Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee 10/31/18 Session 2

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you so much for coming to council chambers today to continue to hear the work that we are doing on the green sheets.

And green sheets, just to bring you up to speed, are recommendations that are made by my council colleagues and myself that would change the mayor's budget.

And we can amend, or we can take things away, or we can identify specific priorities that she may or may not have had.

Now, I know you are all here, and I appreciate the fact that you are here to speak to us.

Public comment is going to be after our green sheets.

That was published that way.

We're going to continue to hold on to that schedule.

I just want you to know that I appreciate your coming.

and that we will respect your time and at the conclusion of our green sheet conversation, we will have public testimony just as published.

Chair Baggio, could I ask you to make an exception?

Because they are Vietnamese seniors who have taken a lot of pains and public transportation to come here as a group.

It is not easy for them because they face a lot of income restrictions.

And I understand that you have decided to do public comment at the end.

I generally don't agree with that decision, but I respect that because you're the chair.

However, we all on the dais know that this meeting will go on for several hours, and it's simply not possible for our community members here to wait for several hours to come and speak.

So all they're asking for is maybe one or two speakers among them to speak.

They're just going to speak as one group just for maybe two minutes.

All right, so I'd like to hear from my colleagues if that's acceptable to you, but I'm seeing Alex Zimmerman, Patricia Sully, a lot of others who I know are going to want to speak.

Are you willing to make the...

I'm going to ask you...

No, this is...

I'm going to ask counsel...

I'm going to ask security to escort you out if I hear another outburst like that from you, Mr. Zimmerman.

Colleagues, may I ask security, please, just invite him to go.

Madam Chair, I would like to say in point of order that Mr. Zimmerman is being disrupted and should be removed.

This is public comment.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

So, if I may just hear from my colleagues, are you willing to make an exception for the senior citizens to speak?

I mean, I say we stick with the protocol, but I might be in the minority on that.

Okay.

Lynn, did your folks know that public testimony was going to be at the end today?

They did.

They did.

We're just making an exception.

Thank you, Shama.

I'm asking Lynn.

Did your group know that public testimony was going to be at the end of this?

Sorry, ma'am.

We wasn't aware of that.

We thought that the public comment was at the beginning of the meeting.

Okay.

All right.

It was my error.

It was my mistake, and I'm asking for your forgiveness.

Okay.

Not a problem.

It's okay.

But I'm going, I'm feeling really bad about this because I've been trying very hard to stick with the schedule.

But would you ask your two leaders to come up and speak to us for two minutes.

We understand why they are here and then we will move on.

And I'm just going to ask for the audience's indulgence for the remainder of public comment to come at the end.

Okay, so I greatly appreciate it and I'm so sorry if I am really making it inconvenient for anybody, but I really appreciate it.

Please bring them up, Lynn.

No further need to apologize.

Good afternoon.

And good afternoon.

I am going to ask you to stay within the two minutes, please.

My name is Mr. Wong.

First of all, I'd like to We represent, you know, the Vietnamese senior citizen here in the Vietnamese Senior Citizens Association.

Firstly, to appreciate for your help in the past.

And secondly, I'd like to ask for your continuing support in this same type of activity.

But the main thing today is I'd like to talk about the budget that The committee will reserve for the Vietnamese senior people.

And second is housing, actually is the main thing.

I'm 80 years old and before I don't mind about, you know, afford myself financially, but now I don't have anything.

My income is not enough to support them for my housing so I can live with my kids.

So today I'd like to emphasize on that matter.

So we're pleased to support us, but just and also the housing problem.

I thank you.

My name is Minh Huong Nguyen, DHHS retired, and I am here to support Vietnamese senior group.

I am a senior too.

And secondly, and support affordable housing for senior and for everybody in the city.

As a social worker, and I know the need there a lot, So a lot of people crying for those too.

So please support us, continue supporting the funding for the Vietnamese Senior Group for have a place to, you know, relax and also for mental and health issues too.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you, Council Member.

And if you want to stay till the end, we're happy to have you.

And you can sign up to speak to us then.

All right, we're going to continue from our conversations this morning.

We ended at item number 39, I believe.

And we're going to start with 40, which is the Department of Human Resources.

So will those of you at the table please introduce yourselves.

Council Central staff, this is statement of legislation 34-2-A-1-2019 and I understand Council Member Mosqueda would like to speak to this first.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Madam Chair, this initial statement of legislative intent was informed based on conversations we had directly with city employees, members of PTE Local 17, who came into our office as mothers, as expecting mothers, and talked about the unaffordability and limited access to child care, especially for those who work here in our city but don't live here.

We initially wanted to request a slide to get some additional data.

And actually, over the weekend and last night, we're pleased to receive some information from SDHR.

And I think that it basically covers much of what we had anticipated receiving in this slide.

So I, at this point, would suggest that we can pull this and I'll work with SDHR on next steps.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

Item numbers.

Anything else you need for 40?

I'm sorry?

I said, is there anything else we need for 40?

Are we just going to move on?

We'll move it.

Okay, very good.

And Council Member Mosqueda, thank you.

Appreciate the leadership there.

But also, I want us to tie back into what we talked about yesterday of what we need to do in order to get a child care center, both for infants and for toddlers, here in City Hall and or across the street at the Seattle Municipal Tower.

So, thank you very much for proceeding with that.

Great.

Item number 41 is Green Sheet 12-1-A-1.

It is sponsored by Councilmember O'Brien and supported by Councilmembers Herbold and Mosqueda.

I apologize, I need to amend the amounts.

It would add $107,368,000 in 2019 and $138,982 in 2020. for one strategic advisor, one in FAS, the Finance Administrative Services Department, for priority hire and contract compliance.

The difference in the numbers is I have been working with both the city budget office and the department on the position costs, and there are different ways different departments are calculating that, so we were able to revise these figures today.

And I want to thank both CBO and FAS for the efforts they've put in for the last A couple of days on trying to figure this out.

The priority hire and contract compliance position would help both contractors and people bidding on projects as well as monitoring once the projects have been under construction.

The position goes to the site and reviews.

compliance with prevailing wage apprenticeship utilization, WIMBY goals, as well as the priority higher goals of increasing utilization of people living in economically distressed areas of the city and county to work on our construction projects.

Thank you.

Council Member Wren.

Thank you, Patricia, and thank you for finding ways to streamline the costs on that by her method.

There's a lot of construction going on right now in the community, including public works projects, where we are overseeing compliance.

And for the priority hire program to work, it's critically important that everyone is planned by the same set of rules.

And so we want to make sure that we have the capacity to monitor that appropriately, and that's what this ad would do.

All right, thank you.

Seeing no further, oh, Council Member Mosqueda.

I just really want to applaud the prime sponsor of this, and looking forward to working with him.

I think this is also a good example of where we have put some very important labor standard protections into law, and just like we talked about yesterday, we want to make sure the letter of that law is actually being carried out.

We know that there's some really big projects on the horizon, and I just, I think it's so incredibly important that we advance this concept now, so I appreciate the sponsor bringing this forward.

Thank you.

Chair Baxter, just a suggestion for the, for Eric, maybe can you bring the individual, which is I think that's more useful.

I had told him the other one.

Oh yeah, really?

Well, that's fine if you want.

So I didn't hear your comment.

What is it that you're asking?

To see the whole green sheet?

To see the individual green sheet under discussion, but I think Council Member Mosqueda wanted it the other way around, that's fine with me.

Okay, go ahead.

We could perhaps solicit a general sort of a call for consensus, perhaps?

I know, I know, I can totally do that, so let it go.

All right, let's move on.

I have no idea what we're talking about.

I don't either.

None whatsoever.

Does anybody else know what we're talking about?

I believe the question here, I don't want to eat up a lot of time, is whether to project the agenda sheet or the individual green sheets in succession.

Feel free to do that if that's helpful to the audience because we've got them up here in front of us.

Item, the next item please.

Excuse me.

Good afternoon, Councilmembers.

Allie Panucci, Council of Central Staff.

Item number 42 is Green Sheet 12-2A-1.

This Green Sheet would recommend passage of legislation that will be introduced on Monday amending regulations for short-term rental operators in the city.

And while I'm speaking, I'm going to just disrupt that previous conversation and pull up something entirely different, which is a map that will help explain some of the existing regulations.

I believe Councilmember Johnson has copies of the map for Councilmembers as well.

This legislation would extend an exemption to the limit on the number of dwelling units a short-term rental operator can offer for short-term rental use.

Under the existing regulations that were adopted last year and will go into effect on January 1 of 2019, an operator can obtain a license to operate their primary residence plus one additional dwelling unit as a short-term rental.

When that legislation was adopted, there were a number of exceptions made to those limits for operators existing prior to October 1st, 2017, or excuse me, September 30th, 2017. The map tries to illustrate what those exemptions are.

And so in general, for most of the city, if you were operating short-term rentals prior to September 30th of 2017, you could be licensed for two units.

And you could add a third unit if it's your own home after one year of operation.

So that is all of the yellow area on the map.

The darker blue area represents the First Hill, Capitol Hill Urban Center.

In that area, certain building types or people who operated units in certain building types prior to September 30, 2017 could operate as many units as they were operating prior to that date, plus could add one additional unit in their own home.

And then the lighter blue area, that is the downtown exception area that is roughly south of Olive Way and north of Cherry Street, you could operate any units you were operating prior to September 30, 2017 and could add up to one additional plus your primary.

Councilmember Johnson, do you want to speak to this?

Allie was about to finish, and then I'll jump in.

So this legislation would take the exception that applies in the light blue area, the downtown exception, and apply it citywide.

The reason for this is as we've been looking at the revenue projections coming in for short-term rental revenues and the proposed spending plan, those projections didn't take into account the impacts that the proposed limits might have on that.

So it assumed that It was based on sales tax data that the state has access to based on sales tax that some short-term rental platforms are paying now.

So it assumed if all of those people continue to operate, we generate about $10.5 million a year.

So what this does is it would allow all of those operators to continue operating, and it would provide more certainty that those estimates are correct.

And if they're an underestimate, it would raise more revenue.

So, excellent overview.

This is a complicated policy choice, but I wanted to put it in front of us during the budget conversation because if we were to adopt this amendment to the current short-term rental regulations, it would ensure a higher likelihood that the $10.5 million that we have assumed in our budget for 2019 actually comes in.

If we do not, then I think we need to be a little more stringent about the assumptions of the $10.5 million that we currently have assumed to come in.

And that may result in additional budgetary challenges for you, Madam Chair.

So we could probably spend the next hour just talking about this if you really wanted to.

But the short version is, if you're currently the effect of this, Legislation legislative change would be if you were currently operating a short-term rental anywhere in the city as of September 30th 2017 You would continue to be allowed to do that and add one primary Resident and one additional unit to your portfolio whereas the current regulations don't allow you to do that if you're anything in the yellow area of this maps and

And if I could just add one thing that I forgot to mention in my introductory remarks is that you'll recall from the previous discussions on this policy that the policy reason for putting these regulations in place that is articulated in the ordinance was both to limit the number of units that are coming off the long-term rental market and being converted to short-term rental rentals while trying to also balance the economic opportunity that it provides to some operators.

And so a lot of the focus was on limiting the future growth in the industry and trying to balance those two competing goals.

And my assumption here is that this would continue to try to thread the needle there.

Those folks who were operating as of September 30, 2017 likely are still operating but may stop operating at the conclusion of this year.

If they were if they're not grandfathered in so, you know, I can't give you a hard number about how many dollars we might lose from us Regulatory change but this change allows us to have a higher degree of certainty about the ten and a half million dollars that we've assumed in 2019 Please councilmember O'Brien

I have some concerns about this and so I'll just state them and we'll figure out how we move forward.

But essentially two levels of concern.

One is I feel like we just had a pretty in-depth policy conversation about this last fall and to go in and do that and part of the budget doesn't feel appropriate.

I haven't seen anything that's shifted dramatically from the policy perspective.

And so if we do collectively want to revisit policy around how we regulate Airbnb units or short-term rental units, I would suggest that we do that through the regular process of the legislative calendar.

The second concern I have is around what I think is probably driving this, which is the desire to maintain the revenue.

And again, as we've talked about before, the purpose of creating the short-term rental tax was, from my perspective, largely around a policy that we wanted to maintain both fairness in the system and also protect housing options for folks and not divert them.

and I'm concerned about saying that this is actually just a general revenue tool that we want to use to cover overall budget shortfalls.

I think the mayor, by assuming the state's projections for the short-term rental without any on-the-ground experience here is putting the budget at risk a bit, because she has fully spent what they said, and typically we try to be conservative when we have new revenue sources.

But I think that's a problem that we should put back on the mayor to figure out.

remain committed that the first five million dollars of short-term rental should be going to the equitable development initiative and then there's some parameters on how we can spend that beyond there and if it turns out that those numbers are coming in lighter than we thought then I think you know I would find it appropriate for us to direct the mayor to you know reappropriate some budget numbers to make to figure out how to make this work but I don't think I don't think grandfathering everyone in at this point without having a much broader process and community engagement.

It's certainly something that I don't think I would support regardless, and I don't think it's appropriate for us to do that without a broader process, especially since we did one just a year ago.

Good.

Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Johnson, for providing this.

And Council Member O'Brien, I do agree with a lot of what you shared regarding the short-term rental tax and the policy of fairness in the system and protecting our housing stock.

And I understand that.

And I also supported that the short-term rental, that the first $5 million should go to EDI.

However, I do support Council Member Johnson in this because, again, one of the things that always concerned me when we talked about the short-term rentals in these geographical areas is I was always concerned about geographical parity.

And as you know now, a lot has changed in the last six, seven months, in that D5 in particular will have two light rail stations.

We only have two hotels in those areas.

And now we have the NHL coming to Northgate and 1,200 units and more density.

And so I see this as more opportunities for people to, if they can be grandfathered in, because a lot of homeowners and a lot of people are using the short-term rentals.

to pay their mortgage, to age in place, to get their kids in college, and to have that extra income stream.

So I would be supportive of this.

clarify what I think this proposal would do in the simplest way as I can.

This proposal would just grandfather all units, regardless of how many an individual operator has, that were in operation prior to September 30th, 2017. Is that correct?

Yeah, I also think that one of the policy objectives of this legislation was to address the fact that we have lost rental housing to this business.

And we, I think, struck a balance between trying to work to retain some of the, return some of those units to the rental market while also recognizing, as Council Member Juarez said, that there are people who are not, not necessarily businesses, but people who are doing this on the side as a way to supplement their income so that they can live in an increasingly affordable, unaffordable city.

So I'm just a little nervous about breaking this open now.

Yeah, Council Member Johnson.

If I may just sort of close the discussion.

Again, I think that I don't disagree with anything that my colleagues have said.

We certainly spent a lot of time and energy talking about this point.

But I wanted to offer up here, we've had several different council members that have been trying to identify new revenue streams in order to build more affordable housing.

In addition to Council Member O'Brien's request that we have $5 million, the first $5 million go to the EDI fund, We had also identified that $2 million of the short-term rentals would go back, would be the dedicated revenue source to pay back the $29 million worth of affordable housing bonds.

So as we contemplate finding new revenue in order to build more affordable housing, this is one of those places that we've already got a good nexus.

And if we don't adopt this, which I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't, but if it is in the will of the majority of the body that we don't adopt it, I want to lift up that that creates some uncertainty for me about how we've currently received a budget and how to spend $10.5 million within that budget.

And I'll want to be looking closely to see where we're prioritizing spending that $10.5 million because I'm not sure that we will have all of it that we might expect.

Thank you.

And thank you for clarifying that.

I will say that when I first looked at this map, I just brought back that dread that I felt a year ago as we were struggling through all this.

And looking at your map, Councilmember Johnson, I want to just remind folks that that blue area happens to be my neighborhood.

And I was willing to say everybody who's got units in that area because it is more of an entertainment hotel area, that that made some sense to me.

But as soon as you started walking north on Belltown, you will recall that, I mean, we were here with torches and pitchforks, or I would say the audience was here with torches and pitchforks, because there was so much concern about apartment units that were already taken up by people as B&B, and what they had thought was going to be their retirement home, suddenly they felt like they were at the Holiday Inn with people coming in at all hours of the night and that their home had become something that felt much more like an unwelcome place for them with people that they said were, this one woman I recall very distinctly said there was somebody jumping on the ceiling above me and on both sides of my units there were people that had music up loud And that just didn't feel fair to her.

And they didn't have CC&Rs in their condominium, and hence it went the direction it did.

I think that before I'd feel comfortable opening this, and I do want to say thank you for helping me balance the budget and finding some alternative revenue sources.

I just would want to have a whole lot more opportunity for discussion.

And the idea of opening this up just for budget reasons is disturbing without having a better opportunity to make a decision for everybody.

So, thank you for that.

Yeah, Councilmember O'Brien.

I just want to clarify one thing, Councilmember Johnson, you said.

This is not Council Member O'Brien's request to do $5 million for EDI.

This was the policy that we collectively set a year ago and we're really clear about.

Similarly, the other investments.

And the mayor, when sent over the budget, chose to not follow that.

But this is something that at least a year ago we all agreed was our priority.

That can change, obviously.

But this is a shift in policy that the mayor is making and I think that it's appropriate for us to kind of resolving the challenges, especially if it comes back on her desk to resolve how she plans to deal with it if the revenues come in short.

Okay, I'm going to suggest we move forward that, Allie, do you have something else you want to add?

Yeah, if I might, Chair Baxter, I just want to know, to give the budget office its due credit that they did, they based the estimates on the state's revenue projections that didn't consider the impacts of the local regulations, but I will say they did conservatively estimate zero growth in the next year, so they assumed it holding steady.

So they did, the budget office did assume that the regulations may have some impacts.

I just wanted to note that for the record.

All right, excellent.

It's going to be my recommendation that we, if we want to open this up again, that we decide to do it through the Land Use Committee and we do that after budget and not part of this.

Understood that seems to be the will of the majority here I would then therefore suggest that you just take a really hard look at that ten and a half million and whether or not that's the full.

You said take a hard look at it?

Take a hard look at that ten and a half million and just make sure that you feel very confident that that's gonna come in because if you don't then I would recommend holding some in reserve in case we don't get that full time.

Okay.

Thank you for that alert.

And Ali, I'm going to rely upon you and CBO to give us some confirmation that they believe the numbers they've given us are something we can rely upon.

And if we, if that is in question, that I will ask both you and CBO to get back to me as soon as you can, but certainly before the weekend.

Okay.

Thank you.

OK, so I know that Council Member Johnson, did you have anything else on your OK?

Thank you.

Mr. Rogers is going down to take care of the kids for a few minutes.

Okay, please, let's keep going.

Next up is item 43, a statement of legislative intent, number 12-3-A-1.

It's sponsored by council members O'Brien and Herbold, requesting that FAS submit a report on properties with mutually offsetting benefit leases by February 1st, 2019, particularly that the executive identify the current status of their plans and any upcoming next steps.

Thank you, Jeff.

Council Member O'Brien, do you want to take this one or Council Member Herbold?

I can take it.

Yeah.

So we've heard from folks in three different communities, well, two communities representing services that are being provided at three separate locations where there are these, what are called mutually offsetting benefit leases.

One, the operator of a senior center in Greenwood.

One, an operator of a senior center in the Central District.

And then also the operator of, boy, used to be Camp, then it was Centerstone, and I'm forgetting the name of it again as I always do.

Something Baird, Bairbar.

Bird Bar.

Thank you.

And there's been a great amount of uncertainty for the organizations that provide these services and have provided these services historically in these communities for a really long time.

We began this process way back in 2012. And every time we seem like we're about to get to the finish line, where we make decisions about what to do with these properties, we get a new mayor.

And the new administration, very understandably, takes another look to see whether or not there's interest in retaining those properties for some other city use.

And so what this slide does is it gives the executive a timeline to report back to us on at least those three, I think, is really the focus right now.

There are actually, I think, six.

different mutually offsetting benefit properties, but we really want to focus on the three.

One example is the fact that one organization is going to have to return a $1.5 million check from the state of Washington to do capital repairs in the facility if they don't get site control of the property by June of next year.

So we want to signal our concern and our interest and moving these decisions along so that these organizations don't have to deal with this uncertainty so that they can make investments in the property and so that they can continue to deliver these, again, historic services in these communities.

Great.

Thank you.

Council Member O'Brien, did you want to add to that?

I'll just add that Council Member Herbold and I worked on some stronger language than you see in this green sheet, but we, I believe, missed the deadline by a few moments.

It essentially was a little more firm that said if the mayor does not come back with a plan, we will figure out a way.

as a council to kind of unilaterally move forward on closing these deals.

So, I don't know if you have more comments on that.

We are working on a resolution, our offices together, as well as with the help of central staff, and we'll hopefully have language for that resolution that will hopefully accompany the budget legislation.

We'll have language soon.

Okay.

It would be good to hear from folks if, you know, how firm people feel like moving forward, because Council Member Herbold and I are certainly there.

at least in exploring that opportunity.

I think Council President Harrell has a comment.

A few things to say.

Number one, feel free to add me to the sheet, number one.

That's the first point.

The second point is, here's always been my concern that many of these organizations, I know we have the fine folks from Central Area Senior Center here, that they've, as Council Member Herbold pointed out, they're working with uncertainty and they are hindered because there are significant capital improvements that need to be made and they're not in an ownership position.

to make those necessary improvements.

So we want to support that as much as possible.

That can mean transferring ownership to the governance body.

It also can mean working with the lenders to somehow subordinate our interest to put them in a position to meet their lending needs.

One of the concerns I've expressed is the 10-year, 15-year picture down the road from today.

And by that, I mean if a complete transfer is done and we don't have the necessary safeguards in place, the building will be lost.

And once again, it'd be lost to communities that become gentrified and they lose total control.

I hope that embedded in this, SLI is the language that meets their needs, which is site control, the ability to make capital improvements, and perhaps to be in a position, if ownership is tended to the groups, which I would support, that they are in a position to succeed.

And those that have been around the block a few times have seen organizations, not particularly in the city-transferred buildings, but seen organizations gain ownership and then ultimately lose, and then there's something else there.

In this report back, if you will, we want to make sure the community is truly protected from a loss 10 years from now.

That remains my concern.

So I would just like to add that as we're going forward to this, blessings, since this is coming back to my Finance and Neighborhoods Committee, I would like to make sure it's clear what next steps are.

And Council President Harrell, you've raised a very good point, which is whether or not the city has a first option in the event that it does, something does go south 10 or 15 years down the road so that it can be preserved, reserved, and cared for within the community.

So I'd like to make sure that we're thinking about all these elements, what is going to provide the most security to the community, what people in the neighborhoods want, and then at the same time, making sure that we have a failsafe.

And there's language in what we did with the health board in the Pearl Warren building or the Leschi building, I get the buildings mixed up, where when there was a quasi-transfer, we actually put language in there that they are to be used for Native American purpose.

We were very explicit, almost like a covenant, that we made sure that it wasn't going to get lost to the Native American community in that sense.

So without violating any laws, if there's some way we can make sure Whether it's a complete transfer or a subordinated interest, we can make sure that these truly remain senior centers for that demographic that they're serving.

I think that's what we're trying to preserve in this slide.

That's the ultimate goal.

Thank you.

Okay.

Any other comments?

Council Member Warris, are you thinking or are you?

I'm just thinking.

Okay.

I just want to second what Council President Harrell said.

The analysis should absolutely include, you know, all the kind of fiscal analysis about how this moves forward.

This isn't a, we're just going to give it away.

And that's always been the plan.

The frustration, I think, to date is these haven't moved forward.

And if there have been concerns, no one's expressed those concerns that I've heard about.

And so if someone has a concern and says, hey, community group, these are the bars you need to clear before we do it, We just need to tell them.

And we haven't heard that.

And that's what's been really frustrating to everybody.

And that may not be the case.

It's just hard.

And in previous years there were concerns identified and those have been addressed.

So there are certain things that these providers have been asked to produce to the executive to sort of get to the next stage and that's another reason why we're focused on these three because these three are kind of what we call ready to go and there was a consult report last year that identified these three as, quote, unquote, ready to go.

The other three are not ready to go, so.

Okay, well, it sounds to me like there's been a little bit of the goalpost moving, so I'd love to have work with you on that consultant report, know what the next steps are, and if there are three we can target and move forward on in early 2019. And thank you for putting a February 1st, 2019

date on it that gives people from the time we pass the budget about 70 days to Get that back to us that ought to be enough Thank you Okay, next up is item 44 green sheet 12 for a 1 to amend and pass council bill 1 1 9 3 8 5 which is related to fees at the Seattle animal shelter the original bill is provided by the executive and it provides The authority to charge fees for services that are provided when there is a complicated spay or neuter procedure.

At this time, the Seattle Animal Shelter is not able to collect those fees.

It would provide that authority.

The amended bill will also increase license fees and late fees by approximately 5%, late fees by $5, in order to cover the cost of an additional animal control officer.

This green sheet was sponsored by Council Member Herbold.

All right, please.

Thank you.

So I think the important thing to take away here is that Animal Control actually has 14 slots, and only 13 of them are funded, and Animal Control works in pairs.

So there's a funded spot that they can't use unless we fund that 14th one.

I think this is a hopefully budget neutral way to do so.

And because I don't know if you've noticed, I've been reading constituent emails as part of my pitch throughout the last couple days.

I want to share this one with you.

My name is Alexander Calvano, and I'm a nine-year-old boy.

And I live on 47th Avenue Southwest in Seattle.

I'm contacting you because I'm sad that when I look across the street, 95% of the time there are dogs having fun, where there are three signs that specifically say that there are no dogs allowed.

Also, 98% of the dogs are running around with no leash.

I also want to go over to play 99% of the time.

So basically I'm prevented from playing over there because there are too many dogs Also, there used to be parents and kids, but now there are dogs and owners I think the rule should be enforced better and I think there should be another off leash dog park in West Seattle The increase of $5 what percentage is that over

the current amount of fee for licensing?

I am going to defer to central staff on that.

I'll verify, I've got it here somewhere.

I'm pretty sure they're $25 currently and it would be raised to 30 for a late fee.

And then we're asking about the actual licensing fees?

Yeah, because you know what happens is we'll raise a fee and then somebody will say, we're raising the fees by 20% and it's unfair to somebody.

So I just would like to know what those numbers are.

For all of them?

Do you want me to run through now?

And you don't have to tell me now, just sometime before Friday, if you'll tell me what the percentages are.

Okay, it is approximately a 5% increase, frankly, we rounded, so that when it was 92 cents, we rounded up, something like that, so it would be easier for those people purchasing licenses, but it was a 5% increase, was presumed, on all of the fees.

I'm not sure if I said only cats and dogs previously, but miniature goats and pigs were also included on that.

That's just wrong.

Which, strangely enough, I think are the lowest of the fees, are the miniature goats.

And I think we probably have a former council member, Richard Conlon, to talk about that.

I think so.

Okay.

Anybody want to add their name on to this with Ms. Herbold?

Yeah, I will.

Okay.

Thank you.

Very good.

All right, thank you.

If we could go on to the next item, please.

Sure, next is item number 45, a green sheet, 12-5A-1.

It adds $100,000 in general fund revenue in 2019 for FAS to complete a study of childcare space in City Hall.

This is sponsored by Council Member Mosqueda.

This is a follow-up to a previous study that has been done, and this study would actually ask for a detail of structural changes that would be needed to the interior and plaza exterior, the cost of implementing those changes, a business model for the facility, including costs and revenues, and potentially the types of subsidization that would potentially be necessary by the city, if at all.

Very good.

Thank you, Jeff.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thank you to the co-sponsors as well, Council Member Harreld and Council Member Johnson.

We talked yesterday about the need to make sure that we're actually doing the work instead of studying it again.

We have, for your consideration, modified our green sheet here to do just that.

The green sheet has been actually amended to reflect what I think was the true intent, and to not do another study, but to actually create an implementation plan to begin building the facility that we need to make sure that there's child care on site.

This green sheet would look at an actual implementation and modification needs, create the plan so that we can do the recruitment of an operator and potentially allow them to help us bid on the space and would help provide assistance and a report back.

So what we have done here is really look at the both structural changes and recruitment of an actual operator as suggested in the previous study.

If I might, the previous study in 2016 looked at various spaces, came back and said the best space for such a facility to actually create child care onsite at City Hall would be downstairs by the coffee stand.

But there was two main objections that were a concern.

One is that they needed to identify an operator.

And two, they needed that operator to help develop specific programming, general guidelines on space, and programming suggested for the facility.

So I think this actually helps us take that next step, Madam Chair.

And there was a question that was asked prior as well about whether or not it could be open to the public and how that affects our financing.

I appreciate that question that was asked.

In the previous study, it said a facility, if it was opened, if it gave preference to just city employees or if it was dedicated to city employees, it would not be eligible for many state and local sources of funding.

For example, our Seattle preschool program cannot support employer-preferred childcare programs.

I think to go back to that question, the intent again would be to have it be open to the public and that I think is reflected in this document that you see here.

And I hope that some of those changes are helpful so that we're not just doing another study but taking that next step for a possible implementation plan.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for also being open to my suggestions that rather than having a plan that we actually have an implementation and action effort this year.

And I would, if I could just offer a friendly thought here is that I would like to say that we're opening a childcare space in the vacant area near the city grind, coffee stand, or other space if it's found to be preferable for whatever reasons.

Or maybe we end up having you know, an infant room in one space and a toddler room in another.

So I just, I didn't want to leave this.

Like that was the only place that would be acceptable to us.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Thank you.

Excuse me.

Still getting over my cold.

I'm not getting emotional.

That was yesterday.

I used all my feelings yesterday.

So, just really quickly, Council Member Mosqueda, can you remind us when that original study was done?

Yes, thank you for asking.

The report that we received was June 30th, 2016, and it was in response to a slide submitted the prior year.

Slide 76-2A-2 from actually 2015. Great.

If we could get a copy of the study, that'd be great, just so that we all have the benefit of reviewing it for those of us who might have not reviewed it.

And then, secondly, I just wanted to, you know, also echo my appreciation for you and I had a conversation about this after the last budget committee hearing around how can we move away from the consistent studying of this issue and just move forward with an implementation plan if that's what we want to do.

And I think that's what we want to do.

And so, I really do appreciate your responsiveness to moving away from the study plan and towards an implementation plan and I also like Council Member Bagshaw's idea around making sure that we don't commit ourselves just to one particular site and sort of foreclose other opportunities in terms of city-owned spaces, either in the Municipal Tower or within City Hall to be able to house this particular facility.

And then, you know, I would say that the study, it identified sort of one of the barriers being trying to find a service provider, and I think that a lot of the work that we've been able to do through our Seattle Preschool Program really does alleviate a lot of those initial barriers that you described as you were discussing your proposal.

And so my hope is is that that one, thanks to the good work that we've done through our Seattle Preschool Program in developing and increasing the pipeline of providers available, that that really lends itself well to an opportunity to sort of hold hands with providers that we're developing through the SPP pipeline and then providing space for those providers to be able to deliver their services.

So I am really pleased with where the green sheet is at now.

One of the things that I'll note that I noticed is that on your prior green sheet you had asked for this report, a report to come back.

to your committee, and this one doesn't talk about who the report would come back to.

And so this is the Finance and Administrative Services Department, which historically reports to the Finance and Neighborhoods Committee, but it would also implicate DEEL.

And it's being proposed by you, and you chair a different committee, so I just want to make sure that we don't spread folks too thin and have sort of clear direction on where this report back should go.

I will tell you it will get a very friendly response in the Finance Committee, and you are sitting on that with me, and maybe we could invite Councilmember Muscata to join if you choose.

And otherwise, we can have some special committee that crosses crosses all boundaries.

Council Member Swant and then Council Member Juarez.

I just wanted to add my support to the amendment.

Oh good, thank you.

Council Member Juarez, are you supporting or did you want to speak?

No, yes.

I just wanted to say that I wanted to thank Councilmember Mosqueda for incorporating some of the language we discussed.

Adding the close to transit, because as you know we discussed this in the last time that it came up, that we're trying to make sure that we have transit-oriented child care.

pre-K infants, and that if we have city property and encouraging private developers to provide that as well, that it's not just a luxury or an amenity, but it's actually gonna be, hopefully be a requirement.

So I want to thank Council Member Muscata for that, and then let the chairwoman know that I will be supporting Council Member Muscata in this as well.

Great, thank you.

Okay, anybody else?

I know that Mr. Rogers has indicated support for this in the past.

All right, thank you.

I'm sorry, just to clarify because I've made a bunch of remarks and then I didn't punctuate it with whether I was signing on or not.

I would like to now punctuate my sentence with very many sentences by saying that I would like to be added on.

Is there anybody here who doesn't want to be added on?

Who doesn't like children?

Can I do it for you?

Well, you know, I think don't just get too charged up.

Just come back.

We're going to, the next item which is Council President Harrell's, he would like to skip over and we will come back.

He's got a.

Madam Chair, I just want to say I really appreciate everybody's support and contributions to this and I just want to thank central staff.

We've made quite a few suggestions and amendments in the last 24 hours to make this reflect some of those great ideas and this is still a work in progress so we will incorporate these various ideas and I really appreciate your quick work on this.

Excellent.

And I appreciate the fact that we have specified a date of this thing is going to be operational in 2019. So, we got a lot of work to do and I'm very excited about doing it.

Thank you.

So, if the next item, the one that Council President Harrell asked us to skip over was.

Actually, I think the next item is number 46, which is this one.

Yeah, next is number 46, requesting a business plan for a municipal bank.

I don't have Council President Harrell on that one, but maybe I'm mistaken.

No, I'm flipping through his binder.

I don't see what he's talking about either.

So we'll come back to him if he's got something to say on an item.

So I believe that the bank is next.

Okay, so item number 46, slide 126A1, requesting that FAS submit a business plan for a municipal bank.

This is sponsored by Council Member Sawant.

This would ask FAS to provide a report by June 1st of 2019, following up on previous examinations of a municipal bank.

Good.

Can I just quickly ask, did you review the reports that have been done?

And what's the last one on this topic?

So I don't have the most recent one, which I understood was from a previous session that was going to be coming out shortly and is not yet released.

I could be mistaken on that, Council Member.

I can talk about it.

Okay.

So just to repeat what Jeff just said, this statement of legislative intent would request that the Finance and Administrative Services Department present City Council with a business plan for a municipal public bank and The study that Jeff was talking about was commissioned by the council.

Feasibility study was commissioned, you know, and it's out and it's been released today.

And this study identifies challenges to creating a municipal public bank.

It's a very good study.

I think Council should look at it.

It identifies challenges to creating a municipal public bank, but also it provides a real direction for a path forward to navigating those challenges.

And I would say that while the challenges exist, the authors of the study were very clear that it is in no way insurmountable, but the steps that we need to take are not just straightforward create a public bank.

There's steps that we need to take in terms of the RFP process for the city's banking and that will lead us towards that.

And the other thing that the authors of the study indicated also is that Seattle is not alone in having these challenges to navigate.

It's something that they've observed in the other studies of the other cities that they've undertaken as well and also There have been, there are existing studies that other cities have commissioned, not necessarily from this agency that we used to consult with, but that our consultants looked at and they said that this is not an uncommon thing and it's not insurmountable.

And what they identify is that in whatever path we take, the first next step is for the city of Seattle to create a business plan for a municipal public bank.

And as council members know, that many community activists have been committed to pursuing a public bank like the state of North Dakota has.

And the people who have been advocating for this are all the way from the Economic Opportunity Institute, to indigenous activists, to environmental activists, including 350 Seattle as one of the prominent organizations.

And what they have pointed out is that the for-profit financial system dominated by mega banks like Wells Fargo ruthlessly seek the greatest short-term profits and have proven themselves to be able to be willing to sacrifice anything to get it.

So on the one hand, there's the financial underwriting by these for-profit banks of but environmentally devastating projects like the Dakota Access Pipeline.

On the other hand, there's also the discriminating, discriminatory, and gouging practices engaged in the way they treat specific customer bases, low-income people, people of color, Latino and black communities, and so on.

And so what the movement has pointed out is that the city cannot afford to be dependent on these financial institutions and that we should take whatever steps are necessary to create a public bank.

So just to reiterate, there are challenges doing this, and many of them are flowing from the state's restrictions.

that have, and these are very specifically placed restrictions through corporate lobbying over several years, to put public banks at a disadvantage financially in terms of serving a municipality of a size like the city of Seattle.

But the state also has the authority to make exceptions to those restrictions.

And in this statement of legislative intent, we hope that FAS will include in the consideration of a public bank the business plan steps that the state can also take to make the business plan financially sound.

On December 1st, the state is expected to hear the results of its own public bank business plan and FAS will have the benefit of that information as well as it works on this study.

So the best solution will be if the state were to make the public bank, obviously that would make it much more straightforward and Seattle could participate in it.

But if the state legislatures fail to act, then we have to be prepared to pursue this independently.

And I'm quite excited about this study.

And so I hope the council will support this.

Any other comments?

No.

Please.

So I'd like to sign on to this too.

And I really, Council Member Sawant, appreciate your work on this.

I really appreciate the community folks who've come together and the study that was done.

It was just released, but I had a chance to look through it a little bit.

And it's, you know, it does help settle some questions.

You know, my initial read on it is that They're pretty clear that there is no prohibition from the city forming a city-owned bank.

And at the same time, there's a number of steps we would need to go through, including clearing some regulatory hurdles, which involves other layers of government, which will be complicated.

I think the reality- Who's got the report?

It's out now, so everybody's got it.

Oh, good.

It has been circulated to all of us.

Yeah, it should be in your mailboxes.

The reality, until we see a radical transformation of banking practices in this country, I believe that this council and future councils will continue to be frustrated with the banking options we have.

And so I think there's a lot of work to do to create more options in our existing system, and that we should be pursuing that.

And at the same time, what's clear is this path to a public bank is a multi-year process, and I imagine that future councils will appreciate that if we start us down the path.

So at least that has the potential of being an option in future years.

So I think this slide does that where it lays out what are the next steps we should be taking so that I don't want to Let anyone in the public think that somehow in 2020 we're going to have a city-owned bank.

It's a much longer process than that, but we can start to lay out what that process is and take those steps intentionally so that it's hopefully an option in the future if we choose to need it.

Thank you.

If I might, I just thank you to especially to Jesse in Council Member O'Brien's office who has done a lot of work bringing the community groups together and also to Ted in my office who has helped as well.

Thank you.

Okay, let's move on to the next item.

Next is item number 47, slide 12-7A1-2019, requesting the FAS submit a report evaluating a requirement for city contractors to provide transit subsidies for their employees.

This is sponsored by council members Mosqueda, Johnson, and O'Brien.

It would look at requiring all contractors that receive city contracts to provide some type of a subsidy or transit benefit to their employees, first looking at current offerings, and then looking at the potential impact of providing additional benefits to their employees, and looking at a range of what those benefits could be, anywhere from 70 up to a full subsidization of a transit benefit.

Thank you.

Council Member Muscata, do you want to speak to this?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Just very briefly, we've taken some tremendous strides recently to make sure that more people in this city have access to an ORCA pass and multi-modes of transportation, both for the environment and for affordability issues.

We did that just recently with the pre-tax deduction.

This slide requests FAS to examine what the financial impact would be.

if we went another step further and required that our contractors, I'm sorry, that we required our contractors to offer a certain level of subsidy to their workers for transit passes.

This really came to us from members of the building construction trades, some of the service workers unions, and the hope was that their employers would help participate in this program so that more workers and employees would have more affordable transit options.

and looking forward to working to see if this is a viable path forward through this slide.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

I would just like to say I welcome this analysis and I also want to respect the fact and Council Member Sawant, Council Member O'Brien from the previous slide, I'm going to ask you especially on the last one to focus as I had distributed this morning for a a little bit more information about what and how you want the information, as it's returned to us, how we deal with that, both in, because they're both coming back to my committee, but then also what council center, what expectations you have for council center staff's work plan.

So if you could do that by Friday so we'll have that be useful.

I will tell you that my staff is already well versed on your prototype and is working through it, and I appreciate your putting that out there.

Thank you very much.

Okay, good.

So the next item, please.

Okay.

Next item is number 48. Screensheet 12.8.A.1.

It's to pass Council Bill 119.384, which raises regulatory fees at FAS.

This was legislation provided in the 2019 proposed budget, and also stems from a sly response that was received earlier this year.

It would increase fees for business and professional license fees in the areas of public parking lots and garages, used goods, adult entertainment, and marijuana.

providing the authority for many of these to achieve full cost recovery of the regulatory activities that the city engages in.

It is estimated to raise, sorry, I didn't bring the exact number for me.

I believe it's 457,000 in revenue, but I can double check on that.

Any questions on that?

Yeah, Councilmember Herbold, then Councilmember Gonzales.

Thank you.

I just wanted to make a note that I have failed to follow up on something that you and I had spoken about, which is responding to FAS's offer to work with us and identifying the next slate of fees for them to examine for cost recovery.

So I don't think we necessarily need to do that with a slide, but if we could talk more offline about how to work with our council members here to identify which group of fees we should ask them to analyze for cost recovery.

fuller cost recovery outcomes, that would be helpful.

And FAS is working on doing the analysis.

There's additional regulatory activities that have fees, and they are already beginning work.

We didn't prioritize any specific ones.

I gave them the broad guidance of those that, as with the initial slide response, have the greatest amount of regulatory activity or the highest amount of revenue associated with the fees for their priority, but they will be working through all the remaining ones over the course of the next few months.

Okay, so for the 12 or so fees that they've identified an interest in doing analysis in the future on, the definition, or the direction that you gave is to look at sort of among those 12 or 13, which ones might have the best bang for their buck?

Essentially, yes.

I didn't actually narrow down anything from the remaining list.

They're all a lot smaller than the initial ones that were covered, so I'm hoping they can do the entire remaining set.

Okay, fantastic.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Thank you.

I just wanted to get a little bit more granular detail around what the cost recovery will be for each of these different regulated activities.

So what is it for the public parking lots and garages?

What is it for the used goods?

What is it for adults entertainment?

Etc, etc, etc.

Just to give me a sense of how much we're actually recovering from each of those.

Do you have that information on hand?

I do.

I believe so.

You mean currently, before raising the fees from where they are?

No, no.

You indicated at the top of your presentation that you anticipated that this bill would generate an additional $468,000.

Is that what you said?

I believe it's $457,000.

I actually, for some reason, don't have the back of the sheet that tells me that answer, but I can follow up with the answer.

Okay.

So it's an additional $457,000, but how much revenue does this How much are we currently recovering in terms of revenue?

It would be in the range of $1.4 million.

It looks like a little bit more than that.

About $1.4 million.

I only brought those that are actually having their fees increased.

Currently, for example, with marijuana, if we kept the status quo, we would be looking at $815,000.

Adult entertainment would be $188,000.

Parking lots and garages, $168,000.

Used goods, $64,000.

And those are...

I'm sorry, adult entertainment was how much?

$188,000.

Additional?

No, that's what's currently recouped.

That's what is currently recouped.

Okay.

And when we're talking about adult entertainment, we're talking about strip clubs?

Yes.

Exclusively strip clubs?

I'm not entirely sure about that.

Okay.

If you could, I mean, I could look at the code, but I'm going to ask you to look at the code.

Yeah.

And let me know if that is exclusively limited to strip clubs.

And I just want to note a slight concern that out of all of these categories, the adult entertainment category is the one area in which the industry is primarily occupied by women.

many of whom oftentimes end up being put in situations where they are actually having these costs passed on to them as part of their rental fee to be able to dance.

And so I'm a little concerned about whether or not FAS evaluated this through a gender equity lens, if at all.

And if they did, I'd be interested in that analysis.

If they did not, then I think, I think we should consider exploring how we can make this less punitive in terms of anticipating that adult entertainment club owners will pass that cost on to dancers.

I'm asking you a very complicated set of questions and it may be triggering a policy issue that would need to be addressed through budget legislation, but I would like for you to just do some early thinking and analysis around that particular issue.

The analysis that we received from FAS initially did not do any gender equity analysis.

To my knowledge, there wasn't anything included in the report.

Thank you.

Thanks for bringing that up.

Yeah.

Also, if I may clarify, I realized I was reading from the wrong column for that last number on adult entertainment.

The $188,000 is the regulatory cost that the city has, and what we receive in revenue from the fee being paid currently is $166,000, assuming just the current status quo, not increasing revenue.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

So the SLI report gave information on how much the city is subsidizing these different activities with general fund dollars and not having the regulation fee itself pay for those activities.

And that report said that we were subsidizing 11% for adult entertainment, 64% for marijuana, 43% for parking lots, and 44% for used goods.

I remember a follow-up question I asked is, with this legislation, what's the level of subsidy that we're looking at at the end of the day?

Do you recall what the answer is?

So the level of subsidy for marijuana would be 20, assuming that these fees were increased as proposed in the council bill, the level of subsidy for marijuana would be 22%, while all others would be 0%.

Thank you.

And if I could just continue, if I can add, and I'm not, I tend to be of the philosophy that I think that the city should be striving to have full cost recovery of these types of regulatory activities.

And my concern is sort of the pass-through or the impact to folks who might be working in some of these industries.

And again, when we look at parking lots and garages, used goods, adult entertainment, marijuana, Of course, those costs could be passed on to consumers, but I'm worried about the workers who could be impacted in the adult entertainment area in particular in terms of implications to unintended consequences to them by asking for a full cost recovery and going from an 11% subsidy rate to a 0% subsidy rate.

It may be that as a policy decision and choice, this council wants to go in that direction, but I think if we do that, we should understand at a minimum the potential unintended consequences on workers in the adult entertainment industry.

Thank you for bringing that up.

I have to say I've learned more about this in the last five minutes that I knew so I appreciate it.

Okay, let's move on to and budget chair has nothing else to add to that.

So we're on to 49 Thank you, Madam Chair Lisa K Council staff item 49 is green sheet number 12 dash 21 dash a one.

It would add $220,000 per year from the general fund to finance and administrative services to fund civil attorneys to work with King County's Department of Public Defense representation of indigent defendants at the Seattle Municipal Court.

This is sponsored by Councilmember Harold, I'm sorry, Herbold, with support from Councilmember O'Brien.

Okay, Councilmember Herbold.

OK, I've lost my page here.

OK, fantastic.

So this is to continue a civil legal aid program that was funded by this council in 2016. As I think I've talked to folks about in the past, it has had two stages.

The first stage allowed for the Office of Public Defense to consult with civil attorneys in addressing the issues that might come up within the same time period that somebody is being defended by a public defender.

Previously, our contract with the Office of Public Defense only allowed our public defenders to work, the public defenders that we are contracting with King County to represent Seattle Municipal Court defendants, they were only allowed to work on the criminal case associated with that charge.

A lot of things can happen within the course of a defense.

Sometimes people's housing becomes threatened.

Sometimes people have issues with licensing or employment issues.

I'm going to pass out a quick summary of what has been worked on with these funds over the last year with the Office of Public Defense.

And you can get a sense of sort of the breadth of civil issues that now we're able to make sure that The public defenders are helping defendants who have not been proven guilty of anything.

So we hate to see people lose their jobs or lose their housing when they're dealing with some of these crimes.

these charges.

And this has been such a successful program that King County has included funding for it in its budget.

Our second phase of the program actually amended our interlocal agreement with King County.

So that would allow us to actually go beyond just consulting with civil attorneys, but allowed actual representation of these clients.

And so this is, I think, a fantastic example of the city working together with the county to provide more holistic wraparound services.

The model that this is compared to often is the Bronx Defender model, and there are other cities that have similar approaches.

So Council Member Herbold, thank you for sharing the article with me yesterday.

I thought that was a very convincing and succinct description about why this is valuable.

So I will be supporting this going forward.

Thank you.

Council Member Swan, you just want to be added on?

Budget Chair.

Okay, very good.

Let's go on to the next item.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Lisa Kay still here.

Item number 50 is Green sheet number 12-22-A-1.

The screen sheet would request termination of the city's contract for Snohomish County Jail Services and reduced Finance and Administrative Services Jail Services appropriations by $60,000, which is the estimated contract cost in 2019. It would also increase funding to the Office of Civil Rights by $60,000 for a youth development program.

The screen sheet is sponsored by Councilmember Mosqueda with support from Councilmembers Herbold and O'Brien.

Okay.

Council Member Miskady, would you like to address it?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

We talked briefly before about how the city is in partnership with Snohomish County.

We signed a contract on November 30, 2015 that was effective to 2017 with up to two three-year term extensions.

So we're now at the end of the first of three-year extensions.

And well, we will be through December 31st to 2020 so we know we also are well below the number of individuals that we currently pay for in terms of beds and What we're hoping to do is zero out the dollar amount that goes to Snohomish County that may sound Like a lot at first, but then you realize it's only $58,000 we're hoping that this will be additional funding that you could potentially have for your budget and We did indicate funding could be transferred to a youth development program.

I want to hold that for a later conversation.

Really, this would be freeing up those dollars to make sure that it was available for a series of potential other investments.

But that is the intent with this green sheet here, to free up $58,000 a year.

Thank you.

Any additions?

Okay, let's move on.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Item 51 is a slide that is tab number 12-70-A-1.

This is sponsored by Councilmember Muscato and supported by Councilmember O'Brien.

The slide would request that the executive provide a report on the city's jail services contract with King County to the Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans, and Education Committee by March 31st, 2019.

We have talked about how the city of Seattle is doing a good job at reducing the number of individuals that we currently send over to our King County partners for incarceration.

a count of 200 coming up in 2019. And we're expected to meet our floor of 187 individuals in 2020 or less.

But we have a floor that we currently pay for.

So if we're no longer incarcerating individuals at the rate that we are paying for, this is really an opportunity for us to just do an analysis of whether or not that existing contract meets our needs and is it, is there any opportunities for us to potentially renegotiate to make it more fiscally sustainable.

Very good.

Council Member O'Brien.

Oh, I'm sorry, Madam Chair.

I believe Council Member Herbold had wanted to sign on to this too, and I don't think we had her included on the official sheet.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

Very good.

Council Member O'Brien.

I'd like to thank Council Member Mosqueda for this and the previous one and community members and Budget for Justice for ongoing work.

This is a theme that we've been working on as a community for a number of years.

We spend a lot of money and a lot of resources in our criminal justice system and we know we're not getting We're getting very disproportional racial outcomes and oftentimes the programs aren't working as well as they could.

Sometimes they're doing more harm than good.

And it's obviously a complex system and I know a lot of folks up here on the dais and a lot of folks in the community have been working on this for a long time.

And I think these are both modest but smart steps for us to continue to rethink what we invest in and what we don't and the outcomes we get.

And they all are tied together and it's not easy to radically shift a system that's been in place for decades.

And yet to do that we have to take some steps and I really appreciate the leadership on this and look forward to Hopefully moving these forward and ongoing work that we've discussed on the dais in the last few days for how we move this work forward.

Councilmember Gonzales, then Councilmember Herbold.

I'm happy to defer to you first if you'd like to go as one of the co-sponsors.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

This green sheet not only reduces the jail services appropriations by $60,000, but it also funds one of the priorities that have been identified by the budget for justice.

And I think many of us up here have different programs that they are proposing to be funded that are part of the package for the Budget for Justice.

Councilmember O'Brien and I met with representatives of the Budget for Justice on Sunday and discussed the notion of pulling together some of those proposed additions into a single package and working with you, Council Member Bagshaw, on after hearing from the members of this coalition have really worked really hard to make sure that they're not they're not basically competing with one another.

We'd love to give you guidance when we hear more from them about what their priorities are of those six specific programs.

Great.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

And just to clarify, I know Council Member Gonzales wasn't up in the next queue.

I think that that comment was related to the previous agreeing sheet on item number 50. But it is very all connected.

But it's out.

Council Member Gonzales.

So I just wanted to, as the chair of the Gender Equity Safe Communities, New Americans in Education Committee, I'm happy to receive the report in my committee.

I am, however, with slide number 51, or whatever, tab number 51, slide 1270A12019, whatever.

The, I do just want to flag that we are also going to talk later on in the agenda at tab 53, which is a green sheet ad designed to facilitate the city council's ability to be able to better align the various criminal legal system recommendations and figuring out how to implement them.

I'm a little, I'm a little worried that this one is competing with the intent and the purpose and the desire of the green sheet that I would like to advance that really creates a more comprehensive, holistic, strategic plan around how we're going to address all of these recommendations.

So while I'm supportive of the slide being proposed by Council Member Mosqueda in tab 51, I'm also concerned that it is yet another set of recommendations that we're asking to be completed before we have a strategic implementation plan.

And I'm I'm struggling with figuring out the timing of how to do the alignment that I think really needs to happen to begin creating institutional transformational change, while also feeling like this body of work of evaluating how we contract our jail services is an important body of work that should be included in whatever strategic plans we have.

So I'm, perhaps it's just an issue of the timing and we should not be asking for a report back by March or conversely we should be asking for it to occur much sooner.

than March to allow the person that we're gonna onboard if the chair includes my green sheet in her balancing package, how we would allow that person to actually meaningfully include the products that come out of your SLI could be included within the strategic implementation plan.

So I'm just a little worried that we might be two ships passing in the night again.

So may I suggest this?

First of all, Council Member Gonzalez, what you were describing for the coordinated approach is one of my top priorities for this budget cycle.

We need that.

We need your leadership.

through your committee, since you've got experience across the board, I think you are the right person at the right time to be taking this on.

That said, we also need the information about the jail services contract with King County, but I don't believe it's going to take 60 days to get that.

That is...

information about how much we're paying, how many people are in the beds, what Chief, I mean, County Executive Constantine has proposed about opening up the West Wing for places for people to be that have nothing to do with the jail, but it could provide 24-7.

This is, this is the type of work that is going to take us time to coordinate.

I would recommend and suggest Councilmember Muscata that for your green sheet proposal you proceed to ask for this but do it by the at the end of January and again that'll give 70 days for FAS for a CBO to get that information back to us then that can feed right into Councilmember Gonzalez's work.

Yeah, I might even suggest that it could probably be done sooner than that.

I would recommend at least by...

I don't want to jam CBO, but to me it seems...

It isn't that, I mean it doesn't strike me as being difficult analysis.

It's like numbers that they should have.

Council Member Musqueda, if we did honor before January 31st, is that something that you would feel positive about?

Absolutely.

Thank you so much for both the clarification on timeline and we definitely want this to be done in harmony with the upcoming discussion that Council Member Gonzalez is priming.

So happy to change that date and make sure that it harmonizes with that more comprehensive review.

Really appreciate the suggestion.

Okay, anything else Council Member Gonzalez?

Nope.

Okay, let's move on.

We've half done 53, but let's do 52.

Asha Venkatraman, Council Central Staff.

Moving into the Seattle Municipal Court, Item 52 is Green Sheet 37-1A1.

It's sponsored by Council Member Sawant, and it would cut $1.7 million in 2019 and $3.2 million in 2020 from the Seattle Municipal Court's court compliance budget summary level, and it would add $4.2 million in 2019 and in 2020 to fund community-based solutions to probation, as well as alternatives to the formal criminal justice system.

Council Member Sawant.

Thank you.

So this budget amendment is the entire package proposed by the Budget for Justice coalition.

And I really agree that we should not put the different programs that are all extremely beneficial to the community.

We should not be forcing them to be pitted against each other, and the best way to do that is to fund the entire package that has been proposed.

I think, as Council Member Herbold said, the community has made huge efforts, and this is not just for this budget cycle.

Their efforts are based on their work experience from many years, and a lot of that is encapsulated in their study, the Budget for Justice report that is extremely useful.

And I'll read a few parts of that, but just to introduce this.

The Budget for Justice Coalition has proposed a package for funding a series of community projects with a proven track record of helping young people avoid the criminal justice system or come out of the criminal justice system by providing alternatives that are along the lines of restorative justice that include very concrete, life-changing avenues like jobs programs, getting them into apprenticeships that also lead them into union jobs, and really, just really just a complete shift from what the young people might have had an offer before they came into contact with these programs and the people who serve these programs.

This budget amendment though also includes the funding source proposed by the Public Defenders Association as part of the Budget for Justice Coalition and that is to reduce, to bring about a reduction in the Seattle Municipal Courts probation program and really this is based in Budget for Justice's Thanks.

philosophy that Seattle divest from harmful systems from which, and I'm quoting from the study now, for which there is no research support, you know, divesting from harmful systems where there's no research that shows that these systems are actually beneficial to the community that is targeted.

And the Budget for Justice report says that this divestment should start with the Seattle Municipal Court probation.

And And, you know, and I personally, you know, don't believe that all the ills of society in relation to criminal justice can be addressed on the basis of capitalism.

However, it's extremely important to take note of those who are working in this field who have pointed out that there are specific inequities that can be corrected immediately if elected officials and elected representatives act on it.

And the probation system is one very clear example where if we begin to move away from it, it will actually, I think it will show that it will have a beneficial impact.

And there's been a nationwide effort, partially at least flowing from the activism of the Black Lives Matter movement to point out to specific inequities in the criminal justice system.

Obviously the probation system that that the Budget for Justice Coalition has pointed out is one example.

Another example is a new law that has been put forward in California, in the state of California, to overturn the bail system because it is clearly an anti-poor system and giving discretion in the hands of judges to decide who is going to languish in jail and who will have other options based on the criminal or other merits of the case rather than whether you have money or not.

So I see this attempt to begin to divest away from probation in that same spirit where it will actually allow us to fund better, much better and non-harmful initiatives.

And here in Seattle, the coalition has explained that the probation system is often not helpful for preventing recidivism and is sometimes harmful to people trying to put their lives together.

This proposal, specific proposal, does not eliminate probation entirely, but it scales back the probation system so that we can have time and opportunity to demonstrate that if those funds are redirected differently, then it can have better impacts.

uh and I know that you know and we have already had some of the discussion that council members have put in budget requests to fund various programs and I would support any or all of them but I would also ask the council to look at the potential for beginning to divest from the probation system as laid out in this budget amendment so that we can fund all the programs and not just, all the programs, not just part of them, because I think Budget for Justice has made a serious proposal here to pointing out not only the problems with probation, but also that beginning to divest from probation will generate the necessary funds so that we can fund the other projects.

And I will just add a small bit from their report where they say that Seattle is behind the curve in the national conversation about shrinking probation as part of criminal justice reform.

Seattle has yet to make any move to reduce municipal probation, the cost of which has mounted annually.

Meanwhile, research support for the reduction of probation is mounting as And they quote a Harvard Kennedy School report from 2017, which is titled, Less is More, How Reducing Probation Populations Can Improve Outcomes.

And then they also point to, from May of this year, 31 currently elected prosecutors, including Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes, and King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg who signed a statement on the future of community corrections which says, quote, we believe it is possible to both significantly address the footprint of probation and parole and improve outcomes and public safety, unquote.

So it seems like there's a lot of indication based in statistical analysis that we can actually do this and that Seattle should be now part of the plan and we're not leading the way, we're following other cities that have already taken steps.

So I would urge council members to support this.

Any additional comments?

I have a few comments.

Council Member Swan, thank you for that thorough analysis and I am doing my best.

One, I wanted to say I have so much respect for the Budget for Justice folks, community groups that have come together to really highlight the potential for us to do some, to just be smarter about how the system works in our investments.

I was hoping Councilmember Gonzalez was here.

Maybe I'll talk long enough to do it.

I don't want to keep anybody's time.

I'm not prepared to support this green sheet.

As I've said before, I think I want to engage with Seattle Municipal Court probation officers, the prosecuting attorney's office, defending attorneys, community members, and get some more data, too.

And I don't want to pretend like this is just all about data, because we also have lived experience.

It's really important.

But to really understand what is happening, what's working, and what's not working.

And before I jump forward into saying what jobs are going to be cut or what investments are going to be made, I want that to play out a little bit.

And I think Councilmember Gonzalez's leadership on resolution and some of that work, not just about this system, but the broader system, I want to intertwine those.

One concept I have that I want to share with folks, or one concept that came forward from some community members, was, OK, if the reality is that we may consider shifting the focus and one of the concerns we have is for employees who are working in this field would be to use some budgetary tool, proviso or something that said, look, in the next, you know, in the first quarter, first half of next year as attrition happens to not backfill those jobs right away to see how this plays out.

I don't want to hire a handful of new people and then immediately say, oh, we've just decided there's better investments, but now we're stuck.

And so I don't know exactly what that looks like, but I wanted to float that with colleagues that the concept of something like that, assuming that we're talking about small enough numbers that there's still room to do the existing work with an existing body.

but to maybe pause replacing people that might naturally leave.

And we don't even have good attrition numbers that I've seen yet to know what that might be, but that's something I'm exploring.

Councilwoman Gonzalez, I just floated a concept in your absence that affects you, so I apologize for that.

We just increased your workload by 100%.

No problem.

As we're working on these other processes to think about the criminal justice system, because there may be the potential that we would change how we allocate the workforce within the probation office to put some sort of proviso or something for early next year that wouldn't replace any vacancies that come up through natural attrition for a little while so that we're not in a position where if we do make a decision, oh, hey, we want to shift some workforce and we didn't just hire a bunch of people.

So we need to think through that to make sure there's enough bodies to do the work under the existing system, but it's a concept I'm toying with.

And so we'll want to talk to you more if you have comments now, but we can talk offline too.

I don't have any response to that proposal because it's the first time I'm hearing of it.

I would be interested in learning more from you about the attrition concept.

And of course, I think for me, it's really important to make sure that we're also hearing from the potentially impacted bargaining units that are impacted as a result of even an attrition.

a concept because that still impacts the working terms and conditions of existing.

employees at the Seattle Community Court within the probation division, which are represented by PTE.

And I think some of them are represented by Teamsters as well.

And so obviously if they're gonna be backfilling work or picking up work that would ordinarily be picked up by adding additional personnel, then that's gonna impact their working terms and conditions.

And as we all know, we have begun negotiations with our city coalition of which PTE is a co-chair of.

And so we also have restraints and pressures on our general fund as it relates to those labor negotiations.

I think in my conversations with folks at PTE, they are amenable to having conversations about how this body of work can and should evolve to really be responsive to the significant and reasonable concerns that are being expressed by all of us around how do we really tackle the criminal justice reform work that I think we all think is really important.

And I think they're amenable to having that conversation, but they do feel that they have a duty and a right to be part of those conversations because it is their membership and their members that are being affected.

And obviously an attrition proposal, you know, kind of falls into the hands of Janus, which is the Supreme Court opinion that is now the law of the land that specifically is designed to limit the growth and membership of unions.

And so I just want to be really sensitive to being able to reconcile these concepts in a way that that meets the need for us to again continue to engage in criminal justice reform without damaging and hurting unions and the principles that I think we all believe in, in terms of collective bargaining.

I agree with everything you said there, so thank you for being...

Yeah, thank you.

And I also think that this is a great opportunity for us to bring in our municipal court judges, both elected and appointed, and make it clear what it is, the direction that they are thinking about going, but also to help them understand where we want to go as part of this criminal justice reform.

I don't think anything I've heard up here is inconsistent with that, but I do think we need to be thoughtful.

And I would like this to go right back into the work that Councilmember Gonzalez has agreed to do.

And I'm teasing about the increasing your workload, but it will increase your workload.

So, thank you.

Council President Harrell and then Councilmember.

Just a question to center staff just so as I understand the proposal.

There's a description in one paragraph that says reductions at this level would likely mean cuts to a majority of the 44.85 FTEs.

So I take that to mean more than 51% by using the term majority.

But on the sheet in back, it sort of lists these fairly significant cuts and the number of positions and the position titles are blank.

So I'm just wondering, at least on the one I have, so I'm just wondering Will we have that information at any point?

Do I have the right document?

So the 44.85 is how many people are currently in the court compliance division.

And so over the two years proposed, a majority of those positions would end up being cut because it's 90% overall.

So this first year, the $1.7 million is about 30% of the $5.6 million that funds that division.

And then the second year is an additional 60%.

And so that's overall 90% of the personnel.

And so the court hasn't decided what that might look like yet if this were to move forward.

And so it would be, it's unclear at the moment which position.

I see.

So you can't really fill that in, but it would be within their discretion on.

And I'm sure pursuant, if we're looking at all possibilities, maybe they have some insight we can have as we consider this green sheet.

So I'd be very curious as to what they, they think it would look like.

Yeah, and in our conversations, it's just it's not a decision that's been made yet.

They haven't started to figure out what this might look like.

Okay.

Council Member Swank, can you bring it to a close and then we'll move on?

Yes.

Well, one thing I wanted to clarify is that from what I understand from the proposal, it is based on iteration and not layoffs.

I mean, I think that the It's not clear.

Okay, that is something that we should clarify.

But my understanding was that it would not be a question of layoffs, but it would be a question of slowly phasing the program out, but taking necessary steps with the goal being to reduce SMC probation to 10% of its current size in four years.

That's the proposal that's been made in the Budget for Justice report.

I mean, you know, we can look more closely into this and see what makes sense.

And the Budget for Justice Coalition, the Public Defenders Association should also give us more information based on the questions that have come up.

I will say one, I will make one comment in general.

If council members are worried about Janice, which I am extremely worried about because, you know, I came from a public sector union.

I'm still a rank and file member of a public sector union.

then we should fund a massive jobs program by investing heavily in public housing that will create, you know, hundreds, perhaps thousands of unionized living wage jobs and that will be a real pushback against Janus.

Thank you.

All right, let's move to the next item, please.

Okay, moving into the Legislative Department.

This is item 53. It's Green Sheet 19-1A1, sponsored by Councilmember Gonzalez and supported by Councilmember O'Brien.

It would add about $156,000 and two term limited positions in 2019. and about $201,000 in 2020 for a strategic advisor and half of an administrative specialist to create this strategic plan about implementing recommendations that the city has already received about the criminal legal system and working with the staff of a group as well as a reconvened criminal justice coordinating council to align current and future policy investments and outcomes regarding the criminal legal system.

Thank you.

Council Member Gonzalez, we've of course spoken about some of this, but do you want to put a fine point on it?

Yeah, I think Asha did a great job of describing the various components.

So we had had a pretty thorough conversation around this particular proposal when we did issue identification.

I think it was last week.

I lose track of time.

And I think this is where we settled is to have a position within the legislative department who would answer to the city council on aligning all of these.

current and future policy investments and outcomes regarding the criminal legal system.

The individual would be a report to Director Aristad or her designee and would report to my committee as well.

So I think it's pretty straightforward.

I think this is how we bring it all together and try to actually begin to implement a lot of the recommendations.

I did have an opportunity to have a conversation with the mayor around making this a priority for next year.

And she has given me her commitment and agreement that she will work with the city council to make sure that we can continue to advance this work once the recommendations are out.

The vision here is that we'll reinstitute the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council in a more robust, well-staffed way, and that we'll be able to have all of the decision-makers from the executive, the MuniCorp, us, Defender Association, etc., etc., to be able to sign off on really prioritization of how we're going to implement these recommendations.

Are we expanding this criminal justice coordinating council in your mind to include, and maybe the prosecuting attorney's office has been involved, but perhaps we could talk about who should be sitting at the table in order to accomplish these goals.

I think this this green sheet is vague enough to allow us a conversation about who should be Part of the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council should be distinguished from the sort of work group that the strategic advisor will be engaging with.

That work group will be more of sort of folks who are doing the work day-to-day and throughout the systems.

That could include the King County Prosecutor's Office.

It would also include folks who represent impacted communities or community members who themselves are impacted by the criminal justice system.

But the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council would be decision makers, people who are responsible for these systems, who are the only ones able to actually move us through the morass of bureaucracy.

within the city only?

Within the city, because we only control our city systems.

So there's nothing to say that we can't coordinate with King County Prosecutor's Office that, you know, frankly does a vast majority of very significant crimes, felonies, et cetera.

And so I think we should include them in the conversation, but I'm not sure that they are not decision makers as it relates to our own Seattle Municipal Court.

But certainly the city attorney's offices and And I would expect that city attorney homes would be involved.

Good.

Me too.

And I also want to acknowledge the good work that we did just a year ago around the gun forfeiture rules and that it was very helpful having a city attorney, prosecuting attorney, police department working with us on that because we needed all the parties.

So I'm looking forward to working with you on this one.

Great.

Chair?

Yeah.

I just want to make sure.

Council Member Juarez and I think Council President Harrell.

I'm just supportive of Council Member Gonzalez's green sheet.

Okay.

And I... Just adding Council Member Juarez.

And I was...

I want to make a point.

I'd like to be added to the green sheet as well.

I'm hoping maybe in the language, you know, turn to some of the primary sponsors, but put me at the top of the list on the sponsors, by the way.

that I want to have a conversation with Director Arstat in that we currently are sort of set up to have policy analysts, right, and they do outstanding work.

This position is a little different than policy analysts.

They're almost an individual contributor.

They're out there making it happen, not just drafting and assisting with legislation.

A little different beast, if you will, than our department.

I think we can do it.

I think we can pull it off.

We're morphing our sort of legislative charge a little bit.

And I'm game, but I just want to have some discussions with Director Kerstad, and maybe in this slide we reserve a right to have that discussion, and we'll see how that looks.

But I think that the ownership piece of what we're trying to achieve, no one's owning this, and we are the most passionate about this to get this work done.

So I think this is a great slide, and I'd like to be added to the top of the list.

Oh, I guess I have the next one coming up, so I'm establishing that goodwill again for the next one.

Oh, I don't know.

You're trying to mend my green sheet.

Maybe that goodwill isn't so good.

But I would say that, I'm just joking obviously, I would say that we've had good conversations with Director Aristad around the fit question that you are posing, Council President Harrell, and I think it's I think this person will be doing both some policy work but also just some strategic advising around how to implement that policy work.

And, you know, although our central staff tends to, you know, focus on a variety of different policy issues depending on the flavor of the day, it certainly is within within the bounds, I think, of the job description of what many of our policy analysts currently do.

So, but I think Director Erstad would love to add to that in a conversation with you afterwards.

Good.

Excellent.

Any other comments?

No.

All right, time to move on, please.

The one thing I did fail to omit just real quick about this is that it does acknowledge that there's an intent to develop a resolution that would create some more detail around what this would look like.

So that is currently in development.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Please go on to the next item.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Lisa Kay, central staff, item 54. is a green sheet number 19-2-A sponsored by Council President Harrell.

This green sheet would add position authority and increase general fund appropriations by about $66,000 in 2019 and $88,000 in 2020 for one full-time personnel specialist assistant to the HR Finance Division in the Legislative Department.

I would note that we are still tweaking those numbers Plus or minus about 5% and also verifying the start date assumed start date for the higher in 2019 Okay.

Thank you.

I'll follow council Herbold's lead and pass out some paper here supporting the position to my right and to my left, but I think that Looking at our own department that our HR needs for this kind of I position, FTE if you will, makes sense given our growth and sort of the additional responsibilities and the interplay between our HR department and SDHR, so I, you know, the city's HR department.

So if you look at some of the data that's been presented for, as an example, would be since 2016 we've hired over 36 college interns and October of 2018, right now we have 12 active interns.

We're taking over a lot of more work with the same resources.

We've all, I think we've added eight or nine more staff members to council members given the shift from all citywide to districts, et cetera, et cetera.

So what I've given you, what I've handed out to you is quite candidly sort of a compelling case as to why this kind of additional resource is needed.

The second to last page talks about the additional work we're doing for the Inspector General Office that's newly created, which again is sort of analogous to the auditor and the hearing examiner, and that's a standalone department, if you will, and we're providing HR support to that organization as well.

I think many of you know in the hearing examiner's office we've had a new hearing examiner after a long time, and new personnel there.

So, we're doing a lot more with the same resource, and I think this is a modest ask, but I think a compelling point has been made, and I just handed it to you.

So, it's $66,000, 66.5 in 87 in 2020 for one FTE, a personnel specialist in the HR finance division.

Great.

Any other comments?

All right, I think this was so persuasive.

We're moving on to the next item.

Okay, moving into the Office for Civil Rights.

Item 55 is Green Sheet 21-1A1, sponsored by Council Member Sawant.

It would add $25,000 in 2019 and 2020 to fund Indigenous Peoples' Day celebrations and impose a proviso on that funding to state that it could only be used for that purpose.

Council Member Sawant.

Thank you.

So this budget amendment is fairly self-explanatory, but I'll give a little bit of background.

It allocates a very small amount of money, $25,000, to fund the annual Indigenous People's Day celebration.

That celebration includes a rally at City Hall, a march downtown, and a community festival at the Daybreak Star Center with salmon dinner.

Every year the city does fund a celebration.

So it's been, you know, Indigenous Peoples Day was passed in 2014, so 2015, 16, 17, 18, so it's been four years.

The city has funded the celebration, but Unfortunately, every year the Indigenous People's Day Planning Committee or Celebration Committee and city staff from many city departments waste dozens of hours debating where the funding will come from, and the Planning Committee is forced to have to advocate for small amounts of money every year.

Last year, My office had proposed a budget amendment, which I'm happy that the council agreed on and got passed for the 2018 budget, but it was to fund some parts of the celebration.

We got a lot of feedback from community members that that was extremely helpful, but that what they need is for the celebration as a whole to be funded or not just a part of it and for them to not be forced to have to you know go through the same process every year.

So I would hope that the council agrees to this budget amendment so that we can hopefully put this issue to rest by providing a stable ongoing funding source for the IPD celebration and In reality, it will not cost anything new in the sense that every year we do end up funding the celebration anyway, but it will just allow for the city staff and for the planning committee members to not have to go through the, you know, replicated process over and over again.

And I would also add that We discussed this with the representatives of Canoes, which is the City of Seattle Native American employees, but also the whole host of Native American community members and leaders during this year's celebration.

My staff was also at the Daybreak Star event where we asked them, you know, what would make sense.

And it's very clear to us that there is tremendous support in the community to just have an ongoing funding source and not have to worry about it every year.

Any additional comments?

This next item.

Can I ask if anybody is signing, agreeing to this?

It looks like you've got overwhelming additions right now, but it's a good concept and we'll take it up this weekend.

Item 56 is a Statement of Legislative Intent 21-2A1.

It is sponsored by Councilmember Sawant, and it requests that OCR review its authority and resources to see if it can more effectively investigate complaints of workplace harassment and discrimination, specifically if it were modeled as an independently elected office.

I just note that currently the Office for Civil Rights is undergoing a racial equity toolkit around designing its structure and design.

And so one of those options could be OCR being an independently elected office.

Thank you, Asha.

This statement of legislative intent requests that the Office of Civil Rights present counsel with a report detailing what tools, resources, and authority would be required for an independent elected office.

which can effectively investigate complaints of workplace harassment and discrimination in workplace citywide.

So I don't mean just city of Seattle employees, but in general workplaces.

The authority and resources must be sufficient to empower the Office of Civil Rights to enact large enough penalties and remedies in cases of harassment to effectively protect Seattle workers in the public and private sector and to provide support and resources to survivors of sexual harassment and assault.

We know in general many of us through our own experiences and also through the just the enormous revelations of the Me Too struggle that sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination are rampant in workplaces throughout the city, throughout the nation, globally, in many cases even though they are specifically illegal.

Oftentimes people do not report these abuses because they are legitimately worried about retaliation, worried that they will lose their jobs, or if they don't lose their jobs, they might be retaliated against in other ways that are much less visible.

They're worried that their complaint will not be investigated sensitively, or most often are worried that nothing will be done.

We also know what happens with relying on human resources departments in various companies.

My office also worked with the OCR staff to help workers file a discrimination complaint when security guards at the Amazon campus who were hired through a subcontractor were facing systematic religious discrimination and racism at work in addition to labor rights violations, including the paid sick and safe leave.

The OCR staff who helped walk us through the process and helped with the intake were extremely hardworking and knowledgeable, and they took the case very seriously, but they also expressed to us frustration that they had limited authority to defend those workers.

They do not have the resources that OLS, the Office of Labor Standards, has in terms of the number of staff to conduct investigations.

They also do not have the authority to directly institute fines, penalties, and remedies when they discover that harassment or discrimination has happened.

Instead, they produce findings that can then be taken to the hearing examiner or to a civil court.

In addition, there has been a lot of discussion about the problems caused with the Civil Rights Office is under the control of a political establishment that might be hostile to its mission, which is why I think and the People's Budget Movement thinks that the leadership should be independently elected and it could be just turning the Office of Civil Rights into an independent office or something else.

So, you know, it's not in conflict with that goal.

I think it's pretty much in line with that goal.

And this Statement of Legislative Intent asks the Office of Civil Rights to look at all of those aspects, staffing and resources, authority to seek remedies and penalties, and political independence.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I just want to make note that as it relates specifically to the question of SOCR independence, we have provided funding to the Office of Civil Rights to do work that they are currently engaged in to make recommendations at the Racial Equity Toolkit.

They're consulting with an outside consultant and we just recently gave the consultant who's doing this work with GAIR, the Government Alliance on Race and Equity, we gave them an extension to report back to council on their recommendations to May 2019. So we're going to be getting recommendations with funds that we had already provided to the office to answer that question of SOCR independence.

As it relates to the work that you're proposing on how it is that SOCR enforces the law, both for Seattle workers as well as for workers within the city of Seattle who don't work for the city, we talked a little bit in previous stages of the budget comparing the way SOCR enforces its civil rights laws with the way OLS enforces labor laws and that there's some differences of approach.

And so I appreciate you following up on the discussion that we had because I think we left unresolved the question of whether or not SOCR should be looking at different approaches.

So just help me understand, does this, is this consistent with what you've done before?

Does it add additional requirements?

What?

I think it would make sense to make some changes to the statement of legislative intent to narrow the scope to not be duplicative of work that's already being done.

I agree with that, but I also think that there are some aspects here that are not fully covered in that and it will be inconsistent with, not inconsistent, it will be consistent with that.

So do the two of you want to work on that?

Absolutely.

And bring something forward before Friday?

That's fine, yeah.

Okay.

Very good.

Thank you.

Then let's move on to 57. Okay.

Item number 57 is Green Sheet 21-3-A-1.

It's sponsored by Councilmember Mosqueda and co-sponsored by Councilmembers Harrell and O'Brien.

It would add $92,000 in both 2019 and 2020 to support an arts-based community organization that is doing youth diversion work.

Okay.

Good.

Teresa, do you, I'm sorry, Council Member Mosqueda, do you want to take this one?

That's okay.

Yes, it'll be very brief.

I think that Council Member Herbold alluded to this earlier.

This is one of, I think, six components of a comprehensive package that she discussed earlier, and I think we would be happy to have further conversations with the sponsors of the various other pieces that intersect as well to see how it matches up.

to reflect the desire to have these items packaged together.

So perhaps that means we can put this on hold for a full discussion until that more comprehensive combination happens.

Okay.

Okay with you.

Council Member Herbold.

Council Member President Harreld, you were weighing in on this.

Is that okay with you as well?

Yes.

Okay, let's proceed.

Item 58 is Green Sheet 21-4A1.

It's sponsored by Councilmember Herbold and supported by Councilmembers Harrell and Mosqueda.

It would add $400,000 in 2019 and in 2020 for a community-based organization creating restorative pathways out of the criminal justice system for youth and young adults.

Very good.

Council Member Herbold, do you want to?

Thank you.

Just ditto what Council Member Mosqueda said for the last item.

This is again one of the Budget for Justice recommendations that we are going to, in the next phase of the budget, talk about combining into a package with some recommendations from the Budget for Justice on what are the highest priorities given given the limitations that we have to work with in this budget cycle.

Thank you.

Okay.

Item number 59 is Green Sheet 21-5A1.

It's sponsored by Councilmember Herbold and supported by Councilmembers Mosqueda and O'Brien.

It would add about $61,000 in 2019 along with an FTE and about $139,000 in 2020 to the Office for Civil Rights to make an equitable funding position permanent.

Okay, Council Member Herbold, do you want to address this?

Thank you.

Yes, so this is a current position that has been recently filled.

It's doing work that this council has identified as a high priority, specifically working around equity issues and specifically criminal justice equity issues and reentry and zero detention.

So it's really important, I think, to continue this position and not to let it sunset.

I'd like to also speak to this in relation to the previous two green sheets and other budget for justice ones that are coming up.

One of the One of the messages I've heard from community members who are part of that Budget for Justice coalition is a concern that we will look at a series of green sheets and decide who was more vocal at a presentation or who had a more compelling story and make some selection about which program we want to prioritize over which other program.

And from the community, it's been really clear that they don't want to be pitted against each other.

They would rather collaborate.

And I really want us to support that collaboration.

The reality may be that we can't meet the requests across the board.

And if we reduce it, having the community have some feedback in how they would see the best way to meet the needs in their community.

This position in OCR is really critical, I think, to making sure the city is plugged into that work and is helping manage it.

And the individual who holds this position, I think, has a lot of respect.

from the people in the community and will help us be successful in that model going forward.

May I just ask a question here for and Councilmember Herbold, Councilmember O'Brien, those who have are the lead sponsors on this.

Do I read this correctly that 57, 58, 59, 60, 61 are all budget for justice items that you want to consider?

59 is not.

59 is a staff position that will be necessary for the Office of Civil Rights to do the work that we're already have identified as a priority.

It's not necessarily connected to an expansion of the programs that we're proposing to fund under the budget for justice requests.

But the others.

The others are?

Yeah.

So can we just note that on 59 that this is a high priority and I'm hearing what you're saying that you need this in order to implement the other things and then 57, 58, 60, and 61, what would you like to do with those?

If those are all budget for justice items.

I think the plan is to have a single green sheet in the next stage that we, and we get some guidance from the coalition on the way that we prioritize those items in that package as it relates specifically to the funding requests.

I have promised that I would not use the word right-sized, because from their perspective, these are right-sized for the work that desperately needs to be done in these areas.

But nevertheless, I think we're working together in collaboration, recognizing the limitations that we have, and as Council Member O'Brien said, The preference is that the decision isn't made up here on the dais by sort of what an individual council member's favorite program is or who brings the most people to testify in favor of that program, but that we take their lead on.

on work and, well, not just take their lead, but wait for them to have some process among the members of that coalition so that they can make a group recommendation to us.

So, would it be appropriate for us just to move to item number 63 then, law enforcement assisted diversion?

Can I make one comment?

The process for what Councilmember Herbold just described I think is, I'd like to suggest something and we're just making this up as we go.

Because a majority of folks on this council have signed on to various versions of those green sheets and I want to And so combining all those in one sense would require conversations with everyone about this and I want to be cautious about doing that.

What I would suggest is that Councilmember Herbold and I, but if someone else wants to do it that's fine too, would work on a green sheet that would compile this and find just a few minutes in one of our budget meetings tomorrow or the next day to bring that up and see if folks are okay with that so we could collectively potentially sign on to that in public.

dollar amount that we'll, you know, we'll put something in there, but it'll obviously be determined over the weekend.

But then we can see if folks are on board with that concept, if that's okay.

Yeah, that's certainly fine by me.

That works for me as well.

Because I think what we know about the recommendations from Budget for Justice is that there isn't a single one of them that you can't say, That is going to make a difference.

That's the kind of thing that we want to invest in to make our criminal justice system fairer and to have more positive results on all of the items that they have raised.

That said, I don't want to be going into this with blinders on and just think that we've got a couple of million dollars floating around.

Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

While I appreciate a lot of the sentiment that has been articulated, and we certainly are seeing in the green sheets for Budget for Justice and the half a dozen or so organizations where they would like to see this money go, I would just like to point out that a lot of that is all directed in the South End.

I'm not seeing any other listing, but no one has shared any of this with me.

I'm seeing a lot of this for the first time.

So I welcome an opportunity for you guys to get a more complete, tighter package and give me an opportunity to review that.

While I respect those organizations, I can think of a dozen more that we need to look at the city obviously as a whole in light of the fact that last year we expanded LEAD $750,000 into the North End.

LEAD is now asking for another million.

I don't know how much is being dedicated to the North End.

A lot of this money is they're saying, well, we need more money because LEAD and the navigation team have way more than they can handle on Aurora.

And they're not just adult, and a lot of it is restorative justice, and there's a lot of issues in there.

And so what I'm not seeing, quite frankly, which I'm not inclined to support until I see, is that we see other organizations with geographical parity that are offering the same type of services, but aren't quite as aligned or bringing people down here or having the same access to City Hall or the same type of organizations with a different political philosophy that may be different from other folks.

And so I'd like to see more diversity in these programs such as, and I know there's like a half a dozen of them listed and they're repeated over and over again.

And some of those programs are already doing LEAD, they're doing diversion, they're doing probation.

They're already engaged, but I'm not seeing an effort of outreach citywide.

So with that, that's where I'm at right now.

So I'm looking forward to seeing what you bring, if you condense that, and I can hopefully add more and be supportive.

So thank you.

Thank you.

So we'll carve out time tomorrow afternoon for you to present this.

Alison, do you know how many items are on tomorrow's calendar off the top of your head?

I don't, because Patty sent it just a little bit ago.

Asha and I are going to work with Patty to figure out where the best place for it to fit in.

And we'll let council members know as soon as we determine that.

Council member Gonzales.

Yeah, I mean, I want to talk.

I have a question and a substantive remark on this proposal.

But also I think maybe just in terms of the logistics, I think tomorrow is when we're discussing other issues, so maybe that's where it slates.

It has to be tomorrow.

We've got about 60 items that are currently on the agenda for tomorrow, so that's not a light lift, but it is a smaller number of items than today.

We also have Human Services Department, Office of Housing, correct?

So that's a buckle of your seatbelt.

I don't believe we have OH, but we do have Human Services Department and related services for the homeless.

And then I just, there hasn't been the sponsors of the proposal around a package that would address additional investments in the space of criminal justice reform and harm reduction strategies and approaches.

I haven't heard them identify what they intend the revenue source to be.

What is your intention?

Like everything else so far, there's no revenue source.

Okay.

So I just want to make sure that...

It's in the same constraints.

Okay.

Yeah.

And so I think that is going to be an important thing for us to consider.

Again, I think cutting into probation or the Seattle Municipal Court's budget before we have an opportunity to go through the process that has been outlined is not something that I would be supportive of, even though I'm supportive of what programs and types of services that the proposal seeks to advance.

So I just want to make sure that

Totally, and that's where I'm to.

I mean, they were presented to us by Budget for Justice as a package deal, and I think we've separated those two.

We have a path to move forward on figuring out reform or changes, and we also recognize that if there's a possibility in this budget to make some investments, that would be great too.

And then secondly, so again, I'm in the spirit of making sure that we are engaging in an honest conversation about how to align our criminal justice reform efforts.

So I brought this up when Council Member Mosqueda talked about her green sheet, so I'm going to bring it up now again, that I think it's really important, I'm not arguing that we shouldn't have these investments, I'm just I just want to make sure that we are threading the needle here and really making sure that we're looking at these investments with a holistic perspective of how they will be implemented and how we will continue to follow up on that implementation in a way that is strategic and really effectuating the change we want to see.

And so I just want to put that out there in terms of making sure that we integrate all of this into that body of work that we're already planning on doing next year.

And so I'm assuming you don't have an objection to that.

No, absolutely not, and I think, I mean, you named threading the needle, and I think that's going to be a challenge, because we do have this body of work going on, and we have urgency now, and so I think how we collectively decide what are the things that we know we want to fund, what are the things that, like, let's hold off on this until we figure out some more.

And then my reading of the various green sheets really tells a story to me that this is enhancement of work that we are already doing.

I don't think that there's anything new that is being proposed.

Programmatically, I don't think there's anything new.

that is being advanced through these green sheets.

It's just a green sheets that are designed to do more of some of the things we have already been doing, although I'll be in a bit of a disparate way.

So I think, so just, I just wanna recognize the fact that I acknowledge that we're currently doing work in a lot of the spaces that are being described in these green sheets.

And it's just a matter of figuring out how do we continue to support that work?

But also how do we make sure that it's working and that it is highly coordinated so that we're not working at cross purposes and so that the organizations that we're funding are not working at cross purposes with each other either.

I endorse what you just said, and it's back to the coordination.

And I recognize that many of the recommendations that were made for the group's budget for justice, they are a sophisticated group.

They know that they're not going to get everything they want when they want it.

That said, I think you're taking this on in a very coordinated way.

not jumping to a conclusion, but saying, what are we trying to do to make sure that the whole system works better?

That's my goal.

And then if I could just add one little thing here is I just wanted to echo Council Member Juarez's concerns around making sure that that when we are, as a citywide representative, for me it's really important to make sure that there are citywide investments to address a citywide issue.

The issues related to criminal justice system, to the criminal justice system and the disproportionate impacts that that has on low-income communities and communities of color is a citywide issue.

And so I do think it's incredibly important for us to make sure that the organizations that we are supporting to do this work likewise understand that it is the council's expectation that they will be engaging in citywide work where and if appropriate to make sure that we are not leaving communities behind in areas that are traditionally much more affluent and have historically been not as diverse.

And there are plenty of areas around the city that have been evolving in terms of diversity and in terms of the intersection of.

those communities with the criminal justice system.

And so making sure that we have data-driven approaches to understanding where those investments should occur is, I think, gonna be part and parcel of the implementation work that hopefully will help guide some of these great nonprofit organizations who are doing the work to really sort of identify where the pockets of significant need may be.

Okay, so Council Central staff clear about direction for tomorrow that we will pick this up.

All of the Budget for Justice items will be reviewed in a package, but I think we're gonna start ripping them apart again so that we're able to look at what and how are we going to proceed to address them.

But I think it's valuable to hear from the groups or the individuals up here who are supporting that.

And I'd like to move on to lead.

So the next item we're going to discuss is item 63.

Thank you, Councilmember.

The next item is on the law enforcement assisted diversion contract, and it's a green sheet that's sponsored by Councilmember O'Brien that would add $1 million in 2019. and $1 million in 2020. The money would be used for two purposes.

One, to expand the program into the south and southwest precincts that are currently not served by the LEAD program, but also to deepen coverage citywide.

And when I first explained this program expansion, I used this table that's now appearing before you.

And I want to clarify that table two, the five case managers that would be added, would not be specific to each precinct.

They would go to where the lead demand was and serve in that area.

And what is our total of lead right now?

It is $1.75 million.

OK.

Council Member O'Brien?

Yeah.

This is one of my top priorities in the budget, and I don't need to explain to my colleagues about how LEAD works, because I know you're all very familiar with it.

But I want to just relay the reality that I'm hearing from LEAD and community members, and also what's coming out of the police department in the North Precinct.

When we started this program a number of years ago, There was a lot of work to do to build the trust of the organizations that were participating, including the police officers, the lead caseworkers, and community members who were participating.

We clearly established that.

We're at a point now where police officers, certainly throughout the North Precinct, my understanding is the program is being overwhelmed.

with police who want to be trained in the LEAD protocol so that they, too, have the ability to understand how to identify people they interact with and potentially understand who would be a good subject to divert from the criminal justice system and make a referral to LEAD instead.

My understanding is that the last meeting in the North Precinct, I can't remember if it was a week ago or the week before, where the referrals were made, there were 37 referrals from the police department to this program.

The program's been up and running in the North Precinct for just a couple months, and they're already almost at capacity for the referrals they can take.

The great story there is that we have given the police department an alternative to simply arresting folks when they recognize that that's not going to solve the problem, or the alternative of not doing anything, which isn't going to solve the problem either.

The challenge we face now is that we don't have the capacity to meet the demand when the police are ready to do that.

And I'm talking about the North Precinct.

I know folks in the South and Southwest Precinct don't even have this opportunity yet.

And the police officers in those precincts, my understanding is, they're saying, we want to be able to make these referrals too.

And when I look at some of the challenges we face, specifically the emails that fill a lot of our inboxes, you know, there's a lot of, it's difficult times out there and it's difficult because there's a lot of problems that are falling on our lap at a city that are causing it.

You know, for some national and state policies that are tough for us to manage.

And yet we still are the front line of government and need to be responsive to our constituents.

And simply saying, yes, we're going to arrest people when everyone in the system knows that that will not fix a problem.

And when we don't have alternatives, it's really frustrating.

And here we have an alternative that's been proven through research to work better than the alternatives.

We have police officers that understand now how the system works and want to refer it to.

We have a program that is well-established and is poised to expand, not as fast as I would like it to, but at least at a pace where we continue to add more referrals to it.

And frankly, it's a thing that I can talk to when I hear from business owners, neighbors, human service providers that were frustrated with what's going on, and I can now say, in the North at least, I would love to be able to send some lead caseworkers out to talk with you about what can happen.

And the feedback I get was, wow, that was an amazing meeting.

I think we have a plan on how we can proceed with some of the individuals that are causing some problems in a way that actually reduces harm and may solve a problem, as opposed to just put it back on the street a week later and be back in the same spot.

But we're not going to be able to.

I'm faced with the reality if we cannot add money in this budget, I'm going to have to tell my constituents that We had this really great program, it's working really well, but it's full right now and it's probably going to be full for a year until something else happens.

And I know, I can only imagine what it feels like for my colleagues that represent, that have constituents in the South and Southwest District that don't even have the opportunity to do this now.

Thank you.

Thank you for your very passionate approach.

Mike is one of my top priorities as well, so thank you.

Anybody else want to speak to this?

May I borrow the soapbox?

Yeah, I may need a backfill, let me pass it down.

Please add me to the uh to the green sheet.

That's uh well stated and thank you for your leadership Council Member Bryan.

I think Council Member Johnson wants to be added.

Anybody else?

I'm not sure.

Council Member Gonzalez.

I'm not sure.

Does anybody else have anything to add?

If not, let's keep moving.

Very good.

Thank you.

I think you're uh made your case very well.

Okay.

All right, item 65.

We are on the proposed Office of the Employee Ombud, item 64. It's green sheet 23-1A1, sponsored by Council Member Mosqueda and supported by Council Members Gonzalez and Herbold.

This item would proviso about $564,000 in 2019 and $562,000 in 2020 for the Office of the Employee Ombud.

This is the amount that the mayor's office proposed to stand this office up in 2019. The intent is to provide some of the funds and have the associated legislation go through the Housing, Health, Energy and Workers' Rights Committee to have it heard in December and January and with the intent to pass it out of committee in January.

Good.

Thank you.

Council Member Muscata, do you want to speak to it?

Yes.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And thanks again to the incredible work from the IDT.

These are individuals who are on the front line in various departments who came together over the course of about six months to really identify a robust set of recommendations.

I passed that out last time we met.

creating the office of the ombuds, making sure that there was independent investigations, making sure that there was additional training dollars are all part of the recommendations that came forward.

And I applaud the mayor and her leadership for pulling this task force together and for this initial legislation and also the inclusion of these dollars in the budget.

We know the budget is a reflection of our values, and I'm very excited that these dollars are in there.

I know the community is as well.

So we are wanting to advance the full amount that the mayor has suggested and encourage the creation of the office, identifying the administrative services potentially needed, potentially even starting some work to do outreach for a director and getting that process underway.

And in the meantime, we will bring the legislation to our committee at the very first meeting that we have of the Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee, because this directly ties to workers' rights and the work that we've been discussing, actually, in probably all of our committees.

I know this is a council-shared priority.

We will bring the legislation to our committee on December 6th.

And then the next scheduled meeting that we have, we would identify opportunities to advance it out if there is agreement in our committee and bring it forward to the full council prior to the end of January.

So this is not a delay.

This is absolutely an intent to try to make sure that those who were informing the policy Those policy informers are at the table helping us with any final conversations around the legislation.

And this would be to enhance and lift up some of the legislation principles that are already there and make sure that we have crossed our T's and dotted our I's before we pass it to full council.

But definitely want to see those dollars provided so that we can go as soon as we get that bill passed.

Great.

Thank you.

Any further comments?

All right, let's go on to the next one.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Item 65, I'm Lisa Kay, Council Staff.

Item 65 is green sheet number 13-40-A.

And I can actually pick it up from here, Lisa, if you'd like.

So this has come before us two other occasions.

It is our mobile integrated health response teams.

I'm going to pass these pieces of paper out one more time, and I wouldn't do this to you other than the fact that there's still a stack of them in my notebook.

So, I know I wouldn't do it, like I'm saying, it's just here.

But this is, this is.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

But the mobile integrated health response teams, also known as the low acuity behavior by health is for us to provide our first responders with an opportunity other than having to respond with ladder trucks and EMTs when we find somebody or they get a call from somebody who's having a low acuity.

behavioral or physical issue.

So, I just want to underscore that I heard from Kenny Stewart today, once again, that he, who is the head of our Firefighters Union, supports this.

I've worked through Chief Scoggins' office and John Ehrenfeld.

We want to say thank you for him.

King County has helped us identify this.

For $500,000, which is the request, is that we are going to be working with the mayor's office, with our first responders teams, to get this going so that what will happen is that somebody calls, we will have a behavioral health team that includes an EMT, somebody who's trained, a case manager, maybe a mental health or social worker, depending upon the call need, that we will then work with our single portal to provide the first responders with the tools they need to know where to take this individual before the individual is released or removed or sent away from wherever they're taken, that we have a warm handoff.

And that warm handoff will provide the individual with housing if available, targeted services if needed, and the community care that we can get.

So, this is my top priority.

I hope that I will have some additional support in it, but I just want you to know that we're going forward in it.

Wait a minute, Council Member Brown.

I'd like to be listed as the top supporter.

I'll put you all on as co-supporters.

You have to remember this when we start meeting with you one-on-one now.

I led it.

I led the support there.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Any comments?

Any additions?

I know that I've just spammed you, but

I think the model is brilliant and I think this is smart government at its best and obviously it's complicated to work out and so I think I really appreciate your leadership on this.

Thank you.

Okay let's go to the next item.

Thank you Madam Chair.

Item 66 is green sheet 36-2-A-1.

This green sheet recommends passage of Council Bill 119389 which is Seattle Fire Department's 2019 fee ordinance.

Seattle Fire Department's Fire Prevention Division, which is also known as the Fire Marshal's Office, collects fees that offset some of the costs of providing fire prevention services to direct service users.

According to Seattle Fire, the proposed legislation would bring the overall cost recovery levels for the Fire Marshal's Office to 92%, up from 85% at the previous rates.

Collectively, the proposed fee changes included in this legislation would increase revenue by roughly 1.23 million in 2019, which is a 17% increase, and 1.18 million in 2020, which would be a 14% increase over 29. I don't know how much more detail you would like me to provide.

Budget chair has nothing to add.

Anyone else?

Please proceed.

Madam Chair Greg Doss up with tab 38 1 a 1 and it's SPD adding 37,500 in general fund in 2019 and $75,000 general fund in 2020 to retain the South Park Public Safety coordinator position that position was funded in 2018 and It was recommended by the South Park Task Force and is going to exhaust its funding on June 30th of this year.

This would keep it going throughout the biennium.

Thank you Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you.

So this is yet another example for Budget Chair Bagshaw of this council following up on SLI work.

So the council a couple years ago passed a statement of legislative intent identifying the need for a South Park public safety task force to come together and make recommendations to the council for ways to address their unique public safety challenges.

We did a number of things, some of them transportation, pedestrian safety related, some of them parks and lighting related.

And one of those recommendations that this council followed up on as a result of that slide was funding the South Park Public Safety Advocate.

That person was hired mid-year this year.

Just referring to an email from one of my constituents.

This person says, we have many immigrant, refugee, people of color, non-native English speakers, youth and elder, and low-income residents.

For these reasons and many, many more, we have worked so hard with the South Park safety task force to recommend that the city funds our public safety coordinator.

And we were thrilled when this position became a reality this year.

We knew the first year would be crucial to building relationships.

Our public safety coordinator has been working tirelessly since his hire date to reach out to neighbors, attend meetings, make connections, and be available as a familiar face, attending chat sessions in coffee shops, going to PTA meetings in both English and Spanish, and community center events like late night.

He has reached out many times to me in my capacity as PTA member, South Park Neighborhood Association member, and member of other neighborhood committees to offer help, Spanish translation or interpretation advice and support.

We have begun a process that has the potential to fundamentally alter and improve south park.

Please allow us to see it through to fruition Very good.

Thank you.

Um, appreciate that Thumbs up up down there Thank you, and we've got council member or as council member gonzalez agreeing to sign on I also have a quick little comment.

Okay, so I I um obviously support this particular request.

You know, I think that originally when we had advanced, when Council Member Herbold and I advanced the SLI and then as a result of the SLI advanced a green sheet to fund this position, it was our original hope that that position for the Public Safety Advisor in South Park would actually have been hired In early 2000 and what year is this?

18. So we had we had hoped that this person would be in place much, much sooner.

And unfortunately, that did not occur.

And so I think that, you know, to be consistent with how the council has approached this from a both of funding.

and a policy perspective in the past with the funding of the public safety coordinator position in the Chinatown International District.

I think it's only fair for this community to also get a full year of funding and then an additional year after that to really make sure that we're taking seriously the needs of this community to access public safety services that, you know, there is, And I know that Chief Best, you know, my gratitude goes to her for paying particular attention to South Park and their public safety needs and being very responsive to Both of our requests for her to continue to spend a lot of time there And in fact, she even had one of her swearing-in ceremonies in South Park.

So Again, I think this is a good opportunity for us to continue to follow up on many of the promises that the City Council has continued to make to the South Park neighborhood that Oftentimes, unfortunately, we aren't very good at following up on those commitments that we've made to the South Park community in particular.

And this is a good example of how we can turn the tide there and continue to build goodwill and funnel limited amount of dollars in there that have a huge impact.

Great.

Thank you.

All right.

I think that's clear.

Can we move on?

I'm going to ask if we could do 68 and 70 at the same time, and I'll speak to both of them.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

That's actually just what I was going to ask you.

And if it's all right, I'll start with item 70, the green sheet that would add $32,000 in 2019 to SPD to fund a business analyst for the LEAD program.

And first to point out that we've gotten some updated information on this, and it's actually going to be $25,000.

And it will go to Seattle IT, not to SPD.

But it's for a half-time business analyst for three months to assist the lead program in finding a database that would store its information and its data.

This is apparently something that has been a challenge for the program.

And they are interested in some guidance in how to purchase a database or what to get.

And then this also would require, there's a slide that's 38-2A1.

And that slide would require, as a result of this business analyst working with LEAD, Seattle IT and SPD to submit a report on how that new LEAD database could connect to the SPD RMS system.

and the new Mark 43 program.

So that's what you're talking about, RMS being the record management service.

So I'd just like to briefly describe this.

I've spoken with our police department as well as with Lisa Dugard.

And part of the problem has been that if a police officer is out in the field, it's hard to identify is this individual either already in LEAD or somebody that would be LEAD eligible within our current database.

We're getting this new system called Mark 43. My understanding is King County is doing it as well.

The unfortunate part is, is that Mark 43 is not going to be able to identify somebody through the LEAD database, as is.

However, they know that, they're working on it, but it will take some additional months and some individuals, as Greg described, to make that happen.

So, that's what this money is for, is to make sure that we've got the connections, because without the connections, it just, it seems silly to me to have separate software systems, and then to get the analysts that'll help us over a three-month period of time to make it happen.

Councilmember Muscata, I couldn't agree more.

I'd love to sign on.

Okay.

Also, I think you this is a great example of what we've seen other cities do well and Enhance their technology.

So thank you for advancing this great.

Thank you Good, and we also have councilmember Herbold and councilmember O'Brien have signed on Okay, so could we go to?

Item number 69 requesting the executive submit a report on special events cost Thank You madam chair.

Yes.

This is a slide that provides that there be an examination of police staffing at citywide events and specifically that there is convened an interdepartmental task force that has representatives from the mayor's office, the budget office, Seattle Police Department, the special events office, and council.

to look at the departments, Seattle Police Department's cost recovery methodologies, to look at the special events ordinance that was established a couple of years ago and created the $67 police fee, and finally, to look at the categories within that ordinance, particularly the mixed free speech or the community events to see if the city should be getting better cost recovery from those types of events.

Councilmember Gonzales, do you want to take this one on?

I'll be really brief.

I think we've had a lot of conversations about this particular concept in prior meetings.

budget committee hearings pretty straightforward.

We just want to create a process to follow up on some of the studies and the work that have been previously done to create an interdepartmental task force to really dig into this work and provide the council with some recommendations including potential changes to existing city law around how we recover

Public safety costs and your expectation is this comes back by the 1st of July to your committee, correct?

Okay And just so and just so the executive knows I'm not in the mood to grant any Extensions on that nice.

I think that's clear Anybody else want any comments or you want to add on?

Okay, councilmember Muscata will add on I OK.

Let's go to item number 71.

Item number 71 is a proviso on spending related to community service officer program in SPD.

And this proviso is sponsored by Councilmember O'Brien.

The proviso would restrict 653,000 of, well, it would enable the program to spend no more than 653,000 until they submitted to the council CSO program report that would address a number of topics that are listed in the in the sly and I can go over those were or defer to Councilmember O'Brien Why don't you take it Councilmember O'Brien?

Thank you.

I'm going to read the last line in here because it's better than I can make it up here.

Nothing in this proviso should be interpreted as a barrier to hiring CSOs and CSO supervisors.

It is the expectation of the council that the first phase of five community service officers and one community service officer supervisor will be hired by July 1, 2019. the department should produce the report required in this proviso concurrently with the recruitment and backgrounding of community service officers.

The department should send that report in no later than March 31st, 2019, and the community should go do it.

I wanna just highlight that because the information we're trying to get, this is an attempt to just make sure that we're informed and hopefully collaborating as this program rolls out.

There was a racial equity toolkit and interdepartmental team that was done over the course of the last couple years to really lay out some different options for how community service officers could be deployed.

And my sense in talking to Chief Best and folks in the executives, I think they're still refining exactly which strategy they're going to use.

I do not want them to slow this down because I'm anxious for community service officers to be out there, but I do want them to be At a minimum, sharing with us what their strategies and how they're going to prioritize.

There's a lot of needs that were identified that community service officers could be used for.

With five community service officers and a supervisor, we're not going to be able to meet all those needs immediately.

So how they're going to prioritize and hopefully a chance for council to provide some feedback if we're not totally aligned on that.

But the goal here is not to slow things down.

It would be great actually to accelerate things.

We just want to be part of that discussion.

Any additional comments on that?

Okay.

Council Member Johnson signing on to it.

Sounds like a good idea to me.

I think the last Council Member Mosqueda is as well.

And the last item, Greg, is that yours?

Requesting SPD to submit monthly and quarterly reports on staffing.

Yes, Madam Chair, it's a Sly 386A1.

And what this would do is it would require the Seattle Police Department to submit on a monthly basis the data from its sworn staffing model.

That's a model that it uses to predict separations and then also for recruiting.

And it would require the data to be submitted to Council Central staff once a month.

And then on a quarterly basis, it would require the department to come forward with a descriptive analysis of the data that would summarize their recruitment activities over the prior quarter.

It would also summarize the information that is captured in the forms that officers fill out when they separate and then finally make predictions about recruitment upcoming in the following year.

Thank you.

Council Member Gonzalez, do you want to address this?

Yes, just really quickly.

So this is a follow-up to conversations that we've had during issue identification.

and in my committee around commitments being made by the Seattle Police Department to hire X number of officers and feeling as the chair of the Public Safety Committee that I have not been able to readily access the information to be able to track and account for whether or not the department is We have a lot of work to do to stay on track and making progress in this area.

As we know, right now the department is currently in a situation where by the end of the year we'll likely be in a situation where we'll have negative 38 officers even though there was an original intent to hire 200 officers over the next two years.

I'm seeing an issue here and it's really difficult for me as a policymaker to figure out how to solve for it when I don't have easy access to the most accurate information as it relates to the department's ability to hire, recruit and retain officers.

Very good.

Thank you.

Do you just want to speak or just add your name?

Okay.

Add Council Member O'Brien to that.

Council Member Johnson.

Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Marquette.

I'm going to get these names yet.

I think we're there.

Council Member Mosqueda is in.

Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Johnson.

Council Member O'Brien.

Popular one.

Unanimous.

Okay.

I think we're done for today.

I just want to add that I've been working with Mr. Doss on trying to collect some information around the recruitment practices that SPD uses and to the extent that some of that information, what we learn and what maybe we have as goals for the future might be able to be incorporated into the reports that we get in the future to comply with.

Chair Gonzales, Public Safety Chair, Genza Chair, Gonzales' request here.

Okay.

Very good.

Thank you.

That makes sense.

Now, we do have a number of people signed up for public comment.

Okay.

Got it.

Thank you.

So, thank you all for waiting.

Thank you for being here.

I know it's been a long afternoon for all of us sitting up here, and I can only imagine for you in the audience as well.

So, I'm going to start with Bruce Lee.

If you'll come up, then Linda Spain and Cesar Roman.

How about if you raise your hand if you're here just so we've got that?

Okay.

So, is Bruce Lee here?

Okay.

Linda and Cesar, are you two speaking together?

Come on up to the microphones, please.

After you, we've got John Perkins, and it looks like Diane Ferguson.

Good.

Thanks.

Please go ahead.

Thank you for having us here today.

My name is Linda Spain.

I'm with the nonprofit Seattle Neighborhood Group, and I was a member of the South Park Safety Task Force.

And as you know, South Park is a proud diverse community, but it has many unique safety challenges.

One of the top priorities recommended by the task force was the hiring of the position of the South Park Public Safety Coordinator, and that position was to lay the groundwork necessary to form a collective knowledgeable voice to build a strong, resilient community.

The community asked that a bilingual South Park resident be hired, and we are most fortunate to have found that person, Incisar Ruan, who started just this past July.

The task force membership invited other people in the community to participate in a newly formed South Park Safety Partnership, SPSP, as they call themselves.

Anyway, and that is to assist with the public safety coordinator in making sure that the integrity of the goals identified in the task force were going to be followed through on.

They also help him and assist in communication in the community.

Within the past three months, Cesar has worked, as you heard from Lisa Herbold, tirelessly within the community, going to many events, many meetings, meeting people, just being out in the community.

He has garnered incredible trust and support from community members, and he is just getting started.

Your support is necessary to move forward, and I'm going to pass this on to Cesar.

Thank you.

Council Members, I'm Cesar Roman.

I'm the Public Safety Coordinator for South Park.

So I've been doing a lot of work in the community.

I spend a lot of time there working at the library, coordinating different groups, different nonprofits, neighbors, and also liaison between the neighborhood and the City of Seattle, including Seattle Police Department.

There's been a lot of coordination with a lot of projects that happened between the City of Seattle Department of Transportation doing a lot of improvements around safety in the neighborhood.

and getting all that information, communicating it back to the neighborhood.

And it's been a good way of connecting the city with the neighborhood both ways.

Neighbors get to know what resources are available and the city gets to have input, direct input on their projects that are coming from the neighborhood.

So it's been a few, it's been three months since I started there.

And it's nice getting people to see me as part of the neighborhood, and they recognize me, and they know who to go to in case they need resources.

So it would be great to have this position funded for the next couple of years.

And it's also a good position to have in other parts of the city, because from what I know, it's only in Chinatown and South Park right now, but it's a good way to have someone from the neighborhood to be coordinating these big projects between the city and the neighborhood itself.

Cesar, thank you for coming.

Yeah, thank you.

You're a good role model for us.

John Perkins here.

John and Diane Ferguson.

And then after that is two speakers from Historic Seattle.

Good.

Hello, I'm Diane Ferguson.

I'm John Perkins.

Denise Klein.

Sue Lerner.

Nice to see you all.

Thank you.

We're from the Central Area Senior Center and I'm just so impressed with all of the work that you've accomplished today.

I wanted to say thank you to Council Members O'Brien and Herbold and all of those who will join that green sheet to support our efforts to get the MOB's properties process defined so that we can have the buildings that we've been in for a long time.

I was thinking collectively as I was listening that all of us serve lots of people.

On our membership rosters of annual members and lifetime members, we have 4,000 and we have at least 1,200 to 1,400 people that navigate our center in any given year and I know that that is equally true for Finney Ridge as well as for Barbird Place.

And so we anxiously look forward to some resolution coming forward.

We are also in the same situation of not being able to access capital dollars by not having a long-term lease agreement or anything that says that we have site control of the building.

And so I know that there are many pockets that will open up and support us once we have acquired the property.

so that we can make the renovations and the repairs to the facility that needs to happen and so that we can continue to grow and expand our services.

We act as a community hub in our residential area, so we're not only serving seniors, that's the primarily population that we serve, but we have many intergenerational programs with youth and focus for photography, with Leschi Elementary School, with Songbirds, which is a preschool toddler program where they come and sing three or four times a week.

So we're doing many things.

And this would be a way to ensure that we can continue with our activities.

Now we have many partners that make us successful.

Wider Horizon is a village model of serving older adults.

And maybe Denise, you wanna come up and share how our partnership works.

Yes.

Well, I've known some of you for many years because I've been in the field of aging for 42 years in Seattle.

And this partnership that we have with the Central Area Senior Center, which is about three years old, is one of the most successful that I've seen.

We use their facility and their members attend our events.

And we are doing more and more things together.

And so we're really pleased to put in a good word for having the property under the control of the Central Area Senior Center.

And again, thank you, Mike and Lisa, for putting forward this proposition.

Thanks.

Thank you.

I just want to add my voice as a member of both the Central Area Senior Center and Wider Horizons that this is a tremendous resource for the community, for all of us.

We find more welcome there, more opportunities there than in many other places in this city.

And I just want to encourage moving forward on this so that the building can be safe and accessible like it should be.

Thank you.

And then I'll just add that one of the questions that came up today is, are people qualified to accept the money?

And I can tell you that Diane and the board, since I've been working with them the past year, they're ready, they're on track, they're strong.

This is the time to make that transition.

A win in their hands helps them get more funding.

Diane's expertise is fundraising.

Just so you know, and I'll just sort of add that.

Other organizations looking at their proposals have said, yes, we'll support you.

That's why this money is there pending to drop.

This is third party, other parties.

And it's not a random thing when people decide to give away a million and a half or 250 or half a million dollars.

So they say, yeah, we think this organization is strong enough as it is to accept our money.

Now it's time for the city to pick up what I call a cold potato.

And I think the city council is finding a way to put their hands around this cold potato.

and get it moving forward.

So I applaud you and thank you very much.

Thank you, John.

Thank you very much.

Good.

Thanks for coming.

Okay.

Historic Seattle.

I think we've got, is it hard to read, but it looks like West and Kelly.

Yeah, Naomi.

There are three of us, so I don't know if you want to have us as a group.

Please come on up.

Okay.

I'm Naomi West.

I'm the Director of Philanthropy at Historic Seattle, and I'm here on behalf of the 225,000 people that our buildings currently serve.

We have eight properties which cover Districts 3, 4, and 7 currently.

and a competent, dedicated staff of 15 people working hard every day.

We also know we could do more around the city, particularly in districts where we aren't currently operating, and the only thing that's stopping us is funding.

Over the past few years, we've been working on building out our fundraising program, and our donors have been stepping up, but in this red-hot real estate market, it's just not enough.

We can't act fast enough on grant proposals and potential major gifts.

We need cash in hand to be able to save more meaningful places that are fostering lively communities.

We recently lost out with efforts we made to purchase the garden house on Beacon Hill.

The house is going to move through the landmarking process in the coming months, but as of today, the nonprofit tenant that's operated there for decades is being displaced.

We could have been more competitive if we'd had funds in hand ready to save the historic community use of the garden house, but instead it went to an all-cash buyer.

The $500,000 of historic preservation seed funding from Council President Harrell will enable us to immediately act on garden houses of the future and expand our community-focused work in neighborhoods that are currently underserved by preservation.

So on behalf of Historic Seattle and the hundreds of thousands of people we're currently serving at places like the Good Shepherd Center, the Cadillac Hotel, the Bellboy Apartments, and Washington Hall, I'm asking you all to help us do more.

We can't counteract the tide of displacement stemming from a trend of demolition on our own.

Like our fight to save the show box, we need you, the leaders of our city, on our side.

These places matter to people from all walks of life, but you often don't hear from them until it's too late.

Please vote yes on Council President Harrell's proposal for seed funding for historic preservation.

Thanks for your consideration.

I'm Kai Kelly, Executive Director of Historic Seattle.

I'll keep my comments really brief because I know some members of council want to go trick-or-treating.

I had some prepared words, but I'm not going to use them.

I'm going to rely on Naomi's words to sort of speak for why it's so important for President Harrell's green sheet to move forward with sponsors.

You know, we on a daily basis work so hard to not only preserve historic buildings, but to preserve buildings for people and for communities.

And we've been doing this since 1974. Obviously, as Naomi said, the real estate market now makes it extremely difficult for us to act quickly as demonstrated at the Garden House, but I think over for 44 years now we've have a track record of doing amazing work with amazing partners all to the benefit of the community.

So I ask for your support on the green sheet as we move forward.

Hi, I'm Kitty Wu from 206 Zulu.

Our organization moved into Washington Hall in 2009. Since 2016, we've been managing the operations of Washington Hall alongside our anchor partners, Hidmo and Voices Rising.

The rental program we run has significantly increased our earned income, giving us the ability to offer more programming for youth and families in the central area, not just in the central area, but all over the city, and the ability to pay people for their work for the first time.

A lot of our volunteers have been there for, we're 15 years old this year, This is the first time that we're able to pay some of our folks.

This would not have been possible without Historic Seattle's leadership.

Without Historic Seattle, Washington Hall could have been torn down with condos built in its place, or a profit-driven owner could have taken over and turned it into an expensive private venue.

Instead, the hall continues to thrive 110 years later as an affordable community space, the hall for all.

Access to gathering spaces and sources of revenue, prevention of community displacement and gentrification are huge social justice issues.

The preservation model practiced at Washington Hall addresses these issues in a mutually beneficial way for community-based, people-of-color-led organizations and Historic Seattle.

Our city needs more places like this and every time a historic affordable community hub is sold to a developer or moves into private hands, we lose part of what makes our city livable and vibrant.

Please help Historic Seattle do more in this area underserved by preservation.

Vote yes on Council President Harrell's seed funding green sheet for historic preservation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm going to pass the next speakers over to Council Member Gonzalez.

The last speaker is Joshua Treibig.

Hello, council members.

My name is Joshua Trabig, and I'm one of the three collateral consequences attorneys at DPD that's currently being funded by your council, and I particularly want to thank Council Member Herbold for continuing or pushing the resolution to continue funding my position.

I'm not, however, here as a representative of DPD.

I'm here as a 14-year resident of Seattle, and I'm here to speak on behalf of the interests of my clients that I get to serve.

The 2015 Civil Legal Needs Survey found that the average Washingtonian didn't face just one legal issue when they were involved with the criminal justice system, but they had issues that were compounded by not only multiple issues, but by poverty itself.

My clients are the most vulnerable in our community.

They're disproportionately people of color.

They have unstable housing.

They face histories of trauma, and they've survived cyclical poverty.

They are, by definition, Seattle's poorest.

Now, like me, I know that at least a few of you are still renters here in Seattle.

And I would imagine, like me, you've had some difficult situations dealing with your landlords and had no idea what your rights were.

That's a place where I have an opportunity to serve our clients.

When they are facing evictions, when they're dealing with a difficult situation with their landlord, and they're also involved in the criminal justice system, it's an opportunity for us to step in and to help them navigate these difficult systems.

Many of the discussions we've had, we've heard here tonight, have been dealing with affordable housing and the many struggles that people in our community face.

I was looking into one particular project, the Arbora Court Affordable Housing, that built 133 units at a cost of $40 million.

The proposal you're looking at right now is for $220,000 to fund three attorneys for one year to provide critical services to our clients.

And it's not just housing.

We help our clients get their driver's license back so they can get to work and to school.

We help them navigate public benefits decisions, and we help them navigate the immigration consequences that come with their charges.

I thank you for your time.

I thank you for your support for our position, and I thank you for voting with your values.

Thank you.

Is that it?

That was the last speaker.

Okay.

Well, thank you for handling that.

I appreciate everyone coming and staying.

Thank you.

Council colleagues, thank you.

Looks like we have somebody who's...

What's that?

Do you have time for another comment?

I'm going to have to excuse myself.

I will continue public comment.

So I was going to do a last call.

If anybody didn't have an opportunity to sign up, they would like to offer us testimony, now is your time.

Very good.

Thank you.

And thank you, council colleagues.

See you tomorrow.

Everybody, my name is Travis Mann.

I'm a public defender at the Seattle Municipal Court representing individuals accused of misdemeanor charges.

SMC only hears misdemeanor charges.

Felonies all go to Superior Court.

Most of my clients, if not all of them, face severe economic insecurity.

Almost all are dealing with housing instability.

Majority are people of color, which is very telling for us living in this predominantly white city.

Many are dealing with mental health or addiction concerns.

I'm here today as a resident of the city, not as a representative of DPD.

I'm just here briefly to talk about probation.

I work with probation day in and day out.

I can sincerely say that I've had a number of very reasonable and positive outcomes working with probation when we've been able to sit through and work through certain issues.

It doesn't happen all the time, though, as I'm often not able to be with clients at their probation meetings, nor am I able to come to the table for all of my review hearings.

For a little bit of background, if probation determines that a client is not fulfilling a condition of their sentence, they request either a bench warrant or a court hearing to address the allegation.

And at these hearings, probation makes a sanction recommendation to the court.

More often than not, the court follows the recommendation.

The sanctions can range from amped-up UAs to extensive jail time.

Obviously, I don't have time to go into detail about all the collateral consequences of jail, but I can absolutely note that a number of my clients have lost housing, employment, and child custody as a result of jail time for probation violations.

And my concern here today is probation's over-reliance on punitive sanctions rather than a more harm reduction model.

This is a model that empirical data suggests leads to more positive outcomes in individual lives.

It's also a model that I've heard testimony in support of for LEAD.

For example, it's one that recognizes a number of very difficult circumstances that folks involved in the criminal legal system face.

It's one that understands a relapse may be a part of recovery.

It's one that realizes that a lack of stable housing often results in increased police contact, a lack of reliable transportation, and limited economic opportunities.

And most importantly, it's one that recognizes that jail time only further diminishes any positive steps that an individual may take to create stability in their lives.

I know that I'm out of time, but I know that we're spending millions of dollars on probation, and I'm not interested in taking anyone's work away.

And I know that that's a big concern for a lot of folks.

What I am interested in and what I'm most concerned about is creating the best possible outcomes for my clients, which in turn, I believe, will create the best possible outcomes for the city of Seattle, especially if the system is working the way it should, which I think that there's a lot of issues.

My big ask is that any form of post-sentencing supervision or case management take an approach that the City Council, through the testimony I've heard today, seems to understand, which is a harm reduction and restorative model, is a much more effective model than incarceration.

or overly punitive measures and I would suggest if the city is inclined to continue funding that they also look at any sort of study that talks about or that discusses the impact that probation has whether it be positive or negative and also look to other districts and their use of probation compared to ours.

Please.

And come to review hearings as well.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else who would like to give a testimony?

Yes, just briefly.

Go ahead.

My name is Claire Sullivan.

I am also a public defender in Seattle Municipal Court.

I'm here in my personal capacity as a resident of the City of Seattle, not representative of the Department of Public Defense.

First, I want to speak on behalf of Josh Trebig, who's the collateral consequence attorney at ACA, the division that I work with.

I have referred clients to Josh on numerous occasions who have had issues with relicensing, who have had issues with landlord-tenant disputes, who need support in navigating a social security apparatus.

There are so many things that our clients need further support with that I just cannot provide because of my caseload in Seattle Municipal Court and Josh has the capacity the empathy, the compassion, and the knowledge to help clients navigate really challenging systems that are hard for myself and others who have much more privilege and access into those spaces.

Secondly, to just build a little bit on what Travis said and to add to the discussion around probation, I am interested in the best outcomes possible for my clients and in trying to prevent people who are coming back into Seattle Municipal Court from cycling through the King County Jail.

And any way that we can best do that, we need to try.

And I think what we are trying to focus on is best practices and seeing those implemented in a post-adjudication setting.

If people are on probation, they've already pled guilty.

They've already served some kind of punishment.

So how can we use harm reduction models and more research-based practices, best practices, to ensure that people aren't cycling through King County Jail on 5-day, 10-day, 20-day holds, or having further impediments to trying to get into stable housing and things of that nature.

So I think What I'm really advocating for is for us to try and find a better way forward.

I'm not interested in anyone losing their job.

I'm not interested in any of that.

I'm interested in us as a city trying to find better ways to reduce the population in King County Jail and to get people on a better track forward.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else who wanted to give us public testimony before you close out?

Okay, seeing no one.

That was our last speaker and we are adjourned.