, I will turn it over to Karina to give us a quick update on how we have been trying to compile a draft response to the domestic workers presentation that they provided to us in last month's committee meeting.

And my hope is that we can sort of start to outline some of the response that we'd be interested in sharing.

There is no vote on this today.

This is a discussion for deliberative purposes so that we can all see if we are working towards the same direction that would allow for us to come back on August 3rd with a possible draft that we could potentially send to the board.

So I'll turn it over to Karina to walk us through any additional updates that she's been working on.

Good morning, Council Members.

I am Karina Bull from Central Staff, and I will present to you this morning a presentation that provides a high-level overview of a possible draft response to the Domestic Worker Standards Board.

And to begin, as Council Member Mosqueda referenced, the board presented their recommendations to committee on May 18th, and we are working towards, at the very latest, a September response, but as Council Member Mosqueda noted, hoping for early August.

The board had four main areas for their recommendations, and then there were a total of 11 recommendations with some subset of each of these main topic areas.

And the topic areas were investing in community expertise and building trust, providing more materials and resources to workers and hiring entities, implementing policy changes to improve the ordinance, and also mandating portable benefits for domestic workers.

In consideration of these recommendations and under the governing procedure of the Domestic Workers Ordinance, this draft response provides a written response with the following guidance.

And so each recommendation will have one of these five types of responses, although I think there's only actually three that have been selected for this draft response.

A is that the committee would support the submission of a proposal to put before the council for approval.

B is that the committee would request more information from the board.

C, the committee would request the board to develop alternatives.

And D, the committee would reject the proposal with reasons for rejection.

And then last, the committee would consider the proposal on a longer timeline.

As a preview, there is no recommendation in which there is a recommendation for the committee to reject the proposal.

There are requests for the other items and then sometimes sort of a mingling of both request a proposal along perhaps a longer timeline.

So to begin, these draft responses are quite broad.

They indicate broad support for the board's recommendations and there is no prescriptive action, but instead a desire to show the deep respect for the board's expertise and to empower the board to make their own decision making and to prioritize their own areas of focus that then the committee can then receive, evaluate, and with an understanding the committee is eager to support improving the working conditions and lives of domestic workers.

So within that framework, again, deep deference to the board's recommendations and then some general guidance in the form of this response.

So the first recommendation under the category of investing in community expertise and building trust is expanding funding for community organizations.

As a bit of background, office of labor standards already has a a significant amount of funding for community organizations.

It is about $2.1 million total, a million and a half of that money going towards community organizations to support workers' awareness and engagement with their rights, and then $600,000 is for businesses and hiring entities.

This recommendation would propose expanding that money to make sure that it has specific funds for domestic worker outreach and ongoing funds for domestic worker outreach.

Right now, my understanding of the way that the funding is organized for community and business organizations and that it's a broad funding that the organizations decide how to divide up as far as focus for each labor standard.

And the board is requesting specific funding for domestic workers with recognition that there could need to be different ways of reaching those workers and hiring entities separate from workers who are functioning as employees.

So the draft response would be to broadly support this goal and to support submission of a budget of a request for a specific amount of money.

And that proposal could come from the board and or office of labor standards.

So there are a number of recommendations that have this kind of response where it's The committee welcomes a proposal.

It could come from the board, could come from Office of Labor Standards, or a combination of both.

Next is a recommendation to compensate workers for their expertise, specifically to pay board members who are domestic workers and to fund paid surveys and interviews of domestic workers to inform policy development.

This recommendation was made in recognition that there are numerous barriers that prevent workers from engaging in policy development, and yet their input is so incredibly valuable and critical to making those policy decisions.

So the committee would be in alignment with that recommendation, but also would want to have some more information from the board on this recommendation.

Perhaps some short and long term ideas for compensation, something that could happen now, but maybe not sure about what would happen in the future.

The committee also would be interested in exploring separate from the board, how compensating board members would impact other boards across the city of which there are many.

and other efforts across the city of which there are many to involve community members in helping to shape policy development.

So recognizing that compensating domestic workers wouldn't be on an island on its own, but it's all part of a larger picture of how the city engages the community.

So seeking some more information on that specific recommendation.

Next is under the category of providing more materials and resources would be funding development of new outreach materials and expanding language access.

Currently, Office of Labor Standards has created a very beautiful booklet and model notice of rights.

And I believe some of those, the booklet has been printed and it has been translated into Spanish and simplified Chinese.

And then the board recognizes that an expansion of language access could certainly benefit more workers.

And so there's interest in that and also updating materials, creating new materials as informed by community organizations to know what's going to work best to reach workers and hiring entities.

So the committee would support a submission of a request for that proposal, wanting to know more about the specific funding amount that would help move that recommendation forward.

Also in the category of providing more materials is the board's recommendation to fund a mailing to all households in Seattle.

There are about 350,000 households in Seattle and OLS provided some feedback on the board's recommendations.

And there is a sense that without partnering with other departments that the cost of the mailing to all households could cost up to $175,000.

It could be perhaps as low as $100,000 if there's some sort of targeting, but that provides a general framework of the cost of this recommendation.

So the draft response would be that the committee would request more development of alternatives to this recommendation, perhaps an exploration of other partnerships with city departments and other means that could be more cost efficient, perhaps some more targeting of outreach as well.

So support for this, but wanting some alternatives to reach a similar goal.

Also in the same category would be a proposal to fund improvement of the domestic worker section of the Office of Labor Standards website.

The board communicated their belief that the website could be more user friendly and it could have easier access to Spanish translation.

And there's a recommendation to look to other city departments.

Department of Neighborhoods has a help bot that could help guide users through the website.

So the draft response for this recommendation would be again for the board and for office of labor standards to submit a budget request for the specific amount of funding that would move this recommendation forward.

And then last in this category are ways to ensure third party platform compliance with domestic worker ordinance.

So this background there are third-party apps, the online enabled platforms that facilitate, that can facilitate domestic worker provision of services to varying levels, whether it's acting as a payroll processor, posting information online or actually being the intermediary between the worker and the consumer.

And so there's an interest on the board to find out ways to reach those third party platforms to make sure that they are aware of their obligations and also to help the consumers of those platforms be aware of the obligations as well.

So that could take That could be implemented in a variety of ways.

There could be letters to the platforms that the council signs on and sends under their name, or joins Office of Labor Standards, or joins other organizations.

If there is a mandated notice of rights that's required to be given to workers, then that is something that these third-party platforms would need to do as well.

The draft response would be the submission of a proposal from the board or the office of labor standards and how much this would cost to fund to meet their goals and also out front statement that the committee would be interested in signing a compliance letter to these third party platforms.

And actually, there is one more.

in this category of providing more materials and resources.

And that is a recommendation to address the impact of lack of health care for domestic workers.

And this recommendation could take the form of providing resources to hiring entities, convening city departments to discuss the issue, and for the committee and council to advocate to the state legislature ways to adopt a statewide affordable health care insurance program.

The city departments could be a convening of Office of Labor Standards, Office of Economic Development, and Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs for an interdepartmental team, the IDT as it is called, and a draft response to this recommendation could again be a submission of a board or Office of Labor Standards proposal on how on the funding needed or the resources needed to make this recommendation move forward.

And the committee could certainly take part in advocating for statewide affordable health care.

The next category of recommendations regards policy changes to the Domestic Worker Ordinance.

The first one would require hiring entities to provide workers with information about their rights and conditions of work.

I believe that all of the labor standards that are currently on the books have a mandated notice of rights that employers or hiring entities need to provide.

When the Domestic Worker Ordinance was passed, There was language in the ordinance that required Office of Labor Standards to create a document with a notice of rights, but it is not required to be provided to domestic workers.

And so the board currently is engaging in some stakeholder work to find out if the ordinance were amended to make it required legally for employers to give that information to workers?

What would be the impact of that?

And would there be any unintended consequences?

So the board is doing that work.

And then the committee would support submission of a proposal about that legislation, making that legislative amendment with a fuller understanding provided by the board on the benefits and risks of that proposal and the stakeholder engagement that was done.

The next policy change would be to eliminate the exclusion of publicly funded home care workers from the Domestic Workers Ordinance in recognition that there's been a state law that has changed the landscape of publicly funded work.

So in the same vein as the previous proposal for a policy change, the committee would support submission of a proposal for this change and with again with more information about the benefits and risks and the stakeholder engagement and the committee speaking of stakeholder engagement encourages working with SEIU on outreach and engagement.

The other policy change would be to eliminate the interference standard for joint hiring liability.

Currently when there is a situation of a third party platform The way that the accountability works for the ordinance is that the end user is not responsible for complying with the ordinance unless they directly interfere with the domestic worker rights.

And this actually, it's more than just third party platforms.

It's any sort of separate hiring entity.

So if there is a nanny services organizations that a family can go to and say, I need, we would like some, Family Care Service, the nanny company, could provide that family with a worker.

And as it stands now, that family would not be responsible for compliance with the Domestic Worker Ordinance unless they did something proactively to interfere with the worker's rights.

For example, denying rest breaks, denying meal periods, discriminating against the worker.

So the board is interested in removing that shield from liability and the committee, And this draft response would request more information from the board on that proposal, more information about the benefits and risk and stakeholder engagement.

And then the last recommendation, which is perhaps the biggest and most complex, would be to mandate a portable benefits program for domestic workers with a specific focus on access to paid leave for sick days, rest days, and other uses.

And recognition that this proposal is quite vast and quite complex of the board would recommend that I'm sorry, the committee would recommend that the board developed this proposal with Office of Labor Standards and then submitted to the committee for their evaluation under with the understanding that there is a very sincere support for developing a portable benefits program with just recognition of its complexity.

Already central staff and council member Mosqueda's office has sent four pages of questions to the coalition of the board that is working on this proposal.

So there are many, many things to consider.

And so an interest of efficiency the committee would want to receive a more developed proposal, fully developed proposal from the Board and Office of Labor Standards.

So in summary, of the four categories of responses, there would be five where the committee would support the submission of a proposal.

And in this particular instance, it would be a budget proposal.

Next, there would be three where the committee would support the submission of a legislative proposal.

And then more in requesting more information from the board.

There would be two, funding resources to compensate workers for their expertise and that eliminating the interference standard for joint hiring liability.

And then last, requesting the board to develop alternatives.

There would be one recommendation in this category, which would be funding and mailing to all households in Seattle.

And that is the end of my presentation.

If there are any questions, I'm happy to provide more information.

Karina, thank you as always for walking us through a pretty dense recommendation and helping to distill the policy recommendations and the funding recommendations in the way that you have, I think has been very helpful.

Again, I want to thank members of the Domestic Workers Standards Board who also provided a very comprehensive PowerPoint presentation that had a similar outline in terms of funding recommendations, advocacy recommendations, and policy changes.

Colleagues, there's a few things that I would like to note.

Number one, as Karina mentioned at the beginning, this is a sort of unique board makeup in that we have asked them to come back to us.

and give us recommendations so that this is not just a policy that's stagnant and recommendations don't sit on the shelf.

But we also want to recognize that the board themselves as individuals who you heard from today who make up hiring entities and workers themselves absolutely have advocacy capacity to come and lobby the council or work with the Office of Labor Standards in any way that they would like to.

One of the things that we're trying to offer here is sort of initial indication of things that we'd love to see more of or help us understand a little bit more about, but in no way are we trying to help prioritize what they should be prioritizing.

We want to indicate support for areas where we think that there might be common ground in what might be able to be funded and for them to help have a sense of that we would like to see further explored as part of what Karina has outlined here.

This should not be an indication that we are prioritizing one item over another or would fully fund one item versus another, but really an indication that we're hoping that they could take back these recommendations and then work within the board to prioritize.

And on the health care one, as Karina noted, for 775, SEIU 775 initially had suggested that home care providers who were covered under Medicare contracts at the federal level should not necessarily be covered in this domestic workers ordinance that we passed two years ago.

And so we didn't include those because they had different protections.

As Karina noted, there was a state change that has made it more possible for us to cover those domestic workers.

And so we are interested in following their lead and working with them and 775 to make any changes that we need to make to the state, excuse me to the city legislation.

I think that that's a good follow up.

So I just wanted to provide that additional context and then in terms of the.

Just one more thing, sorry, Vice Chair.

One more thing in terms of the portable benefits policy, which is a very large body of work.

From the research that we've done and understanding where other cities are at, thanks to the Domestic Workers Board, we have a better sense of what other cities are looking at, I believe, including Pittsburgh and San Francisco, and wanting to have our expert team at the Office of Labor Standards really in sort of the evaluation and policy Um...

development chair for us to be able to have the expertise of both the board and OLS at the table has been something that I think is extremely important.

It took Pittsburgh a few, I think they're working on this, the second round, the second year of pulling together the policy recommendations.

And as you all know from our conversations on domestic workers, possible portable benefits a few years ago, we sort of grappled with how do we create our own individual city focus, insurance system, if you will.

And having that within the city of Seattle versus regionally or at the state level, how do we make those distinction was really challenging policy conversation two years ago.

So really wanting to partner closely with Office of Labor Standards as Pittsburgh has done in developing their legislation is something that I think we could look at versus having the city council or one individual office come up with the policy in and of itself, it feels like a much bigger conversation with a lot more research capacity needed than, for example, our office has within just one office at the council level.

So I just want to provide that additional context to, you know, the trust and support and, you know, really, honor the expertise within the Domestic Workers Standards Board, then also note the incredible amount of work that is to come for a handful of these recommendations as well.

Vice Chair Herbold, and then if there's other questions, I will keep my eye on the hand features as well.

Thank you.

Can you remind me, are these recommendations jointly to the council and executive?

Are they recommendations to the executive?

And the reason why I ask, and I appreciate that the slides include in their options for council response an invitation to OLS to give us funding recommendations, but it seems very important to me that these recommendations be directed to OLS and the mayor's office because unlike many, many departments, we have created the authority within OLS to independently of the mayor give the council funding recommendations as a way of creating independence for that department.

And so I would hope that the Office of Labor Standards is using that authority, hearing the recommendations from the domestic workers board, um, and acting on those recommendations by, um, making funding requests of directly of the council.

Um, and so just really would like to understand a little bit about, um, who those who those, um, recommendations are directed to.

Thanks.

Council member Herbold.

I am.

Oh, go ahead.

Council member Scott.

I'm sorry.

Okay, you didn't have anything to say.

All right.

I am looking directly at the Domestic Workers Ordinance, the part of it that addresses these recommendations, and the ordinance states that the board will submit recommendations to the mayor and this committee by a certain time period, which they have done.

And then the committee will consider the board's recommendations.

And then the committee will respond with the committee's response as to whether to support, ask for more information, reject, et cetera.

So it seems like the ordinance is contemplating that these recommendations go to both the executive and the committee, but then the response only comes from the committee.

thinking about what you're talking about the budget.

One way for the executive to respond is within OLS's budget to a degree, but there's no forthright requirement in the ordinance for the executive to respond.

Thank you.

Yeah, Council Member Herbold, I appreciate you asking that question.

I think that that gets to the crux of the issue here.

There's so many great recommendations and you know, in terms of sort of who holds the purse, if the executive makes the initial recommendation to council on those first.

sort of five more budget-oriented items.

I can see how those recommendations being shared now hopefully will get absolved into OLS's recommendations to the executive and then ultimately to the council, and then we have the ability to add to it as well.

In terms of policy development, you know, we have really asked our office of labor standards to help be there as thought partners as we create policies that follow up on these recommendations.

But it has to be more than just the council driving policy recommendations given the limited capacity both at the city council within our own offices and obviously creating You're incredible as one person who takes on all labor standards.

Some of these policy recommendations are so incredibly big.

That's why I believe that cities like Pittsburgh have looked to their similar offices to try to develop robust legislation and do deep stakeholder engagement.

especially when it relates to things like portable benefits.

So I think that having this sort of be a joint effort between us and Office of Labor Standards or the executive team is exactly what I'm interested in.

And I believe Steve Marchese, Director Marchese from the Office of Labor Standards, has been a really great partner as well as Jasmine here on the line with us.

I'm looking for the tile here.

I believe Jasmine's still with us wanting to to be able to better understand some of the recommendations and really have a chance to make sure that we're continuing to advance our thoughts around what is possible policy-wise, but capacity is really more in the executive and OLS branch at this moment.

Council President Gonzalez, anything from you?

Okay, so I will just do my best, Karina, to summarize what I think are next steps, and perhaps you can chime in and let me know if I'm getting this right.

Colleagues, what I'd like to do, if there's not a red flag or something not sitting with you well right now, what I'd like to do is talk to the Domestic Worker Standards Board today, later this week as well, talk with Office of Labor Standards about our initial recommendations.

Again, I think having a recommendation We have a letter that as Vice Chair Herbold has noted, really reflects sort of the city family's response to the recommendations is my hope.

So we'd love to work closely with OLS in drafting the final letter.

And we will put some more meat on the bone to fill out some of these details.

Karina's verbal presentation was really comprehensive in terms of some of the why around these recommendations.

So we want to codify that in a letter.

you know, coming up with the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights took the better part of a year and a lot of stakeholder work before it even came to council.

And so I know that there is a tremendous amount of capacity and interest in the community to continue to advance those policy recommendations in addition to the funding strategies.

And we will have conversations over the next two to three weeks with the Office of Labor Standards, the Domestic Workers Standards Board, and we'll work on finalizing a letter for you all to take a look at at the August 3rd meeting.

Again, we're trying to hold these meetings in a public forum so that members of the public and the board and others know exactly how our deliberations are going.

And then after that August 3rd meeting, we will plan to send a letter so that we can get it out before the August recess.

Okay.

I'm not hearing any concerns.

And I think the question that was asked by Vice Chair is exactly in alignment with some of the questions I've asked as well.

And so I think we're all moving in the same direction.

We will work on finalizing this letter.

And I want to thank Craneville from central staff.

I want to thank Lori Mejo from my office, who has been really leading this effort, along with Stasia Parikh, who worked on the initial legislation.

Thank you all very much, and Jasmine Marwaha and Director Steve Marchese from Office of Labor Standards for their collaboration as well.

And the legal team.

All right, thanks so much.

Let's move on to the next item of business.

Madam Clerk.

And item number seven, Council Bill 120111, an ordinance authorizing in 2021 acceptance of funding from non-city sources authorizing the hands of the Executive Department, Human Services Department, Seattle City Light Department, Department of Transportation, Seattle Fire Department, and Seattle Parks and Recreation to accept the specified grants, private funding, and subsidized loans, and to execute, deliver, and perform corresponding agreements for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you, Madam Clerk, and my apologies for not asking for the short title.

I will do that for the next two.

Colleagues, I want to note as well, items 7, 8, and 9 on our agenda for today really do relate to budgetary items, and we have invited other council members to join us for these budget-related discussion.

So I want to welcome council members to want who I saw join us as well.

Thank you for joining us.

And also just a quick note before we begin the presentation on this, it does say briefing discussion on possible vote.

My goal today is to have a briefing and discussion and hold this item to be voted on.

with the other two budgetary related items that are listed on the agenda here for today at our next meeting or the following meeting.

So with that, I will turn it over to Ali and Tom and welcome you from our budget team at Central Staff to walk us through the presentation here.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, good morning committee members.

I'm Allie Panucci of your council central staff.

I just wanted to note we did prepare a stock memo for items seven and eight that kind of go together.

So we are planning to do a presentation of both items if that is okay with the chair.

That sounds fine.

Do you mind if I read item eight at the short title into the record just so that we're all on the same page?

Wonderful.

Madam Clerk, do you mind reading item number eight into the record as well?

The short title is fine.

Madam Clerk, you may be on mute.

Okay, I'm going to go ahead and read item number eight into the record.

Item number eight is Council Bill 120112, an ordinance amending Ordinance 126237, which adopted the 2021 budget, including the 2021-2026 Capital Improvement Program.

Let's call that the short title.

you.

I also just wanted to know, too, before I turn it over to my colleague, Tom, who will walk through the staff memo before turning it back to me to describe potential amendments, that there was an updated memo distributed this morning and posted to the agenda.

I wanted to acknowledge that there was a staff error.

I had mischaracterized the sponsor's intent for Amendment No. 4, so I wanted to confirm for the record that that has been updated.

This reflects the sponsor's original intent that was mischaracterized by by staff, by me, in the memo.

So version two of the memo is posted on the agenda.

Updates are shown in track changes for the record, but for presentation today, I'm showing a clean version of that memo, so it's easier to read on the screen.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Tom to walk through the background information and description of the legislation.

Thank you, Allie.

Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the Finance and Housing Committee.

As Allie mentioned, my presentation that I prepared will follow generally the memo that was produced and uploaded for the agenda this morning.

It's going to cover a number of different concepts by way of a kind of a comprehensive where we have been and then where we are now discussion about budget adjustments.

What I will cover and then I'll hand off to Allie, I'll cover the summary of the adjustments that have occurred so far, both automatic and council approved.

Then turn to the bills that are on this morning's agenda, agenda items seven and eight.

And then turn over to Allie who will review the amendments that we've received from council members, and then we'll go into next steps.

So first, just a quick touch on the background on adjustments that have been approved so far.

So as you see on the screen, this is table one of the memo on page one that shows through July 16th of this year, there have been a total of $2 billion of budget adjustments, both automatic and council approved, which is a 31% increase to the budget that council approved last fall.

1.9 billion of the increase was actually described and covered in the staff memo that accompanied the 2021 carry forward bill that council passed in May.

That was ordinance 126326, for those who are interested.

The remainder is a set of one-off standalone ordinances that council has passed since that May discussion.

There on the screen are the list of the various changes that council has approved for the budget.

I will just highlight at this time just the most significant of this set of adjustments, which is ordinance 126371 in the middle of the screen, which was the council's authorization of the coronavirus local fiscal recovery funds that were received as part of the first tranche of the Federal American Rescue Plan Act monies.

So that appropriates significant amounts for a variety of COVID community relief programs.

So with those adjustments and those adjustments approved through May, it brings the total revised budget to $8.67 billion for this year.

So that was a very quick quick treatment of a lot of work.

I'll pause right now to see if there are any questions from the committee about the background.

Okay.

Thank you, Ali.

Thank you, Tom.

I'm not seeing any hands.

Great.

Okay.

So next, I'll actually take these bills out of sequence.

So the first one I will talk about is Council Bill 120112. which is the mid-year supplemental appropriation bill.

And for the record, the item number eight.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So the first comprehensive supplemental was actually the carry forward.

So when I say comprehensive, again, refreshing back to the May discussion, these are the significant proposals that come from the executive that come by way of a citywide ask of all departments for adjustments that they may require to their budget during the year.

to address events that were unforeseen or unforeseeable at the time when the original budget was adopted.

So Council Bill 120112, so I'm just going to call it the mid-year supplemental from here on out, would increase the revised budget by $15 million total and would add 68 positions, many of which are temporary in nature, funded with ARPA dollars.

There are, as you'll see in this page, there were a few changes that were received from the executive or otherwise after the bill was transmitted that were corrected from the transmitted version and built into the received bill.

One is an update to an item, which I will actually cover later, which involves the Seattle Fire Department's use of FEMA requested monies for vaccine and testing.

There was a change to the community safety center position authority, largely a technical correction, because there were positions that were housed in a budget line that no longer exists.

And then finally, a change that corrected the appropriations in parks to match a grant that's included in the grant acceptance bill.

So those were just mostly technical in nature.

I just wanted to highlight those since they were added post-transmittal.

So now I'll just kind of begin by saying at the end of the memo, there is an attachment.

It's actually page 10 of the memo that shows a lot of detail describing the revised budget by department, the approved changes so far, and then this particular bill, the mid-year appropriation request, and what those percentage changes in dollar values are aggregated by department.

It's a bill with a lot of items.

So just kind of the strategy that I'm employing in the memo and for this presentation is just to highlight those areas that are significant changes to a department budget or otherwise large dollar values, though I'm happy to answer any questions on any detail.

Perhaps we can, if you could Ali, scroll to the last page of the memo just to give committee members a sense of how that looks.

So this is the kind of the suite of all the changes.

And you can see some of the larger values, the final column on the right, the percentage changes that are large.

For example, in the middle of office of labor standards, 23% change.

So I try to hit the highlights by virtue of size, though there's a lot of detail in the summary attachment to the fiscal note that was introduced with the bill that includes changes on some of the smaller dollar values that may also be of interest, but strategizing for time.

So if we could go back to page two, Allie, thank you.

maybe three.

Okay, great.

So, again, the bill would increase the Office of Labor Standards budget by 23% from the general fund.

And this is actually to implement the driver's--.

Chair Mosqueda, could I ask a question before Dom goes on?

Yeah, that's fine.

Council Member Salant?

Tom, you were talking about you just showed the screen of the final page of the memo, which is, as you showed, it's an extremely helpful table.

showing how the budgets for all the different city departments have changed mid-year this year.

And column B is labeled automatic carry forward.

And I see $20,770,000 for the Seattle Police Department.

In other words, if I understand correctly, there was that much leftover in the SPD budget at the end of the year last year.

that 20 million was automatically added to the SPD budget this year.

Could you please explain what exactly is happening there?

I don't think we saw that $20 million authorized in any of the carry forward ordinance.

Did I completely miss something or did something else happen?

Yeah, thank you for the question Council Member Sawant.

So I can investigate the specific details.

Automatic carry forwards are going to be to provide funding for for authorization to provide funding in 2021 in this case for either, so basically one of two things, either council authorization that was provided for 2020 that has not fully been spent by the department.

A good example of that, I'm not sure if that is precisely the case in this situation, but it normally will represent grants that were requested and not fully spent in the prior year and sometimes can be from from farther back prior year grant acceptances.

And another item that can be built into Automate Carry Forward is just simply carrying department budgets for encumbrances.

So this is just going kind of deep into the accounting weeds, but it's monies to pay vendors or other contracted expenses for which we weren't able to pay for those expenses in the prior year.

Citywide accounting will then automatically carry those monies into the budget to ensure that our checkbook balance is high enough to pay those expenses.

So it's largely a technical thing.

That being said, I can research further and find out the details behind that dollar amount.

I just don't know precisely the elements of that because that was covered in May.

So I'm not prepared for that.

Thank you.

Good question.

Just sorry, just a quick follow up.

Thank you, Tom.

And I would really appreciate if you.

I got those details for my office.

I just wanted to say it was surprising to see an automatic carry forward of $20 million, given that in December of last year, the council was told that the SPD had overspent their budget and urgently needed an additional $5.4 million, which unfortunately every council member but my office voted to grant them.

I'm also concerned that there were several provisos on some parts of the police budget and council members, we will all recall, spoke at length about how those provisos meant that they were following through on community demands to shift resources away from violent policing.

But does this carry forward mean that those previously restricted funds were just automatically rolled into this year's budget with all the restrictions lifted or I mean, I understand that there are some funds that come from grants, as you mentioned, that can only be used for certain purposes, but I've also seen in all the years that I've been on the city council, that it's very easy to switch funds around to account for those restrictions.

And that happens virtually every budget when it serves the purposes of the political establishment.

So it would be really useful if you could give us a technical clarification around that.

Thank you.

So I believe we're on bullet two, referring to a $9 million increase, which is 13% of this Seattle Center budget.

It's from a combination of items, but the largest is $8 million, which is for a 2021 limited tax general obligation bond fund increase.

And so this is to pay for signage and reader board package at the Seattle Center campus.

There was legislation.

approved earlier this year that approved those bonds to be issued in Ordinance 126288. So this is just sizing up the budget to administer those funds.

Next, again, this is in terms of percentage increase, a 12% increase to the Office of Arts and Culture budget, $2.5 million across a number of items, the largest of which is $1.6 million to pay for public arts projects at the Seattle Waterfront.

So this is the next one down, finance general.

So this is the kind of the city's holding place for a variety of different programs and projects.

This is actually a $48.6 million decrease, which is 12% of the finance general budget.

And it's a result of well, essentially three adjustments, that's called two, but one of them is kind of a combined adjustment.

You will recall from last fall's budget discussion that council approved council budget action FG06B2, which was the council's redeposit of general fund money back into the emergency fund.

The mayor's proposed budget had used significant monies from the emergency fund to balance.

However, in the November forecast update, the city budget office identified general fund resources would be available.

Council Budget Action FG6B2 sent those monies back to the emergency fund.

All this does is essentially rather than send the money from the emergency fund to the general fund and then send it back, it just retains $33.7 million in the emergency fund.

So it accomplishes council's original intent with fewer accounting transactions.

So it's a fairly large negative reduction, but it's strictly technical in nature.

Similarly, there's a $17.5 million technical increase across a couple of bond funds in finance general.

And this just is done to formally cash transfer money from the bond funds to the information technology fund.

As indicated by the executive, this is a change that's mandated by accounting that in the past, bond monies were deposited into are appropriated from the Information Technology Fund, and now they're making more explicit the appropriation, the bond funds, and then transferring it back to the Technology Fund.

Again, both significant changes, but largely technical in nature.

So some other notable items, not necessarily in terms of percentage, but in terms of amount, is that a $16 million increase to the Seattle Parks and Recreation budget for a number of capital projects.

A large one is about $1.5 million, which will be funded from grant revenues that will be discussed in the next section of the presentation about the grant acceptance bill.

There is an $18 million increase to the Department of Finance and Administrative Services.

So this is a net result of a couple of different changes, the largest of which is a $24.5 million increase for FAS's support of staffing, contracted supplies, and operation of the city's vaccination sites.

The executive does intend to apply for FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency reimbursements for these costs as they incur them.

Also going in kind of the other direction is a $6 million reduction from the 2021 West Seattle Bridge LTTO bond fund.

There was an original plan in the budget to issue $6 million of bonds to lend to the Pike Place Market and Public Development Authority.

That is not going to occur this fiscal year.

FAS plans to re-propose it for the 2022 proposed budget, but in the meantime, they're reducing the budget authority and truing up the budget for the fact that they're not going to issue the loan this year.

Next, we have large dollar changes.

It's a $15 million decrease to the Seattle City Light budget.

More than this is explained by the abandonment of capital projects.

So there was a whole suite of capital projects that were not able to be delayed or that are either delayed or reduced due to COVID-19.

There is also an offsetting increase which is for higher than expected conservation projects in the utility.

The SDOT budget would increase by $9.7 million across a number of different items.

The notable changes is that it's a, I believe, $14.7.

I'd say it's a typo as I'm doing my presentation, but I believe it's a $14.7 million increase.

for Madison Street Bus Rapid Transit, which is $12 million in the transportation fund.

I'm using reimbursements from Seattle City Light, Seattle Public Utilities, and Casita Grande, and $2 million increase from the Move Seattle Levy.

So these are consistent with SDOT's reporting to council during consideration of ordinances 126333 and ordinance 126334. Also, a significant part of the grant bill that was that I'll discuss in a little bit is actually appropriation of grants to the transportation fund.

And I'll talk about those in the next section.

But that's a fairly significant portion of the change.

Neighborhood large and business zero projects are increasing by $2 million to implement changes recommended by the levy oversight committee.

These basically increase support for safety projects and in-demand neighborhood projects.

And then finally, kind of going the other direction, similar to City Light, there is a $25 million reduction that's abandonment of budget authority that is no longer needed in capital projects.

And then finally, by way of changes, in the Seattle Fire Department, there's a $10.1 million total increase in the general fund.

So $7.9 million is for one item, which is the item I mentioned earlier in terms of technical corrections.

It was originally requested at $11 million.

But in the bill as introduced, it's now $7.9 million for COVID-19 emergency response costs, testing, and vaccines.

The executive does determine that these costs will be potentially reimbursable by FEMA Other items would include $1.5 million from the Federal Homeland Security Biowatch Program grants.

So these are for early detection of bioterrorism events.

These grants are accepted in the Council Bill 120111, the grant acceptance bill that I'll discuss next.

So those are the highlights, the large dollar items.

There's a whole assortment of other smaller items that are discussed and described in the attachment A to the summary fiscal note.

The bill, when considered by council, would require three quarters of the council approval to pass.

And I'll just pause now to see if there are any questions about the mid-year supplemental bill.

I do want to note also just in terms of process where we are at in the review here.

So we have moved on to item number eight.

We're going to go back very quickly to item number seven, which is also in the memo.

And I want to note as well that there's a handful of amendments that council members are beginning to flag just for our I would like to have those due to central staff a week from now.

And again, for any council members that are not members of the Finance and Housing Committee, I am happy to bring forward that amendment on your behalf, recognizing it is ideal to have these discussions as much as possible in the committee setting, and so happy to do that for you.

But again, If you don't have an amendment today and you're still considering some amendments to this mid-year supplemental, are due a week from now, and please do work with central staff as you craft those.

We'll have a chance to go back and walk through those amendments, but I want to make sure that we get a chance to also do the high-level overview of the item number seven that's on today's agenda.

So there's a few of those amendments that are included in the memo, and if we could just hold on that for a second, and then just get kind of oriented to how those two bills have been introduced, that would be great.

I'm just a little confused about how that's described.

the West Seattle LTGO bridge bond fund.

Can you help me understand that?

I don't understand it as it is drafted.

Yes.

Thank you, Council Member, Vice Chair Herbold.

That is a confusing one.

And this is because the executive as part of the West Seattle Bridge LTGO bond issuance made a change to restructure or rename what they were calling the fund that they established.

So it not only captured the West Seattle Bridge, but it also captured other items that were included in that bond issuance of which this is one of them.

So it's kind of a...

a mismatch between the title and the intended purpose that this gets caught up in.

I apologize.

You do not remember the specific bill in which that took place.

But it was, I believe, last month.

And I can follow up with specifics on that.

But it is simply just a bit of a nuance that caught this up in some other larger change I think it's important for us to make sure that we have the funding that the finance administrative services team was necessary for that other larger bond issuance.

I appreciate that, Tom.

I do recollect that legislation, but just, again, want to confirm this legislation would have no impact on the issuance of bonds associated with the West Seattle Bridge.

I am glad you got that clarification on the record.

Thank you very much, Mr. So we're at the top of the revised memo that Ellie noted will be posted to the agenda materials as well.

Again, all of the materials that were posted yesterday still accurate.

Just one change to one of the amendments, which we'll discuss in a moment here in terms of the summary and explanation of that.

We are at the top of page 5 of the central staff memo and we are going back to item number 7 which was read into the record as well.

Council bill 120111 and this is the acceptance of grants.

And then we will go ahead and walk through the various questions that folks have on these two bills and possible amendment ideas that councilmembers have already flagged.

I'm going to go ahead and review item number one, which is a rescue plan bill number two.

Allie has confirmed that that is a relatively short presentation, but we also are fine to discuss it in whole at the next meeting, which is August 3rd.

So we wanted to make sure you had all of the materials for today.

But if we don't get to the last item on our agenda, that is also okay.

So this is time to review those materials in advance of the third.

OK, thank you, Madam Chair.

So Council Bill 120111, item 7, is the mid-year grant acceptance legislation.

So this bill would accept $23.3 million from a variety of external sources.

The bulk of this is then appropriated in the mid-year supplemental appropriation bill previously discussed.

And in fact, many of the large amounts that you'll see on this table are in the areas that I did highlight in the supplemental discussion.

Council Central staff did not flag any areas of concern for these items.

I would note that the bulk of this is for transportation projects.

And about nearly half or approximately half is from Federal Highway Administration grants that fund capital projects and SDOT.

Also, Seattle Fire Department has $1.8 million worth of grants from a variety of sources, the largest of which is the BioWatch grant that I noted previously.

And then finally, Seattle Parks and Recreation has $3.6 million of grants from a number of sources, the largest of which is $1.9, nearly $2 million from Department of Commerce.

And this would fund the Magnuson Park Capital Project that I noted in the technical corrections area, part of the presentation at the beginning.

So again, similarly, each one of these is detailed in the summary attachment to the fiscal note.

I'm happy to follow up or provide response if there's questions about any of the individual items or amounts shown here.

Great.

Well, if there are questions, I can walk through the potential amendments that suits the chair.

That sounds good.

I'm not seeing any hands and colleagues.

I do want to thank you for flagging some early amendment ideas so we could initiate the discussion today as we consider the mid year supplemental and also appreciate that we have moved into a mid year supplemental discussion.

I think this is a good governance strategy and a transparent budgeting process that allows for us to have greater assurances for how those dollars are spent so we can look back at them and ask some of these critical questions that have already been asked today.

I will turn back over to you, Allie.

So I will briefly describe the proposed amendments and we'll continue to work with the amendment sponsors to finalize amendment language for consideration at the August 3rd meeting.

And as Chair Mosqueda highlighted, if there are additional amendments council members would like to see for consideration on August 3rd, please let us know by noon on July 27th.

So the first amendment is sponsored by Chair Mosqueda, and this would add $50,000 and one position to the fire department for a mental health nurse.

This would be in addition to a similar position that was added by council action in the 2021 adopted budget that is supporting the healthcare trust in the fire department, but it's been through conversations with the fire department, additional resources are needed.

So this would provide funding to fill a second position this year, create the position and the expectation that there would be ongoing funding in next year's budget to continue to support this position.

Chair Muscato, would you like me to pause between amendments to allow the sponsor to speak to it?

Yes, please.

That would be welcome.

If there's any additional context, feel free to.

I do not have any additional context.

on this one, just to let folks know that this is pretty straightforward.

We have all seen a tremendous need for there to be mental health counseling, especially for folks who have been responding to the COVID crisis and compounding crises in terms of lack of access to affordable housing, mental health services, and chemical dependency needs, along with the crises of global warming and increased fire We heard a lot about this in last year's budget.

and make sure that we reduce any barriers between conversations with the chief and with the IAFF 27 members.

I think there's recognition that greater access to a mental health counselor would be sought by members of frontline firefighters if it was housed within the trust.

So there is agreement to move those remaining dollars over to the trust so that the fire Fighters have access to mental health and you know routine physical health services all in the same place.

That's a great way to connect the mind body and Make sure that people are all healthy.

In addition to that, though, because the money hasn't been spent as fast as we thought it would be.

We would like to make sure that there's also a fire.

And so this would allow for basically two positions to be available both for members of IAFF 27 and also for non-union members of the fire department so that everybody truly has access to providing care.

to mental health care and this idea for mental health services really sprung up for my visits with the HealthONE team who talked about the tremendous trauma that their members see and we are happy to make this accommodation here and then we'll continue to work with them to address the ongoing needs.

I said I didn't have any comment except for all of that so thank you for bearing with me colleagues.

Thank you.

Um, Amendment to proposed by chair, our co chair, vice chair, Council member Herbold would add $300,000 to the Community Safety and Communication Center for a protocol system for the 911 dispatchers.

This would provide a more consistent process for obtaining key information from the call centers as well as supporting better data analysis and would help inform decisions about alternatives to police response.

Please go ahead, Vice Chair.

Thank you so much.

I'm really excited about this admission.

So originally we were thinking about making enhancements to the dispatch protocols in 2022, and we were thinking that we would be considering funding to do so in our budget deliberations for 2022. But now that the council has fully authorized the transfer, of the 911 call center to the community safety and communication center, there's no need to wait until January 2022 to begin upgrading the dispatch proposals.

And interim director Lombard indicates that the protocol system should be added before the community safety and communication center starts dispatching alternative police responses.

So this is so important to our efforts to begin to match more 911 calls with non-police responses.

This is considered a best practice, the use of these protocols to identify predictable patterns for specific types of calls, which really help public safety agencies like CSCC determine where and when to allocate appropriate and sometimes limited resources of non-police response.

So ultimately, this kind of system would help the community safety and communication center continually evaluate the kinds of calls that do not need an armed response.

The 9-1-1 center doesn't currently use this kind of a protocol system that this funding would support.

And currently the dispatchers obtain information through something more like a guided discussion.

This does not allow for atom mining analysis.

And so Director Lombard recommends that we implement a protocol system as soon as possible.

We're also looking at ways to reduce the time and resources required for training staff when alternative call responses are available.

In addition, the protocol can be easily adapted and modified to reflect better the alternatives to police response.

that we were originally considering for this next important step by several months and moving forward on it now.

Thank you.

Thank you very much Councilmember Herbold for your work on that and the explanation.

Okay, let's move on to number three.

I'm not seeing additional

It's proposed by Council President Gonzalez.

This would add position authority for the director and create a new budget level summary to implement the new Office of Economic and Revenue Forecasts.

Just yesterday, the council passed Council Bill 120124 that created this new office.

This amendment would take the initial budget actions to begin to implement that office by creating the structure in order to hire the director.

And we anticipate that additional budget actions will be necessary in the year-end supplemental, as well as the 2022 proposed budget to transfer funds that the council has already reserved in the 2021 adopted budget to support this new office.

And I'll turn it to Council President Gonzalez.

Not not much more to add.

I think we talked about this briefly on Monday and certainly in committee.

So this this just follows through on the need to implement the intent behind the legislation we just passed on Monday.

Excellent, thank you.

Thank you again for your leadership on this.

Thank you.

So Amendment four, also sponsored by Council President Gonzalez, would add funds or would impose a proviso on existing funds in Seattle IT to provide resources to update the city's public disclosure technology and practices.

So this is really meant to broadly enhance and prepare the city to be able to respond to those requests and ensure that there are systems in place to maintain records.

Additional context on that council president.

Yes, this isn't in direct response to much of the public reporting that we have been seen related to the, the technology issues that have been surfaced that have led to.

The loss of the certain public records, so this is an effort to again, create a down payment opportunity to identify additional resources to fund the need that has been flagged by Seattle and our public disclosure offices to address those software gaps.

and to ensure that we are retaining public records as opposed to potentially losing some of those public records to technology failures that are out of control of the user of any sort of these devices.

So you'll notice there's not a dollar amount quite yet identified.

And I think that's because we're working to continue to evaluate and analyze exactly what the cost is.

But in the spirit of putting out a placeholder, we've identified this as a need.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

Okay, so the next amendment five also proposed by Council President Gonzalez would add about $97,000 to the legislative department for the staff in the Office of City Auditor.

Like all departments across the city in 2021, the Ledge Department took a reduction in their base their base budget to address the overall city revenue shortfalls, and the Office of City Auditor was among the divisions that took a budget reduction.

It was assumed that that reduction could be absorbed in that office, but because the bulk of the resources for the Office of City Auditor is for staff and due to some set costs due to staff separations and other things, they're not able to absorb those costs and actually pay all of their employees through the end of the year.

So this proposal would add funds to ensure that there are adequate resources to support staff in the Office of City Auditor and technology needs in that department this year.

And I'll also note that this will be an ongoing need in 2022 to continue to have a budget to support that office.

Great.

Any additional context on this item?

Thanks Ali for highlighting that this has been identified as a very high need for the office of the city auditor and, you know, I think he's been able to be very nimble with some.

impending retirements and other staffing changes to not compromise the core functions of the city auditor's office.

But with the volume of requests that the city auditor receives for independent audits, both from the city council and through our budget process, I think it's absolutely critical that we restore some of this funding in order to not compromise the core competencies and functions of the city auditor office.

And with that, I just wanted to congratulate Auditor Jones and team who is going to be experiencing some of those retirements that the Council President just noted and thank the entire auditor team for all of their work and good luck as they head into retirement.

Thank you.

So the next amendment, amendment six is proposed by council member Lewis and council member Peterson.

This would add $25,000 and one temporary or term limited position to the legislative department for a position that would report to the chair of the select committee on homelessness to monitor homelessness investments.

I'll turn it over to council member Lewis on the line, sorry.

My screen wasn't big enough.

Apologies.

Thank you, Allie.

And I appreciate an opportunity to discuss this amendment.

Council Member Peterson and I came up with this concept when we were having a conversation the other day about tiny house villages in our respective districts that have been delayed considerably beyond the initial already, I think, quite generous timelines for when they were supposed to be opened.

This in addition to lots of timeline issues surrounding the council's investments in Just Care, the council's investments in hoteling resources, all of the fundamental emergency shelter resources this council has funded, and the delay of which has left our homelessness crisis without the essential resources to respond quickly and compassionately to the need that we see on the streets every day.

that are currently delaying these projects to a considerable amount of time.

We think due to the absence, partly, of some kind of dedicated oversight resource to really run these in.

I think that this position is important just because of the capacity strain that this particular subject is putting on my office and a couple of additional offices.

who are desperately pursuing these additive shelter resources for their districts.

I think it is appropriately term limited instead of permanent, given that I think we're going to have a massive, massive influx of shelter over the next two years, which will then taper off, hopefully, because there will be an expansion of permanent supportive housing investment.

and other investments that will make adding the shelter less essential and it'll pivot more to sustaining and managing the expanded shelter system.

But as we build toward that, it's going to be important to have that additional capacity and to really put a pin on how important this plan is to the council to expand the emergency shelter, given that 80% of what this council is really struggling with, it seems, is the homelessness crisis and how the homelessness crisis is manifesting in the city.

So this is a position to help manage specifically those investments that are the heart and the crux of the homelessness emergency response.

And that to date, very little of that additive resource has been stood up relative to what the council has appropriated funding for.

So I think that that's a good summary of additional context.

And I'm happy to discuss this more as we deliberate on the amendments.

Thank you very much, Council Member Lewis.

We do have Thank you.

I have two more amendments to go on.

a lack of information or clarity about how those dollars are being spent and then having months delay in terms of the dollars being spent on this critical issue.

I think a number of us have experienced that in a handful of other areas, whether it's deployment of housing, building affordable housing dollars, or getting the implementation plan as required in our jumpstart proposal.

So I think one of the questions that I have is more around sort of whether or not we have an existing model like this that we've used in the past.

and whether there's a staffing model that we can harken back to that sort of has a quasi-legislative-like role within an executive body here from our central staff team.

I think that's a better question for Allie, since my institutional knowledge on this only goes back a year and a half.

So I think I would turn it over to Allie.

I am not aware of a similar position being included in the legislative department.

I will go back and confirm that with my colleagues, but to my knowledge this would be somewhat of a unique position.

You know, central staff spends a fair amount of time monitoring and tracking the various policy decisions and budget actions that the council makes to provide updates and provide that help support the committee's role in the oversight function.

I think the expectations for this is a little bit different and outside of the scope of what central staff would typically do and is somewhat of a proposal to try something to try something different, but I'm not aware of a similar model being used at the council.

But again, we'll follow up to confirm I haven't overlooked something.

Okay, thank you.

And I also want to underscore my agreement about the frustration that you and others have experienced and also want to thank central staff for their deliberative efforts to try to get information there.

And then when We have eked out information that has been concerning quick action by central staff and council members to try to find corrective actions as was done with the $12 million bill.

I appreciate that and I hear the frustration.

Council Member Lewis.

Yeah, Council Member Skater, the only thing that I might add, and Ali, I appreciate your comments just now on this.

The only thing that I would add is, you know, I see this as more of an investment in the oversight rather than analysis function of the council, which I think is one of the things that we're missing in this particular space right now.

I think it's best to sort of explain it just in the context of some of the hurdles that These investments are facing, and I do believe that people are making good faith efforts to try to get these investments stood up.

But I think that what has been occurring in a lot of cases, I mean, I know what has been occurring in a lot of cases.

is a lot of these processes will get bogged down.

And I guess just to use an analogy, it's sort of a position to determine at all times for all of these different shelter projects where the football currently is.

Like if it's in the Port of Seattle for a SEPA analysis, if it's with Sound Transit for a lease negotiation.

I think things are getting stuck in inboxes.

with various agencies or they're getting bogged down in some kind of bureaucratic morass where they're not getting always the priority that they should be receiving given how important these investments are and given that we're in a state of emergency on homelessness.

So I think it is a little bit of a unique role.

I think it is an important gap because I think that having this oversight role missing has just allowed I think it's important for us to have.

Several additional months of time to pass on the implementation of these things, because we're, we don't.

Have the resource to perform the oversight function sufficient to move this through these processes.

So I just want to provide that additional context to what Allie said and agree that it is a fairly unique position, but it's also something that I think is needed to move this along.

Along the lines of this is a unique position, I just want to make sure that we are not creating insurmountable expectations.

I think central staff does have the ability and has functioned to let us know when we've I'm going to talk a little bit about where spending implementation is by working with the executive departments to get that information.

the spending investments that were implemented and not yet implemented in this area, in homelessness investments.

And, you know, within a couple days, that information was turned around.

I think, similarly, when you want to drill down on a So both sort of on the big picture, getting the oversight associated with how many dollars the council has allocated versus how many has actually been spent, central staff has been able to fulfill that function.

If you want to look at individual projects and you want central staff to drill down on individual projects, they'll serve that function as well.

I'm concerned that we're creating potentially the expectations of oversight.

that is really bounded by the executive department in that the executive department is the implementer.

I'm interested in finding out more about the vision for this position, but again, I'm just concerned that we might be expecting something that might be very, very difficult to deliver given the current situation that we see ourselves in.

Thank you.

And I appreciate those questions.

And I also do want to end the discussion on this by saying, and those frustrations are real, have been experienced by central staff and members of council across the board, I believe.

And so the need for a different response is absolutely accurate.

And I think trying to get at what the solution is, is where we will continue the discussion on the possible amendments here.

But thank you, Council Member Lewis and Council Member Peterson for your work on that.

Council President, please go ahead.

Yeah, I just wanted to, since this sort of impacts how we're structuring council central staff, I wanted to just.

Make a few comments as the, as the council president and and really, I think, I think, you know.

I had an opportunity to talk to Councilmember Lewis about his sort of brainstorming session with Councilmember Peterson on this particular amendment.

And I think what is important to me is to walk away with sort of the understanding that We continue to on the council level have a lot of demands on sort of how we're allocating and and making resource decisions in terms of our most valuable asset, which is the time of our council central staff.

Members and so and so thinking about how do we supplement, you know, the capacity of folks like Jeff Sims and Tracy Radcliffe and others who already do support the council on making sure that we have a good understanding of how.

our investments, our appropriations are being implemented, I think is really sort of at the crux of this particular proposed amendment.

And so there might be an opportunity for us to have a conversation about whether this is the right structure or whether we want to pursue something like we did in the capital projects context where we created a model around creating an interdepartmental interbranch you know, monitoring team that sort of really met and convened in the spirit of accessing timely information to make sure that we are all on the same page about how our investments are being deployed on some of these, you know, critical areas of investment for the city.

In that case, it was around, you know, again, capital projects.

And in this instance, I think the need is around sort of how our investments in the area of homelessness being deployed.

And so I think, you know, I hope that we can continue to have a conversation about sort of the need and continue to refine the concept around how do we best achieve the goal of getting timely information and of making sure that Council Central staff is resourced appropriately to be able to staff this critical area of high priority for the Council and for our constituents.

Thank you for those summary comments, well said.

Council Member Lewis, thank you again for walking us through this.

Let's go on to number seven.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

The next amendment, amendment seven, is authored by Council Member Sawant.

This would add $500,000 to the Parks Department budget and cut 500,000 to the Seattle Police Department's budget.

So it's a self-balanced proposal.

The proposed $500,000 is requested to support the Garfield Superblock Organization to support the pre-development work for this project, including to cover the cost of construction, drones, and permitting.

The Garfield Superblock campus is comprised of a number of resources, Garfield Community Center, Medgar Evers Pool, the tennis courts, and adjoining Garfield Park, including Garfield Ball Field, and the Teen Life Center, and a number of other resources.

The proposed project includes site improvements throughout the park and the creation of a pathway that integrates art and amenities that reflect the cultural arts and heritage of the central area.

I'll note that the proposed cut of $500,000 is predicated on the proposed cuts that were previously contemplated in Council Bill 119981 that was not passed by the Council.

I will also note that I have just heard in a discussion of this potential amendment after the memo was published with executive staff that I understand this has been flagged as a priority as well for the 2022 proposed budget and I think the total project needs are closer to $6 million or so.

So just wanted to note that for the record and I'll turn it over to the sponsor or excuse me, the author.

Thank you.

Councilmember Esselwalt, thanks for joining us today.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, and thank you, Ali, for that explanation.

I'll just reiterate a few points that Ali made and then add some community input in favor of this budget amendment.

As Ali explained, this amendment would fund the $500,000 that the Garfield Superblock Park needs to become shovel-ready.

It's a self-balancing budget amendment, as Ali pointed out, freeing up the funding for the Garfield Superblock by cutting the $500,000 from the Seattle Police Department's 2021 budget.

The Garfield Superblock campus comprises the Garfield Community Center, Medgar Evers Pool, the tennis courts, and adjoining Garfield Park, including the historic Garfield ball fields, the Teen Life Center, the Quincy Jones Performing Arts Center, and Garfield High School and track and field.

The central staff memo as we can see describes the project as including site improvements throughout the park and the creation of pathway that integrates art and amenities that reflect the cultural arts and heritage of the central area and the $500,000 would complete the pre-development work for this project.

The Garfield Superblock is a grassroots effort to create a vital civic space that honors and tells the story through art and cultural presentations of the people who have lived there over the millennia, from the Duwamish people to Black Americans today.

The Garfield Superblock, working with staff from the Parks and Recreation Department, aims to enhance the area around the Garfield Community Center, Medgar Burrs Pool, and Garfield High School with art that celebrates the area's history, new trees, and walkways to ensure access for all new, safe, publicly accessible bathroom facilities, And other urgently needed community amenities and it's precisely the kind of public project that should be funded in, especially neighborhoods like the central district but really throughout the city.

And we're quite confident that when this is completed, it will be a community gem in it and that it will very likely be emulated by other communities.

Unfortunately, such many such projects have in working class communities of color have languished for lack of funding over the last 15 years, and that's what's happened to Garfield superblock and even though this idea has been in existence for 15 years.

It's been a struggle for funding, but it's gotten to a really good point.

And it is exactly the kind of community project that also is in line with the demands of the Black Lives Matter protests last year, which is basically shifting money, public resources away from the bloated police department budget into urgent community needs, which actually go directly towards addressing public safety.

Reducing the SPD budget by $500,000 is obviously not defunding by 50% as the vast majority of the council promised to do.

It is actually far, far less than 1% of the budget.

It is not even cutting the $5.4 million from the police budget that was a council promise last December.

And in fact, We know that that amount is related to the fact that the department illegally spent more than they had.

It is in fact, it's a very small amount.

It's less than 10% of the promised $5.4 million.

And it is really a drop in the bucket if you look at the overall police budget, but it would mean everything to make this Garfield Superblock shovel ready.

It enjoys a tremendous community support.

I've seen this.

for myself by having spoken to dozens of community members about this issue.

I wanted to specifically thank Stephanie Ingram, Robert Stevens Jr. and Sharon Kosla and a couple of others for speaking today in favor of the Garfield Superblock.

in the public comment in this committee, and I wanted to thank all the community members, including the activists like Triana Holiday and others from the Africatown Community Land Trust, community members like Karen Estevenin, and many others who have been very eloquent spokespeople for this project.

In the last two weeks with our offices organizing support, they have collected 576 petition signatures in support of funding this project with this supplemental budget amendment.

And many of the petition signers added their perspectives about why they feel the council must fund this superblock.

And I just wanted to read three of those very quickly.

Valentina wrote, quote, this project funding is long overdue the central district community has been voicing their request for an improved park facility for decades.

This project honors those voices and highlights the cultural diversity and resilience of the area.

End quote.

Jenny wrote, maybe that's Jennifer, I'm sorry, wrote, the Garfield superblock and central area are so important for honoring black folks in Seattle and undoing the negative impacts of gentrification on black and indigenous Seattleites.

Funding this project including funds originally allocated to cops is such a powerful gesture.

SPD sent the most cops to the January 6th insurrection.

It is well past time to defund them and abolish the SPD.

As we make our way toward that goal, funding the Garfield Superblock is a powerful gesture in support of Black and Indigenous Seattleites.

Joe wrote, investing in a long standing community organized project is one of the few tangible ways to fund to fight gentrification and protect the central districts culture as a teacher at Cleveland High School I've seen firsthand how the city's growth has disproportionately negatively impacted black and brown residents of the CD and the south end and I think the superblock and alleviate some of that.

So I mean, this is just a glimpse of the many, many community comments we have received and also the community members who have spoken to me and my staff personally about why they care about this project.

We also had a representative from the parks department speak at the recent celebration and picnic that the community members organized, but I also spoke in support of this budget amendment.

So I urge council members to support this to fund this important community resource.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you Council Member Sawant.

Colleagues, are there any questions about the summary here?

I will jump in with one question.

Councilmember and potentially Ali, it sounded like there was a discrepancy with what the executive had noted maybe last night or this morning with the total of $6 million, but I think what I heard Councilmember Sawant, what you noted was you were trying to make sure that the funding gets the pre-development cost paid for so that it is shovel ready.

This seems very similar to what we did with a handful of projects.

I'm trying to think of a few examples, but we did this in last year's budget where we paid for that shovel-ready element of it so that then the final funding could come through and the project was ready to go.

Is that sort of the vision here?

And perhaps I'll direct that to the author of the amendment as well, Ali, and then maybe get some technical feedback from you.

Council Member Sawant, is that sort of the vision here, to pay for the pre-development costs, and then if there is any additional cost for the actual construction, that will obviously come later?

Yes, exactly right.

OK, great.

I think I I think I understand then where that discrepancy is coming from.

And again, I think that is in alignment with what we have done before to get projects ready, shovel ready so that they can be available for additional departmental investments.

And there weren't any barriers.

Ali, do I have that correct?

Do you have anything that you'd like to correct on my end?

Yeah, I just thank you, Chairman Skater.

I just like to flag that it wasn't actually a discrepancy between what this amendment is and what I sort of generally refer to as what I think the total cost is.

I was noting that the project in general has been identified as a priority.

The executive wasn't flagging an issue with this amount or being inconsistent.

I think that whether or not this amendment moves forward, I think that right now the mayor is considering whether or not to prioritize that in the proposed budget, but I know it has been identified by executive staff as a priority.

And so if this money moves forward now, I think we would expect to see additional funds to continue implementation of the project, as you said.

in the 2022 proposed budget, or the council may contemplate changes to the proposed budget if that's not included.

Great.

Okay, thanks.

Additional questions, colleagues?

I'm not seeing any.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant, for being present and authoring that, and Allie and team for making it possible to have these hybrid sort of discussions among various council members.

And the last one is also from a member of the City Council who's not a usual member of the Housing and Finance Committee.

And I don't believe Council Member Peterson is here today, but I'm happy to have this item discussed today as we consider possible amendments as a preview.

I'll turn back over to you, Allie.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Uh, so, uh, amendment potential amendment number eight authored by council member Peterson would add to civilian positions in the Seattle Police Department.

One position would be for a crime prevention coordinator to work with the community and personnel of the north precinct to reduce and prevent crime.

Um, SPD currently has six funded CPC positions and one one is assigned to each precinct.

The existing north precinct position is currently vacant and the department is in the process of building that.

So this would be a second position to serve areas north of the ship canal.

The second position, the second civilian position would be a strategic advisor too, to facilitate communication between the department, the community, and our accountability and oversight agencies with the city.

The author's intent is that these positions in 2021 could be funded using the salary savings achieved due to the delay in hiring of the existing position that they're currently in the process of filling and requests that ongoing funding is included in the mayor's 2022 proposed budget.

So this amendment would add authority for these two civilian positions, but would not increase the budget for SPD in 2021.

Thank you very much.

I don't believe Councilmember Peterson is with us.

Just double checking here on my screen.

Colleagues, are there any questions on this amendment that Councilmember Peterson has authored for any members here or central staff?

Yes, Vice Chair Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I'm just trying to understand the thinking behind this.

If you know, Allie, I have been Councilmember Peterson and I have been trying to talk to one another.

But so given that it does not add funding, it only adds position authority, is the idea, and maybe you said this and I just missed it, is the idea that the funding would be provided in the 2022 budget?

Council Member Herbold, yes, that's correct.

So funding for 2021, should those positions be filled, would be using existing salary savings in SPD's budget because they have not filled at least one, you know, the North End civilian position and it was funded for a full year.

So there are some salary savings there for 2021 potentially.

And then the expectation would be ongoing funding would be included in SPD's base budget for these positions in 2022.

So just so let me just say that back for you.

So I know that I understand it.

There is existing funding because the funded North Precinct but I thought that position wasn't funded.

I thought that because that was one of the positions that I was proposing to fund with my budget bill earlier this year.

I know that they are working on hiring that person, but my recollection was that there was a North Precinct Advisory Crime Prevention Coordinator position as well as the A couple of CSO positions that were being held vacant because there wasn't funding for those positions.

And so if there was funding for those positions and they haven't hired and it's mid year, I could understand why there's interest in creating another position to use that remaining funding to hire for a second position because they haven't hired for the year.

But again, it's my recollection that these positions would require funding in 2021 to hire for 2021.

So at this stage in the amendment development, we are in general presenting the council members intent.

We have done some initial work to look at to look for whether or not these resources are actually available, because even if the position was fully funded, salary savings can be used for other purposes within the, as long as they're consistent with the state, you know, the purpose of the budget summary level anyways, whether or not this specific position that is under discussion was fully funded in the 2021 adopted budget, we are still still confirming, but I just want to reiterate that the author's intent is that these new positions would be funded using salary savings from existing other civilian positions and not the other positions.

But we will get more clarity to confirm whether or not these are available and providing the position authority would allow the department to fill those positions if they have resources available.

in the department and then, and so anyways, we'll follow up with more details on the specifics behind whether or not the existing North End position was fully funded.

Thank you very much.

Again, my recollection is that the way that the mayor's office found salary savings in her proposed 2021 SPD budget was by, was by basically doing a hiring freeze and scooping significant resources from civilian positions.

And the reason why I have this recollection is because the budget bill that I proposed earlier this year was to fund those existing positions that did not have funding.

So I'm eager to find out more about this.

I do also want to flag that if we are adding a new geographically based position that doesn't already exist, I think there may be some conversations that need to happen about that because I just think we should be making those decisions about adding geographically based positions based on data associated with understanding the need for a geographically-based position.

I would not be surprised if public safety advocates in other precincts might also argue that there should be additional civilian positions created.

And so just want to understand sort of what the basis is for adding a position in the North Precinct.

Although, as I said, I have already expressed my support for funding the existing North Precinct Advisory Committee.

the crime prevention coordinator position.

And then also just as it relates specifically to the accountability agency liaison position that as proposed would be housed in Seattle Police Department, I have talked with the CPC out their needs to broaden their relationships with folks who are working on policy within SPD.

When I've had conversations about a potential liaison position with any SPD in the past, the concern that they have expressed me was they don't want another gatekeeper.

What they want to do is they want to have better relationships with a number of different folks who work on policy within SPD and that they have a concern that if there's a designated liaison that that might create more barriers.

But I know that Councilmember Peterson has talked with the CPC about this position, so their thinking may have evolved since the last conversation that I myself had with them.

But just want to flag, I'm looking forward to learning more both from Councilmember Peterson about his vision for this position as well as continued conversations with the CPC.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Herbold.

looking for additional hands.

I am not seeing any.

I think that that does get us to the end of the suggested amendments for discussion and deliberative purposes today.

Again, if other council members or if you all who are present here today have other ideas that you'd like to see for amendments, please do send those in a week from today, noon, next Tuesday, the 27th, so that we have plenty of time to work on amendments.

Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I did want to flag here briefly an open session that I do intend to bring forward an amendment to direct some human services department underspend toward the Chief Seattle Club to help them finish the 80 units of permanent supportive housing they are currently constructing down at Pioneer Square.

Just to flag really quickly, sort of related to the issue that I was raising earlier around the delay in the tiny house villages and some other things being stood up, is there is a considerable amount of one-time underspend.

The council assumed in our budgeting that those tiny house villages would be open in January.

It now looks likely those tiny house villages will not be open until significantly later this year.

And in any event, over half the year has gone where those operating funds are not going to be used for tiny house village purposes.

I think it makes sense, given that there are other needs in our housing and human services stakeholder community that could be addressed to try to capture some of that underspend and move it.

to address some of those one-time costs, like some unanticipated costs associated with getting these 80 units of permanent supportive housing built.

I just wanted to flag that for central staff here.

I believe Jacob Thorpe in my office is working with Allie on it, but just in case, I wanted to take this opportunity to flag my interest in capturing that underspend and getting it out to the community to address some important needs.

So, thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

Any additional comments on these two bills, items seven and eight, for today?

Hearing none, I do want to take the temperature real quick.

Colleagues, it's 1245. I'm wondering if you have 15 more minutes or if we need to move the entire item number nine to next week's next committee meetings agenda, which is also fine.

Ali has prepared a memo that is included in our materials dated July 19th.

Do folks have 15 minutes?

If you don't, that is fine.

I want to also respect your time.

I only have 15 minutes.

I have a 1 p.m.

that I will have to leave committee early if we do go over.

Okay, great.

That's the same for me.

So, Allie, what's your preference?

And same for Vice Chair Hubboldt.

Okay.

I see you, Council Member Strauss.

Is 1 p.m.

a hard time for you as well?

Okay, great.

So, Allie, would you like to use the next 10 to 15 minutes to describe the last item?

I can just really quickly, I don't need 10 minutes, just describe, I was just going to highlight what's in the memo.

You all can read that, but I just want to make sure it's clear on the process for the next round.

Okay, great.

Let's go ahead.

Madam Clerk, will you please read item number nine to the record, and Ellie, I'll just have you take it off from there.

Agenda item number nine, Seattle Rescue Plan 2 process update for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

So item number nine relates to the next round of legislation to consider the Seattle Rescue Plan 2 that would accept and authorize spending some targeted aid from the American Rescue Plan Act.

This is following up on Seattle Rescue Plan 1 that was just passed by council in June, and as well as accepting an additional grant that the city has received from the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021. The staff memo provides details on what we expect to see included in this to date.

That includes a targeted aid for emergency rental assistance, support for seniors, as well as some transportation funds.

And there may potentially be another grant related to small businesses and shuttered venues, but we're still trying to understand the details and whether or not we'll have that in time for inclusion in this bill.

And this will be similar to the previous legislation where the bill will accept the grants and authorized spending.

Again, this is targeted aid.

So it is money for specific purposes.

So there are limitations on what it can be used for.

But the bill will include some intent language outlining Council's expectation and how those funds are deployed.

And so I just wanted to flag for the committee if there are specific interests you have in in how the what direction is provided to the executive um please work with central staff prior to the the 27th and we'll coordinate with the budget chair um with chair mesquita to determine um information to be included in the bill for introduction and or work with you to propose um amendments because i think the The intent is to try to discuss and vote on the bill on August 3rd, so the executive can start working to get that money out the door.

And that's all I have, Chairman.

Well, that is very efficient, Allie.

Thank you very much for the memo and the high-level overview.

So to summarize specifically for this next act, again, recognizing the third act will be in the fall budget so that we can accommodate the second tranche of the ARPA funds.

Seattle rescue plan number two is our targeted federal relief for approximately $50 million for transportation, parental assistance, and support for seniors.

I know all of these items are of utmost importance to the council members here today and on full council.

We look forward to having a more in-depth discussion at the August 3rd meeting.

And as Allie noted, if there's anything specific in those categories that you'd like to see really highlighted, please do notify central staff before Tuesday next week.

Vice Chair Hurdle, please go ahead.

Super quick, just wanting to flag that regarding the Older Americans Act.

I understand that the use of these funds has been broadened to include solutions or other strategies aimed at alleviating negative health effects of social isolation.

In the previous Seattle Rescue Plan legislation, I advocated for funds to address the at a pandemic of mental health issues that are a result of the pandemic and social isolation the past year and a half.

Want to know whether or not there's anything in the guidance so far that we've seen that constrains us from using these funds to address mental health impacts among seniors.

Thanks.

And I don't need that answer now, but wanting to question on the record.

Thank you, and thank you for being such a strong champion around those dollars as well.

I see Ali taking some notes, so perhaps more information to come on that question.

Okay.

Any other specific questions to help guide central staff's research over the next week or two before we come back to this item on August 3rd?

Not seeing any.

Colleagues, I want to thank you very much for your generous time today.

It is 10 minutes to one.

We're going to get you out of here and just note that the next meeting that we will have will be August 3rd.

We will finalize our discussion on the equitable communities initiative for briefing discussion on possible vote.

A domestic worker standards work letter in final form just to showcase for the committee and then we will ideally send after that.

We'll have the Interfund Loan Bill, which we noted as we discussed the Jumpstart Seattle Fund discussion.

And we'll have that for your consideration once we have received the final details on that and work that out with CBO as well.

We'll have the Grant Acceptance Ordinance, the Seattle Rescue Plan 2, and a continuation of our discussion from today for a possible vote on the third.

along with the introduction of the MFTE extension bill number two and annual report, which will be new for our committee at that point.

Are there any additional questions or comments for the good of the order?

Thank you to the entire central staff team for getting us through these multiple presentations today, and for all of our offices and our clerk, Cuddy, that with us for working with us in the clerk's office.

Everybody else, today's meeting is adjourned.

We'll see you on the 3rd of August.

Take care.