Finance & Housing Committee 9/7/22

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning.

Thanks so much for joining the Finance and Housing Committee meeting of the Seattle City Council.

Today is September 7th, and the time is 9.32 a.m.

I'm Teresa Mosqueda, Chair of the Finance and Housing Committee.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Vice Chair Herbold?

Here.

Council Member Peterson?

Here.

Council Member Nelson?

Present.

Council Member Lewis?

Present.

Madam Chair Mosqueda?

Present.

Madam Chair, that is five present on excuse.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

Colleagues, thanks again for joining us today.

This is our regularly scheduled first meeting of September.

Our next meeting in September will be on the third week.

Today, we do have an agenda that includes the quarterly Seattle Rescue Plan spending update, the Yesler Terrace Memorandum of Agreement modification, and the Green New Deal Jumpstart Appropriation, where we will hear all about the recommendations for use of the Jumpstart funding as dedicated in the spend plan from the Jumpstart Progressive Payroll Tax.

If there's no objection, today's agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

In advance, I'd like to thank Vice Chair Herbold.

If we do end up going past 11.30 a.m., I will be handing over the gavel of sorts to our Vice Chair to close us out.

But I do think that we will be able to get through all of the items in time today, colleagues, as we do not currently have anybody signed up for remote public comment.

Madam Clerk, could you just confirm that we also do not have anybody signed up in person?

That's right.

We don't have anybody signed up in person.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Okay, for the good of the order, I will be opening up public comment, seeing that there is no one signed up to provide public comment.

We will go ahead and close out public comment for today.

I will also note that many of the folks who are excited about talking about the Green New Deal spend plan recommendations will be joining us virtually for presentations as well.

And you may be receiving some additional public comment from members of the community on any item from our agenda.

If you're not in chambers or online, you can always reach us at council at seattle.gov and we will happily read your public comment there.

Okay, Madam Clerk, let's go ahead and move right on into the first item on the agenda.

item number one quarterly Seattle rescue plan spending plan update for briefing and discussion.

Thank you so much.

I just wanted to confirm that we have our presenters here with us from the, uh, city budgets office.

And if we don't have those, then I'm happy to go ahead and read in item number two.

Um, and we can go ahead and come back to item number one.

Does that sound good?

If we don't have our budget director?

Do we have William Chen from the budget office as well?

Okay, they may be planning to come later in the agenda.

So we will go ahead Madam Clerk and leave agenda item number one open.

Madam Clerk, could you read agenda item number two?

agenda item number two, Council Bill 120414, an ordinance relating to the redevelopment of Jesseler Terrace by the Housing Authority of the City of Seattle for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Wonderful.

I very much want to thank the presenters that we have with us here today on this item.

This item will include Andrea Akita, the Deputy Director of the Office of Housing, Jared Johnson, Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation Development Authority, also known as SCIPTA, Chris Persons, the CEO of Community Roots Housing, along with Taya Munchell from Community Roots Housing.

And we also have with us Terry Gallini from Seattle Housing Authority, along with our very own Tracy Ratcliffe from Central Staff, as always.

I'm really excited about the panel that we have in front of us, and I hope we are not catching folks off guard with the earlier than usual start time.

Since there was no public comment, we'll make sure to send a message to any of the presenters not here.

But I do see William Chen, Terry Gallini, Taya Munchell, I see Jared Johnson, Tracy Radscliffe, and as we see more people pop in, we will be happy to have them speak about this item as well.

I'm going to first turn it over, I believe, to Tracy Raskliff, who perhaps is going to walk us through the legislation in front of us.

We have Council Bill 120414. This is a piece of legislation I'm really excited about.

It allows for us to continue the fulfillment of the vision for redevelopment at Yesler Terrace that provides new family-sized units for low-income families developed by our community-based housing partners.

That's why we have SCIPTA and Community Roots Housing here with us today.

It will also include a new early education center run by Denise Louie Education Center.

And we will have our partners, the Office of Housing and our community partners noted in the introductions provide a summary of their interest in this legislation as well.

But first, I'd like to go ahead and turn it over to Tracy Ratzliff to walk us through any of the details.

So I'll briefly take the thunder that the Office of Housing was going to actually provide to you in terms of describing the outlines of this legislation.

You have in front of you an ordinance that would, in fact, make an amendment to the cooperative agreement that is between the city and, interestingly enough, Seattle Housing Authority as it relates to the Yesler Terrace development project.

In that cooperative agreement, the city made commitments to provide funding for housing being developed as part of the Yes or Terrace redevelopment.

That development of housing, in part, involves community housing developer partners, such as SCIPTA and Community Roots, who are doing some of the building of low-income housing, replacement housing included, at Yes or Terrace.

That initial allocation that was made for what is called now the phase three of Yesterterris was $13 million for all the housing that would take place there.

There is the one project that is under, soon to be under construction, I believe, by Skipton Community Roots Housing, that because of the pandemic and because of rising construction costs, has become short in terms of the money that they need to complete that project.

So this amendment today would authorize the office of housing to provide up to an additional $3.3 million that would be used to provide the needed funding to complete that project that's being done by SCPTA and Community Roots Housing on the Esther Terrace Redevelopment Project.

Great, thank you, Tracy.

Are there any questions for Tracy Ratzglick before we open it up to our community partners?

Okay, I do see Council Member Peterson off mute, and Council Member Peterson, please feel free to ask questions, and then Council Member Herbold, and then we will go to Office of Housing, and we might get a bigger picture of all of the components once the community partners speak.

Go ahead, Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I think you're right, since we're going to hear from the Office of Housing and the requesters for the funding, I can hold my question, see if it's answered along the way.

Okay, excellent.

We'll come back to you first after the presentation to see if there's additional questions.

Vice Chair Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I just didn't hear in the set up and maybe like Councilmember Peterson, I should be anticipating that it's going to be covered, but as part of the background, I think it would be helpful to have fresh in our minds what the original agreement was.

If we're amending it to allow for the use of more resources, what was the original agreement?

So the original agreement for phase three of the the housing development was to provide up to $13 million to fund those anticipated housing units that would be done in phase three.

To remind you, Council Member Herbold, we had phase one, phase two, where we made commitments for funding, and those housing units were completed.

And then we had this final phase of phase three, where we allocated the up to $13 million, and it is that phase three where we are going to be providing potential opportunity for there to be additional dollars to go to this housing project.

Thank you.

And if you did include that number in your opening remarks, I apologize.

No worries.

No worries.

It's good to paint the picture up because there are new people here who don't have history like you do.

So no problem.

And a very, very good memory I always am impressed.

I will just pause briefly I don't see our office of housing folks on the line yet I know we are trying to get them on here we are a little ahead of schedule since there was no public comment this morning.

No one signed up for public comments.

So I'm excited that we have with us a community panel, including Chris Persons from Community Roots Housing.

Good morning, Chris.

Good morning, Taya, as well, from Community Roots Housing.

Terry, I see you from the Seattle Housing Authority.

And I believe that we have Jared Johnson.

Hi there, Jared.

Wonderful.

So I'm happy to defer to you all if you'd like to jump in.

I'm not sure of any particular order.

But feel free to go ahead and walk us through the presentation, the interest in this phase three.

I see off mute.

Chris, why don't you go ahead and get us kicked off?

Well, I was just going to say, well, good morning, everybody.

We're happy to be here to see you on this Sunday morning.

And I think Jared Johnson from SCIPTA is going to start with our presentation.

We do have a PowerPoint.

Is somebody running that on our behalf?

Madam Clerk, could you tee that up?

Let me get it real quick.

And if someone else has it on their computer and you want to get that shared on your screen, you're welcome to do that as well.

Yeah, we can see that.

Wonderful.

Thank you for your time, everyone.

My name is Jared Johnson.

I'm the director of property operations for the Seattle Chinatown Preservation and Development Authority, also known as SCPDA.

I'm going to provide a really brief intro to the project, and then our partners at CRH Community Reads will kind of take it from there.

For those who don't know, SCPDA is a mission-driven organization.

We are a community development organization, and we really approach real estate very differently.

We live our mission out through how we operate our buildings, and especially for the residents that we serve who are limited English proficient and amongst the lowest income residents in the city of Seattle.

For this project, which is, again, part of a larger Yesler redevelopment, we really have to thank Community Roots for their partnership, lending their years of expertise in real estate development and championing skimpness capacity to grow as a BIPOC-led developer of housing.

This is our first ground-up development in close to 20 years, and our two organizations have shared goals of housing affordability, housing stability, and fighting the pressures of displacement by providing family-sized housing.

We're so excited for the two, three, and four-bedroom units that are on their way, including also the child care center that's going to be run by the East Louie and we also have 2,500 square feet of retail space and we'll be working with the Office of Economic Development to fill those spaces.

And hopefully by this time next year we'll be on our way to fully leasing the building.

So I just want to thank everyone for their time and especially our partners at Community Roots.

Sia, if you want to take it away, I will advance to the next slide.

And Thea, sorry for mispronouncing your name.

Appreciate the correction there.

And Jared, just so you know, I think your audio was a little muffled.

So if we come back to you for questions, feel free to yell it into the microphone.

Okay, Thea, good morning.

Good morning.

Thank you.

Yesler Family Housing is a project that includes 156 new housing units in the neighborhoods of Little Saigon, Yesler, and the Central District.

What's really great and unique about this project is the number of family-sized units included in the development, including 25 three-bedroom units and seven four-bedroom units.

And this is supported with the Ground Floor Early Childhood Education Center, as you mentioned, that would be run by Denise Louie, as well as some outdoor areas that would be shared between the daycare and, or the Early Childhood Education Center, I'm sorry.

And the residents, all of the housing will serve residents at 30 or 60% AMI.

And in addition to the, nearly 8,500 square foot education center that will be just over 2,000 square feet of ground floor commercial.

That'll be for community-based businesses.

And I just think it's a really exciting project and partnership between Community Rights Housing and SCIPTA.

Chris.

Yeah, I was just wondering if you would say a little bit more about where we are in the construction.

Oh, sure.

Yeah, we actually started construction in May of 2021. And due to COVID and some unforeseen labor issues, we are actually behind schedule, which is one of the issues that's driving the increased costs to the project at this time.

So at this point, we're looking for a completed project in May of 2023.

And the building's fully topped off, so the construction is quite a ways down.

With the additional costs that Theo was referencing, we worked very, very hard with our general contractor to reduce costs as much as we could and got the increases down to a level that, you know, we just couldn't get it down any further.

So the additional funding is really just filling the gap that was caused by the labor dispute last year.

Excellent.

Any additional comments on this slide?

Okay, I see Andrea Akita from Office of Housing.

Good morning.

We are just walking through the presentation here.

Are we turning it over to you for this slide, Andrea?

Yes, good morning and good morning.

I'm sorry I technical difficulties and I'm apologies to my partners from skipped and community housing.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, we are here to propose that the council adopt the ordinance which would authorize the city to amend the.

The cooperative agreement between the city of Seattle and the Seattle Housing Authority, the specific amendment allows for additional city contribution.

In addition to any previously authorized in the cooperative agreement that the city may contribute an additional 3 million.

$348,429 to the 13th Infer Family Project.

And that includes $2 million, which is additional city funding, plus an additional 1.3 million of pass-through grants that this project has been awarded through the state because of the importance of the project and their ability to work in partnership and create these units.

So that's the proposal before you all today.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you.

And Terry, did you have anything else you'd like to add?

Just SHA's deep appreciation for the council's support, for Office of Housing Support, and then obviously for the partnership with Community Roots and SCIPTA.

The people on this call may remember that we went through a competitive process for selecting a development partner for this site, and we're just thrilled to have Community Roots and Skipta be a partner here in providing replacement housing for the original 561 units at Yesler.

The project is going to provide affordable housing for 92 of those original residents at Yesler.

So just SHA's deep appreciation and support for the project and for the action proposed today.

So thank you.

Thank you very much.

This, I think, concludes all of the folks who we had as part of the panel.

Did any panelists want to add anything else before we get to questions?

Okay, great.

I think you can go ahead and leave up this summary page for right now, and we will take a few questions.

Council Member Peterson, I think you're up first.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Thanks, everybody, for being here.

So many different partners on this project.

So appreciate you all working together on this.

So just so I understand, this would be approximately a 25% increase going from $13 million to $16 plus million.

So for me, so much of the decision is about how to best deploy the public tax dollar, and it's an assessment of trade-offs.

So presumably, we could use the $2 to $3 million to provide to other new projects so they can generate additional units, whereas we're not getting any additional units here we're just finishing the ones that we're already committed to.

So just want to ask a few questions about this so.

One question, I'm really glad to see money, 1 million of the 3 million coming from the state.

Just wondering why the housing authority or the federal government would not be contributing to the overage here.

Could I just, Chair, should I just get my questions all out?

Yeah, that sounds fine.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

So one question is, why no contribution from the Housing Authority or the federal government?

I'm curious if the Office of Housing could sort of walk us through the due diligence they do to say yes to additional grant requests.

Did you compare the before and after sources and uses of funds for the project?

Trying to understand how exactly the pandemic increases costs for housing project under construction.

Just what I'm sure it does.

I just trying to, if we could just drill down into that a little bit more, the concrete strike obviously makes sense, but the pandemic is a little bit vague.

So if you get more specific there, and then how would this not be setting a financial precedent for other nonprofits who are also in the middle of building affordable housing for Seattle?

Cause they obviously went through the pandemic and the concrete strike.

And I guess, you know, the office of housing's budget is limited.

So, Are there any other pending requests?

Are we gonna get a dozen other requests like this just so we see the big picture of what's going on?

Those are my questions for now.

Thank you.

Thanks so much, Council Member Peterson.

So a series of questions there.

Andra, do you have some answers specific to the funding, the braiding of funding?

And of course, Terry, feel free to chime in as well on any ideas or limitations you may have.

Go ahead, Andra.

Thank you.

So I'll leave the federal contribution and maybe the housing authorities contribution to last.

But in general, I guess I'll start with precedence across the board for all of the projects that OH is participating in and providing.

investment in we act as what we call kind of the gap funder and what that means is at the time that we are awarding funding we're working with a project that we award funding to to the completion of that project so throughout that project as things twist and turn as leverages received for different projects, then we are constantly in evaluation with the project developer and sponsors on ensuring that we can keep costs to within a budget that we're setting and to be able to make it as cost effective as possible.

This is not necessarily setting up any precedents for other projects.

We're working with all of our projects in the same way to work with them to fill the gaps related to unforeseen.

They're constantly looking at due diligence ways to value engineer their projects in ways to ensure that they can develop the product that they're set out to develop.

The reason why this is coming to Council in this way is specifically because of the relationship and the location of this project within the Yesler Terrace Redevelopment Community and the commitments that the City has made overall to the projects that are developed by non-profits that require City and public funding in order to make that promise happen for that community.

So I think that The due diligence is applied at multiple steps along our production process, our financing process, and we are looking at the budgets along every step of the way.

Terry, I might ask you to speak to the different, and our sponsors to speak to the different financing that they have within this project.

Yeah, I think the in terms of the do you want to speak to the on the specific financing elements.

I think probably that the the skip and community roots team might be better able to speak to that I can speak about the SHA and the federal government side, but maybe chip and skip that should chime in next.

Thea, do you want to walk through the sources side?

I can just say that when the gap started to become clear, and every day that I know this is being recorded, but it was the construction, it was the concrete strike that really drove the costs, the delay.

We were tracking them daily and some of our other projects we've been able to Value engineers some things out to cover some of those costs, but there are definitely gaps caused by the, the concrete strike and it hit this project at, like, the worst.

Possible time, because we were in the middle of pouring, so we just had to had to stop the poor and in the middle of the of the activity.

We couldn't do any other work on the project, so the project came to an immediate standstill, and the cost just skyrocketed.

And we have had some intense conversations, Council Member Peterson, as you can imagine, about who would pay for that.

And the You know, it could come from Community Roots Housing, it could come from SHA, and then it would diminish our ability to create more housing.

So whoever's paying for it, it's taking away from our collective ability to create more housing.

But the agreement that we reached in conversations was, you know, we got the money from the state, increased the commitment from the city.

The city had already made a significant commitment to this, and I think as you heard from Um, Deputy Director Akita that, you know, when the city comes into the projects, they're in for the long haul.

I know you asked for a budget and Thea's going to send you that budget to Council Member Peterson, but Thea, do you want to walk through sort of what the capital stack is?

I don't know, can you share your screen too and pull it up and show us?

I don't know if I can, you know, find an image.

Sorry, because I printed out materials to prepare.

It's okay.

I don't need to see the...

We don't necessarily need to see all the sources and funding today.

I guess the real question is why of the 2 million or 3 million, why doesn't the federal government or housing authority also contribute?

Maybe that's a good transition.

Terry, you want to jump in?

Sure.

Yeah.

Thanks for that question.

Council Member Peterson, as you know, Yesler received Choice Neighborhoods grant for the redevelopment from HUD of $30 million, including planning and a lot more than just housing, but a total of $30 million.

And all of that, all of those funds have been allocated to various projects within Yesler.

There's very little of that left.

I will, going to ask Chris really quickly.

I think the 1.3 maybe it may be from the state, but it actually may be federal funds.

I'm not 100% sure, which will offset that, um, to the question about S.

H. A. Providing capital.

So, so S.

H. A. Is already providing $4 million in capital for the development of this project.

And we are also providing 92 vouchers for the units there.

One thing that Chris and team did not talk about is the work that went into getting this down to 3.3.

We've been partners with those groups in bringing that number down through value engineering, pressuring the other partners, the contractors and the lenders and investors to each have a little bit of skin in the game.

So I just wanted to share that we've been a partner with them on that.

So I hope that is responsive.

Thank you.

Very helpful.

Thank you all.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

much.

Appreciate the praise for my memory.

But I did have to actually go back and check my memory.

And I appreciate that I may have not asked the question as I intended.

I intended to be asking what the original agreement was.

And I think the answer I got is what is the, and I may have asked it that way, what is the change that we're seeking in this particular new agreement?

And so whereas that might be from, a $13 million commitment to include these additional funds.

I went back and I checked the original 2012 agreement, and that agreement, I believe, was about $11 million.

So I'm guessing what that means is we've made some other changes along the way since 2012 that I'm not remembering.

But I think the original agreement was that the city's commitment would be $11 million, and that was after there had been a $7.5 million commitment.

And so it's been sort of inching up a little bit.

The question I want to really, there's two things I want to delve into.

And one of the questions relates to, I think, the point that Council Member Peterson was making.

The original agreement, and again, we may have already stripped this obligation out of the agreement, but the original agreement required that if they were coming back, if SHA was coming back for more city funds, it needed to be a competitive process.

So I'm wanting to check on whether or not that obligation still exists.

And then secondly, as it relates to the issue of SHA's commitments to this project, just I think an important piece of the original plan was a recognition that the plan identified an intention to sell 40% of the public land in order to fund the project.

But while recognizing that that was necessary to fund the project, there was an obligation included that if the revenues from selling the public land were in excess of what was intended, that the funds need to go back into the yes or terrorist redevelopment activities.

So I'm interested to know a little bit more about the fulfillment of that obligation as well.

Thank you.

Great.

I see Tracy Rathcliffe off mute.

Perhaps our central staff has a technical answer on some of those things.

And Tracy, if you need a few more minutes to pull up the numbers, that's no problem.

We can come back to you.

So I'm gonna need to do a little bit more research, but I think Council Member Herbold, so there was the overall commitment that the council made to this redevelopment to provide, I think, $30 million.

And then we had money provided in phase one and phase two of the housing development that was done, which I do think totals just a little bit over $11 million.

I don't remember that we made any amendment that provided any more additional dollars, other than when we took the action on the phase three to provide the $13 million so I'm going to need to go back and check my history to make sure I'm not wrong about that.

So, this would be the first change.

that is made to the overall amount that we were anticipating being made for the housing, different than what we had already approved for in terms of phase one funding and phase two for the housing.

So I'll just have to go back and check, but the overall amount that we had committed to, I think, and Terry, maybe you can confirm that as well.

It was, I think, $30 million.

but that may have also included some of the parks money.

As it relates to the sale of property, I'm gonna let Terry answer the question.

We actually did, I think we had requested SHHA to come back to us on the issue of land sales.

It was, I think, either a statement of legislative intent or a separate request for them to come back to us to tell us Had they gotten any dollars above what they were anticipating that they needed to redevelop the project?

And I believe that they submitted that report to indicate to us that they did not get proceeds in excess of what they needed to do, plan to do for the rest of the redevelopment.

But I'll let Sherry confirm that.

And also just don't wanna forget the competitive application questions.

That I can't answer, I'm gonna have to let them answer.

Thank you.

I just just try chiming in customer her boat I and and Tracy and others did a little bit more research on this than I did.

But what you may be referring to is that there is language in the cooperative agreement that says that if any additional funds or SHA and partners, which part of what we're doing here, if there's a request of additional funds that we would have to come back to council.

So I think that that is what I and and Tracy will correct me if there is a competitive component to it.

I, but I don't, I don't recall that in the lead up to, uh, to, to, to these discussions, um, in terms of, uh, land sales at Yesler, uh, I referred to the $4 million in capital funds that we are providing to this.

Uh, project and the source of those funds are capital dollars.

The thing I didn't mention is that we also purchased this land from the county for $7 million and contributed that.

So we donated that to the project.

So in addition to the $4 million in capital, we have $7 million in acquisition costs.

And the source of that is from other land sales within Yesler.

So a total of $11 million of land sales at Yesler is going to.

Thank you.

And maybe the answer to the question about the competitive process is answered by the source of the money.

I'm reading a summary of the original cooperative agreement, and it does specify levy dollars.

If you're asking for levy dollars, you have to go through the competitive process.

So perhaps this is not housing levy dollars that the city is contributing?

The proposed additional source of funds from the city?

I'd have to let our Office of Housing speak to that.

Great.

Yeah, I'm not seeing Andrea on the line anymore.

Oh, there you are, Andrea.

Please go ahead.

Sorry about that.

There may be additional levy funds in this, but I can't say that all of the dollars would be levy of up to $2 million.

Tracy, did you have something else?

I do have something on the nonprofit housing development.

So as it relates to replacement housing, and this has a portion of it that was a replacement housing, what it says is that the selection of nonprofit housing developers to produce replacement housing shall be through a SHA selection process with OH representation and approval of selection.

So it allowed- I'll send you the text I have as well, and we can compare and contrast later.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay, are there any additional questions or clarification?

Thea, I think I saw you come off mute.

Maybe I cut you off.

Well, I was just commenting that we did apply through the levy round for the original source of funding.

So I don't know if that satisfies the competition aspect of this.

Okay, I appreciate all of the questions.

I'm wondering if, colleagues, if you have any additional questions.

I had anticipated voting on this today.

and would be still happy to entertain a vote.

I appreciate that there's some questions and clarification that was already provided today and some follow-up material that has been requested.

Council Member Nelson, I see your hand.

This is a very important project.

I would hate to see it flounder just because we're at the very end missing some money because of delays, time drives.

So I will be supporting this, but I just wanted to ask the Office of Housing to just sort of put, restate Council Member Peterson's question about trade-offs.

So is this gonna be a problem on another project, or is there enough cushion to be able to afford an additional contribution from the Office of Housing on this?

We have sufficient resources to be able to provide resources to the 13th and Fir Family Housing Project.

We are working with all of the projects that we have awarded funding to to ensure that all of them will get to their finish line with the resources that we have available.

This is not removing other resources from existing projects that are in our pipeline that have been awarded funding at this time.

And I also wanted to note that, yes, we're trying to meet our replacement goals of the units, but a lot of these particular units are larger than the original units.

And so this will be actually, I don't know what the calculation would be, but this will be actually helping more individuals because of the large family-sized units.

So thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson and a good reminder of the type of units that we're talking about here.

Good family size units that we really need in our city and affordable ones at that.

I appreciate that there is additional follow-up information that's going to be sent to the committee.

I think that that could be sent to the full council.

I'm sure there's other interests as well from other council members.

Great questions that were asked and appreciate the detailed answers and memory from our colleagues as well about the importance of looking at these issues.

I would still, as Council Member Nelson noted, I would still like to be able to move forward with this.

I know that there's a sense of urgency around it, but I do recognize that there will be additional information that will be sent to colleagues before a final vote in full council.

So if folks are comfortable, okay, I'm seeing some nods.

I'm gonna put the legislation in front of us, and then we can go ahead and vote on it.

Council Member Peterson, anything else before I put the legislation in front of us?

Just that I appreciate the comments from you and council member Nelson and that we will be getting additional materials for the full council and I'm really happy to see a million dollars covered by the state.

Obviously the recipients are nonprofits with rather than for profits and they've got solid track records.

A lot of trust with the office of housing, low income housing is a top priority for the city so I will be able to get comfortable with this I just think it's important that we know in our oversight role we're just asking these questions to make sure due diligence was done that we don't.

that we see the bigger picture.

Are there any other requests coming?

And so I appreciate this forum.

And I think part of it's, you know, we're coming off of the two week recess.

I would have probably gotten my questions in earlier.

So thank you for the answers you were able to provide today.

Excellent.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

And thanks for your questions as well.

Okay, let's go ahead and get the legislation in front of us.

I move the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 120414. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

It's been moved and seconded.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I just want to state for the public record that I'm sure I'm going to be able to get there for the full council vote, but I will be abstaining until I learn more about the changes to the original cooperative agreement and just want to have that affirmation that we are in no way violating the expectations that were originally set for the use of ongoing use of city dollars.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you very much.

And I see Office of Housing nodding and taking notes.

So I'm sure that that information will be sent to us very shortly here.

And again, feel free to share that with the full council.

Okay, seeing no additional comments or questions, it has been moved in second and if there's no additional questions or comments, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the passage of Council Bill 120414?

Herbold?

Abstain.

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Madam Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is a five, a four in favor, one abstain.

Great.

Four in favor, one abstain.

Thank you so much.

The motion carries.

And the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the September 13th Seattle City Council meeting for a final vote, recognizing information will be shared with the full council to follow up on the questions asked today.

Excellent.

Thank you all very much for the work that you do, especially in these tough times.

Housing is the key to a healthy community, so we greatly appreciate all that you do on a daily basis, and especially the work that you've put into this project.

Looking forward to seeing it come to full fruition.

You do not have to be present on the 13th, but we appreciate any follow-up information before that.

Thanks, all.

Okay, we will move to, oh, please, any additional comments?

Just saying thank you.

Excellent, thank you very much, Christopher.

Thanks.

Okay, let's go ahead and move back to agenda item number one.

It has already been read into the record.

We want to welcome to the committee here Director Julie Dingley from City Budgets Office and William Chen as well.

Thank you for your flexibility in carrying this item over from our committee meeting last time.

This is our attempt to provide a in public community update on the spending aspects of the American Rescue Plan Act.

I should say acts of plural because in the city of Seattle, we had multiple Seattle rescue plans.

But this is our way to provide a transparent update to the community on how that spending is going.

And I will also note a lot of appreciation from our congressional delegation for the way in which Seattle has provided updates on a monthly basis in written format and that we are doing these quarterly updates in a public format as well.

So I think it helps them to be able to show the country how those federal dollars are being put to use.

I'll turn it over to Director Dingley to walk us through this conversation.

There is no vote on this.

This is just for briefing.

And we have a hard stop on this item at 11 o'clock so that we can use at least the last half an hour for the Green New Deal updates.

But if we can get through it before that, that's fantastic.

So Director Dingley, thanks for taking it away.

Awesome, thank you so much, Chair Mosqueda.

And thanks everybody for having us here today.

We're really excited to provide you with another update on Seattle's implementation of our rescue plan.

We have done incredible work over the last several months.

And just as a note at the top, this is a point in time presentation.

So some things have happened in the last 20 days since we prepared this originally for you, but we're gonna still attempt to just give you that point in time update.

You're going to hear from William Chen who is the lead for the Seattle Rescue Plan work within the city budget office.

He is just an incredible force of nature along with his team working to implement this work.

We have really exciting updates coming your way.

We've just recently submitted our second performance plan which is required by the feds, and also opened up a big transparency portal so that the residents can actually dig in and see what impact all these investments are having in our communities.

We're really excited to share that with you today.

I'm just going to be here in support mode.

So you're going to hear primarily from William.

So I'll turn it over to him to get the presentation started.

Thank you all.

Thanks, and good morning, Chair Muscatin and committee members.

Thanks for having us.

So first, a quick overview of the presentation, and I'll begin with key takeaways, and then I'll look across other federal funding sources before digging into updates on the city's funding from the American Rescue Plan Act, namely Seattle Rescue Plan funding.

We'll take a look at where things are with the implementation, introduce that new web portal for SRP, and review some highlights on the performance of SRP programs that have been underway.

So the first cycle of performance evaluation has been completed now with the submittal of the report to US Treasury and the publication of it at the end of July.

And that was the 2022 recovery plan performance report.

And in tandem with that report, we launched a new public web portal where people can see the city's progress in spending and highlights from the Seattle Rescue Plan.

And I'd like to just take a moment here and recognize the members of the Seattle Rescue Plan team who led and did Yeoman's work on the report and the portal, Madeline Bartsch and Janine Needles on the report, and Paulina Deschamps-Ramirez on the portal, working closely with Ben Delghetti from the mayor's office, along with big contributions from and hive mind-like coordination with other members of the Seattle Rescue Plan team, Nick Tucker and Wen Huang, as well as many partners and departments across the city who are implementing and evaluating these programs.

It was a huge package.

There's a lot of people involved, and there's a lot of people involved in creating this reporting and evaluation work that we're doing.

And implementation of the programs continues.

We're going to continue to gather data and stories about what these funds have done for the city and its people.

So this presentation is going to be mostly about the Seattle Rescue Plan funding, but in addition, FEMA reimbursement activity is ongoing, and city departments are watching for information to be released about infrastructure bill grants that are of interest and applying or preparing to apply.

And then finally, the Inflation Reduction Act was recently signed into law, and we'll be watching for more information to come out down the road.

Applications for FEMA reimbursement continue to work through all those steps of review.

There's now been 15.8 million of reimbursements that have either been received by the city or approved by FEMA to be sent to the city.

And that's an increase of about three and a half million in approvals over the last quarter.

There's another 17 and a half million in that pipeline for review and eventually potential reimbursement.

And all of these anticipated revenues have been factored into revenue projections and balancing assumptions.

We're establishing a planning and coordinating structure for communicating and decision-making on infrastructure bill grants.

And as noted earlier, departments have analyzed the bill for opportunities, watching for more information and rules to be released about each of those, and then also applying and preparing to apply as deadlines come up.

Any grants that the city does receive will be accepted through the normal grant acceptance legislation.

And now we turn to the Seattle Rescue Plan.

We've completed that first cycle of performance reporting to the U.S.

Treasury with the release of the annual recovery plan performance report.

And next, the city is going to continue implementing those programs, setting up performance evaluation on programs that weren't ready to be included in this year's report.

There's a lot more.

And then also evaluating and sharing those results in future editions of the annual report.

We also developed and launched a new web portal in tandem with this report's release.

The SRP Transparency Portal is a layperson-friendly website where you can see the city's progress in spending and highlights of different programs from the Seattle Rescue Plan.

The website also links to program sections in the report so that viewers can dive a little bit deeper on specific programs if they're interested.

And at the same time, the report references website for readers to get any more recent updates that might be on the website versus a static PDF report.

So on that slide, it's a link to the portal, and I encourage everyone to take a look.

So this familiar slide and the next are just a reminder of what funding we're talking about, namely the federal COVID relief funding that has come to the city from the American Rescue Plan Act.

And the largest of those grants that the city received was the Coronavirus Local Fiscal Recovery Fund, which we colloquially call CLFR.

CLFR is also the grant that requires the aforementioned very large performance report.

And it's on the CLFR performance highlights that the bulk of this presentation is about.

Between April and August of this year, the city recorded another $9.7 million in CLFR spending, and also continued to make progress obligating and encumbering funds and spending down encumbered funds.

The next two tables simply show the same spending stage information in tabular form.

Now we turn to sharing some of the measurement and evaluation work that the team and city departments have pulled together so far.

This work lets us take stock of what the relief and recovery programs have done for the city.

And where possible, the team analyzed the output of our programs to give a sense of how well we're doing reaching our target audience.

namely, are we reaching BIPOC people who studies showed were the most heavily impacted by the negative effects of the pandemic?

Is our funding going to the parts of the city that need it most, where people with greater need are more concentrated?

So on this slide, you can see two maps.

The one on the left side is the Racial and Social Equity Composite Index map, or the RSE index.

And the RSE index combines data on race, ethnicity, English learner status, immigrant status, socioeconomic disadvantages, health disadvantages, disability.

It's compiled by OBCD.

And mapping this index across the city shows us which parts of the city have higher concentrations of need.

Those are those darker blue areas in this map.

Last quarter, we shared administrative data that showed that the Seattle Relief Fund, which was the cash assistance program, funding went primarily to BIPOC households and also those who had lost jobs, income, or were in unstable housing.

The red map on the right side of the slide shows where recipients of the Seattle Relief Fund program were most concentrated.

And you can see that it matches up very well geographically with the most disadvantaged areas of the city.

So that's another good sign about how well the program targeted me.

This slide provides more detail about the affordable housing units that were purchased through the Rapid Acquisitions Program.

So there were 443 units in total.

And those units are divided amongst tiers of affordability.

126 of those are for people under 30% of the typical income for the area, or the area median income in Jargon.

Another 170 of those were for people under 50% of AMI and 147 for those under 60%.

And all four of the developments are in central Seattle with good access to public transit and in areas of high displacement risk.

This slide presents a status update on KCRHA's implementation of the Clifford funds that are going via them.

And they've now gotten their entire $28.8 million of Clifford funds under contract and have started spending.

William, I'll just note on this slide, thank you to the folks at CBO who've been really trying to push to get this information.

I know that we have been seeing on our regular monthly report outs that the money has been sent in terms of out of the city to Regional Homelessness Authority, but the questions that we continue to have was how has RHA, how has the Regional Homelessness Authority actually gotten those dollars out the door.

So this level of detail has been long desired and is really appreciated and I'm glad to hear that The actuals are being reported out, but we may have more questions about this for Councilmember Lewis's committee and as we head into budget, but appreciate you getting this level of detail and providing it for us.

The map on this slide shows where recipients of the Child Care Provider Wage Allotment Program were located, or the Equipment Funding Program, at least.

This map, too, shows that support generally went to parts of the city with the greatest need.

59% of these child care provider sites were located in under-resourced parts of southeast and southwest Seattle, and 68% of the funded staff identified as BIPOC.

Also on the slide is a status update of the Child Care Facilities Program.

HSD received a robust response to their RFP and are reviewing proposals, and they expect notifications of awards to go out on the 8th.

On this slide is another example of how measuring and evaluating program data can help us make sure that we're having the effect that we're hoping to have with our programs.

Seattle Public Library branches closed in March of 2020 due to COVID.

CLIFR funding helped to reopen library hours and restore those open hours to pre-pandemic levels.

The line graph on this slide compares open hours by month in 2019 in that red line versus open hours in 2021 in blue.

And you can see that when the CLIFR funds kicked in in September of 2021, the open hours jumped to a higher level for the remainder of the year near pre-pandemic levels.

Implementation continues also on economic recovery programs.

We can look at data from programs that are in flight to see how they're doing in course corrective need.

For the time periods that we had data to report on, neighborhood economic recovery grants have gone out to business associations across the city and also with RFP grants being focused in central and southeast Seattle.

The majority of recipient organizations are either BIPOC-led or serve BIPOC communities.

The Downtown Workforce Development Program hosts a virtual hiring hall, and 73% of participants identify as BIPOC, with most job seekers living in South Seattle or just south of the Seattle border.

Empty storefronts activation, also known as Seattle Restored, has allowed 22 small businesses so far, with the data that we had, to establish public locations in downtown Pioneer Square and the CID, with 73% of those businesses being BIPOC-owned and 64% women-owned.

And then finally, the Shop to the Beat program has linked up musicians to perform at small businesses and venues, particularly in central and southeast Seattle.

And 84% of musicians identify as BIPOC.

We've also got data to look back at how some of the completed outdoor recreation programs funded by Clifford have done.

And looking at that map on the slide, wading pools are marked with green triangles on the map, and they were reopened around the city, allowing families to stay cool, closer to home, wherever they lived in the city.

while the Rec of the Streets program, with the red squares on the map, aimed to provide outdoor recreational opportunities to families with less access.

And so you can see on the map that those events are held in more disadvantaged neighborhoods, according to the RSC index, that's darker blue areas of the city.

Then the Stay Healthy Streets program closed streets during the pandemic to give people safe outdoor space to recreate and maintain both physical and mental health.

Bike use on those routes doubled and pedestrian use more than quadrupled.

So, Quiffer funding was used to identify street closures that could be preserved in underserved areas and locations most impacted by the pandemic.

And more than 75% of the routes serve the highest and second highest, the darkest blue areas of this map, disadvantaged geographic areas per the RSC index.

And then finally, CIVIFORM.

The program allows people to apply to multiple aid programs without having to enter redundant information between their applications.

And the system we find with our data saves applicants time on every program, ranging from a few minute saves to as much as two hours saved per application.

Also on the slide is a map of where people are applying from around the city.

And also, this map resembles the RSC index map of disadvantaged neighborhoods.

and 67% of applicants identified as BIPOC.

So if anyone's interested in learning more about the programs that we've reported on, the full report can be found linked on the CDO website on the Seattle Rescue Plan page.

And these programs continue to be implemented and we're going to continue working with departments to gather data, improve data practices and our capacity for this kind of work and evaluate how we're doing and sharing the results.

questions now.

Thank you so much again.

I'm really thankful that the city budget's office is providing not only this level of information in terms of whether or not dollars are encumbered if they've gone out the door, we're still waiting.

But the maps that you provided to overlay the high high areas of lower income communities and especially BIPOC communities has been really helpful in visually seeing how we've targeted COVID relief efforts and our recovery towards a more equitable recovery by making sure that those most disproportionately impacted by COVID, which aligns with folks who have more frequently been working on front lines as essential workers who are more likely to be folks who are from BIPOC communities that they are receiving the funding directly and many of the programs and services in those neighborhoods as well.

That also overlays with much of our support for small businesses and for business recovery as well.

So thank you so much.

I will turn it over to our colleagues to see what questions you have.

They may wanna go back to a slide or two.

So if you wanna leave that up for a second, that'd be great.

Vice Chair Herbold, please go ahead.

I do have a few questions about how to read one of those earlier slides.

I think it's notes here.

Slide four.

and just wanna understand, and William, you may have covered this.

I just need to slow it down for my brain to catch up.

I need to understand some of the definitions.

Unadjusted amount, and what does that mean?

And why is it different from April to August?

The category, they're both called unadjusted, but there's a difference.

And then forecasted amount, is that what we expect to recoup?

And then go ahead.

Sorry.

Yeah, that's right.

So the unadjusted amount is the total amount that we're applying for reimbursement for.

depending on how far it's gone through the review, if it's early in the process still, we don't expect to get 100% of that.

So we have an assumption currently we are assuming 60% of that high amount or the early amount.

And as it works its way through those different rows in that table, different stages of review, we're getting more and more certain about how much of it's going to make it through.

So we gradually increase the percentage that we're assuming that we're going to get.

So that's the difference between the unadjusted and the forecasted amount.

The difference between April and August is that there are projects that we call them project worksheets.

They're kind of different emergency reimbursement projects that OEM tracks.

They may be aware of a program already, but then not necessarily have worked out with the department dollars that are going to be applied for.

So then that'll pop up as those get filled in.

It's also possible that as they learn more, they realize that more of it's reimbursable than they previously thought, or not so much of this happened between April and August, a little bit, but there might also be new programs that have been submitted to OEM to start tracking.

That said, at this point in the process, the likely variance, the kind of chance that it'll pop up anymore is a smaller amount now, given where we're at in the emergency.

Yeah, I'm just trying to look for a pattern, just to see what we might have learned from this process.

And so the first row, That seems like that might be a good pattern to expect in the following rows, but it doesn't play out that way.

So I could understand your unadjusted amount, you start small early on in the estimate, and then it's larger later on, and then you get somewhere in between the two numbers.

But that doesn't seem to be the pattern for these different projects.

I'm just wondering, is there anything that we have learned from this process of making an estimate, making another estimate, and then having a forecast of what we actually plan to receive?

And again, the forecasted amount is what we expect to receive, correct?

That's right.

Or it's certainly like our best attempt at what we expect to receive.

I will say this pandemic has been, you know, you've heard this word so many times, unprecedented.

And we won't be able to draw on past experience from OEM to help forecast this experience.

So, you know, we'll take what lessons we do learn from this and hopefully they'll be useful in the future.

you know, on the other hand, we also hope we don't have another pandemic.

The future emergencies that we deal with may not be similar to what we're dealing with now.

So it was just a matter of it being such a new, unprecedented pattern that we're trying to forecast here.

And then my second question is just about looking forward on the infrastructure bill in the Inflation Reduction Act and just broadly what we know about projects that will be eligible for federal funding under those two policies and what we know about the timing.

Yeah, so it's going to take many months for this to work out.

Thus far, we're talking with central staff also about how we should be, how we will be, you know, sharing information But so far, we've got a few that are applications that are just about due or actually due.

And then a number more that departments are actively working on that they actually have information about, here's the rules of the grant, and knowing whether or not the city has projects that are eligible that make sense to apply for.

And then a much larger body of grants that were in that federal bill that they haven't even released information about yet so it's still all just kind of TBD.

Did I hear you say that there are some that we are applying for now.

Yes.

I think that would be really helpful information for the council to have.

Just like I think under Carrie Mosqueda's leadership, we provided our guidance on the ways that we wanted these funds to be spent.

I think the council should have an opportunity to interact with the executive departments prior to applications going in.

And that's what we have been in discussion with central staff about what kind of process that might look like.

Dr. Dingley, I see you off mute.

Did you want to add anything else to that?

William took what I was going to say that we're just we're working on what that'll look like Council Member Herbold to figure out because a lot of these grants are really targeted and so they're actually quite limited on what types of projects that they could fund.

Some require a local match so we'd have to come and talk to you about that.

So given sort of the uncertain timing of when all of these things are going to come down with details and when their due dates are going to be, what the requirements are going to be, William has done incredible work standing up a sort of internal structure to look through all the opportunities to again, you know, we keep saying this make sure we are not leaving any dollars on the table and making smart investments for the city.

But yeah, working with central staff to figure out what and how to best like how to best engage with you all and at what cadence, but that's all definitely in the works.

I'll underscore the vice chair's comments on this as well.

And I think that it's a shared goal and desire from CBO, as you've just heard as well.

But I do think that it would be helpful maybe at the next meeting before we head into budget to have a sense of how some of those new grant dollars are going to be shared with council early in the process.

I think we're trying to sort of correct for some past Not, not will you over there but some past efforts where we learned about the application after the fact and I think Council wants to have a more proactive role in seeking some of these federal dollars, especially because of the partnership we're seeing under the Biden administration right now so appreciate that it's a work in progress, and that there's already conversations underway Ali Panucci as you know that the director for the central staff.

I did not ask her to be on the line here today.

I will do follow up there, Director Dingley, and see if maybe we can do an update for our council colleagues here before we head into budget.

And we'll explore the importance of getting that information proactively.

Go ahead, William.

On that point, I understand that OIR will be presenting to the full council on this next week.

Maybe it's the following week, but in any case in September.

So it's coming.

It's coming.

Okay, great.

Any additional questions?

Yes, Council Member Nelson.

Well, you probably know where I'm going with this, because I always zero in on small business recovery.

Could you go to slide 11?

I'm glad to see that we're getting the money out, 55% now.

And so I'm just wondering, does that mean that there is 45% more money left over for something else?

Because I understand that the mayor launched capital access program and also expanded with federal dollars the tenant improvement program and so I am just assuming that the businesses that will be receiving that money that that is included in the already encumbered category.

So, and also, I just want to recognize that OED has really been working hard to process grants and get this money out for intended uses.

So can you just shed some more light on what's going on with the rest of the 45%?

Yeah, thanks for that question.

So certainly part of it is the nomenclature about what's in process versus what's encumbered and what's not.

Some of these programs, like the Commercial Affordability Program, that isn't actually included in any of these numbers yet.

So that's a large chunk that currently has been launched.

They're going, but it's not counted as encumbered yet or in process.

showing up in that number.

So that's where a large chunk of that sits.

And similarly with some of these other OED programs where they've got heavily under discussion the contract signed but it hasn't actually gotten encumbered in the system, that might not show up there.

So it's partly a matter of you know, what the department is determining when they're telling us we've got this in process or not.

And then when you actually ask them, oh, is this is this is this just sitting fallow?

You know, you will say, no, no, no.

We've actually already been talking with community folks.

It's already verbally agreed to, but not really.

We haven't been saying that it's counted here.

Right.

And I and I think that your director Dingley's comments that this presentation is a couple weeks out of date.

And so it's very possible that number is now different.

Anyway, thank you for that explanation.

Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, Director.

Oh, no, you said exactly what I was gonna say.

So no problem at all, Council Member.

Thank you.

Excellent, okay.

I'm just looking to see if there's any additional questions.

Is that a new hand, Council Member Nelson?

Okay, great.

So thank you so much for the walkthrough here today, both to Director Dingley and to William.

Again, colleagues, this is the third time the committee has had the chance to walk through the presentation in a comprehensive way.

We will continue to get an update.

I believe, Julie, we're planning for a November timeframe as well.

Okay.

And that looks like what we're trying to do is sequence this with our quarterly revenue forecast updates that follow the Revenue Council Committee meetings.

So we'll, again, get a chance to have any updates in November.

I want to thank your team as well for the monthly report outs that we receive and the comprehensive summaries that the departments have been sending to you so that we can have that information available at our fingertips.

This is a really exciting way for us to continue to track the effect of the $3 million that approximately $3 million in federal relief that the city of Seattle received and sent out to the community through four sets of Seattle rescue plan legislation.

So we will continue to have this.

And as you can tell, the city budget's office is available to us and the community.

So we're able to provide greater transparency and accountability on these dollars and work in partnership with our federal delegation who worked very hard to provide this assistance directly to us.

I also think it's a really good way of putting on a little local progress slash national League of Cities hat here.

It's a really good way for us to show to Congress that when cities receive money directly, we put them into action.

Yes, we appreciate pass-through dollars from the state always, but having the money come directly to us meant that we could more quickly act and I think provide some flexibility in how we appropriated these dollars given that we're closest to the ground and the folks who have been feeling the impact of COVID.

And I hope we continue to see dollars come directly to cities in the future.

Okay, thanks for all your work.

All right, we are just on time and Vice Chair Herbold, I think we're going to maybe get us out of here on time.

So hopefully there won't be a need to hand over the gavel at 1130. But we are at 1045. And we're going to head on over to talk about green new deal recommendations.

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

Agenda item number three, Council Bill 120413, an ordinance amending ordinance 126490, which adopted the 2022 budget, changing appropriations to various departments and budget control levels, and from various funds in the budget.

For a briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

I am very excited about the panel that we have.

This is the debut, I believe, of our director from the Office of Sustainability and the Environment, Jessen Farrell, former representative and Working Families Champ.

We also have with us OSE's Climate Justice Director, which is an amazing title, Liliana Ayala, and we have a community panel with us that makes up Green New Deal board executive committee members.

This includes Davalina Barnegeri, please correct my pronunciation when you can, Maria Batiaola, and Cyrus Valentin.

So it's going to be wonderful to hear from all of you.

And this is a conversation about the legislation that's been anticipated by the community, by the panel members here today, and is so desperately needed as we see skyrocketing Temperatures in our region, wildfires around the country, crises like the floods that are occurring across the globe.

We in Seattle are working to put jumpstart progressive revenue dollars towards the Green New Deal spend plan as codified in statute.

We are maintaining our commitments here.

The proposed bill in front of us would release $6.5 million of Jumpstart Seattle funds from the finance general for Green New Deal priorities based on the recommendations directly from community from the Green New Deal Oversight Board.

This is a board that was called for from community to make sure that there was direct oversight over a large portion of the Green New Deal funds from Jumpstart, and it was included in the council's 2022 adoptive budget.

So I want to thank you in advance.

The board has engaged with various city departments and conducted this extensive public outreach and engagement process that you'll hear about, and they have developed these recommendations for us.

They've submitted these recommendations to make sure that the 2022 reserves can be spent according to their recommendations and that the 2023 budget that we will be soon receiving from the mayor as his proposed budget and that the city council can act upon includes these priorities as well.

I'm going to turn it over to Director Farrell to maybe provide additional context and to welcome the panel.

And I just want to thank you for all of your work.

Congratulations again.

We're very excited to have you.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

We are so excited to be here.

For the record, I'm Jessen Farrell, Director of Office of Sustainability and Environment.

And before we jump in, why don't we have each of the panelists introduce themselves?

And Liliana, why don't we start with you?

Thank you, Director Farrell.

Hi, nice to be here.

This is Liliana Ayala.

She, her pronouns, and I'm the Climate Justice Director at OSCE.

Good morning.

Good morning.

And executive committee members of the Green New Deal Oversight Board.

Good morning.

Welcome.

So excited, historic moment.

My name is Maria Batiola, and I serve as co-chair Cyrus Valentin is not able to make it yet, but he is also very excited.

And I'll pass it on to Debolina, please.

Good morning.

It's a pleasure to be here presenting with all of you.

I'm Debolina Banerjee, and use she, her pronouns, and member at large in the Executive Committee.

Great, thank you.

I think I failed to also note that CBO is also with us for part of this panel.

Would you like to introduce yourself, Ashka?

I'm Akshay Iyengar, CBO analyst for OSC.

Well, thank you so much.

I would like to just start by thanking the chair for her leadership on the Jumpstart payroll tax and on the Green New Deal.

It's really exciting to get to be here.

And I wanted to thank our executive committee members of the Green New Deal Oversight Board.

They have put so many hours of work into this.

And of course, fabulous OSC staff, Liliana, who has really led on this and our partnership with CBO.

So thank you so much to all of the effort that's been put into this.

And of course, members of the Finance Committee for your time today and taking this up.

So my remarks are very, very, very brief, only to say that we're really excited to present the 2022 budget investment recommendations.

2023 budget recommendations will be coming very soon.

And we really see both of these as a package that has been really informed by the recommendations and the outreach and the dialogue that the Green New Deal Oversight Board has had with the community.

So while we're only presenting 2022 recommendations today, we really do see a lot of complimentary work that will be coming in the recommendations soon on 2023. So with that, I am going to turn it over to Liliana, who will kick off the presentation.

Thank you, Jessen.

So I'm going to get us started here.

As Jessen said, the purpose of today's briefing is to update Council on budget investments linked to the set aside $6.5 million for 2022. And then we have our incredible members of the Green New Deal Oversight Board's Executive Committee, who will talk through the board's approach to developing budget recommendations that informed the investments that are in these 2022 investment package here.

First, we'll get started with the board.

This board is a group of 19 people.

One, I want to thank council for appointing such incredible folks along with the mayor's office.

These 19 folks represent labor unions, youth, frontline communities, tribal representatives, people with expertise and knowledge in workforce development and greenhouse gas reduction, and climate adaptation.

So we really have an incredible crew of oversight board members that we get to partner with on developing actions to accelerate Seattle's policies and programs to meet the climate crisis.

And all of our members have been appointed, which has been incredible.

And I'm going to Also, this allows me to pass it on to Maria Bateola and Dabolina, who have a couple slides and will give us some grounding and context to their process in developing their budget recommendations before we go into the specific investments that you see before you.

And I'll pass this to Maria.

You're on mute, Maria.

One more time.

Thank you so much to to each and every one of you.

This is an incredible collaboration between community and leadership at the Council.

And so we were, we have a lot of guidance from the Green New Deal ordinance.

And when we first gathered in 2021, we spent time building relationships with each other as a board, and we established critical foundation elements for our work together as a board with the support of OAC staff.

One of those elements was really establishing a mission for the board in our collective work.

We wanted to identify core values that we will hold ourselves accountable.

And we accomplished our mission by recommending systemic changes and budget priorities to the mayor, city council, the city departments and advisory boards, by supporting departmental planning and implementation, and by coordinating our efforts with city departments and related advisory groups that is consistent with the ordinance.

Next slide, please.

During the three-month process, we underwent in developing the budget recommendations.

We were very clear that we were a large board and we needed to be united.

We had a small work group that was continuously engaging the larger group so that by the time we proposed the community priorities, it was very clear.

We created a community input survey and hosted with OSC a community listening session.

to help inform the development of our budget recommendations to you for both the 2022 investments and as will be discussed later, the 2023 budget process.

We want to build on each of these foundational elements.

The staff from the city departments gave us presentations to get us up to speed on what the city is leading on policies and programs to advance the goals of the Green New Deal.

Then OSC provided us with a presentation that put together input from various community engagement processes, anywhere from the equity and environmental agenda, the Duwamish Valley Action Plan, and staff also summarized findings from community-led reports, such as powering the transition that was led by Puget Sound SAGE.

And then finally, as board members, we ourselves were appointed to bring the voices and knowledge of our communities to the Oversight Board, as well as bring it back out to our respective communities, we provided a wealth of technical expertise and knowledge to help inform the recommendation process.

And now I'd like to pass it on to Deepalina to speak to you more about the criteria we developed for these recommendations.

Thank you, Maria.

Thank you, Lily and Justin.

So as Maria said, I'll talk a little bit about the criteria that we as the board developed to consider all our recommendations.

The board and the budget committee within the board, we centered ourselves around the key pillars of the Green New Deal that you see before you on this slide that talks about addressing the climate crisis, inclusive and equitable low carbon economy, and promotion of community health and well-being.

But in addition to this, the recommendations needed to center racial and social equity, ensuring that the benefits and investments are prioritized for frontline communities.

We needed to ensure that we have an alignment of community interest or be adapted to incorporate the needs, assets, and preferences of frontline communities that was kind of captured by the extensive community engagement that we did, as Maria talked about in the previous slide.

The recommendations need to have impact with efficacy being tracked, measured in appropriate community responsive methods and demonstrated.

It should build capacity for community leaders, organizations, the Green New Deal board and city staff, and are feasible and scalable Next slide, please.

So all of this that we talked about that both Maria, Lily, and I presented, all of this led us to the set of the 15 recommendations that you received in June, early June, and you see on the slide as well.

The Green New Deal Board took it up as our role and responsibility to craft the budget recommendations very seriously.

As you can see through the actionable set of recommendations we developed, and delivered to council and mayor.

We are pleased to see that many of the priorities have been incorporated in the 2022 budget legislation before you.

And our understanding is that we may see more of these priorities being reflected in the 2023 proposed budget.

As the board, we are eager to continue to see the Green New Deal investments that can again, address the climate crisis and environmental injustice through climate adaptation and carbon pollution reduction.

builds an inclusive low-carbon economy, promotes community health and well-being, support critical connection for frontline communities to Green New Deal programs through outreach, engagement, education, technical assistance, and in-language services, and builds capacity for the Green New Deal through staffing, board support, and community investments.

Thank you for your partnership.

And Maria and I will look forward to responding to any questions after the presentation is done.

And Lili, I'll pass it on to you now.

Thank you, Dabolina.

Thank you, Maria.

So with that incredible grounding in context, I'll dig in here to the specific investments that are before you in the budget legislation for this 2022 Green New Deal Opportunity Fund.

This is an overview slide.

that kind of just walks you through the investment bucket areas and the amounts.

We've also mapped them to the priority areas that the Green New Deal board has identified for us as well.

And so I will dig into the specifics here.

So our first investment area is for resilience hubs.

As Council Member Mosqueda mentioned earlier in the presentation with the impacts of climate change, Front and center, we are focused on strategies at the City of Seattle that center community resilience as well as climate resilience.

These resilience hubs are exciting community-driven investments that are designed to help keep people safe and connected to critical resources and to each other during climate events such as extreme heat or cold weather.

When we're experiencing forest fires and thick, smoggy air, as well as flooding.

You'll see here that in terms of the breakdown, we have 1.78 million to support resilience hubs.

1.35 of that is to pilot resilience hubs in the Duwamish Valley to provide cooling, air filtration, and critical programming.

And then you'll see 430,000 to support the development of a citywide resilience hub strategy focusing on communities that are impacted first and worst by climate change.

And that is to support inclusive in-language outreach and engagement.

It's to support technical analysis as well to really help us identify where we can be citing these resilience hubs.

The next investment area is to support our municipal building electrification strategy.

This is to transition systems from fossil fuel gas to electric and support heating, cooling, and air quality upgrades.

The City of Seattle has 650 buildings, including 27 libraries.

This investment is to help us accelerate that transition off of fossil fuels and city-owned buildings, prioritizing buildings that are community-facing.

Of that 2.3 million, 610,000 is set aside for municipal building electrification, and then specifically, 1.7 is to provide heating, cooling, and clean air at the northeast and southwest library branches.

This next investment area is to support affordable multifamily housing electrification.

This is about advancing Seattle's commitment to 100% clean buildings.

This strategy accelerates Seattle's transition off of fossil fuels for renters, ensuring that we build affordable multifamily housing with electric infrastructure so that renters aren't stuck living in apartments with fossil fuels that contribute to poor indoor quality, and continue to worsen the impacts of climate change.

This is supporting new construction that has been vested to 2015, excuse me, energy codes versus current buildings that are not required to meet electric system requirements.

This.

Next investment area is to support data gathering and working with community to develop climate and community health indicators.

As the city continues to make exciting investments to address climate change, we are simultaneously building data dashboards and maps to help inform equitable investment decisions that prioritize Seattle's most overburdened residents.

If you recall, in 2020, there was an executive order asking OSCE to develop a public-facing dashboard.

We are underway with that work, and this investment item helps us to put in additional data to inform the investments.

This is going to help us track our impact advancing climate justice via more up-to-date greenhouse gas emission data, as well as community health data.

And then finally, this last investment is to support community engagement to inform the climate element of the One Seattle Comprehensive Plan.

And I failed to mention this in each of the investment areas, but we are partnering with our departmental partners.

For example, this one, we have been in conversations with our colleagues at OPCD for affordable housing.

We've been working closely with OH the Municipal Buildings Electrification Strategy, working closely with Seattle Parks and Libraries and FAS, and Resilience Hubs were coordinated with Office of Emergency Management, Seattle Parks and Recreation, OPCD, City Light, and other departments.

And I believe that might be all she wrote.

So I want to thank you all for your time, and I am glad to answer questions.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

And for all the folks who've been watching the presentation online, I know it was packed.

You can also find those recommendations linked in our agenda and zoom on in and you can get linked to the full recommendation packet.

Vice Chair Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Just want to first say I'm super excited about this announcement and these priorities.

And as it relates to some of the projects in District 1, really excited to see funding for resiliency projects associated with the Duwamish Valley program, the Duwamish Valley Action Plan, as well as the electrification, heating, cooling, and air quality upgrades in the South West Library as well as Council Member Peterson's Northeast Library.

We worked together, he led, Council Member Peterson led, but we worked together during the budget process last year to fund this priority and I'm glad to see that the Green New Deal Oversight Board agrees that this should be a high priority.

Could we go to the page that describes the investments for the resiliency hubs So, okay, thank you.

So you're looking at 1.7 million and some of that, it looks like the 430 is for planning, whereas 1.3 is specifically for capital projects.

Um, I'm, I'm wondering, I'm looking at this presentation versus the attachment, which is the, um, the materials, uh, from the oversight board.

And I'm seeing, um, a little bit of a different, uh, Take either it you could be saying the same thing to saying it differently, but I'm just trying to understand I see 2 million in 2022 and 4 million in 2023. And of the 2 million in 2022, about 500,000 it looks like is to do some planning work, to find out where we would make these investments.

And then 1.5 million would be at the actual funds to do some of the work.

So I'm just, I'm wondering how those recommendations, align with what we're hearing in the presentation.

And it doesn't seem that we're seeing in this presentation the 2023 numbers, only the 2022. And then I'll just this area as well.

I think people know that there's a group of a coalition of folks who are lobbying the council as it relates to the Metropolitan Parks District and the investments that we're planning to make there and asking that we include dollars for capital investments for these resiliency hubs in that revenue stream.

And so just wanting to understand for us moving forward, if we were to do more in the Metropolitan Parks District and create a new revenue stream for this work, how how we would be able to sort of marry that with the funding here and the objectives here.

Those are all excellent questions.

What if we start by answering the question with the MPD and how that relates to the Green New Deal funding and then maybe Akshay you can jump in and help with the interplay of the 2022 RECs and the 2023 funding if that works.

So I'll just start with kind of a broad framing.

There is a lot of community energy around resiliency hubs, and there's a real need for moving forward on this.

And the way I think we're seeing the phasing is there are really three parts of it.

There is the capital improvements around decarbonizing and all of the things that are needed to make sure that these are places that people can be safe in an emergency.

There is the programming that needs to be done to make sure that it is community responsive.

We know that elders and people with children and people experiencing homelessness and other varying neighborhoods have different needs with respect to programming.

And there's then a need to also do the planning so that we know exactly what our strategy is as we're weaving together funding.

And I can say that we worked really closely with parks as they developed their proposal for the MPD.

and in this proposal and what you will see in 2023. So all three of these funding pieces are complimentary with the idea of being able to build a comprehensive community responsive strategy.

And Lily, if you wanna jump in and add any addition to that, I'm happy for you to do that, but we can also just turn it over to Akshay.

Yes, thank you.

Council Member Herbold, thank you for your question.

So we tried to look at the 22 recommendations and the 23 recommendations holistically.

I think to be frank, just given that this point in time, the calendar year, most of this money is not going to be spent until 2023. So we have put in legislation, authorization to auto carry forward.

We really tried to look at each bucket as complimentary.

You will see additional funding for resiliency hubs in 2023. I think I can share that we have about three and a half million dollars more coming to parts on top of the funding from this legislation, as well as the MPD funding.

And there'll be additional funding for libraries and other municipal facilities as well.

Again, to speak to the differences between what's in the board's recommendations and this legislation, Again, we tried to look at it holistically and really look at what were items that could be funded in a one-time basis with the 22 amounts.

And again, you'll be seeing more for all these priorities in the 23 legislation.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you so much.

Council Member Herbold, any follow-up before we go to Council Member Lewis?

All right, thank you.

Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you Councilmember Mosqueda, I wanted to jump in on the same thread here, and I've appreciated getting all of the information yesterday from the executive that that does that you know no one was over their skis talking about the 3.5 million.

that's gonna go to parks for this purpose.

That was included in the materials transmitted to us yesterday.

But I did wanna jump in a little bit more and see Director Farrell, whether or not there's any indication at this point, if there's a list of park assets that would be prioritized for the resilience work.

And it might also help for me to hear at least at this point, what the specific capital investments are, because I appreciate your bifurcation of the capital component of climate resiliency versus the programming of those sites once those investments are made.

what those capital improvements are to make a community center a candidate to become a resilience hub and be able to accept and use that programming to accomplish that part of its mission.

So those two things, like one, what are the capital, the physical improvements necessary to become a resilience hub?

And then two, is there a list that is being put together of which park assets in particular would be the first priority with this initial round of investments?

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

That's a great question.

And I am going to defer to Akshay to maybe speak a little more specifically about what was in the parks district.

I have that, but just not at my fingertips and so can absolutely package all that up.

But if Akshay has that and can answer it now, that's great.

And what I would say kind of more broadly, though, around that question of how a project moves from being a candidate to an actual resiliency hub, that's where I would really direct your focus to the investments in the Duwamish community.

There has been a lot of community-driven work there to identify locations and to identify programmatic and community needs that will be built out in those neighborhoods, the South Park, neighborhood center, the South Park Community Center.

And so those two are called out specifically because there's already been done so much of that community work.

So there is that bifurcation of decarbonization, upgrading the facility, but then the programmatic piece really has to be a two way conversation with community to make sure that it's really deeply responsive to needs.

And so that's why we're focusing first on the Duwamish where there's already been a lot of that two way conversation.

And we expect that through the planning process, there will be more of that.

But actually, if you want to jump in on the specific facilities, if you are able to, that would be great.

Thank you, Justin.

So unfortunately, I cannot speak directly to which which parks are being which parks facilities are being prioritized.

I can get that information from my CBO colleagues.

I'm happy to follow up on that.

Council Member Herbold, excuse me, Council Member Lewis, follow up.

Yeah, I guess I'm still just not hearing those specifically what capital improvements make a center a resilience hub.

Is it air conditioning?

Is it HVACs?

Is it weatherization?

Is it decarbonization?

I wanted to get really specific.

And maybe I wasn't clear in my question on what are the things we need to do to go into a community center and make it something that could be a resilience hub?

Because I imagine we're going to want to do those things no matter what.

Um, you know, we're gonna want to, you know, probably make those capital improvements no matter what.

But then it, you know, to get it the rest of the way to be a true resilience tub you would put in that programming which we probably aren't going to do immediately for all of these different centers but we could make a plan.

to make the capital improvements to make them all candidates, if that makes sense.

But I want to get a better sense just in general, like what would make a public facility resilience hub and what are the capital improvements we need to make to realize that at a high level of specificity.

So I think you just hit on basically all of the key points to that question, which is to say that It can include weatherization, it can include HVAC, it can include the electrification, new roofs.

There are a lot of different upgrades that are really dependent on the facility, but at the end of the day, it's about making it a place that is decarbonized, that has cooling capabilities.

And there may be other things that are identified as we go through a process that are part of the building upgrade.

you kind of checked all of the boxes, it will depend on the building specifically.

And we do have that level of detail for the investments that are being made.

So I will be happy to provide that to you as follow up.

And then you're exactly right.

The second part of that then is, well, so to kind of wrap that up, yes, we need to be doing this with all of our municipal buildings, but really focusing on these candidates first, and then building in the programmatic piece.

That's kind of exactly the strategy, and we'll provide the specific upgrades as a follow-up.

Great, thank you.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Nice to see everybody here this morning.

I want to thank the Green New Deal Oversight Board.

I also appreciate the work of Council Member Sawant and former Council Member Mike O'Brien, who worked on these issues for a while.

I appreciate it was the leadership of our budget chair who generated the sustainable funding here.

And pleased to see Director Farrell in action as the new permanent head of the office.

I wanted to ask about one of the line items in the 2023 Dan Burke, COB OSMP): spend plan or Susan 2022 spend plan so to increase our resiliency.

Dan Burke, COB OSMP): In the face of heat waves of climate change and correcting environmental injustices, I believe we need to plant and protect more trees throughout our city, especially in South Seattle and looking back at the original.

Green New Deal resolution 31895 adopted in 2019 it had strategies for addressing the warming climate, including encouraging preservation and planning of trees citywide to increase the city's tree canopy cover a prioritizing historically low canopy and low income neighborhoods.

And so this spending plan.

I'm not seeing trees as part of the environmental structure, except for the hundred $50,000 for a study out of the entire six and a half million for 2022 and while we're not technically approving the 2023 I do appreciate the oversight board providing their draft and the materials of what that might look like for 2023 for that $22 million, but again I'm not seeing anything about trees there so I just wanted to.

Get a better understanding because we, we just got an urban forest, the urban forestry commission just got a presentation, showing that Seattle has lost 255 acres of trees since 2016, and this presentation was just a couple of weeks ago.

But it shows that we're the data showing we're going in the wrong direction on trees, trying to get our canopy coverage to increase to 30% but we're going in the wrong direction.

I'd like to see Seattle plant a million trees over the next 20 years.

So I'm just trying to better understand if there's not funding for trees question I guess is for Director Farrell for not seeing.

more for trees in this particular spending plan, can we expect from a separate location in the mayor's budget proposal that we'll be getting in the next few weeks here?

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

This is a great question and I would just affirm that trees really are climate infrastructure and that as we are really delving into the data from the tree canopy assessment that we're in the midst of, one of the things that we are really finding is that trees are being more and more impacted by climate change.

And so we need to be more aggressive in both protecting, you know, and making the trees that we have be able to make it through climate change and then getting in front by by planting more trees.

So that's absolutely right.

I will say there will be investments in the 2023 budget that are responsive to what we're seeing in the data.

And I can just say kind of overall, Um, we have seen that there has been a diminishment of trees in parks, natural areas, and that really is in part because of climate change.

Trees are being impacted by drought.

They are being impacted by stronger wind storms.

And so that's a place where we need to be investing.

And again, this piece around trees as climate infrastructure and equity.

we know that there is less tree canopy in our neighborhoods that are impacted by other systems of systemic racism and economic injustice.

And so building out a canopy and a planting plan that reflects that, I think is going to be a really important part of our work going forward.

And so there will be more on this in the 2023 budget.

Thank you.

Are there any additional questions?

Okay, I'm not seeing any additional Oh, Councilmember Peterson was that a new hand?

No.

Okay, great.

I'm not seeing any additional questions, a lot of appreciation for the community partners and the community outreach, this deep engagement strategy, and it's one of the first opportunities for us to really make sure that the Jump Start Seattle Green New Deal spending goes as community is intending to frontline and fence line communities most affected by climate change.

So very excited about the representation that we have here from the Oversight Board, from the participation and leadership and support that Office of Sustainability and the Environment is providing.

And with that, if there's no additional questions, I would very much like to entertain us moving forward with moving this bill.

Seeing no questions or concerns.

Thank you so much.

Is there any additional comments from our panelists?

Excellent.

Thank you.

Okay, excellent.

So with that, I'd like to move that the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 1204-130.

Is there a second?

Second.

Second.

Awesome.

Great.

Lots of excitement and enthusiasm.

Multiple seconds.

Any additional comments or questions?

Hearing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the passage of Council Bill 120413?

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Madam Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is five in favor, nine opposed.

Thank you very much.

Congratulations.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the September 13 Seattle City Council meeting for a full vote.

It is unanimous.

You do not have to be there to see it pass, but we will make sure to sing your praises and appreciate the board and the department's work on this.

So very exciting historic day here with many more to come.

Please pass on our appreciation to your colleagues as well on the oversight board.

Congrats.

And with that, we're at the end of our agenda.

Thanks colleagues for helping to get us done on time.

We do have another committee meeting in September, our last meeting before we head into budget, September 21 at 930 am we are still finalizing our agenda.

But we will have some potential legislation related to let me just double check my notes here.

The Seattle City employment retirement system rates.

There are some is potentially some information coming to us from the CSRS board.

And as we work on finalizing our agenda, we'll make sure to keep the committee updated on that.

Anything else for the good of the order?

All right.

Hope everybody had a great break.

Thank you for your participation today.

We'll see on the 21st.

Take care, everyone.