Select Budget Committee Session II 10/1/21

Thank you all very much for coming back to our Select Budget Committee meeting.

I'm Teresa Mosqueda, Chair of the Select Budget Committee meeting.

Today is October 1st, 2021, and the time is 2.02 p.m.

We are going to go ahead and start with Session Two of our agenda today.

Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll for the Select Budget Committee?

Gonzalez?

Here.

Herbold?

Here.

Thank you.

Council Member Juarez.

Present.

Lewis.

Present.

Peterson.

Here.

Morales.

Sawant.

Present.

Strauss.

Present.

Chair Mosqueda.

Present.

Eight present.

Thank you very much Madam Clerk.

Colleagues I want to thank you for the time you've taken the last two and a half days and we are I'm near the finish line.

What we have in front of us is a presentation from a diversity of departments, Human Services Department, Office of Emergency Management, Office of Housing, and the City Budgets Office as it relates to COVID response.

And then we'll round out the day with a presentation from Human Services Department on items that are not related to homelessness services, as we covered that yesterday.

I want to thank Tanya Kim, Acting Director of the Human Services Department, Kareem Mayer, from the Director of the Office of Emergency Management, Emily Alvarado, Director of the Office of Housing, and Ben Noble, Director of the City Budget Office, along with Julie Dingley from CBO as well.

I want to thank you for having a large panel here today as we seek to understand more about how the 2022 proposed budget that the Mayor transmitted on Monday includes priorities for a more equitable recovery.

Today's presentation is focused on response and recovery, and I am hopeful that we will have a chance to have time for questions at the end as well.

Much like the conversation at the national level, recovery is not just about infrastructure and making sure that buildings and the brick and mortar of our city has the investments that they need, but recovery is truly centered on whether or not humans have investments in our infrastructure that allows us to go to work like childcare.

and support services like transportation that runs on time and making sure that our elders have care and food and that our kiddos have the support they need by having a home to go to to study and learn.

Looking forward to hearing more from you about how our COVID response in 2022 builds on the work that City Council has done with our joint effort with the mayor around the Seattle Rescue Plan Act, the first tranche of funds that we allocated our investments from Jumpstart Seattle, which was in the first two years dedicated to COVID response.

And it's been a long two years, but I think that the news coverage as of late has reflected back on how important that first investment from Jumpstart was in our effort to make sure that we had an early investment in community and small businesses.

into our most vulnerable and especially into our city department to make sure that we weather this storm that is COVID by actively using our Jump Start projected funds as we spent some of our rainy day investments.

And that helped us in the city of Seattle to come out stronger than many other cities.

So I'm proud of the work that we've done together and look forward to hearing how the 2022 budget is proposing to build on those past investments.

With that, I will turn it over to Director Noble Director Noble, we are almost at the end here.

Two more presentations to go, and thank you for being with us over the last three days.

It's totally been my pleasure.

Move to the next slide.

As I promised back on Wednesday, we have an overall presentation for you on federal funding.

And actually, maybe a little bit unlike some of the other presentations, this isn't entirely forward-looking.

Some of what we wanted to do was to provide you an update on the resources that have been allocated to date, or allocated this year.

So in particular, what we called Seattle Rescue Plan 1 and Seattle Rescue Plan 2. Those were the somewhat flexible dollars that were in the first tranche of the coronavirus local fiscal relief, the CLFR dollars, but then also some of the more targeted dollars that went to specific programs.

So we'll go through, update you on that.

We'll also give you an update on FEMA, the work that we've been, in terms of expenditures and the work we've been doing to get repaid by FEMA and the processes there and the timelines that we've been seeing.

And then the more detailed part of the presentation is about the proposal to spend federal money, the remaining part of the Clifford dollars, so essentially $116 million of the tranche two.

That funding is incorporated into the 22 proposed budget.

We wanted to give you a comprehensive look at how it all fit together as a package.

And then we're going to wrap up, giving you a little bit of a lay of the land on what's to come.

I obviously think that I was just checking CNN and New York Times before I logged on to see what the latest is from DC, where some of these issues are being actively debated.

So we don't have certainty there, but I wanted to give you a sense of how we were positioning.

So that's the agenda.

And first up is Seattle Rescue Plan 1. So if we advance to the next slide.

I think I'm turning this over to Curry, but maybe I'm wrong.

Curry, yep, that's right.

FEMA first.

FEMA first.

Good afternoon.

My name is Curry Mayer.

I am the Director of Seattle's Emergency Management, and I'm very happy to be here today.

Thank you for inviting me.

I'm also happy to share with you what has been happening and the reimbursements we've received so far from FEMA.

So overall, we've received $4.8 million in funding approvals from the Public Assistance Office with another $2.1 million in review with our state partners that will then be forwarded on to FEMA.

I'm going to go ahead and share my screen.

I have 13.2 million in preparation for submittal by city departments that comes first through the office of emergency management.

I have additional details about what some of those projects are on the next slide.

all of the PPE that FAS purchased at the beginning, the quarantine and isolation facilities.

And then we have a second funding opportunity or second funding process for an additional $10.5 million pending reimbursement via the King County contract, Public Health King County.

Seattle King County for our vaccination efforts.

So it's important to note that there are those two funding streams for department projects and then vaccines as separate.

We noted here that the eligibility has been extended to December because at first we thought it might end in September.

So that also allows us to apply for additional items to be funded or reimbursed through FEMA.

It's also important to note that this is an unusual event for FEMA and while it is a disaster, it's a public health emergency which they do not have a lot of experience with.

They're used to disasters that have a short period of time or a short period of impact and then a long period of consequence management.

This one's different as we're still in it and we're still making changes as we go along in terms of what it is that we need to do to help people.

It also means that FEMA is taking time on their guidance and the guidance they give us on what's eligible and what's not.

They recently added to the safe reopening costs, also safe operating costs.

And we'll be looking at that for possible eligible items.

But just to underscore that because it's unusual, FEMA is struggling a little bit to catch up with the COVID work alongside of the other disaster work that they do.

So hurricanes and wildfires and all of those things that they have a lot of experience with are still happening.

and also require reimbursement so it can make our reimbursement timelines for this disaster a little more dynamic.

So also the reach for COVID is across the nation.

There's no place in the nation that this disaster hasn't touched.

So you can imagine it's a giant body of work for them to look at across the country, what are the things that are gonna be reimbursed?

We have FEMA federal funding for additional vaccine work, that last bullet, through an extension of our contract with Public Health Seattle King County for the new vaccination work that's going to be happening.

So for the boosters and possibly any of the other things we do, we have spent a lot of time negotiating that contract the first time around and now we're extending it.

All right, so next slide, please.

All right, this gives you a snapshot, a little bit more details on what has been occurring and what we're submitting to FEMA for possible reimbursement.

So some of so you can see over here on this side on the far left hand side are the departments that have submitted projects to the Office of Emergency Management, which we then review and then we send to our state partners and then on to FEMA.

We send them to our state partners because they do a more intensive review prior to it going to FEMA, which is actually a good thing.

It's more likely that our reimbursements will be in good shape and not need additional documentation prior to going to FEMA.

So that saves us a lot of time.

So that's a good thing.

They also expect We expect the reimbursement to be reflected in the 2022 budget.

And this comes from estimates of the potential eligibility to spend those funds.

The projects that are further in review are assumed to have a higher potential for reimbursement and a shorter timeline for receipt.

So if FEMA approves eligibility or the possibility of eligibility up front, then those items should not take as long as as new items that haven't been previously reviewed.

That's what that means.

So some of the so the also the projections for the general fund are heavily weighted toward 2023, where revenue projections for the fund or more evenly spread across the years for 2122 and 23. There's about 40 projects total from departments and there are things like from SDOT, there was traffic management at testing sites, also PPE hygiene stations throughout the city, also at the libraries, and then some funding for personnel for the fire department.

So again, yeah.

Can I ask a quick question just to clarify what I'm looking at on this slide?

I guess I want to make sure, are the columns additive then?

If there was a final column to the right, would you see a total in terms of what has been allocated to each of those departments?

What this is doing is tracking the work we're doing to seek reimbursement.

So we have submitted claims for 21.4.

What we hope over time is that The far right-hand column ends up adding to 21, but to 21.4, so that eventually that our submittals are approved, and we're tracking the timing of the likely repayment to us.

Looks like Julie's maybe got better clarification than I've offered.

All right.

Each of Ben just, that was exactly right, with one slight nuance that each column is actually an independent total.

We have a 21.4 sort of outstanding that's.

Department that's what I'm asking.

Yeah, Julie, then it would be.

It would be, I think it would be helpful to have a final column to the right then with totals.

For the actual total that each of those department get and then a grand total.

on the far right column too.

I mean, it's easy math to do, but that would be helpful to see visually.

Yeah.

The bottom line here is the city has fronted this money, and we are now seeking the reimbursement.

And we're developing a model, and you're essentially seeing a summary of it, of our expectations about when those payments will come.

And that's very telling, very telling.

Thank you.

Okay, so yeah, just the last thing to emphasize is that the duration of this pandemic makes it more complicated in terms of when the funding will be returned to us.

They could change, they could extend the incident date, so that might also change in our favor.

But just know that there's kind of two channels of work, the independent departments and that, sorry, the independent department projects and then the backseat work.

That's all I have for the summary, unless there's other questions.

Great.

Thank you so much, Kari.

From here, we'll head into, if it's all right with you.

I will go ahead and take questions.

Oh, go ahead.

As we go, like we did in the first presentation, since this is sort of a high level with multiple departments, I think it's OK for us to do that.

But I am going to ask folks to be pretty short with your commentary.

And let's just go straight to questions if we can.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thanks.

So on slide two, it listed that the FEMA eligibility currently extends to December 31st, 2021. Wondering what we know about FEMA eligibility being extended into 2022. And then as it relates to the conversation we just had about the detailed breakdown of reimbursable expenses, I really appreciate that this information being provided, but I'm still not quite sure because we build a budget based on some sort of assumptions about reimbursement.

So what is I see what we have, what we're applying for, but what are our assumptions about how much we'll get in each of those categories?

Thanks.

Okay, so I can speak to the incident eligibility is what that date is about.

So FEMA usually looks at a disaster, say the Northridge earthquake, and says the eligibility for projects is this amount of time, and anything that happens outside that eligibility or incident period would not be considered for reimbursement.

For this event, because it keeps rapidly changing, they have waited right until the last minute.

So first of all, it was September, and I think we found out Maybe a couple of days before the beginning of September that they were going to in fact extend the incident date to December 31st.

So that could change again, but it could, but most likely they will wait until the last minute.

And I think it's also important to remember that they're balancing their other work.

you know, the hurricanes and what happens with wildfires and whatnot, where they actually deploy staff to help as well.

So that's a bigger burden for them, whereas they're not right now anyway, deploying staff for COVID.

And then I think the other portion, and then I'm going to hand it over to Julie for the other question, Council Member Herbold, because it's a reimbursement activity rather than we know we're going to get this amount, It's a little more vague in terms of the total amount, unless it's amounts we've already spent, within what they call emergency protective measures is the largest category of FEMA public assistance reimbursement.

What are those actions that you've done to protect the public?

Hopefully that's a little bit helpful, Julie.

Yeah actually if we can go to the next slide.

I think Council Member Herbold the final three bullets under this table might help provide a little bit of clarity for what you're asking.

So so this is again this is our this is our spending as we're estimating at this point that is likely eligible and it as it moves through the process it gets more refined on what we think is actually going to be reimbursed.

So there's as it goes through we expect that 21.4 for example in the left-hand column to become some smaller number by the time it gets even to OEM and then even yet again to the state and FEMA.

So in the budget we are also assuming some revenues coming in from these and we are balanced to those.

Those revenues the third bullet is explaining that are they're heavily weighted toward 2023 because each of these stages has a significant amount of time associated with it and some uncertainty too.

And especially when FEMA changes their mind on things then that adds to that uncertainty as well.

So for example for the general fund we have I think about $1.4 million assumed in balancing for 2022 and then closer to $20 million more like $17.5 million for 2023. So and then we'll sort of see those kind of as they roll in the future and be able to refine those estimates over time.

Ben is there anything you would add to that.

No, just to say that we purposely created a constructive model here.

We know what stage we are at with each of these elements.

And again, with that, we make an estimate of how much of that we expect to receive.

And our forecasts are based on that.

And what we understand has been the timing on FEMA.

So it's a part of the revenue forecast at the bottom line, but it's built this way, very constructively, not as a loose guess.

So of the $21.4 million that we are planning to submit, in some cases have already submitted, How many dollars are proposed to be spent in the 2022 budget?

So of the 21.4 million, those are actually costs already incurred by the city.

So we have already spent those dollars.

In 2022 budget, we have no evidence to suggest to your other question that FEMA is going to extend into 22, and so we don't have those assumed.

Got it.

All right.

Sorry about that.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you for that.

It's a good question, and I think we should move on, but I want to make sure, though, that I did understand, and I'm going to look at you, Julie, sorry.

I did understand, right, that this is These are columns of stand-alone point in time, but 21 is not the total universe of dollars.

It's actually 21 plus 13 plus 2 plus 4.

Yes, and then it continues.

For example, our contract, as Kareem mentioned, vaccines was just extended.

So this total will grow.

So it's a it is out of date as of the time we submitted it to you.

That's okay.

We will look for an updated chart from you that includes that total column.

And I think you have explained it well.

We do have over 30 slides, folks.

So I'm gonna ask you to keep 35 slides.

So I'm gonna ask you to keep moving.

And again, if there's points of clarification, please feel free to raise your hand and jump in.

This was helpful.

If there is comments or broader concerns that you'd like to raise let's hold those to the end.

But if you need a point of clarification please feel free to raise your hand and interrupt.

Great.

Thank you.

And thank you so much Curry.

This was hopefully the meatiest and most complicated part of all of this.

So appreciate your patience as we get through this.

So next we're going to turn to the Seattle Rescue Plan summaries.

And I wanted to provide a little bit of overall context Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda, for the introduction.

That was a really great summary overall.

So overall, the city is receiving nearly $300 million of the $1.9 trillion from the American Rescue Plan Act.

This is just our current estimate.

This includes $232 million in local direct aid, which is called the Coronavirus Local Fiscal Recovery Funds.

You'll hear us refer to that as CLFR throughout the presentation, so just want to decode that alphabet soup up front.

We've also received a number of other targeted aid grants over the course of this year and anticipate yet more in the future.

Because this has been such a big bill and this funding covers so much ground, we really wanted to be able to cut through some of that confusion for the public and nest all of these things under the umbrella of the Seattle Rescue Plan so that If folks are curious how we're spending federal funding they can Google one thing and they don't have to look for emergency rental assistance support for seniors you know independently.

So in the first Seattle Rescue Plan that we passed earlier this year $128 million dollars.

It had Clifford $116 million of Clifford funds that was tranche 1 and 12.2 of home.

In Seattle Rescue Plan 2 was $52 million dollars.

We had rental assistance support for seniors transportation funding and some funding for shuttered venue support.

What you're seeing today, and this conversation largely, is Seattle Rescue Plan 3. It's the second tranche of CLFR, which is another $116 million allocation, which is part of the mayor's proposed 2022 budget.

So what we're going to do next is roll into some implementation updates for Seattle Rescue Plans 1 and 2, and then get into itemized descriptions of what's in Seattle Rescue Plan 3.

Thank you.

Council Member Verbal, I just want to double check your hand is left overhand and not a burning clarification.

Great.

Okay thanks.

Please go ahead.

Great.

Thank you.

So we have already gotten some really wonderful recognition for the work we have done in Seattle Rescue Plan 1 and so I just wanted to take a quick moment to celebrate the progress of where we are at this point.

We've previously shared that we are leaps and bounds in terms of planning ahead of most cities in the country and as a result are getting some significant recognition.

So the quote here on the screen noting that we have We're one of the first out of the gate to bring together comprehensive plans with project level details from the Brookings Institution which is a think tank that's highly respected out of D.C.

They do a lot of really great work.

I just want to take this quick moment to celebrate.

Thank you for indulging.

Moving on to the next slide please.

So a little bit on process since we last talked about Seattle Rescue Plan 1. So with an unprecedented level of funding coming to us, the Treasury has created a very, very extremely thorough and complex set of guidelines for the use of Clifford dollars.

This takes the form of what's called an interim final rule.

And that means that it's a regulation that the Treasury uses to tell everyone how to spend the funds or more importantly, how to not spend those funds.

So to address the complexity of how intense this final rule was, CBO created and managed a review process that spanned over 51 different programs.

So through that we've reviewed eligibility just to make sure that the spending that we had all agreed to in Seattle Rescue Plan 1 was indeed eligible and we could produce sufficient documentation to make sure that we retain those funds long term.

We took a look at racial equity impacts.

We developed a sort of racial equity toolkit light question process that we ran departments through for each of the programs.

We did go program by program on that looking for racially equity equitable outcomes for each program to identify the benefits and burdens that it was creating and whether the program was advancing opportunity and minimizing harm.

Lastly as part of this process we set up performance evaluation.

So we are looking to do a comprehensive evaluation plan that looks at individual program performance as well as how programs can work together to look at individual family business and neighborhoods their unique set of needs.

We're going to also include qualitative and quantitative data as part of these evaluations as well as being able to disaggregate impacts by race which I know has been a priority of the council.

Next slide please.

Part of the requirements Treasury has also implemented is that they are requiring multiple reporting processes for us.

So first we have a quarterly project and expenditure report.

This is a technical accounting report based on spending categories the Treasury provides.

The first of these reports I do have to amend this slide in real time because we just found out today that instead of October 31st this is going to be due on January 31st of 2022 for cities around the country.

a little bit more time which is nice.

We also have an annual recovery plan and performance report that is due.

We have already submitted our first one.

You can get to it on on either CBO's or Council's Seattle Rescue Plan websites and it's also linked here in the presentation agenda so that the public could access that document.

And then lastly want to note that the City Council will be receiving monthly update reports on Seattle Rescue Plan spending starting in October.

So you'll have a lot of visibility moving forward.

Okay, great.

On this next slide.

I want to just take a quick second to note the importance of these evaluations and report backs.

Thanks to Council President, the work that Julie and Ben have done and our office as well.

We baked that in intentionally so that the public really had a transparent way to ensure that there was, I think it's an important element that we actively included in this year's work on COVID relief.

continue to be accountable in terms of how these are used.

And I know that a few of us had an opportunity to meet with Senator Patty Murray and describe to her the approach we're taking around accountability and transparency of the use of these dollars.

And she was really appreciative of that and also requested that if there was an opportunity for us to share with her the outcomes and results that we're seeing, that that would be very helpful to her.

in our ongoing advocacy to continue to allow for direct allocation to cities, as opposed to having to rely on pass-through agencies.

So for what it's worth, I think it would be helpful to have some synergy there, and perhaps coordinating with our Office of Intergovernmental Relations might be the best way to do that.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for that.

We'll absolutely follow up with them so that we can make that connection.

Thank you, Council President.

On the next slide you're going to see some select program highlights from Seattle Rescue Plan 1. We as as the chair noted we don't have enough time today to get through probably what we have but especially not all we have done so far.

So turning it over to Emily Alvarado to get into some program highlights.

Thank you Chair Mosqueda.

Councilmembers.

Thank you Julie.

Emily Alvarado with the Office of Housing.

As part of the Seattle Rescue Plan, one, there was a $28.5 million allocation for affordable housing capital.

And that was a combination of $12.2 million in home funds and then the other more broader funds.

And we immediately used those resources to try to create immediate affordable housing opportunities.

We did that by launching our first ever rapid acquisition NOFA.

Under that NOFA, we made awards for the three initial applications for three brand new under construction buildings, totaling 165 units.

Those units will be open by the end of the year to provide homes for people who are experiencing homelessness.

We have a near finalized award that's to another organization that will secure a short-term use for a shelter facility and long-term affordable housing redevelopment.

And then this NOFA will continue to roll and that means we're accepting applications.

We expect that there are additional applications that we will receive that can bring online housing high quality affordable housing quickly.

And so to make the connection here to the part of the presentation that you'll see later the ability to continue to roll this NOFA and resource it is dependent in part on the next allocation of capital funds that we could use to help continue to support this strategy.

So as a result we do have some immediate housing that has already been brought online.

Great.

Thank you Emily.

On the cash assistance front, AWIRA and HSD have been hard at work getting these dollars out the door.

There are two phases to this work overall.

The first is a recertification of applications that were already submitted.

So these are, there's going to be about 8 million of the 25 allocated to this effort.

They started on August 30th and they've reached approximately 80% of applicants that have been recertified.

Scholarship Junkies is who they have contracted with to do that work and they're making phone calls to reach the remaining 20 percent to get them to that recertification.

Awards on average are about one to three thousand dollars per award depending on household size.

They've also dispersed nearly five million dollars so far.

The phase two of that program is going to be to launch a Seattle Rescue Fund application for assistance which will go live aiming for October 25th.

be about $15 million available.

OIRA and HSD convened several community sessions to receive feedback on different priority areas in contracting with over 40 or with 42 rather community-based organizations to do direct outreach and in-language application assistance.

Here also looking at a similar award size there's some additional funds that are going to be geared toward contracted outreach.

And then just to make all that foot in case anyone's doing mental math.

the additional dollars are going toward program administration.

And on the next slide is Emily to talk about some SRP2 program highlights.

I want to take a quick second to say thank you to the departments for their innovative work on the cash assistance.

I think there was a lot of cities as you noted who've been looking at Seattle for how to do the cash assistance directly to community to avoid any trickle-down economics at play.

We really wanted to make sure folks had cash on hand As you noted here, started with immigrants and refugees in our first efforts, and then we built upon the infrastructure that was created there through the departments to get the cash assistance out through this phase too.

So this is really exciting work.

And then we'd be remiss to not mention the direct assistance as well to childcare providers, which will be appreciation allotments for those providers who apply on behalf of their employees so that we can pass that through to them too.

a huge amount of pride in the work that we've done here as a city team to get these dollars out the door.

And just note, lots of cities continue to call upon us in Seattle to see how that was done.

So something that I think we can all be very proud of.

Council Member Herbold, a question?

Yes, thank you.

I just want to ask about the direct assistance.

We had added cultural workers and artists to the group of priority populations to receive aid, and I'm just wondering how the executive has been working to ensure that, as required, artists and others in the creative sector are recipients.

HSD and OIRA worked a lot with the community organizations to make sure that they were targeting the creative economy.

I don't have specific details.

So if you would like more specifics, we can definitely get to you.

I can offer a quick response.

So part of the planning also included arts and culture.

And when we had those listening sessions, we included our colleagues and their organizations that they contract with.

So just to kind of streamline the process, HSD has taken on those community outreach and application assistance.

And so we're actually working with those creative folks too.

So it'll be HSD and AWIRA working together on those contracts, but we're collaborating with multiple departments.

Thank you so much.

Let's keep going.

So with emergency rental assistance, as you all recall, we received two allocations so far.

The first is ERA1, the second ERA2.

For both of these investments, as you recall, we created three strategies to deploying resources.

The first was through United Way of King County, who was focused on supporting tenants in properties run by small landlords The second was to support publicly subsidized affordable housing in which we know that tenants have some of the lowest incomes of households in the city.

And the third was to be invested through 16 community-based organizations, really looking at those with expertise, serving folks who have higher rates of COVID and higher rates of housing instability.

At this point, and I'm sorry to do what Julie did, which is read numbers that are not on the slide because our numbers continue to go up.

As part of ERA 1, which is $22.7 million, we have now obligated 97% of those funds.

71% are spent, which is $16.1 million.

And we've started rolling on to the next round of ERA funding to ensure continuous supports to community members who are seeking rental assistance.

So for the $28 million in ERA 2, we have now obligated 38%.

of the funds and 13% has been spent out.

So we'll continue to provide updates.

What I can say, I committed to data integrity as part of my presentation yesterday, so I'll get into that for one second.

While we continue to crunch the numbers, we can see that at least half of all households that reported racial data across all programs are BIPOC.

And we see that 39% of households, so roughly 40% of households served by both the community-based organizations and United Way of King County are families with children.

I know those have been particular issue interest areas of folks.

So we'll continue to track that data.

But Emily, let me just break that down a little bit to see if we can do a little plain speak on this.

So especially when we look at ERA to the Recovery Act.

the emergency rental assistance act.

So we did this at the beginning of COVID.

And then again, earlier this spring slash getting into summer and folks just remember that we had funding that was going to the office of housing and United Way of King County.

And then what we did, especially in this last round of rental assistance, was we made sure that community organizations who really have roots in communities that are highest risk of displacement and and thus also at highest risk of economic instability and possibly losing their home if they don't have rental assistance, we included funding equitably for those organizations as well.

So when you're saying that 13% has been spent by United Way and the community organizations, that means that people have applied and they've gotten checks out to those landlords.

directly so that people can have assurances that their rent is being paid.

a way to explain it?

Yeah, let me.

I should define some of these terms.

I apologize.

So if we look at ERA 1, in which we're completing expenditure, obligated means that it's either under contract or it is spent.

So we have the three strategies.

United Way has spent their entire $8 million allocation.

Publicly subsidized affordable housing providers have spent their entire $7 million allocation.

And then the six point something million dollar allocation that went to CBOs is all under contract with the agencies.

They are currently working with tenants in community and then they bill us on an ongoing basis.

So the difference between the 67 percent largely and the 90 3% you see up there is us awaiting invoices from the community organizations that are currently working with community members.

Because United Way and the publicly subsidized affordable housing providers have already spent down their first tranche of money, they are now moving into the second tranche of ERA too and spending that money or are already under contract.

So the public service announcement is If you are a renter or if you are a small landlord and you need assistance with paying that rent or receiving the rent that you're owed, there are dollars available.

And we have that information on the Office of Housing website and we put it out on our newsletters too.

But I want to make sure that small landlords and renters know that that money is available and there still is money to be had.

Great, okay, thank you.

Great.

And I was so excited to talk about the creative economy and our cash assistance that I neglected to introduce myself.

I'm Tanya Kim, Acting Director of the Human Services Department.

And I'll reference the next portion on this same slide for the Older Americans Act.

And so we are budgeting for $2.8 million in the Older Americans Act funds in 2021 for a total of $7.7 million.

We're still waiting from the state for a final plan.

The primary goal of the Older American Act funds is to provide relief to our current funded contractors.

and that is to meet the service demands, as well as maintain or scale existing COVID relief efforts, which includes alleviating negative health effects of social isolation.

And so here at HSD, our Aging and Disability Services has identified priorities for spending in the duration of the grant period, which will include elder abuse case management, transit fare subsidy program, caregiver counseling, nutrition, as well as ADS capacity just to support the overall efforts, and service capacity for our providers as well.

The Aging and Disability Services, which also serves as our area agency on aging, is focusing on the new allowable expenditures aimed at alleviating negative health effects of social isolation due to long-term stay-at-home recommendations.

And so those are really focusing on improve, maintain cognitive health, as well as implementing the interdisciplinary evidence-based program called CAPABLE, designed to enhance older adult ability to age in place.

And I believe next is Ben.

Okay, great.

Let's take a quick question, Councilmember Hurdle.

I'll make it clear for sure.

So we, the council, passed Council Bill 120150, which appropriated some of this funding from the Older Americans Act.

The bill itself included a proviso which required $200,000 to be spent on services to address the mental health impacts of senior isolation.

I don't recall receiving a spending plan per the request to do so, and I understand that HSD has provided some information to Council Central staff just in the last few days via our budget Q&A.

It shows, if I'm reading it correctly, that There were two investments totaling $94,000, and that was less than half of what was required by the proviso.

So unless there's some information I don't have, I'm really disappointed in acting on the council's direction via legislative intent to support seniors through the mental health impacts of senior isolation, which, again, as I understand, is an allowable use of OAA fund.

I am monitoring my colleagues who are typing a response.

We'll need to get back to you on that.

Thank you.

Okay.

And I just want to point out, I reached out many times about the intentions for how we plan to spend those funds.

I'd offered to partner with HSD on engagement activities with some of our providers to find out what the highest priority needs were.

And, you know, again, I understand that the department may not have had time to partner with me in doing those engagements, but I did expect at the very least that the $200,000 for this purpose would be spent for this purpose.

And thank you, Council Member.

And we'll definitely, as Tonya said, we'll get back to you on that.

We've appreciated the comments from your office and definitely have had that top of mind Much of the spending out of this grant is out of the city's control as it's directed by the state.

So we have definitely been holding that in the forefront but we'll we'll get back to you once we have more of a final plan from the state.

Thank you.

And without further questions we're going to move on to talk about Seattle Rescue Plan 3. So the second tranche of the of the CLFR dollars.

If you advance one more slide.

I'm going to give a quick overview here of how we kind of pulled this package together and then turn it over to Julie with some more of the details.

As we moved into the second tranche, I think you'll see, and certainly it was our perspective, that we are striking a slightly different balance between the need for immediate assistance and immediate aid and shifting towards recovery and the opportunity to use a substantial sum of money, of one-time money, to make some long-term investments as well.

And so the package includes some of both, sort of an increasing share of the longer term.

The most obvious element of that was on affordable housing.

So $50 million of the 116 available in the second tranche dedicated to affordable housing.

As I described previously, in a city where affordable housing is in desperately short supply, where that has manifested as a significant homeless crisis, clearly an opportunity to invest to help address immediate needs and to make long-term generational change as well.

Also, economic stimulus, because it'll take workers to help to build the housing.

And in the context of being one-time funding, it doesn't – not creating a by-way by setting up new programs.

So that's certainly a new focus for our federal dollars, but one, again, we think makes sense in the current context.

Also, a focus on sustaining some of the work and some of the effort we have made, helping those who are even more vulnerable, those who are in fact experiencing homelessness.

But as we do that, also recognizing that the current crisis and the federal funding that's offering relief won't be available, the crisis ideally will not last.

indefinitely in the federal funding won't be available.

So beginning to look at how to transition away from the federal funding and to learn some of the lessons and to make some of the changes in the systems permanent, but also reverting to some previous approaches as well.

And then last, again, on the economic side, a focus on inclusion and really targeting those who have been most affected, but also looking to the longer run.

So you'll see an increased emphasis on things like workforce development rather than necessarily cash relief for businesses, although there are some of that as well.

So that was kind of the overall perspective.

Julie will now fill in with some more details and some more about our process.

Great.

Thanks, Ben.

You can go to the next slide, please.

So what you have on your screen now is a summary of the Seattle Rescue Plan 3 package.

So we're looking at investments of nearly $73 million in housing and homelessness.

Nearly $14 million in community well-being.

$18.3 million in recovery.

And $11.6 million in supporting city workers and reopening.

As Councilmember Herbold just noted Council in the discussions around Seattle Rescue Plan 1 had three items where they where you all outlined your intent on on what you would hope to see in this package.

The first was that affordable housing capital reach a goal of $60 million overall which we have achieved in this package.

The second was to spend future funding not necessarily in this space but in any space on trying to keep keep moving streets permanent.

And we have as been noted at the top we have our eye on the federal infrastructure bill which is going to have funding dedicated to that once it passes.

And then the third council intent item was the one that Council Member Herbold already spoke to which is on Older Americans Act.

With that I want to talk a little bit about racial equity and how that's incorporated in our package.

So we really wanted to focus the Seattle Rescue Plan 3 follows the path that we laid down with the council and executive and all of our external engagement processes in developing Seattle Rescue Plan 1 and all the analysis that departments did on their program by program evaluations that they submitted to us as part of CBO's process that we stood up.

And also this equitable communities initiative and relying on all of those equity analysis and community feedback that was gathered through that process as well.

The core tenant of these funds in all of the guidance is helping those most harmed by the pandemic.

So that is at the federal level in every single document that they have produced.

So here in continuing that vein we are targeting aid to groups and geographies most disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 and to groups and those groups unfortunately are disproportionately put by POC because this this pandemic has exacerbated historical inequities.

So these are just some examples of the new investments.

I will I won't go through those here because we're going to go in more detail coming up.

So you've heard about a lot of these programs throughout the course of this week already in the department-specific presentations.

We're also going to cover them here.

We're not going to go into as much detail as you heard about in the department-specific presentations but we will show you them so that you can see the full package.

So the first up is Housing and Homelessness Bucket at $72.8 million.

And Emily is going to pick us off here.

Thank you.

Next slide please.

So $50 million here are allocated to affordable housing capital.

And as I described yesterday, this capital can be imagined as being delivered through our existing processes to help meet a growing need and demand for affordable housing development, acquisition, and preservation.

So we imagine that these funds could be invested either through the annual notice of funds availability that we have.

This year we have $100 million in requests for our published $35 million NOFA, and that serves a range of populations and with a range of priorities, including addressing homelessness and advancing equitable development.

We also could imagine that some of these resources, as I said earlier, goes to supplement our rapid acquisition NOFA to ensure that if there are additional opportunities to secure buildings that are currently under construction, we have the ability to do so.

So this will be a general capital source to us that helps to allow us to fund more projects that we know are waiting for resources in the pipeline or new buildings that we know we can bring on to help address the homelessness crisis.

Okay, so back to the Human Services Department.

Tess Colby gave a brilliant presentation along with many others for the city-wide homelessness presentation the other day, but as a reminder specific to these funds, there is $22.3 million for emergency shelters.

through 2022 to 2024 to be implemented by the King County Regional Homelessness Authority in which HSD will be contracting with.

This includes one year ramp down funding for COVID mitigation in shelters at about 3.7 million.

So the changes that were made during the pandemic include expansion of open hours, increased spacing between shelter beds, increased daily services, enhanced disinfection protocols and additional personal protective equipment.

It also allows shelters to adjust their programs to continue to keep shelter clients safe and prevent the spread of COVID-19, of course, throughout the year.

The second is maintaining Salvation Army SOTO enhanced shelter units.

That's 241 units at 12 million.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, three basic congregate shelter locations, City Hall, King County Administration Building, and 4th and Jackson were combined and converted to a single non-congregate enhanced shelter in SOTO.

This funding is planned to maintain the 241 shelter units in their current format at the new location when the SOTO site closes in September of 2022. And there are 2 million for startup funding approximately.

And that is operations, maintenance, services, et cetera.

And then the last is to maintain the KRO enhanced shelter units, 125 units at 6.6 million.

And that is an estimate that includes approximately three years of operations.

And you can see the description here of the additional prior COVID, $19 here that was in the first allocation of $18.7 million for diversion, capacity building, outreach, shelter, rapid rehousing, RV safe lots, safe storage, tiny home villages.

Great.

Thank you.

Next is recovery.

We have $18.3 million in this category.

Going into the details.

First up is the Small Business Ownership Fund.

This is going to go to proposed to go to the Office of Economic Development for $7.6 million.

This funding would go through 2023. This is targeted at the creation of a Small Business Ownership Fund to finance small businesses so that they can acquire ground floor commercial space.

and provide a public benefit.

This is in contrast to renting that that space.

We have a partnership with the CDFI National Development Council to provide a matching grant to for their funds to loan capital to those small businesses.

OED's planning to prioritize outreach to Black Indigenous and people of color owned businesses located in high displacement areas.

We're basing that on our displacement risk index.

in Seattle's 2035 Growth and Equity Analysis.

And it's worth noting that we do have to as we did in the first package this is not this is one of those programs that's not directly eligible for CLIFR so we do have to do a funding swap to be able to put CLIFR revenue replacement to free up general fund to be able to fund this program.

We did that in the same way with cash assistance program in SRP1 if council members remember that.

We had a separate bill to do that.

And then just noting here the prior COVID funding in this space overall.

Next please.

Next is a workforce development package and this actually represents investments across a number of city departments.

Oh it looks like we left off the duration.

Sorry I will get you that duration.

Little typo on our slide.

So what we're trying to do with this package is create strong pathways to middle wage jobs and more wealth generating businesses and industries that that our data shows us will thrive in the future.

These investments in economic inclusion are going to help us recover from the pandemic and position our local economy for continued equitable growth.

These items are going to be funded also in the same way with revenue replacement here.

The guidance doesn't specifically allow for economic development although we know that is key as as Director Noble mentioned.

That is the that is where we have to head is into sorry economic development not recovery is eligible economic development space.

So those individual workforce development items are Individual Artist Relief and Workforce Development and Arts for $1.5 million.

Priority Hire Program and FAS for $500,000.

Maritime Workforce Development OED for $500,000.

Affordable Housing and Homelessness Service Providers Workforce Development.

This is the program you heard Director Alvarado speak about yesterday for $750,000.

Reemployment Pathways for Immigrant and Refugee Families or Immigrant and Refugees rather for $250,000.

And then Clean Energy Pre-Apprentice Scholarships in OSE for $1 million.

Next item please.

I believe Ben's going to talk to you about this one.

Sorry, I was on mute.

So I already touched on this in a couple of different forums, but so the proposal is to continue the Clean City Initiative funding that we had essentially in the first tranche that we would, and you can see the last point there, is that there was almost $6 million in the of CRF appropriation that carried us through December for this work.

As has been noted, this is sufficient funding, and the full description here of the items, again, I think council members are familiar, so you can read.

But this takes us through August when we're, and obviously there have been a number of questions about whether that will be sufficient or not, and I think that is a fair question.

Again, as we are putting the budget together, We had relative more confidence than we do now about the timeline for the pandemic itself.

That was perhaps hubris.

The other side of this is that we know that uncertainty has been the name of the game here.

So the thought was that this is something that we could reevaluate mid-year, next year, and determine whether or not additional funding would be needed.

I wouldn't be disputing a conclusion that you can already make that judgment.

But that is now in your hands.

So that's really the story here.

Again, we've talked a fair amount about this already.

So I think without, you know, the next slide.

So there are a number of investments that we've grouped in a category called community well-being, and it's probably more useful to see the individual items.

So next slide.

So one of those is child care stabilization.

I actually think this might be one that we could think about under the economic recovery side as well.

Because as I said the other day, we're not really going to get folks, particularly parents, back to work unless the child care system is up and running.

And it continues to face challenges.

Again, I know some of these firsthand challenges about not being able to share teachers across classrooms, about shutdowns associated with positive tests and the like.

So what's proposed here is $2.4 million to provide financial support to licensed child care providers, and then also to family, friend, and neighborhood providers.

So this is consistent with funding, and you can see, again, that last bullet below, consistent with funding we've provided before.

Given that many child care facilities are now open and running, and also just overall financial constraints.

The overall level of funding is somewhat lower than in the past, but this is not an area that we think we can yet, that we can neglect and will require ongoing support.

Next slide.

Quick question on the family, friend, and neighbor.

investments for providers there.

As you know, we did this invest, this is an incentive program that we put into Tranche One after we had a lot of conversation with child care providers and advocates and SEAU 925. I think it pairs well with some of the pilot projects in the new Best Starts for Kids.

But can you tell me how the investment specific to the friends and neighborhood investments how we are getting to the goal of making sure that those folks are actually receiving the tranche funds.

I'm going to turn to others on that implementation question.

I don't know if anyone online has that detail, and if not, we can get back to you on where we stand.

You can get back to me.

I think the biggest question that I'm trying to figure out is how does this investment for number two here compare to anything that we did in number one?

I'm just not recalling.

And the basic idea is to continue the support that was targeted towards child care facilities themselves.

A similar process, we have a list of folks whom we've awarded dollars to date.

But again, we'll get back to you on some of those implementation questions.

Okay, thanks.

Okay, next slide.

So this slide is the human services department focusing on food.

And so for the duration of funding is for 2022 the Work is about one-time funding to ramp down COVID-19 pandemic-related food support programs back to their previous levels, and so baseline levels.

And HSD intends to utilize the funding for ethnic grocery bags, meals, and permanent supportive housing and emergency shelters, as well as with food banks throughout the year.

And you could see the previous amount was 8.8 above the base.

Thank you so much.

The next item is Affordable Seattle Unified Portal.

So this is something that is not new to council members.

This was previously included.

This funding would only I'm so sorry just on food.

I was surprised.

I didn't see a question from herbal.

I do see councilmember herbal.

Please go ahead on and you were pausing for me and everything.

Thank you.

Yes.

Um, the slide, uh, says transition, but I'm, I'm interpreting this really as potentially ramping down and ending some fan, uh, pandemic food support is, is that right?

It is.

And so, um, Is this choice driven by an observed drop in the need or demand?

Are there other programs or new funding picking up or will this represent a net decrease in support?

I think it's more about other fund sources coming online and looking at the state and the county and seeing the distribution of that throughout the state.

It would be super helpful to get a little bit more detail about those assumptions and the numbers of people that we are projecting will be served by those new programs through the state and sort of comparing that to the number of people we've been serving through our program.

Noted.

Thanks sorry for the interruption Julie.

No so sorry that I missed a hand.

So on the unified portal.

So what we're trying to do here is create a portal a single portal where residents can learn about city programs.

So we would this would address negative economic impacts because it would remove a barrier to folks accessing our programs.

Currently we have I couldn't even tell you how many programs that folks have to access through different venues.

And if someone wanted to access funding in parks and in D.O.N., they'd have to contact those departments separately, or in DEEL or parks.

So what we're trying to do is have one place where folks can go and enter their information in one time, and it'll tell them what they're eligible for, what kind of benefit from the city, and also would share their information with those departments.

So it would act as both that, education piece and application all in one.

So this there are multiple components of this item.

Parts are in IT to be able to actually have the back-end technical systems stood up.

The QAQC here is quality assurance quality control.

Sorry that I did not spell that out.

And then also funding for the innovation and performance team to have a program lead and look across programs and find ways to streamline and reduce those burdens to our communities accessing these dollars.

Next is additional support for Seattle Promise.

In the first bill we included $4 million for Seattle Promise and adding 6.7 here to carry this these additional programs through 2023. As as council members know and you heard from Director Chappelle earlier this week when the pandemic hit kids of color were more likely to get separated from education and less likely to come back.

And so these these resources are to help engage and engage them.

So here we're looking at enhanced programming support for those programs added in 2021 to get to a total of 10.7 over both allocations.

There's specific efforts listed in these sub-bullets below so you know addressing the impacts on students during COVID and to support new partnerships with University of Washington and extended tuition and programs supports at Seattle colleges.

Offering additional college preparation and persistence.

Support for recent high school graduates particularly students of color as I mentioned.

Bolster the Promise Scholar Pathways Program to college completion through a new partnership with the University of Washington.

And then finally addressing educational equity toward three key program outcomes.

Looking at student preparation for college-level coursework retention in college and completion of certificate credential degree or transfer to a four-year institution.

And real quick, the spending plan here anticipates potential step down of the funding so there's sustained funding into 22 at the current levels but then less funding into 23 recognizing that some of the supports that are for the current cohort who found both the high school students and the college students who've been dealing with remote learning, that some of that impact ideally will have faded by then.

And then, as previous conversations have indicated, some discussion could be had in 23 and beyond about what elements to be sustained and whether other funding sources might be brought to bear to do so.

But this already does, it's a couple years funding, but it already does anticipate that a ramp down of some level.

Thank you so much, Ben.

Next slide.

So in our last category and thank you for hanging in there with us.

I know this is long.

Last category here is supporting city workers and reopening.

As we all know to make all these programs work we have to have people in the city to run them.

So first looking at federal funds impact evaluation and we spoke a little bit about this at the top and this is also a continuation program from something in Seattle Rescue Plan 1. So here we're providing three years of funding to support the measurement and evaluation efforts to look at the impacts of the city's recovery investments.

We're priority prioritizing racial equity in our investment strategies.

We're identifying best practices to deepen the impact of our investments.

We're looking to establish citywide best practices for disaggregating data.

And so what you're hearing from me is is not just trying to learn about these programs but also how do we extend those learnings throughout the city and really embed that body of work throughout.

These, the individuals hired with these funds also are responsible for doing our performance reporting to the feds as well.

Next slide.

Another significant element of the overall funding request is for staffing to help track the implementation of the federal money and then the reporting back to the federal government itself.

I would note that this funding, this dollar amount, is to cover as many as three years worth of funding here, 22, 23, and 24, because that's the period over which the federal federal dollars are eligible to be spent and will need to be reporting throughout.

So it may seem like a large dollar amount, but it does cover funding for three years.

And we're looking for staff in the budget office because we are to be held accountable to holding the money, to being accountable about the money.

Also at FAS, because the accounting and reporting side of this is key to producing the reports that we need to provide to the federal government, and then also a little bit at OEM as well.

They have a critical role in this.

Again, we've been getting kudos at the national level for having moved quickly on implementing this.

We know in discussions with the federal government, this is one of the things they expected the money to be used for, which I recognize that the reporting requirements are significant.

So this is an important piece, if not a little bit of background, if you will, rather than real on-the-ground impact.

But we can't get the on-the-ground impact if we're not also going to follow through with the kind of reporting that's required and ensuring that the implementation is happening.

Next slide.

Related piece is supporting city staff in our current hybrid environment.

So the current arrangements have put real stress on the IT department and our IT system.

So actually what's here is support for staff more than anything, staff who can help folks respond to technical issues.

When your team goes down, you can't log on with computers.

Yeah, kick you out of VPN, all those kinds of things.

Also work kind of less customer focused, but really essential work around cybersecurity.

All of us tapping into the city systems remotely do inherently heighten some of those risks.

So that's a big component here.

The next slide, if we move on, is related.

We are the same kind of software and human touch side of IT.

We're also looking at the hardware side.

So it's really been a fundamental shift here in terms of our approach about computers in particular.

So in general, we have a whole system of desktop computer replacement, a cycle of five years on those.

But what we've realized is that it probably makes more sense to replace a lot of computers as they reach the end of their natural life now with a laptop to promote and facilitate hybrid work.

They're more costly.

We have not built our funding systems, weren't anticipating this shift.

So this is a little bit of an increment to help us pay the additional costs associated with moving towards ever more laptops across the city.

So that's another critical piece to keeping this work going.

And every expectation that hybrid work environments will be the future for some share, a significant share of the city's workforce.

Next slide.

related piece.

So with the vaccine mandate now in place, we're working.

There is some expense associated with simply implementing that and assuring that everyone is, in fact, properly vaccinated.

So there'll be some ongoing work on that as well.

So a small funding ask here for that as well.

Again, these are the backbone things that we need to keep the city operating.

And next slide.

Oh Julie yeah thank you.

Yeah I can take this one.

So as we discussed there's a lot of uncertainty with FEMA moving forward.

So here looking to establish a FEMA reserve of about $2 million.

If you will remember in discussions of the first Seattle Rescue Plan we had discussed a much larger FEMA reserve up front.

Now that we know more and we're actually doing quite well with our reimbursements we think we can more responsibly lower that total to about $2 million.

And this is anticipated for items that are not FEMA eligible.

So we will you know we bake in the FEMA spending and and associated revenue into the forecast but there are going to be things that aren't eligible and we have already incurred those costs as a necessary expense related to the pandemic but for whatever reason they were not eligible from FEMA.

And then believe it or not we've reached our last one more slide after this.

So just high level.

So what we have talked about today are all these check marks.

So the American Rescue Plan Act, we have received the Clifford dollars.

So this is the final out.

This is the proposed final allocation of Trunch 2 for those.

The other grants listed there we've already talked about that have been allocated elsewhere.

We fully anticipate additional resources coming in through state or county pass-throughs.

that are also related to ARPA so those will come in the future.

The amount and timing of those are still to be determined.

And then additional resources are still under consideration at the feds.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act at $550 billion.

The Build Back Better Act and Innovation and Competition Act.

We're looking at huge sums of money covering a really wide array of possible investments and so we will as always keep you posted as we learn more.

What questions can we answer for you.

Thank you all very much for your in-depth presentation today.

I'm gonna jump in because I don't see any hands up here.

Okay, the first question that I have in looking at the investments in IT and the precious resources that we have for the Recovery Act and our congressional partners really trying to prioritize getting funding to most vulnerable and system services.

Is there anything that you are anticipating in the hopeful infrastructure bills, plural, that would help with city infrastructure-like hardware, IT upgrades?

Yeah, I was going to say the same thing.

What I've heard is the potential focus on internet access for the public.

But I think the focus, the assistance for cities' operations is really, I think we have to assume it is in these dollars.

OK.

All right.

Thank you.

And I'm trying to find the slide.

Here we go.

Slide number 17 related to emergency shelter services.

So part of our conversation yesterday, one of the questions that I didn't get the chance to ask of the pretty large panel there was related to the type of shelter.

And Director Kim, I'm not sure that this is the most appropriate question for you, but I'm assuming you're probably the most connected to this question.

You know, part of the reason that I think we have so much visible trauma in the streets, and especially downtown, is related to the number of high needs people who lost housing at the beginning of the pandemic.

Housing meaning shelter options.

DESC had been operating over 500 beds.

Downtown Emergency Services Center providing care to really acute, high-needs people with behavioral health, mental health, addiction issues that they've been dealing with.

And they went from over 500 beds to about 93 beds.

And they were told that they were going to be worked with to open two additional hotels.

And then those hotels were denied to them as a place to open.

So some of the people that they serve ended up going to Renton.

But I think that a lot of the reason that we continue to see people that were living outside in unsanctioned encampments with very high-needs behavioral and mental health issues is because a number of those, you know, over 400 beds were shut down.

Now, I understand that they're on track to potentially open up about 350 or so beds in Seattle for the high acute needs patients from DESC.

I shouldn't say patients, excuse me, people from DESC clients.

And that's great.

I'm glad to hear that we're going from about 93 beds to 350. But that's still a net loss of 150 high acute care beds and units for people that DESC serves.

So can you tell me, A, when we talked yesterday with Tess, and apologies that she's not here and I didn't get the question in yesterday, can you tell me more about the number of beds that we actually are talking about opening?

And why on this first bullet are we talking about ramping down funding for for hotel services.

And perhaps this bullet doesn't correspond to the earlier comments that we received.

I see Director Noble, you're off mute as well, so you can chime in.

But we did at some point talk over the last three days about those hotel services shuttering in quarter one.

And I'm really concerned that that's not the same strategy that I'm hearing from our King County partners who are trying to open more hotel services.

And I know that we're all rowing in the same direction here.

We're all committed to this regional approach.

And we got a long ways to go to stand that body up.

But I'm really concerned about those high acute beds, what beds are opening, and why we're shutting any hotel services before we have a alternative safe place for folks to go.

And it's okay Director Newell if I'm.

I don't want to direct this at you.

If you have any intel as well Kim or Julie like that's fine and we can follow up but that's my biggest concern.

These are high acute needs people who are not well served in you know just just a roof or a door.

So there's people that we know.

who needed mental health services and behavioral health services that we haven't opened those doors for.

Then there's additional people that we've sheltered in hotels and tiny houses, which I'm thankful for, and I just don't want to see us shutter any of those hotels in the moment that we're still trying to recover from the crisis.

So it's two sort of distinct populations of those who are living unsheltered, and I'm worried about both of those issues.

We can follow up if needed.

expert in the subject matter so I'm not going to weigh in here but I don't know if Julie or Tanya have any answers for now otherwise we can get back to you with more details.

Okay I'm seeing.

Yeah I think it would benefit from having having Tess and or Mark join us for that discussion.

Okay yeah thank you and Director Kim yeah I appreciate that this is a not necessarily an easy answer but that'll be part of our follow-up questions as well.

Okay.

Can you tell me more about the one-year ramp down funding for COVID mitigation shelters, though, in this section?

What does that entail?

That is a good question.

I do not have the specific details on that.

Julie, do you have more information?

Yeah, so we had enacted a number of emergency measures in our shelters to make sure that they were safe under COVID-19, so I think think barriers, think PPE, think spreading out a program over multiple sites.

And as a result of those measures, if we spread out a program over multiple sites in order to provide additional spacing for folks staying there, then you had suddenly twice the cost to run the shelter because you had to have twice the number of employees there to support the people that are staying there.

These programs you know we're trying to extend these another year.

These increments of how we are sorry these individual durations of each of these items is intended to be a step down to transition out of our one-time funding and onto potentially new or different funding in the future without it all hitting as a general fund need in the future all at once.

Because you can see this would be you know in one year pretty significant so that We're doing ramp down for one year on that first one at Salvation Army and at Soto is two years of funding there.

And then for Cairo, that's three years of funding.

So when we go to discuss the 2023 budget, we can discuss at that time a much smaller increment and say, does it make sense to continue these?

Are these still needed to continue in the future?

And then that can have that policy discussion at that time.

Just to emphasize that point, these are one-time federal resources and as Julie has described, the time frame here is not the same for all of the elements.

This is one year because we will expend the full 3.7 next year.

Whether the city determines that additional funding is needed, it will have to be from some other source going forward, will be a 2023 decision.

The Salvation Army Fund, again, it's one-time funding, but we're going to spend it over two years.

So that's essentially $6 million a year, because we fully anticipate that we'll want to be maintaining that shelter into 2023. That will raise the same funding question come 2024. But these are structured so that they're not all a cliff that comes in 2023, nor a cliff that comes at the end of 2024. And to the extent that they are, at least in part, response to COVID specifically, we'll know more about where the pandemic or what may become an endemic are over the next year and then again the year following.

So there's a strategy here about, if you will, meting out the one-time money that we have and reading the situation as it develops.

Uncertainty, again, remains the name of the game.

I'm sorry if I went quickly.

And did you have a question about specifically what would be included in the mitigation of shelters?

And so what types of, so it would be things like the expansion of the open hours, increased of the spacing beds, increased daily services, PPE.

Yeah, that's sort of what I was imagining was in mitigation strategies.

But when it says ramp down, that's what I'm trying to figure out.

Is this 3.7 million?

The ramp down is that it is funding for one year, and after one year, the federal money in this space will be gone.

So if it were to continue into 2023, it would require an alternative funding source.

Again, that's distinct, for instance, from the second item, that's actually two years of funding.

All right, thank you.

Any other questions, colleagues?

Okay, I think that that covers the high-level overview of federal dollars.

I thank you all.

It's really good to see some faces we don't often see, so thanks to the Emergency Management Team, the Office of Emergency Management, Office of Housing, HSD, and let's keep you on, HSD, and let's go into this last presentation.

All right, thank you so much.

Madam Chair, will you?

Madam Chair, that'd be me.

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

Agenda item five, Human Services Department for briefing and discussion.

Thank you again for your willingness to join us here, 3.30 on a Friday.

We have about another hour.

I'm sure it probably won't take that long, but wanted to make sure we had ample time for an HSD conversation.

Colleagues, this is material that you received for our Thursday presentation.

It was item number three on yesterday's agenda.

We are carrying it over to today so we can get all of our questions asked.

Again, this is HSD, Human Services Department, items that do not relate to homelessness.

lots of other great activities happening at HSD.

And thank you again to your staff for all that you've done, especially for our most vulnerable.

After you present, we'll have Council Member Herbold go first.

Great, thank you.

So I think if we don't need to record our names for the record, we can move to the next slide.

So again, Tawny Kim, Acting Director at the Human Services Department, newly minted.

I've been in this role for about a month, but have been with the department for 11 years.

We're here to present on the Human Services Department, but you've already heard from us three times so far.

So on homelessness citywide, safety citywide, and just now around our coronavirus response.

And so here, it's just an overview of our department and focusing on some of the other areas that we do.

Thank you so much.

So for the HSD 2022 proposed budget, next year, we'll continue to partner with communities.

and community partners around safety investments, strengthen the foundations of our department to better serve our community and grow in the key investment areas and strengthen our data.

In today's presentation, we'll look ahead at 2022 and discuss our racial equity impact of this budget, significant changes to HSD's budget and how we will address our own capacity at the department.

We'll also review significant changes in the budget by the budget summary level.

And since HSD, like I said, gave numerous presentations, it will be high level.

And in addition, we don't have some of our typical subject matter experts.

And so we're happy to follow up, of course, offline.

Next slide, please.

In 2022, looking ahead, we, of course, are launching our relationship formally with the King County Regional Homelessness Authority and lots of change management there.

Community safety and violence reduction investments, and I know that's very important, of course, to Councilmember Herbold and others.

Additional investments in our Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities, our BIPOC communities through For example, our Equitable Communities Initiative Task Force Investments, the continued relief from the Seattle Rescue Plan, and strengthening our overall community engagement and racial equity for investment strategies.

Next slide.

Racial equity is and has been at the forefront of the way that HSD has been doing our business.

But of course, it's been pronounced in recent years to a demand really for how we're doing our business and needing to improve.

Our budget prioritizes resources towards communities where disparities exist.

We use population level data to identify disparities and focus our funding.

And HSD is developing its proposed budget and consultation with our change team leadership, that's our internal race and social justice team, and community input, and we've received this input throughout the year.

It's not just tied to a specific request for a proposal per se, but we've been engaging community more and more.

A couple examples of how HSD has partnered with community to inform investments, and you'll see these changes in the upcoming slides, but one is our Mayor's Office on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, or MODVSA, which invests in programs that serve BIPOC survivors of gender-based violence, recently completed seven listening sessions with providers and other key stakeholders to better understand the needs, gaps, and opportunities for investments and partnerships.

And these sessions are informing the way that we're spending our CLFR funds, for example.

And another example of how we're engaging the community and really being informed and how to invest is our colleagues within aging and disability services.

And they have a visiting nurse program that was identified as an area of interest to support the African American elders program.

It's essential to providing better care for our aging community because of the health disparities.

And so we're really proud of These other investment areas, although they might not share the same amount of airtime.

Next.

There are significant changes, and one which is, I believe we all agree, important.

A 2.4% inflation adjustment for all contractors, which represents a $4.6 million increase for the department, In addition, as we know, we're sunsetting our Homeless Strategies and Investment Division with the launch of our partnership with the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

And the budget therefore then reflects the abrogation of 20 remaining positions that were a part of that division.

And after consolidating, this year we've been working to refine our own capacity and we consolidated our finance and leadership division.

This might not be very exciting, but making sure that our own capacity and our infrastructure being strong is important to the work that we're doing in partnership with community.

And HSD will continue to strengthen our policy and procedures around finance.

And finally, We're returning to a two-deputy structure.

Why that's important is we just need the appropriate oversight and capacity in order to meet the growing demands.

And so one deputy will oversee aging and disability services, which for context is about half our department.

They have about 200 people.

As well as overseeing our homeless response, which remains in the department and a second deputy will oversee the youth and family empowerment division, as well as our new safe and thriving communities division.

Next slide.

I did talk about our capacity in the previous slide and I'll continue to talk.

little bit more about some more, we have a stipend for staff that are using multiple languages in their work.

And that's, of course, in alignment with our citywide initiative.

There's new positions, we're getting Rex, some more staff to enhance the safe and thriving communities division, because there's a greater need.

And so these specific ones are focusing on the support of survivors of gender based violence and sexual assault.

In addition, we are looking at establishing funding for anticipated finance capacity because our budget has grown significantly in, and it's more complex, over the past several years.

And so next, Joe Kaspersky, our CFO, will cover the details of the proposed budget changes.

Thank you, Acting Director Kim, and good afternoon, Madam Chair and council members.

Our fiscal year 22 proposed budget, from a numbers point of view, does represent a reduction of approximately $15 million.

However, the impact of services is limited and found in two areas that have been previously discussed over the past two days, and that's in the hotel-based shelter program, which is slated to close in March of 22, as well as our food programming, which has been reduced from our current level of fundings, but still remains greater than our pre-COVID funding levels in fiscal year 19. I have noted there are specific questions and concerns by council noted earlier, and we will work with your staff to get the answers that were previously asked.

The following slide.

will highlight significant changes by HSD by the budget summary level.

Let's start off first with the areas supporting healthy aging.

The fiscal year 22 budget submission will propose $150,000 for funding a visiting nurse program.

identified by the African American Elders Program as a needed addition to improve the health and quality of life of those served.

This new year-round program will provide funding to hire a registered nurse to provide nursing care to approximately 200 African American elders in the city.

We will also be leveraging a funding opportunity with the Seattle Seattle Housing Authority to increase the number of case managers serving clients within the Seattle Housing Authority.

This funding will provide approximately 30 additional case management hours to high risk residents of the Seattle housing communities with a focus on behavioral health medical and long term care services.

And there will be an additional $4 million from the state and from which is largely comprised of Title 19 as a result of additional clients being served within King County and additional funding we will be receiving to enhance the quality of care to our clients.

Next slide, please.

For promoting public health, the two significant increases will be a $1.5 million increase to direct health care providers that offer culturally responsive care to community members.

And to complement this service, there will be an additional $1 million increase to improve access to the culturally responsive health care.

So it's a two-pronged approach.

get the word out in the community and provide the resources to provide the response to the community need.

Next slide.

significant changes, excuse me, to promoting affordability and livability.

There will be a $200,000 to continue funding for local farmers who provide food to preschool and afterschool programs focused on serving the BIPOC communities.

And as discussed, there will be a $2.5 million set of, or allocation of CLFR to support food programs as they ramp down our COVID response programming levels, which, as I mentioned before, still remain higher than the 2019 pre-pandemic levels, but lower than the current levels that are being funded.

Next slide.

There was an extensive brief on this yesterday about the significant changes to supporting safe communities by our Division Director, Mr. Rex Brown.

Just to highlight some of the things in this BSL, we will funding to continue services that were funded through the community safety capacity building RFP in fiscal year 21. And we are funding and providing positions to support gender-based violence survivor programs and funding to address anti-Asian hate crimes.

And the last slide.

Generally, I just want to give you a preview of these are the, of course, current funding levels that we are anticipating to carry forward into fiscal year 21, 22, excuse me, which will be the basis of the way we continue our current level of services.

I won't read through the slide.

Most of these areas have been discussed in previously in greater detail.

And with that, I will return the mic over to Director, Acting Director Kim.

What questions do you have for us?

Well, that was a record presentation.

Thank you very much.

I know you had an extra day to sit with the information, so we have as well.

I'm sure that there are some questions.

I do see Chair Herbold as the chair who receives reports from HSD to go first, and then we'll have Council Member Morales.

Please go ahead.

Thank you so much.

I just want to start off with some opening remarks of appreciation.

It is true that there's a lot to dig in here, but I really do appreciate that this presentation focuses on HSD's work that doesn't always grab the headlines.

There's a big structural change that's coming to HSD in the year ahead.

And this is not the first year in which HSD has been managing through significant changes.

Not only has the department stood up a new division, the Safe and Thriving Communities Division, to respond to the need for community-driven approaches to build community safety from the ground up.

They did this while managing a whole lot of changes in their leadership structure.

Looking forward, HSD has this transition of its homelessness strategies to the Regional Homelessness Authority.

It's been long planned and expected, but it's a significant change.

And I mention it here just to recognize that it has created a lot of, I think, a lot of I'm trying to use a word that's a positive word because I know HSD folks are doing so much work in doing it well, but I know it's been difficult.

I just really want to recognize that, and I want to recognize the fact that HSD employees also left their desks to go into the field to distribute food.

Staff worked on the ground to expand shelters and there's all the work obviously to help people struggle and survive through this pandemic and that work has not let up at all.

I want to just give my heartfelt thanks to you.

leadership of HSD and every HSD employee who has persevered the past year and a half and is somehow ready to take on the challenges of the future.

So, just really, again, want to lift that.

I also want to just mention, you know, I focus a lot on the community safety investments that are happening through the Safe and Thriving Communities Division.

But I'm hoping that in this budget process, we can think a little bit more broadly about what's been called the shadow pandemic, the secondary impacts of fear, uncertainty, and isolation being expressed by so many in our city over the last year and a half.

I think we have this year been really starting to see the impacts for community's health and safety.

There have been increased incidents of domestic violence, murder abuse, gun violence, mental health crises, overdose deaths, suicides, and low-level and survival of criminal activity.

And I think as we're moving past the initial crisis that we've been struggling with for the last year and a half, we really need to take stock and begin to think about how to build back better, not just with our physical infrastructure, but with our human infrastructure.

And so I'm really, in this budget process, going to be looking for investments that'll help us address these secondary impacts by investing in mental health to secure our collective health and safety.

And I'm really hoping that we can talk about piloting a mental health initiative for Seattle.

I know a lot of cities are grappling with these same things, and I do want to look to see how other jurisdictions are dealing with that.

Thank you.

Madam Chair, may I ask a couple of questions?

Yes, you may.

Thank you very much.

And then we have Council Member Morales as well.

Thank you.

So on slide four, the slide includes the agency inflation factor of 2.4.

I just want to be clear that this item funds increases to contracted agencies.

to account for increases in their real costs due to inflation or to improve employee wages.

This cost increase was passed by council in mid-2019 under Madam Chair Mosqueda's leadership.

And we know that there's more needed to meet the real costs of effective, robust services that we need.

And I want to also appreciate Councilmember Lewis's recent roundtable of homelessness providers that highlighted the need for higher wages and better benefits so nonprofits can effectively do all that we need them to do.

I'm really interested in flagging my interest in a proposal by the Human Services Coalition for a wage equity study for this particular sector.

And I'm wondering whether or not this is something that is already funded in the budget or something that I should be looking with my colleagues to find funding for.

I don't believe we have funding for such a study in the budget, but I can confirm.

No, I can confirm, Ben.

No, currently our budget submission does not include or extends any funding for that consideration at this time.

Thank you so much.

Just to confirm, Council Member Herbold, your first question, this is intended to be for the organizations to be able to use for wages if they want to.

The CPI.

The 2.4%, yes.

Yeah, OK.

Right.

The other is a budget request from the Human Services Coalition for the wage equity sector.

Going down to the, I guess this is skipping over to the page that identifies the underspend.

It looks like there's $52.5 million in underspend.

Much of it seems to be planned to be carried forward in 2022. for the same purpose as it was appropriated in 2021. But there appears to be about 5.6 million in underspend that is not proposed to be carried forward.

I'm just wondering whether or not there is a plan for that underspend in the proposed budget.

I'm sorry, I'm trying to pull up my last slide.

Sorry, I'm skipping around.

The purpose of this slide was to show the funding that we received in this year that's in our current authority that we plan on attending or carrying forward through a request to council into fiscal year 22. I'm not seeing the, I don't quite understand the background associated with the $5 million delta, where the difference, where I believe he's observed there is $5 million missing.

Let's see, so the HSD budget includes 52.5 and underspend, and I think the funds here do not account for that full.

There's 52.5 million.

I think there's about 5.6 million that is not proposed as a carry forward on this page.

Let us get back to the details on that.

I just want to make sure we get it right rather than speculate.

OK.

Thank you.

And then on the gender-based violence victim services, there's $875,000 for gender-based violence services with a note that it addresses a 2022 funding gap.

Is this funding gap referring to the federal VACA funding?

No, that funding gap addresses the loss of funding.

Previously, this program was supported by the funding received through the Um, I believe it was the sex industry victims fund.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

I use an acronym.

I said, that's what I was.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

I'm sorry.

But that's that funding stream has been reduced.

However, the importance of the program and the need for the program continues.

So, this is this is a general fund increment.

to sustain existing funding, a significant one, obviously, but the previous approach to funding it, which was through fines, wasn't generating the revenue needed to sustain the program, but obviously, or maybe not obviously, the program was clearly of value.

Thanks.

And then just I think we have the answer to this, but I just want to confirm it.

Supervised consumption services that the council provided funding for last year, you know, those funds were a hard won and high priority of the yes.

to supervise some services coalition, and those funds were contracted through HSD with public health to support a competitive RFP.

I just want to ensure that those dollars are protected for 2022 and ask whether or not there's any council action that's required to carry them forward.

I believe we've already encumbered them this year.

Council Member, I will have to follow up on the specific status of the contract and the obligation of, you know, what is obligated to date.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you for those questions, Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Thanks again for being here, everyone.

Sorry, let me get to my notes here.

OK, I've got just a few questions.

The first is about the leadership and administration.

Given that there's a substantial portion of HSD portfolio moving to the Regional Homelessness Authority, can you explain the increase in the indirect costs there.

It looks like in the leadership and administration BSL there's six FTEs that have been added.

Can you explain what those roles are?

Joe, do you want to take that offline or are you prepared to answer that?

I'll get the specific titles and positions associated with that 6FTE.

Generally, the LAD, the indirect budget has increased, and that's largely due to the increase in the grant revenue.

25% of the LAD costs are typically supported by grant revenue, the indirect portion of grant revenue.

Okay.

So, yeah, if you could clarify what those roles are and what grants they're associated with, that'd be helpful.

Okay, so there's a million and a half for re-entry program funding.

Is that going to be an RFP process?

Will they go to currently contracted programs?

It is an RFP process, yes.

And it'll be an expedited RFP process actually this month.

And then the contracting will be encumbered this year and go through next year.

And that's through the Equitable Communities Initiative.

Okay, thank you.

And then regarding the Equitable Communities Initiative, there's two issues around health care.

There's inclusive access to health care and then inclusive direct health care.

We don't typically do direct, I don't think so.

Can you talk a little bit about the types of programming you're envisioning here?

And I'm especially interested in what direction the city is looking to move as it relates to public health.

And if there's any opportunity to leverage funding for investment in mental health supports in particular.

Again, yeah, ECI, Equitable Communities Initiative, really identified.

I think, you know, part of Councilmember Herbold, her opening remarks attached on that is the need for culturally responsive different kinds of care, including behavioral health.

And so that's the direct care that we'll be investing in.

And so we don't provide that.

So we're going to be passing through those dollars to two different organizations.

One being public health.

And the other is another organization that I don't have off the top of my head.

Perhaps a colleague can give that to me, but we're going to be working with those providers who can focus on the outreach and engagement to ensure that our community members have access and then strengthening and investing in culturally responsive healthcare that's a span.

It's broad reaching, including behavioral health.

And so I'm really interested in the idea of cultural, particularly culturally appropriate mental health services.

You know, given the district that I represent, we have a lot of folks, especially right now who are struggling with.

all kinds of things.

And so I'm really interested in understanding better how, as a city, we might be able to provide some support, even if we're not doing it directly, you know, supporting public health and other entities in very specifically in culturally appropriate mental health services, because that's a whole other ball of wax.

So look forward to following up with you on that.

understand.

And the other organization, I apologize, is Healthier Here.

So we'll be working with Public Health and Healthier Here.

Okay, thanks very much.

Any additional questions?

Oh, please go ahead, Council President.

Not a question, just I want to support the last comment made by Council Member Morales.

And in addition to there being sort of a focus on needing to make sure that there's cultural relevance to those programming, I want to encourage us to also make sure we include language.

And we obviously have a lot of really great community health clinics in the area who would be good partners in that space.

So I'm sure you all are already thinking about it, but just thought I'd say it out loud just to make sure that we get it on the record.

Well said, appreciate that.

So I have a question that does dovetail with homeless services, though I promise it's not about implementation or programs.

It's about process.

And Interim Director Kim, I'm wondering if you can help me understand more about how we are going to be transparent with the public and how we can create some sense of the council and executive's role in identifying how this $104.2 million that is going from HSD's homelessness services investments and into the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, what is the plan for how the city still has a chance to review some of those I think it would be helpful to have a better understanding of what are the different strategies and what role is HSD being asked to play with evaluating how that transition occurs.

I apologize for my colleagues who may be more in the weeds on this, especially those sitting on the regional homelessness authority board, but I think it would be helpful to have a better homeless services investments are going into King County Regional Authority and to that magnitude of over a million dollars.

What role do we have in this transition to see how those dollars are being invested and to better explain to the public what programs are being carried forward or what's going to be new?

Again, one month.

And my area, having been at the department's been focusing on other areas, but my understanding is that really the idea is that, well, first, we're working very closely with King County, as well as RHA, the Regional Homelessness Authority.

on the agreement and making sure that we're aligned.

The other is that in 2022 we're, you know, not expecting too many changes that this is really about creating stabilities for providers and allowing the authority to have the capacity that they need in order to operate any future RFPs.

And so at that point where the regional authority will have ownership over this body of work, my understanding is the way that the governance structure with the council representation, as well as, of course, others on there, that's a great opportunity to give input and influence as well.

But I will need to follow up on additional ways in which the city can help influence that.

And maybe Ben or others here who do serve on those boards might be able to be more insightful.

But we are setting the stage right now and making sure that there is a process for city input.

There shouldn't be significant changes right away.

We're communicating even with our providers.

And I have heard Mark say that those contracts that we do have, for the most part, we're maintaining with the exception of all, of course, the new incoming dollars that that's going to be expanding because of COVID.

Ben, anything else to add there?

I'm not sure it's in addition, just to further.

The city and the agency in conjunction with the county are developing a master services agreement, sort of an Uber contract, if you will, to govern the way that the city's money flows.

So the governance side will be determined through the policy level direction, but then the actual, I mean, these are our dollars going to them.

So we're gonna need, among other things, one of the things actually that needs to be dealt with that is that some of the money that we'll be, if you will, supplying to the regional entity will be some of the federal dollars.

And we'll need to make sure we're getting back sufficient information to get back to the feds as well.

So there's an agreement there to deal with some more of the technical issues.

So that's another place where an opportunity to to set out the terms by which the city and the agency are interacting, particularly around the financial side and the contracting side.

Do I have the dollar amount correct, Director Noble, $104.2 million going over to the Regional Homelessness Authority?

I recall that number, but I don't have it in front of me.

John, maybe that was a better question for you.

Sorry.

It's very significant.

I mean, whatever the sum, it's hugely significant.

Right.

It's huge and significant.

And I think that I want to again underscore what I think every council member has said when we've talked about homeless services as it relates to the questions about transition.

We're all committed to this regional homelessness authority and a more coordinated response especially so that we can weave together.

not just the shelter and housing type options for emergency housing options, but also the health services that are largely led by King County.

There's no question that I think there's greater economies of scale and coordination that will benefit those who are living unsheltered and helping them to get connected to housing.

We are gonna stay laser focused on scaling up that housing as we have done in Jumpstart and in our budgets in the past.

I guess what I'm trying to ask is, is this not in this budget our opportunity to continue to show members of the public that those who are frustrated by what they continue to perceive as a growing crisis that needs immediate action and all of us who are frustrated by this now being the fifth going into the sixth year of a declared state of emergency, we are the ones that they're going to call.

I doubt that there's many constituents out there calling the regional homelessness authority or emailing the CEO of the RHA.

They're emailing us, we're their elected officials.

So I do wanna have a better sense and perhaps this is a conversation to come with central staff as well as we identify policy.

I wanna have a better sense of how we understand then the flow of money and the flow of those contracts and how we're able to then report out to constituents what's happening.

So if you want to check, I wasn't on mute.

I can confirm the $104 million, so just to be clear.

And I think what you're describing are ultimately the underlying governance questions about the regional entity and its relative authority over the way resources are directed versus the cities.

And I know near term, what's happening in large part is that we are taking contracts that have already been let and turning them over to the agency.

That's essentially the first year.

Beyond that, the agency will have a more direct role.

I think your colleagues who serve on the board and can provide some of that information, we obviously can provide some as well.

But I do think that this governance question is one that is going to evolve over the next year and beyond as the agency stands up.

and if you will, what have been the theoretical governance structures become real and start making real policy decisions and direction.

So I don't mean to, I'm not trying to dodge your question anyway, but this is, it's a pivoting moment where the city's role is going to be different than it has been in the past.

Just how different, I think, is in part to be determined.

Great.

And then lastly, because I think that this is a HSD question still, though Interim Director Kim, you can tell me if this is, also part of the conversation that you are not prepared to have today.

Can you tell me how the department has been involved in helping to notify existing staff of opportunities to apply for jobs at the new authority and what that process internally has looked like so we can maintain some continuity for the individual personnel who are helping provide key contracts with our community partners?

We've been working on keeping our employees whole for quite some time.

And as you know, the timelines also have been delayed.

And so we've been in close communication with RHA.

I know that they have been hiring through competitive processes.

In fact, there are several of our staff who are working there now.

And so we're very happy for them and look forward to that ongoing relationship.

The other in terms of keeping our team whole is we've identified positions for folks to move into after the positions are abrogated.

And so for our permanent staff, we do have secured positions elsewhere in the department.

And because this has been going on for some time, there, of course, are other staff who colleagues have already transitioned.

OK.

Well, we will look forward to learning more.

Just pausing real quick to see if there's any additional comments or questions.

Please, Council President.

I'll just really quickly on your point related to the RHA and sort of the ongoing connectivity.

And I think really fundamentally what your questions are about are about how do we as effectively one of two funding agencies of RHA maintain our responsibility and duty to our taxpayers in terms of understanding that body of work and what our taxpayer dollars are paying for.

I think there, is potentially, you know, an opportunity to take another look at the ILA, the inter-local agreement, to see what it says about that.

And the reality is that we, as a city council and as a city, will continue to have representatives at the King County Regional Homelessness Authority via the governing committee, and that will be an opportunity for there to be a back-and-forth flow of ongoing information between the City of Seattle and the RHA as a new structure.

But it is new, and we are all learning and adapting as it continues.

to get stood up.

So I suspect that there will be an opportunity for us to sort of modify our practices and sort of roll with it as it continues to sort of become more solidified and operationalized.

The other thing that I just wanted to say is that I think as a city, our biggest accountability metric is through the budget.

We retain our complete budget appropriation authority.

And if we do not believe that the results are being produced by the RHA that we expect or that our constituents expect, then we have an opportunity to reflect that perspective via our upcoming budget appropriation decisions.

I'll just add that, of course, with the agreement, there will be reporting requirements and we will continue to track the outcomes and the performance as well and be prepared to provide data and information, of course, to council too.

Great.

Well, thank you very much and thank you, Council President, for that summary as well.

I think this is something that We get emailed about hundreds of times a day.

It's something that I've reached out to business owners and folks who are working with those experiencing homelessness, and it is one of the most pressing crises in our country right now.

It's absolutely being manifested in the streets here in Seattle, and we have a population that's grown by 20% even before COVID, so we didn't have enough housing before that.

part of, I think, the central questions that we have to address in the 2022 budget and beyond in terms of how we create a housed, healthy, and safe Seattle.

That is, I think, the end of my questions, and I don't see any additional comments or questions.

Director Kim and Joseph, thank you very much for your patience and being willing to come back and join us today.

You have the grand finale presentation, so we really appreciate it.

We appreciate Director Noble, you and your team.

Julie, if you're still on as well, we really appreciate all the work that you did.

Thanks for being with us the last three days.

We know that you're going to do tons of work with our team from Central Staff.

I see Ali Panucci on the line, and if there's any alerts or anything like that from Central Staff, please feel free to jump in, Ali.

Please go ahead.

≫ Thank you.

the budget office to get those questions answered.

Questions that were asked in committee and unanswered, we are already tracking and we'll get those posted and get responses back to you.

And I look forward to moving on to the next phase of the budget deliberations with all of you in a couple of weeks when we are back for issue identification discussions.

Thanks, Allie.

Huge round of applause for you and your team as well, Allie.

Thanks to Patty for managing all the materials, yay.

And to central staff as a team, to our IT and communications team, and to the clerk's office as well.

Folks in my office, I want to thank Sejal, Erin, Aretha, Farideh, and Lori, who have helped to get us ready for the budget season in front of us.

And all of your teams, especially your budget leads, thank you all for identifying a budget lead to work with our office and central staff.

We have reached the end of our agenda, and our next meeting is actually a public hearing.

So for members of the public that are still with us at 410 on a Friday, After three full days of public discussion about what's in the draft budget from the mayor, we will have a public hearing on Tuesday, October 12th at 5.30 p.m.

You can sign up for that two hours in advance at the opportunities listed on the agenda.

As per usual, registration will be available at 3.30 p.m.

that day.

And you can find us all at council at Seattle.gov.

If you need immediate assistance, please note that you can call our office We will be there to help you and help answer questions about the upcoming budget process and to hear from you about priorities as we finalize our council budget proposal over the next two months for final action.

It's been a pleasure to work with all of you.

Thank you so much for the last three days, and we'll see you at the public hearing on October 12th.

Thank you everyone.

The meeting is adjourned.

Have a great weekend and celebrate up in Northgate with the opening of the light rail and I'll see some folks at New District as well.