missing title

All right.

Good afternoon, everyone.

The April 9th, 2026 Special Committee of the Library's Education and Neighborhoods Committee will come to order.

It's 3.02 p.m.

I'm Maritza Rivera, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Foster?

Here.

Councilmember Linton?

Here.

Councilmember Rink?

Chair Rivera?

Present.

Three councilmembers are present.

Thank you, Clerk.

Please note for the record, everyone, that Council President Hollingsworth is excused from today's meeting.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on the agenda or within the purview of this committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

Chair, we have no speakers today.

All right.

Then public comment is now closed, and we'll proceed to our items of business.

Councilmember Rink, are you present?

Checking audio.

Can you hear me, Chair Rivera?

Yes, we can.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm present.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

So for the record, Councilmember Rink is also present at today's meeting.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Agenda item one, update on $4 million investment for refugee and community support for briefing and discussion.

Thank you, clerk.

Good afternoon, colleagues.

This is a special Libraries, Education and Neighborhoods Committee meeting because as you know, our recent regularly scheduled land committee meetings had been used for the renewal of the Seattle Public Library levy.

I wanted to hold this meeting today to provide an update on the very important $4 million investment that was given to OIRA in the 2026 budget in support of our immigrant and refugee community in town.

Director Kuvu is here today to let us know how those funds are going to be implemented by her great staff at OIRA.

in support of our immigrant and refugee community members.

I want to acknowledge the great work in general that OIRA does and has been doing for many years, not just now, for the immigrant community.

For the record, I've had the pleasure of working with Director Vu all the way back to about 2018 or 2019, Director, We're so lucky to have her back at the city at the helm of AWIRA once again.

I know her commitment to our immigrant and refugee residents here in the city and I really appreciate her work.

and so lucky, as I said earlier, to get to work with her again.

We've spoken, and while we have not seen the surge that we saw in Minneapolis, here in Seattle we have seen an increase in ICE activity.

And while we don't know what's going to happen in the future, we also don't want to instill fear in folks because that's the point, right?

The current administration clearly wants folks to live in fear.

I never want to be fear mongering or add stress to what is already a very stressful time.

for our immigrant and refugee folks here in town.

It's our job as council members and elected officials and as the City of Seattle to really help keep our people calm, and we want to make sure we support our communities when we are, instead of operating in a chaos situation, and that is the point of our investments is to really help support our communities and provide comfort and security.

and so I'm really looking forward to hearing about the investment and how it's getting implemented.

The original investment, which is an ongoing investment, by the way, was delineated by council action to do the following, to address backfill for federal budget cuts and also just rapid response, legal defense, which the department already provides, immigrant integration and citizenship support, which the department already provides as well, adult immigrant workforce development and ready to work, which the department's been doing for many years now, immigrant youth career pathway programs, immigrant safety access network and ethnic media and translation and community advisors, and the staffing needing to support these functions, the temporary staffing needed to scale up the work because this is normally it is would have been a six million dollar department is now a ten with this new money.

So you're able to do more.

And the reason why I'm pointing that out is because any time a department gets this size of percentage increase I want to acknowledge that the department then has to turn around and be able to scale up their operations to meet that extra funding and that takes time.

So I just want people to acknowledge that this isn't something that you could turn around overnight because this is a lot more than you're usually managing for in terms of a budget.

So that's important here to note.

and it always takes a little bit of time.

And then I really want to also, colleagues, apologies for not getting the slide deck sooner.

We always strive to get materials as soon as possible.

There was some last minute work on the presentation, but I didn't want to hold up the meeting today because I know that the department's doing great work.

So I wanted to make sure that We could get you the briefing sooner rather than later, but that meant you didn't have the materials till a little earlier today.

And for that, I do apologize and I thank you for your grace.

All right, so let's get into the presentation.

Director Vu, you can introduce yourself for the record.

I really appreciate you being here.

And then colleagues, if you have questions, I'll look out for your hands.

You can go ahead and ask questions as we go along because there's a lot of information and a lot of great work, and there are a lot of pieces to this, and I want to make sure you have.

We don't have to wait till the end.

Go ahead, Director Kuvu.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Council Members Lynn and Foster and Rink for joining us today.

My name is Kuvu.

I'm the Acting Director of the City of Seattle Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs.

I am here today to provide an update on our office's $4 million expanded investment portfolio.

As the chair has referenced, this $4 million represents a significant increase to OERA's budget.

And we have a lot of thanks to community advocacy for that, but also support from city council And these additional resources will allow OERA to continue supporting the mounting challenges facing immigrant and refugee communities today.

For folks who are new to our audience today, the mission of OERA is to improve the lives of Seattle's immigrant and refugee communities.

And we do that by advocating for welcoming policies, providing programs and services that improve the health and economic well-being of immigrants and refugees.

and doing community engagement, including our Ethnic Venia program.

So I want to start first with Looking at the importance of this budget add and needing to make sure that we not only move quickly, but also do it in the right way that reflects community need.

So we've done a lot of community feedback, looked at data and research, and all of that to reflect council's directive to us, which is to mitigate impacts of federal funding loss and expand or create new programming to support immigrant and refugee communities, including legal services, workforce development, outreach and community navigation services, and other critical programs.

So I'm going to start with this table here.

I had the opportunity to give a high level response previously.

And now we want to drill down a little bit in the details, which I know that you're interested in.

So we start first with the investment areas, which are removal defense.

I want to move quickly through this and then spend a little bit of time in giving you more detailed information about what each of these investment areas looks like.

So for removal defense, we have a proposed investment of $1.25 million.

and community grants, we have $280,000.

And if there's a surge in 2026, that will definitely impact what this investment looks like for 2027. We have a category to support businesses, workers, and social providers at an amount of $500,000.

We have $250,000 for community response for detained families, and then additional investment areas that are impacted by federal funding cuts.

For example, the legal orientation program there, that's work done exclusively by the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project at the Tacoma Detention Center.

$538,000 of federal funding was cut there.

And our proposal is to continue funding this work at $140,000.

And this is an amount that's prorated for the percentage of detainees who have a direct Seattle tie, which is about 25%.

federal naturalization funding cuts in Seattle.

It was approximately $675,000.

And this amount reflects USCIS citizenship integration grants lost for several organizations serving people with a Seattle tie, including ACRS.

rewild and neighborhood house.

This total USCIS citizenship integration grants lost overall is more than $1 million per year.

And our proposal is to fund these cuts for naturalization at $200,000 for this year.

As we keep moving to cuts to federal funds for ESL, our estimate was that approximately 800,000 of federal funds were cut, affecting mostly our Seattle colleges.

And we did receive reporting from north and central Seattle colleges and are awaiting on information from South Seattle College.

So I expected that 800,000 estimate was actually much higher.

which represents lost capacity for serving community needs, so that our proposal to support this work at $655,000 gets us closer, but not a complete replacement of those federal dollars that were cut.

emergency assistance.

We're looking at leveraging this $300,000 investment.

We'll partner with Seattle Foundation.

They have a goal of raising private dollars to match or exceed this amount.

As you know, our office is doing the language access work and language justice, if you will, in ethnic media.

We have a budget of $75,000 to $125,000 to make sure that we're able to reach as many audiences as possible and to involve our important partners in ethnic media.

about $300,000 to go to temporary staffing.

The legislation approves for three positions, two strategic advisor, one general government positions, and one contract and grant specialist.

We do not need the grants and contract specialist role because we have the ability to absorb that additional work.

But we will request one strategic advisor, one position, and that position will sunset at the end of the year.

So I want to add that and then just step back for a moment here to explain how we arrived at those investment areas and the amounts.

And really grounded in the previous slide that we saw, which is that we did a lot of listening beginning from the time that the new White House took place.

And we knew that there was going to be a lot of immigration activity.

So we convened our legal programs and did a survey for both the Legal Defense Network and our naturalization program partners back in May of 2025 and did another one in March of 2026. same thing for our ESL and workforce education partners, a survey, an in-person convening in July 2025 of last year, and again in March of 2026. Rapid response, that was an ongoing discussion, because if you recall, the enforcement action started immediately in 2025, and that body of work was critical for us to stand up as quickly as possible.

And we did one-on-one engagement with my predecessor, the order director, with 23 community partners, which I have continued to do in my return to the city.

And as the Mayor Katie Wilson's administration has taken leadership, they felt it was important to also be grounded in the listening and learning from immigrant and refugee communities.

And the mayor and her staff held a roundtable in February 2026. We took information from her transition team that did two listening sessions and a survey, another ethnic media roundtable in March of 2026, and then some really substantive conversations that we've done with our peer jurisdictions in cities such as Boston, Denver, Chicago, Minneapolis, and San Jose.

And of course, Chicago and Minneapolis had a lot of important lessons to share.

So what did we learn?

I want to reflect first on the number one priority that stood out through all of the engagement that we did.

And for good reason.

We saw federal policy changes that have led to significant delays in immigration processes.

and new barriers preventing immigrants in Seattle from accessing things that were not so hard to do before, such as getting work permits or applying for asylum or applying for a green card, becoming a U.S. citizen, and other benefits that come with immigrant and refugee status.

But those increased requests for legal assistance and immigration information due to heightened community concerns about immigration enforcement tactics.

So we see, according to track data mapped out to the Seattle subdivision of King County, there are 14,290 cases in immigration court with about 6,266 that are represented by an immigration attorney.

and approximately 8,000 without representation.

So effectively, almost 60% of the cases have no legal representation.

And the data shows also that between 2024 and 2025, according to Seattle Times article dated March 11, we saw an increase of 152% in enforcement, along with increased challenges for communication with detained individuals.

On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to sit with a coalition called Hot Pot for All, which is a group of organizations that serves mostly Southeast Asian immigrants, but many of those come as refugees, and that community has seen a devastating toll in deportations that happened very quickly.

So it is not just are members who have no documentation.

It is members of our communities who are here with status and who are being deported and not able to see their families or communicate with them.

And what's significant about this is that 929 arrests were carried out in 2024 among Washington counties.

King County saw the highest number of arrests last year, with 1,030 people taken into custody.

And nearly half of the King County arrests, about 470, were in Seattle, which to me debunks the idea that Seattle is safe from ICE enforcement.

That is just not true when we look at the data.

Why?

I will say, Director Boo, I'll take the minute now to say that this tracks what we heard last year from immigrant organizations, defense organizations, where the federal funding was getting cut, and this was a significant source of concern for the council, so this legal...

piece is really important, and the point that our immigrant populations, the ones who are here documented are experiencing issues too, not just the ones that are here undocumented.

So everyone is in need of legal defense right now.

And so that is an important point to make.

And I don't think that anyone thinks that Seattle, there has been an uptick in Seattle.

We haven't seen quite the same surge as Chicago and Minneapolis, thankfully.

And again, we don't know what's to come in the future.

But I don't think anyone doesn't know at this point that folks are getting picked up in Seattle.

There's an increase we've seen.

Thank you.

And that's important to know.

Thank you.

And while this is happening, and the legal defense rising as number one priority, we heard a lot of other needs.

And so I wanted to touch on these additional priorities.

We heard that, and we've seen significant cuts in federal funding.

to immigration integration programs such as naturalization and ESL.

We have heard and we have seen immigrants and refugees are deeply afraid of being targeted by federal immigration enforcement.

And the impact of that is that it is affecting people's self-sufficiency.

They are afraid to go to work sometimes.

And when there is lack of income, that impacts their bottom line to be able to afford basic needs.

There's fear of sending kids to school too, Director, we've heard a lot.

So yeah, I know that SPS is doing a lot of work there.

Additional priorities include small community-based organizations that are telling us that they need resources to support residents and workers.

And while we know these stories of enforcement at a national level or even a regional level, it really drills down also to fear at a hyper-local level and people feeling need to support their neighbors We also heard that there's a need for expanded legal consultations, safety planning, and response to protocols across business communities, workers, and immigrant-serving providers such as food banks.

So that's a general overview of what we've heard.

And I want to begin now just giving you a little bit more detail about this expanded investment portfolio.

And we're going to start first with the top two, which you see on here, legal removal defense and small community grants, because these were the ones that were the most urgent in terms of standing up and reflecting what we heard as priorities.

So with the removal defense, this touches our legal defense network, our LDN, and needing to expand that.

And we're going to do that through an RFP process.

So this program provides legal representation to low-income immigrants who are in detention facing removal.

are in danger of loss because of their immigration status.

So I want to provide a little bit about what the funding details are.

And this is available through an RFP.

And I'm happy to make it available to other council members if they would like.

The total funds available are up to an additional $1.25 million.

The contract period begins June 1. And through the December 31 of 2026, this RFP has already been released.

and the submission deadline is 5 PM on April 24th.

Eligible applicants must be a nonprofit organization with the 501 status.

They must have offices located within Seattle King County and have at least one fully accredited DOJ rep or licensed attorney with at least two years of experience providing removal defense services.

They must be committed to offering removal defense services for at least the next five years.

That's a very high bar, but one that is necessary because these cases are taking a long time.

And they need to be able to rely on representation for the entire duration of their case.

And eligible applicants must also be able to commence full proposed services within six months of the contract execution.

Director Vu, can you also, and I know part of this is ensuring that these organizations are servicing either residents or Seattle or folks that have a nexus to.

There's got to be a nexus to Seattle.

Yes, thank you for reminding me.

These organizations are required to provide services for individuals who have a tie to Seattle.

And that means live, work, or go to school here, possibly receive services here as well.

And because this is a significant program, we want to be transparent about what the outcomes are.

So there is full representation with this additional investment for a caseload of 500, which effectively doubles the current caseload of 250. And that includes unaccompanied children.

Out of this 250 cases currently, there are an additional benefit to 100 derivatives, which is family members.

We also, through this program, provide critical, qualified immigration attorney services for cases through the very complex and often lengthy immigration process.

And Director Vu, would you please share with us that I'd love to put in our newsletters the RFP so folks know it's open and they can apply.

So I'm happy.

I know we would all do so.

Speak.

I see Council Member Lin giving me the thumbs up.

So we'd love to get the information out wide, disseminated widely.

So if you share with us the RFP details, we'll put it in our communications to our constituents.

We'll do.

I'll follow up with that.

That'd be great.

Thank you so much.

And of course, part of this, Director, on the outcomes piece, the caseload, these are all goals, of course, and then with the ultimate outcome of helping to help folks in our community be successful as they move through the process here.

So we'd love to hear, in terms of outcomes, how many folks we were able to help in town stay here.

Yep.

We do collect quarterly reports.

So I'm happy to share those with any council members who are interested.

That'd be great, because I think it goes to just, it would alleviate our concerns, well, some of our concerns, not fully, but just it's really great to hear that we were able to be helpful, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

So thank you.

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah.

We can do that.

Another area that I want to highlight, which we also sent out an announcement of RFP.

And if you have not heard it, we will follow up and provide information on this.

These are one-time contracts with community organizations or neighborhood groups to offer resources, education, and tools to empower communities in Seattle.

So the acceptable activities to be funded include community aid for basic needs.

This includes meal delivery service or items of food pantry, basic goods such as baby formula or diapers.

We do direct people to existing City of Seattle programs to assist with utilities, rent assistance, and food.

Another acceptable activity is Know Your Rights presentations or community info sessions that can include recent or pending changes in immigration law and policy, of which there have been many.

It also includes immigrant workers' rights and protections, for example.

A third activity that this funding will support is family safety planning.

This is typically offered through workshops or clinics and with an immigration attorney who helps individuals and their families create plans for care of children or other dependents.

In addition, they also provide legal preparations in the event of the detention or deportation of a parent or legal guardian.

And I know some of our community partners have used their discretionary dollars because it's just what was needed by community.

El Centro, I know, is doing that and a number of other organizations.

And so we can learn a lot from that.

And in fact, I have recommended to some of our Asian API communities to lean into the expertise that our Latino communities have developed.

And that's a way that we can learn from each other.

Yeah.

And there was a recent article actually talking about across the United States, kids who come home to find their parents have been detained.

And so having a family plan in place is really important.

It's very sad.

And also, having a plan in place is really important.

Thank you.

So the funding details is pretty straightforward.

Because we mean this to be a broad category for the types of activities that the city does not currently support and that our intention is to reach very small organizations that many of which may not have any experience contracting with the city.

We want to make this easy.

So these will be applications through PDFs and one-on-one phone calls, for example, just to drill down a little bit to understand what the proposed activities are and that people understand.

We'll follow up also with any technical assistance that may be needed for very new organizations working with the city.

The funding details are described here.

The total funds available are up to $280,000.

I do want to say that where there may be underspending in other parts of our investment portfolio, that we have the option to shift some of those resources over here, because our expectation is that the need is greater than the resources that we have.

And that is true probably across every grant area in the city of Seattle.

Each application may be awarded up to $10,000.

And here, organizations are still eligible, even if they receive city dollars in other areas or other departments.

So we want to make that clear.

The application deadline, applications will be accepted on a rolling basis with funding decisions announced within six weeks of application submission.

And that is because we know that communities needed this money yesterday.

And so we want to make these resources available as quickly as possible, but also allow for enough time for very small organizations to have a chance.

And so we'll keep this open for as long as budget is available or until funds are exhausted.

The contract period for this is through this calendar year.

This is really important that eligibility is contingent on a nonprofit having 501c3 status, or they may partner with a fiscal sponsor with the 501c3 status.

But in any case, they must serve people with a Seattle tie.

I do want to emphasize, it's not on a slide, but it's important to communicate that this program cannot fund any projects that actively or unlawfully obstruct or interfere with federal immigration enforcement.

We cannot fund legal advice not provided by an immigration attorney or accredited DOJ representative, and we cannot fund cash assistance for individuals.

So that's spelled out in the RFP, but I just wanted to make sure to convey that to you all as well.

thank you director and then just what we just want to mention because a lot of folks aren't familiar with the fiscal sponsor set up some are some aren't and particularly the people watching but for these neighborhood groups if they're not a 501c3 organization they don't have things set up to receive funds so typically then you work through a fiscal sponsor that is a 501c3 and they know how to help with the applications to the city and all the paperwork and all on the back end, things that you have to submit in order to then get the grants.

And then all the reporting, the 501c3 fiscal sponsor then helps with the reporting.

That's right.

And the reporting.

That's right.

So just so people know what that is and how the neighborhood groups that aren't 501c3s get to be competitive still if they work with a 501c3 fiscal sponsor.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

That's right.

So reporting is a part of contracting with the city.

And we want to be transparent about that.

So moving forward, the outcomes that we have for the community small grants.

Sorry, director, one more.

We have a question here.

Sorry, director.

I was remembering Lynn, you're recognized.

Thank you, Chair.

On the eligibility, some of our unions, in particular industries, a majority of their members may be immigrants.

and we've seen how oftentimes it is our union partners that are kind of a first line of defense for many folks.

There's a news report recently about a UW grad student who was detained, and it was the union that rushed down to the airport to try to assist.

And so I'm just wondering, on these small grants, I don't think unions are 501 s.

I just wonder, if they're not eligible, could you just talk about a little bit any sort of collaboration or opportunities with our union partners?

That's a good question.

Certainly from the worker angle, there's a lot of collaboration.

And so I'll go back to our group.

I know labor unions have a specific labor tax status, and I don't want to rule that out.

So thank you for pointing that out.

And then I'd love to follow up with you to have a more substantive conversation about that.

Having said that, I do want to say that our intention is to support very small organizations.

And although unions do do important work, I think given the amount of support or requests that we would expect from this, that that would be applied against consideration for organizations that have no resources.

So I want to make sure to offer that as well.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, thank you.

That's a great question, Councilmember Lin, and thank you, Director Vu, because a lot of folks don't realize that, you know, part of this effort is really, there are a lot of folks on the ground who, and a lot of folks that want to help the folks on the ground, immigrant folks on the ground, and we want to make sure that we're working with folks that have access to a lot of people that might not know how to get resources and how to access some of these resources.

So oftentimes we find these small community groups that want to be, and sometimes they get squeezed out of the process because they're not used to contracting with the city.

So I think what I'm hearing you say and what I know from our work in the past together is that The department is also really intentional to make sure that we're providing access and opportunity for some smaller groups that do already help folks in community, but they don't necessarily know how to access city dollars, which is why I bring up the fiscal sponsor piece because a lot of those organizations aren't necessarily 501 s and they need to be able to have this fiscal sponsor to do the work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I just pointing out those smaller groups.

Thank you.

And the importance of the smaller groups because they're doing so much in community and they don't necessarily always have the access.

Thank you.

That's what I'm hearing you say.

But you correct me if I'm wrong, director.

And you know, the beauty of what we saw in Minneapolis was that the decentralized nature of how people came together with very little resources was admirable.

And we are in such a privileged position to have any amount of money to be able to support local efforts

Yes, but the other thing is that there isn't a scarcity of, I mean everyone wants to help so our labor partners too can come together and refer folks to the department who can refer folks to those smaller organizations too and have, I mean like we're all working together so I'm not suggesting we shouldn't work with our labor partners.

Yes, we definitely should because they have access to folks too.

and we're all coming together in order to provide assistance to immigrant communities.

And the other thing I would love, and I know this is kind of a tall order, but just outside of this city, there are a lot of folks coming together to also provide assistance, including in our labor partners are doing so much.

I'd love to hear about that.

We don't always hear what's happening on the ground, and I know there's some other, and philanthropy and some other efforts which is why I think you're gonna work with Seattle Foundation in terms of raising some funds because the need is greater than we're able to address.

But the city doesn't always hear who else and what other work is being done out there.

I'd love to be able to figure out a way for us to know that, including the great work that our labor partners do in this space, because they do a lot.

But we don't always hear about it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So this next slide here, I wanted to share the outcomes that we can expect from this body of work, and also to highlight that we do require all grantees to track and report to us the number of events, the topics, the number of attendees, and languages served.

specifically for family safety planning activities.

Grantees will report the number of completed plans.

For basic needs, grantees will attest to the eligibility of those who are served and provide receipts or financial reports for the type of need.

And that, consistent with our concern about data and privacy, we want you to know that all of this will be reported to us only in the aggregate.

Yes.

Really important to note that the city does not collect information, identifying information, no names, address, nothing of that nature.

We just really, receipts don't have names attached to them, but we just need for our reporting, our fiscal, our books.

We need to make sure we have the documentation, but it is not to identify individuals or to discourage anyone from coming out to get assistance.

That's right.

So here's just an example of a reporting template here.

I wanted to share that so that you could see what our community partners will see.

And then the next phase of funding So I just talked about the LDN expansion and the community small grants.

Those were the first to be released.

This next phase of funding includes investments that will go out and be announced later this spring, which is support for a body of immigrant inclusion services.

I mentioned earlier the federal funding losses that we have seen for naturalization and ESL and the legal orientation program.

Also, we want to support the community response for detained individuals and families.

And for those who are interested in learning more about this and upcoming opportunities, just come to our website.

There's a link here in the slide.

And then we provide regular updates and resources through our monthly newsletter, our blog, and social media.

So please stay connected with us and stay informed.

And that information is here on the screen.

and I will stop there.

Thank you.

Thank you, director.

It's clear you and your team and thank you to your team, some of which are in the audience.

Nice to see you again, are doing a lot.

And I want to also acknowledge this is only part of the implementation of these funds.

And since this is ongoing in your budget, you are working on then future years and looking at how well things are going and sort of did we cover the need that, you know, what community needs at the moment because you want to be nimble also in subsequent years and address what we're seeing at that time.

at that time.

I mean, we just don't know what's going to happen in the future.

That's right.

The landscape is just constantly changing, and we need to be responsive and keep taking a look at this, keep listening and pivoting when we need to.

Thank you.

Thank you, Director.

And I hear from and I've spoken with some folks in our immigrant community in town, and they're so grateful.

for OIRAs and just the city's collective efforts.

And that's always really, you know, I appreciate hearing that from community, because I know we all want to do what we can to help.

Colleagues, questions, comments?

Councilmember Foster, I see you have your camera on.

Do you want, you have any questions or comments?

I'll recognize you, go ahead.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Director.

It's always a pleasure to get to hear from you.

I wanted to ask, and maybe you can just send over some of the things that you shared at the beginning of committee via email later, because you had some really great points around the cuts to ESOL that you've seen and the cuts to legal defense services.

And so we've been trying to sort of track those.

If you're able to send those numbers via follow-up, I think that would be helpful.

I got as good of notes as I could, but I want to make sure I got that correct.

That would be fantastic.

I really wanted to say I appreciate, and I wouldn't expect anything less from your leadership, but I appreciate the level of attention to detail, particularly around the legal defense and knowing that that's seen significant cuts.

hearing more about the prioritization and the way that you all have approached the funding amount based on Seattle was really helpful to hear.

So thank you.

No questions, Chair.

Thank you so much, Council Member Foster.

Any other comments or questions?

And like I said, colleagues, thank you to my Council Member colleagues for showing up.

at this meeting today.

I know it's a special meeting, but I thought it was important at this juncture.

The department's been working diligently, and I wanted to provide an opportunity to show both to us and to members of the public, because I hear from members of the public in general also who very much care about supporting are immigrant and refugee community members in town and I wanted them to see things are happening and the city is offering assistance and it's important.

I didn't want to wait further and I know there's more to come and this is the first of subsequent.

We'll bring you back to committee to give updates on the next pieces of this and then updates to the pieces you just introduced but Thank you for talking about the RFPs.

And if you share both RFP information, we will share that in our newsletter.

Councilmember Rank, I see you have your hand up.

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to quickly add my voice to say thank you for scheduling this special meeting today to get this information out and in the public.

I think that's tremendously important and I wanted to take a moment to also again thank Director Vu for your work on this.

I think Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs has found a really important balance here of moving with urgency but also being very careful and thoughtful when it comes to putting together this proposed plan for the $4 million.

Just a huge thank you also to my council colleagues for those who are on this committee and those who aren't for making this $4 million investment ongoing in the budget last year.

And I wanted to take a moment to further thank the OIRA team, Oksana, Azmi, Belexa, because you all have partnered with us when we are engaging in conversation with a number of community groups.

And those are not always easy conversations.

There is a lot of fear, distrust, frustration in community.

And I want to thank your team for showing up in those conversations alongside myself and a number of other council offices to really make sure we are hearing the authentic voices and making sure that the subsequent plans for this funding is really informed by what is needed by community.

So I wanted to take a moment to thank you and your team for your careful work.

And thank you again, Sheriff, for making time for this committee meeting to get this information out in public.

It's my pleasure.

Thank you, Councilmember Rankin.

I also want to acknowledge the county.

I know that the King County Executive had a meeting and I was grateful to get an invitation.

I think many of us actually to participate where we heard from community members themselves, immigrant and refugee community members themselves.

And it's really important to have those opportunities to hear from community directly.

So really appreciate partnering with the county on this, who I know is also giving resources and trying to do what they can.

And the state for that matter, the governor is also, he cares deeply about this too.

We are all working and partnering together in supporting our immigrant and refugee community members, whether it be at the city, with the city of Seattle, at the county, and at the state level.

And I'm just very appreciative for all our partners who are coming together to help, and our own community members residents who are not members of the immigrant or refugee community who are helping as well individually giving of their time and efforts including all our food banks in town so really appreciate that and then director vu you've got community you've got staff members and some we mentioned some i don't want to leave out others and so do you want to introduce who's here and the audience from your team who are doing awesome work.

I didn't even see them come in.

They're here.

It would be my pleasure to introduce, starting on the end here, Shethis Wilson, Belkisa Tama'ami, Azmi Haroun, and then Joaquin Wee, who's recently joined us to make sure that this all goes well.

Thank you for doing that.

If we're doing any good work, they get credit for it.

And I like to give people credit.

And that's why I like to have people named by name, because everyone's doing great work.

And people don't recognize the people behind the efforts.

And I want to make sure everyone gets acknowledged.

So thank you for being here.

And let's see.

I don't think anyone has any other questions.

Thank you, colleagues.

I so appreciate you being here.

Seeing no further questions, this concludes the April 9th special meeting of the Library's Education and Neighborhoods Committee.

Our next line committee meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, April 22nd, 9.30 a.m.

If there's no further business, this meeting will adjourn.

Hearing no further business is 3.51 p.m., and this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.