Seattle City Council Select Committee on Homelessness & Housing Affordability 32219

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning.

Thank you for joining us today.

This is the Select Committee on Homelessness and Housing Affordability.

It is March 22, 2019, 9.30 a.m.

And we just want to welcome you here on this sunny Friday.

Really appreciate the fact that you are here, and thank you.

to my buddy, Mr. Johnson, for joining us.

I appreciate that.

We have two items on today's agenda.

First, we're going to have public comment, of course, but then we're going to hear from Jason Johnson and Mark Jones, Tess Colby, and Alan Lee on the progress of the homelessness regional government work.

I've asked them to be prepared to talk to us about a recommended schedule and next steps.

And second, we're going to begin the committee's work today on the Human Services Department Director Confirmation.

We'll have the mayor's nominee, Jason Johnson, and Deputy Mayor Mosley at the table.

So I welcome you here and thank you.

Council Member Gonzalez, welcome back from San Diego.

And we will have, just for the record, we're going to have another special select committee on homelessness and housing affordability in two weeks on April 12th.

So let's dive into public comment.

I'm going to ask that we do line up at the two different microphones.

Since we only have about 14 people signed up today, I'm going to ask for a two-minute clock to be placed on each person.

So Jane Klein and my friend, Mr. Abdullah, you'll be next, and then Janet Pope and Gordon McHenry in that order.

So thank you, Jane, for being here.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Wait a second.

Before you get going, put your microphone on.

Do you see the little green dot?

There you go.

Great, Jane.

You'll just have to speak right.

And that raises so you can stand up straight if you want.

Thank you.

Hello, council members.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide public comment in support of Mayor Durkan's nomination of Jason Johnson to be HSD's director.

I've been a city employee for over four years and have worked closely with Jason that entire time.

I'm his executive assistant, so I know him and his work very well.

First, having Jason serve as HSD's director provides stability for HSD staff, our community partners, and the region's human services sector as a whole.

Many staff and partners want the steady, stable leadership and accompanying organizational improvements that Jason has and can continue to provide.

Second, given the important work this year to create a new consolidated entity to unify the region's homeless response, Jason is the right person to lead HSD during this crucial period where he has deep understanding of the city and HSD's staff work.

Third, Jason is an open and inclusive leader.

As his scheduler, I can attest to how Jason shifts his calendar to accommodate impromptu meetings with staff, how he takes meetings early in the morning or late in the evening to accommodate their schedules and any privacy needs they may have.

He truly has an open door policy.

Lastly, there are many, many other HSD employees and community members who support the mayor's nomination of Jason, but providing public comment in meetings that the press have described as circus-like just isn't their preferred style.

You've received several email messages from colleagues in support of Jason over the last couple months, and I hope you'll value those sincerely.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jane.

Hamdi, welcome.

Thank you council members.

My name is Hamdi Abdul and I am representing here the community that I serve which is mainly refugees and also I support equity and social justice in all King County and mainly in West Seattle and also a South Seattle area.

I would like to take a moment to reflect on Mayor Jenny Durkan's decision to appoint Mr. Jason Johnson as the Director of the City of Seattle Human Services Department.

Many of my community members as well as friends have discussed the importance of the appointment.

We believe Mr. Jason Johnson is a strong leader who can bring progress innovation and have leadership skills to uplift the morale and the work of the city of Seattle, especially in the area of homelessness.

I worked with Mr. Jason at All Home Board and had a discussion with him in different meetings, including one table and also including the task force.

I was also part of a group that traveled to Washington, D.C.

with Mr. Jason to advocate for more support for our homeless families and individuals.

I found Mr. Jason Johnson as someone who is able to connect people across different sectors and cultures to bring meaningful discussions and solutions in our growing community in Seattle.

Furthermore, our community values his appointment because of his passion in caring about human dignity and also caring about equity and social justice and prosperity for all.

Thank you, Hamdi.

I'm going to ask you to wrap it up.

I personally believe that Jason is qualified to lead this work and he has the full support of my community and the people who believe in social justice and change in this perspective.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for coming.

We have Janet Pope and Gordon McHenry and after that Denise, Scott Schubert and Bruce.

Thank you.

Good morning.

My name is Janet Pope, CEO of Compass Housing Alliance, and we fluctuate between the second and third largest holder of service contracts for the Human Services Department with the city.

In addition, we operate over 800 units of affordable housing within the county, so we understand the system.

I started my position nearly six years ago just as the former amazingly talented leader of Catherine Lester was fluctuating from permanent to interim and back to permanent as the leader of the Human Services Department due to a political process.

It was extremely frustrating for providers as the department was paralyzed just as so many critical processes and improvements were happening that went unresolved.

Since then, with Jason as Catherine's Deputy Director for Homelessness, the department has done some amazing, wonderful work, including developing a strategic plan and working with many consultants that, in my opinion, have finally moved the system forward.

Jason has been instrumental and hugely supportive for COMPASS, including helping COMPASS expand our 24-7 enhanced shelter model and housing navigation case management system that is really having significant impact in the system.

We have improved our data-driven decisions and we can't wait to share some of the data and things with the system and the evidence that we have collected.

So as we move forward with future labs and some of the other recommendations from the multiple consultants that we've had with the city over the last few years, it really is time for action and fast action.

It is not time to pause and do a search process and have a huge learning curve for a new leader when we already have someone with the right skills and the right experience, but most importantly, the historical knowledge already in place.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Janet.

Gordon McHenry, then Denise, then Scott Schubert.

Good morning committee chair, members of the council.

I'm Gordon McHenry Jr.

I'm president and CEO of Solid Ground.

I'm here because I support the council moving forward with a sense of urgency to complete the process of appointing the director of the Human Services Department.

process is important and is needed and uncertainty and delay is harmful to the effectiveness of the department and can weaken effective leadership and leaders.

And in my opinion, an extended process unfortunately echoes a pattern for most of this decade of behavior by the city toward those who seek to lead HSD that could easily be perceived to be dismissive and even disrespectful.

It's an especially disturbing pattern since the leaders have been from communities that have historically been marginalized by our society.

I support Mayor Durkin's nomination of Jason to be confirmed as Director of the Human Services Department.

Solid Ground is a partner of the City of Seattle, providing life-affirming services in the areas of homelessness and housing, food and hunger, transportation, and advocacy to eliminate barriers that contribute to poverty, racism, and oppression.

In this role, we work on a daily basis with the staff and leadership of the Human Services Department.

I have worked for years with Jason as Deputy Director and after Catherine Lester's departure as Interim Director.

Jason and I are both members of the Seattle-King County Continuum of Care Coordinating Board.

Jason is an exemplary leader committed to the efficient, culturally relevant, and compassionate delivery of human services to those in our city who need these services.

He is a strong partner in the hard work to redesign our homeless system so that we have a regional system and structure that will strengthen our work to make homelessness rare, brief, and one-time.

Jason understands and is committed to race and social justice values and principles that are key to Seattle being a city that is fair, just, and equitable.

He is leading, and he is leading well.

So I strongly encourage the Council to affirm and invest in Jason's leadership and service by approving his appointment to be Director of the City of Seattle's Human Services Department.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Gordon, always good to see you, and thanks for the work you're doing on solid ground.

We have Denise, Scott, and then Bruce.

Hi.

Good morning, Council.

My name is Denise Crownbell.

I'm co-chair of Seattle Silencebreakers and a 19-year City Light employee.

I'm here to testify against the nomination process for Jason Johnson as HSD director.

This nomination didn't follow the process that HSD employees were promised by the mayor's office, nor what SSB, Seattle Silencebreakers, was told by the mayor's office would happen, an open, inclusive, and transparent search process.

Many HSD employees have testified to the fact that the process did not include a race and social justice lens.

Many stakeholders and community members have also testified to that fact.

The recent HSD employee survey showed deep concerns with leadership, including the span of time that Mr. Johnson was the interim director.

When so many people have spoken out against the nomination, how can council move forward with this nomination?

If confirmed, how does HSD move forward?

This process was run counter to the mayor's own city values, as the process did not include a race and social justice lens, nor was it an inclusive process.

Words and actions matter.

And then finally, putting aside my other hats, like my silence breaker hat and my union hat, and speaking as Denise's city employee, my nearly 19 years of the city, I have never seen so many employees come out and testify, and this about their own boss.

They do that at great risk to their futures at the city of Seattle.

And yet, they still testified because they cared.

And as a citizen of Seattle, pulling the nomination from Council Member Sawant's committee, I feel is an end run around council's duty as a legislative body.

And I know things get political, but it feels really political.

And it also feels undemocratic and disrespectful, not only to the employees, but the community as a whole.

Words and actions matter.

Please return this nomination to council and redo the search process, or to the mayor, and redo the search process for a new head of HSD.

Thank you.

Next we have Scott, Scott, Bruce, and then Peggy Hotz.

Good morning, my name is Scott Schubert and I'm the Program Director for the Homeless Housing for Accelerator YMCA.

I'm here to read a letter of support from Mark Putnam, our Executive Director.

He says, I'm writing again to express my support for Mayor Durkin's nomination of Jason Johnson as HSD Director.

Jason Johnson is compassionate, intuitive and hard-working leader.

He pursues innovative ideas and creates collaborative teams to execute on them.

Jason's own lived experience provides a perspective that supports centering HSD program participants in all solutions.

I've worked with Jason for more than 10 years, from his days in the city of Kent, and have always respected Jason's professionalism and earned leadership.

He has earned respect from his colleagues in government, non-profit, philanthropy, and business in each of his roles.

including his stint as the interim director of HSD.

The steady leadership Jason has provided over the years has led to significant results for some of the most vulnerable citizens of the city of Seattle.

Stability of leadership during the planning and transition phase of creating a joint oversight structure to guide the homelessness response is essential.

nonprofit partners such as the YMCA significantly rely on HSD funding and operational competency.

Confirming Jason as the director provides certainty during this time of important transition.

Thank you for your leadership.

Thank you for coming, Scott.

Bruce, Peggy, and I think it's Gina.

Hello, my name is Bruce Gogol.

Last night, Nickelsville Othello Village residents unanimously voted not to allow Jason Johnson's bully, Lehi, to oppress and destroy what Nickelodeons have created.

When Interbay voted unanimously to change operations, Jason Johnson and Lehi fully supported that democratic decision.

So Jason Johnson, the people you serve have spoken.

Leave us alone and put a leash on your dog, Lehi.

Hold yourself accountable.

and for your mismanagement, and don't be a hypocrite.

This is self-management versus mismanagement.

As head of security, I am one-third of a leadership that leads by example.

Obligations, accountability, and community are the ideals we uphold.

Self-management takes practice, patience, humility, and forgiveness.

Humber yourself, Jason Johnson, and lead by example.

Only then will you be forgiven.

Viva Nicholsville Othello Village.

Thank you, Bruce.

Peggy?

My name is Peggy Hotz.

ShareWheel and Nicholsville are democratically organized and self-governed.

That kind of structure empowers the homeless people who live there and teaches them valuable skills that will benefit them for the rest of their lives.

Self-management isn't for everyone, but most people agree it's a valuable type of organizing that should be part of a broad range of shelter options.

Jason Johnson doesn't agree.

He's done his level best to try and eliminate them.

Under Johnson's leadership, a huge, powerful nonprofit has been encouraged to swallow Nicholsville, ignoring the encampment ordinance of the cities and the years of work homeless people themselves put in to build Nicholsville.

In 2018, Tent City 5 voted to switch its operations to the Low Income Housing Institute, and Jason Johnson said that was just fine, even though it was against the ordinance.

Last night at Nicholsville Othello Village, there was a unanimous vote to reject Lehigh and stick with Nicholsville.

Here's a test of Mr. Johnson's integrity.

Will Jason Johnson support a Democratic vote to stay with Nicholsville as Othello Village voted unanimously?

Or will he reject democracy when it doesn't suit his purposes?

Gina, we have Gina, I think it's Petrie, Sean, and then Benjamin Cox.

Good morning.

My name is Gina Petrie.

I'm the co-chair of Seattle Silence Breakers and organizer for Radical Women.

I'm here also to urge you not to move forward with this nomination of HSD director.

I want to thank those council members who have voted to send this nomination back.

I think it's important to recognize that you are standing for a transparent and inclusive process.

But I just want to ask for those that haven't, How can you ignore the countless testimonies asking you not to?

If you move this process forward without that, that is the message that you are sending.

Some of you have stated the desire to change the process later, but my question is why not now?

This moment is before you.

So I would like to ask you to take a stand and show support of those HSD employees who are speaking up, the service providers and recipients who have also made their position clear and been organizing.

So I would like to ask you to show that their voices and their organizing matters in this city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sean, and then Benjamin Cox.

Hi, my name is Sean Bickley.

I work for the Arc of King County.

We're an organization that advocates for people with developmental disabilities, and we have a grant from the county, Best Starts for Kids.

Disability is the single largest disproportionality in the homelessness crisis.

We're 6.4% of the population and 53% of the homeless population.

There are a lot of reasons for that.

I wanted to focus on two, and I have some materials for you as well.

Extremely low income is calculated at 30% of AMI.

Well, if you're on Social Security, you're making $9,200 a year.

You're well below 30% AMI, and that's never going to change.

And so there's a large proportion of people who cannot access housing for extremely low income because they don't make enough money.

The other thing I wanted to highlight was that the VI-SPDAT, the Vulnerability Index that the City and County uses, does not weigh disability.

It doesn't weigh language access either.

people can be extremely vulnerable in real life but not rate as needing intervention.

And I have some examples of people that the ARC has worked with.

I can think of an individual who's deaf, autistic, medically fragile, and transgender and did not score as vulnerable enough to receive intervention.

So I'll leave you with these and I hope that that you will look at the reasons why disabled people aren't being served.

There are a lot of organizations that have been trying to weigh in in the city and county about this.

Thank you.

Benjamin Cox.

And then we have one more, Matthew Lang.

Benjamin here?

No?

Okay, Matthew.

Good morning, Council.

I'm here to read a letter from the Transit Writers Union to the Council today.

Dear Low Income Housing Institute Board of Directors, Mayor Durkin, and Seattle City Council members, the Seattle Transit Riders Union has had a long and productive association with Nicholsville.

We have worked together on issues ranging from transit access to very low income and homeless riders to funding for housing and homeless services.

Over the years, we have seen Nicholsville succeed in providing needed shelter, safety, and community for countless people of diverse backgrounds, situations, and needs.

We have seen the dedication and resilience of Nicholsville residents, leaders, and staff as they have persisted through difficulties, changed lives, and built lasting relationships with neighbors and the broader community.

We are therefore extremely dismayed to learn that Lehigh has told Nicholsville to withdraw from operation of the Othello, Georgetown, and Northlake villages in a matter of days.

We are concerned that the City of Seattle's Human Services Department is encouraging this move.

We understand that there are disagreements over mandatory case management, which is not required by city ordinance sanctioning the camps, and the self-management model that is central to Nicholsville.

We are not experts in these matters, but we believe that there must be a solution to these disagreements that doesn't end in this damaging way and that preserves and respects Nicholsville's integrity.

Therefore, the Transit Riders Union calls on the Lehigh Board, Mayor, and the City Council to direct the Human Services Department to not mandate required case management and to encourage the self-management Nicholsville has succeeded with.

We ask that Nicholsville be allowed to operate their camps in place for a cooling down period of a month, followed by negotiations led by a skilled, respected, and agreed professional mediator.

We also would like to note that without many years of dedicated work, and especially the organizing advocacy and activism of Nicholsville and its sibling organization, Sharon Wheel, it is unlikely that Seattle would now be a national leader in pioneering tiny house villages and sanction encampments.

Thank you for your commitment to resolving this conflict fairly.

Sincerely, the Transit Riders General Membership Meeting.

Great.

Matthew, thank you for coming and reading the letter.

Okay.

Do we have anybody else?

Nobody else has signed up.

All right.

Well, thank you all for coming.

Thank you for your testimony this morning.

I'm going to move to our next section, which is with Mark Dones, and I think Tess Colby is here.

I'm going to ask you to come up to the table, and anybody else that you're bringing with you.

I believe Jason Johnson, you're going to be part of this conversation as well.

Alan Lee from Council Central Staff.

Jeff Tracy, are you part of this?

Okay, very good.

Thank you.

Well, if you will, as you're settling in, Alan, if you'll start with introductions.

We have a PowerPoint that is ready to go.

Good morning, Madam Chair.

I'm Alan Lee with Council Central Staff.

Thank you.

Tess, do you want to introduce yourself?

I do.

I do.

It's on.

Sorry.

Good morning.

I'm Tess Colby with the mayor's office.

Hi.

I'm Mark Jones with the National Innovation Service.

Thank you, Mark.

Good morning.

Jason Johnson with the Human Services Department.

Good morning.

All right.

Ellen, are you kicking this off?

I'm happy to.

Okay, please do.

Okay, great.

So thank you, council members.

So today we are hearing from, as you noted, Madam Chair, from Mark Dones of NIS, as well as members of the executive on the ongoing process for implementing some of the recommendations that Mark Dones and NIS, previously known or excuse me, previously under future laboratories, the recommendations that they made for the process outlined and agreed to by the mayor and King County executive last May to explore different models of combining the governance of our homelessness investments and policy strategy into one combined county-city authority.

So the last time that Excuse me, two meetings ago for this select committee, Mark and Tess both were here to present on the recommendations themselves.

And so today we're going to hear about a potential timeline as well as a general work plan and other characteristics as we move forward with this process.

Great.

Very good.

Are we diving into Mark or Tess?

Do you have some intro?

Before we hand it over entirely to Mark, the only other thing I would note is that the mayor's office has convened a council client group, and that client group has met now twice and will be meeting monthly thereafter.

And so that client group actually has had a preview of this presentation.

The presentation will go into a little bit more detail and is responsive to the feedback that we got from the client.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just think it's important for the viewing audience that we clarify what client group means.

When I heard client group, I thought there would actually be folks who had experienced homeless on this group.

Client group, I think in this case, means council members plus mayoral staff, which is the similar makeup I understand that the county council is using to make sure that The electives actually get feedback from folks who are working on a new model and envisioning that.

So I don't want folks to think that there is an actual client group that maybe people hadn't yet heard of.

So I do think it needs a new name, because it's really an internal focused conversation.

I just want to make sure that's super clear.

Very good.

Thank you.

Who's on the client group?

Who are they?

So council members Bagshaw, Mosqueda, and O'Brien.

And if I could just add a point.

There are other people I just thought I heard.

I'm sorry?

There's more to that, right?

I just heard Council Member Mosqueda say there were several people, including employees or staff?

So it's the three council members plus staff from the mayor's office, and then central staff is also in the room, as well as council staff.

And Mark, representing in his role as project manager, has also been participating.

Is that 10 people?

Six people?

What does it look like, and what is their goal?

So again, there's three council members that are participating on behalf of the council, mayor's staff, HSD staff.

And the number of people in the room varies depending upon which staff show up.

So it's been anywhere from

I'm sorry, I'm probably not asking good questions.

Sorry.

What are their names and what is the purpose of the client group?

Okay.

Who are they?

Sure.

Oh, great.

I'm not clear.

I got the three council members.

I got that part.

So President Harrell, Council President Harrell, this client group was established by a statement of legislative intent during the last budget session.

And the statement of legislative intent called for the creation of a joint executive and council-led quote-unquote client group that would explore how the how the recommendations, at that time, forthcoming recommendations would be implemented to completion during this year, calendar year of 2019. And currently that client group comprises the aforementioned three council members.

Also present at this client group has been Interim Director Jason Johnson, Mark Jones has recently joined, Tess Colby and central staff.

Am I missing anyone?

Oh, and excuse me, Steve Walker from the Office of Housing.

Oh, as well as the Office of Intergovernmental Relations.

They have also been there.

So the purpose of this group is to inform how recommendations will be implemented.

Madam, I think there's still concern up here about who's sitting there.

So you so you mentioned Steve Walker from OIR from OH excuse me from OH shell swab from OIR and The three council members we've mentioned Jason Johnson was there test Colby from the mayor's office and not to belabor point Thank you.

Thank you very much for that clarification.

I Remember we set it up during the budget process through a sly and we're doing a lot of things in a very compressed time period during the budget period and so While we try to put placeholders in there and give it some thought, I don't think we did a deep dive.

I didn't do a deep dive in thinking about the regional structure and who should help develop it.

I guess part of my concern is whether it's a little top-heavy and whether we should have more of a comprehensive client group, which could consist of other folks as we deploy it.

I think the last thing we want to do is come out with a structure that's just top-heavy without the input of stakeholders, people experiencing homelessness, employees, just a little more of a comprehensive group, because it sounded a little just top-heavy when you said client group.

That doesn't feel like a client group, so again, That's just one of my concerns.

And we appreciate that concern.

And I will confess, I'm relatively new to the city.

And so when I heard the term client group, I was also confused.

And so I had to go back and look at the slide to truly understand what the purpose was.

Part of the presentation today that Mark is going to give specifically addresses that issue.

We'll do a presentation about what the various committee structure and groups are to ensure that there is broad representation of stakeholders, including customers, including providers, including labor representation.

so that, including staff, and so that that will ensure that we've got the voices that are necessary to take this work forward, but also that there's respective accountability to those groups, so that any decision that comes forward to the mayor and to the council in its legislative capacity will be informed by that process.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you Madam Chair.

I just want to underscore I think the Council President's points are really well taken and part of the frustration and concern I've had as well.

One of the things that I asked for was a list of all the individuals serving on various committees and various groups as we know that there's, you know, kind of concentric circles of stakeholder groups.

I shouldn't say stakeholders, I guess internal groups plus some external groups.

It's very confusing even for me after being at two of those meetings.

So I think what the council president is asking for is similar to what I know the chair and I have asked for, which is we need the names of folks who are going to be serving on these various groups.

And as you continue to fill out which organizations are going to be participating, ensuring that the voice of those who've experienced homelessness, which is a key component of the recommendation.

Thank you, Mark.

that we have a better understanding of that.

So Mr. President, I just want to underscore your concern or my concerns as well, and I'll share with you the initial documents that I got in response to that very question, though I understand some of those groups are changing.

So we are all asking for the same information.

Thank you.

Okay, shall we move on?

Just to put a footnote on this, I think what we're hearing is that the initial group coming together was a leadership group that identified what the next steps are going to be.

Mark, you have spent a year and a half, I believe now, or more creating what we're going to hear about and your recommendations.

And what I'm excited about is how will the community be engaged?

I know you already have done much of that, so if you could just as you're going through, explain who's been involved, how they've been involved, and what the next steps are gonna be.

Of course, thank you.

And I will also note, just by way of general, not even caveat, but framing at the outset, that much of this work of community engagement, right, if done well, is always ongoing, right?

There's not a, point where it's over, and so part of, I think, the desire has been to acknowledge openly, right, like when we just haven't talked to someone yet, and that it's not an unwillingness to talk to somebody or anybody, it's just like, haven't talked to those folks yet, so.

I hope that as we have this conversation, that it's clear that there is no unwillingness to engage with anyone.

And we're very, very, very flexible in that regard.

Okay, so briefly, today's goals are to familiarize folks with the current roles and work streams of the consultant teams, to discuss how implementation of the recommendations will be managed, and to identify the decisions that are legally reserved to council.

So briefly, just by way of reintroduction, in the past, I was with a team called Future Laboratories.

I'm now with a team called the National Innovation Service.

There's actually not a difference there.

My team has spun out of our parent company.

We are still deeply related to those folks organizationally, and we are their friends.

Just wanted to be clear about the name change.

All right.

I also want to be clear about the role that we have.

Oh, a team moved.

I want to be clear about the role that we have now.

In the fall, we were very concerned with policy development, community engagement, developing assets.

We were really doing a lot of work.

Our role now is really to assist in managing the implementation of that work.

And so our job has shifted to some degree around identifying priorities, managing timelines, and helping to resolve issues.

Part of that does include working with both councils and both executives to identify what are the concerns.

I know that I've said this to some of you, but I want to be very clear that our contract remains jointly funded by the city and the county, so I am here not as anyone's particular agent, but simply attempting as best as we can to help shepherd a process appropriately.

Okay, so roles and work streams.

Of the consultant groups, I want to make sure that folks have clarity around who's doing what and who's responsible for what.

So our team is responsible for building a runway for a new regional authority by focusing on the following actions from the fall report.

That is, one, a system-wide theory of change.

Two, consolidating into a regional authority.

three, becoming accountable to customers at all levels, and eight, creating a defined public-private partnership through a funder's collaborative model.

The inputs for that work are still, first and foremost, customers and folks with lived experience, agency staff, city and county councils, mayor and executive, providers, private sector partners, and, of course, the work that we did in phase one.

The outputs are really just organizational infrastructure and a funder's collaborative.

Like, that is really our highest task here is to make sure that the regional authority is stood up and to the point that one of our colleagues at the county often makes, that it works, right?

That it isn't just like, we built a thing because we said we were gonna build a thing, but it doesn't actually change, right, the way that we function or how we move to engage folks.

The next group, CSH, or Corporation for Supportive Housing, is on board to develop something that is being referred to as the Regional Action Plan, or RAP.

A lot of acronyms in government, so if I say RAP, I mean Regional Action Plan in this context.

and to support change management around that.

I will note that CSH was also here in the fall, working very closely with my team, particularly around COC governance, and integrating the HUD dollars into a regional authority framework.

Our teams work very well together, collaborate quite closely, and they're led by a woman named Anna Oliva, who was the former Deputy Assistant Secretary at HUD, who oversaw all of the homelessness investments for the nation.

She's very, very brilliant.

The inputs for the RAP work will be our report from the fall, focus strategies data which I'll get to in a moment, customers, councils, mayor and executive providers, private sector partners.

The outputs are really a plan for regional programs and policies and program level metrics, strategies and goals.

I want to delineate here, because I think that Anne would want me to, that the desire is not to direct people in, like, go do this, right?

The desire is to hear, again, really listen about what do people want to do, and then to use our technical expertise as best we can to help identify what potential pathways are that will get you to those goals.

I think it's really important actually that that be like stated and restated.

We are very clear internally on sort of the consultant team that our job is not to dictate the path forward, it is to like hear where folks want to go and help craft an executable strategy.

And just a quick reminder, we've been through your study multiple times at this table, and if somebody wants to see it online, where do they find it?

It is in a lot of notes, and it has a link that's letters, but it is hrs.kc.future.com.

That is where the report lives, if I'm remembering correctly, and someone will nod at me about

Well, we'll make sure that it's someplace very visible and circulated again to my colleagues so that they have an update.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I also think that if we could put the link to the interactive presentation that the team has created, that would be great.

But we also, for those of us who want to flip a page, have a PDF version of this.

Thank you for creating that.

I think it would be good for us to link that as well on our web page so that people can find it readily.

And we're happy to connect with whomever to make sure that that happens.

Good.

And I think that's important, but also I want people to know how much work has gone into this, that this is not the first impression, that you've been working on this for many, many months with lots of input from community.

So please continue.

Thank you.

The last team, Focus Strategies, has a goal of analyzing the investments of the city of Seattle, King County, suburban cities and philanthropy, and analyzing the system performance as it is currently.

Excuse me.

I want to be really, really clear about the delineation in streams in the sense that our team at NIS, we are policy folks, qualitative researchers.

This was really a quantitative job, right?

So this was about an almost forensic level of fiscal analysis given how many funding streams were at play.

And so the inputs for that were really budgets and investments.

I was part of some of that process where they generated a number of templates and sent them out all over to the suburban cities, to philanthropy, to really find out, like, okay, how much money is flowing into this in what programmatic buckets.

Homeless management information system data, so HMIS data for, again, for acronyms.

Housing inventory count data, or HIC data.

Key informant interviews.

and then system admins and staff.

The outputs are sort of a clean data analysis for CSH to incorporate into the regional action plan.

I know that a number of you and I think generally folks in leadership positions in this region have often said like, but can we get the actual data on the thing, right?

And Focus Strategies, because of their quantitative expertise, was really brought in to lean on, to produce that, and to be able to say, okay, this is actually how much money it is, and this is what it's being spent on, and these are the best that we can do in terms of seeing its performance.

Any questions from Council on that before I move into a roll-up of that work?

Good.

Council Member Johnson.

Mark, I just wonder, you know, later on you're going to talk about some of the ways in which we will implement these various sets of strategies.

Talk to me about how the work of focus strategies might change some of the ways that we think about either funding of a new regional authority or how it might actually change the process by which all of our various governments and private philanthropists give funding to individuals that are doing work to end homelessness or organizations.

That's a good question.

So I would say that One of the benefits to the amount of collaboration that's been happening between these teams is that we were, although there's been some disaggregation of our timelines, which I'll show in a moment, our work has been reinforcing.

So none of the work that has been produced by focus strategies that I've been privy to thus far has indicated that any of the work that was produced in the fall was actually not informed by the right things or headed in the wrong direction.

I would also say that this gives specific capacity around, I wouldn't say the ability or the need, I should say, to sort of shift investments, yeah, I mean, you will make those decisions, but it gives you an idea of who's spending what where, so that you could begin to think about, like, okay, so, like, is, you know, given that we can see with clarity that philanthropy is putting all this money into this thing, do we want to continue to fund at the levels that we're funding, right?

So I don't, I wouldn't say that it is, a body of work that is intended to be used in that way, I think it really is supposed to be more informative and deliberative for you all.

Is that correct?

May I ask a follow-up, Madam Chair?

Absolutely, please.

Is it fair to suggest, then, that the client group is going to be digging into the level of detail around those types of investments that you just highlighted and making recommendations about, you know, either additional governance reform or additional revenue or additional other recommendations that may come out of that fiscal analysis?

I think some of that is on Tess.

I was looking at Tess mostly for that question, Mark.

Thanks for kicking it in.

Yeah, again, great question.

So what our expectation is is that the data set and the general analysis, so the analysis that Focus Strategies is doing currently is really looking at the progress that's made and the accountability that the city and the county have had to respond to the 2016 report and producing a data set that actually brings city, county, philanthropic investments together.

to feed into the regional action plan, and Mark actually has a couple slides coming up here that will show that flow.

And it really is the regional action plan that is then going to provide recommendations and rationales behind exactly what you're talking about, sort of the direction that funding should go, and if funding goes towards particular interventions or in particular combinations, what the anticipated outcome will be, but more importantly, what the performance outcomes will be and the accountability for achieving those performance outcomes.

So if we can think about the focus strategies as sort of a foundation for the work really that more predictive work that you're describing, which will come out of the regional action plan.

Okay, and I think it goes without saying that there is a lot of scaffolding that you guys are using right now.

And, you know, I'm the land use guy, so I have to use kind of building analogies, right?

A lot of scaffolding that you're using right now to kind of undergird a set of recommendations.

But I think, and that's important, and we need to understand about that scaffolding, and we need to understand about the process in order to be well informed about future recommendations.

I think what I'm really interested in learning more of is how our different governments and philanthropies have worked together well, where we might be funding things at cross purposes from each other, where we might be overly redundant and we could have efficiencies of scale, and the kinds of recommendations both structurally and financially that need to be made in order to make sure that maximum resources are going out to providers to support individuals and getting them off the streets and into permanent supportive housing.

And so I think this is, I'm not frustrated by this presentation by any stretch of the imagination, but I think there's just a lot of anxiety, and maybe this is just because I'm a short timer, but a lot of anxiety to try to get to outcomes here so that we can really start to see better results.

And so I'm excited to learn a little bit more about what some of those recommendations are, and I really hope that the client group is gonna be working on those specific elements.

because I think that from reading through many of these reports to date, there seems to be opportunities here for improvement, but we haven't seen those yet, and I think everybody's just anxious to see what they look like.

And I couldn't agree with you more, and it won't be surprising that the mayor's office shares your interest and concern and desire to see exactly those level of outcomes.

The client group will absolutely be part of the review of the regional action plan, which again is really the document that is going to get at the concerns and questions and issues that you're raising.

So it's an interactive process with the executive's office, the client group, as well as the consultative process that Mark is going to go through.

Okay.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

For the first question that Council Member Johnson asked, I think it's a really good question and I'm not quite sure he got a direct answer.

I think the answer is no, that the client group is not directly responsible for answering those questions.

I still think that And I think what you were saying is that the regional action plan through this group of people that you've planned to convene in the future will actually look at the metrics and the strategies that he was asking about and the funding.

I think it still bears the question, which is one that I posed earlier, which is help us define what the client group is doing, because I think our colleagues are going to have a lot of questions about what this table is doing.

versus what the other concentric circles of stakeholders will be doing.

So to answer the good council members question directly, I don't think we still have a definition of what that client group is charted with doing, though I think it became a little bit clearer in that last meeting, and I know in some ways you're building the plane as you fly it.

And appreciate you continuing to try to get us information in writing with clear definitions and names as the council president has requested so that we can also be very clear in our responses.

But I think the direct answer to the first question was no, that client group is not responsible for that level of detail.

So I am wanting us to move forward here.

And I know that on slide 12, you're going to start talking about implementation management.

Yes.

So just briefly, I like timelines.

They help me think.

So this represents a timeline of the overlapping work and the particular products, right, that are flowing, right?

So there's the system audit that our team did in the fall.

We're now helping with system stand-up.

There's fiscal analysis and the regional action plan.

I think what is off of time but I think just more helpful is like the products, right?

So like this is a schematic of how the products work and how they flow into each other.

So you'll note, right, that the 10 transformational strategies which then flow both into the regional action plan and the system stand up and that that regional action plan then informs the actions of a regional authority.

So That is how all of this information is currently being moved forward.

And if, right, the Council would like to take a dive on a particular thing, I hope that this is helpful with regard to where that dive might be.

All right, so to pivot into implementation management, which I think also contains a number of questions that the Council has asked, so the purpose of implementation management, right, again, is to establish accountability between the city, the county, and key community stakeholders throughout the implementation process, and to engage key stakeholders to inform the decision-making process.

And I think, you know, as We have tried to, again, embody as imperfectly as we have, but tried to in the fall.

We really want this to be a community driven process.

Like, the desire is not to do something, you know, behind closed doors in a top-heavy way.

And I think part of, to Council Member Mosqueda's point, What has happened is we are building the plane as we are flying it, and so some of the questions that you are asking are the questions that we are asking.

But I think what we're also really trying to do, to the point about names, is actually not over-assert who should sit around tables, but to genuinely go out and ask community members, like, how do you want to be involved?

And we've just begun that process.

So what we have thus far is a staffing structure that has not been turned on.

I want to be very clear, right?

So we have settled on this as a plan for a path forward, but we have not begun to fully turn this engine on, so to speak, and get it humming.

I think that's the work of the next week, week and a half.

So a steering committee, which will be largely responsible for sort of process management and strategy, will be composed of sort of the implementation leads.

representation from both executive offices and both relevant agencies, or all relevant agencies, as you say, so that's All Home, DCHS, HSD, our team and our project management role, HSI specifically, Seattle Office of Housing, DCHS, Public Health Department, All Home, Lived Experience Coalition, Sound Cities Association, the US Interagency Council on Homelessness, philanthropy, business partners, labor unions, providers, advocates, and council central staff from both councils.

That is the current formation of sort of a steering body for all of the different work that has to get done.

There will be four working groups that actually do a lot of the deep dives that we have been talking about needing to get done.

Those working groups are organizational stand-up, community engagement, policy and planning, external affairs.

So for example, Council Member Johnson, that some of the questions that you were just raising around like, you know, how and where will we understand where policies are at cross purposes, for example, That will take place in the policy and planning working group where staff, again, from all of the relevant agencies will begin to actually run an audit of like how are we funding, what are we funding for, et cetera, so that we can begin to answer that question.

What you'll note is that you know, for example, using that, we're trying to make sure that everybody who's involved in funding stuff is there.

So the reason, for example, Ray Raikes Foundation is there is that they will represent philanthropy and all of the investments that they are putting in to be able to discuss what policies guide those investments.

Similarly, right, like we're inviting the suburban cities policy managers because they also have investments, and we need to understand what policies are guiding those.

We have tried for these to be as inclusive as possible with regard to who is there.

And we have made sure that equity and homelessness advocates will be invited to all of those tables.

Again, part of the reason why you don't see names is that on the staff side, we're currently working with our partners at All Home, HSD, DCHS to identify who are the appropriate staff, right?

And then with the community members, we have to go ask.

Right?

So like, again, not wanting to assert like you have been chosen from community to represent, but to say, look, we need to reach out to the lived experience coalition and have a conversation about how they want to engage.

I want to specifically note that because we had a meeting with the Undoing Institutional Racism Collaborative earlier this week, and one of the specific conversations there was actually about like, is it actually reasonable to expect people to attend a meeting as like how their input is taken up, right?

And that when those of us who are paid as like full-time staff to go to meetings and like do that work, put that imposition on people who are not being paid to perform that labor in the same way, that that actually is deeply inequitable.

And so we need to actually have a conversation with those community members about how their involvement will be felicitous and not a burden, will not actually create further tension, and we're just now starting those conversations.

I'm happy to talk about that, but I don't know a lot of answers.

Well, one thing you mentioned at our last meeting, Mark, that I appreciated is that you and your team have been going and will continue to go into the community to find the leaders, the natural leaders, and to ask for their involvement.

It's not people have to come to City Hall at 2 o'clock in the afternoon on Friday.

Exactly.

Great.

Thank you.

So just visual schematic, this is the decision-making structure as it is currently held legally, which is that there will be working groups, as I just mentioned, right, that are responsible for sort of process implementation, generating all of the things.

One more, excuse me for interrupting.

Can you discuss the acronyms?

Because not everybody knows what USICH and what DCHS is.

So USICH is the U.S.

Interagency Council.

on homelessness.

They're a federal agency.

I stole my Director of Public Policy from them.

And they help guide a lot of the federal strategies that in turn inform HUD and HHS and a number of other departments around their investments.

DCHS is the Department of Community and Human Services.

That's the county department that is the ortholog to HSD, which is the Human Services Department for the city.

HSI, Homeless Services Investments.

homeless strategy and investment.

That is the city department specifically responsible for homelessness work.

Am I missing any?

I did HST, yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

Oh, I'm sorry, SCA, so Sound Cities Association.

That is the membership body that represents the suburban cities through a number of different policymaking bodies.

So the working groups will be responsible for work.

There's a lot of it to do.

We're really excited to get started on that and to be able to provide very specific answers as that work happens.

The steering committee is really there to help do process management coordination and strategy.

Again, that's made up of a lot of the sort of senior staff who are then going to be responsible for making sure that the respective councils and executive leadership are like getting the information that they need and the ways that they need to make it to uphold their legal and constitutional authority.

So that's the implementation structure that has been outlined.

Again, we are in the process of turning that on right now.

So look forward to having actual things to say that are not just process things at meetings moving forward.

Good.

And on your previous slide on page five, where you have August, September, October, November, that was obviously last year, 2018, and you're now at the system stand-up point.

What juncture do you think you'll be able to come back and talk to us about who's involved, what the next plans are, and whether or not we'll succeed in having something in 2019?

On the first question, in terms of who is involved, in a week or so, really.

I mean, we are in the process of, again, on the agency side, folks are identifying the right staff.

On the community side, we have already started that outreach to be like who and how and what.

So should be able to provide specifics about that in the near term.

On the second question about will we do something in 2019, I can't tell you.

tell you that.

Our team has always shared your sense of urgency and has advocated wherever possible for short timelines that drive towards action and are not process heavy.

It is our hope that that continues to be the attitude on both the city and county sides and I believe that currently that is the case.

Thank you.

Any other questions before I move forward into the specific legal decisions that will come before Council?

No, I think continue.

Okay.

So for Council decisions, we have identified I believe this is seven decisions, and some of this will require a formal vote, some of it may need a formal vote, some of it is just like, y'all will have to sign off on it so that we know that we're proceeding in line.

They are approving the legal structure for a new entity, like is it a PDA, is it a, you know, LLC, etc. that those are decisions that you will have to provide input for.

There is adopting a resolution affirming regional governance, approving a scope for charter for a new entity, again, that made a formal vote, adopting an interlocal agreement, approving external partners agreement with a new entity that's specific to a funder's collaborative model and how that will engage.

approving the regional action plan, which again will have a lot of the detail around program level metrics and strategies, approving new entity board members, and adopting a budget request.

What you'll note is that for each decision there are parties consulted or involved.

You know, the client group is always there where on almost everything there is also the lived experience coalition.

And we are, again, this is not like a closed list, and these are the only people we will talk to.

This is who we know we need to be talking to, and if someone else raises their hand and says, I would like to be part of this, or someone tells us, hey, you should also check in with so-and-so, that's community engagement, right?

It's just them doing that.

The timeline is in seasons right now.

I think that we had previously indexed this against select committee meetings.

I think on the advice of central staff, we have gone with a more general, like, if we can get this done in this timeframe, and then the relevant work stream.

So these are the things that are really going to come to council for sure.

There will be many other things.

I just want to be really clear.

that, like, these are the things that we know are, like, hey, these are the big decisions.

Along the way, we will have to make many, many, many, many, many decisions together.

And I believe that, again, when we talk about what is the purpose of the client group, I think it is probably, at least how I am hoping that it will be used, is to troubleshoot around those kinds of, like, more day-to-day, like, how do we get through this, who should we be talking to, who do we call about, those kinds of questions.

This is my last slide, so.

Thank you for your time.

And I yield the remainder to questions.

All right.

Council Member Johnson.

Mark, it'd be helpful if you went back one slide.

Are there existing entities that we are basing possible structures off of or stealing good ideas from other entities and cobbling them together into some kind of Frankenstein structure here?

I mean, can you point me to some examples about where we might be trying to draw from in order to help not recreate the wheel.

Yes.

So less Frankenstein, more Sphinx, right?

You want elegance, not just haphazard stitching.

But yes, there are a number of models that we are borrowing from liberally.

The two most I guess the ones that will have the most in common with the final structure, but it will still be different, are L.A.

and Portland.

So L.A. City and L.A.

County have a joint authority that they distribute a bulk of their funding through called LAHSA, but then they also have investments that just flow through the county and the city, and strategies that are actually, they have county strategies, regional strategies, and then L.A.

City strategies.

So a lot of the work in our report in the fall around sub-regional governance and the ways in which we recommended dealing with the size of the county.

We were the 13th largest county in America.

I say that all the time.

We took a lot of that work and redeployed it in terms of thinking through how you could do sub-regional governance in a way that would make sense.

Portland has a joint entity with Multnomah County, the county that sits inside.

Mark Jolin, who's their director, is a person that I talk to quite frequently about sort of how his board structure works, actually.

Their governance structure is very effective and how it works in terms of who sits on it and how they select who sits on it is something that I definitely have chatted with Mark about quite a bit.

We have also looked at a number of other models that are close but not quite there.

So one actually is Columbus, which has One entity that oversees all of investment, but it's a 501c3 actually that is the sort of the single funder for everything.

It's not merged with the county in the same way, but some of the span of control they have over services was certainly what we were vectoring towards when we began to look at like what the structural difficulties you were facing were.

And I'm happy to, I can do this list for quite some time, and I'm happy to provide it to your office or answer any specific question you might have.

No, that's super helpful.

OK.

Council President Harrell.

Thank you.

Thanks for the presentation, Mark.

I enjoyed it and enjoyed you a few times now.

Thank you very much.

Now, I might have missed some of this, or maybe it was in writing, but I just had a few very basic questions.

Of course.

This new entity, if you will, or I think I understand the decision-making structure and sort of how Decisions are sort of flow in the collaborative process.

I get that.

But this new structure, if you will, when is our goal to have that in place?

What are we shooting for?

The goal that I would love, again, I can't make this decision for you, the goal that I would love if everyone would agree to is the fall.

Like, to have something by September would I think be pretty great, given the number of other things in terms of budget process that you are then obligated to take up.

And I'm not going to hold you to that.

I'm just trying to get a feel for it.

Like I said, I might have missed some of this in other conversations.

Of course.

Again, this structure, if you will, I know how many council members we have.

There's nine here and there's nine there.

And there are different city councils within the county.

We've got a lot of moving parts here.

Ideally, what is that?

final entity look like?

Is that a nine-member organization, or a five-member, or a 25-member?

What's sort of the goal there, the range of goals in that new structure?

So do you want to?

Yeah, I do.

So very good question, and that is, again, one of the questions that we're grappling with.

We've begun to talk with the city attorney's office.

The county also will begin to talk with their prosecutor's office around exactly these questions.

So the actual question of what the legal form will look like, again, Mark just described several examples of types of legal formation.

So we are still looking at legal formation and we're actively in conversation with the client group about that.

That is essentially the first step in this is to really decide legally what it will look like when we bring the county and the city together.

and leave room for the possibility of some of the sound cities to actually invest and be a part of that.

That will be the first step to making a decision about the number of commissioners or board members, depending on where we fall.

and what the allocation of those will be between the different governments.

The one thing we know for sure is that we are looking to create an entity that can be nimble, that can be innovative, and also deeply responsive to the outcomes and to the goals that both of the large, at least the county and the city, have endowed it with.

So, sorry, it's a little bit still of building plane while flying, but we will have, again, more robust conversation with the client group, leading to even more robust conversation with the council.

So, Tess, that's a great answer.

Thank you very much.

I was afraid I was going to get that kind of answer.

So, I get it, but I'm just trying to get a, we got the experts here, just trying to get a feel for, is it between 5 and 20, or can you just give me something September's right there.

I'm just trying to get a feel for what our goal is.

And it seems to me that it's okay in a lot of the work that I do outside of, or even in this job or outside of this job, is I just start with what I'm trying to do and then I sort of work backwards sometimes.

And I could change that a little bit, but I'm just trying to get a feel, and particularly to be transparent on what we're doing.

This should be huge and should generate some great outcomes.

And if we don't have a test, I get that.

We have to do the process, I get that.

But I'd like to be able to just sort of know what we're shooting for.

But if you don't have anything, then I don't want to force an answer and someone's going to hold you to it.

But I just want to be able to, because I had a few more just basic questions like that that I want to ask.

But anything?

Yeah.

So I can tell you what we said in the fall, which I think is, I will say, is just our take.

which is that a governing body should be small and technically expert.

Meaning that if you have a board of 25 people, it's really difficult to actually then get something done.

And technically expert, I mean actually deeply fluent in the things that you need in order to solve the problem.

Because whoever takes this on as ED is gonna have a real, job on their hands, and they need to go to a board that they can actually get advice from that isn't just folks who are like, I'm here because I have this X, Y, or Z power.

So I'm hearing a little smaller, not 25, but something smaller than that.

And they will be staffed.

They'll be staffed separately.

Or do we envision our employees and the county employees and sort of having it as part of their assignment.

Are they employed by this new entity, or do we know any of these questions?

Yeah, so you are dead on in every single question that you're asking.

And because we are still early in the process, and again, haven't actually decided what the legal formation of the entity is, we don't yet have all the answers to that.

I will say that the conversation is that DCHS staff and HSI staff, homeless services, why can't I say that?

Strategies.

That for the moment, the theory is that those entities, that those staff positions will move into the new entity.

The way they will do that and the types of positions that will be available in the new entity is part of the work that we've engaged Mark and their team to help us with, but we're also talking with HR, we're also talking with the union, we're also going to be looking at the possibility of actually subcontracting with a separate HR entity that has expertise in merging and in creating job classification, salary bands, those sorts of things.

So the general answer is, right now the view is, and I keep doing this with my hand because I'm, trying to say that we're actually flowing folks into this new entity.

But quite frankly, we have the same questions about not just the status of existing staff moving into it, but then how do new staff move into it?

Like, there'll be openings, and what do we do in terms of hiring new staff for that entity?

And that's really a conversation between the council and our city attorneys and HR.

That's very helpful.

And this is my last question, I promise.

The smaller cities, like Renton within the county, are they at all engaged in these preliminary conversations?

Or are they more represented just through the county leadership in these discussions?

They have been engaged through Sound Cities.

So through that body, they have been there.

And I will say that the folks who've been the most engaged because of the positions they have within Sound Cities are Mayor Backus, Mayor Chalmenak, and Council President Prince.

I was just using Renton as an example, but I was just trying to figure if they if it were just dealing with their interests through the county or whether they're actually and then I just want to make a comment on As we consider this and we're still sort of at a very high level it creates I think a lot of angst and anxiousness and a lot of people with respect to those experiencing homelessness or vendors and contractors or employees And during this process of high-level discussion, I just think we need to try to get on with it a little more clear because we could lower anxieties.

There could be great opportunities.

hopefully better outcomes, better results.

But until then, trust level may not be high.

And so I think we just have to sort of get stuff out there.

So you wouldn't have been out of line if you said, this new entity, we're looking at between 8 to 15, that sort of ideal.

And ideally, maybe 25 or 30 employees, or maybe 200. I have no idea.

But we could start putting some meat around the bones a little bit.

It's OK, because we can change it down the road as we start.

You've got to start somewhere.

So I did enjoy the presentation, but I'm trying to just get a little more clear on what this September, October rollout may look like.

But I appreciate that.

I just wanted to give you that feedback.

I will say that that was received a similar request from County Council yesterday.

So that is helpful because it I mean, honestly, I will say that, like, from our perspective, you requesting that means that, like, we're in a good place.

And so we can then go forward to produce the next body of work.

And so that is what we will now do.

Great.

And I would just like to direct this question to Tess.

I have been really grateful that You have been brought on by the mayor's office.

And I didn't realize your background until we had an opportunity to talk a couple of weeks ago.

And maybe if you could just talk about what you think your responsibilities are going forward as the mayor's representative.

And the work that you've done around systems, that to me is a real winner and something that we need.

Thank you.

So my body of work with the mayor's office is twofold.

It is definitely being the mayor's representative and conduit as NIS is doing the project management, certainly being the conduit with the council around regional governance.

which can take many different forms from attending an entire slew of meetings around this issue to, again, engaging with central staff in more thorny questions about legal entity and engaging internally with our partners in OIR and city council, excuse me, city attorney's office, and also making sure that internally I'm working with my colleagues in the mayor's office to make sure that, for example, labor issues are handled appropriately.

So to a certain degree, as Mark is playing the project manager role, if you will, for the overall implementation of this, I think of myself as sort of the mayor's project manager on this.

And again, attempting to balance the perspective of both the mayor as well as the council in partnership with central staff and council staff.

Thank you for that.

Other questions, council colleagues?

So what I, oh, Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So I wanna also say, you know, you and I had the chance to talk about how some of the folks who I really trust in the homelessness and housing world, I've worked with you in the past and have had a lot of great working relationships with you and I think you came highly recommended so that gives me a lot of hope.

I've had the chance to sit down with Mark as well.

Thank you for your commitment to sitting down and including the voices of folks who have been experiencing homelessness either for a day or for a decade and making sure that their voice is centered.

One of the things that I really want to elevate from the report that you included was the need to make sure that our frontline staff, our HSD-contracted organizations receive a living wage.

This is something that the Council's been taking on for a very long time.

We were able to make a small deposit in the bucket last year in our budget, thanks to my Council colleagues for supporting the cost-of-living increase for all contractors.

So I think that those elements are really important.

One piece that I just want to make sure that we don't lose sight of is that your report had 10 recommendations.

And the concept of having a joint governance structure is one of those 10. And so as I said before, and I'll say publicly, I just want to make sure that we're not reshuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic if we're not addressing those other fundamental root cause changes that need to be put into place, everything from, as you heard from the disability rights advocate, from making sure that our intake system is equitably including folks and looking at their lived experiences and making sure that they get access to services, to making sure our HSD providers are getting a living wage, to making sure that we're tracking measurable outcomes, and that includes internally as well for our own department, not just applying performance standards to our contracted organizations, but figuring out how we're going to hold ourselves accountable to ultimately creating a new shared governance structure.

I think what you're hearing in terms of questions, and again, I want to call on Councilmember Johnson and I think the reason that you're hearing so many questions is because we're ultimately going to be responsible, right?

We are going to be held accountable as we should be as the electeds to make sure that the systems truly do change and we haven't just shifted responsibility and without knowing more about the ways in which the council will continue to have a role in directing funding, ensuring accountability for our internal workings, for changing the metrics in which we hold our community partners accountable versus ourselves accountable.

We are all going to ultimately be the ones who are going to be responsible for any changes that do or don't materialize.

So the big question for me continues to remain, what role does council have in helping to establish and also monitor and What leverage points do we have to change course if we don't see it changing?

So I know those are the big questions you've heard from me before.

And one area that I think would be helpful, and I can't remember exactly which of our colleagues said it, but let's not reinvent the wheel.

And one of the things that you've offered is to show how this model that you're proposing might be different from Los Angeles.

And then what is the other state you mentioned?

Oh, Portland?

Ohio, thank you.

Columbus and Portland.

Would be great to have maybe the three-city presentation and even maybe some colleagues from those cities to come and present about what's worked, what were the pitfalls, how did they include the voices of those on the front lines in terms of providers?

And how do they include those who are living unsheltered in terms of those experiencing homelessness into their models?

And then really, what was the outcome?

How did they see the change?

And I know many of our cities across the nation have been able to celebrate ending chronic homelessness, which to me would just be a huge marker of us actually succeeding and changing our patterns.

Some cities have experienced decreased overall numbers in terms of people living outside, like Los Angeles and New York.

That is, you know, an indicator that I would love to see as well.

But what are some of the other cities doing and how are they including that voice?

And then ultimately, as decision makers, as the policymakers who got elected to bear that responsibility, what was the responsibility that they had in these new structures?

Those are my big questions.

So I just had a quick sidebar with Council President Harrell before he went out the door.

Technically, we only have six meetings of this committee between now and September.

And all of us are wanting to support what you're doing, which is to speed this up.

We all have been working on this.

I mean, for the 10 years I've been on this council, We have been working on these issues over and over again.

What you have brought to us, I think, is our best way forward.

You built on Barb Poppe's study.

You built on the good work that was done by focus strategies.

You've had them look at this again.

So what I'd love to be thinking about, we've got our client group.

You're going to have the steering group.

how we can move this, what you need from this council in order to be able to get the support, whatever you need for us to be able to say, yes, if September is our goal, let's put that stake in the ground, figure out what you need, work backwards.

So if we need special meetings of this committee in order to help you make your decisions, I mean, you've asked for us to approve a legal structure, to adopt a resolution that will affirm regional governance We want to approve the scope of a charter for the new entity.

You've mentioned all of that.

And then adopt an interlocal agreement.

That means us working with King County Council.

We know that we can work with our external partners, philanthropy, to be able to bring together the government funding.

Let's figure that out.

But I guess you're hearing from all of us, we're very interested in the detail.

We know that you need our support, so let us know how we can be useful.

Thank you.

Great.

All right, any other questions for this panel now?

Anything else that any of you want to add?

Thank you for your time.

And I mean that quite genuinely.

I've worked on this for a long time, and it is actually really wonderful to be in a community that has this much thought and care.

Well, it's kind of you to say, and I've really found your energy refreshing.

And I also like it that you'll tell us, yeah, we're on the right track, or no, we aren't.

It's been great to have that candor.

Thank you.

Okay, anything else?

Then we will just move forward.

Mr. Johnson, we'll give you a minute.

So the next item we have on our agenda is the first discussion that we will have for an appointment with Jason Johnson.

And I think he's just taking a quick moment.

So Mr. Mosley, why don't you come up and join us Jeff Sims from Council Central staff, thank you for being here.

And rather than just having dead silence here for a moment, why don't, Jeff, if you want to introduce this, then David, you can, and I know that Jason will be right behind.

Sure.

As council members know, on Monday, the introduction and referral calendar was amended so that the confirmation of Jason Johnson to be the director of HSD was moved to this committee.

On Wednesday, some questions were provided to HSD to receive a written response, and we have received about two-thirds of those back already, so we appreciate the work that HSD put into getting those back on what was a rather short timeline.

We understand that more of the remainder of the written answers will be arriving shortly, certainly well in advance of our next committee meeting on this topic, which will be April 12th.

And also, I understand that Mr. Johnson is prepared to respond to any of those questions as well as others that you might have today.

And then moving forward, this committee will have another hearing on this nomination on April 12th as a special meeting of this select committee.

Very good.

Thank you for that.

Mr. Mosley?

I'm pleased to be here today to support the Mayor's nomination of Jason Johnson as the Director of the Human Services Department.

Jason has been in leadership roles in HSD for almost six years now and has served as the Interim Director for the last 10 months.

As Interim Director, Jason oversaw the largest expansion of shelter space in the city's history, which included expansion of services to LGBTQ households.

He has helped to make our homelessness response more effective to serve those communities more disproportionately impacted by this crisis.

He has been instrumental in completing our essential work toward a regional governance structure, which you heard about just recently.

He was a key participant in the city's response to our unsheltered citizens during the recent snowstorm, which brought more than 500 people into safe, warm places and literally saved lives.

Of course, homelessness is not the only portion of the critical services that HSD provides.

Jason is also ensuring that we're serving our seniors, our youth, victims of gender-based violence, and our most vulnerable populations.

Finally, he has been an effective lead of HSD during this period of transition and uncertainty, as pointed out by the Council in the previous presentation.

This is a period of transition and uncertainty, and Jason has done a remarkable job of keeping that agency and the important work it does functioning at a high level.

So I'm pleased to be here to have this morning with Jason as the council begins your confirmation process.

Thank you.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor Moseley.

Mr. Johnson, welcome to the table.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

I think you may have a few preliminary comments that you'd like to make, and I welcome that.

And then we have asked you many questions.

Thank you for your many pages of response.

I know there's been additional questions that are coming your way, and that those will be coming back to us prior to the next meeting scheduled for April 12th.

So, if you would like to make any preliminary questions, please do, and then I'm going to go through many of the questions and answers that you've provided, or at least ask the questions again and allow you, in your own voice, you know, in front of the cameras and folks who are watching, just to discuss your answers.

So please, go ahead.

Great.

Thank you, Council Member Bagshaw and the rest of Council.

I am really honored to have this opportunity to be with you today.

Also honored to be nominated for the director position at HSD.

Before I start, I want to acknowledge that while this hearing is about me, I am privileged to do this work with a team of nearly 400 of the most dedicated people I could imagine.

HSD staff truly are on the front lines of addressing some of the greatest inequities in our community.

And I am very aware that I do not sit up here alone.

They are in every statement that I make.

So first, I'd like to share a little bit about me and why I'm in this work.

Then I'd like to review just a few of the department's many accomplishments from 2018. Finally, I'd like to share some thoughts about 2019 and my vision for HSD going forward.

So let me begin with a little story that has helped shape who I am today.

I am the eldest son of a loving, resilient mother who became a parent as a teenager.

She raised my brother and I on her own in public housing, and she relied and my family relied on many of the support services HSD is responsible for providing today.

Social workers and coaches were my heroes.

They were the ones I wanted to emulate.

I share this out the gate not because it's unique.

Thousands of people overcome adversity and successfully improve their economic status right here in King County.

But to share that this lived experience and my relationships with human service workers is my starting place.

It is the lens through which I see the department's work.

It is also formative as I continue my journey in understanding racism and equity.

The system of supports worked exactly as designed for my family.

But it was different for my neighbors of color, many of whom are still living in that housing project today.

My friend Jose and his family, hardworking Mexican-American immigrants, are raising a new generation in the same economic conditions that they were raised in.

It is through this lived experience that I understand my privilege, my family's privilege, and the impacts of structural racism.

After becoming a licensed social worker myself, I began a career in Seattle at the Fremont Public Association, now known as Solid Ground.

I managed in-home care programs for older adults and adults with permanent disabilities.

I worked under the leadership team of Frank Chopp, Cheryl Cobb, Humberto Alvarez, and Cecile Hinault.

These progressive leaders helped shape my perspective of the human services sector and gave me a framework for understanding how to combat the negative impacts of racism and poverty.

I credit these leaders today for grounding me in our shared values of equity, justice, responsibility, and most importantly to me, optimism.

They showed me how to be more empathetic, equity-based, and client-centered.

They lived the power of servant leadership.

This is when I first began a partnership with HSD and saw the expertise, care, and the values of staff here that were aligned with my own.

When I worked at the Lifelong AIDS Alliance, I managed housing programs and a caseload of high-need, medically vulnerable single adults.

It was also my first experience serving a chronically homeless population.

I learned what powerful medicine a safe, stable home can be.

And again, HSD staff were ever present in that world as a funder, but more importantly, as advocates for social justice and equity.

I saw the need for advocacy, justice, and collaboration firsthand in my work at the City of Kent.

People living in poverty, involved in the court and jail systems, survivors of domestic violence, and people experiencing homelessness were in need of services in an area undergoing huge growth and demographic transitions.

And with factions advocating for different goals, it was only in relationship with community-based organizations, across government sectors, and with people using services that our work succeeded.

Once again, HSD was a partner as we worked on a multi-year regional unsheltered task force to end homelessness in King County.

It was clear that the best and brightest worked at the Human Services Department, and I wanted to join them.

I had the opportunity to do so in 2013. I am proud of our work here at HSD, to be part of a team that has grounded the work of the Department in equity, community, results, and accountability.

We have been on a multi-year journey to tie our work to measurable changes for the people we serve.

I am especially proud of the work we accomplished together in 2018, a time of great transition with a new mayor, the departure of Catherine Lester after three years as our department director, my new role as interim director, and an MOU with King County around governance over our homeless response.

Even in those conditions, we put out $136.5 million of our budget in contracts to community organizations.

Our case managers supported over 11,000 adults throughout King County.

Our staff provided 360 young people with internship opportunities.

Through our funding of community-based organizations, there were nearly 1.3 million emergency meals provided.

Our investments in addressing homelessness served over 25,000 unduplicated households last year and increased the number of exits to permanent housing by 30%.

And 4,900 support services were provided to sexual assault and domestic violence survivors.

Over half of our staff attended race and social justice training and or undoing institutional racism training.

Additionally, we executed three times as many contracts on time as we had the year before.

In 2018, we had zero audit findings.

We consolidated the navigation team under HSD and continued to address the crisis of homelessness with our regional community partners.

But we have much to do in the year ahead.

You heard in great detail the city's plan to stand up a new regional entity to address the crisis of homelessness.

I would like to say publicly here that I'm not seeking any formal role with that new entity.

I am, however, committed to ensuring that the foundation of this new entity is sound and developed with customer voice.

If I should be confirmed to do so, HSD is where I'm interested in continuing my work.

work in partnership with employees, our provider partners, Mayor Durkin, her cabinet, all in partnership that will make important changes in people's lives here in Seattle.

I believe in the work of HSD and the people working here, and I'm happy to be part of that team.

As I look ahead for HSD, I see several areas which we can focus on should I receive your support of my nomination.

My vision includes, one, results.

HSD investments positively impact Seattle's population, meaning that our performance measures show impact.

Two, stewardship.

HSD spends the public's money responsibly, meaning that HSD operates within our budget and without audit findings.

Three, employee experience.

HSD is a great place to work for our employees, meaning that staff report their satisfaction through a variety of channels, including the employee survey, connections with their supervisors, direct feedback to the director's office, and our human resources team.

We can and must improve in this area.

Four, innovation.

HSD has a modern infrastructure, meaning that stakeholders can access the data they need.

And five equity work to ensure racial social gender and geographic equity in our funding services staffing and convenings.

However as my journey here today has shown I have never done this alone should I be confirmed I look forward to partnering with you the community other departments and the employees of the human services department to continue our work to address equity support and community for all of Seattle.

Thanks again for the opportunity to be with you, and I'm prepared to answer any questions.

Great.

Thank you, Jason.

I'm going to ask the first two, and then I will allow my colleagues to weigh in here as well.

Otherwise, I'll just keep going asking you questions.

One of the responses that you made to our questions was in question number six about how will you support the implementation of the city's race and social justice initiative.

You mentioned that in your opening remarks.

I'd love to have you And I'm wondering if you could dive a little bit deeper into that.

Sure.

So, you know, I mentioned in my opening remarks that it was with great intention that it came to the Human Services Department.

One of the reasons that I wanted to be here is that this city and that department a very clear race and social justice initiative and strategies within it.

That had not always been the case in other places I had worked.

It was that framework, that initiative, the deep commitment to addressing the impacts of racism and social injustice that made it very desirable for me to work with this city and specifically with the Human Services Department.

I felt that there was great alignment in values between the Race and Social Justice Initiative and the values that I hold, both as a person and as a trained social worker.

I have a 25-year career in this work.

I have always worked in the human service sector.

passion to ensure that I am part of a movement that helps people and brings equity into people's lives.

And so I see very close alignment between my personal values, my professional values, and the values of the Race and Social Justice Initiative.

Likewise, it's, you know, I think important first and foremost for a leader to allow space for discussions, dialogue, and debate about racism to occur inside of an organization.

I do that.

There are ample opportunities for people to enter into dialogue.

and to call to task when they believe that racism or the impacts of a social injustice are present in any of our policies or practices.

I also have ensured that our staff are trained and have language and the ability to both speak to and understand the impacts of institutional racism.

I shared in my opening remarks that we had over 200 people go through race and social justice initiative training and or undoing institutional racism training.

We, I have a deep commitment and have made a commitment to participate in our RSGI change team.

I meet with the change team co-leads on a monthly basis.

That meeting is, takes place so that we can both share information but also work in partnership about how we're going to promote RSGI inside of the department.

But there is a lot of work to do.

There is work for me to do personally.

I understand that while I have certain studied and training understanding.

I also understand, as a queer man, what oppression can feel like.

As a white man, it is my ongoing responsibility to make sure that I am engaged with and at tables and inviting others to participate in tables that I have the opportunity to be at.

so that different perspectives, ideas, and perspectives can be offered and always part of my decision-making.

And so that's how I implement it.

I try to be an inclusive leader.

I try to ensure that I am working collaboratively and that there is a diversity of perspectives perspective and experience when I make decisions.

Great.

Thank you for that answer.

I'm going to ask, and I know this is a tough one because we have all heard over the last few months concerns about the transparency of the process.

And I know you have not been insulated from some of the concerns.

and complaints that we in the council have heard.

And I really want to give you an opportunity to address that if you choose.

That what do you think about the hiring process and whether or not there have been people who have been left out intentionally or otherwise, whether there is institutional racism that you point to to say that's what happened.

Mostly what I'm trying to do here, Jason, is to acknowledge that this has not been easy.

to give you the chance to say, how would you move forward?

How do you take your department forward?

Thank you.

I appreciate that question.

When I think about this process, I think back to when Catherine Lester asked me to be her deputy director.

In that moment, and after considering that offer and saying yes to her, I knew that I was making a commitment to step into a sort of different level of leadership, that I was committing to backing her up in a day-to-day way, sometimes stepping in her place in very full and complicated schedules in that director role.

I also understood that if she was to leave that position that I would either for an interim period or on a permanent basis be stepping into that role and I was always preparing and again knew understood that when the ask to be her deputy was made that I was saying yes to a different level of leadership inside of the organization.

When Catherine did depart and Mayor Durkin asked for me to serve his interim.

First, that was a great honor and I took that request very seriously and was excited to step into that role.

Also felt confident that I had the tools and experiences and the support I needed to serve in that role.

Mayor Durkin, you know, new mayor coming in and I, as a new leader in the Human Services Department, we needed a period to get to know one another, to get to understand our work styles, to get to understand the bodies of work, and to make sure that priorities were aligned.

I feel like we've done that during the 10-month period that I served as interim.

And there was a point in our working relationship when she asked if I would continue on in a permanent manner.

And I enthusiastically said yes.

Again, this is, this work, being in the, working in the human services sector, working in the human services field is my career.

This is my profession.

This is a position that I feel like I have worked my entire career toward.

And so I, again, offered an enthusiastic affirmation of my commitment to this department and to her in this role as a member of her cabinet.

I can't say that I also fully understand the perspective about process and the call for process.

You know, many of us who were just at the table before talk about the Seattle process and sometimes we talk about that and laugh or shake our heads when really what we mean is, does it have to take this long?

But I am someone who does value process and likes to work collaboratively and understand that there are voices at the table and that those voices are heard and considered.

So there is a level of understanding.

I did not watch or hear about any of the discussions that either took place in in this chamber or on the community and shake my head as something that was ridiculous or unwarranted.

I heard the voices from the Human Services Department and understood that they, at the core, they were feeling unheard.

They were feeling like they were, that they had something that they wanted to say.

They wanted some level of input into who was leading the organization that they were part of.

That is now my work to do.

Again, if I am so honored to be confirmed by this body, I will immediately step into that work.

I will want to meet with those groups who have spoken before you and understand, make sure that I understand their perspective, make sure that we can find common ground and a means to move forward.

I work I very rarely work as an individual.

I really enjoy and value being part of a team, and I want that team to be cohesive.

I want to make sure that folks that are part of any team that I'm part of, that they feel safe and supported.

And so that is the work ahead of me to make sure that that level of understanding and that commitment to work together on the many challenges we have in front of us happens.

Great.

And just a quick follow-up.

Can you describe, in your 11 months, how you have been meeting with, or if you've been meeting with, people within your department and outside the community, other than the immediate people that are reporting to you?

Thank you.

So, yeah, so we have a structure.

The senior leadership team of this department and I meet every week.

We meet every Tuesday morning for two hours.

Outside of that, it's really important that I, or really any leader in this position, be engaged with the workforce more broadly.

I can't take all of my direction, all of my consideration, cannot just be filtered through a senior leadership team.

So I have continued many of the practices that have been in place in the Human Services Department for years.

Those include floor check-ins.

So the Human Services Department and the 400 employees that work there work on three floors inside of Seattle Municipal Tower.

We also have an office in the central building on 3rd Avenue in downtown Seattle and an office in Renton.

So it's important that there is time held and I try to keep that time fairly unstructured so that I can invite folks from each of the floors, each of the sort of satellite offices to join me in dialogue.

I want to make sure that I'm keeping them updated on the work that I'm involved in and I want to make sure that I'm hearing from them about how policies and practices that I'm trying to implement are impacting them.

I also want to hear about how they feel they are able to make an impact in the community.

I want to understand what gaps or what hardships they're having as they implement their work.

Likewise, during this interim period, I stood up an internal staff advisory group.

I wanted to have a group that included a variety of classifications that had an eye to diversity and that was a group of people that I could turn to and honestly work very candidly with to help guide my leadership, especially during this interim period.

There are also other ways that we invite employees to be in communication with me.

I have a literally an open door policy.

I do my work in my office with my door wide open, and people take full advantage of that.

Just yesterday, I had, sorry, the day before yesterday and yesterday, I had seven to ten people walk in with, you know, out of a scheduled meeting to talk to me about things that they were dealing with inside of the department.

I encourage that kind of open dialogue.

And I, at every opportunity that I am engaged with employees at the Human Services Department, I invite them to give me their feedback.

I consider myself someone that listens, and I encourage feedback from anyone and everyone that I work with.

To that end, just last year, I conducted a 360 evaluation where, you know, 50 folks from inside the department and outside the department gave me feedback about how I was doing as interim director.

That was critically important information for me.

We also conducted and continued to conduct a employee survey.

We do this every other year.

And one took place in September of 2018. That is another tool that gives me information about what the employees inside of the department need and how they're experiencing the work, how they're experiencing my leadership, and the leadership of the senior leadership team.

So there's a variety of things.

A variety of ways that I try to stay engaged, but there are also a variety of tools that I use so that people feel like they can access me and give me feedback about the work that we're doing collectively.

Thank you.

Council Member Johnson.

Thanks, and I appreciate being able to jump into the queue.

This question is somewhat influenced by the fact that I have to sneak out of here to go to a lunch date, Youth Cares annual luncheon.

And so I apologize.

I'm going to get a chance to listen to as much of your answer as I can get, Jason, and then I'm going to have to disappear.

I want to talk about the work that the Human Services Department does with youth and families, and in particular, the collaboration between the department with the Department of Education and Early Learning.

Under Councilmember Gonzalez's leadership last year, we were able to put out into voters a very successful education levy renewal program that a lot of the both inside school time and outside the school time is supported by nonprofits who are also clients of the Human Services Department.

So we are, I think, very interested in how we can see continued collaboration between HSD and DEEL.

And in particular, I want to see if there are opportunities for efficiencies of scale for a lot of those providers to think through the application processes that they might go through with the Youth and Families Division and with the Department of Early Learning so that we might be able to avoid having a constant process where service providers are applying to funding from one pot of money and then applying to funding from a different department and a different pot of money to fund the same kid in the same program, where we also might have different outcomes that we're tracking within each of those different departments and different goals and objectives.

So can you talk to me a little bit about the work that the department does with the Department of Education and Early Learning and what you might see as some opportunities for improvement?

for interactions with our clients and human service providers.

Thank you.

Very good question.

So Dwayne and I speak regularly.

Obviously, we're both on the mayor's cabinet and get an opportunity to work together in that space.

But it is critically important that our departments are aligned and in regular communication so that we can avoid some of the especially structural impacts that we might have on providers and people doing the work.

We are, you know, many of the programs and even many of the employees that are part of the Department of Early Learning were employees of the Human Services Department.

And so there are even very informal relationships that still exist between our two departments.

And there is a lot of continued collaboration and continued work that happens due to those individuals.

You know, in the So I have two thoughts.

First, we just heard a pretty detailed discussion about an important reorganization that's going to occur around addressing homelessness.

The creation of this new entity is going to have a significant impact on the Human Services Department.

And I am working right now with Deputy Director Buehring to really start to understand what those impacts are going to be and start to ask questions about why and what investments or program areas are living inside of the Human Services Department.

And some of those are in the youth and young adult space.

And so there are funds that we hold like the Child Care Bonus Fund.

There are bodies of work that we still do to support young people either in early education or who are school age.

And as we go through this process of considering the future of HSD once this new entity is stood up, I will have to work very closely with Duane to understand and answer the question, is this program something that the Human Services Department should hold or should that body of work be the responsibility of the Department of Education and Early Learning?

So those dialogues will have to happen.

Inside of the work, when I think about the work that the Human Services Department is doing to support young people and the families connected to those young people, it really centers around employment.

It centers around affordability and it also centers around safety.

And so as I do that work of trying to partner with DEEL and understand why an investment or a program area sits inside of the Human Services Department and not into the Department of Education and Early Learning, that is the frame by which I'm going to be using.

One, is it an opportunity for us to support young people moving into the workforce?

So we have our SYAP, We're expanding that work, making it year-round, making sure we support young people as they enter into the workforce, and we want to make sure that that level of programming is robust.

We do that in partnership with a number of departments.

Economic development is a key partner, but DEEL is also an important partner in that work.

affordability becomes critically important.

We want to make sure that the affordability mechanisms that we control are helping to support families.

So we want to make sure that the utility discount program is there.

We want to make sure that other benefits that city of Seattle families can access are available to them.

We want to make sure that there is food security for the young people that we're serving, and we also want to make sure that there is a strong anti-poverty strategy and work happening inside of the department.

And that will always rely on us working with DEEL, with other departments, to ensure that's in place.

And then finally, I think this is the area where there's the most intersection with DEEL, is around community safety.

We want to make sure that this is where we serve a lot of the same individuals or families in making sure that children and youth are moving through life here in Seattle free from violence and in stable, safe, supportive communities.

And we have investments in that space, DEEL does as well, and it requires really strong, tight partnerships between our two departments.

Any follow-up?

Council Member Swan, I know you said that you've got possibly the youth care lunch as well, but that you need to be moving, then you have a couple of questions.

Yes, I'm sorry Chair Bakhshal.

Yeah, I had something scheduled long before this meeting was scheduled today.

So first, before, I have a couple of questions.

maybe for Mr. Johnson, and I'll get to them in a second.

I just wanted to make some preparatory comments.

First of all, to thank everybody, both human services department employees and community members, including homeless community members themselves, hundreds of whom have spoken personally in committee meetings, in my committee, more than once, some people spoke twice, and also the hundreds of people who sent emails and called my office and I'm sure other offices about their concerns about how the mayor was approaching this question of the leadership of a very important department.

And I think underlying all of this is not just a question of the appointment of one individual, but the issues that people care about, which is the homelessness crisis, the exploding homelessness crisis, the chronic underfunding of these services, and hence pitting one service provider versus another service provider.

Everybody's struggling to get funds for their service, but ultimately everybody's suffering because we don't have enough affordable housing and we don't have enough money for services either.

So I just wanted to underline that that's at the root of all of this and as I've said many times before I think the ultimately the buck stops with elected officials because elected officials have both the power and the responsibility so I want to make it clear it's not about any one executive member, although executive leadership in the departments also have responsibility and ultimately you have to also decide to follow your conscience.

I mean, officially you report to the mayor's office, which is clear.

I mean, we understand the chain of command, but at the same time, I think what community members have said, I mean the sentiment that's being reflected is that they want the leadership to do the right thing in the face of this deep inequality and this deep crisis.

And I really, really wanted to give my thanks, gratitude, and congratulations to homeless community members who spoke up courageously, communities of color who spoke up, but I should make a special mention of the employees of the Human Services Department who spoke because I think it is, we have to recognize how much courage it takes for workers to speak against their leadership and may not be against any given individual, but against the direction of the leadership, that takes tremendous courage and there is always a fear of retaliation.

So, you know, I don't know where other elected officials stand on this issue, but I wanted to make clear to all of you, some of you who are here in this chambers, but many of you who spoke earlier, so please convey my thanks and gratitude to them.

I also wanted to especially thank Denise Crownbell today of the Silence Breakers and Gina Petri of the Silence Breakers who spoke today despite the fact that this is not the kind of public meeting which fosters that kind, I mean it's intimidating to speak in a meeting here, in a setting like this.

And I also have to say it is really unfortunate that the mayor in her press conference chose to characterize the meetings where hundreds of employees took the courage in their hands and spoke openly, that she characterized those meetings as circus-like.

That is deeply unfortunate, I think.

That does not really reflect as any kind of real leadership.

And I think, Mr. Johnson, you did a good thing today by I mean, just to paraphrase what you said is that you watched those meetings, but you didn't dismiss them.

And I'm, and thank you for articulating that.

But of course, the fact that you didn't dismiss has to also show up in your actions.

So my first question is, on the employee surveys, and I'm going to ask the questions the way I had sent them, but, you know, not the way they reached you.

I just want to acknowledge that it's not going to be the exact wording that council member questions reached you in.

Employee survey results, and I hope at least employees, obviously you know the results of the survey that you all participated in, and hopefully members of the public have also seen it.

If not, please go to my council website and look for them.

The employee survey results have shown precipitous collapse in human services department employees confidence and management and I don't know Statistically whether it is accurate to hold you single-handedly responsible.

I don't think that it would be accurate in general but leaving that aside and not not don't not implying anything about your responsibility or not My question is, what role do you think human service employees should have in determining the direction of the department?

Also, what do you think is, I mean, just genuinely speaking, again, this is, again, also, you know, echoing what Denise Crown Bell said, how do you see the department moving forward given the results of this survey?

These are not minor indications.

I think no matter which side you're on on this appointment, you have to acknowledge that the survey results are really stunning and So it's a serious question I ask to you as somebody who is probably now going to adopt permanent leadership.

How do you see the department moving forward on this?

And how do you expect to address what's clearly a crisis?

And I won't go into the crisis, it's reflected in the survey.

And let me actually go ahead and also say another thing that I was going to say later, but you know, it's part of this question, just to highlight that in addition to the employee survey results that were recently revealed, at the time when the nomination process came to the City Council and came to my committee, 130 of your employees, employees in the Human Services Department, 130 members of Protech 17, which is the union local that represents at least half of the employees in the department, 130 of those members signed a petition circulated by their union objecting to your nomination by the mayor without community engagement.

So I think the survey results, the petition, membership, all of this reflects the difficult situation that the department is in.

And how do you see in terms of the leadership's role moving forward?

Thanks for the question.

The survey is a tool, I believe an important tool, that helps to convey information to leadership and to the rest of the department, to other employees about what the experience of working in the Human Services Department is like.

We saw in this survey that there are issues around communication.

recognition of work, as well as RSJ, that came to the top, race and social justice.

The 2018 survey, you know, it reflects all of this.

And it provides us the opportunity to acknowledge our challenges and start working on solutions.

And that is exactly how I intended to use this survey, no matter the results.

I believe that similar to 2014 when this survey was conducted, that the immense change that has occurred inside of this department has an impact on how satisfied employees are with their work.

And just to clarify, the changes that I'm looking at actually from the 2016 score and 2018 score, that also to me is an indicator that

I agree.

What I'm trying to point out is that in 2014 there was substantial change occurring.

There was a brand new mayor, there was a brand new department head, and there was some reorganizing that happened inside of the department.

In 2016 that was a period of great stability.

That was a period where both the administration, the department, and the organization itself had a level of stability intact.

And then again in 2018, there was another level of great instability.

A change in the mayor, a change in the department director, and the signal of great, again, reorganization that was going to occur inside of the department.

I'm not saying that those are excuses, but they are part of the reality.

When I look at this data, when I look at this survey, that I have to take into consideration.

It begs the question of me of how can I best support a team of professionals through great change.

The change is going to occur.

There are going to be anxieties.

How can I as a leader help support them in the right way?

But it also, you know, it gives me, especially as I hope to be made permanent director in this space and lead this team for many years, it gives me baseline data, baseline understanding, to understand what things I need to work on.

So I need to improve communication.

I need to make sure that communication is happening more than what's occurring now.

I've gotten a lot of feedback that I send too much email and people want to hear my voice.

They want to hear from me personally.

So I need to create more opportunities to do that.

I have heard that the practice of floor check-ins and of having, you know, these regular huddles that occur inside of the divisions are something that people enjoy.

I need to make more time for that.

And so I've committed to holding different kinds of forums.

We have in the past used brown bags or Lunch and Learns.

as a way to engage with one another, and I want to participate in more of those.

But I think more importantly, I've heard very clearly from the employees in the Human Services Department that there is going to need to be some real intentional healing that will need to take place.

There will need to be some probably facilitated mechanism that happened, some event that where we can come together and have common understanding of what we desire.

You asked how do, what role do I see employees playing in the direction of the department?

I see them playing a significant role.

I want their input.

I want to understand where they want me to lead them.

And we can only do that with better communication.

The other element on this survey was recognition.

We have ways of formally recognizing staff.

We have an end of year max awards.

We do try to highlight when staff are part of successful efforts.

Deputy Mayor Moseley is joining me in that effort in when he sees work highlighted through our weekly report.

He gives people a personal email.

I write personal cards to employees all the time, thanking them for their efforts, thanking them for their service.

But there's got to be more.

And I don't want to pretend that I have the answer to that.

I need to engage with staff and find out from them How do you want to be recognized?

How do you want to be recognized in this really difficult work?

Work that, you know, we're working to undo great injustices.

We're working with people who are suffering.

And so it may not be a lunch, a party, an award, a certificate.

It may be some other kind of recognition that is needed by employees, and I need to lean in and determine what that's going to be, and I can only do that in partnership with the employees.

Thank you for that.

Council Member Swan, I think you've got another question.

Yes.

And Council President Harreld said he'll wait.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate the understanding.

My question is unrelated to that one, so I'll just go ahead and ask it and then Council Members may want to follow up on the other questions.

In December, the Human Services Department sent ShareWheel a one-year contract for 2019. Less than a week after homeless people from Cherville and Nicholsville testified against the mayor's nomination for the leadership of the department, their contract was cut by six months with what I think and what many community members feel was a very thin explanation for why that happened.

There was no new RFP issued.

So I just wonder, how do you think this will impact or should impact human service providers' trust in, not just you, but in the department, and clearly the directives come from the mayor's office, I understand that.

But also, even if it was, I mean, many, many community members have said that it felt like retaliation.

Cherville and Nicholsville members themselves have said it felt like retaliation.

But regardless of whether it was or not, It's not clear why these services that are clearly providing a lifeline for a lot of people who would otherwise have little to nothing, why is it that we continue nickel and diming those services?

And do you envision that under your leadership, human service department could have a different approach?

So we contract with Catholic Community Services on behalf of the shelter programs operated by ShareWheel.

And I just want to acknowledge that ShareWheel has made progress, did make progress in 2018 in regard to their exits to permanent housing.

But at a point in time when we did have the RFP, And they applied at the end of 2017 to be awarded funding.

They were not selected for funding.

Those funding decisions, those really difficult, complicated funding decisions are not made by me alone.

They are not made by the Human Services Department alone.

In this Pathways Home or Homeless Investment RFP, we engaged dozens of stakeholders to help us make these difficult decisions.

And the Catholic community services and the share wheel shelters were not selected for funding through that very thorough RFP process.

I, in partnership with the mayor's office, identified six months of bridge funding.

It seemed irresponsible to immediately on January 1 cut ties with an organization that was providing a roof overhead for hundreds of individuals.

So I wanted to make sure that it wasn't just a month or three months, that it was a half year bridge to be able to offer some transition for the individuals staying in those shelters.

This body continued to fund that for an entire year and continued to put money into the budget to keep those shelter programs whole.

I want to address this issue of retaliation directly.

This is in no way retaliation for anything that has been said inside of this chamber.

I have commented many times today and in other spaces that I welcome feedback.

And if there is something that our department or I personally am doing that interrupts services for vulnerable populations, I want to know about it.

And so, again, I, this is, this was not a retaliatory effort.

Likewise, it wasn't an isolated effort.

We, you know, because ShareWheel through this RFP was not selected, we are going to pay careful attention to how this program is performing.

Again, we're seeing improvements.

We want to continue to support this programming, continue to improve.

But there are still issues, especially issues of data quality.

And we met with the ShareWheel organization just this week.

We went through a very clear performance improvement plan.

We enter into these performance improvement plans with many organizations.

This is, again, is not an isolated issue.

We have performance plans in place for many organizations.

Bill Hallerman from Catholic Community Services was familiar with the performance improvement plan and the elements that we put into that plan that we conveyed to Share Wheel.

And we are going to do everything we can to be able to enter into that second six-month contract.

We are not trying to use this as a tool to defund them.

And we are, in fact, trying to use it as a tool and a way to engage with them to help them continue to improve and continue to help provide safety, overnight safety, for hundreds of individuals.

I just would like to follow up on that, and I think Council Member Esqueda has got a question as well.

My experience may be different from others, but my experience with Share Wheel has been good, and it has been good for close to 15 years.

What I mean by that is that I have visited the shelters.

I visited when they are putting up encampments on faith institutions.

And I've been very impressed with their self-management.

Again, I'm saying from my experience, what I have seen is that people have a dignified place to live.

I'm hearing from others that that's not the case.

I'm hearing that some people within those shelters or within the tiny home villages feel oppressed or required to do things that they don't feel comfortable doing.

I don't know where the truth lies, Jason, and maybe you can tell us what you know about that.

and how we move forward because what I do believe is that Share Wheel is offering something that others don't in terms of places for people to go overnight where we can just get them off, get people into something warm and stable as contrasted to leaving them on the streets.

Yeah, I didn't hear a specific question in your comments, but I think I do have a response.

First, I want to state clearly that I don't have a bias for or against ShareWheel.

What I do have a bias for is performance and stewardship.

I want to make sure that in my role as head of the Human Services Department that we are making sure that the taxpayer investments are being made into organizations that are working.

And in addressing homelessness, whether it's the city, the county, all home, we are all trying to put oars in the water, point at the same direction, and making sure that people exit homelessness and enter into permanent housing.

And so right now, that is the measure by which I am gauging performance and in my stewardship role, able to analyze whether or not the investment is successful.

So I do have a bias there, and I think, like I said, the Catholic Community Services, in partnership with the ShareWheel organization, is showing improvement in that area, and I hope that it continues.

I also want to state that we know, by standing up more enhanced shelter last year, that enhanced shelters, meaning shelters that have services attached to them, services that help direct people toward housing are five times more successful in providing permanent housing, providing a permanent housing placement for individuals than basic overnight shelter.

That is not a judgment statement against overnight shelter.

Overnight shelter serves an important role and provides life-saving roof overhead overnight to hundreds of individuals in this community.

But it is In my opinion, through case management, that the successes in enhanced shelter are happening.

It is through that engagement that happens by case managers with individuals that is helping us see that throughput out of homelessness and into permanent housing.

And our expectation is that case management is present in our shelter programs.

and that it is an important, we believe is an important role in making sure that the issues and needs of individuals experiencing homelessness are met.

So it's what's been very clear, not just through this process, most recently working with a number of our Muni Court judges is that everybody says we need more places for people to go.

That really to address homelessness, the obvious thing to do is provide more housing, to have more housing available for all economic levels.

The worry that I have around ShareWheel is that if they don't continue, that we don't have places for people to go.

So how do we coordinate with our Office of Housing, with every other organization that is doing this, to expand fast the number of places where people can go?

This is the pipeline question.

So can I make a comment before?

Absolutely.

So this is a confirmation process.

And that is the agenda of the day.

It seems to me that this conversation about shared will and organization I have tremendous respect for and thankfulness for what they do is a committee discussion.

That's what it seems to me.

Now, we can ask the director's views on this, I have sort of a policy view, and that is actually who's making decisions, whether it's coming from you and your staff or the mayor's office, which I think would be, of course, the mayor is the executive, but I think we need to daylight that process, because I'm hearing you say that you don't make the decisions, it's sort of, It's a lot of staff work and a lot of evaluative work.

But I'm also heard, I think, during the surveys and during some of my discussion with the employees, that the mayor's office sometimes makes decisions.

I don't know if the truth is somewhere in the middle.

But my bottom line is, this discussion about share will, again, an outstanding organization.

It seems to me it's committee work.

So in all due respect to the chair, I'm not sure why we're doing a deep dive on that issue right now.

Because I have confirmation questions I'd like to get out.

Anyway, I appreciate what you're saying.

I think that this is a fundamental question that is going to continue to come up.

Maybe you could just...

So let me ask it in the form of a question.

Okay.

Who's making the decisions on share will?

Is it staff?

Is it the mayor's office?

Is it you?

How do these decisions come about?

Yep, it's all of the above.

So there is a really sound team inside of the Homeless Strategy and Investment Division that works on contracting for millions of dollars in contracts to address homelessness.

The contract with Catholic Community Services and the ShareWell shelters is one such contract that is closely monitored and closely watched.

Like I said, there are performance improvement plans in place related to many contracts and that that level of dialogue about how a contract is performing and whether or not there are technical assistance that our department can offer is a discussion that happens between the staff as part of the contracts unit and their director, in this case, Tiffany Washington, Deputy Director of Homelessness inside of HSD.

Now, those discussions do not happen in isolation.

We work, I work for the mayor's office, we all do, that role is very clear, and so there is a lot of engagement about what is occurring, what is occurring with our investments, what's occurring with our providers, what do they need, what is the action or next steps that we're recommending, and we do that in close partnership.

and close dialogue with the mayor's office.

But those kind of, you know, performance contractual decisions happen at the staff level.

Of course they're run up through me, and of course I flag them for the mayor's office to make sure that everyone is aware of what's happening.

But contractual discussions, how and when a contractor is put on a performance improvement plan happens at the division level, happens at the staff level.

I think we've got some follow-ups down here.

I have a different line of questioning, so I'm going to defer to my colleague, Council Member Gonzalez, on a follow-up on that question, and I'm going to try it.

And I know we're trying to get out of here by noon, so I'll speak quickly.

Yeah.

Maybe the answers will be a little tighter, too.

Okay.

Yeah, sorry.

I know this is our initial confirmation hearing on this, and that there will be more confirmation hearings, and I just want to say a couple things.

One is I know that Chair Bagshaw you've put out a schedule for us to consider this confirmation.

I just want to flag that there in my view may be a need to amend that particular schedule in the event that we don't get all of the information that we've requested from the nominee in time and in the event that we don't have enough space in these committee hearings to actually follow up on those written responses and ask follow-up questions.

It's already close to noon.

We started at 930 and I do feel that already we haven't had enough time to have this discussion with the nominee.

And so just wanted to flag that as a process concern before we adjourn today.

But my follow-up specifically to the line of questioning that was being pursued by Council President Harrell is really around a concept of independence.

And I want to hear from you, Mr. Johnson, what your views are from a principal perspective in terms of your role as the potential director, permanent director of HSD.

and how you view independence in your decisions as a subject matter expert and as a manager of these investments, whether it's homelessness, investments we make in the space to end gender-based violence, which we have not spent a lot of time talking about.

You know, making sure that we are meeting the needs of aging and folks who have disabilities in our city.

And of course, the other thing that is really important to me, reducing youth and family violence in our communities.

And so I think it's really important for us to acknowledge that City Council members who sit up here on this dais, many of us are not subject matter experts in any of those areas of business that the Human Services Department.

Likewise, most of the people in the mayor's office are also not subject matter experts in those particular lines of work.

No offense, Deputy Mayor Mosley, but I don't think you have a social worker degree, nor do I.

And so I think it's really important for us to have somebody leading this department who understands that by nature and by structure, the mayor's office and the city council are political creatures.

And as a result, we need to have a leader in this department who is willing to stand their ground and to deploy evidence-based strategies that are not going to be subject to undue political influence.

I don't care what your bent is.

I don't care what your perspective is.

Like, at the end of the day, it is about making sure that people can thrive in our community.

And I am less interested in who gets credit for that and more interested in actually getting the work done so that we can end human suffering on our streets.

And so I wanna hear from you what your perspective is as it relates to this big diatribe I just gave you.

But really, what does it mean to you to be independent and to be the leader of an agency who is responsible for deploying their subject matter expertise in a manner that allows every member in our community to thrive?

Thank you.

really good question.

So we just recently had a leaders retreat where we were talking about values.

And we were trying to understand how our personal values aligned to the work that we're doing.

And a value that came up for me was one around autonomy.

And it is difficult to have autonomy in this environment.

I rarely get the opportunity to fully and in isolation myself, Jason, make a decision.

There is a decision-making process that typically involves a lot of people and a lot of perspectives.

But I bring perspective as well.

I am a seasoned human service professional.

I'm a social worker.

I care very deeply about the people that are served by our investments and our direct services.

And I bring that expertise into rooms with me every day.

So whether it is having to enter into a debate internally with the senior leadership team, whether it is in my one-on-ones with Deputy Mayor Moseley and bringing perspective, asking tough questions about policies, I try to live as independently as I can, meaning that I bring my expertise with me everywhere.

I am, you know, Mark Jones was at the table earlier, and in the short time that I've known Mark, I've learned a great deal from him, but I've also, learned that there is a lot that we have in common.

And one core value there is around being person-centered.

I want to know that the things that we're doing are working for people who need the services that we provide.

Again, I stated that I had a bias toward performance.

I need to know that the things that we're doing, every bit of energy that we are placing into our work is going to have a positive impact on the people that we're serving.

So I see my role as an independent, meaning that I get to bring my expertise into rooms.

I have the opportunity to be at tables, to be part of making important decisions, and I want to make sure that my expertise, my training, and my long, many lessons learned through a 25 plus year career are ever present.

Did you have a follow up to that?

I think really what I'm trying to get at is, I'd like to get an understanding of what are you going to do when you're being pressured to do something that you don't think the city should be doing?

How do you stand up to that level of power, whether it's coming from a city council member, or whether it's coming from somebody on the leadership team, or whether it's coming from the mayor directly?

Yeah, so what I try to do in my work on an ongoing basis is provide options.

And those, I'm not always providing options to literally lay out options, but to show that if you do this, this is the impact.

If you do this, this is the impact.

If you do this, this is the impact.

And I always give a recommendation.

So I always have a point of view.

I always have a place that I wanna go.

But if you're asking if I have to have it my way or the highway.

I don't know that that is a reality that would work very well inside of a political environment.

And so I have learned how to press my, again, seasoned opinion, and learned how to make sure that my opinion and the best path forward from my perspective is ever present.

But there are times when, there are times when you lose the battle.

There are times that politics win.

And I will need to be really clear, as a leader of this organization, what I think the impacts of that are going to be, and then start planning for that end result.

But it is, I believe, my responsibility and my duty to bring into the room, bring to the table what I believe to be right for individuals that we're serving, and to the extent I can, hold to that opinion.

Thank you.

Council President Harreld.

I have a couple of questions.

Actually, I'll now sort of begin with sort of a follow-up on Council Member Gonzalez's questions, which were a follow-up to mine, by the way.

First of all, I really appreciate you being here.

And for those folks that were wondering, why we either shifted committees or why we're still doing this confirmation process.

It is precisely because this is how it should look.

This is not a rubber stamp process that we are subjecting you to both written and verbal questions.

It really gets at the core of who you are and are you capable of leading this organization.

And I say that to segue into the point that Council Member Gonzalez and I are making is that you do have a boss.

We understand that.

You can't pound your fist and say, my way or the highway, because it's likely to be the highway.

I think we understand that.

But on the other hand, what we look for as a council, we, because of the separation of government, we may have different policy objectives and strategies and budget power than the executive, any executive, not just this current executive.

And so what we look for is something perhaps differently.

We look for someone that will say, look, You all are lawyers.

I'm a social worker.

I know this stuff.

I live this stuff.

And I have to listen to all these folks.

And so it gets in the leadership style, because one of the criticisms that have been launched thus far in this process that has really just begun, I mean, there was some preliminary work done at the committee level, was that you weren't as forceful or as aggressive in terms of your vision and the department's vision vis-a-vis the mayors.

And so I don't know whether that was based in reality or not, but now you are openly saying your leadership style.

And so again, that's part of the process.

And so let me then ask a few questions.

You talked a little bit about recognizing your privilege and recognizing your personal story, which, by the way, is very touching.

You are clearly succeeding two women and two African-American women who were in that position prior to you.

With the recognition that your department probably serves more than any other department, people that have been directly impacted negatively by institutional racism, discrimination, you deal with people that, for whatever reason, desperately need our services and our sense of empowerment in trying to help them.

Did it ever come up in the process that you recognize that perhaps you are privileged in that position, you would say, and perhaps the Deputy Mayor could answer this question as well, You know, just like in the police department search, perhaps we should open it up.

Perhaps I want to demonstrate that I am the best person for this job based on who I am.

And I will prove to everyone that I am most qualified, because perhaps I am still benefiting from some of the privileges that I have, that this kind of conversation come about.

And I'm not saying it should or should not have.

I just want to get a feel for sort of the elephant in the room.

And that is how it had sort of come about.

And I think you, in your personal story, recognized the privileges that you did have.

So I'll let you address that.

Did you understand the question?

I think so.

Well, if you didn't, I'll say it shorter.

Yeah, you're essentially asking...

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

You're essentially asking what privilege I understand and the impact of that privilege in this current process.

Well, okay.

Thanks for clarifying it, because that's sort of it.

Did it ever occur to you that you could have received privileges by virtue of who you are?

You told your story in this exact moment in time.

And did it ever occur to you to say, well, wait a minute, you know, let's really take a look at this.

This department is so important, this work we're doing in the department.

I'd be willing to compete against other folks.

Did that ever come about?

And quite canonically, that's part of the concern that we keep hearing over and over that you are a beneficiary of it.

And I want to know how that, I wasn't part of any of that.

And now I'm being unfairly, I think, not me personally, but the council is being unfairly criticized for just rubber-stamping a process that we weren't part of.

So I want to know how that had sort of come about.

And did that recognition ever sort of take place in how you process this?

Okay, yeah, thanks for clarifying.

So, first, I fully acknowledge the privilege that I walk through life here in this country with.

I, you know, Catherine Lester brought me to this organization.

She and I worked very closely together for nearly five years, and She and I had a good partnership, a trusting partnership, and a really solid, sound work relationship.

I was really saddened when she resigned.

I felt like there was a simpatico that existed between us, that I trusted her, she trusted me, and I felt like we were a good partnership.

when she resigned and was talking about next steps and offering her full confidence in my abilities to Mayor Durkan.

She and I had a really difficult conversation and one that saddened me to the core because she felt that looking back at her experience in this position, in this very chamber, that I was going to have a much easier time than she did.

She knew that.

She knew that I, as a white man, was going to be able to move through this work in a way that was very difficult for her.

we acknowledged that that was likely true.

And there are, there have been meetings where I have reflected on that and thought, you know what?

This would have been really difficult for Catherine to persuade this group in the way that I just did.

And so I acknowledge fully that there are privileges that come with my skin color.

I also acknowledge there's privilege that comes from being male, even being male in a female-dominated sector like human services.

And so I acknowledge that.

I have to check that all the time and make sure that I am working in partnership with people and working arm in arm with others and so I I rely on my senior leadership team that is a 100% Female team majority people of color team and they know and have an expectation that I will keep my white male privilege in check.

So I'm just gonna try to tighten up because this is not, this is the initial meeting, so I'm not gonna try to solve cancer at this one meeting here.

And I'll give it, I know Deputy Mayor wants to save it.

So here's the challenge I have, that I hear you in acknowledging the privileges, I have privileges too, I mean we all have, well I don't get into that philosophy that I sometimes lose on this debate.

I hear you acknowledging that.

But acknowledging that and sometimes saying, and because of that, I'm willing to do something else, is sometimes a quantum leap.

I was very clear that I was willing to go through any process, absolutely any process, to continue in this position.

And I, let me make it clear, I'm not advocating for that.

I wanna know who you are and how you respond to my inquiry as I look for a department head.

It's a confirmation process I'm trying to get to.

to who you are basically and what your values are.

So I'm going to sort of, I'm going to, I'm going to get some questions out and then I just want you to think about them.

You don't have to answer them today.

I don't want you to answer them today.

And then in the next confirmation process, you could respond.

And between then and now, I do plan on meeting with a lot of the advisory group, the staff advisory group, and the race and social justice equity team, and the employees, and those that want to really chat about it so I can get a rich information.

And I'd like you to know what these conversations are.

We don't have to do it with all the TVs running.

That's not how I want to get this done right now in terms of getting feedback and giving you feedback.

I want to get to a real good place.

And the place is going to be having a strong director in place.

And so my questions that I want you to think about are, when we had two African-American women in charge of the organizations, Danette Smith and Miss Lester, It wasn't an easy road for them at all times.

In fact, it was a very difficult road.

And so one of my questions will be, when they were in that very difficult road, what kinds of things did you do, if anything, to help uplift them and help support them?

That's a question I have.

Another question I have is the staff advisory group, what kind of feedback did they give you?

What did you hear and what did you do about it?

The piece of it is, I read your answers on you meeting with the RSGI change team and meeting with them.

I assume that was you and not a designate.

I assume you're physically meeting with them.

Correct.

OK.

And the people doing that kind of work in your department, they have full-time jobs.

This is like our department.

This is something they chose to do sort of, I don't want to say on the side, but sort of on the side, right?

This is not their full-time job, correct?

That is correct.

OK.

And what I'm trying to see, given the fact that the RSGI issues are so important in your organization, is there any creativity that we should consider?

I was thinking like an equity officer, a chief equity officer, or an RSGI officer, or something like that.

Given the issues that have surfaced during the employee survey and during this confirmation process, rather than just business as usual, might we want to think about how we double down on this issue since it has come up in your confirmation.

So more to talk about on that.

And again, because this is the last thing you're going to hear from me today, because I'm getting a little hungry, is I want to thank all of you for subjecting yourself to this kind of confirmation process.

It is not a rubber stamp process.

It means a lot.

You've been doing this kind of work.

Your story is very impressive.

But we also want to hear from the other folks that do have concerns, because this is our shot.

Well, there's only three of us left now.

But this is our shot to really weigh in on department heads.

It's this process itself.

So I want to thank you for that.

And thank you, Chair, for indulging me.

Of course.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

You know, a lot of the questions that I had, our council colleagues have asked today.

And I appreciate the opportunity to have a more robust conversation in this meeting and in future meetings as we consider not just your responses today, but partially some of the responses that I'm hoping that you'll go home and think on and maybe get back to us on.

There's two documents I would love to have.

One is the 360 evaluation and the second is the employee survey.

And what I'm hoping not only to see in those documents but in response to the questions that have been asked today is some true concrete understanding of what you'd like to see change.

So I heard a lot about the systems that you've engaged in, the open door policy that you have, the willingness to sit down with folks and be open to feedback.

But I think what we're asking for is a better understanding of how that information, how the response from those two surveys, how the process that you have gone through in the last few months with this confirmation process, has actually influenced your thoughts about what policies need to change.

It's obviously a relationship that needs to build trust.

You said that there needs to be some, I think, reconciliation that you would desire if you were to get this role.

But in order for us to fully understand what policies you would like to put into place, I need to hear more than you're going to send less emails, that you're going to do additional brown bags, that you are understanding that there needs to be internal healing.

I hear you on those things.

I think that's a good first start.

But in terms of policy changes, how to make sure that folks get recognized, how to make sure people get heard, how to make sure that the systems or the perception of chronic intimidation or harassment, especially by women and people of color and folks within the change team and the silence breakers, that they feel not only heard, but that there's true policy changes.

Those are some of the things that I'd like to hear from you.

And then I'll just also note, You know, since we do get to do this again, having you reflect a little bit more on how not just you as an individual, and I appreciate you recognizing the privilege that comes with being white and being male, but it's the power dynamic that I think a lot of us are interested in hearing more about you recognizing and taking into consideration as you think about the change in internal systems and policies.

because that position that you're holding now, it takes a lot of courage for folks to either come into that open door or to those brown bags.

And we've acknowledged the courage that it takes for people to speak up here in our hearings, but I think that they're not doing so to be Right.

It's it takes a lot of courage to come forward and talk about what they're experiencing.

So recognizing not just you, the individual and the privilege that you may have compared to other populations, and also recognizing the discrimination you as an individual also have faced, but the power.

that you now have and that power dynamics that we are hoping to break down in this system that clearly has underscored to us that workers feel intimidated or harassed or at least not heard or respected in some ways.

Those are the systems changes that I'm hoping to hear from a director in terms of what your vision is for the department.

And Madam Chair, I think I'll hold my questions specific to metrics and accountability and the ways in which I would like to see our internal department being held to the same standards as the external partners in which we partner with.

You know, for example, we've had a lot of conversations about how we could apply similar metrics to our own navigation team and making sure dollars are being tracked down so that we can report back appropriately.

Some of those internal metric questions, I think, are a little bit more in the weeds than where we're at today.

But that's what I'd love to follow up with you on, recognizing that we're 20 minutes over.

Councilmember, how do you want to proceed with that?

You had, like, many questions in that conversation.

Do you want to issue a few more questions to Mr. Johnson?

I'd be happy to do that.

I do recognize you've answered a lot of the questions that we've already submitted.

I think that there's been a number of questions also put on the table today.

Madam Chair, I'm happy to also share with you the eight questions that I wrote down specifically today that we didn't get a chance to ask directly.

But would love to have those questions asked directly at a future meeting before moving forward.

Okay, I think what would be appropriate Let's let's do those in advance so that Jason has an opportunity to respond So I want to say first of all, thank you You've been here for a long time sitting at the table and I also want to acknowledge that it's been a real pleasure for me working with you and And when I was chairing the committee, you and Catherine would be in as a tag team, and I was always very impressed at how you supported her and worked as a team.

So, just for the record, if there's been any doubt, it's been a real pleasure for me to have that opportunity working with you.

And I'm really glad she supported you as her recommendation for her successor, because I think you've earned that.

We have a lot more questions, obviously, up here before a final decision is made, but I do want to just express my thanks to you.

So since it is 12-21, and I think many of us have other meetings we're trying to get to, I'm going to suggest that we adjourn this meeting and that if you have other questions, colleagues, that we get them to Jason before our April 12th meeting.

Very good.

Thank you for being here.

Deputy Mayor Mosley, thanks for being here with us.

Jeff Sims, thank you for all your hard work.

And I appreciate, Allison, what you've done here at the table.

All of you have been here today.

Many thanks.

The meeting's adjourned.