There we go.
Thanks, Cody.
Okay.
Good morning, everyone.
Welcome to a regularly scheduled committee hearing for the Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans, and Education Committee.
I'm Council Member Lorena Gonzalez, chair of this committee.
Joining me at the table is Thank you all for being here.
There are three items on today's agenda.
First we will discuss and likely vote on I'm offering a comprehensive set of amendments to this council bill that I've shared with committee members in advance of today.
And there are copies of those changes available for members of the public in the front of the room.
After consideration of that council bill, we will hear from the Seattle Immigrant and Refugee Commission as they present their 2019 work plan.
And then lastly, we will consider a vote and a vote on a reappointment to the Immigrant and Refugee Commission.
So before we dig into that, we will consider public comment and then we'll go ahead and begin items of the agenda.
Just really quickly wanted to, as part of my chair's report, Let both my colleague, Council Member Mosqueda, and members of the public know that we know we've heard some news recently from various media outlets in terms of a new initiative and bill being introduced and offered by our Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal.
that would propose a Medicare for all structure.
I've been in conversations with Congresswoman Jayapal for several weeks now about her bill, and really excited to see that she has over 100 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives to support a Medicare for all bill.
We know here in the city of Seattle, and there's probably nobody better than Council Member Muscata to talk about this, but the health disparities in terms of people's access to insurance and affordable health care coverage is very wide in King County and in the city of Seattle.
And this is an issue that really impacts every single one of our constituents here in the city.
And really excited to be joining up in supporting Congresswoman Jayapal's efforts to both introduce and pass this legislation at the federal level, have been working with our Office of Immigrant our Office of Intergovernmental Relations to add it to our federal lobbying agenda.
And I'm really excited to share with folks that we'll be the first major city to introduce a resolution in support of Congresswoman Jayapal's Medicare for All legislation in Congress.
And we're hoping to be able to consider that resolution on Monday.
But we're going to continue to have conversations with her congressional office to make sure that we've got the timing just right.
So very excited about it and more to come.
If any of you have any questions about that, please feel free to reach out to me or Cody, who is the point in my office on that resolution.
Okay, so public comment.
So before we continue with the agenda, we'll go ahead and take public comment.
I only have one person who is signed up for public comment.
Each speaker will be provided two minutes.
At the end of two minutes, I'll ask you to end your remarks.
And we will now hear from Alex Zimmerman.
Sieg Heil, my sweet, lovely sugar console.
My name is Alex Zimmerman.
I want to speak about Agenda No. 1, about policemen.
I see many stupidities in Seattle for the last few years.
This is the No. 1 stupidity, what I see.
Why do you need more policemen?
We have more than enough policemen.
Gestapo principle, what we have in this city, must have changed.
More policemen is stupidity.
I'll give you a couple of examples.
Example number one, Saturday meeting in university, 100 policemen present, 100. It cost us $1 million.
And this is almost a dozen people in a small room, so probably five policemen is enough.
That's number one.
Number two, I go yesterday for a meeting for City Light, and Director Schmidt presented this meeting with council.
This never happened with police commissioner.
Police commissioner never opened to public comment.
I never see when director or chief of police present in council, in council meeting, you know what I mean?
Commissioner meeting, like everybody doing.
And I'm talking about this for many years.
This is exactly what has happened right now.
We need to establish a policy so every director, together with commissioner, you know what I mean, can come every month and speak to people.
People can speak to this.
I'm talking about this for many hundred times.
So people like you into the mayor office, Durkan, and before this idiot Murray, you know what it means?
We need doing this.
It's exactly what it is.
We don't need more policemen.
We don't need more money.
We need a smart management.
It's exactly what it is.
I don't have counsel and smart managers.
We don't have this right now.
So stand up, Seattle.
Stand up, America.
Clean the dirty chamber from this cretin and idiot.
Include management.
This is important.
Stand up, America.
Thank you very much.
There it is.
Okay, so is there anyone else who would like to provide us any form of useful public testimony?
No one?
Okay, we will go ahead and close out public testimony and we'll go ahead and begin today's agenda.
So if you are here to speak on agenda item one, which is Council Bill 119468, I ask you to join us at the table while Cody reads this item into the record.
Agenda Item 1, Council Bill 119468, an ordinance relating to the Seattle Police Department, creating an incentive program for hiring police officers and repealing obsolete sections 4.20530, 4.20540, and 4.20.550 of the Seattle Municipal Code for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.
Thank you, Cody.
So why don't we go ahead and do a quick round of introductions, and then I will sort of frame up the issue really quickly, and then I'll hand it off.
Greg Doss, Council Central Staff.
Mike Fields, HR Director, Seattle Police.
Carrie McNally, Seattle Police Recruiter.
Angela Sossi, SPD Budget Director.
Ben Noble, City Budget Director.
Catherine Isenberg, Innovation and Performance.
Well, thank you all so much for being with us.
This is our second committee hearing on this particular council bill.
We have reintroduced this bill this past Monday on our introduction referral calendar to modify the title of the bill to allow for the amendments we're going to discuss this morning to be considered and voted on by the committee and be subject to a recommendation for the full council.
The proposed amendments that I am asking the committee to consider were distributed to council members yesterday.
I apologize that that wasn't up in Legistar in time, but we do have copies of those available in the front in paper form, and we'll make sure that the clerk uploads the electronic version of the proposed amendments to Legistar here in short order.
What I'd like to see happen today is that Greg will walk through my proposed amendments to the underlying council bill, and then we'll have an opportunity to have a conversation about those components, those proposals, and then we can also, we also made sure to have members of the Seattle Police Department and the City Budget Office available with us to make sure that if there are any questions regarding implementation, or intent that they're here as technical experts to provide us their opinion on the workability of the proposed amendments.
The second thing that we'll do is hear from the executive on some changes that they'd like to see reflected in the council bill.
Unfortunately, I got those very, I didn't see them until late last night and didn't have an opportunity to talk with them offline about it, but thought it would be in the sort of sake of transparency, a good practice for us to just have a conversation about them at the table.
I don't think any of them are controversial.
Most of them are wordsmithing, but wanted to make sure that you all had a copy of those, which I think Cody just passed out to you all.
That's the red line version that you have in front of you.
For purposes of today's conversation and action, I'm not gonna suggest that we, because we're just now seeing these amendments, I'm not gonna suggest that, colleagues, you be put in a position of voting on this modified language, even though I think, for the most part, they're not controversial changes.
What I'd rather do is vote on my underlying language and then give, give us an opportunity to work with the executive on considering some of the redline edits that they have made to to my amendment language for consideration as a walk-on amendment at full council or potential walk-on amendment.
full council assuming we can't get to an agreement on Friday.
That will be paired with some amendatory language that we will see to my proposed amendment in subsection E of the bill related to how we structure a set of requirements for police officers who or hires who accept the bonus to continue on with the police department for a reasonable period of time.
So we are going to work with the executive on striking a balance as it relates to Section E, and we can talk about more details and possibilities of what I'm thinking in conjunction with the executive in terms of subsection E, and we'll have a conversation about that today.
So that's what I think the run of show will be for today.
So with that being said, I'm going to hand it over to Greg to have him walk us through my proposed set of amendments.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
You did a great job summarizing it.
Which would you prefer that I speak to, the red line version?
Mine.
Okay.
So taking it from your version, There are several changes that are proposed to the original bill, or I'm sorry, the amended bill, I'm not saying this right, to Council Bill 119468, and I'm gonna walk through them.
The first one is that there is a cap that is placed on the amount that could be given to a lateral or to a new hire upon coming into the SPD, and that cap is 15,000 for a lateral hire and up to 7,500 for a recruit hire.
So of course as though as with the original legislation being permissive This is also permissive.
The department would be allowed to pick the level that they wanted to create the incentive at The second provision is that the city budget office performance team performance and innovation team and the Seattle Police Department work together and come up with a some measures to evaluate the program to see whether or not it's working.
And those measures would be put together into a report that is transmitted to the council on September 3rd, 2019. The intention there is that there would be an evaluation for the council to look at before the writing of the 2020 budget.
And if there was a desire to make any changes in the budget, there would be some data to guide that discussion.
So I'm going to go ahead and read what those are.
The first one is to determine relative to other law enforcement agencies either around the state or maybe even around the nation, what are the incentives that are offered in other places and how do ours compare?
The second is that the, whether or not the hiring incentive contributed to a new recruit's decision to work in policing versus another profession.
The third is whether the incentive created a reason for a new recruit or a lateral hire to come to SPD versus another law enforcement agency.
And the reason that that one is there is because some other agencies, like the King County Sheriff, are offering some non-financial incentives that might be drawing recruits or laterals over.
I think, at this point.
So the fourth one is survey responses that indicate whether or not the incentive was more or less effective than other kinds of recruitment tactics, the kind of tactics that Officer McNally talked about in our last meeting on February 13th.
All of these data metrics would require a survey be given and I believe the executive is planning on doing something to that effect to measure the effect of this incentive.
And then a demographic and race and social justice analysis of the information that is collected.
And finally, a cost-benefit analysis of whether continuing the incentive is worth it relative to the other recruiting tactics that Officer McNally is currently using.
So then the next provision says that SPD needs to be collecting this information at the same time that they are giving the incentive.
And that as they're collecting this information, they report to the council how things are going.
There is a slide 38-6A-1 that was passed in the budget that asked for SPD to come once a quarter and talk about its recruiting both the things that have happened and the things that they're projecting that they will be doing.
And so this seemed like a natural venue to provide some sort of an update on the surveys that CBO would be administering, whether that be as part of a formal report or even a verbal report, but at least providing the council with some information about how things are going.
And then finally, there is a lapse clause for this legislation that it would lapse on December 31st of 2019. And the rationale for that is that SPD has indicated that the amount of money that is needed for incentives for recruits and lateral hires is coming from savings.
from the staffing budget because they are understaffed right now or under their targets.
And so whether or not there is savings next year and whether such savings could be used to support an incentive is budget dependent.
And so if the council and the executive determine in the fall budget cycle that there isn't money for incentives or that they're not working, then December 31st would be a natural place for the provision to expire.
If, however, there is a determination that they are working and there's money either found by council or the executive in the budget, then this could be changed as part of the budget process to reflect a later date that would be more conducive to evaluation.
Let's see.
And then finally, is the section council Madam Chair that you talked about and this is in the spirit of looking for a commitment on behalf of the recruits or laterals that accept the incentive.
for some time period to stay with SPD.
What this specific provision does is it asks for the department, city budget office, and the city attorney's office to explore ways to make that happen.
We heard from law this morning that if a person After doing some research, if there is a legal need to do further legislation, that would be something that would have to come to committee.
And so if the desire of the council is to make sure that this is effectuated before incentives are given out and that there is a legal commitment and binding contract, then it's possible that the law department may require more legislation to make that happen.
And that is my summary.
Okay.
Any questions for Greg, colleagues?
Okay, I'll just say on this last piece, subsection E, for me, it's really important to make sure that if we are going to stand up this program, that we as the city council have a high level of confidence that the individuals who are accepting the hiring bonus are going to be incentivized to also remain at the police department.
And I think that's just a really important principle and concept that we have to bake into the legislation.
So I have indicated to the executive that it is my strong preference that that provision be legislated and included within the council bill as opposed to being left to policy.
And so I think that what I would like to propose is that my colleagues support the language that appears in this amendment with the understanding that my office will be working with the executive on coming up with some language that will also be subject to legal review and that will be acceptable in terms of all of the employment law and contract laws that may apply to this particular scenario, which I think is what Mr. Doss was signaling.
If I may, Madam Chair, I want to say that I strongly support that approach.
I think that with the caveats that you mentioned about our requirements, both legal requirements and with our labor unions, You know, in the private sector, it is a very commonplace thing to see either an employment bonus or a move-in bonus or a first hire bonus have some conditions whereupon after a certain period of time, if that employee were to depart before that period of time, some or all of that bonus or move-in costs would be repaid to the employer.
So I think this is very consistent with what we have seen in the private sector, and I hope would be the kind of thing that you could work on with the executive to have some sort of clear indication on before we get together on Monday.
I support that approach.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
And that's exactly the direction that I think we'll be headed is legislating a payback provision with a certain period of time.
I'm at this point thinking three years is the right mark, not because that's a science or a formula, but because it just seems like that's what other jurisdictions surrounding us that we compete.
with our also requiring is a three-year payback provision.
I know that Mr. Fields has also suggested the potential of staggering the payment, so partial payment upon hire, rest of the payment upon completion of probation, and then layering on top of that the three-year payback period.
So those are some of the options that we're going to consider and weigh with the executive to make sure that we get the right balance here and are able to fulfill what I think the underlying policy intent is.
And if I just might, our interests here are completely aligned, so we look forward to that very conversation.
I think the only other interest we have, which I think we also share, is given the interest in starting this program, that we work as quickly as we can to reach that language.
And I think, again, we're all aligned to do exactly that, and we'll work with the law department to do so.
Great, great.
So if we vote this out of, if we vote an amended version of this bill out of committee today, we stand a high chance of being able to consider, have the full council consider the amended bill on March 4th, which is this Monday.
If for some reason we bump up against some delays for whatever reason, then we could delay consideration of the full council bill until March, excuse me, of the amended bill until March 11th, full council.
And I understand from my conversations with Mr. Noble that that would be okay.
Yeah, again, it's as soon as possible, but it's obviously contingent on being able to get this language nailed down.
Again, language that we all agree is important to have.
Great.
So we're looking at either full council consideration of an amended bill on March 4th or March 11th with the understanding that my mandatory language will likely be further amended to take into consideration.
the policy concerns that we share on subsection E.
There are also some other, any other questions about that, colleagues?
Okay.
There are also some other revisions that were offered by the executive, and Greg, I don't know if you want to walk through those or if you want to defer to the executive.
I would defer to the executive.
Yeah, so I will give a shot, and Mike, you can help me as we go here.
So you actually have the marked up version, so the red underline are suggested changes.
And just real quick, we are I think the biggest change we have, and it's reflected in this language in the first underline for an interim status report.
As proposed in the initial amendment, the incentive would expire at the end of December 31st of this year.
We're suggesting to extend that to June of next year, simply because we think that without a full year, we're not going to have a meaningful way to assess how effective this is.
Obviously, that would be stipulated by our ability to resource the incentive for the first part of next year as well.
I think we will be in that position, but as part of the budget process, that could be further explored.
to create the clear expectation that if resources are available, we would be running the program through at least June of next year.
Again, to really assess whether or not we've made a difference over, because by the time we get started here, that will be roughly a calendar year, given that in order to get the reauthorization, we probably need to present you legislation by, I'm thinking, the middle of April, so that you could debate it through, you know, end of May, and then we'd have a 30-day effective.
So we're sort of looking at an April to April kind of timeframe.
And we're talking in 2020.
Exactly.
Ben, on that point, so one of the reasons we were locking this down into the end of this calendar year was because of just budget considerations.
So how do we How can we be certain that when you say that there's going to be resources, identify that it's going to be within existing resources?
I'm presuming that you will be looking at ongoing salary savings.
No, it's obviously a totally fair question.
When we bring you the budget in September, we are going to, We will need to be identifying as part of that the resources that we will use to run the program if we're proposing to continue it through the first half of 2020. You can see right now, we have the endorsed budget level, so you know what the committed level of funding is for 2020 for SPD now.
And any variation from that, we would need to explain.
And so if part of, if we are actually requesting additional monies, additional funds to extend the program, you would see that and we could have that discussion.
Again, we've been, I think, completely transparent about this.
We'll continue to have a work group where we're clear about where we're headed here.
So I think there'll be ample opportunity in the budget for you all to have that discussion.
And through the power of appropriation and proviso, you will be well situated, as you well know.
I mean, most of the time we are.
And again, I don't think that there's an antagonistic version of this.
I mean, we're only working together.
But I think we would be very clear about that and how we plan to fund it.
And that way we wouldn't have to reauthorize legislation and worry about that, that's all.
And with that notion of timeline, a September report going into budget would be an interim report, hence this language.
So that's still a policy discussion that we are interested in having on whether or not we would want there to be a process for automatic rollover pending a report versus Legislation, is that correct?
That is included in
There is already a provision in my amendment that effectively requires reauthorization.
The question is, is when do we want to or when do we think we need to receive the report that provides us with the data that we would reasonably need to be able to evaluate whether reauthorization is appropriate or not.
I think the executive is signaling that if we, if the cutoff date for data collection is through December, 31st of 2019, it creates a less robust picture and set of data for us to realistically evaluate whether or not reauthorization is appropriate on the basis of whether or not we believe that the data is showing us that is actually an effective tool to addressing some of the hiring issues at SPD.
Right.
I think that that's a helpful clarification, and I see that distinction in the proposed language from the executive.
I also just want to put a flag out there.
I think it's really important that we as the legislative body, no matter what the date is, when the information comes in, that we still retain the ability to decide whether or not that set date moves.
So I just wanted to make sure I didn't misunderstand that that would still be a legislative decision.
Exactly, so what we're talking about is an expiration date of one form or another.
In order to reauthorize past that, we would need your legislative approval.
We're only suggesting that it's probably not worth reviewing as early as December, but more likely in April.
But that said, we would be providing you information on September 23rd for the reasons that I just described.
Through the budget process, you may well want to have a discussion about this, and My pledge for my professional career has been about fully informed decision making by whatever set of elected, so we want to make sure you have that information.
So the timeline would be that we would still receive whatever data is currently available by September 23, 2019. There's a proposal that we call that an interim status report because it's iterative, I'm assuming.
Right, our notion here again is that we would then provide you a more complete report, I'm guessing March of 2020, as we approached the potential reauthorization date of June of next year.
Okay, so we would receive our first report September 23rd, 2019, so that we have information that might be relevant to our decision-making in the course of Council's budget process.
And then the reauthorization, however, is proposed by the executive to be June 30th, 2020, as opposed to my proposal, which was December 31st, 2019. And then just...
I'm sorry, Ben, before you go on, I think Mike wants to get in.
Yeah, I do.
It's just timing.
I'm looking at our lateral test dates.
So we've got a May 17 and August 23rd and a November 15. So by the time this is authorized, you'd want to have an opportunity to get the word out, have saturation in terms of people knowing about it and then taking the test.
So the May 17 is going to be following fairly closely on the heels of this potential authorization.
Then the August 23rd, you would expect to have the word out and that would be a meaningful data point.
We'd really only have that one before the September date.
So there's some timing constraints there that relate to both the reporting timeframe in September and then the expiration in December.
I would also add that, you know, starting, stopping, and starting, if that were to happen with a lateral incentive, wouldn't be helpful on the recruiting side.
Sorry.
Thank you for that clarification.
There are some other language changes here.
I'll just quickly describe those.
We talk about, we added some language about survey questions and other research message methods.
We're just, a survey is going to be a component of this, which I'm not quite sure what else we might want to do.
So I just didn't want to be restrictive there.
We struck some language about whether or not the incentive resulted in a new recruits decision.
We think it's going to be hard to disentangle what set of things is incentivizing folks to come in.
Our goal is going to be used questions to do that.
But we didn't want to create unrealized expectations for you.
But our goal is very much to understand how the incentive versus the pay rate and other factors are affecting recruitment because that's obviously the key issue.
But we're just, again, recognizing that it's going to be a difficult sort because there are multiple variables working at the same time.
You might find the proposed edit to what was question six a little pedantic.
We have changed cost-benefit analysis to an analysis of cost and benefits.
The reason we did that is in the world of public policy analysis, cost-benefit analysis is a term of art that refers to a specific approach that we don't think really applies here, but we totally get that we need to explain what we're spending on this and what we're getting for it.
So that's, again, perhaps pedantic, but we just wanted to be clear about it.
I just thought you wanted to triple the amount of words in an ordinance.
I get a bonus per word, so I was going there.
Yeah, and then I think the rest of this we've largely talked about, so those are just some minor changes.
Thank you.
Anything that anyone else from the department would like to add?
those particular changes.
No?
Okay.
Colleagues, any additional questions or comments?
Council Member Mosqueda?
Madam Chair, I want to say thank you for your work on the amendment that you've brought forward.
There was a few key items that you've highlighted here that were really critical for my consideration of this.
One was a firm sunset, so thank you for including that.
The second was your comments last committee meeting were really well taken about how this might not meet our diversity and racial equity goals if we're just looking at lateral hires.
So you've included new hires and have created some flexibility on how those funds would be allocated so we can truly reach out and reach more women and people of color.
I think it's important for younger folks to come to the department, so I appreciate your creative thinking about that and the department's willingness to recognize that that helps us meet our goal.
The third thing is I think that the language in item E or section E, as you discussed, is essential to make sure that folks are truly keeping their word, they're staying with us, and they're, more importantly, addressing the gaps in the hiring model.
I see that we are interested in not just getting data passively, but that we're going to be constantly analyzing whether or not this is a tool to meet our recruitment and retention goals.
And retention is critically important as well.
I want to get back to that in a second.
But as we think about whether or not these metrics are being effectively deployed and helping us meet those goals.
To me, it's going to be critically important that we see the language in your proposed amendment in B3 retained.
So I just want to put a flag in that for you.
Whether incentives resulted in a new recruit or a lateral officer's decision to work at the Seattle Police Department versus another, local or state law enforcement agency, I think is the crux of what we're trying to get at in the survey or assessment.
So thank you for including that and I'll be looking forward to working with you to see that we can retain that language.
Lastly, this gets beyond this, but I had a chance to meet last night with some of the folks from the Neighborhood Watch, District 1 West Seattle folks.
I think it would be really helpful as this language moves forward or in This in conjunction with the work that we did last year on the SPD contract, if we do a little bit of education and outreach for our neighborhood watch folks, they were under the misunderstanding, wrong impression that somehow council wasn't supportive of recruitment and retention efforts, especially on the retention side.
I had to clarify a number of times what we've been trying to do.
So to show as the good captain in the precinct there, echoed for us as well that this is truly a team effort.
It would be great if we could do a little bit of education and outreach, maybe some flyering to our friends who are helping on the ground as well so that they know the council is working on this as well.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I would concur with that last point.
I've been trying to amplify our work in this space for quite some time, and any partnership we can see out of the mayor's office and the police department would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
I think what we will do is go ahead and Again with the understanding that we will continue to work with the executive to have a set of amendments that address both subsection e and some of the other issues that were highlighted by By Ben in in other aspects of the edits that they provided to us yesterday so we will continue that work with them and but for now we're just going to vote on the version that I gave you all enough advance notice of and appreciate that I don't want to put you all in a hard spot by voting on things that you just saw at the table.
So I will go ahead and move for us to, for the committee to consider Amendment 1 to Council Bill 119468. Is there any further discussion?
Okay.
All right, so all those in favor say aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
No opposition.
The council bill has been amended.
So I will now move that the committee recommend the city council adopt council bill 119468 as amended.
Okay, second.
Is there any further discussion?
All those in favor say aye.
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Aye Thank you all so much for being with us, and I really appreciate the collaboration on this particular issue.
Likewise.
Okey-dokey.
So we are going to move along to agenda item two.
If you are here to present on the second agenda item, I ask you to make your way up to the table, and then Cody is going to read agenda item two into the record.
Agenda item 2, Seattle Immigrant and Refugee Commission's 2019 Work Plan for briefing and discussion.
Thank you, Cody.
All right, good morning.
So we will go ahead and for those of you that haven't been at the table with us, your microphones should be really uncomfortably close to your face and the green button should be on.
That's how we make sure that you all, your voices are heard beyond.
beyond the table.
So we'll go ahead and start with a round of introductions.
And then, Maha, did you want to make some introductory remarks, or you just want to let the commissioners take it away?
I'll just let them take it away.
OK.
So let's do a quick round of introductions, and then I'll hand it over to you all for your presentation.
Hello.
I'm Maria Zepeda-Flores.
Hi.
I'm Johnson Nguyen.
I'm Madhani Thapede.
Come on.
Hi, I'm Maya Pia.
I am one of the co-chairs of the Immigrant and Refugee Commission.
I'm Ankita Patel.
I'm one of the co-chairs of the Immigrant and Refugee Commission.
Maha, you should introduce yourself.
Hi, I'm Maha Jashan from the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs.
Thank you.
All right.
Maha, is it possible to get the PowerPoint?
Yes.
Oh, it is.
Perfect.
I just couldn't see where it was.
Just let me know and I'll get the next one.
Fantastic.
Well, thank you for having us.
Today, we wanted to share with you the last few months we have spent as a commission coming together, really trying to identify some of the key issue areas that are impacting the immigrant and refugee communities in Seattle.
We have spent some time as a group Really calling out the areas that we think are sort of most pressing and that council has the most and the city has the most opportunity to influence.
We have distilled those areas down into sort of three key areas.
Those are issues that are impacting women, youth, and then economic empowerment.
And then we also recognize that the impact of Census 2020 is going to affect all of those issues.
So today what we'd like to do is sort of share with you some of our key goals in each of those areas.
I want to start by saying we completely recognize the intersectionality of all of these issues and that many of these goals are going to impact multiple populations and we need to take that intersectionality into account.
But for simplicity's sake, we'll present those goals based on some of those key communities that are impacted.
So I'll have each of our commissioners here are leading a subcommittee on one of those areas.
So I'll ask them to walk us through some of those areas and then we'd like to save some time for questions and discussion.
Our goal here is to really present our initial work plan and hopefully it's some food for thoughts, burning some ideas for collaboration and ongoing discussion with each of you.
So we'd also like to make that ask that we'll be hopefully scheduling some follow-up meetings to work on particular issue areas with each of you.
Great, thank you.
Yeah, so with regards to women, we want to address issues that disproportionately and adversely affect immigrant and refugee women.
And for that reason, we decided to focus on two areas.
One is domestic workers and caregivers.
We want to make sure that their rights are included to ensure protection for various reasons, which I would also leave for the discussion part.
And the second area that we want to focus on is on gender-based violence through, so the areas that we would like to focus on, again, on community education, economic empowerment, and cross-sector collaboration to increase legal representation for survivors.
Hi, our second priority is youth issues, and our goal there is really to ensure that policies and programs designed for Seattle's youth are intentionally inclusive of immigrant and refugee needs.
And one of our own guiding principles for this priority area is really to echo and uplift the City of Seattle programs or policies or services that directly connect to immigrant and refugee youth.
And one of our...
subcommittee priorities was education and especially making sure that provisions in the levy that was passed in November specifically include immigrant refugee youth.
And we've done that by attending the levy oversight committee and really trying to build a relationship with the Department of Education and Early Learning.
But we recognize that the different portions of that levy, there's different levels of how much community engagement that has happened for each of the programs, whether it's the Seattle Preschool Program or the Seattle Promise or any of the K-12 services.
And I think on my end, one of the asks for you all is really to see, you know, which other policies and programs do you think we should connect to and utilize our expertise to support and uplift into the community so they can connect to them.
Great.
The other main priority within the youth subcommittee is around youth justice, so identifying what are the needs that immigrant refugee youth here in Seattle are facing.
The bulk of our work really trying to be on how do we create or address youth needs before they even get involved with the criminal justice system?
So what are the additional supports, resources, services that they need?
With also an element of once they're involved in the criminal justice system, how can we support community generated restorative justice programs to ensure that they are being adequately and fairly treated and have an opportunity to lead fulfilling lives?
Thank you.
And one of our goals that I'm going to just step in and represent the hard work that our subcommittee lead has done around economic empowerment.
We have basically distilled this into making sure that there are economic opportunities for uplifted for immigrant and refugee communities given that the barriers they face to housing security, to employment, and to just the visibility and the uplifting of small businesses owned by immigrants and refugees.
So these are some of the three big areas within the economic empowerment subcommittee plan.
And under housing stability, we want to focus on affordable housing.
We want to focus on displacement of immigrants and refugees out of the city of Seattle.
Under employment, we want to focus on elevating career pathways for immigrants and refugees, and also looking at wage equity for our communities as well.
And then, like I said, for small businesses and entrepreneurship, we want to focus on increasing the visibility and resources for small businesses and immigrant entrepreneurs.
And all of this, you know, just to shift a little bit As a personal narrative, it's so important that we keep highlighting economic empowerment for immigrant and refugee communities.
A lot of communities risk a lot just to come to this country and make a living for themselves and their families.
So we think that this part of the work plan uplifts both the youth empowerment and the women's empowerment work plans as well.
And to echo what Maya is saying, that we are truly taking an international intersectional approach, yet we are wanting to be focused on what we are doing.
And then the next thing that I want to raise for the council or this committee is Census 2020. We know that Census 2020 is once in a decade opportunity to make sure that all our communities are counted, and Census 2020 has imposed some unique challenges, including just the the new challenges related to making sure that people are going to fill in the online questionnaire, as well as the chilling effect that immigrants and refugees have already experienced with the citizenship question being proposed to be introduced in Census 2020. So, we are still waiting on what will happen on that regard, but the impact has already happened.
And so, one of the things that we will be voting on in our next meeting is to make sure that this is part of our work plan, which is why you don't see this in the one-pager in front of you.
One of the things that I want to also highlight in Census 2020 is the hard-to-count communities are at a greater risk of being undercounted, and these communities include immigrant and refugee communities, communities of color, renters, communities with or people who are LEP individuals, as well as people experiencing homelessness amongst other categories in the hard-to-count population.
So again, these are all, you know, like really important communities that we should focus on and make sure that we are aiming our outreach efforts and resources towards them and educating them about the implications of Census 2020. And then on a final note, we just want to say that We are here to, the PowerPoint's behind me, so I can't really see what's going on back there, but we are here to collaborate, we are here to support, and we are really here to make sure that we are queuing up everything in a way that is effective and impactful for immigrant and refugee communities.
Thank you.
that presentation.
Are there any questions?
Council Member Johnson?
Johnson, which is an easy name for me to remember.
Yeah, I hope so.
You spoke a little bit about, you know, sort of the issues related to the Department of Education and Early Learning.
But one of the things that I would ask you to consider as part of the work plan, because you asked sort of what are some other emerging issues to be aware of.
The city in 2014 authorized, through a set of different taxes, a partnership where we fund about $50 million a year with a bus service of King County Metro.
And that bus service, we have continued to expand over the last couple years the types of buses that are and the communities in which they're running.
And that's going to be up for renewal in 2020. So as you all consider what a 2020 work plan looks like, I'd strongly encourage you to think about that as a priority because of the economic and I think important access issues that come with an expanded bus service.
We also have a commitment, as you may know, to offer a free ORCA card to students within the Seattle Public School high school system.
But unfortunately, that doesn't descend down to those in the elementary or middle school, let alone those little ones, although if you're under five, you're free.
So, preschoolers at five, maybe not be in kindergarten yet.
So, as we contemplate what that renewal in 2020 looks like, staying engaged and making sure that we can provide access points, particularly for those elementary and middle school students to get access to the same sort of benefits that their older peers are getting, I think would be really important.
So you asked the question, so I wanted to throw out not a 2019 idea, but maybe a 2020 idea for consideration.
Yeah, definitely.
Do you recommend, like, connecting with any specific person?
One of the other boards and commissions we have as a city is the Seattle Transit Advisory Board, a.k.a. STAB.
We're an unfortunate acronym.
It is an unfortunate acronym.
But you have a similar cohort, again, engaged member on the Seattle Transit Advisory Board that I'd be happy to connect you two up with.
They're going to be making a series of recommendations in early 2020 to the council for consideration for what the 2020 transit renewal ballot measure might look like.
So, again, this isn't an issue that I'm recommending you guys take up as part of your 2019 program, but particularly for youth and the expansion of our Youth at Work program, a good opportunity for consideration in 2020. And I'm happy to connect you with the right folks.
Yeah, for sure.
Thank you.
Council Member Mosqueda.
Thank you very much.
It's really exciting to meet some of you and see some of you again.
I'm interested in more information about the ways in which maybe the city has already engaged the commission on the Census 2020 work.
I've had the chance to sit as the co-chair of the city's Census 2020 task force, and this is one element of a part of the state's effort and the county's effort to be more coordinated.
Can you tell me what outreach has been done, how you guys have been engaged, have there been that type of connections made already, or do we need to do a better job?
That's a great question.
So at our February meeting, one of our fellow commissioners who attended the Census Alliance Statewide Summit, led by people of color, came back to the commission and reported basically what happened at the summit and some of the key learnings that he shared with the commission, which is why we are considering putting it in our work plan, is that communities of color have already felt the impact of the citizenship question.
There is just an under-resource of what it will take to fund community-based organizations slash trusted messengers to make sure that everybody is feeling safe when they participate in Census 2020. And currently, like, so he, in his daytime job and in my daytime job, and we have another commissioner, we are all looking at it from various angles, but where we feel like there could be like more traction is like, what kind of outreach efforts are being done?
How can the city like really come forward with a friendly message about the benefits of Census 2020 to communities?
Or it's actually a mutual benefit, right?
Because when the city is resourced enough to provide housing programs and medical programs and just support those fundamental safety net programs, it really, you know, will help every, like all communities.
And the impact in the next decade will be felt more by immigrant and refugee communities.
So just how can the city council and the city just continue putting like these messages out there in terms of the importance of participation and the safety, like really addressing the safety part of it, because people are feeling unsafe to come forward and participate in Census 2020. And one of the things that perhaps you could think about is April 1st, 2019 is one year out from Census 2020. And so what kind of messaging can we do together around that?
That's a great idea.
Well, first I want to apologize because I think that on behalf of the city's task force on Census 2020, it doesn't sound like we've been directly engaged with the commission.
So that is something I'm looking to correct and rectify.
One of the things that we know is that it is important to make sure that people don't feel forced to fill out any information.
I think Jorge Barron, who was on the And I think that's where we need to be.
And I think that's where we need to be.
And I think that's where we need to be.
And I think that's where we need to be.
And I think that's where we need to be.
So I think we'd love to work with you more to make sure that the city and the task force specifically working with the executive's office does a better job in reaching out to you so that we can connect you to our little concentric circle, which is part of the county and more to the state's efforts as well.
And we'll follow up with you and the chair on that.
That's great.
Thank you.
Yeah, I would just say that even as the chair of this committee, I've only just recently been looped in to the work that has been going on under the census 2020, and I have had longstanding concerns about how the citizenship question impacts the feeling and the sense of safety of members of the immigrant refugee community who are undocumented or who lived in mixed status families, which is just a reality of our community and have had the pleasure of working on the last census around this particular issue and doing advocacy with One America when I was on the board.
as president of the Latino Bar Association of Washington.
So, really excited to hear that you all have an interest in engaging in this topic because it's really important and the resources are limited.
And, you know, our commitment needs to remain really strong to make sure that folks who want to engage with the census feel like they can do so without retribution or retaliation.
One of the things that I'll say is that we have been talking a lot with our friends in Olympia at the state legislature around U.S.
Census issues.
And one of the things that they mentioned to us is that they've only received one comment on additional resources for community-based organizations to do the trusted messenger work that you've identified.
I think it would be really important immediate step for the commission to write, assuming you accept this as part of your work plan, which I can't imagine that you wouldn't.
I think one low hanging fruit that is a short-term action is queuing up a letter to our Seattle delegation at the state legislature echoing your support and advocacy of having the state identifying real resources for people to be counted if they feel safe filling out the census.
I think that's a really immediate step that needs to happen.
I believe the budget down in the state legislature is gonna be released in about a month or something like that.
So I think there's right now is the moment to to take a position on that issue.
I'm certainly interested in supporting additional resources from the state to be able to fulfill that really important outreach component.
Okay, great.
Thank you for your recommendation.
Yeah.
Okay.
Are there any other questions or comments, colleagues?
There's a lot here in your presentation.
I think it's absolutely super focused, but also, as you all have mentioned, does take into account that intersectionality component.
I don't know why it's so hard for us to say that word this morning.
All of us have struggled with it.
It's like English is a second language, I guess.
I don't know.
So, really excited about following up with you all after today's meeting to sort of get a sense of how you want to be best supported by this committee in your implementation of the work plan.
So, let's stay in close contact and see what we can do to support you all's efforts.
Thank you.
Looking forward to the partnership.
And thank you all for your volunteerism.
I know it's a lot of work.
So we really appreciate it and look forward to working with you.
Thank you.
And then, Maher, are you going to stay for the reappointment?
Yes.
OK.
So you guys are welcome to stay at the table, too, if you want.
But it's a reappointment to your commission.
So I will go ahead and have Cody read the second agenda item into the record, and then we will consider the reappointment.
agenda item three reappointment of Maya Babla Appiah as member Seattle Immigrant and Refugee Commission for a term to from January 31st 20 sorry for a term to January 31st 2021 for briefing discussion and possible vote.
Great thank you Cody.
Maha you want to go ahead and kick us off?
Sure I feel like this is just for the record you could see how we're fans of Maya.
So Maya Babla Appiah currently works as a program manager within Microsoft's Global Talent Acquisition Team, strategizing creative ways to bring amazing, often undiscovered talent to Microsoft from all over the world.
She previously worked at LinkedIn in San Francisco, where she consulted with Fortune 500 companies on their hiring strategies and her core role, and supported LinkedIn's refugee program, Welcome Talent, as a volunteer.
While in the Bay Area, Maya joined the Leadership Council of Upwardly Global, a nonprofit supporting refugees and immigrants in landing professional jobs aligned to their skills.
And then when she moved to Seattle in January, Maya began growing Upwardly Global's presence in the Pacific Northwest.
Previously, Maya worked at a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that partnered with women leaders in the developing world.
This work inspired an ongoing commitment to find creative ways to have a positive social impact and, in particular, to use technology and cross-sector partnerships in order to do so at a global scale.
And as you can see, Oira recommends the reappointment of Maya.
She will continue to be a great asset to the commission.
Not only does she work within the tech industry, as we mentioned, as is very involved in the workforce development and youth employment realm through her connections to Upwardly Global and her role in Microsoft.
She's one of the newly appointed co-chairs, and she's been doing a phenomenal job helping the commission restructured their work plan and putting forth a strategy and she brings in a much-needed economic development and job creation lens for immigrant refugees that the Commission currently needs.
She's also a strong facilitator and excellent strategist, great person to be around and both skills have proven to be valuable to the Commission.
So we'll leave it at that.
Well, as we can all tell, Maya is a horrible underachiever in her life.
And obviously, I'm just joking.
Maya, we're really grateful that you want to continue your service on the commission.
It's really great to have somebody with your robust set of experiences who is willing to dedicate time in your free time.
to the work of the commission.
And, you know, I think for a lot of us in the immigrant justice movement, doing this work is not really free time.
It's what we desire to do every moment of the day.
So I really appreciate you channeling that energy into the commission as one of the co-chairs and one of the commissioners in general.
So I really appreciate your willingness to continue to serve.
Is there anything you'd like to say or add?
It's a privilege to be a part of the Commission and work with such amazing co-commissioners, so I am very honored to be a part of the group.
Great.
Is there anybody on the Commission who's with us at the table that would like to object?
I'm glad we all can still have a sense of humor in spite of the heaviness of this work for our community right now.
I really do sincerely appreciate all of your leadership in this area and look forward to continuing to work with you, Maya, and the rest of you throughout the year.
If there are no questions from my colleagues, I'll go ahead and move for this item.
No questions?
No comments?
All right.
I ran out of jokes, so we're just gonna keep going.
So I am going to move for the passage.
I move the committee to recommend the reappointment, reappointment 01259. Is there a second?
All right.
Any further discussion?
All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
No opposition.
So, the committee will recommend that the City Council confirm appointment 01259 with a unanimous vote.
The appointment will be considered by the full Council at its meeting on Monday, March 4th, 2019 at 2 p.m.
Your attendance is, of course, welcome, but not required.
Is there any other business to come before the committee?
You work for what sounds like the best department, Global Talent Acquisition Excellence.
That sounds like a good title.
I like that they threw the excellence in there, that's kind of a fun part.
The excellence.
Maya only works on excellence, that's it.
Okay, so there is no other business before the committee, so we are adjourned.
Thank you.