Sustainability, City Light, Arts & Culture Committee 5/2/2025

Good morning, the Sustainability, City Light and Arts and Culture Committee will come to order.

It is 9.32 a.m.

May 2nd, 2025. I'm Alexis Mercedes Rink, Chair of the Committee.

Council Member Moore.

Council Member Saka.

Here.

Council Member Solomon.

Here.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Rank.

Present.

Chair, there are four members present.

Wonderful.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Welcome everyone to the Sustainability City Light and Arts and Culture Committee.

I want to begin today by thanking my colleagues for attending our last committee meeting two weeks ago where we provided an update on the City Light investigation and heard directly from leadership.

Actions noted in the report are deeply egregious and in many cases traumatic for City Light employees on the receiving end of the hostile work environment and my office is in regular communication with City Light and we're working to provide accountability for the array of issues provided in the report which outlined the pervasive culture of heavy drinking while operating heavy and intricate electrical machinery, as well as sexual assault and harassment to a number of women employees within the department.

This committee will be provided an update later in the year regarding actionable steps City Light is taking to change its internal culture and to ensure that any work done by intoxicated employees is safe across the city.

But moving into today's agenda, we will vote on the appointment of Luis Ernst to the City Light review panel, followed by two presentations from the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

The first will be an overview of the Fresh Bucks program, and the second will be an overview of the Environmental Justice Fund.

And we will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on today's agenda or within purview of the committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up for today?

Currently, we have zero in-person speakers signed up, and there is one remote speaker.

Great.

The one remote speaker will have two minutes.

And clerk, could you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

The comment period will be up to 30 minutes.

Speakers will be called in order in which they were registered.

Speakers will alternate between sets of in-person and remote speakers until the public comment period has ended.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds of their time is left.

Speakers' mics will be muted if they do not end their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

The first speaker is David Haynes.

Please press star six when you hear the prompt.

You have been unmuted.

Hi, thank you, David Ains.

Did the Seattle city government invest in any trucks for their fleet to pick up some foods in the larger regions of the farm fields so that we can start filling up some food banks and some schools so kids can get an apple a day and some cherries in the summertime without seeing it all go to China and India waiting to pay extra tariffs while the rest of the USA people have to pay exorbitant prices so that the middlemen can record record profits at the grocery stores?

while the farmers still get cheated and the people of the state of Washington are still starving with their belly full of junk food.

Fresh bucks is another justification to have some sort of investment in large delivery trucks because they need to like almost saturate the shelf space with some of the great foods in the state of Washington and not just the pea patches in the local region that want to pocket all the money acting like they're cane of cane of table.

In a different like policy of concern about presentation the racist woke agenda within like the environmental justice is it true that these nonprofits that are politically connected that are going to get this money might have these like six-figure salaries and they're going to hire black and brown kids at minimum wage to move dirt claiming they're restoring and soil remediating habitat and I mean You know, I know it's not a lot of money and it's probably needed to help build character and everything.

It's just, I'm sick and tired of the racist woke button pushing voting blocks that keep getting paid to spew skin color policies that are based on some ignorant past.

It's like, what are y'all going to focus on the whole of the community that needs to like tax the industrial trains that are passing through the waterfront, choking off the fresh air for everybody.

You know, stop pitting one against another and rise up against the toxic elephant that's choking off the fresh air.

Thank you.

There are no additional registered speakers and we'll now proceed on to items.

We will now move on to our first item of business.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record?

appointment zero three one three zero appointment of Lewis Ornst member as members, the city light review panel for a term of April 11th, 2026 briefing discussion and possible vote.

Wonderful.

Thank you all for our folks who are coming in today.

Please take a moment to introduce yourself for the record before speaking.

I'm Lee Barecca, Interim Chief of Staff at Seattle City Light.

Lee Barecca, Interim Chief of Staff at Seattle City Light.

Good morning, Council Members.

My name is Bridget Molina, and I'm the Council Legislative Coordinator for Seattle City Light.

Wonderful.

Great.

Thank you both for being here.

Please proceed.

Thank you.

Thank you for having us.

Good morning, Council Member Rink and committee members.

Again, Lee Brecke, Interim Chief of Staff at City Light.

I'm here today to seek the appointment of Lewis Ernst to the City Light review panel into the financial analyst position.

Just as a point of view, Just back in time, the panel was established in 2010 by City of Seattle ordinance, and their role is to review and assess our biennial strategic plan and accompanying rate path, and to provide an opinion on both when the plan is submitted to the mayor and city council for approval.

The panel's made up of nine members representing City Lights customers and partners.

As you can see above, each of the existing current panel members and their roles.

Four positions are assigned by a city council, five by the mayor's office and all are approved by the city council.

The position I'm bringing before you today is a council appointment and he is in the bottom left, bottom right, pardon me, square there.

Typically, we would have a candidate with us today so he could say a little bit about himself.

But his wife had their second child yesterday.

And at 9.15 last night, he messaged me that he unfortunately wasn't able to come.

So we congratulate him and excuse him.

But I'll tell you a little bit about Lewis.

His interest in the energy sector began as an engineering student drawn to its role in the economy and its evolution amid climate and policy shifts.

He launched his career as a mechanical engineer at Kansas City Power and Light and has since held roles in consulting, strategy, and finance, currently serving as a finance manager for two Amazon subsidiaries.

He holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and an MBA in finance and economics from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he earned recognition for his work in sustainability and policy analysis.

Lewis cares about clean energy and has strong skills in finance and problem solving, which makes him a strong candidate to be on the City Light review panel as the financial analyst.

And that is all I have.

Thank you so much.

And before proceeding, I want to note for the record that Council Member Moore has joined us virtually.

And thank you for being here, Council Member Moore.

And with that, colleagues, any questions you have today about the appointment?

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

No questions today.

Appreciate everyone's volunteer service.

Colleagues, any additional questions or comments before I chime in?

Well, I will just say congratulations to Mr. Ernst.

Very exciting, and I still can't believe he took a moment in the midst of parenthood to notify that he would not be coming today.

Certainly appreciate that.

So glad that we will have a fully seated now review panel.

This is very exciting.

Let's hopefully keep it that way.

And thank you again to the City Light team for finding and recruiting such amazing panelists who are gonna bring a lot of expertise.

Very glad that we're able to be able to have this body and be able to potentially confirm his appointment today.

And so if there's no additional comments from my colleagues, I move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointment 03130 to recommend the confirmation of the appointment.

Any final comments?

All right, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to confirm the appointment.

Council member Moore.

Aye.

Council member Saka.

Aye.

Council member Solomon.

Aye.

Council member Strauss.

Yes.

Chair Rink.

Yes.

There are five in favor, zero opposed and zero abstentions.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the appointment be confirmed will be sent to the May 13th city council meeting.

Thank you again, City Light staff for being here.

Thank you all.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record.

Fresh Bucks Program, Office of Sustainability and Environment, briefing and discussion.

Wonderful, and as our presenters make their way up to the table, when you have a moment and get settled in, please introduce yourselves for the record before beginning your presentation.

Good morning.

Thank you for having us chair rank, esteemed council members.

My name is Liliana Ayala.

I am the interim deputy director at the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

Good morning.

My name is Robin Kumar.

I'm the Fresh Bucks program manager.

Can you hear me?

I think you need to press the little.

Good morning.

My name is Robin Kumar.

I'm the Fresh Bucks program manager.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Ximena Fonseca Morales.

I'm the Environmental Justice Fund strategic advisor.

Thank you for having us this morning.

Excellent.

So today we'll be chatting a little bit about our Fresh Bucks program and Environmental Justice Fund.

Robin and Ximena are excellent leaders in the Office of Sustainability and Environment and are excited to give you this overview.

We'll start with Fresh Bucks.

Good to go.

All right.

We are good to go.

So this is just a regrounding in the Office of Sustainability and Environment's mission, which is to ensure a clean and healthy environment for all of Seattle residents.

We do this in a way that prioritizes those who are currently and historically overburdened by the impacts of racial, economic, and environmental injustice.

We know that the scale of the issues that we work on quite large and require scaled solutions that means deep partnership and collaboration we can't do our work alone work to seek the best available science and knowledge to ensure that the policies and programs that we're putting forth are responsive to to the issue and then As you know us, we work on climate policy and greenhouse gas reduction and do that in a way that also seeks to ease the burden of that transition for Seattle's residents.

Next slide is just a bit of a glimpse, again, a reminder of our core services that we do at the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

And then you'll see today we're focused on a program that falls under our climate and environmental justice work, our environmental justice fund, and then our food policy and programs work, which is Fresh Bucks.

So at this point, I'll pass it over to Robin Kumar.

Thanks, Lily.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to present about the Fresh Bucks program today.

So Fresh Bucks is part of OSC's mission to foster healthy, sustainable, climate-resilient communities.

Aligned with the climate justice agenda that drives OSC's work, Fresh Bucks is a hallmark program that addresses food access needs in the city by connecting Seattle residents who are most impacted by food insecurity and diet-related chronic disease with locally grown, culturally relevant, and health-promoting foods, while also enhancing the economic viability of local businesses, especially BIPOC and Wimby-owned retailers.

Today, I'm going to be sharing a high-level overview of FreshBox, how it works, who we partner with, and the impact of program strategies that are grounded in equity.

I've saved time to address your questions at the end of the presentation.

Fresh Bucks provides a healthy food benefit, and we know that healthy foods play an important role in supporting longevity and overall health, but are also generally more expensive than less healthy options.

And we're really living in an unprecedented time.

Food costs have risen dramatically, increasing close to 24% from 2020 to 2024, and these increases are particularly pronounced for healthy foods, which costs nearly double that of unhealthy foods.

It's not surprising then that we've seen increased participation in food assistance benefit programs like SNAP or food stamps over the past several years here in King County.

And now with over $230 billion in proposed reductions to federal food assistance nationwide, we're bracing for the ripple effects of these policies, increasing food insecurity and reducing revenue for our local food retailers.

Fresh Buck started as a hyper-local SNAP or food stamp matching program at a few Seattle farmers markets in 2012. Grounded in community advocacy calling for deeper investments in healthy food access programming, we've grown the program over the years through a combination of philanthropic, city, and federal investments.

The passage of the Sweetened Beverage Tax, or SBT, in 2018 was a huge milestone to scale city investments in Fresh Bucks benefits, enabling the program to expand program eligibility and grow from serving 2,000 to 12,000 households between 2018 and 2022. We're now in a steady state continuing to serve 12,000 households with Fresh Bucks.

Fresh Bucks is a core strategy in the city's food action plan, addressing community food security, and is also integrated into the city's One Seattle approach to ensure food access.

OSC is a leader in this space, working to convene cross-departmental collaboration to address the myriad factors impacting local food systems and food access.

Fresh Bucks collaborates with all other city food access programs and together we form a network that's critical to how the city addresses food security and affordability needs of local residents.

Fresh Bucks is a unique benefits program in that it's helping income eligible households to buy more healthy foods while also contributing to local economic development.

There are over 12,000 households enrolled to receive Fresh Bucks.

Any Seattle household with an income at or below 80% of the area median income, or AMI, is eligible to apply.

Participants receive $40 a month to spend on fruits and vegetables at 40 participating Seattle retailers, including supermarkets, farmers markets, grocery delivery, and independent grocery stores Seattle.

We're really proud of the way that Fresh Bucks contributes to the viability of local businesses.

Last year, $4.87 million in Fresh Bucks benefits were spent at local Seattle businesses, and that translated into over $7.7 million in local economics.

35,000 spend at farmers markets and independent grocers.

And we know that these sales are making a huge difference for these small businesses.

Anecdotally, one small business partner shared with us that Fresh Bucks revenue was the reason they were able to stay open through the pandemic.

As we expand FreshBooks retail options for our customers, we're focused on sustaining a vibrant local food system.

Our expansion efforts are informed by customer and community partner input and serve to support customer choice and agency in where they would like to use their benefits.

Here, I've listed the retail partners we've onboarded over the past couple of years in neighborhoods with limited options for Fresh Bucks access.

We continue to focus expansion in underserved areas of North, Central, and South Seattle, and are exploring more citywide delivery options and considering partnerships to boost local produce distribution through our retail network.

Fresh Bucks is serving residents from the most under-resourced neighborhoods in our city.

The green map on the left is a heat map of where our customers live.

The blue map on the right shows the city's race and social equity index priority areas maintained by the Office of Planning and Community Development, which combines data for poverty, race, and community health indicators.

As you can see, Fresh Bucks is serving households that are concentrated in the neighborhoods of highest need.

So here's how it works.

Customers are enrolled into the program with the help of our community enrollment partners.

Benefits are loaded directly into their customer benefits accounts each month, and then customers can use their Fresh Bucks card or mobile app to shop at any of our participating retailers.

We transitioned from paper to electronic, excuse me, hold on, I lost my place.

Here we go.

We transitioned from paper to electronic benefits a few years ago, which has been a significant improvement for our customers, retail partners, and program operations.

Customers no longer have to wait for paper vouchers to arrive in the mail.

Retailer reimbursement happens seamlessly through the backend of the electronic benefit system, which reduces admin time both for our retailers and for our team.

And the electronic benefit system also provides us with customer spending data that helps us to project and track benefit spending to maximize the annual benefit budget and has enabled broader administrative capabilities that streamline our ability to systematically adjust monthly benefit levels and increase the number of households receiving Fresh Bucks benefits.

We work with a broad range of community-based enrollment partners to offer focused enrollment within priority BIPOC immigrant and refugee communities.

These partners help to enroll people into the program and support them with using their benefits.

They help customers to activate their benefits accounts.

They offer grocery store and farmer's market tours and also healthy cooking classes.

Relying on community partnerships for equitable program enrollment is an important and impactful program strategy.

71% of Fresh Bucks customers are from focused communities most disproportionately impacted by food insecurity and diet-related chronic disease, which includes Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish, Black, African American, American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and immigrant refugee communities.

Over half of our customers prefer language other than English, and the majority of our customers are in the lowest household income bracket.

We recently opened the Fresh Bucks waitlist application to give income qualified households a way to register interest in receiving program benefits.

This public facing application will remain open indefinitely, which removes the barriers of a limited term enrollment period and also widens the enrollment pool beyond our current community enrollment partner network.

We plan to enroll people from the waitlist as spots become available in the program, either through attrition or when someone moves out of Seattle.

The waitlist application is hosted on the city's affordability portal.

When someone submits the Fresh Bucks waitlist application, they're invited to submit applications for other city assistance programs that they qualify for.

The affordability portal team shared that 80% of the applications submitted in March when we first opened the Fresh Bucks waitlist application were those that were referred to other programs following submission of the Fresh Bucks waitlist application.

This underscores the scale of community food access needs and the important role that Fresh Bucks plays as a gateway to other city programs.

There are over 40 city programs hosted on the affordability portal, including the Utility Discount Program, Seattle Preschool Program, and others.

10% of adults in Seattle are food insecure.

which is around 60,000 people.

We currently serve a little over 12,000 households with Fresh Bucks.

And since opening the waitlist application in early March, we've received over 3,000 waitlist applications.

Given the scale of food insecurity needs in the city, it's likely this number will continue to grow as more people learn of the waitlist opportunity.

The importance of a healthy food benefit in addressing equitable community health outcomes is undeniable.

At a community level, we know that low fruit and vegetable intake is associated with a higher prevalence of diet-related chronic disease, especially in BIPOC communities.

Customers like Derek have shared the importance of that Fresh Bucks has had on their, the important impact that Fresh Bucks has had on their health.

And preliminary data from our customer surveys is showing us that Fresh Bucks customers reported increased fruit and vegetable consumption and increased food security when receiving program benefits.

This is especially true for customers who start the program with low fruit and vegetable intake.

These customers have doubled their consumption during their time on the program.

It's really humbling to hear how Fresh Bucks benefits our customers, so I wanted to close my presentation today by sharing a couple of customer testimonials with you.

This customer testimonial shows how Fresh Bucks is going beyond providing healthy food benefits and is helping to build family traditions around healthy foods.

And this testimonial showcases how Fresh Bucks is helping to get more healthful, culturally important foods at safe and convenient neighborhood retail options.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to share FreshBooks with you today.

I'm happy to take any questions now, or I'm always available to answer any questions in the future that you may have.

Thank you for your presentation.

And at this time, colleagues, I invite you to ask your questions of our presenter today.

Councilmember Sacco.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And thank you all for this presentation today about this exciting programs, been around for a while, but I know it's near and dear to many of my own constituents representing many communities in food insecure, food desert type environments like Delridge, South Park, Well, the entire Duwamish Valley, including Georgetown.

So really important program, as you noted, to provide fresh, in many cases, locally sourced, culturally relevant, and ideally healthy food options.

So terrific, terrific program.

Love this work.

A priority of mine is to address food deserts across the city, but in my district in particular in those neighborhoods that I mentioned.

And this is one mechanism of many tools to do that.

At least that's my view.

And we need a variety of options.

from farmer's markets, and yes, to supermarkets that have more steady, predictable, reliable, longer hours for people who work a range of jobs and hours.

So we'll take a Trader Joe's in Delridge.

But in any event, I'm not expecting an answer now, but it would be great if you could please follow up with my office and share, I would love a list of all the various retailers and supermarkets that currently accept these program benefits.

Ideally, it's linked on your site somewhere, but if you wouldn't mind sharing that out with my team, that's an excellent resource that I would love to include in one of my subsequent newsletters for our constituents.

So thank you again for this presentation and thanks for your work in advancing this effort.

Thank you, Councilmember Saka and Councilmember Solomon.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Just to follow up on what Councilmember Saka said, in terms of knowing which retailers are participating, I was curious, and I think I may have missed it, is there a plan to expand the list of retailers that are enrolled in this program?

Because I'm thinking about a lot of the...

not only the smaller independent retailers like Fooley or Seattle Supermarket that provide culturally specific produce, but even thinking about our larger retailers like you know, the Kroger family, the Albertson family that have a lot that may wind up going to waste that, you know, folks can benefit from.

And even thinking of like McPherson's, you know, is that another place where neighbors can access this program?

So just wondering about the expansion opportunities for people to, you know, access this.

Yeah, thank you.

So absolutely, we're in sort of exploratory conversations with lots of different retailers.

Our sort of priorities or the way that we're thinking about expansion is both from the both to try to increase the number of access points within Seattle neighborhoods where there are limited other Fresh Bucks retail access options, and also thinking about kind of trying to expand culturally relevant options, trying to expand local produce options.

It's both from, and you mentioned sort of the large retailers.

We're in all of the Safeway Albertson stores in the state actually right now, which obviously in Seattle, we have a variety of those.

And we continue to try to explore partnerships with the Kroger band of retailers as well.

But we're both sort of coming at it from a place of trying to expand brick and mortar, 24-7 access options, as well as trying to support local small businesses that really specialize in those culturally relevant produce options, in particular in neighborhoods where we have limited other options for fresh box access.

Great, thank you.

And you mentioned it early on in your presentation about federal assistance.

And quite frankly, that seems to be going away.

And how do we protect and insulate our people from those cuts that are coming on the national level?

And I'm looking at this program as a way to do that.

So thank you for that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Solomon.

Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Tara.

Thank you for the presentation.

I had a couple of questions.

One is, seems like $40 a month for fruit and veg is really not nearly enough money, particularly now that fruit and vegetables are going to be even more expensive.

It would be helpful if we could get some figures from you about what is really a more realistic amount of money that's needed per month or to support that.

So if you could get back to my office with some figures, I would appreciate that.

The other thing I noticed under your focus community enrollment, I see that Lake City Collective is there and I'm really pleased to see that they're there.

I'm wondering why North Seattle Helpline is also not listed as a focus community enrollment because they do services as well as being a food bank.

Yeah, absolutely.

So we know that our community partner enrollment network doesn't, there's no way it comes close to having representation from all of the great organizations that do this great work and serve our residents in this city.

And that's one of the reasons why the Fresh Bucks waitlist application is a really exciting opportunity.

We're actually working, the community enrollment partners that we have been working with, the 11 organizations that we're working with this year, we've been working with them for the past three years.

So we have really strong partnerships and relationships within those organizations.

And those organizations actually have a wide network of partners that they do work with.

And so one of the things that we're working with our community enrollment partners to do this year is to serve as a wait list application ambassadors.

to really share the opportunity with their partner network so that we can really hear from folks that have not been directly served by our community enrollment partners, but are being served by their colleagues, either neighborhood-based or community-based colleagues that are serving folks that could use FreshBooks benefits.

So it was an opportunity to kind of hear from people who are not directly served by the folks that we're directly working with.

I don't appreciate that, but I didn't get a specific answer to why North Seattle Helpline is not a community partner.

When we originally started working with our community enrollment partners, these were those that had applied to be enrollment partners, and we've continued in those partnerships.

And the North Seattle Helpline was not one of those that had applied at that time.

Is there any, so I would request that you reach out to them and see if they are willing to be a partner because Lake City Collective does a great job, but we need to be expanding this program and North Seattle Helpline actually has a lot of people that they help.

So I don't think we should be, if they didn't reach out at the beginning, let's give them another opportunity to do so.

And then the other question or well, which is in looking up the FreshBooks priority neighborhoods map and note that it shows it just stops at Northgate in terms of distribution of FreshBooks customers.

And yet, if you look at the city of Seattle race and social equity index priority areas.

North Seattle, we have a wide priority area that goes extends way beyond Northgate.

So just wondering how that additional community and need in North Seattle is being met and incorporated.

That's slide 25.

Sure, I mean, I think this shows sort of the current capture of where the current customers are living.

We don't, and the way that we've enrolled people into the program has been through our community enrollment partnerships.

So there, I think that's, it speaks to your comment that there's definitely a need to .

of Northgate area to try to reach communities there with benefits, absolutely.

Great, yeah, thank you for that.

I appreciate that recognition there.

And then I guess the last question I have, Madam Chair, is what, it's always struck me as odd that we divide our food work between HSD and Department of Neighborhoods.

So I'm just wondering what kind of coordination is happening between the departments that do have responsibility for different parts of the whole food work?

Yeah, that's a great question.

And OSC as well.

Yeah, that's a great question.

I think the food action plan interdepartmental work is a really great example of how we all, all of the different food access programs and food programs in the city really come together.

So we work closely with our HSD partners to make sure that the work is coordinated.

The, you know, a lot of the HSD food access work is really focused within the emergency food sector network and food bank network.

And that's not, all of the work, but that's a lot of the work that they do.

But we are deeply sort of coordinated with them in particular through the food action plan coordination.

So we meet together all the time.

We make sure that we know the work that's going on across all of these different program areas.

And we work together we serve a sort of a unique, I mean, with Fresh Bucks, what we're specifically focusing on is providing a healthy food access benefit.

And so it's sort of a supplemental benefit on top of what other benefits people might be using.

So it's, I don't know if that helps to answer that question.

A little bit.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Moore and Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you all for your really great work.

It's impressive to see the impact that you have with the dollars that you use.

the return on investment is incredibly high because you're leveraging other dollars and you're leveraging both our farmers market or all of our farmers markets, our small, many small businesses and the big box stores that are open as council member Saka said, all the time.

Um, it's, Colleagues, you may or may not remember your first bill or your first budget amendment that you championed.

For me, it was Fresh Bucks.

And when I talk about I'm elected by the people of District 6 and I serve the entire city, you can look on the map of where the distribution of people using Fresh Bucks are.

It's not mostly in my district.

There's one precinct and it happens to be the area that the income restricted housing or other people call it affordable housing, that's where it's located.

And so it makes sense that that's where the participants are in my district.

So I really cannot thank you enough because you do the quiet work over an SMT, probably don't get a lot of attention, usually don't have to come on camera, and the work that you're doing is changing people's lives.

It's changing the people's lives of those who are receiving food to have that culturally appropriate food, to be able to get more food when they don't necessarily have the money for it.

And more than that, you're stimulating the economy by supporting it.

You shared that story of the small business that said that they couldn't survive the pandemic if it weren't for their Fresh Bucks customers.

Mm-hmm.

But then I look outside of our city as well with all the farmers that come in for the farmer's market.

I'll put in the plug, Ballard Farmer's Market is the best farmer's market in the city.

Fremont is an arts, it's a crafts market.

So Fremont is the best crafts market in the city.

Fight me for it.

I just say that because when I'm down there, and I'm interacting with farmers and I see folks setting up and taking down, people spend their entire weekend to get to Seattle to sell food.

And those folks are definitely on the margins as well.

There's not a lot of money in farming, especially small farming.

And so I'm just here paying you that compliment for doing that quiet work that probably doesn't get a lot of attention because it's not just the family's lives that you're making an impact on.

It's our broader economy and it's really the food economy as well.

This is usually where I insert a quote from Council Member Hollingsworth about the power of food, but just know that she is an incredible supporter of food access as well.

When I made a budget amendment in 2020, it was to clear the existing wait list at that time.

You mentioned your changes to the just open wait list.

I think this is genius.

Can you talk a little bit more about maybe how many people are on that wait list?

And then what is the rate you mentioned folks sometimes drop off the program, whether they choose not to re-enroll maybe they're not eligible anymore or they move out of the city.

Can you talk about the rate of folks dropping off and what is our waitlist at currently?

Yeah, great question.

So we currently have a little over 3,000 applications on the waitlist.

We opened the waitlist application at the beginning of March.

So it's only been two months and we have 3,000 people on that application and literally we get more every day.

In terms of the kind of, I'll call it the attrition rate, generally we have about 1,000 spots open up each year just through natural attrition.

People moving out of the city, they're no longer eligible.

You know, people...

for a variety of reasons, are, you know, no longer on the program.

And so they, yeah, so it's about a thousand that opens up just naturally.

And that's just kind of baseline budget.

People just, you know, come off of that program.

Per year?

Per year.

Okay.

Yeah.

So we are already exceeding our desire.

Absolutely.

Two months in.

Yeah.

Okay.

From your perspective, I'll ask kind of two general questions.

You shared the one story of the small business that had this big impact.

Are there other stories from your experience, whether it's with the families who receive the food or the small businesses or even the big businesses about, you gave us a lot of data and the data speaks volumes to me.

Do you have any other personal stories of how this program has changed people's lives, whether they're folks in business, farming, or just receiving the culturally appropriate food, or just food in general?

We do.

We have a collection of stories.

I didn't feature them because of time today, but absolutely I could sort of compile some if that is of interest.

But what we...

I'm just trying to kind of think about one that might be a good...

I'm putting you on the spot, so I'm also filibustering for you just a little bit.

Yeah, let me...

I would love to get back to you because I want to sort of think about...

a way to kind of organize.

A lot of the stories that we get are through our community enrollment partners.

We have them, but they're kind of anecdotal, and it's not, you know,

Yeah, happy for you to get back to me.

I asked you that because the data that you provided us today at committee demonstrates the financial sense of this program because we're leveraging other dollars and that impact is made so broad and wide.

The data here demonstrates the need in our community.

what we also, and that's all speaking to our mind.

And so I was hoping to speak a little bit to the heart a little bit because all of those data points, when I look at the fiscal books of our city, it all makes sense, but those are just numbers.

Yeah, actually, sorry, as you said that, it was something that just came to me.

Recently, a colleague actually shared that their grandma is actually a Fresh Bucks member, and she and all of her friends, actually, they all have Fresh Bucks, And something that they really enjoy doing is getting together and going down to the Columbia City farmers market.

And they go and they, it's a social activity for them.

So kind of speaking to kind of the heart of the program, I think that, you know, yes, you're right.

Absolutely, there's hard numbers.

We can show that there's, strong impacts that this program has.

But when you talk about kind of the human stories of Fresh Bucks and people making this into a social opportunity and a way to be together with their friends, with their families, I think that's the kind of heart of, when you talk about the quiet work, that's actually the work that brings me to work every day.

And so I think that's the power of this program.

That's fantastic.

Many programs have to rely only on the heart because the data doesn't support it.

Your presentation today clearly demonstrates that the data is supporting this work.

Thank you for sharing that new information.

That's the first time I've heard of that, that this program is actually creating community by having participants get together.

Thank you for your amazing work.

Keep it up.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you Councilmember Strauss and thank you colleagues for all of your questions.

I know for me in this, this program is immensely impactful.

I've seen and heard it directly from residents who are enrolled in the program and it's going to be tremendously important in the moments that we're about to encounter ahead of us.

I have a couple of questions here just maybe to close this out if my colleagues don't have any additional questions.

On one of the slides related to SNAP data, one of the data sources is cited as public health and I'm wondering how often is that updated?

How regularly is that updated and do we know what public health's data set is there?

I think that that data point is from late last year.

And so I'm not sure how often that particular study gets renewed, but absolutely.

I mean, I think there are some data points I didn't include in my slides in talking about that food insecurity is higher now than even during COVID times.

that grocery costs are something that, there was a recent study out of UW that came out about how asking people about what things they were concerned about in the past month.

And grocery store costs, or grocery costs, they ranked even higher than housing costs for folks in Seattle.

And so, Anyway, I just wanna mention some other things that didn't make it into those presentations that really speak to the need of these types of benefits.

And I appreciate everybody's comments today and just wanna say that really over the past several years, what we've done is we've built the infrastructure for a program that is ready to, scale and deploy benefits to a wider number of people that we know will be impacted in deeper ways.

And I think it's an opportunity to help fill some of the gaps that we know are already being faced and that people will kind of continue to face in this time.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I'm happy you brought up infrastructure because I feel like that's one element we haven't talked too much about.

How big is your team?

Let's see.

We have...

Sorry.

We have six people on our team.

Yeah.

And so we're a really small, lean, mean operating machine.

And the majority of our budget does go towards these benefits directly.

So really, that electronic benefit system gives us a way to operate this program in a much more efficient fashion and remain lean, while also being able to scale opportunities and benefits for more customers.

So if I'm understanding you correctly, we have six full-time employees administering a program that serves 12,000 households.

That's correct.

That is a very lean program.

And we know there's still a tremendous need, as demonstrated by the wait list and the projected amount of 60,000 adults in the area that are food insecure.

And so I'm wondering if some work has been done to estimate in terms of, you know, if we were to try and reach to scale the program to serve more of those households, cover our wait list, even go beyond that, try and meet the need of how many food insecure adults we have, do we have an estimate of how many additional staff we may need to bring online in order to scale the program to that extent?

I will, I know that we have that, we've done some of that thinking already, and I'm happy to provide your office with more of that detail, absolutely.

Yeah, I think that would be great to contextualize.

Again, it's a very, very lean program, and it'd be interesting to know exactly how much more people power would be needed as we look at potential options on expansion.

And just so I'm also understanding correctly, right now the benefit is $40 a month per household.

Is that dependent, just to be clear, a flat amount or is there anything related to household size that's factored in there that denotes a greater benefit?

Yeah, that's a great question.

It is currently a flat amount.

Everyone across the board in our program receives those benefits.

About half of our enrollment base currently is one to two person households.

And yeah, and the other half is sort of beyond that.

And that's all, yeah.

Yeah, I'm just thinking about like households with kiddos, like three to four person households as well and just understanding.

Do we keep track of also how many kiddos are served, households that also have kiddos maybe served here?

We don't ask about, we ask about household size.

So we have that information.

We don't have, you know, ages of children.

We have the ages of the household member that applies and we have household size.

Understood.

Great.

And I think it's been discussed and pointed out by Council Member Moore, and I would agree, $40 a month does not go that far today's day and age.

When was the last time we had an update to the Fresh Bucks monthly benefit amount?

Yeah, it was in 2018 when we set the benefit amount.

And since then, I mean, I think the thing about this program is there's always more need than what we have budget available to serve.

And we've really, I think, prioritized serving more people with a little bit less monthly benefit rather than increasing benefits for

with you know with a for a limited number of households does that make sense like it yes you have to kind of yeah understand certainly the difficult trade-offs you're making from program administration so we haven't seen a update to the monthly benefit amount since 2018 I don't have an inflation calculator but I'm curious what if we were to keep it steady since 2018 what the monthly benefit amount would look like then and certainly interested in any of the work you all have done as well in looking at maybe, looking at trying to denote household size when determining benefit as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

And then, I think we covered some of those pieces.

Also curious about just dual enrollment, particularly with SNAP.

We know that, as was voiced earlier, there's uncertainty on the federal level about SNAP.

And I'm curious about how many Fresh Bucks participants also are leveraging SNAP or using SNAP.

Yeah.

We don't collect that data.

The sweetened beverage tax, called for kind of fresh bucks to serve folks in the food gap, which are those that don't qualify for SNAP for a variety of reasons.

Either they make a little bit too much money or there were other immigration status restrictions or things like that.

So we don't ask about SNAP enrollment.

But what we know is that the majority of our customer base is in the lowest income bracket, which does overlap with SNAP income eligibility.

So at least from an income perspective, we know that the majority of our customers would qualify for SNAP benefits.

Thank you for that.

I think my final question here is just related to seeking, you all have been deep in this program.

It's clear you've been collecting great data on this.

You understand who you're the member base is, the participating programs, the partners.

I'm curious to see and would seek your recommendations on what a meaningful update to this program could look like based on any kind of process improvements or just better meeting the emerging needs that might be in our community and would ask for recommendations there.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any final questions before I let our presenters go?

Continue to administer this great program?

No?

Fabulous.

Thank you all for being here today.

Thank you for your presentation.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

We will follow up with responses to your questions.

We're now going to segue to an overview of the Environmental Justice Fund with Ximena Fonseca-Morales.

Wonderful.

Technically, we need to read into the record, so will the clerk please read item three into the record?

Environmental Justice Fund, Office of Sustainability and Environment, briefing and discussion.

Whatever gets it to work, right?

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you again for your time this morning to provide this briefing on the Environmental Justice Fund.

This morning, I will dive into some context and background about this program, as well as provide an overview of our guiding goals and strategies.

Then I will highlight some of the impacts that this program has had and share some of the work that's ahead of us this year.

And I'll leave some time at the end for your questions, of course.

Now, the Environmental Justice Fund is one of the signature grant programs at the Office of Sustainability and Environment, and it launched or it stems from the Equity and Environment Initiative, which launched in 2015. It was the first of its kind at the time and really represented the city's commitment to embedding race and social justice in our environmental work.

Now, the initiative is guided by the Ecuadorian Environment Agenda, which was created in deep partnership with community members from communities that have been most impacted by environmental pollution as well as climate change.

And it was the first time the city was working together with these community leaders to really serve as priorities around environmental justice and climate justice.

And one of those key priorities that emerged from the agenda was actually the creation of a mechanism to invest directly in community-led work for environmental justice.

And so this program is a key early action that stemmed from the equity and environment agenda.

And many of the key priorities highlighted in the program have actually been embedded into the DNA of the program itself.

So the EJ Fund launched in 2018, and it was co-designed closely with community partners.

The mission of this program has always been to invest in climate and environmental solutions that are coming straight, meaning they are led by and with our communities that have been most overburdened by the impacts of racial, social, and environmental injustices.

And we specifically identify our priority communities as individuals who identify as black, indigenous, people of color, immigrants, refugees, as well as individuals with low incomes, youth, and elders.

Now, we know that the ecosystem of environmental justice and climate justice work across our city is vast, and that it is critical for this program and these investments to reach a variety of organizations in order to really strengthen this network.

And so, since the beginning, the EJ Fund has sought to invest in groups who are doing environmental justice work or climate justice work, groups that may not be doing that work explicitly, but they are actually doing that work without calling at that.

as well as groups and community organizations that may want to begin to do this work but haven't had the resources or the funding in order to do so.

And so I just wanna highlight some grantees work, and I'll provide more on this shortly, but we have funded, again, a variety of programs.

One of them is the work of Feed Seven Generations that launched a school program for indigenous youth to really help them cultivate connections with traditional foods, traditional ecological knowledge, all while helping empower their youth to really see themselves as the environmental stewards they are.

as well as Sound Generations, who facilitated a workshop series for their elders to really understand how environmental justice and climate change is impacting them and offering programming in a way that really builds social cohesion, which we know is critical in the face of climate change and really important for climate resilience.

And we also have Via Comunitaria, who has facilitated an educational series to really help folks understand how poor indoor air quality impacts health.

So this is just a highlight of some of the grantees that we have supported over the years.

But I want to name that these investments are reaching all districts.

And we also know from the race and social equity index that there are specific communities or certain communities across our city who are disproportionately being impacted by environmental hazards, For example, folks who are experiencing disproportionate exposure to poor air quality that is impacting their health or folks who are more impacted by the urban heat island effect due to lack of tree canopy cover.

And so we are really seeing the value of these investments reaching communities in these specific geographic areas so that we are leveraging these investments.

and using them as a way to lift up everyone and close those disparities.

Now that we've talked about the program and the background, I want to just transition us into the guiding goals and strategies that have served as the foundation for this program's success and impact.

We really recognize the impact of this funding for priority communities and we really center them in our grant making approach.

This means that we really seek to reduce the barriers to access funding.

This for us looks like providing technical assistance to applicants so that our community groups and organizations can actually access this funding.

For instance, we connect them to technical assistance providers who can work with them to walk them through the application process and help them propose really competitive proposals.

We know that many of the grantees, or excuse me, the applicants who come to the program may have limited grant writing experience, and this additional support really allows them to provide strong proposals and access this funding.

We also hold building trust at the center of our grant making.

We as a program don't take a transactional approach and organizations that are providing a service.

We really see them as partners.

We take a relational approach because we recognize the work they're doing helps to advance our city's environmental justice and climate justice goals.

And so this also includes acknowledging that all of our community groups and organizations are leading the work that their communities need because all communities are experiencing different challenges that really require unique and specific solutions.

So we are trusting that they know what those solutions are and we're there to support the implementation of that work along the way.

As a program, we also really seek to deepen the bench of community leaders from our priority communities to really grow representation in our environmental work.

And we do this through our community review team, which I'll speak about shortly.

But that has been a cornerstone of this program since it launched in 2018. And we also see this grant program as playing a really critical role in enabling our grantees, our community groups and organizations to leverage these funds in order to build and to strengthen their internal cultures and systems and build the resources and skills they need to be able to provide the critical programming to our priority communities, which ultimately advances environmental justice and climate justice for all.

So here's a deeper dive into our environmental justice committee, which is also known as our community review team.

This committee is comprised of six members who are from our priority communities.

They are deeply rooted in environmental justice and climate justice work.

And these folks serve on two year terms.

Now, this really functions as a leadership opportunity for committee members.

They are in a position where they learn about how this local government is approaching, directing these investments into our priority communities, but they're also in a position to really influence how that work happens.

They are partnered with us on iterating on our grant making process and most importantly they are the ones who review all the proposals we receive and directly inform the funding recommendations and where these investments are going.

So they really are trusted partners in this work.

Now the EJC itself is one example that really highlights how peer learning strengthens relationships and leads to creative solutions.

And we continue that thread through our programming with our grantees.

We convene learning circles, which are really an opportunity for our partners to come together, to build relationships with each other, and to explore collaborations in really organic ways, which ultimately supports community resilience.

and strengthens our environmental justice and climate justice network.

We also really hold a key principle of equity and environmental justice at the center of our work, which is to ensure that those who are most affected by environmental inequities can inform program design and inform decision making.

And so we really see this program, the Environmental Justice Fund, as a bridge to connect our partners to really important city-led efforts that are a priority to them and to their communities.

So for example, Robin spoke about the food action plan and many of our grantee partners actually worked closely with OSC last year to provide feedback and inform the food action plan.

And looking ahead at the coming year, they'll be working closely with us too to inform the upcoming climate action plan update.

So now that we've covered sort of the bread and butter of this program and what has led to its success and impact, I wanna now walk us through some of the highlights of our grant making and trends that we're seeing.

So over the last seven years since we launched this program in 2018, we have awarded over $3.8 million to 64 community groups and organizations, and a total of 82 projects.

Now, again, because all of our communities are experiencing different impacts from environmental hazards and climate change, we don't dictate the type of work that our proposed a project that are going to meet their community's needs, which means that we fund a wide variety of projects, anything from organizations that want to lead soil remediation efforts for their communities, as well as educational series on indoor air quality and its health impacts, as well as youth empowerment to learn more about green jobs and what a career in the green sector looks like, as well as practices that connect folks to indigenous and cultural medicine and knowledge.

And of course this work wouldn't be possible without our partners.

So our 64 partners are listed here and this full list really helps demonstrate one of our core commitments through this program, which is to invest in organizations that are first time grant recipients, as well as to deepen our support for these groups and organizations.

So the organizations that have an asterisk next to them have received more than one grant.

So they have been, funded more than once, which has enabled us to deepen our investments and really deepen our partnership and relationship with them.

So now that we've talked a little bit about these impacts, I wanna just take a moment to highlight a couple of grantees.

One of them is Basilica Bio.

They are an organization that's building resilience in communities most affected by environmental injustices.

And they started off as a really small organization when they received their first grant.

They were early on in their work and anecdotally we know that this grant funding really enabled them to grow their staff size, to increase their programming and leverage more funding that has ultimately enabled them to grow and continue to provide programming for our communities.

And this is just one example of how the EJ Fund, again, can serve us more than a grant, right?

It can really support the growth of our community organizations and exemplifies our guiding goals and actions.

Another partner is Lake City Collective, and they're a group that also exemplifies our guiding goals and actions.

One of the co-directors of this organization, Cesar Garcia, began his work as a member of the Community Partner Steering Committee, the Environmental Justice Committee, and has been a longtime partner, and he has often shared how that experience really helped to inform the work that Lake City Collective is now doing.

They were also a grant recipient of the Environmental Justice Fund, and that grant allowed them to, for the first time, really connect with their communities and understand their environmental justice priorities.

It allowed them to create a green space, which was really critical for a community that didn't have one at the time.

And so again, this is just one example of the many grantees and the important work that they're doing.

So transitioning from the impact that these critical investments have had, I wanna now dive a little bit into the trends that we've seen around the funding that we have awarded and the funding that has been requested.

So here we have a graph that shows data from 2018 through 2023. The blue bars represent the funding that has been awarded and the orange bars represent the total funding that has been requested.

In 2018, the EJ fund launched with $250,000 from the general fund, but the passage of a Green New Deal for Seattle in 2019 directed revenue from the payroll expense tax starting 2020 for this fund.

So it is fully now funded by the PT.

And through a partnership with mayor's office and council, we have been able to modestly increase the amount of funding that we are awarding year over year.

But ultimately we see from the orange bars that the current need for this funding is outpacing what is currently available.

And now that we've covered these funding trends, I wanna just highlight some work that's ahead for us this year.

Specifically, we launched our 2025 RFP just last month.

It will close on June 3rd, and we look forward to onboarding a new cohort of partners.

We will be awarding $740,000 this year through this RFP.

We will also soon be releasing our first Environmental Justice Fund Impact Report that highlights the work from our first five years, and some of the information you've seen today will be in that report, so we look forward to sharing that with you.

And we'll also be releasing a short video that really highlights the program and some grantees' stories, and we'll make sure you see that as well.

And we look forward to really hosting more gatherings for our partners this year, convening them to really amplify the work they're doing and continue to connect them with the work that we're doing as a city.

And with that, I thank you for your time.

Thank you so much.

I see first hand from Council Member Solomon.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

My question is really basic.

What is the source of the funding for the funds that you give out?

Yeah, so thank you, Council Member.

That's a great question.

The payroll expense tax revenue is what's fully funding the Environmental Justice Fund.

Okay, great.

And how much do you have in the bucket to give out?

Also a great question.

This year we have $740,000 available.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Sacco.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you so much for this presentation, the highly impactful work that you all do every day to administer this terrific investment and program across the city and make sure that all the delivery partners and orgs that do the work are able to succeed in amplifying their voices in the process.

So thank you.

First off, let me quickly revert back to a discussion from the last topic on the Fresh Bucks program and a comment made by one of my colleagues about the best farmer's market in the city.

Councilmember Strauss, I will be perfectly blunt.

The Delridge farmer's market administered by the ACHD, African Community Housing and Development Organization, is the best.

Another best is the West Seattle Farmer's Market.

They sort of serve two different segments, but check out the Delridge Farmer's Market, by the way.

Sometime they have the best, I particularly enjoy a fella Joloff catering.

Best jollof rice and West African staple.

Also love the Black Farmers Market Collective, and they have a number of great vendors and providers and sourcers there.

So anyways, that's more of an aside and a fact.

We have many policy debates here publicly at this dais, but I love the ones where we talk about the best, because it's all in D1.

There's a spoiler alert.

All right.

Back to this important work.

Thank you again.

The whole...

Again, Environmental Justice Fund, this construct of building resilience in communities most impacted by environmental injustice, injustices rather, is something that's near and dear to me because, again, I represent the Duwamish Valley, both sides of the Duwamish, South Park and Georgetown, who are deeply impacted.

And so I know firsthand from hearing from many of my constituents the importance of this work.

So you mentioned Via Communitaria, is one of the community partners.

Shout out to them.

So in any event, thank you for this work.

Appreciate all you do.

And I know my constituents do too.

Thank you, council member.

Colleagues, any additional questions?

Council member Strauss.

Thank you, chair.

No questions for you.

Just similar message to the last presentation.

Keep up the great work.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, I have a couple of questions.

And again, thank you for the work that you do and for being here today.

Curious about, so I will share colleagues, I was proud to stand with the executive just last week.

Was it last week?

Two weeks ago?

What's time?

It was Earth Day.

We stood together on Earth Day to announce the update and the work that we're doing to update the city's climate action plan.

Wondering about the integration there and if we can expect to see some updates or recommendations of how we use this fund and these investments included in the climate action plan.

Yeah, I'll answer that and say absolutely.

We're looking forward to working with Ximena and our grantee organizations to gather their feedback, not only on their policy and programmatic priorities to address the impacts of climate change, but to understand where the need is greatest to continue to inform the Environmental Justice Fund.

you fantastic and it was last week i'm just just time is funny was it last week yeah time's very long elusive and wondering about you know this really critical work on environmental justice is is so important and i've been heartened to see the state also take a role in stepping into the space of environmental justice and so wondering how you're coordinating your work with some of the the state work happening at Department of Health and a little bit at Department of Commerce, I believe, and some of the state legislation related to the HEAL Act as well.

So thinking about what is the interplay there?

How are we also coordinating those efforts?

I can take that.

Thank you so much for the question.

There's so much coordination.

I'll say with regards to the HEAL Act, OSCE is really proud to have a former state staffer in our office, Elise Rasmussen, who helped stand up the community board.

that worked on that legislation.

So there's some internal knowledge on staff.

There's also members of the Green New Deal Oversight Board, as well as grantees of the EJ Fund who serve on the State Environmental Justice Task Force.

So there's open dialogue there.

amongst the state level actions and how that correlates back to the city.

I'll also say that the Environmental Justice Fund, I just wanna sing Jimenez praises here, is a program that is quite unique for local governments.

The structure of this grant program has inspired state-level work and how state-level grant programs are shaped.

County-level work has also influenced other cities across the country.

And so there's a bit of an emulation of structure in some regard, too, there.

Incredible, Seattle being a leader again in another amazing area.

It's something we should just certainly be proud of.

And thinking about just looking ahead and engagement with community, there's a note on the what's ahead slide on just gatherings to amplify community-led efforts.

I'm really curious to know how we're also engaging with young people in some of this work.

And so could you speak a little bit more about that and also just expand out any of the other effort, like the community-led efforts and kind of what that looks like?

Yeah, absolutely.

The grant specifically supports a lot of organizations that are specifically serving youth.

Young Women Empowered is one of them.

And I will say that we, again, look for ways to connect organizations to city-led work.

last year through the Food Action Plan update process, there was a really close and intentional partnership with our colleagues who were leading that effort to partner with Young Women Empowered utilizing the EJ fund as a bridge to connect these two efforts so they could actually engage youth to help .

Can you repeat your second question, please?

Just curious about anything you wanted to add in terms of your community-driven efforts and organizations you're working with or any specific stories you'd like to share.

Oh, there are so many great stories of the work.

I think, let's see.

I feel like I highlighted a few here, so I'm trying to think of some different ones.

I will say the work that we're seeing with Wanawari, for example, is another really great and critical programming.

They have been intentionally partnering with organizations that serve youth who are really newer to the area and are seeking out communities, seeking out connections so that they can also feel like they are part of a network that is supportive and helping them feel rooted here.

And they've been able to really do that work intentionally through programming like weekly volunteer parties, monthly gatherings through which folks are coming together, infusing art and dance and practices that keep them connected to their cultures as well.

And so I think that's one example.

And again, I think speaks to this question around like youth and how we're supporting youth through these funds.

Another one maybe I'll highlight is the really important work that's being led by organizations like the Common Acre, for instance.

They have been working in partnership with Yahout in the Rainier Valley area to actually continued some efforts around natural restoration and also hosting different gatherings and opportunities where they're bringing in folks from different backgrounds, artists, as well as indigenous folks who can provide a space for indigenous and native urban folks to really continue to feel deeply rooted in their practices in a space that's designed by and for them.

Thank you for that, Jimena.

And thank you for your work as well.

And I'll just conclude with this.

Colleagues, we have an environmental justice fund because we have a history of environmental racism in this city.

That's why this fund exists, to try and remedy what has been done to so many of our black and brown communities in the city.

I'll often use the term frontline communities when talking about environmental justice because I want to be very clear and pointed to say there have been a disproportionate number of black, brown, immigrant communities that have been at the front, that have borne the brunt of pollution in this city.

And we continue to see time and time again, people having these frontline communities having lower life expectancy rates.

developing different kinds of illnesses and diseases associated with disproportionate amounts of pollution.

The data's there.

We have it on the state level, we have it on the city level.

And I think it's just important to continue to name that.

We continue to see these disparate outcomes and it's unjust.

And so these investments are important.

I wanna commend the work of OSC for working in partnership with communities on education and trying to remedy these efforts.

And thank you also for your coordination with the state on this matter.

The HEAL Act was an incredibly important piece of legislation for the state to be able to start taking steps in this direction.

And we also have to take steps to bring down our emissions and pollution as well.

And that's gonna take some other major system level interventions to be able to just try and get pollutants out of our communities.

So I wanna thank you again for your work and I'm really excited to see how we can work in the Climate Action Plan update to be further focused and expand on this work.

So thank you all and I'm sure see you soon.

Thank you all so much for your time.

Thank you so much for your time.

Have a good weekend.

All right, colleagues, we have reached the end of today's agenda.

Is there anything for good of the order?

Okay, I saved my good-of-the-order comments to comment on farmer's markets as well, because we have a lot of great farmer's markets in this city.

So I have to shout out the Columbia City Farmer's Market, but also the Capitol Hill Farmer's Market, which important to note is one of the year-round ones, same with University District.

But I also do love the West Seattle Farmer's Market as well.

Councilmember Sokka, it's one of my favorites.

I know, I gotta get out to Delridge.

It's a goal to be at all of them, but I had to at least name that.

All of our farmers markets are amazing.

So with that, colleagues, anything else for the good of the order?

Nope, fabulous.

All right, with that, that concludes our meeting of the, with no, oh, I have to say the line.

We have reached the end of today's meeting agenda.

Is there any further business to come before the committee before we adjourn?

Hearing no further business to come before the committee, we are adjourned.

It is 1058 AM.

Thank you, everyone.