Seattle City Council Committee on Public Safety & Human Services 1/25/22

Good morning, everybody.

The February 8, 2022 meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee will come to order.

It is 9.30 a.m.

I am Andrew Lewis, vice chair of the committee, acting as chair for today's meeting.

Councilmember Herbold is unfortunately not able to join us today.

She sustained an injury over the weekend and is at home recovering.

We wish her all the best and for a speedy recovery.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Mosqueda.

Present.

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Chair Lewis.

Present.

Four present.

Just a very brief chair's report at the top of the meeting.

On today's agenda, we are going to hear an overview of the Pre-Basic Law Enforcement Academy Program from Interim Police Chief Adrian Diaz.

We are also going to hear a summary of the Office of Emergency Management's Winter Weather Response After Action Report, or at least a draft of that report, and an update from central staff on the latest draft of pay-up policy legislation.

We will now approve our agenda for our committee meeting.

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

hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

At this time, we will transition into public comment.

I will moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

Due to the large number of speakers today, each speaker will be given one minute to speak.

I will call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they registered on the council's website.

If you have not yet registered to speak but would like to, you can sign up before the end of the public hearing by going to the council's website.

This link is also listed on today's council agenda.

Once I call a speaker's name, you will hear a prompt, and once you've heard that prompt, you need to press star six to unmute yourself.

Please begin speaking by stating your name and the item which you are addressing.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

Once the speaker hears the chime, we ask that you begin to wrap up your public comments.

If speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's mic will be muted after 10 seconds to allow us to hear from the next speaker.

Once you have completed your public comment, please disconnect from the line, and if you plan to continue following this meeting, please do so via Seattle Channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

There are 21 people currently signed up for public comment, and I am going to have the clerk, Alex Clardy, moderate the public comment process.

So, Mr. Clerk, I will pass it back over to you.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

First we have Seaborn Page who's listed as not present but we will call you back up when we see that you are present.

We have Howard Gale.

Hello.

We can hear you.

OK.

Thanks.

Howard Gale District 7. Since your last meeting of the Public Safety Committee, the OPA has released its report on the SBD murder of Derek Hayden from last year.

Once more, a heartless police accountability system that has police policing police determines that a cop murdering someone only requires a one- to three-day timeout.

Andrew Meyerberg has, in this case, as he did with the murder of Terry Kaver, engaged in absurd legal and philosophical contortions to separate out an officer's failure to be actually escalate from the act of killing because they're killing a pedestrian with your car gets you a car a traffic ticket just for running the red light as surely as the fpd created and supported a system that denied barricade in life the opa the cpc and the council has supported a system that denied him and his family and friends you have to stop looking at data without understanding the people behind it you could die than their lives don't deny them justice

Thank you, Howard.

We have Sage Wilson, who will be followed by Well Lin.

Sage.

Hi, Sage Wilson with Working Washington, and I'm here today in support of moving forward on the payout policy being discussed.

Today in Seattle, workers on apps like DoorDash, Instacart, and Handy are struggling with subminimum wages because they are currently excluded from our city's labor standards.

In a recent survey of app workers, half said they are unable to keep up with the cost of maintenance on their vehicles.

36% unable to afford groceries or other basic items, and almost two-thirds reported having less than $100 in their bank accounts at some point in the past year.

You'll hear directly from workers about these realities in a moment, but it underscores why it's so critical to raise pay, protect flexibility, and provide meaningful transparency to workers in this industry.

A tremendous amount of work has already gone into the draft ordinance being discussed today.

Several months of stakeholder meetings, detailed review by city staff, and feedback from hundreds of workers.

Some of the biggest gig companies operating here have engaged as well, and a broad coalition of community organizations, including One America, Somali Community Services, SAE 775, and the Washington Loans and Housing Alliance have weighed in with their support.

Through broad agreements in our city that it's time to eliminate subminimum wages and end the exclusion of gig workers.

Thank you, Sage.

Next, we have Well Lin, who will be followed by Michael Pullman.

Well?

Well, remember to press star six.

You're still muted.

Well, if you can press star six to unmute yourself.

Okay.

Can I speak?

Is that me?

Right?

Yes, sir.

Can you hear me?

Okay.

Hi.

Hi, my name is Will Lin, and I have been working with GoPub since February 23, 2020. Beginning in Seattle, I found a second job that allowed me to work around my primary schedule.

GoPub seemed to be a great deal for me since I was completely new to the city and still trying to make up my mind.

The people I worked with back then obviously cared for one another.

The job was easy and flexible with the time, but things changed.

So did the staff, due to the change to the pay policies, forcing people to find another employment.

While all the people I see changing was the flex rate they were paying.

On my scheduled shift, I have to arrive to the warehouse, clocking and getting the average, because you cannot do that when I not arrive at the warehouse.

Most of the time, I would just wait in the car outside the warehouse for my turns.

And after I signed to the bag, which is brought by one of the warehouse workers, make sure the bag is tagged.

Imagine, you need to quickly finish those before it's too late.

I'm not allowed to enter the building when I need a bathroom or a break, because most of the time, I don't have any, and the shift block is very unnecessary, unreasonable, and just all over the place.

Thank you, Will.

Michael Pullman will be followed by Terry Herstad.

Michael?

Hello, my name is Mikey.

I'm with the Pay Up Campaign.

Outside the pandemic, I produce and host live shows, including stand-up music storytelling.

Currently, I work for DoorDash, and I'm the primary caregiver for my disabled partner.

I'm a member of the Pay Up campaign because in the 30 years I've been working in the service industry, I've never struggled as much as a worker.

I had a job delivering pizzas in 1996 and paid me $2.50 extra for each delivery to cover costs.

That's on top of minimum wage and tips.

Now, 25 years later, DoorDash pays as little as $2.25 total per delivery.

Gas alone is four times as expensive, plus increases in vehicle ownership and maintenance.

Another quick issue, a basic tenet of free market capitalism is both parties being aware of any agreement.

Last weekend, I took over a dozen deliveries that paid considerably different than what was offered when I accepted the job.

This makes it difficult to have any control over how much I make and earn.

The restaurant industry is an important part of the Seattle economy, and many restaurants rely on delivery to stay open.

Protecting delivery drivers protects the Seattle economy.

I have faith that the city council will continue to show national leadership and set the standard for the fair treatment of gig workers.

Thank you very much for your time, and have a wonderful day.

Thank you, Michael.

Terri Herstadt will be followed by Ashley Sutton.

Terri.

Hi, thank you.

Hi, thank you so much.

I'm Teresa.

I'm an independent contractor with the Gig Economy Handy app, and I joined PayUp Campaign because I see the lack of respect from gig economy apps for contractors who bear all of the expenses of doing business.

Although my experience with Handy is a prime example of how gig economy app companies work.

Handy's considering themselves a technology company, yet their operational behavior resembles a home booking services agency.

On the Handy platform, Handy determines my pay rate, the time I need to complete a job, and the time I'm allowed to do the job in.

They will control over all customer service communication, including communication if I'm exposed to COVID.

They control everything as if I was an employee, yet I'm expected to cover the cost of my business license, my state taxes, my federal taxes, my liability insurance, my surety bond, equipment and supplies, along with mileage and phone expenses.

And this is a broken relationship that's not healthy for any independent contractor.

Basically, we, the app.

Thank you, Terry.

Ashley Sutton is up and will be followed by Carmen Figueroa.

Ashley.

Good morning, Chair Herbold and members of the committee.

My name is Ashley Sutton and I am TECNEC's Executive Director for Washington Northwest.

TECNEC represents many of the delivery network companies this legislation aims to regulate.

And on their behalf, I would like to respectfully oppose the PF policy proposal.

TechNet recognizes the importance of ensuring access to flexible and independent work.

This type of work allows families in need of supplemental income, including during periods of unemployment or underemployment, to access work on demand.

We appreciate your interest in the complicated policy issues related to delivery, as they are different than issues affecting transportation network companies.

As such, The council's previous work on TNCs cannot simply be ported over DNCs.

We are concerned about creating barriers to entry for drivers, which could be an unintended effect of the process that applies to a one-size-fits-all approach to vastly different companies and different types of delivery.

We also have concerns about the potential cost impact of the proposal, which could result in reduced availability of delivery opportunities for CL drivers.

Several of our member companies are holding substantive and productive conversations with stakeholders like Working Washington, I need more time to try to get a workable policy.

We respectfully ask that council pause consideration of its proposal to allow more.

Thank you, Ashley.

Carmen is up and will be followed by Katie Wilson.

Carmen, remember to press star six to unmute yourself.

Carmen, you're still showing as muted.

Remember to press star six.

Carmen, if you can hear us, press star six to unmute yourself.

Okay, we are gonna move on to Katie Wilson, and we'll come back to you, Carmen, if you're able to unmute yourself.

Hello, council members.

This is Katie Wilson here speaking on behalf of the Transit Riders Union.

We are strongly in support of the pay-up policies that you all are discussing today.

I know that some of our members have been relying on gig work to make ends meet during the pandemic.

Subminimum wages have no place in Seattle.

Seattle has been a national leader in labor standards, and we need to make sure that all workers benefit.

We ask you to end the practice of paying sub-minimum wages to gig workers on apps like DoorDash, Instacart, and TaskRabbit.

Work on these and other apps has exploded during the pandemic, and they're some of the most exploited workers in our city.

Please support the payout policies so that gig workers are paid at least minimum wage after expenses with tips on top.

We appreciate Councilmember Herbold's leadership on this issue and ask all the Councilmembers to keep moving forward to provide basic labor standards to gig workers.

Thank you.

Thank you, Katie.

Leif Gehring is up and will be followed by Kitten Binet.

Leif Gehring, I see that you're here, but you are still muted.

Remember to press star six.

LeafGearing, if you can hear us, press star six to unmute yourself.

Okay, we will move on to Kitten.

Kitten, press star six to unmute yourself.

Hello?

We can hear you.

Hello?

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, good morning, council members.

Good morning, members of the FAAP campaign.

My name is Kiran Ibrahim and I'm a member of the FAAP campaign.

Now I reside in Des Moines, Washington.

I was a cab driver and also I was working as an independent contractor with gig companies like Amazon, Staccard, Uber, and others.

The gig industries are still not regulated to the extent of the right of each individual working under them.

These companies are multi-billion dollar companies.

They ride the rule to their advantage.

If a contractor doesn't follow the rule, they will become their victim in different forms.

They deactivate for temporary, suspended, and even at last, permanently deactivated, and there is no place to ask for the reason why they closed each individual's account.

For example, Amazon, after they closed each contractor's account, allows 10 days to send them new sites for it.

But only activate your account if they feel for their interest, and don't even explain why they reactivated your account again.

Amazon steals millions of dollars from contractors which are given by customers.

And this is another example there should be.

Thank you, Kitten.

Talisha Harold will be up.

And I just want to note for the folks that have not been able to speak, we'll come back to you at the end of public comment and see if we can get you then.

So Talisha Harold is up and will be followed by Michelle Bowser.

Talisha, remember to hit star six to unmute yourself.

One more time, Talisha, if you can hear me, press star six to unmute yourself.

Okay, we'll move on to Michelle Balzer, who will be followed by Shelby Hanson.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Hello?

Okay, perfect.

My name is Michelle and I am calling on behalf of the Pay Up Campaign.

I work with Instacart and I've been with them just about two years and in that time I've seen a dramatic decrease in our pay.

You know, supposedly their minimum payment is $7 to $10 per order.

However, once you take out mileage, that's often like $3 to $4 in order.

And these orders are taking over an hour.

Making $3 to $4 an hour is just not OK.

I think that we saw this kind of work really explode in the pandemic, as well as other judges work from home.

And I really would hate to see that flexibility comes with that kind of cost.

And working from home comes with that kind of cost.

I am urging the city council to pass this.

and really set precedent for the stopping of the exploitation of the workers and allowing us to be able to support ourselves.

I don't think flexibility should mean homeless.

So I just ask that you support us and the community and your neighbors and get the standard pay floor, which I think is ultimately the first fix.

Thank you, Michelle.

We now have Shelby Hanson, who will be followed by Matthew Humphrey.

Shelby, can you hear us?

I see that you're unmuted.

Hello?

We can hear you, Shelby.

Hi.

I'm Shelby, and I'm a gig worker on Rover and a member of the Pay Up campaign.

I work for the Rover app, which is a pet sitting and dog walking service.

I thought it would be fun to work with pets while I was pet sitting.

However owners were not honest with me and it left me with medical bills from being hurt by a dog.

Rover would encourage us to undercut our wages with other gig workers and this was not sustainable to help us make a livable wage.

When you have to choose between food to stay alive transportation or even rent there's no way to live.

We need city Seattle City Council to pass the pay-up policy for gig workers in 2022, because I need to be able to pay my bills and for basic survival.

We need your help.

Thank you for your time.

It was much appreciated.

Thank you, Shelby.

I see Matthew Humphrey is no longer present.

So we'll go down to Jason Reeves, who will be followed by Mary Lucchesi.

Jason.

My name is Jay.

I'm a gig worker.

I'm a volunteer for the Pay Up campaign.

I've been working on DoorDash for five years, three of it while completing college and now two years into the pandemic.

I've watched profits of the platforms reach record highs while the payouts have cratered.

I need City Council to pass the Pay Up policy and require a pay floor transparency and tips on top.

A standardized pay floor would mean that more money for families and hard-working people like myself who have delivered medication yesterday.

Nearly, I've done shopping.

I've done it all.

I need tips.

I need to know if my tips are on.

Actually, what they say they are, and then they're not going to be used to supplement for the pay that I'm supposed to be making.

The customer tips for services I complete should be separated from the wages.

The policy developed by us workers and the folks that work in Washington is a good framework that ensures hardworking people are being paid fairly, and there's some regulation in this growing industry.

You guys have the framework.

You guys have the will.

Let's do it, Seattle.

Come on, let's get it done.

Thank you, Jason.

Mary, you're up, and I understand that you're using an interpreter, so we will put the clock at two minutes for public comment.

Yes, thank you.

I am calling through an interpreter, and my name is, this is Mary, and I used to work with Instacart.

I'm a member of the Pay Up Committee, and I do work in, live here in Seattle, And gig workers are still being paid quite low.

We need the council to pass this policy to increase the pay for a standardization.

And last, employment income compared to the gig.

We need the flexibility and that's very important.

but also the income to match.

Last time I shopped for five hours and earned $55 in tips, and they took that out of my expenses.

It ended up being $22 for those five hours.

And based on pay, it's just not enough for what's in the pay, and we need the council to pass this new policy in 22, we need fair pay and standardization.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mary.

Next, we have Kimberly Wolf.

And the next two after Kimberly are showing is not present, but if they show up, we will allow them to speak here.

That's Lou Bond and Will Burns.

Kimberly?

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Okay.

I hear things about barrier to entry and all this other stuff as to why we shouldn't be passing this, and it's all just smoke and mirrors.

For instance, there's no barrier to entries on delivery.

It's easier than TNCs.

We need to focus on the point, which is there are people in this city living in poverty because they are not paid a fair compensation for the work they're doing.

I would like to say that I work with SHIPT but I can't because I've been deactivated for the second time in as many months from them for dropping an order within an hour of the window when you have to go go leave to pick it up.

This was because I had.

accidentally picked it and called them immediately, less than a minute, and they took it off, but yet they deactivated me.

So these types of things are happening.

We need clear standards to make sure that unjust...

Thank you, Kimberly.

Again, Lou Bond and Will Burns are showing as not present.

So we'll go back to three people very quickly here that were unable to mute themselves at the time.

First is Carmen Figueroa, followed by Leif Gehring.

Carmen?

Can you hear me now?

Yes, we can.

Okay.

I thank you for the opportunity to briefly explain why on-demand gig workers need lawmakers to raise pay and set standards for the gig industry by passing the payout policy this year.

I am now partially disabled due to a back injury.

The gig industry is the only industry that allows me the flexibility to set my own hours while working at a pace and intensity that I am physically comfortable with.

Gig work is my only source of income.

App industry executives are implementing ways to undermine gig worker flexibility and pay.

Without legislation demanding they do so, they will never invest in their workers.

Passing the pay up campaign standards policy this year will allow me to earn a wage in which I could thrive and flourish in society.

We are trusting lawmakers to pass the pay up policy.

We are not disposable and we should not be exploited.

Thank you for your support.

Thank you, Carmen.

Leif Gehring is now showing as not present, so we will move on to the last speaker, Talisha Harold.

Hello, this is Talisha Harold.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, great.

Thank you so much for your time.

I am a gig worker in Seattle and part of the Pay Up campaign.

And as many of the others have testified about today, is the need for gig workers to have the rights of full transparency of what they're being paid and also to be protected against unfair deactivation from these platforms.

There's no recourse for it.

There's I was recently deactivated from my account because I submitted my Seattle sick pay for two days and I told them the reason was because I had COVID.

Because of that, they froze my account, said they hope I get better, and that I need a note from my doctor, which I immediately got to them.

And it took them over two more additional weeks to get my account back and running after I submitted the paperwork, and an additional week for me to even get the pay, which was the

Thank you, Talisha.

That is the last public commenter we have today.

And I will read the first agenda item in here, which is agenda item pre-basic law enforcement academy, ILEA program for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mr. Clerk.

And do we have our panel of presenters present yet?

I guess.

There we go.

OK, excellent.

So I know that we're being joined by Interim Chief Adrienne Diaz.

And it looks like Brian Maxey is here as well.

So why don't we just jump into it if our panel has a presentation.

Chief Diaz, if it's okay, I'll hand it over to you for introductions.

And then we can proceed along accordingly.

So why don't you take it away?

Thank you, Chair.

And I have our COO, Chief Operating Officer Brian Maxey on the line as well.

But I will start off, I'll start us off with this presentation.

I want to thank the chairs.

I know, I believe Chairwoman Herbold is not able to join us.

but the rest of the committee and all the city council members for having me present on our relational policing initiative.

Everything is about relationships.

Over the course of my career, some of the biggest success I've had that I've been involved with could not have been accomplished without the relationships and partnerships that I had already developed.

And it is because of these relationships that we are stronger.

So when developing this initiative that we refer to, or that we're talking about, the PREVIA initiative, I took that experience and it really has four objectives.

It's developing relationships with the community we serve, infuse a culture of compassion and empathetic policing in everything that we do and how we serve, learn about self and how to manage one's emotions and behaviors, and develop appropriate social emotional responses and help moderate those with trauma.

In order to get there, it'll be based on these three main components, a community-centered dialogue and learning, officer wellness and professional development, and 360-degree view of the criminal justice system.

So under the community-centered dialogue and learning, what does that mean?

And what we're focused on is really bringing a whole slew of training when it comes to social and emotional learning and brain development to our officers.

And we're gonna do this prior to their time joining the academy.

We would bring off recruits in for 30 to 45 days prior to the academy, and we would develop a level of training in social emotional learning and brain development to understand how these practices can better help facilitate de-escalation, but also better understand how the community that they're gonna end up serving.

Through this community center dialogue, we will also provide them listening sessions with community members, not only just on police, but police and race.

Also understanding the community, understanding community, understanding the demographics of who we serve.

We have been doing some of these dialogues in our CID area and in the Central District to really better understand the history of Seattle and for our officers to be able to have discussions with community members that really will help understand the history of how policing came about and some of the also tragic history of how we police in our communities as well.

But by bringing this to them, by bringing the recruits to this at the very beginning, this will give a more centered approach of how they can better work with our community.

The second component is officer wellness and professional development.

We know that if we are able to build resiliency early on, over the course of an officer's career, where they're going to be exposed to a variety of levels of trauma, they're going to see the shootings, the robberies, all of the things that are tragic in our society.

And so we want to build that level of resiliency early on.

And we feel that the social emotional learning from understanding when an officer comes to work, where they're at in that day.

Because an officer, if they come, they've had experiences at home, maybe they've had something that didn't go right and they come to work and they're not in a good place, we know that that might potentially carry out into how we serve the community.

So we want to make sure that we're building that level of resilience early on.

The second component of that professional development is really focused on problem solving.

But we are gonna do it through what they call growth and outward mindset.

There's a whole level of development of training that we want to make sure that our personnel are equipped with to really find themselves, them growing as a person on a daily basis.

And then the third thing is really to get a good overall view of the criminal justice system.

And what we really wanted to also bring into that is how diversion can operate within our policing model.

Typically, when I came onto the force, it was, you know, we'd made an arrest, we ended up booking them into the King County Jail, and that was our level of work.

But we really have to understand that how we can actually be part of a diversion or restorative justice process.

And we feel like understanding what the criminal justice system is all about and how we can actually make some incremental changes culturally on the front end and actually feel like we can actually accomplish something together as a community would be so important.

As part of this training that we're looking at doing, there's, so we bring in 34 to 45 days, they would then go to the academy.

In the academy, they focus on guardianship versus warriorship.

Then after the academy, they come in to the, what we call, refer to as postplia, and we would then reiterate these same values that we have.

We know that when we hire an officer that they're gonna be with us for the next 30 years.

So we have to provide that early on training prior to the academy, prior to them going out and being deployed into the actual streets.

If we are going to get our department back up into its staffing levels, we also are going to be hiring over 100 officers for the next several years.

If we hire 100 officers for the next five years, that'll be over half the department that will be infused with this level of culture change that we're really focused on.

This is what we've, the reason why I took the social emotional learning and brain development, we know from the education field that have already started to do this with their teachers, is really try to understand when a student comes to school, we know that they have a whole level of trauma that has gone on in their life from experiences of abuse at the home or drinking alcohol in their home, And so how do the teachers then be able to get the student to to be able to learn and develop, just like everybody else.

And so they went through a variety of different training there for the teachers to understand how they can, you know, help address those needs.

And I feel there is a good place for our police officers to also learn from those same practices and develop those same skills because we're dealing with people in trauma every single call.

We know that this person not only just dealing with people in crisis, but we also know that when people are victims of a crime, they're experiencing that level of trauma that we have to then understand how we can better serve them as well.

And so this is gonna be a very, this is one component of this whole relational policing initiative that we will be able to actually implement earlier or later this year.

The academy, I've already been in discussions with the executive director from the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission.

We will be doing our own class starting in June, and we will be launching the relational policing model in May, May 1st.

And so we've now been in discussions with a variety of different nonprofits and other organizations to help do lead the course curriculum work.

We are also putting the schedule together so we can actually be able to have a plan in place to know what our officers are going to be doing out throughout that 30 day process.

The first class is going to be 30 days because it's kind of this first try at this.

And then we hope that we will expand this out, learning from what worked and what didn't work from the recruits, but as well as learning and listening from the community about how we can actually make this a stronger program.

So we hope to build this out to a full 45 days, but initially we're going to start off with 30 days.

And that's just kind of an early rundown of this program.

And any question, I open it up for any questions that you might have.

Thank you so much, Chief Diaz, for that overview.

I don't know if COO Maxey has anything that they want to share as well, or if they're mostly here for potential questions.

I just want to give some space before we open it up to the council members.

Thank you, and I appreciate that, Council Member.

I think I'm mainly here to respond to questions, and so let's just get to those.

Thank you.

Great.

Well, we can oblige.

I'm sure there will be some questions.

So the first thing I want to throw out, Chief, that I would like to ask you, as someone who represents downtown and has seen a lot of good collaboration between the West Precinct and the Just Care program in particular, And then also in a more long running relationship, the West Precinct and the LEAD program, which of course is a derivative of Just Care.

How does that factor into this curriculum for the program when you're working with folks pre-academy?

in terms of integrating them into that very unique Seattle way of having that resource and how officers can learn about that resource and know how to utilize it in their work to triage off things that could be handled by another group of folks and allow them to move on to another priority.

Is that part as you envision later this year of having a class being part of this curriculum?

Correct.

And thank you for that question.

So that's kind of the overview of the criminal justice system.

Really what our focus will be is making sure that our officers have that exposure to what are programs out there that can help divert or help be able to take some of that load off the police officer's hands.

But we know sometimes we're that initial contact.

We're dealing with the unsheltered population and isn't aware of what services or they're, you know, they've stole something and the business isn't called.

And we've got to be able to figure out what services that we can refer them to.

And so using Just Care or using LEAD, And we've used lead for a long periods of time, but actually doing the training prior to the actual their time in the academy really kind of sets the guidelines and expectations that this is something that is valued in our department.

And so, because before you would go through the academy, you would go through your, your FTO training.

And then it would be something that is added on as part of your job.

But if we if this is what we're doing at the very front end of the work, we know that our officers will believe that this is an expectation that I am going to end up making sure that our people that our community is actually being served in the right manner.

Great.

Could you speak a little more to, sort of in this recent answer, but a little bit more to the gap overall that this program is filling and the benefit that this program is going to have to Seattle on an ongoing basis, given the sufficiency of the existing training prior to this program being conceived of?

Yeah, right now the State Academy provides five months of training, but really none of it is focused on building relationships and building connections and really understanding where trauma might exist.

And so we wanted to make sure that we're doing this on the front end.

And so that is just one of the major components of it.

Help me out with the first part of the question that you had, and I apologize for starting with the second part.

No, of course.

So I guess what I'm getting at is, you know, we know that the training from the State Academy, you know, is sort of necessary but not sufficient for everything that we face here in the city of Seattle, right.

So clearly there's some gaps.

How is this program, what specific gaps do you see this program filling and is there potential for amending and changing the curriculum based on the feedback we receive of how successfully it's achieving those goals?

Yeah, so one of the biggest gaps is, I think for the longest time and over the course of my career, we became a very specialized police department.

And so we had a unit for everything, for major crimes and for, you know, bikes and for act team and for community policing teams.

And what that did was it really pushed personnel to say, oh, we'll hand that over to community outreach for them to handle.

And that most officers then just went about answering 911 calls.

And it wasn't a bad model.

It made everybody very specialist.

But over the course of the last two years and losing the amount of personnel that I had.

I've had to, you know, shift people back into patrol.

And that is really more for my focus has been to try and make everybody a generalist.

That everybody has, you know, an opportunity to be the community outreach officer, but everybody also has the opportunity to make sure that they are well trained and they, you know, can respond to an active shooter and have those same skill sets.

And so it's not just the community outreach officer that handles community work.

It is every one of us.

So that is a huge, that was a gap in our department that I wanted to make sure that I fix.

The second component to that is, is that there was a gap in training because we have not really been able as this, you know, through the state academy to provide that level of really developing, you know, integral relationships and understanding what that means.

And so I wanted to make sure that we were going to address that issue as well.

I know that as we look at policing in general, we put a lot of the work on the officers' hands.

We did crisis work, we made sure that officers were going to respond to all crisis calls, and we know that that model isn't necessarily the model that we want for future policing.

And we want to make sure that there are people that are mental health specialists to be able to do that work.

And so we want our officers to kind of go start to take some of that work off.

But we need to make sure that there's an opportune training program that allows them to transition and understand what type of programs are out there for them to transition this work to.

And we also know that Because we're dealing with people that are in trauma all the time, that we want to also make sure that officers have the social emotional skills to be able to deal with this.

And it's not just the one training class that is, you know, 24 hours and now they've gone through de-escalation, they're going to be able to solve every situation.

That no, we wanted to make sure that it is a product of all levels of their training to ensure that they're de-escalating in every level of situation because they're dealing with people in trauma.

Thank you.

So I mean, my last question that I would ask about this program is Council put forward $200,000 to get this off the ground and have a first class this year.

Could you break down how that $200,000 is helping to facilitate this and what kind of programming needs to be paid for and what the expenses that this entails are?

I think would be instructive as we look at how to continue to support initiatives like this.

Yeah, so we are hiring a relational policing coordinator.

So that is one probably large expense that we are doing to coordinate all aspects of this.

We have posted that position out.

So if there are anybody listening to this, please, you know, look at the job description.

And if you have those skill sets that we're looking for, please apply.

The second component is that we're contracting with a variety of different non-profits in this area of brain development and social emotional learning.

And so there are another set of money that we are making sure that we are bringing some of the best practices in this area of training.

And so that's one other aspect of it.

I'm actually talking with federal partners, Federal Department of Justice, COPS Office, Bureau of Justice Assistance, and NIJ on funding and being able to fund the research component to it.

I want to make sure that we are doing a process evaluation of how we build this program, what are the strengths and what are the things that we could work through, and then once the program is up and running, really be able to do a deep dive into Is this a best practice for policing in general?

I don't know of another department in the country that is doing this type of thought process or even this type of work.

And I feel like this is going to be cutting edge for not only our city, but for policing in general.

And so that research work will have to be hopefully funded at the federal level, but there is already a level of interest to fund this program because they understand that this is where policing is evolving towards as well.

Thank you so much, Chief, for all those updates.

I'll open it up now to committee members.

Does anyone have any questions for the panel regarding the status of the Pre-Basic Law Enforcement Academy program?

Okay, seeing no questions from council members.

Chief, good to see you.

And COO Maxey, good to see you.

Oh, sorry, Council Member Mosqueda.

That's a question.

Go ahead, Council Member Mosqueda.

Very close, Chief.

You almost got to get out of here.

But Council Member Mosqueda, you're recognized.

Thank you very much Mr. Chair and thank you again interim chief and team for being here today.

I didn't have a question about the program that you're talking about standing up.

I do have questions just generally on some of the implementation of some other aspects of the 2022 budget and I didn't see you on the rest of the agenda and it sounded like the chair was about to say goodbye.

So I thought I'd take a quick second to ask those questions.

I think notably missing from the press conference last Friday was an indication of how much council has put towards alternatives to public safety and an answer to the call to respond to the amount of crime and violence that we've seen, not just in Seattle, obviously across the country, but in Seattle, we have invested in upstream strategies that I think are aligning nicely with what you and Mayor Harreld and the team described on Friday.

In fact, Chair Herbold, if she were here today, I know that she would probably be noting some of these investments as well.

And one of those relates to gun violence.

For the second year in a row, we have invested over $4 million into gun violence prevention strategies, youth violence reduction strategies, and having just heard NPR, excuse me, I should say KUOW this morning, run a piece at the top of the hour asking what the city is going to do.

to address gun violence.

It is the question that folks should be asking and I wanted it to be followed up with, here's the dollars that have been allocated and here's how those dollars are being implemented.

Because that wasn't part of the report that I heard this morning, I thought I'd give you a quick chance to see if you could fill in the blanks for some of the folks in the public about the dollars that we have put towards gun violence prevention strategies, what some of those strategies already are and how we as a city have invested in gun violence reduction strategies If any of those dollars are still waiting to be spent, an update on that would be helpful as well.

We do do updates on the American Rescue Plan Act and those implementation efforts, but this predates that effort given the 2022 budget and 2020, excuse me, budget cycle which fed the 2021 year and then last year's budget cycle which fed the 2022 year.

We know we've now had two consecutive years of investments in gun violence reduction strategies.

Do you mind giving folks a quick update on where we're at with implementing some of those gun violence reduction strategies and anything else that you may want to highlight or if funding is still waiting to be spent?

Thank you.

Yeah, I think when it comes to defunding, I don't.

I think some of that is funding through Human Services Department.

I know that we also supported some of that extra funding when it came two years ago during the 3rd and Pine shooting.

After that 3rd and Pine shooting, I really focused our push to try and make sure that we were funding critical incident response.

So that is the violence interrupters, the regional peacekeeper, community passageways and other groups that were doing the work to try and.

uh...

stop the retaliatory uh...

potential retaliatory shootings and i'm really grateful for the funding of those programs because uh...

they do do a whole lot of work on the backside to try and make sure that there that some issues are are stopping you know it's it is it you know not i can't speak to the the level of work of everything that they have done You know, I know that our city has already experienced a whole host of shootings.

I mean, last year we finished out with 612 shootings compared to 421 the year before.

And this year we've already started off not on the right foot, but we've had 79 shootings and shots fired compared to 42 last year.

So we're You know, our city has experienced just a whole host of increase of gun violence.

And this is not necessarily related to youth or gang violence.

We're seeing it in all different areas that I think in those funding investments, I think we've actually seen it not rise to what other areas of shootings that have occurred.

Because we're seeing, you know, violence in road rages, in random drive-by where Uber drivers are being shot at and domestic violence shootings.

And so there's been a whole host of different types of shootings, but not necessarily in the areas where these investments have been done.

And so I thank the city council for those investments as well.

And then I still have to also make sure that I note that it's important for us to have enough officers to be able to respond to all of the growing levels of violence that is occurring as well.

Thank you very much, Chief, and I appreciate that Councilmember Herbold's press release also noted the full funding of the hiring plan for the second year in a row as well.

Thank you for the update.

You're right, some of those investments were dual investments in SPD and HSD, for example, the four million that we invested yet again in the community safety hubs, especially in the Central District, West Seattle, Southeast areas through the Seattle Community Safety Initiative and funding for the Regional Peacekeeper Collective with gun violence in our area.

We want to make sure that we're responding to it as a public health approach.

And I do appreciate that you noted how during this pandemic, we've seen all types of different types of interpersonal violence escalate and as the good chair would say, the shadow pandemic that has continued to plague our communities across this country during this very stressful time.

So thank you for that update.

And we will follow up with HSD on the implementation of those dollars to make sure that they are out the door.

And if there's anything else that we can do to help streamline those dollars getting out, happy to do so.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Chief, I actually have maybe a follow-up question that I think the door was open to from Councilmember Mosqueda's line of questioning.

It's not necessarily completely responsive to the agenda item, but you know, I'm the chair, so I'm going to allow it.

I noticed at the press conference a couple of days ago, a statistic that I requested from COO Maxey and the police team was mentioned in that press conference.

And really appreciate the department being responsive to my inquiries around this.

And that's the alarming skyrocketing nexus of homelessness and shootings that we saw in 2021 as a very, very big driver of the increase in shootings.

And I just want to ask, based on your training and experience as a law enforcement official and the actions that you've been doing over the course of last year, it's been my observation that when we have interventions like Just Care, where we are able to respond to an encampment at a location, get everyone into some kind of shelter with wraparound services and not have an encampment dominate a public space, be it the pergola or like Ballard Commons Park or City Hall Park, that that has a corresponding relationship, a correlation to the decrease in violence and 911 calls in that area, because we're able to get people the assistance and help they need and not have a situation where we have a large and unwieldy encampment that is difficult to manage.

Much easier, obviously, to manage a sheltering situation where we haven't had a shooting in a Just Care shelter.

So I just want to hand it back over to you, because I think that this is an important component of what our public safety response has to be, and honestly, an important response of what our response to the public health crisis of the shootings has to be, is removing some of the hazards that lead to shooting concentrations in the first place.

But I wanted to get your assessment of those trends and your response to that.

Yeah, I mean, we want to make sure that people are getting the services and even the shelter opportunities that they need.

We also know that those encampments that grow and develop into some bigger encampments have their own black market system.

They have their own climate issues.

The things that we're constantly investigating are anything from sex and human trafficking to, you know, robberies to other shootings and other aggravated type of assaults.

So we need to make sure that there's a process in place, that people are getting the services, but that we're also not allowing for the big encampments to really be entrenched because that does generate a whole host of issues.

These are things that when I look at the shootings and shots fired just this year alone, the CID has had a large share of these shootings.

And a part of that work is trying to address the issues that are around 10th and Dearborn, 8th and King, in and around The stairwell and 12th and Jackson and these are all things that I think it's it's making sure that, you know, people have access to services, but they were also addressing the criminal element that is also trying to victimize.

you know, down on their luck as well.

So, you know, that, that it's, it's, I think we have to make sure that we just take a comprehensive approach to addressing these needs.

And we, you know, we do have to have a big component of enforcement.

We really need to make sure that, that other nonprofits are able to do their work as well.

Thank you so much for that answer.

I believe we had a question from Councilmember Nelson earlier.

Did I see that correctly?

Oh, no.

Oh, you were waving, I guess, instead of raising.

I was I was waving.

Okay.

Okay, great.

Well, Chief, thank you for being generous with your time.

I know we went a little longer on this item than we anticipated, and appreciate that brief divergence into some other issues.

So, appreciate you coming by, and Mr. Maxey, thank you as well for your service.

Okay, Mr. Clerk, will you please read in agenda item two?

Committee, agenda item number two, OAM winter weather response draft after action report for briefing and discussion.

Great.

And look, that panel just miraculously appeared immediately ready to go.

So thank you so much, Mr. Clerk.

And we are joined by Director Currie-Mayer from the Emergency Management Office.

We're going to jump into the draft after action winter weather response report.

I am happy to hand it over to you, Director Mayer.

I don't know if you have other folks joining you or not, but feel free to introduce yourself and then take it away on the presentation.

All right.

Thank you, Chair Lewis and committee members, for inviting me to talk about our winter weather response.

I very much appreciate it.

Good to be with all of you today.

I have one question.

Can I share my screen?

Will that work?

I have a short presentation.

Yes, please do.

OK.

So if you'll give me just a second here, I will bring that up.

and share with you just some things I put together, and then I am happy to answer questions after that.

All right, we're almost there.

There we go.

Hopefully you can see the screen now.

That looks great, thank you.

Okay, cool.

So first of all, I think it's important to share with you what an after action process and report is.

So it's common practice in emergency management following any kind of incident that we respond to or a large exercise that we do something called an after action review and then we put together a report.

And what that does is allows us to do several things.

We gather data from everyone who was involved in the response and ask a number of questions, what things did they think worked well, what maybe was missing, and then recommendations for what we would do moving forward.

We then share that information from that information gathering and we have you know, clear categories of things that we ask about, like response.

Did you feel you had the equipment that you needed?

Were the proper partners there from outside agencies?

Things like that that you might expect from response.

Then that draft report goes through a number of these Office of Emergency Management committees And they are different groups of stakeholders.

The Strategic Working Group is actually the first group that gets it, and they are a subset of the Disaster Management Committee.

The Strategic Working Group is all city department partners.

Then the Disaster Management Committee involves outside stakeholders.

So think Sound Transit, Metro, utilities, all those outside agencies that would come in and help during, depending on what the event is, that would have some involvement.

So that Disaster Management Committee is looking at this report right now, which is why it's not finalized yet.

Then it goes to the Emergency Executive Board, which is a mayor's committee of the department directors of the operational department.

So operational departments think of those departments that would have resources, either people, expertise, or equipment that would be involved in their response in some way.

Once they approve it, then it goes to the mayor's office and, of course, to council.

And we then are able to submit it for publication.

Then we put together something called an improvement plan of recommendations following that final approval of the plan.

That improvement plan is the piece that talks about, or the plan, if you will, with department leads for each of the recommendations that would talk about what are those things that we need to either do differently or that we're missing or outside partners maybe that weren't involved from the last time moving forward, then we know, you know, it's a constant, a continuous process of improvement.

Also, the improvement plan, though, is not meant to be a criticism, but just an opportunity for us to excel even more so the next time we have that type of event.

Some people are a little sensitive when they hear improvement plan, but as long as you have humans involved, then there's always room for improvement, right?

So a little bit about so that's the process and then a little bit about the pre event coordination.

So the Office of Emergency Management gets daily weather briefs from the National Weather Service.

So we're always paying attention to how that might impact what we do.

what we do for the city.

So really our aim all of the time is to make sure that there aren't any events that will impact either the public's ability to get around the city or do their daily jobs or the city's ability to provide the services that we do all the time.

So the National Weather Service showed that there was going to be this prolonged period of extreme cold and snow that would impact Seattle late December into January.

So we began coordinating with city departments and what that coordination entails is what are you doing in your area of expertise departments say transportation or city light or public utilities or parks and rec.

What are you doing specific to your operations to get ready for this extreme cold event?

So right at the beginning, HSD identified two overnight shelter sites that they would start with and then see how things worked and if we needed additional sites.

something called the Joint Information Center, which has public information officers from all the departments involved to get together and write emergency messaging, talk about talking.

having the media help us get the message out for folks that the weather's gonna be hazardous and what people can do.

You're probably familiar with Alert Seattle.

So we initially sent a message to 57,000 subscribers that the weather was gonna be hazardous and also some things that they could do to prepare for that.

So those were just some of the things, but as I mentioned also, we talked with transportation because they would be involved in you know, keeping Seattle mobile, looking at clearing streets, city light in case there were power outages, all of those departments we started coordinating with immediately.

So then the forecast said from December 25th on Christmas into the new year, that in fact became a reality.

And we had significant snow.

They were forecasting two to eight inches.

So depending on where you were in Seattle, you got quite a bit of snow over the Christmas holiday.

We activated the EOC virtually.

So we would cut down on city workers having to try to get around and that we could do that coordination that we had a lot of practice with because of the pandemic.

So we were virtually activated from right after Christmas through the 3rd of January.

We had 25 agencies involved, city departments and outside partners, and the outside partners were Metro, Transit, Puget Sound Energy, folks like that, that would need to be involved in this type of event.

The major issues were snow management, of course, with transportation as the lead, and then also emergency sheltering.

This also landed on this transition of homeless and emergency sheltering for people experiencing homelessness began with HSD and then transitioned to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

So that transition was going on while this was happening, that kind of baton passing.

It's important to note, though, that my office and my team spent a lot of time both with HSD and the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to make sure that that transition worked well and that we were all connected.

And I'm happy to report that that baton tossing did go really well.

There were some staffing challenges, so we had this kind of perfect storm, forgive the pun of the COVID Omicron variant was, you know, at was spreading throughout.

There were a lot of staffing challenges because of that and the holidays.

And then we have this huge need for drivers with commercial driver's licenses, not only for plowing, but for other equipment needs.

So it was definitely an interesting challenge.

We were able to get what we needed, but it was challenging there for quite some time.

These are just a reminder of the overall objectives for this entire response.

So maintaining situational awareness so that departments could respond together, not be in the way of each other, also help each other, also coordinating support for the community, both for the severe weather shelters if there should be a need for general population shelters and then utilities, the health impacts, so that if we did have congregate sheltering, how are we making sure both those who were coming to the shelter and the workers were in fact protected?

We also coordinated actions and resources to maintain city services, including public safety.

And we also coordinated consistent messaging with the community stakeholders and employees so that there were few avenues of messages going out so that you weren't hearing things from a bunch of different places and people could be confident that those messages were coordinated with the appropriate departments.

So just a couple of other things to highlight about the response.

So Mayor Durkin signed an emergency order to provide monetary incentives for frontline workers and shelter service providers.

We had a number of employees who volunteered to go and help the shelter service providers.

That was such a big need because it was so cold and there was so much snow.

We opened warming centers, which means they're open for just, they're not 24-hour shelters.

Those were at all of the five community centers, City Hall and the Armory, and several of the libraries were also open.

Then we opened a number of overnight shelters, City Center Exhibition Hall, Compass Housing Alliance, and then it should say five additional locations.

Sorry about that, instead of six.

Those were one at North Seattle.

There was the American Legion post in West Seattle, Seattle City Hall, a church called God's Little Acre, and the Seattle Mennonite Church.

January 1st, as I mentioned, KCRHA then took over the lead for sheltering from HSD, and just a reminder, I know you heard from SDOT separately, but they were in 24-hour operations, and there are a number of drivers and equipment operators from City Light, Parks and Rec, and utilities who were able to assist SDOT, because they were in 24-hour operations for a solid over two weeks.

FAS was also on a 24 hour schedule to support equipment needs.

So in spite of the fact that we had really unprecedented snowfall, we really, I think the city did a good job of coordinating resource support.

Oh, and also at the peak of the event, there were 379 beds available for people experiencing homelessness.

And also, There were over 2000 overnight stays provided through the early part of January, so through January 3rd.

So that includes my overview of the after action reports.

And I am happy to take questions.

I will try to not share here in a minute.

There we go.

Alright, Thank you.

Thank you so much for that presentation.

I have some questions, but it looks like Council Member Mosqueda raised her hand, so I'm happy to cede some space to committee members first, and then I will go down my list.

Council Member Mosqueda, you are recognized.

Thank you very much, Trillis.

And just two questions, I'll put them out both together and perhaps you can address them.

One is, given how frequently we are anticipating these emergency weather situations to come with climate change, How are you working to sort of operationalize responses like the ones that we've had last year and the year before, both to, you know, extreme cold, extreme heat, smoke, etc.

So is there a way for us to not see it as a surprise emergency and you know what I mean?

Like how do we bake it in?

And then the second thing is I live out here in West Seattle and one of the shelters was the Salvation Army, I believe, just up the hill from Delridge and They were surprised that they were on the list of emergency shelters, the good individual who was staffing it that day as a volunteer, and he wasn't given a heads up about their location being on the list.

And I understand that he even, you know, was spending the night there because of the staffing needs and not having enough volunteers to make the call for volunteers to come in.

So do you know if that's like just an outlier or how do we do a better job of notifying our partner organizations who have a need for additional staff when that comes, when the emergency comes?

Yeah.

Yeah, thank you for those questions.

So first, we always with weather have a little bit of a lead time because we get the briefings from the National Weather Service.

However, the Office of Emergency Management has a number of plans that we operationalize and practice with other city departments so that we're practicing how we would respond to different events all the time so that there isn't a time where we're caught off guard.

That doesn't mean that there couldn't be some, you know, freak weather event that catches us off guard.

That could definitely happen.

But we have a number of plans and the training and practice time to operationalize those And we do that on a regular basis.

In fact, there is a training happening right now in the Emergency Operations Center with our city department representatives to walk through in-person training, which we haven't done in quite some time because of the pandemic, so that everybody stays up to speed on those skills and coordination techniques that they might not use all the time.

So we do that.

So the other thing that we have been doing starting this last year is looking at what are some mitigation things that we can do for extreme weather events and where there are other city facilities and partner locations that we can use for both heat and cold.

So we're doing that right, we're starting that right now.

So there are really two efforts.

One is looking at what are all departments doing that could be considered mitigation efforts for extreme weather events?

And what are the things that are missing?

So doing that assessment, what are people doing now?

And then what is missing?

And then also looking at, so we have a better comprehensive view or what are the city facilities that we could use?

How close are they to people?

Can people get to them quickly, you know, by bus or walking or something else?

So that isn't a burden because transportation is always an issue.

And as you might imagine, in a snow event, it's particularly hard to move people.

We did do that.

We did move people to the You know, to shelter sites, but it's it can be an issue.

So we're trying to make that is look at all those places where we might have access to a facility that could be used to house people.

So.

Then the misidentification of the Salvation Army facility.

We still don't know exactly how that happened, why that was on the list.

So we're still investigating that as part of the work that we're doing with this after action.

And then also, you know, what we do moving forward for people experiencing homelessness is going to be supporting the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

You know, as you know, they're now the lead for that, for all of King County.

We're happy to support.

I've spent a number of, I've spent some time with them on talking about how emergency management works and how the access to city facilities and resources occurs.

So they're really plugged into us and they understand the process.

And so we'll continue to support that.

But it's really going to be their them as the lead and us in more of a support role.

But once I find out about the Salvation Army, I'm happy to circle back and find out why that occurred.

Sorry, that was not a not a good thing.

Thank you for the questions.

Thank you.

I have a related but slightly different question about looking forward to extreme weather events.

Hopefully we're not going to have another extreme snow weather event this year.

You never know.

But in terms of looking forward to the summer and the possibility of having another extreme heat weather event.

How applicable are some of these lessons learned to mitigating extreme weather events in general, and how could they be tweaked to be instructive in our preparation for June and July?

I only mention that because I think over the last two years, I've been on the council now through you know, at least three pretty severe weather events that had massive consequences and similarly seem to have produced similar lessons.

So I'm glad that we're developing this after action report and adapting recommendations.

This is very welcome, a very welcome change from how we responded the previous couple.

And I just want to make sure that we're not in a position where if there is another heat dome event or a heat wave, that we are similarly in a position where we look back on an inadequate response and think like, oh boy, I wish we would have known to do something different.

I want to make sure we take advantage of this moment to to be preparing for extreme heat events as well, knowing that that's likely the next one we will face.

But could have a snowstorm in March, I guess.

I don't know.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

So having come from California, I was really shocked when I first came here and not everyone had air conditioning.

I think that's one of the challenges here is that so many places where people live do not have air conditioning and even some of our city facilities do not.

So a couple of things, I'm going to go back to what you asked first, Council Member Lewis, about are we prepared for the next if we should move from now to a heat event.

So the response piece is going to be relatively the same in terms, except we don't have to clear snow, right?

We won't have to clear streets.

If it's super hot, we're gonna not so much focus on are people able to get around the city and focus more on what do people need to stay cool and get out of the hot weather.

So a couple of things that we're working on.

One is shorter term and one is more long term.

And the long term has a couple of components to it.

So the short term, like we did last year, is going to be, one, how do we help people ahead of time, ahead of the extreme event?

understand that one the event is coming and where can they go to cool off if they live in a place that doesn't have air conditioning.

So that's the first thing and we're constantly looking for places and I mentioned just a little while ago that assessment or what are the city facilities that we can use in a snow event.

The other piece of that is what are the city facilities that we can use that have air conditioning to keep people cool.

So that's an ongoing piece.

The other longer term for heat events is this.

One, we have applied for some hazard mitigation money from the federal government.

There's one for libraries to install air conditioning so that then they could serve as cooling centers.

We're also looking at applying for grant money for other housing that doesn't have air conditioning and looking at some other ways that we can help people be cool.

And if it's not air conditioning, are there other methods of cooling that can be installed or used that are not as expensive air conditioning so that we can help those places, apartments or other kinds of housing that doesn't have cooling capabilities.

So the longer term, of course, applying for the grant money and then doing those improvements to the buildings will take some time.

And in the meantime, we're looking at what are other places that we can go, how can we partner with our neighbors to look at where are places that we can take people, either transport them or help them get to a place.

where they can stay cool.

But it is something that won't be totally fixed until we are able to do some of those improvements on buildings that are older and don't have cooling capabilities.

Great, well, I think that's work that we all look forward to over the next couple of months.

Fortunately, we have, you know, for an event like that, we have time on our hands to prepare, still on plan, given that it is still chilly outside.

But I can see that coming around the corner and smoke and extreme heat being an issue again.

Anyway, thank you so much for that answer.

Do we have any other questions from committee members?

Okay, seeing none, Director, thank you so much for joining us this morning.

Appreciate the update and look forward to continuing to work on these critical issues.

Yeah, I appreciate it.

Thank you very much for having me.

Thank you.

Take care.

Okay, Mr. Clerk, will you please read our third and final agenda item into the record?

Agenda item number three, pay up policy proposal update draft legislation.

Thank you so much.

So this will be a briefing and discussion.

We're not intending to vote on anything, but definitely looking to solicit feedback from committee members for the central staff presentation to provide an update on some work that Chair Herbold and myself actually have been doing on minimum compensation legislation for gig economy workers.

So I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to our panel, which consists of Karina Bull and Amy Gore.

So, Karina, do you want to introduce yourself and then hand it off to Amy and begin the presentation?

Absolutely.

Good morning, council members.

I am Karina Bull and I am with Council Central Staff.

I'm Amy Gore and I'm also with Council Central Staff.

Thank you.

So this morning there is an informational briefing on the app-based worker minimum payment ordinance.

And I am pulling up presentation, which should be before you now.

This presentation has several parts to it and to keep everyone engaged and to make sure that I answer all of your questions, I'll take about four breaks in it to see if there are any inquiries.

And Amy is also here to answer questions as well.

To begin, this Pay up proposal is addressing a suite of labor standards protections for app-based workers who are treated as independent contractors by network companies.

And these proposals will be grouped into a number of bills, and it cover a range of topics ranging from minimum payment to rights against unwarranted deactivation, protections against discrimination, and other items.

Some of these issues are so interconnected that they are grouped together in ordinances, such as what we are going to discuss this morning, which is the app-based worker minimum payment ordinance.

And so the main issues that are addressed in this draft legislation that I will present today include minimum payment, transparency, and flexibility.

And just as background, the reason for all of these ordinances, as I referenced earlier, is that workers that are working for these network companies, whether they are delivering food or groceries or going to someone's home to put together furniture or take items to be thrown away at the dump, they are hired as independent contractors and they do not have the rights of employees, which range from minimum wage standards to protected leave to a whole host of other issues.

So this proposal is seeking to remedy some of those absences of protections.

And this legislation is focusing specifically on payment, transparency, and flexibility.

Consistent with other labor standards, there would be a notice of rights that network companies would need to provide to these workers, record keeping requirements, prohibited retaliation, and it would be implemented by the Office of Labor Standards.

which right now I believe is enforcing and implementing about 18 different labor standards for Seattle's workers.

Up until this point, there has been extensive community engagement.

Council members will remember that last spring when council passed the independent contractor protections ordinance, there was a commitment by council to consider this proposal for app-based workers, including minimum payment and the other protections as well.

Since last summer, there have been over 10 stakeholder meetings that council members have led with workers, worker advocates, companies, and also Office of Labor Standards and Office for Civil Rights have attended those meetings as well and have coordinated with council offices in the background for their feedback and contributions.

For council committees, this is the third committee for presentation.

So for some council members, slideshow will be familiar, although it has been updated since the previous two presentations.

So at its heart, this minimum payment ordinance is seeking to provide or ensure payment of minimum wage plus payment for expenses with a per minute and per mile floor of the engaged time to perform each offer.

The legislation would cover app based workers who are accepting offers to perform physical services for pay, and that would be facilitated or presented by a network companies worker platform so.

As I mentioned before, these are the workers who are delivering the groceries, they are delivering the food, they are delivering from any retail store that is offered by the network company, they could come to someone's home to take care of pets, to clean the house, to put together a closet of shelves or whatnot.

So there's a wide range of services, staffing, doing laundry, many, many different services.

However, though it is quite broad, there are a number of online orders and workers that are working with an app-based worker platform that are not covered or would not be covered by this legislation.

And that includes those accepting offers for sale and rental of goods or real estates, licensed professional services, Office of Labor Standards would identify those professional services by rule.

So it might be architecture, it might be a number of different things, creative work.

So if a person is connecting with an app-based worker to develop a marketing plan for a business or develop a financial plan for personal finances.

Those would be wholly digital services that would not be covered by this legislation.

Similarly, if a consumer is connecting with an app-based worker to make a quilt or to make a t-shirt or something of that, that would be considered a kind of sale of goods that would not be covered by this legislation.

Notably also the legislation wouldn't cover workers that are providing TNC, taxi, or for hire vehicle services.

The TNC drivers are of course covered by another piece of legislation that requires minimum compensation for those workers.

The network companies would be those that are providing these opportunities for work to workers that are larger.

They would have 250 or more app-based workers worldwide.

Some companies are excluded, including those where it's purely a Facilitation between the worker and the company, or not the worker, the contractor in the company, transmitting payment, an advertising board, hesitate to actually identify services, and in case I'm off base, but I think the classic example of this would be something like Craigslist, where it's purely an intermediary relationship between the app and the person performing the services.

No monitoring or control in that situation by the company.

So that's an overview of coverage.

Are there any questions about that part of the legislation?

Do any committee members have questions for this first segment of the presentation?

Okay, seeing none, you may continue.

All right, thank you.

So the minimum payment structure.

Oh, go ahead, Council Member Musqueda.

I can also hold, Mr. Chair, if you prefer until the end.

I just have questions on slide five and six.

No, no, I think it'd be good.

I think central staff has structured their presentation in such a way where they'd like to take care of some of the questions at the appropriate place.

So I think that works fine.

Thank you.

Thanks, Karina.

Great to see you.

Thanks for all the work that you've done on this for a long time now.

So two questions for you related to slides five and six.

Does this legislation cover app-based domestic workers like babysitters?

We know that there's apps out there that folks can sign up for and find.

workers via those apps?

And so if the answer is yes, how does that, how does this legislation interact, if at all, with our Domestic Workers Bill of Rights?

The second question is, it seems like this could cover a whole host of workers.

I'm having trouble imagining all the different types of workers who offer services via an app.

I really do appreciate that this definition is broad and forward looking because of the changing nature of work generally, but do we have an idea of how this applies to the current universe and the breadth of the type of workers given the various apps that are out there?

Okay, thank you for those questions.

And the first one is about domestic workers and yes, This legislation could cover domestic workers who are obtaining work through a network company platform.

It will depend on what the relationship is between that network company and the domestic worker.

So if it's purely an intermediary relationship where the network company is not accepting payment and is not in any way monitoring or controlling the person's work and their ability to appear on the platform, that would not be covered.

However, when the company is taking more of that active engagement with the worker, accepting payment, performing background checks, these are just examples, controlling payment, controlling when the worker can and cannot be based on performance or feedback on the app, then those types of situations would warrant coverage by this legislation.

And if so, then those workers would be covered both by the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights Ordinance as well as this.

And the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights Ordinance sets a floor for payment of minimum wage for those workers, and it states that such workers have to be paid at least the minimum wage by small employers.

This ordinance provides more protections, so this is the one that would control the minimum wage that would apply to those workers, Companies under this ordinance are considered the large employer.

They have to pay the large employer minimum wage.

It's higher for a couple more years and then all employers will pay the same minimum wage across Seattle.

And then this legislation also pays for reasonable expenses.

And so domestic workers covered by this legislation will end up earning more than what they would be owed under the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, which is just a flat minimum wage.

It doesn't include payment for reasonable expenses in miles.

Do a quick follow-up question, Mr. Chair?

I'll take that as a yes.

Go ahead, Council Member Esqueda.

Thank you very much.

So, okay, I think I understand the difference.

So if there is like a transaction that the app is responsible for, that they're managing payments and providing payment to the worker, even if they're considered, you know, an independent contractor, if they have that kind of transactional role, then the ordinance would apply?

Correct.

Correct.

It's an app that provides house cleaning services They hire the workers, they send the workers, they pay the workers.

Those workers would be covered by this legislation.

And if there is an app that's merely like making connections, I guess, you know, when I was looking for childcare, I was like, oh, I wish there was just one app out there that showed me all of the childcare providers, who's accepting kiddos, at what age those kiddos are being accepted.

And I know that our friends at SEIU 95 are trying to have something like that in the works, but let's just say it was just a pure referral and connection.

I would assume that a worker or a user might actually pay a fee for that convenience.

If there is a transaction occurring to be on a platform or to use a platform, that still doesn't apply to those workers because it's not affecting how much they're getting paid, the receipts that they have from the transaction from the recipient of the service.

Get correct my sense from the type of relationship and situation that you're describing is that those network companies and workers would not be covered by this legislation.

And so what you're just talking about is.

It's purely like a posting of who's available.

Perhaps the workers pay to be there.

Sometimes workers pay to be hired as an app based worker.

But what you're just that would be covered.

But what you're describing sounds like the company doesn't have control over the worker.

It's just referral.

I imagine that Office of Labor Standards will help companies and workers and the public to understand who was covered and is not covered by this.

So I imagine that would be in their outreach materials.

as well.

And your next question is addressing the full breadth of network companies and app-based workers.

There are many working in the city and it seems like there's going to be more and more in the future.

So earlier I described the type of workers that are covered and are not covered.

The legislation does have a fair amount of description of the types of online orders that wouldn't be covered and the type of network companies that would not be covered.

And again, I think that Office of Labor Standards, uh, would come in and help to make clear whether it probably through outreach materials and questions and answer documents to help the public understand what types of companies and workers are and are not covered.

Does that answer all your questions, Councilmember Muski or do you have a follow up?

Oh, that answers my questions for now.

I'll have a question in a few minutes, I'm sure.

Thank you.

Great, thank you.

Are there any other questions before we proceed with the central staff presentation?

Alright, seeing none, we can continue with the presentation.

OK, thank you.

So moving forward to minimum payment at its core, this legislation would require that a worker receive a minimum payment amount for their engaged time in the engaged So those two conceptual terms, engaged time and engaged miles, are at the core of this legislation.

The engaged time is the time that a worker spends performing the services for the offer, and the engaged miles are the miles traveled by a worker during that engaged time.

So they're core to this concept, and they're interconnected depending on the type of work that the app-based worker is doing.

So when the engage time starts and ends is going to depend on the type of offer that the worker is performing.

So if the offer is from what's termed an on-demand network company or it's expected, an offer where performance is expected to happen within two hours, that engage time is going to begin upon acceptance of offer and it's going to end upon completion of the offer or cancellation, whatever happens in that unique situation.

So, for example, if a worker accepts an offer to deliver food from a grocery store, that engage time is going to begin as soon as that worker says, yes, I want to take this offer.

That engage time is going to include The time it takes to drive from wherever they are when they say yes to the grocery store, buying the groceries, delivering the groceries to the customer's home, and then it would stop as soon as those groceries are delivered.

The mileage would also count during that entire time.

The mileage clock would begin ticking when the worker accepts the offer and went all the way through to the store and to the customer's home.

Now, in all other situations, aside from what I just described, the engage time would begin upon the performance of the offer or reporting to the assigned location and end upon completing performance of the offer.

So if, for example, if a consumer through a network company has someone come to their home to put together shelves in the closet or to hang something on the wall or to take something to the dump, then the engage time would begin when that worker reports to the consumer's home or when they begin the performance of the offer, if, say, there's a timing component, come to the home at 2 p.m., the performance would begin at 2 p.m., and it would end when that specific service was over.

So in that particular situation, there is no mileage because the company would not be expected to cover the mileage from wherever the worker was, their home or from a previous offer to their destination.

However, if during the course of that, for the worker does driving that's connected to the service, then that mileage would be covered.

So, for example, if a worker's going to someone's home and they pick up the dog and they go to the dog park and they're driving their car to get to the dog park, that mileage to and from the dog park would count for purposes of engaged mileage and, of course, also for engaged time.

If the worker is going to multiple homes to pick up four dogs, then all that mileage would be covered from home to home to home, and then back again from the park.

Here is the definition of the on-demand network company, and it is quite broad.

It's got some illustrative examples in it, but pay particular attention to that would include but not be limited to.

companies primarily engaged in facilitating or presenting on-demand offers from eating and drinking establishments, food processing, grocery stores, or any facility supplying groceries.

So these would include the very familiar situations of delivering restaurant food, groceries from a warehouse, ghost kitchens, et cetera.

But because it is so broad, it could also include delivering from a retail store or pharmacy other kind of store as well.

As far as the math of the minimum payment calculation, it is simply at its heart a per minute amount times the number of minutes, the per mile amount times the number of engaged miles, and you add those two together and you get a minimum payment amount.

And so I will walk everyone through what that per minute amount is, what that per mile amount is, and how the Kentson members got there.

So the per minute amount for 2022 is 39 cents a minute, and the per mile amount is 73 cents a minute.

That permanent amount is comprised of a number of different factors, and I'll go through each one.

But at a summary level, it's the minimum wage equivalent, an associated cost factor and associated time factor.

The cost factor and the time factor are multipliers of the minimum wage equivalent, and those are multiplied or compounded on the minimum wage equivalent to account for the expenses that an independent contractor has to bear to do this work and all of the time that is necessary to complete the work as well.

The per mile amount is comprised of the IRS standard mileage amount, which is what employees are owed when they are doing work for their employers.

If they have to drive to the store, they work in a restaurant, they drive to the store to get the eggs or whatever other materials or to drive to a home for home care work, the employer is expected to reimburse the employee for that expense because it benefits the employer.

Similar concept here for the app-based worker and same amount as well.

And then there also is an associated mileage factor, which is the multiplier, which recognizes that workers need to drive more than the number of miles that are just connected to performing the offer.

So I'll go back to this main calculation just to give a quick example before I go into the breakdown of those various components.

Say if a worker accepts an offer to deliver food from a restaurant.

The entirety of the offer takes 20 minutes to perform.

The worker drives five miles.

The per minute amount time engaged minutes would end up being 39 cents times 20 minutes.

That's $7.80.

That would be added to the per mile amount.

It's five miles times 73 cents.

That's $3.65 in total.

That offer to deliver food from the restaurant, it took 20 minutes and five miles.

That payment's going to be $11.45.

The minimum wage equivalent, just to break these numbers down, I won't go too deep into this, because I know I presented it to council members in the past, is simply the permanent amount for whatever the year's minimum wage is.

This year, the minimum wage is $17.27 an hour.

If you divide that by 60 and you get the per minute amount, it's 28.8 cents.

The associated cost factor is compensating workers for expenses that they need to pay to do their work.

A typical employee would have their employer pay for all of these expenses.

In this situation, independent contractors bear that expense themselves, but it is benefiting the network company, so they are compensated for those costs under this legislation.

Same thing for the associated time factor.

It recognizes that the amount of time a worker expends to perform an offer isn't limited just to the amount of time it takes to drive to the store and back.

It includes a time for rest breaks, time to review offers, the time in between each offer, and time to perform administrative tasks.

And then the mileage factor is compensating workers for the miles that they need to drive that are above and beyond what is required to perform the offer.

Traveling between offers, traveling to locations for rest breaks, et cetera.

Now, some offers might not rise, or actually, let me take it back.

Companies are required to pay at least $5 for every offer.

So even if combining the minutes and the miles didn't get to $5, workers would still need to be compensated for that amount.

It also would recognize situations where a worker maybe starts work on an offer and then the offer is canceled by the customer or by the network company.

Then the worker would still receive payment of $5.

This amount would be annually adjusted every year to reflect inflation.

And the OLS director could issue rules to establish a grace period between acceptance and cancellation of the offer that would serve as an exemption to this minimum per offer amount.

So that could cover situations where maybe a customer ordered something and it was just purely a mistake and it was canceled very quickly after the worker accepted the offer.

So that is a review of the payment calculation.

Are there any questions about that component of this proposal?

Any questions on this section from committee members?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much.

Again, Karina, do you mind if we go back to slide eight?

Yes.

I mean, I don't mind.

Here we are.

And I appreciate that the good chair is also not here.

Thank you very much Council Member Lewis for your work on this.

If this question is more appropriate for Chair Lewis or Chair Herbold, that's great.

But if Karina, if you have thoughts on this as well, that'd be very helpful.

I'm wondering about how the mechanics of this would work for the breadth of the workers that we just talked about before.

Are there instances in which someone accepts an offer and doesn't begin work on it, like a pre-scheduled delivery, for example, for two hours, but the clock starts under example one.

I assume matching happens on the back end?

Right.

So in situations where it's pre-scheduled, but performance is expected within that two-hour window, then the company would need to know that, OK, this is actually the kind of offer where engage time begins on acceptance.

If a worker accepts an offer that within one hour they need to go to someone's home to take care of a pet or to do something else, to move something, then that's going to be the type of offer where engaged time begins upon acceptance immediately.

And the company is responsible for identifying those situations.

If it's something where maybe the worker is agreeing in three days to go to someone's home to move the thing or to take care of the pet, then the company is responsible for identifying that as a situation where engaged time begins when the worker reports to the home or whatever time that offer is scheduled to begin.

Okay, that's helpful.

And then I think my last question, I see some other hands, so I'll be brief.

I know you've considered stacking or the instances where there's multiple pickups and drop offs at the same time.

Has that been considered and can you walk us through how that might work under this scenario?

So for situations with stacking, then that would be considered a single offer under this legislation.

And so it would be up to the company to combine all of the offers such that that would be considered a single offer.

And then that would, all of the, the engage time and the mileage would all be consolidated for the worker.

So if I think that probably would work best with something that's pre-scheduled or although it might fit into the on demand situation if it's within two hours, but it would be up to the company to bundle those together.

There could be situations where as the worker is performing an offer, they suddenly get notice, oh, while you're at the store, pick up an eggs and milk and something else for this other customer that lives nearby the other one.

So that could still be considered part of a single offer, but there are some limitations or parameters on that that are listed in the legislation.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

No more follow-up questions?

OK, Council Member Peterson.

Thank you very much, Chair Lewis, and thank you, Karina, for this presentation.

Just taking a step back, are there any other cities that have implemented this type of program?

So for rideshare drivers, of course, Seattle has minimum compensation for rideshare drivers.

New York City has a minimum compensation for rideshare drivers.

New York City also just passed legislation requiring their equivalent of the Office of Labor Standards to develop a minimum payment standard for food delivery drivers.

And so those are examples of local jurisdictions that either have regulated or in the process of regulating these types of workers.

My understanding is that this would be the most this would be the widest breadth of out based workers covered by local legislation.

Uh, in right.

So I mean, in Massachusetts, these types of workers are considered employees.

And in California, there is the vote.

Of course, the proposition 22. It's a voter approved ballot initiative led by companies that categorizes app-based workers as independent contractors rather than employees.

That particular proposition has a payment structure in it for workers, but right now it is in the courts because the Superior Court declared that unconstitutional.

So the trajectory, the long-term outcome of that law remains to be seen in California.

Do you have a follow-up, Council Member Peterson?

Yes, I'm just to understand that I'm not hearing any other cities that have this level of program yet.

I do have a question about the time engaged.

The example you had given was somebody is asked to do something an hour from now and they start getting, under this proposal, they start getting paid immediately, even though they're not en route to the assignment?

Correct.

The idea with the two-hour cutoff is that it is a short enough time that it might prevent the worker from engaging in other work.

So in that kind of situation, then the engage time would begin immediately upon acceptance of an offer.

If it's an offer that begins two hours or later, then the worker would have more control over their schedule, and the engaged time would begin when they started the offer or they agreed upon time.

Thank you for explaining that.

Great.

Council Member Nelson.

You're muted, Council Member Nelson.

Thank you very much.

I have a couple questions that might bleed a bit into other sections, but this is my first time publicly engaging in this, so I just want to just contextualize those questions and a couple comments.

So I have been meeting with a variety of stakeholders, including those representing companies with very different business models.

This is a single regulatory framework, and as Karina just described it, it's very wide-reaching.

And it'll have very different impacts on different companies according to their business model and different impacts on the workers and the end customers.

So app-based companies have provided a way for small businesses and individual entrepreneurs to to access customers and know that I'm talking abo and it's also allowed end to access a lot more goods a lot more easily.

And w that these platforms have become a resource, a lifeline for many small businesses to keep afloat.

We've also seen that these platforms have kind of shifted from a convenience to a necessity because they've also been helping vulnerable people like my mother-in-law not interact with the public during the pandemic.

So they've served a vital function providing access to food and services.

And they have also provided jobs for workers.

And that's especially important for people who have gotten laid off during the pandemic, which has disproportionately impacted people of color, immigrants, et cetera, whose jobs were less secure.

So anyway, I'm wrapping up to my question.

We know, and it kind of, It builds on Council Member Peterson's, because he was asking about precedent for this.

And so I'm just looking at the fare share, some of the impacts of fare share.

And we know that fare share increased the cost of a ride by nearly 50%, at least for Uber and Lyft drivers, which has made ride share too expensive for some riders that rely on it.

And drivers now make up words of 160% of Seattle's minimum wage.

And they've seen a decline in demand for rides.

And so hourly might have gone up, but work available might have gone down, or at least that's what I'm hearing.

The average earning standard for delivery app drivers under pay up would be about 170% Seattle's minimum wage.

And let me say right now, I am supportive.

of providing workers in the gig economy a livable wage.

But my question is, what kind of analysis has been done to anticipate the impacts of increased cost of deliveries on small businesses, like the restaurants, or on drivers, if the cost decreases demand for deliveries?

And also, what are the impacts on low-income, vulnerable end customers who decide they just can't afford the increased delivery fee.

All right.

Well, there's a lot to unpack there.

So I appreciate all of those questions.

And I think it helps to begin with the policy purpose of the law, which is you recognize is to make sure that workers are paid a fair amount for the time that they are engaged in this very vital for the network companies, vital work for the companies, vital work for the community.

And so with the development of the fair share ordinance, it was learned that TNC drivers were earning a little bit less than $10 per hour, and that wasn't accounting for their expenses that they were paying for to do that work.

And so that was one of the things that was motivating that fair share ordinance.

The research for app-based workers hasn't been done in Seattle, but it has been done in other places, such as San Francisco, where it was found that food delivery drivers were earning somewhere around $6 per hour for their work.

And again, not being paid for expenses.

And so the purpose of this proposal is to make sure that there is a guaranteed minimum floor for payment of work that corresponds to payment for employees.

And so in that, as with minimum wage, there could be price increases.

I think if one looks to California, yes, there were price increases after Proposition 22 went into effect, price increases in New York City for TNC, ride share drivers, same thing with Seattle as well.

I I think what has been found thus far is that there's a certain amount of inelasticity for these services, so customers are still buying them, they're still doing the rides, still ordering to go to be delivered.

Certainly with TNC drivers, the ridership plummeted during COVID-19, without a doubt, and that impacted a lot of drivers, I think many of whom turned to app-based delivery work.

as another form of earning money.

And so that kind of exploded for a different kind of app-based work.

Now, built into the fair share legislation is actually the expectation that companies might take measures to reduce the work opportunities for workers so that there are fewer workers available for work.

promoting more full-time work for drivers rather than many drivers doing work that does not sustain them an income.

So what you're describing happening with fair share to a certain extent might have been expected as an expected outcome as part of that proposal.

And then in a few years, office of labor standards will reevaluate the utilization rate for that law, taking into effect how long drivers are waiting for a ride.

So some of that was expected.

As far as prices going up and how that affects the lower income consumers.

I think one thing to note is for, I'll take an example of a consumer who was ordering groceries and is the recipient of SNAP federal or state subsidies for food.

There are options for those particular individuals where they could.

I think there's some grocery stores that offer store based delivery for those who are using their snap EBT card.

Amazon makes services delivery services available for individuals using their EBT card.

Where they don't have to buy a membership to prime.

But yes, their prices will go up, and so this is something that we need to be ready for.

And companies will figure out how much to pass on to the consumer and how much to absorb.

And I don't know to what extent one can look at what's happened with the minimum wage, but the same sorts of arguments are in place for the minimum wage as well.

And so it would be interesting to compare and contrast how applicable that research is to the app-based work and network community as well.

Certainly Seattle's been doing well since the minimum wage was put into place, but there were certain companies that were impacted more than others.

So I'm hearing that when it regards something more similar than the minimum wage, like what was instituted in San Francisco, there has not been analysis of that, right?

So the San Francisco, the study of what app-based workers make in San Francisco, I believe was separate from from a minimum payment standard that was research that was done by academics and policy folks.

But as far as what's happening in California with the increased prices, that would be something to research.

And so I can take note of that.

And Amy and I can dig into that to see how that's affecting the community and how that's affecting businesses as well.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Karina.

Are there any other questions for this portion of the presentation?

I would just comment to I think one of the other I think one of the things councilmember Nelson raised that is definitely very relevant is the interaction between the restaurant and the platform in terms of the passed on costs.

And this is actually something during the pandemic that the council and the Durkin administration did a lot of work on.

committee members and the public where we did effectively work together to put a cap on what those pass-through fees could be to mitigate and limit what a lot of restaurant owners were saying were gouging rates of considerable percentages.

So I think we do probably have some data we can extrapolate from what the impact of those caps had on the local economy from that regulation being in place for a year.

We also have the benefit of having the hazard pay legislation that Councilmember Herbold and I also passed, I believe in 2020, which is sort of a sort of similar in concept to some of the things we're discussing here, which we could probably also look to to see how that has affected the market, given that that hazard pay has been in place at this point for quite a considerable amount of time.

So between those two points, I think that this is a good part in our process to check in on what that effect and impact has been.

Obviously, these platforms remain prolific in our local economy.

believe that any of those platforms have left our market or considerably altered the way that they operate in response to either of those interventions.

But they could offer some assessment and glean some lessons that could be instructive for the broader legislation.

So I appreciate those comments from Councilmember Nelson and think there are some ways we can gather some context from some of that information.

Karina?

Sorry, did you?

Oh no, sorry, was that, Council Member Nelson, was that you?

Just now?

I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

It's okay, I should have waited till you finished.

I just wanted to say, what you did with capping the delivery fee really did help those restaurants, so I want to commend Council for doing that.

And at the same time, I have no idea how that impacted the workers, if that cut into their pay, the drivers.

And then, so, I mean, there are kind of like three pieces.

There are the people that are supplying the goods that are being delivered, the people that are delivering, the people that are paying the costs.

And so it's really quite, it is complicated and it's hard to calibrate.

It's how to weigh the impacts across the board.

What I'm really hearing in some of these other discussions is that the business models are very different.

So on the one hand, you've got, I think there was a, you've got Rover who, and I don't know if they make appointments.

This is the pet care company, platform.

You know, I don't know if they make appointments on demand or if they are set up, so I'm not really sure if they if they would be captured by the hour of.

Waiting for the job to begin thing, but but they are very different because a lot of those folks are.

This is really a kind of a side hustle for a lot of people.

I've you know, most of them make under $2000 a year on the app and in you know, And they often do jobs that are overnight.

And so the minimum standard for the hourly pay might render their services unaffordable to your typical people that want to go out of town and meet their dog sit.

But it's very different to the delivery of food drivers that are doing a lot of trips all day long.

So anyway, that was kind of my point when I mentioned at the beginning about complexity of this because of different business models.

Thank you so much for that discussion.

I want to make sure since we're kind of getting a little late here in the morning that we finish out the presentation and then allow for some last questions.

Is there a little bit more Karina?

Yeah, and I can go through it very quickly.

OK, great, take it away.

Thank you.

Yeah, Councilmember Nelson.

I'll also add that there is a section in the legislation that addresses the situation where say, for example, someone spending the night at someone's place, whether it's to take care of a pet or to take care of a of a person, and so Office of Labor Standards would issue rules on that sort of situation as what counts as compensable time versus off-duty time.

And so that would be something that Office of Labor Standards can comment on.

Same type of issue happens in the employment context when there's overnight healthcare workers in someone's home as well.

So it's not without precedent, and it's contemplated by the legislation.

So moving forward, the two other primary pieces of the legislation address transparency and flexibility.

And transparency is what those requirements would mandate offer information to workers so that workers know what type of offer they are accepting.

They would be able to review that offer for a period of time, three minutes.

They would learn about how long it would take, where it would take place, what their payment would be, what the physical requirements would be, et cetera.

Workers and customers would have the right to electronic receipts after the work is performed.

Workers would also get weekly statements regarding their earnings, 14-day notice to workers before significant change to payment calculations.

And then companies would be required to provide information to Office of Labor Standards to help them with enforcement and policymaking as well.

So that could be determining what the associated time factor, cost factor, mileage factor would need to be in the future and if it would need to be adjusted.

Flexibility goes to, I think, one of the heart of the reasons why many workers choose app-based work and the freedom to decide when to work and how long to work and what types of offers to accept or reject.

So the legislation would lay out the workers' rights on these particular matters and which would include the right to cancel an offer with cause.

That's an actual term in the legislation and workers would have the right to do that without being subject to adverse action like deactivation.

They would still be able to get that minimum $5 payment as well.

This Current draft does reflect a significant amount of policy decision making by the council members.

And I've outlined some of those things here.

I think we're running short on time.

So I'll see how quickly I can talk about this.

First of all, the previous pay standard was based on what type of offer.

a worker accepted now, it really depends on that on-demand network company.

It's like a quick way for the company to know, for the worker to know, and also for the Office of Labor Standards to know what the engage time is, what payment is owed to the worker for that particular type of situation.

Companies are required to pay or ensure that a worker receives the certain amount of money, recognizing that sometimes it's a third party that distributes those payments rather than the company.

In those instances, the company would still be responsible for making sure that third party paid that required amount.

The grace period is new.

That's something that is happening with the TNC driver minimum compensation.

OLS is contemplating a grace period for that ordinance, and so it was added to this ordinance as well.

Simplified requirements provide information on the contents of an order.

Before, there were very specific requirements that companies would need to provide contents of an order if it posed a health risk or violated personal beliefs.

Now that is very much streamlined.

Companies just need to pass on what they know about the contents of an order.

Updated penalty amounts.

This is simply reflecting that it's no longer 2021. Penalty amounts have been increased to reflect inflation for 2022 and to be consistent with other labor standards.

And last, there is no effective date in this draft legislation, but as time moves on, it will eventually reflect 12 months after council passage when there's a better sense of when full council will vote on this legislation.

Those 12 months are for Office of Labor Standards to prepare for implementation.

They do a whole host of activities, rulemaking, outreach, translation, coordinating with their community partners.

It's a tremendous amount of work.

12 months is offered for other kinds of legislation as well.

So this would not be a unique situation.

And if there are other laws passed as part of this package, those 12 months will be very important or less to prepare.

Next steps would include introduction, actual introduction of this legislation, and then later on discussion of other draft bills, such as the ones covering other issues affecting these workers, deactivation, bathroom access, protections against discrimination, et cetera.

So that is the end of the presentation.

I'm happy to answer any more questions.

Any questions regarding that last section of the presentation?

Okay, seeing none, just to give a couple of wrap-up comments on this.

I mean, this is, you know, still a I think it is important to note that this is still, as we mentioned at the beginning, still a draft of unintroduced legislation.

this is still in a fairly early process.

obviously, Amy and Karina will make themselves available to some of these policy areas offline.

So this is a good opportunity to give an update to the public and to committee members on where these discussions are heading.

I do just want to flag that Councilmember Herbold has hosted dozens of stakeholder meetings to date involving lots of the stakeholders in this process since the beginning of this year.

And then throughout last year, quite an extensive stakeholder process as well.

Obviously, this is put on hold for the budget process.

that is now taken off again and I'm sure Councilmember Herbold will be back in person to address that herself once she makes a recovery.

so I look forward to continuing this discussion, this conversation.

the immediate next steps, as I just indicated, those stakeholder conversations are going to continue even after legislation is consideration of amendment process and certainly I anticipate council members both in this committee and at the whole council are going to have some issues that they want to raise and drill into with more detail.

And, you know, there really is a hope that we can continue to refine the legislation and craft a policy that's going to work for businesses and saying businesses broadly, including, you know, the restaurants, as we discussed earlier, who are providing the substance of the delivery, as well as the platforms.

And also provides workers with the consideration, wages, and protections and benefits that similarly situated workers who do non-gig work currently enjoy.

And making sure that this new and emergent field of gig economy work is not somehow treated differently with different standards than how we otherwise treat traditional waged and more permanent work not delivered on these app-based platforms.

So a good discussion.

Thank you so much to central staff for answering our questions and giving that presentation.

And Corinne and Amy, thank you for organizing just a great policy process.

Really appreciate your service.

And I know I speak for the whole committee on that.

So moving forward here to adjournment, is there anything for the good of the order before we adjourn the committee this morning?

All right, thank you.

Thank you everyone for bearing with me, filling in as vice chair.

We're not gonna try to make a habit of this, but we all wish me more than anyone else, so I don't have to chair two committees.

A speedy recovery to Council Member Herbold, our friend Council Member Herbold.

So with that, we will adjourn and hope you all have a good afternoon.