Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee 11/13/19 Session I

and continue afterwards for public comment, we'll do that.

So thank you all for being here.

And I also want to say when you ask politely, that happens too.

So I just want you to know we're very happy that you're here and that we're going to move forward.

So it looks like 9.31.

931, we're going to open this.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Thank you.

So, colleagues, thank you for coming.

And I have just spoken to the crowd that with your permission and approval that we are going to move forward with public comment for 30 minutes.

So, it's now 932. Let me do a quick introduction.

I'm Sally Bagshaw.

I chair this committee.

I want to welcome Councilmember Juarez, Councilmember Shama Sawant, Council President Harrell, Council Member Gonzalez, and this is November 13th.

It's our budget committee extended meeting today.

We are going to be reviewing what's called Form C's.

This is a balancing addition to what we had actually gone through last Wednesday.

There's no additional monies being brought in today.

But as you know, last week that I again reiterated our priorities, which is around housing, human services, public health, and LEED.

Those are going to continue to be my priorities through the budget.

Today, we're going to be looking at these further refinements.

There are 44 proposed council budget actions to consider, and there are 12 provisos, 20 statements of legislative intent within that package.

So today we're just going to get started.

I appreciate very much all of you being here.

Council colleagues, thank you.

And so I'm going to turn it over to our, no, we aren't, we're going to just move forward with public comment at this point.

So I'm going to ask that those who have signed up that it's 9.33 at 10.03.

I'm going to cut off public comment, as I said, and those of you who want to stay and continue our Just good to do so.

And I believe, Tony To, you're the first, so I'm going to read these off here, and I'm going to ask you to adhere to the one-minute rule.

Thank you.

Okay, Tony, Marguerite, Richard, Karen Tering, and it looks like Charlie after that.

So, Tony, please proceed.

Actually, thank you, Chair, members of the committee.

I just want to ask again for this amendment number 20 to restore funding for home buyer counseling.

One, we do home buyer counseling for all of the homeownership providers in the city.

Two, it's a citywide process.

Even if you built the affordable low-income homeownership units, if you don't do the counseling, it's really hard to get people to be prepared and to be qualified.

So the home The counseling program is almost like supportive services for other housing projects.

And the third thing is that it needs to be, we can't turn it on and off, because sometimes it takes people 30 to 90 days and they're ready, but other times it takes them years.

And so we work with these people all the time.

And so it's really important.

I hope you can find a source for this.

And frankly, if we can take it out of some monies that's for home ownership, it's not a lot of money, but it's really, really critical to be able to actually put people into units that we build.

So thank you very much.

Thank you, Tony.

Marguerite Richard, then Karen, then Charlie, and then Josh.

Yes, good day everyone.

I'm Marguerite Richard and I've come down here quite a bit.

I recently saw someone in a store telling me to keep doing what I'm doing, so I'm doing what I'm doing and I'm speaking out.

And I am black and I'm concerned about what is happening with this city council, those going out and even those coming in.

Got some information in Buffalo, New York, they did a raid of City Hall.

And I don't care where they come from.

I want them to get here and do the same raid that they did in Buffalo, New York, because I'm sick and tired of providing evidence that they're racist here, they're discriminatory, they're prejudiced, they're narcissistic.

And I could go on down the line with what is occurring here at said time.

And I'm from here.

I was born and raised here.

So I can talk about anything subject to whatever you want to discuss here in this chamber.

Karen, Charlie, then Josh.

Council, my name is Karen Toring.

I'm with Upgrade Seattle and a few other things.

I'm wearing my Upgrade Seattle hat today.

I am here to support Councilmember Herbold's statement of legislative intent for municipal broadband.

I also want to thank Councilmember Sawant and Councilmember O'Brien who have supported this idea of the city controlling our broadband access.

I think it's very important for not only for our culture, but our survival.

Our ability to control our own broadband is within our grasp.

The city itself did a study that said that this is possible in the city of Seattle.

And I'm very happy that the council members have taken this up and are not letting it die.

Thank you.

Thank you, Karen.

Charlie.

Charlie, is it Latham maybe, Josh, then Debbie?

I'm not seeing Charlie, Josh, so go ahead.

Charlie, Debbie, and Colleen were all prepared to speak after the meeting.

Okay, they can.

They'll be back, yeah.

Okay, very good.

I'm just here, once again, Josh Vogt on behalf of Working Washington and Fair Work Center.

I just want to thank Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda for proposing an additional $200,000 for community outreach and education funds for the Office of Labor Standards.

I want to urge you all to support that work at a time of record inequality in our city and around the country.

Enforcing labor standards is one small but critical way of fighting back, making sure that low-wage workers are getting paid everything they're owed, are getting their schedules on time so they can manage their lives, participate in their communities, and getting the sick leave that we all fought for, too.

So thank you for considering that proposal.

We urge you to support it today and look forward to Your final budget.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you, Josh.

And we will signal Charlie, Debbie, and Colleen, if those three are not here, that when they come back in the afternoon or after we're done, we'll put them right back in the queue.

Alex Finch, Katrina Johnson, and Benjamin Fetcher, please.

Good morning, Council Members.

My name is Alex Finch.

I'm the elected External Affairs Coordinator at the Council of Northlake.

As you may know, someone's amendment to the budget allocates money to prevent our village from closing.

Well, what you don't know is that in October, we were told that our closure date has been upped to December 31st from March.

This would mean that, I mean, it's shady.

It's shady, it's shameful, and it's brutal and inhumane to close us in the middle of winter.

Why HSD is being allowed to do this is beyond any reason.

And it needs to stop as soon as possible because December just isn't enough time.

All we're getting offered from our supposed case management is other tiny house villages and not permanent housing.

And we want permanent housing.

That's it.

Thank you, Alex.

Katrina?

Is Katrina Johnson here?

Okay, Katrina, then Benjamin, then Anitra Freeman.

Good morning.

I just want to thank all the council members for pushing LEAD forward and allowing us to be able to expand in the southeast and southwest Seattle and to the most racially and ethnically diverse parts of the city and allowing officers to use tools that they are ready and willing to use for individuals out in that area.

And I just want to thank you guys for your leadership and your hard work that you put into pushing LEAD forward.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Lamont with Community Passageways, and I just want to thank you guys, two council members, for allowing us to work with LEAD, and it's going to be a great year, and just continue to work with us and support us.

Great.

Yes, the partnership between LEAD and Community Passageways will be pivotal in Southeast Seattle and Southwest, and we just thank you all for all that you have done to push LEAD forward and to bring down caseloads for our caseworkers who are doing radical outreach out there.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Good to see you.

All right, Benjamin, then Anitra, then Ed Mast.

Hi, Benjamin Fetcher from Gift of Grace Lutheran Church, and I'm here speaking on behalf of North Lake Nicholsville Tiny House Village.

I understand that there's money budgeted for the closing of that village, and I think that instead of closing the village, the village should remain open under the religious encampment ordinance, and my congregation is really wanting to explore how we can sponsor and make that happen.

I've written a letter to all of you, and I have it in my hand.

I also emailed it to you.

The village is functioning quite well, and I'm concerned that the narrative that is coming out of HSD and Lehigh simply does not square with the facts that I see with my own eyes having been involved with the community council advisory team and also my involvement with the village itself.

So I would like to explore how to use the Religious Encampment Act.

Great, thank you.

I would like to invite you to call my office.

I'm interested in talking with you.

Okay, Anitra.

Anitra Edmast, and it looks like Be Seattle, a group, and we'll give you, depending on how large the group is, extra minutes.

Go ahead.

Hi, Anitra.

Good morning.

I'm Anitra Freeman with Share Wheel and Women in Black.

The Wheel Women in Black stand vigil whenever somebody homeless dies in King County, outside, or in a public place, or by violence.

Today at noon, we are standing for another five people.

This brings the total this year that we stood for to 99. It's a terrible, terrible total.

Without shelter, people die.

And the corollary to that is that with sheltered people live.

We need more tiny house villages.

We need them to support the democratic self-governed groups that have proved encampments in tiny house villages to work.

We need to not create a monopoly of them and we need to not close Nicholsville Northgate.

Please join us at noon for our vigil.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Ed Mast.

I live in traditional Duwamish land, what is now called Wallingford.

I'm also on your community advisory committee for Northlake Tiny House Village.

I am dismayed, as several people have been referring to, that you're allowing your human services department to close Northlake Tiny House Village.

at all and three months before its scheduled time in the dead of winter.

As near as I can tell, this is being allowed to happen because a lot of you are accepting falsehoods from your Human Services Department and their contract at the Low Income Housing Institute.

What you're not doing has been listening to the voices of residents of North Lake Tiny House Village, many of whom are here today and are subject, many of them in their lives, already to repeated betrayals and they are now being betrayed again.

We need more tiny house villages in my neighborhood generally.

Please don't close this one.

Please listen to the voices of the residents of the village.

Thank you, Ed.

Okay.

Who is B Seattle?

Okay.

No, three, three minutes.

All right.

And excuse me, before you get started, it looks like first name I can't read, Loki, L-O-K-I, and then Catherine Parker, Shirley Henderson.

Good morning, council members.

We are with BCATL.

My name is Devin.

This is Renee, Jonathan, Sean, and Charity.

And I'm here today with tenants that we helped.

We helped them organize their buildings.

We taught them their rights.

We're actually going to be doing that tonight.

This is the beginning of a 12-hour workday, so thank you very much.

That we're going to be going out tonight to teach people their rights and how to get more and how to not be taken advantage of.

I'm really disappointed actually, I was really very disappointed on Wednesday when I found out that in this human services and housing and homelessness budget, the city's only budgeting $1.50 approximately per tenant in the city for tenant services.

That's not enough.

That's really, really not enough.

And I say that not just as a non-profit, a person in non-profit, I say that as a tenant as well.

That program that we're doing right now with the very limited funds that we have from the city, if tenant services are not expanded, that program is more than likely not going to exist after the end of this year.

So that means by the end of this year, we will have done 55 workshops with tenants in 23 zip codes.

We've referred or helped 99% of the people that we've worked with.

We've helped form seven tenants unions.

We've helped people fight back economic eviction.

We've helped people get repairs made.

We've helped people replace harmful building managers.

None of that will happen after December 31st if we don't have any extra funds in this budget.

So just wanted to reiterate that, and I think that Charity also wanted to say something.

Hi, so BC had helped me organize my building and I urged the city to fund more tenant organizing because for people like me, it was significant.

can disability, knowing your rights is crucial and often an eviction would be a death sentence for someone like me, so please fund these services.

Thanks.

She just also wanted to mention, sorry, she had written this, that we also definitely need more money for eviction legal assistance, again, because eviction would be terrible.

One attorney is not enough.

That's right.

And so just closing, I know we're over time.

Could you please consider funding $3 per tenant instead of $150?

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Loki, L-O-K-I, last name, and then Catherine Parker, Shirley Henderson, Mauro Moro, and Eric Davis.

Good morning.

My name is Draven Loki.

I've been part of Sherwood takes a c3 for a while now Macy's just gonna keep it short a lot more tiny houses Half of which hopefully run by grassroots organizations like Sherwood or Nicholsville We invite you to talk with us sometime this week about that On I didn't have my notes written down but uh, ah Yep, that's about it.

Sorry Without shelter, people die.

Thank you.

Catherine Parker, Shirley Henderson, Maru, then Eric Davis, and Cassandra.

So how many of you are together?

I think it's 11.

How many of you have signed up?

Two of us are speaking.

OK, great.

We'll stick to your time.

Or we can stick to the one if you prefer.

OK, good.

Good morning, my name's Catherine Parker.

And I'm Shannon Mayo.

We both live in District 3 in Seattle, and these are some of our volunteers.

We're all with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

A few of us, including myself, testified at the public budget hearing on October 22nd, and we're here again today to strongly urge you to fund proven community-based violence intervention and prevention programs that will help reduce gun violence and other safety issues that Seattle faces.

Violence intervention and prevention programs, such as Choose 180 and Community Passageways, effectively invest in those most likely to be involved in both the criminal justice system and gun violence.

These organizations help by intervening in and de-escalating potentially violent conflicts and supporting young people in healing and breaking the cycle of violence without relying solely on the criminal justice system.

They're able to leverage their trust within their communities through advocating for young people in a holistic way to empower them to make positive change in their lives.

These programs need adequate and stable public funding to enable their life-sustaining work.

However, the council's budget draft released on November 6th falls short.

We are asking the Seattle City Council to approve a total of $400,000 in funding, $100,000 for Choose 180, and 300,000 for community passageways.

We know we can make our city rich, sorry, our city much safer for all, and at the same time, create more opportunities for our young people.

Thank you for your support.

Thank you so much.

Thank you all for coming.

So next is Shirley Henderson, Maru, and then Eric Davis.

My name is Shirley Henderson, and I'm one of the owners of Squirrel Chops, which is a small business in the Central District.

And I'm here because so many of us, small businesses and residents included, are so sick and tired of being pushed down and out by big business.

The mayor's budget was a business-as-usual budget, and thanks to the leadership of Councilmember Shama Sawant, we have won some really important gains.

And we're here to continue to fight for a budget that is for the people and that is humane.

And I want, I support all of the amendments that Councilmember Sawant has put forward.

And I wanted to highlight specifically a boost to trans job search services, which is really critical for a marginalized community that struggles with employment to begin with because of discrimination.

I support a central district small business displacement survey.

I support the funding for anti-displacement community work in the central district, which is really critical, and a stop to the sweeps.

Thank you.

Maru, then Eric Davis, then Cassandra.

Hi, my name is Marumura Villalpando.

I'm here representing La Resistencia grassroots volunteer organization fighting against detention and deportations in Washington state.

We have fought to get sanctuary in this state and we are really glad that some of that has happened in Seattle yet.

We still see the investment being pushed into policing programs, jails, and not for restorative justice.

We also see a push to increase funding for surveillance and not for programs that actually protect youth, especially black and brown youth.

We send you a letter and just the summary of that letter is that we support the funding of $300,000 for community pathways, a youth consortium program, $122,600 for creative justice, a community-based arts and youth development program, and $100,000 for the youth-generated Rainier Beach Action Coalition Corner Greeter program.

I mentioned early in the morning I was part of that, the beginning of the Corner Greeters, and that needs to be funded if there's actually sanctuary in the city of Seattle.

Thank you.

Eric?

Eric Davis, then Cassandra, then Jim McMahon.

Good morning, City Council.

My name is Eric Davis.

I'm a co-founder of Camp Second Chance, and I support the tiny house villages, but I'd like to ask a moment if you would allow us to, we have a group of residents, if I could share some of that time.

They all signed up, and we'll stay within the time if that's okay.

Eric, can I ask you who has signed up?

Raise your hands.

No, tell me your names, and I'll just check you off.

Brandon Fisher.

And Brandon, do you remember your number?

It was in the 50s, I think.

OK, so we've got Brandon.

Say your name.

Cassandra Gaspard.

OK, good.

Cassandra, you were next up.

OK.

David Ford.

What's your last name, David?

Ford.

Sword.

Oh, Sword, OK.

Thank you.

Jennifer Lucia.

OK, very good.

Thank you.

Let's give them three minutes, please.

So I just want to share real quickly, you guys understand how much the importance of tiny house villages are, but you've heard my stories before, but I'd like for you to hear for the residents who are currently living there.

So I support all tiny house villages and the shelter that keeps the people off the street and warm and safe.

Thank you.

Hey, my name is Brandon Fisher.

I'm a tiny house, uh, member or resident at Camp Second Chance.

And I've been there for just two months now.

And in that short time, I've been able to make profound and meaningful changes in my life.

Because it's a clean and sober camp, I've quit drinking.

In just two months, I've lost 21 pounds.

I've become more active physically, socially, and mentally.

I have pride in myself and my fellow residents.

And for the first time, I have hope in my future.

Thank you.

My name is Cassandra Gaspard and I too am a resident of Camp Second Chance and I support more tiny villages.

As I was evicted in April and I had a good paying job, I wished I'd had an eviction attorney at that time and affordable housing.

So I support many of the needs of the community here myself.

In January, I'll have 13 years clean and sober from a former heroin addiction.

And when I knocked on tiny house villages, there was no room for me until I got to Camp Second Chance.

I feel it was a blessing as that's right where I needed to be.

And I would pray and hope for the same for those who are going to be displaced.

You know, there's going to be people that are going to be cold and need a place, and they're going to be displaced.

And please expand more tiny house villages.

Hello, Council.

Thank you for listening to us today.

First thing I wanted to say is homelessness is new to me.

I've raised both of my children.

They're 26 and 28. They're good citizens, you know, hardworking, productive members of society.

I've never experienced homelessness until just recently.

started to take care of my mother.

And when she fell real ill, I let go of two of my businesses.

After letting go of those two businesses, taking care of my mom, she's now recovered.

I started to live with a family member and things just didn't work out.

And I was forced out of her home.

I didn't know where I was going to go.

I have a full time job.

I have nice belongings.

I have things that I have worked hard for in my life.

And I wasn't just going to just not get, not just let them go without fighting.

And being able to come to Camp Second Chance and have a place to live versus paying for a hotel every night, which was very, very expensive, having somewhere safe to go, never not knowing where to go, who to call, where the help is.

But then you go to a tiny village like this, and someone says, hey, let us help you.

You still maintain your job.

You start to put a little bit of money in savings.

And before you know it, I won't be there.

This isn't my forever home.

This is just my home right now.

Versus being under a bridge or in a cold parking lot.

Like, we are your people.

If you let us fail, then we're only as good as you if you let us fail.

We cannot fail.

You cannot fail your people.

A $1.50 for the budget, I could tell you what a $1.50 buys at Safeway.

Maybe a couple cup of noodles.

Maybe a small orange juice.

Maybe.

So I know that like there's 20 seconds and there's more to talk about, but it's detrimental to some people that they have a place where they can go and be safe, warm, and not worry about all of the things that they worry about besides where they're going to rest their head.

Thank you.

Thank you.

If you go around and look, they are working.

We don't need to close them down.

We need more of them.

We do.

Look around.

You'll see.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, all of you.

OK, so the woman who spoke, was your name Jenna?

All right, I just want to confirm I don't miss anybody here.

Is your first name Jenna, you who just spoke?

Is it Jenna?

Jennifer, okay, I don't see you on the list.

So, Jenna, then Lori, then Donna Anderson, and we're going to cut it off at 10.03 and then pick it up again afterwards.

So, please go ahead.

Hi, my name is Jenna Kinsey, and I am a resident at Nicholsville.

And I find it appalling that HSD is going to try to shut us down.

I don't know why, because we never did anything to HSD.

All we want to do is live there.

I know it's supposed to be temporary housing, but we all feel safe there.

So why the heck would you shut down a perfectly working tiny house village?

Why?

I don't get it.

And I highly doubt any of you would be able to last a week on the streets.

So don't shut us down, please.

Thank you.

Lori?

Hi, I'm Lori Perry.

I'm from Nicholsville, Northlake.

The Northlake Tiny House Village is not closing this year.

The Human Services Department is leading you about this.

And they have been once they ever stepped in our village.

If Lehigh is getting their own village, why mess with ours?

Why?

The great majority of people at North Lake Tiny House Village will not leave until they have the opportunity to move into permanent affordable housing.

However, this will not be done with Lehigh.

Lehigh offers transitional and other tiny house villages.

If they're getting their own village, then leave us alone.

Let us stay where we're at.

Let us be a village, our own community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We have the last speaker for now is Donna Anderson.

Is Donna Anderson with us?

They were on the list for later, a group from Georgetown.

Can we just come up here?

Go ahead.

I'm going to give you three minutes, and then we're done, OK?

And that's it.

Then we're getting back to the other business.

Hello.

My name's Chris McDaniel.

I live in Georgetown, Tiny House Village.

You know, I was there right from the beginning.

And after a year there, I was thrown out.

I spent a year getting back in, only to have this whole blow-up between Lehigh and Nickelsville.

And it's really ridiculous, because there's nowhere to go.

You know, the sweeps, they're pointless, where you're just sweeping them back and forth, back and forth.

I know people have been swept a dozen times.

They don't ever offer them anything.

Nowhere to go.

You know, DHC over there on Weller, that's an animal house.

I wouldn't send an animal there.

You need to find more villages.

You know, they save lives.

That's about all I got to say.

Hi, what's your name, please?

My name is Hattie Rhodes, and I live at the Georgetown Tiny House Village.

I wanted to thank the Seattle City Council for supporting us.

I also wanted to thank the Georgetown neighborhood for being so supportive of us and for supporting the continuation of the village.

We need more tiny house villages for those who are still on the streets.

The community tiny house villages provide, offer the disenfranchised to rebuild their lives, and they go from having a daily struggle to survive to actually envisioning a future which includes them.

Help others find a future by supporting more villages.

Thank you.

I'll say something.

And what's your name, please?

I'm Andrew Constantino.

I'm the on-site coordinator at Georgetown Tiny House Village.

And I think one of the unique qualities of the Georgetown Village is that it's often people that have been outside for a very long time.

You know, the navigation team may conduct a sweep.

We have an opening, and so they bring someone to our village.

It's people that might not otherwise find the village.

So I'm not completely opposed to the existence of the navigation team.

They do find people that might not otherwise find us.

But people come to us and have been sleeping under a bridge for 10 years.

You know, haven't called themselves by their name in five years.

You know, have been in their car for a couple years.

And the tiny house villages are a great step.

Most of the police or the NAV team itself that we interact with, the tiny house village is an option that people who have been outside for a while will take.

That's something that they want because they know it's a good place to be.

It's a safe place to be.

And so conducting sweeps, as Chris said, is pointless unless you have an option to offer people, and the tiny house villages are a great option for those people.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Donna, I live in Georgetown.

The tiny house villages are the, they're the answer to homelessness.

I think these last couple of years, there's been growing pains for everybody.

We learn things, we've done stuff wrong, we've done stuff right.

So we just need to learn from all of that and move forward.

And also since we've been partnered with Lehigh, they've allowed us more options to keep people in the village.

My favorite sentence is we can't expect people who have been on the street by their self to come into a village and stop drugs, stop alcohol, learn how to take care of a home.

learn how to be part of a community, and learn how to conform to rules, that to set up for failure, and at least we have more options to help that now and not just avoid it and put them back out on the street.

Thank you.

Thank you, Donna.

Thanks to all of you for coming.

And I want to acknowledge and say thanks to everybody for really diving into the one-minute presentations.

We've gotten through a number that I didn't expect we would this morning, so many thanks.

And we will pick it up from where we were now at the end of our presentation.

And if I can invite Tom and whoever else from central staff.

What we're going to do now is that central staff will provide a brief description of each of the 44 proposed items, identify the sponsor.

The sponsor will have an opportunity to speak to the proposal.

And if after the discussion, each item, if anybody wants to be added as a co-sponsor, I'm going to ask you to raise your hand.

Just, I'm going to keep track of this, but I'm not going to be adding my name to co-sponsorship.

just so I can continue to be as neutral as possible going forward for the next step.

And we, just as a reminder, we vote next Tuesday on our final budget.

All right, Council Central staff, thank you.

Asha, would you start introductions, please?

Asha Venkatraman, Council Central staff.

Jeff Sims, Council Central staff.

Tom Mikesell, Council Central staff.

Thank you very much.

And Tom, are you kicking this off this morning?

Yes, Madam Chair, thank you.

Good morning, members of the Select Budget Committee.

This morning we have 44 council budget actions submitted by council members.

These budget actions are all self-balanced, the ones that have financial transactions.

What this means is there is no financial impact to the initial budget balancing package as presented.

The no net financial impact criteria is achieved through a number of ways.

It can either introduce new revenues that were not previously identified, or it could include an adjustment to either the chair's budget package or the mayor's original proposed budget.

We've ordered the discussion of the 44 agenda items alphabetically by department, and I will be joined at the table by the relevant central staff subject matter expert.

with one exception or two exceptions I should say.

The first two items are items that both result in the net financial impact by making a reduction to the same item in the Chair's initial budgeting package.

That is the $75,000 for the Smart Wallet Program.

So we brought those two to the beginning of the agenda today so that overlap can be discussed and those decisions can be made in the same context.

And so with that, I'll turn it over to Jeff Sims.

Thank you.

Thank you, Tom.

As he just explained, both of these make a similar cut to Council Action HOM 12B1 in order to fund the action.

So we're going to speak about both of these together, and then we'll also have the chance to go over any nuances or questions, anything like that.

The first is DEL 12A1.

The second is HOM 13C1.

DEEL-12A1 is not currently in the initial budget balancing package.

This would be a new addition of $75,000 one time for a Human Services Certificate Navigator.

It'd be a contracted position to support a certificate program at Seattle Central College.

The sponsor here is Councilmember Herbold.

And this funding is offset, as I mentioned, by cutting HOM-12B1.

The second is HOM 13 C1.

This item is already in the initial budgeting package, but for $700,000 instead of $775,000.

This is a one-time investment for a rental assistance pilot that would serve individuals that receive either federal disability benefits.

And the primary sponsor there was Council Member Gonzalez.

Both of these two actions reduce the funding provided for council budget action HOM 12B1, which is sponsored by Council President Harrell.

That is an investment of $75,000 for a smart wallet program such as Samaritan, which is a way that individuals experiencing homelessness can be connected with potential donors and receive funds through that mechanism.

Thank you Jeff.

Councilmember Herbold would you like to address your first and then I'm going to ask Councilmember Gonzalez if you'd like an opportunity for item number two.

Sounds great, thank you.

So the proposed Human Services Certificate Program is designed to equip people who have lived experiences of homelessness and poverty with skills necessary to advance professionally in a social services field.

Entry-level positions in the human services sector are often attainable without post-high school education.

However, people in these positions often find themselves with limited opportunity for advancement and career growth.

So committing to a full-time associate's or bachelor's degree can be difficult given financial constraints, work schedules, and a lack of confidence in school proficiency.

The Human Services Certificate Program enables frontline workers to acquire professional skills necessary to advance in their chosen field.

and build towards living wage positions.

The program itself would be available to cohorts of 24 students, supported by a navigator, very similar to the Promise Program's use of a navigator.

It's accessible to students who have not completed a high school degree or equivalent, and the new certificates would be integrated into Seattle Central College's existing human services program, allowing students to stack completed degrees towards a two- or four-year degree.

As mentioned, the Navigator will work with students to ensure they're supported as they return to school and the position will provide mentorship, help students enroll and register for classes, ensure students have access to supply, overcome barriers to attending classes.

The Navigator will build cohort cohesiveness and teamwork to support a positive shared journey and help them do problem solving around barriers and issues necessary to identify actions and resources.

critical to their success.

The funding proposed for this certificate program comes from the chair's proposed balance package and specifically funding for the Samaritan Beacon Program of $75,000.

As proposed, this funding would provide 230 new beacons.

I know a lot of us are getting emails saying that the number of beacons would be 750 beacons.

Under the current budget, it's actually 230 beacons.

But as we have delved into this issue more deeply, I have a lot of questions about how the program itself operates, and specifically about the possible unfunded casework.

Every beacon holder is required to meet with a service provider every 30 days in order to withdraw their donations.

One Samaritan presentation we received, we found that only 54% of beacon holders are able to meet with counselors.

So nearly half of those folks aren't able to meet with the counselors necessary to basically recoup the value of resources on the beacon itself.

So...

Can I ask you a quick question?

Do you happen to know if there is an account for an individual and they haven't met with the case manager?

Does it stay in place until the individual can meet with the case manager?

That's one of the questions we don't know.

We don't know how long the donation is available to the beacon holder, if they're unable to withdraw it.

And we also don't know where the money goes if the beacon holder is unable to draw it.

Samaritan has given estimates to central staff that in order to meet the requirement of meeting with case management, they estimate that that means 15 minutes of case management on average a month to fulfill that obligation.

It feels to me like that's a really small amount of time to spend with a case manager every month, but even using that math, it creates a unfunded mandate of about 690 hours a year or 13 hours a week of case management for this new 230 cohort people.

And so what that does is that puts agencies that provide case management in a position of having to decide whether or not they need to prioritize the beacon holders for case management services because they have something of value to recoup for their beacon.

And so I think that for me that creates some significant concern about whether or not we're putting a burden on our social service agencies with this unfunded mandate and just a management burden for how they have to how they might choose to prioritize limited case management services.

So the, without additional case management funding, we don't know that, we can't ensure that beacon holders are actually able to meet with a case worker.

And again, we're putting this burden, I think, on the organizations that provide case management.

The current $75,000 budget action that's proposed seems to recognize that case management services are needed.

There is an earmark of a $75,000 of, I believe, $20,000 towards an FTE to coordinate with organizations that provide case management.

And, you know, there are a lot of other things that we don't know about this program.

We don't know how the outcomes for this program align with the outcomes of the Human Services Department.

There doesn't seem to be an outcomes or evaluative information attached to the funding to ensure that the city's money is being well spent.

Because I'm interested in knowing more about how this program could align with the city's interest in serving people who are homeless and addressing their needs.

I think that the council would be better served by a sly asking the Human Services Department to work with Samaritan to ensure that human services providers are actually capable of meeting the demand created for an increase in workload.

and answering some additional questions that we would come together along with central staff.

Great.

Thank you.

Any comments on this?

So I guess I'll respond to it.

I didn't know, I was following your lead if Council Member Gonzalez wanted to, she wants to cut it as well, so should I respond to it now or?

If you have any comments about what you would like to see moving forward.

Sure, I'll just comment.

I appreciate your concerns, Council Member Herbold.

I guess I just disagree respectfully that I would suggest that are all of the sort of challenges of the program worked out?

No.

It's a pilot.

It's a continuation of a pilot.

All of the agents that I think you articulated a concern about whether they have the resources to do the case management that you'd like to see, all of those agencies want this funded.

All of them want it funded.

They are not saying don't fund because we don't have the resources.

They are saying fund it.

Mary's Place, Salvation Army, Lehigh, all of these organizations that are getting resources to these folks.

We heard it during a committee meeting during the year.

I think there were six people that testified who were sleeping downstairs who basically said these beacons have saved their life and got them into housing.

I've asked the department to evaluate repeatedly.

They've tried to, and one of the questions I had to the human services department is, what is your process to consider something new and bold and challenging and trying to find that intersection between technology and giving actual resources to the people who are experiencing homelessness?

Forget all of these organizations, just write to the people.

What's your intake process for technology?

And I think there's some challenges there.

Coming from the private sector, we have a very stringent process on how you look at new ideas, new products, new services, and to try to pilot them.

And I think we are deficient there.

So this modest investment of $75,000 is working.

that you have beacon holders actually getting food and services and clothing.

And most importantly, what they are testifying to, and we heard a woman in tears yesterday saying this, that people are knowing their story.

So while the beacon not only allows people to get food, clothing, access to services, They're human beings and they weren't, many of them were not born homeless.

They had a medical condition or a bad family arrangement or something that caused them to be, and people are understanding their story.

So it humanizes the process.

So I would suggest that you have a proven technology that they're able to produce real outcomes.

You do not have a deficient, agency base that are saying we can't do the case management.

And I think that, again, from a pilot standpoint, a modest investment of $75,000 makes all the sense in the world.

And they are on a shoestring budget.

There is a nonprofit involved called Survive the Streets.

They've been around since 1999. They would be the organization that works closely with these other nonprofits to make sure this works.

I don't know much similar.

I just don't know much about your your navigator to support human services certificate program.

I'm not going to denigrate that because these are people that many of whom experience homelessness and are trying to improve their lives and so that certainly seems like noble work, but in a nutshell it seems like we would be investing $75,000 toward a person, a navigator, an employee, as opposed to $75,000 that are potentially helping hundreds and hundreds of people experiencing homelessness.

So for me, it's a higher return on investment.

Thank you.

Council Member Gonzalez, would you like to speak to it as well?

Sure, I'll be brief.

I think Council Member Herbold covered most of the issues related to the revenue source.

My funding request is different than Council Member Herbold's.

Mine would reallocate, would cut the $75,000 that is in the Chair's balanced budget package and redirect those dollars to the Rental Assistance Pilot Program that provides a shallow rental subsidy to families that are and individuals who are dependent on federal disability benefits.

So I want to start off by first acknowledging and thanking you, Chair Bagshaw, for your support for this project and its potential to prevent and or resolve the housing instability of a very specific and vulnerable group of individuals and families who, as I just mentioned, are dependent on federal disability benefits.

This proposal originally was close to $700,000 as proposed.

And I really, again, appreciate you Chair Bagshaw for largely funding the program.

The additional $75,000 would serve the purpose of allowing for robust evaluation of that pilot program, which I think is really critical and important for us to get that evaluation.

in order to make our case to the state legislature as to why we believe that they need to establish a broader long-term solution to address the benefits cliff associated with families and individuals who are able to access affordable housing but unfortunately face a benefits cliff that then forces them out of a stable housing situation back onto the streets of Seattle to unfortunately continue to experience homelessness.

So my redirection of the $75,000 would go towards making sure that we have enough funds in the Home for Good pilot project to connect hundreds of people experiencing homelessness with stable housing, and to make sure that we have the appropriate evaluation mechanisms in place to make the case for either ongoing funding in the future, during the next biennial budget, and also to do some advocacy down at the state legislature for that purpose.

So, like Councilmember Erbold, I share concerns about the proposed Samaritan Beacon program.

I think My perspective is perhaps a little different.

I'm not, I think, for me it's important to not get into the space of criticizing the Beacon Program as a private enterprise, which it currently is.

But I think the question for me as a policymaker making decisions about limited public funds is whether or not at this point this program, The Samaritan program is ready for prime time in terms of investment of public dollars to continue to expand its program.

So for me that really is the question and I think that there's enough unanswered questions about how the program's model is designed.

that leads me to believe that at this juncture, we don't have enough information to fully, to fund the Samaritan program at $75,000 for next year.

I do think it would be prudent to have a statement of legislative intent as suggested by Council Member Herbold to really dig into some of the questions that have been raised in my mind about the program and whether or not the answers will in the future merit public investment is to be seen based on what we get from that evaluation.

So I think I'm cautious about creating additional strain to the system.

We know that case managers and social workers that do this really difficult work in our city are in fact currently overburdened and we certainly don't want to create a system where increasing the burden on those case managers without recognizing that they need additional resources as well.

So while I appreciate that some nonprofits have written to us saying that they, you know, think that the program should continue, I also think that it's important for us to independently review that and come up with a decision about whether or not we think that the system as it currently exists can tolerate more of a burden without additional resources.

So for those reasons, I just think that taking the slower approach to evaluating the program a little bit more and then determining whether or not it merits public investment is an important exercise for us to take.

I know that the county, I think, according to you, Chair, is looking at potentially investing in this program as well.

I think it's fair to say that This program hasn't yet received any public financing at this point.

It's been primarily and exclusively private funding.

So I just think that it's important for us to not denigrate the program, but be cautious about it in an endorsed budget process.

allocating funds to this program at this juncture until we have a little bit more information.

So, that's it.

All right, thank you.

So, I'm going to ask for two separate races.

Go ahead.

Sure, of course.

Two against one.

You're creating conflict.

No, I'm in a happy mood.

I'm in a happy mood this morning.

There's a lot of precedent in the city.

This is technology, this new technology.

There's a lot of precedent in the city where we have sampled technology in a pilot program.

Body cameras would be a good example of where we started with a small pilot to see if it would be a good tool to address police accountability and police actions when there's no one around.

Again, this is a modest investment and what do we know about it so far?

We know that $100,000 of cash from the streets, from people who had some kind of empathy or sympathy for people experiencing homelessness has been transferred to participants in the trial.

We know that people in the homelessness can get free of charge a now a piece of technology that allows them to receive direct funding.

So and again, the money is not going to a for-profit organization.

It's going for the Survive the Streets nonprofit.

But most technology are going to come out of the profit sector.

And so I think that, again, we can go through some of our Wi-Fi setups and some other things in the city that we've done as a trial basis.

So it's not unprecedented that we haven't made a modest investment to see if the technology works, always making sure that it's aligned with the strategy.

Where we are, I think, deficient, and I'd agree with both my colleagues on this point, that we just don't know enough about it.

And that's why I think they've been doing work.

They've been on a shoestring budget.

But I want this budget to reflect something new and something bold to get direct services right to the people experiencing homelessness.

And that's why I think it's a good investment.

I'll rest with that.

Okay, do I see three?

I do.

Okay.

If, I don't think we have to do anything against at this point, so we'll move on to number two, Council Member Gonzalez's.

If you support that, raise your hand, please.

You don't want to add your name as a co-sponsor.

Okay.

You got the count?

Thank you.

All right, we're going to start.

Go ahead.

Moving for the rest of the day, can you just sort of say the count?

I don't want to keep going like this every single time.

You got a better shot, I can't see.

So, Tom, he's asking for you to give a statement of the count.

So, I saw three for the first one and three for the second one.

Two, three, four, five.

Looks like Allie's got something here.

Multiple counters.

Morning, Council Members.

I think what we saw were the primary sponsor plus two, Council Member O'Brien and Council Member Swant, for the first item, deal 12A1, and for the second item, home HOM 13C1, the primary sponsor, Council Member Gonzalez, as well as Council Member O'Brien and Council Member Swant.

That's what I saw as well.

Thank you.

Thank you for double-checking.

Okay.

Anything else?

Nope.

All right.

Just for my perspective, I really appreciate the conversation.

I am more aligned with what I heard from my colleagues, Councilmember Herbold and Gonzales, which is why I voted to support both those.

As far as which place the money goes for, I'm happy to be part of future conversations or to figure out the best use.

I think that we have heard from a lot of people that have testified that they've benefited from the Beacon technology, and I don't doubt that.

There's lots of things we know we can do that save lives.

We had a lot of people talk to us today about things that can do that.

And so figuring out the best way to spend the limited resources we have I think is a critically important thing.

I also appreciate Councilmember Harrell wanting to be innovative and trying new things.

At the moment, where I land is I think there are private sector folks that have made some investments in this technology, and I think that's an appropriate place to get their investment for now until the public can better understand how this technology and program stacks up with some of the other things.

Just more information I'd like to get, so thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for those comments.

All right, we'll move on to item number three.

Item number three is Statement of Legislative Intent CJ182.

It would request the city auditor conduct a review of the Seattle Municipal Courts Probation Program.

This is unchanged from the submittal of the slide to be included in the initial balancing package.

And it would request a study on the impacts of probation on people of color who are currently or have previously been in, excuse me, in the probation program.

with the report back September 15th, 2020. This is sponsored by Council Member Gonzales.

Council Member Gonzales, would you like to speak to this?

Yes, sure.

I'll keep it really brief.

So this is a resurrection of sorts from the first round.

So this would request that the City Auditor conduct a review of the Seattle Municipal Courts Probation Program.

We have run the language of the Statement of Legislative Intent by the City Auditor's Office and have heard from them that they believe that they are able to do this work and that they would be able to engage in the body of work and have a report back to us by September 15th of 2020. It's possible that we might be able to shorten up that timeline based on what we see in the report from the Vera Institute.

So my hope is that the Vera Institute report, which is also doing some evaluation of the court's probation system, will perhaps give us a little bit more of an indication of how much and how deeply the auditor will have to dive into the probation department's system.

So I think, you know, we certainly don't want to duplicate the work of the Vera Institute, but we just simply don't know what that report is going to say at this juncture.

We expect that that report will be delivered.

at the end of November.

So we'll have, unfortunately, immediately after the budget, a little bit better sense of the depth and the breadth of what the auditor's scope of work will be as it relates to taking a further look at the probation department.

But the goal here is to really, we continue to hear from the court that they believe that their probation program is state of the art.

I continue to have questions about that position and about probation as a concept.

And I think this is a good opportunity for us to have a neutral party come in and really take a look at what the probation department is doing and what it is not doing so that we are as a council in the future are best equipped in making better informed decisions about ongoing investments in the probation department.

Good.

Thank you for that.

And I've spoken with Councilmember Gonzalez about this and I'm going to support this slide, but I'm hopeful that we can have this as a phase one with a phase two, something we've talked about briefly, is really to have our auditor look at a systems review, particularly after we have our new investments in LEED.

Because what I'm hearing from the municipal court judges is that if they have additional tools where they can assign people into housing, that is available, that they've got case managers available, that we know the individuals who may have been charged and released.

If we can increase the number of people that we can contact and either introduce to the LEAD program or make sure that they're getting the services they need, we're hopeful that in our criminal justice, just the entire process, that we're keeping more people out of jail and getting people onto a healthier lifestyle and I would support this as a phase one looking at probation and then next fall or whenever it's released take a second look at what system review we could make to see if things are working as we're hoping that they will.

Good.

Do we need to raise your hands on this one or on slides?

Okay.

Very good.

Those in favor of supporting Councilmember Gonzalez's slide, it's item number three, raise your hand.

I hope I'm not raising my hand anywhere.

I didn't.

I'm not.

I'm not.

Okay.

All right.

So, it looks like there are seven yeses on that.

And just to clarify, council members, because I think I misspoke before, these are signing up as co-sponsors, not taking a vote.

I think I might have said I counted votes, but just want to clarify, we will add you as co-sponsors.

Thank you.

All right, item four.

Item four is council budget action CJ2B1.

It would impose a proviso on finance general reserves for the city attorney's office staffing of a case conferencing pilot.

I just note that there is currently a proviso in the balancing package about this item.

The difference here is some addition of language into what the report back on the proviso would be.

And it adds in addition to the that are already in the proviso, how the city attorney's office will coordinate with case managers or others that are not employed by the city, but who hold lawful releases of information from individuals with behavioral health conditions and high exposure to enforcement and prosecution, and how those individuals who are permitted to share health information will be incorporated into the case conferencing process.

Sponsored by Council Member Gonzales.

Nothing to add.

Okay, very good.

Those who would like to add your name as a co-sponsor, raise your hand.

All right, item number five.

Amy Gore, Council Central Staff.

Agenda item number five is Council Budget Action CJ62B1, which would add $522,600 for youth diversion, education, and restorative justice programming.

and cut $522,600 for recruitment and retention initiatives from SPD.

I believe that's at $1.6 million, so that would be approximately one-third of the funds for that purpose in the budget.

And this is sponsored by Councilmember Swann.

Councilmember Swann.

This is, as Amy said, a budget action to fund community-based restorative justice organizations who have been doing, on a shoestring budget, heroic work helping connect young people with positive, enriching activities like the arts, political engagement, and education.

These are diversion programs that are essential for protecting young people from entering the spiral of the criminal justice system.

And they have been very successful.

The programs have been very successful.

We've talked to the impressive young people who are involved in these organizations, advocating for these budget amendments.

This year, the Youth Consortium, and I mentioned this in our committee before, the Youth Consortium organized one of the most dynamic candidate forums of the whole election year.

And it's an example of the dedicated and professional work that young people can do and will do when they're given a chance and when they're given the resources to do it.

Just so very specifically, of these funds, $300,000 would be allocated to the Human Services Department to contract with a community-based organization such as Youth Consortium, which includes community passageways and $122,600 would be allocated to the Human Services Department to contract with a community-based organization such as Creative Justice to find an arts-based alternative to secure detention for young people in Seattle.

And just a little bit about the Creative Justice program.

Each Creative Justice session is project-based.

Youth are referred to Creative Justice to enroll in Three to four month long sessions that meet twice weekly and each session has a unique focus that is collaboratively directed by the youth and the mentor artists who work together as a team.

And the goal is to establish a creative community space to share stories, heal and amplify the voices of youth and communities most impacted by the destructive school to prison to deportation pipeline.

So, I think this is a worthy program.

And then, last but not least, $100,000 allocated to the Human Services Department to contract with a community-based organization such as the Rainier Beach Action Coalition's Corner Greeters, and speakers in the public comments spoke about this, to fund youth outreach services.

Since 2015, the Rainier Beach Action Coalition has implemented a youth-generated community-led project called the Corner Greeters, which is a non-arrest crime reduction autonomous community safety project that is led by young people and community members in the Rainier Beach neighborhood.

And what this project does is transform spaces that are most prevalent for youth crime by employing youth from the neighborhood to create engaging events including food, music, and information about local resources.

And in the years since its implementation, crime has decreased in the Rainier Beach neighborhood and young people have organized around a number of issues.

including but not limited to restorative justice, neighborhood beautification, and are currently on a mission to give out 200 trees in Rainier Beach.

This would be funded by reducing money the mayor has allocated to the Seattle Police Department for what the so-called recruitment and retention initiatives for the police.

The mayor has allocated $1.6 million outreach to urge people to become police officers.

I do not agree with this, and this budget action would reduce that part of money by $522,000, which is a very, very modest ask, to be honest, given the complete disproportionality in how much the police department gets funds in the context of the mass incarceration system, you know, divert that much to about just over half a million dollars to pay for these important community programs.

The last time I brought this up in the budget committee.

Some council members pointed to the money Office of Civil Rights will soon make available for some community organizations to apply for grants like, for programs like this, to apply for grants for them.

And, you know, the question was, why should we fund these programs separately?

Let's be clear, these programs are deeply underfunded.

We are not in any danger of overfunding these programs and wasting money.

There's no danger of that happening.

But more fundamentally, I don't agree with making these community organizations which are really sacrificing their own resources to make sure that young people don't get caught up in the prison system, which is really such a transformative thing for young people's lives.

Why should we force them to jump through these hoops, applying for grants, We're waiting for months and then with only a fraction of them being funded.

Let's fund these programs up front.

Let the police department apply for a grant for their recruitment advertising if they want.

I mean, in the context of the police department having accounts still have a long way to go for accountability towards the community.

Anyway, I'll stop there.

A quick question, Council Member Swann, you named a number of organizations.

We've had Dom's Group here multiple times.

Were they included?

Yes, yes.

So I mentioned Youth Consortium, that includes Community Passageways, which is Dom's Group.

Thank you.

All right, those who would like, oh, you want to speak to it?

I do.

Thank you.

I just want to, for the record, state that the $1 million that this council allocated during last year's budget process for programs like this and the related way of dispersing those dollars using a community-driven grant process was in response to these organizations' requests that we use the Social Justice Fund model for dispersing these dollars.

So this model of dispersing the funds, that it be a process that is driven by both the recipients of future funding working together collaboratively with the individuals who would benefit from that funding in designing what the priorities are, what the process is, and how to select among a number of different bidding organizations.

That model of funding is one that was proposed to us as a better way of getting those dollars out the door rather than the way the city traditionally does so.

I also want to just reference the fact that I do believe that These programs could benefit from more funding, definitely.

I also believe that the recruitment crisis and the staffing crisis in our police department is something that is real.

It's not imagined.

I had the opportunity, the sad opportunity to spend time with constituents in South Park last night.

about and the police department to discuss what has been done so far and what is going to happen now that an innocent individual was shot and murdered in his home, a father of five, a member of the South Park community.

And He and his family live in a house that is next door to a house of interest, a house of interest for a long time.

And SPD has been working on it together with the city's law department in trying to figure out how to abate the property and the activities associated with this property.

And there was really a lot of frustration from the community members in that room about the lack of police resources for the South Park neighborhood.

And I believe that the lack of staffing both on patrol and on the investigation side and on proactive policing has really huge impact on low-income communities of color and I'm committed to working to try to address this staffing crisis that not only Seattle has but large Police departments across the country aren't meeting their staffing goals, and I think we have to devote resources to doing it.

I don't know that the number in the current budget is the right number, and I'm willing to take a look at that, but I don't like the idea of these two things being pitted against each other because they're both really critical needs and I would be doing my constituents a disservice, the folks in low-income communities that are most harmed by violence and crime, if I wasn't doing everything I could to help the department address their staffing challenges.

Thank you.

Can I respond?

First of all, on the first point Council Member Herbold made, yes, it's accurate that the same organizations that have put this proposal together I've brought forward.

This is not my proposal, it is the proposal from the community and from the community organizations together.

It's accurate that they put forward that model that the Office of Civil Rights has used and will be using.

However, this also has been put together by them, so it is not about pitting the model that they proposed earlier against their new proposal.

It's not like that.

It's simply putting more money into the programs that are working, and this proposal itself is not pitting one organization against the other.

The organizations are all working together, and I didn't come up with these numbers randomly.

It is something that they all came together and figured out, and they said, maybe we should allocate this much to the Youth Consortium, this much to Creative Justice and this much to the Rainier Beach Action Coalition and Corner Greeters.

So I don't, it's not accurate, it's not my opinion, it's a fact, it's not accurate to present this as something contradictory to what was in the past because it's the same organization that are making both the proposals.

It's simply, for the council, the question is, do you support, do you believe that these programs can use a little more funding or not?

That's the question.

We should not use these organizations as if this proposal is somehow opposed to what they wish.

This is their proposal.

So let me just say that for the record.

I'm also quite stunned, you know, habitually, this is not the first time, how much scrutiny council members give to small, tiny, tiny, tiny amounts of money to programs that have been proven 100% to work and is as a diversion away from the school-to-prison-to-deportation pipeline, which is a deep crisis facing our communities of color and low-income communities.

This is a small amount of money.

Let's put this in perspective.

The police department is the largest, by far the largest funded department in this city.

This is a department that has had long-term problems.

It still faces major accountability issues.

and it is funded to the tune of $410 million, roughly, and we're talking about $522,000.

It is a drop in the bucket, and I really don't believe that this is in any way pitting one thing against the other.

It is a very small amount of money.

I also find it disturbing that low-income communities of color are being used as a voice to fund police departments, I don't think that is speaking for low-income communities of color.

Low-income communities of color are mainly facing a police brutality issue.

I find it quite jarring that this is being presented as if the restorative justice funds are somehow going to be damaging because we need to recruit in the police department.

And last but not least, yes, there may be, from your point of view, there may be a staffing crisis.

I don't believe that there is a staffing crisis in the sense that it's already overfunded.

It's a big police department.

But if there is a staffing crisis and if the police officers are facing demoralization, that is because they have lost the trust of the community and that is entirely the fault of the way the system works and the way the police department works.

And if they want to re-earn that trust, then the accountability needs to be restored and the political establishment also...

also bears a responsibility for that.

It is not just the police department, it is also the, also City Hall has to have a responsibility for that.

And I don't think spending money on advertising to attract police officers or department is going to work.

Accountability needs to be fixed, then the problems will be solved.

Further comments?

I have a quick question.

Okay.

I'm not sure if Council Member Sawant, you can answer this or if Greg needs to come up to the table, but it's unclear to me from the...

What are we calling these things, foreign seas?

It's unclear to me where the $522,000 is coming from, because there was a $1.6 million inclusion in the mayor's proposed budget.

So Greg, could you give us a sense of where the cuts would come, what we're cutting out of the 1.6 million?

Because I know that we've, Greg, you and I have done some, had some conversations about Um...

some of the proposed funding being squishy in terms of what it is we're actually purchasing.

So I just want to get a sense, or is being proposed to be funded.

So can you just give us a better sense of what, where the 522 is coming from?

Craig Doss, Council Central staff.

So the police department and the 2020 proposed budget, the mayor's 2020 proposed budget would receive $1.6 billion for recruitment and retention initiative.

It's both of those things.

And the chair's budget took out of that $1.6 million, $385,000 by doing two things, by stretching the sergeant's training from one year to two years, and then also cutting in half the training coordinator position.

and then also requiring that the testing fees for Seattle Police recruits not be fully reimbursed by the department, but rather be means tested to make sure that folks that could not afford the fees would not have to pay them, but folks that could, would.

And so what happened was the $1.6 million was reduced by the chair's budget by 385,000.

If this cut was accepted, then it would further reduce the remaining money and the mayor would have to figure out and the police department how they wanted to allocate that cut across the 12-some initiatives that are part of this package.

And I guess my, okay that's helpful, and so my question is on the the remaining cuts, there was a lot of different initiatives and proposals that came out of the work group that was looking at the recruitment and retention issues.

My recollection is that we were struggling more on the retention side than the recruitment side, and I still am not having a clear sense of what the $522,000 as proposed by Council Member Sawant would cut.

The largest amount...

In terms of the specific initiatives?

I think the largest, well the initiatives, there's 12 of them and I can, I have a handout that shows how each one of them is funded.

But the largest one by far was 800 or 787,000, I believe, and that was the sergeant's training.

And so the council has already made a cut to that and spread it out over two years.

I would suggest that at the $522,000 level, that would definitely impact the sergeant training.

How it would be spread amongst the other initiatives, I can't tell you for sure.

I would appreciate as a follow-up, if we can get some additional granular detail around that so that we can make a better informed decision, that would be helpful.

Or, looks like you might have a now.

Council members I would just add the way the proposal was prepared it doesn't the the sponsor didn't specify exactly which program would be reduced so without If this move forward we could add specificity if the council wanted to say specifically we want these six of the 12 programs fully funded and the cuts that come from these other positions.

So Greg can work with you on that specific detail.

But as was proposed, it was just reducing the pot overall and left it to the department to decide where they would make those reductions.

And it's just proposed as a haircut off the top.

It is, exactly.

And if there's interest, I'm totally happy for my office to look deeper into it.

But I also don't feel hesitant in any way to propose this funding these programs instead of that money giving to the police department.

And we can talk about what specific aspects of the police department.

Okay.

Walk you through this handout.

I'm not sure that the chair wants you to go through the handout in specificity, but I appreciate the information and am happy to take a look at it.

No, it's excellent, Greg.

If it's okay with all of you, I'd like to spend some time with you.

I'll go back to council members who want other council members and we will have a proposal on this.

So those who would like to add your names as co-sponsors to item number four, no, I'm sorry, item number five, council members who want, raise your hand, please.

So, all right.

Can I ask you just a question?

I know we're not going to go, just a question on this document.

If there's a line on 2019 for these 12 strategies, does that just mean there was no money in for the budget?

So the proposed is all new money for new ideas or efforts?

Some of the initiatives, they started early, Council Member, so this was money that they put into the budget for an early start on some of them, and that's in the Q3 supplemental budget.

So, I'm not understanding the answer.

So, there's just a dash with no money for 2019?

Yeah, I'm sorry, they didn't need money.

for those particular initiatives in 2019.

So they are likely ongoing.

How could they do these things with no money and then they need money for 2020?

Yeah, in the 2020 proposed column, you'll see that many of them, that's where the money first appears, and it's just because that's when they plan on starting it.

And they're relying on...

So these are new, most of these are new activities...

Yes.

...that have not been funded and have not been...

They all are.

Okay.

These are new strategies.

Okay, thank you.

All right, let's move on to the next item, which would be item number six.

Okay, thank you.

Brian Goodnight, Council Central staff.

Item number six on the agenda is deal 8A1, and this is a statement of legislative intent that would request that the Department of Education and Early Learning, also known as DEEL, Coordinate with the Washington State Opportunity Scholarship, or WSOS, and industry partners to develop a plan for implementing a municipal match scholarship program in Seattle that complements the city's Seattle Promise Scholarship Program, or Seattle Promise Program.

WSOS provides scholarships to low and middle income students pursuing degrees, certificates, or apprenticeships in high demand trade, healthcare, or STEM fields.

And the slide requests that deal provide a report to council by March 31st summarizing the work with WSOS.

And this comes from Council Member Pacheco.

Thank you.

Council Member Pacheco, do you want to add anything?

No, I think you summed it up pretty quick, pretty good, but we had unanimous support.

I think it's a really good idea for the city to leverage its resources in partnership with the state to provide more educational opportunities for kids.

WSOS is a program that works and focuses on low-income and low-income youth, and so hoping to provide more opportunity.

Okay, thank you.

Those who would like to add your name as a co-sponsor to this item number six, raise your hand.

All right, thank you.

Okay, item number seven.

Is this yours, Brian?

Yes, it is.

Thank you.

So item number seven is deal 10A1, and this is also a statement of legislative intent that would request that deal provide a report or presentation to council by May 1st describing its demographic data collection and analysis process.

as part of the city's recent education levy deals committed to disaggregating data in order to promote equity in the city's education investments.

And so this would ask them to specifically report on how that data is collected and disaggregated, who they partner with for data collection and sharing, data sources and opportunity gaps that are currently present in the city's education investments.

And this one comes from Council Member Pacheco.

Do you want to add anything?

No, I appreciate the good summary.

Just wanting to get additional data and elevate the conversations of the council so that we can improve access and opportunity to kids of color here in the city of Seattle, so.

Good.

Thank you.

Those who would like to add your name as a co-sponsor to item number seven, raise your hand.

Good.

Thank you.

All right, item number eight.

Commissioner Whitson, Council Central staff.

This is also a statement of legislative intent, DON5B1.

It requests that the Department of Neighborhoods develop a proposal for a community-led place-based violence prevention initiative for the Westwood and South Delridge neighborhoods modeled on Rainier Beach, a beautiful safe place for youth.

Good.

Councilmember Herbold, would you like to add anything?

Let's see here.

Yeah, again, this was a funding request that I had made earlier in the budget process.

It did not move forward and so this replaces the request for $250,000 with a report to apply the Rainier Beach, a beautiful, safe place for youth model in Westwood and South Delridge.

We understand through pursuing this budget requests that the safe and healthy community subcabinet of the mayor's office is considering this model for other neighborhoods.

And so they're already considering expansion, expanding the model.

I just want to get this particular location on their list.

Okay, very good.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

Those who'd like to add your name as a co-sponsor on this item number eight, I'm sorry, item number seven, raise your hand.

Very good.

Item nine.

Jeff Sims, Council of Central Staff.

Item number nine is HOM 14B1.

This proposal was initially proposed but not included in the initial budgeting package.

The differences are really nuances around how funding occurs here and then also the number of villages.

So this new proposal would discontinue the navigation team, all the funding associated with it, and then also $200,000 that was provided in the mayor's proposed budget and shut down and relocate the Northlake Tiny Home Village.

Those two funding streams, the NAV team and the money to relocate Northlake, would be used instead to open as many as 14 new tiny home villages, which is, again, a little bit different than the previous iteration, which would have used about $10 million in unspecified funding and would have used some funding that's already utilized in the initial balancing package for a different tiny home village.

So, you're saying this is revenue neutral?

Where's it coming from?

Then this is new by discontinuing the navigation team and by taking $200,000 in one-time funding that is currently provided to shut down and relocate North Lake Tiny Home Village.

Got it.

Thank you.

This is Council Member Sawant's proposal.

Thank you.

So just to reiterate a point that I had made in our last discussion when we had talked about tiny house villages before the chair brought forward the balanced package of amendments to the budget.

If the mayor's office were to carry out a major overhaul of the navigation team and the way it works, rather than sweeping people, if it were to do the task of actually taking homeless, unsheltered homeless neighbors and offering them real options that would work for them, take them from being unsheltered and living in dangerous locations, exposed to crime and so on, into options like tiny house villages, then I would strongly support something like that.

But that is not the reality of the navigation team.

That's only on paper.

In reality, the navigation team is a sweepstime and Our movement has been pushing for years to stop the sweeps because they are inhumane and ineffective.

I would also say just to say something, share something that we said in the press conference earlier this morning.

I think the election results are also a rejection of the idea of sweeps because I think as I said before the sweeps candidates have been swept.

So I think it's important that the council really take a serious look at this and you know and sort of and if we agree that the navigation team is not actually doing what we want it to do then we need money to be allocated to solutions that do work, you know tiny house villages being one of them.

First I wanted to acknowledge that we have already in the balancing package put forward by Chair Baksha we have one $1.8 million to expand tiny house villages, which I'm very happy about.

And I also wanted to thank Council Member Mosqueda, who's on parental leave, but who has worked with us on it.

And I really appreciate that.

But we know that organizations like Lehigh, Cherville, Nicholsville, also many faith-based organizations have told us that they could operate many more villages if the city provided the funding and granted the permit.

So, you know, we have separately, we have the legislation to expand the permitting ability and also the land use code flexibility for that.

This budget action could fund an additional 14 villages paid for by stopping the sweeps and by not moving the Georgetown and North Lake tiny house villages.

Also just in that context, I wanted to say I completely oppose the mayor's proposal to dismantle the North Lake tiny house village in the dead of winter.

This is just inhumane.

This proposal is inhumane and I don't think it should go forward.

And again, we've made many, we've heard before, We've heard many times before about Taney House Villages.

I appreciate your support also, Council Member Baksha, but I feel like we can actually do even better and make sure we don't dismantle any existing villages.

Further comments?

Those who would like to add your name as a co-sponsor to item number nine, raise your hand.

Okay, item number 10.

Item number 10 is HOM 6C1.

HOM 6 is already in the initial balancing package, providing the same amount of funding.

The difference here is it's kind of nuanced.

In this case, this new CBA would add a proviso specifying that the funds should be used to contract for additional outreach services, whereas the proposal that is currently in the budget package would allow either HSD to directly hire those staff or to contract for additional outreach services.

This proposal is put forward by Council Member Gonzales.

Council Member Gonzales, do you want to add anything?

Probably not.

It's item number 10. Yes, I will add something on this one.

So this is This would be a proviso on a provision or a funding request that was advanced by Council Member Juarez and this really is just a reflection of some ongoing concerns that I think both I and Council Member Herbold expressed during these budget deliberations around homeless outreach as it is connected or purported to be connected with the navigation team.

So I continue to have concerns about the navigation team structure and don't believe that we should be looking at expanding the navigation team at this point.

I recognize that Chair Bagshaw, you revised the form B to really focus on homeless outreach services.

I continue to believe that there are appropriate models for that homeless outreach work.

Unfortunately, there's some language in the form B that talks about how these resources would be allocated to outreach workers that are either within and currently employed at HSD or to a third party.

service provider.

And my understanding is that the only outreach workers that are employed at HSD are, in fact, part and parcel of the navigation team.

So I think it's an ambiguity that would lead us to the ultimate result of continued expansion of the navigation team in a period where I think a majority of the council has signaled that they are not interested in further expansion of the navigation team at this point, so I think that I'm very supportive of having additional homeless outreach services.

I'm very supportive of Council Member Juarez's intent that those services focus on North Seattle.

She's done I think an amazing job of making the case of how North Seattle continues to be service desert, not just in her district, but in all of North Seattle.

And so I very much support the additional $210,000 of public investment in those homeless outreach services.

I just want to make sure that we are using models that are truly about outreach work, and we have seen some successful and popular models used in Ballard, U District, First Hill, Capitol Hill, and the Chinatown International District, where nonprofit-based outreach workers are able to better connect individuals to services and serve as a resource to neighborhood residents and businesses who have livability and public safety concerns.

And I think that that is a really appropriate and successful model.

And so this is similar to what I did last year when we were looking at a $250,000 investment for homeless outreach services, specifically for First Hill, Capitol Hill, and Chinatown or National District.

We worked with HSD to stand up our fee process and ultimately those dollars went to REACH.

There was a really great article in the Capitol Hill blog recently about the efficacy of that work now that the funds have been distributed, and I believe that the service provider that ultimately received the contract in a competitive bidding process was Reach, and they're doing really fantastic work as a result of those $250,000 that we invested last year.

So this would copy and paste from that model that was used last year.

It was a fast RFP process.

It wasn't overly burdensome or too long and ultimately the dollars were infused into the neighborhoods to make sure that those services were funded and that people were being meaningfully connected to the services that they needed while also addressing the livability and public safety concerns associated with unsanctioned encampments.

Great.

Council Member West, did you want to add?

Thank you.

I do.

Thank you, Council Member Gonzalez, for your concerns.

I appreciate that and thank you, Chair.

for adding this into the balancing package.

A little history here, we originally started asking for much more.

When we originally started and when we first brought this to the Chair's concern in our first packet, we were asking for $254,000.

By working with the Chair and we reduced that amount to $210,000 and then spent time, including a weekend, thank you Chair, to recognize that there are well over 300,000 people who just live in these three districts north of the Ship Canal, and that's not counting the people that work there, go to school there, and provide medical services.

I want to just go back on some language here that we have heard, which is a continual perennial issue for those of us representing the good city of Seattle, but as well as honoring the needs of our district.

To clarify, the language included in the Chair's proposal presented last Wednesday, November 6, includes the following language.

The positions will be either HSD employees or employees with a contracted agency.

And as you know, the North End, in particular, which I can speak to for District 5, we have a phenomenal, very good relationship.

with our social service providers and contracted agencies.

The chair's proposal provides an option to the agency to assess whether to have the positions be in-house or contracted.

Obviously, I would probably err more on the side of using our social service organizations that are on the ground that we've been working with with the last four years.

This budget action removes that option.

Instead, it makes the outreach worker the same as the mental health outreach workers in the U District and Ballard.

Now, the difference is that in the U District and Ballard, the workers are supported and partially funded by a local business improvement association.

This position does not have that backing.

What I most like that we've come to agreement on is that we have some flexibility with HSD and community.

We have learned from our service providers that they don't just provide services or restricted to just one particular district, but they are actually working citywide because we have, believe it or not, folks, a lot of folks that have family and friends, not just in other districts in the city of Seattle, but in the county as well.

I remain concerned that outreach should be done by trained professional social workers who are able to address public health and safety needs with the backing of the NAV team and every other group that was listed.

I want to thank Council Member Gonzales for the sheet that she added more language about who those providers are, and I'll get that to you in a minute.

My original proposal was to ensure that the city's investment in outreach to encampment reached the North End.

My personal experience has been that the North End needs more targeted support appropriate to the specific issues facing the North End, particularly public health issues and safety issues.

Again, the services are not limited nor restricted to any particular district, but these folks would work with us citywide so we can get our people sheltered, get the services that they need, and help them find their way home.

What I like about, the language that I do like about what Councilmember Gonzales stated is the key word is collaboration.

We have witnessed and worked with the navigation team and LEAD.

That's why I have supported the budget increase for LEAD to the tune of $3.5 million.

We have worked with local business, the community police teams, the beat patrols, faith-based organizations, the D5 Business Coalition and local business chambers, the D5 Community Network, as well as the North Precinct and Captain Sano.

We will continue this collaborative process that starts from a place of humanity and empathy.

So I want to thank Council Member Gonzalez for highlighting these concerns.

I want to thank the Chair for working with our staff and our community in this group to address this issue.

And I ask that you support the language included in the Chair's proposal and reject this significant limitation.

Thank you.

Further comments?

I just want to clarify that the only limitation that I have included is to strike the quote either HSD employee close quote language.

it doesn't restrict at all any other ability for the Human Services Department to fund expanded outreach to homeless individuals that are residing in unsanctioned encampments in North Seattle.

The reason that I have suggested striking those three words from Chair Bagshaw, your original inclusion in the balance package is because The only individuals within HSD doing outreach work are employees of the navigation team.

So there was, and I have continued to express objections about further expansion of the navigation team given prior conversations up here on the dais during these deliberative processes and during Councilmember Herbold's committee hearings over the last year and a half, maybe two years.

And I think those are unresolved.

And so for me to, it just seems like a cute way to get around the objection of expanding the navigation team.

And I'd rather just not do that.

I'd rather just focus on getting the dollars into the community to people who are actually doing outreach work to these individuals who live in North Seattle.

I'm completely on board with that.

And again, my only objection to the chair's original proposal is the language, either HSD employees, because that's just code for more people working on the NAV team.

Again, the $210,000 is intact.

I haven't proposed to modify that investment as included in the balance package and believe that there is an opportunity for us to work with service providers who do work across the city, regardless of whether or not that BIA system exists or not, to be able to actually reach the individuals who need these services and who need the outreach to be done and to meaningfully connect them with individuals.

reach and other kinds of those other organizations similar to REACH have really strong connections and relationships across the city and are accustomed to doing their work in a citywide fashion.

And so, again, really I'm supportive of the infusion of an additional $210,000 into North Seattle to address these concerns.

believe that we should be relying on our nonprofit service providers to do that work as opposed to adding additional bodies to the navigation team.

Thank you.

Councilmember Herbold.

Just in addition to that, I think the strength of this proposal is that outreach workers in the city are now being deployed to focus on geographic areas.

And that's a much stronger model and we're hearing great things from residents and small business owners in those communities that that model of Working with community to identify where the priorities are for outreach allows our contracted outreach workers to be much more responsive.

The NAB team, on the other hand, is not geographically focused.

Whereas the city takes complaints about locations that individuals in the city want the NAV team to pay attention to, the way the city decides where to deploy NAV team resources is based on a citywide review of the complaints and the purported objective evaluation of the health and safety impacts of those outdoor encampments.

And so the idea is that the city intends to use this objective assessment, not where the complaints are coming from.

And so I think this proposal to increase funding for for outreach really aligns with what we are already seeing is working really well since we've sort of changed the way we're deploying outreach resources.

Chair?

Yes, and go ahead and then I'll call on you, Council Member Pacheco.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Go ahead, I'll wait.

I just want to wrap up.

Okay, Council Member Pacheco.

Go for it.

Okay.

So I want to respectfully disagree with my colleagues.

This isn't a cute way to get around anything, quite frankly.

Those of us that obviously represent all of the City of Seattle but honor the needs of our district and who have been out there for the last four years that recognize that this isn't a philosophical discussion or argument about whether a NAV team is good or bad or ugly, those of us that have been physically on the ground, and I can count at least 12 instances where I've not just worked with the NAV team, but the mental health team and SPD, to getting people in-house and sheltered.

So this is our response to District 5 and the North End, I've just limited it, that we look at how we not only deploy, but how we enrich and how we continue to work together and that we don't have a philosophical, you know, position.

And I don't.

I philosophically don't, whether you, whether we're working with the NAV team and the success that we have seen, and I will continue to push forward that proposition.

I don't want to find ourselves in a philosophical argument about NAV team is good or NAV team is bad or don't expand it or please expand it.

What I'm trying to say representing the city of Seattle but honoring the needs of my district is that we have had some success and believe it or not a lot of complaints have come to success of sheltering the unsheltered, of getting services, of getting people into the McDermott house, of getting people into treatment, of getting people to North Helpline to sign up for housing and also eviction prevention.

And so with that, I would hope, again, and I've said this before and I'll say it again, I would hope that some of my colleagues would give some of us district representatives a little deference that we actually know what's going on in our community.

And I will leave it at that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Pacheco, did you want to add something?

Well, I'm just going to support Council Member Juarez, and here's why.

Given that I'm in this position for the interim, North Seattle is going to have two new district representatives.

And so the way that I perceive the language that the chair included was to provide flexibility to North Seattle and the North Seattle district champions, both from District 4 as well as District 5 and District 6. And so just wanting to provide flexibility for the two new council members.

And as that conversation continues, I know it's going to continue in the next year or so.

Thank you.

All right.

Council Member Sawant.

So, I mean, just to clarify for everybody who's watching, the proviso that is imposed in item number 10 says, of the appropriations of the 2020 budget for the addressing homelessness, section $210,000 is appropriate solely to enter into a new contract with a nonprofit service provider to conduct outreach to individuals experiencing homelessness.

What it's saying is that the money can only be used for something like a REACH program.

So that's a good thing, just wanted to clarify.

And also just in response to what Council Member Juarez was saying about the navigation team, first of all, I don't think that a discussion of whether the navigation team, as it is right now, not on paper, but what it actually does in the community, whether that is helpful or harmful to the community is not a philosophical discussion.

This is actual people's lives.

So this is a very real discussion for our homeless neighbors.

I don't think it is a district-specific thing.

I don't agree with this claim that because you are the council member for a given district that your position on the navigation team in that district is very specific to that district, and then maybe the navigation team is working differently in that district.

The navigation team is administered by the mayor's staff and the department, so the navigation team does the same thing everywhere, which is mostly sweeping people and very little beneficial aspect to it.

So I think the provisor is a good thing.

Okay.

Those who want to add your name as a co-sponsor to item number 11. Ten.

Raise your hand, please.

So this would be adding your name as a co-sponsor to Councilmember Gonzalez's proposal to add this proviso?

Yeah, I got that wrong.

I was looking at Councilmember Gonzalez.

I was thinking Jeff ruined my diabolical plan to trick you into voting against yourself.

Take that back.

Thank you.

All right.

Could you raise your hands again so we could confirm?

Okay.

So let's try the vote again.

Those who want to add your name as a co-sponsor to Council Member Gonzalez's proviso, raise your hand.

Thank you.

All right.

The next item, please.

Item number 11 is HOM 15B1.

This is also currently included in the initial balancing package, but this new council budget action would add some pieces to a proviso that would already be imposed on navigation team funding.

I want to note that HSD just only received this item, so there are some places that they might need further clarification on, or there might be some descriptions of some of the data points that we need to change the nuance of the language so that they can match it with data that's available readily, or things like that.

In essence, though, there are...

There's one item that would be added to the information that's provided every quarter.

That would be about the meetings that occur between the navigation team and other outreach providers on how to deploy and work with clients.

To the first quarter report, the one that would be due on January 31st, there's an addition of clarifying the definition of obstruction and how that would be clarified is detailed out.

That is a definition that's currently in our multi-departmental administrative rule and it would clarify a place where to make sure that there's no misinterpretation.

Also to the first quarter report, it would be added that a table be transmitted in that first quarter describing when an obstruction was, or what an obstruction, the obstruction was that justified not providing a notice, either 72 hours of notice for outreach or posting, so that we would have, the council would then receive clarity on what that obstruction was that constituted a need not to have advance notice for the encampment that was removed.

report that would be provided to the council by April 30th, 2020, there are two items that would be added as well.

The first is actually, I should say, is adding details to the staffing assessment that would be requested of the department, and the second would be requesting a theory of change for, one, an obstruction or a hazard removal, takes place rather than the theory of change that is currently provided that focuses on providing 72 hours of notice to an encampment based on providing both notification of when the removal would occur but also outreach activities and looking at the times that an obstruction or a hazard occur and you don't have to provide that as a different model and needing to understand the theory of change behind those.

Okay, Council Member Herboldt, would you like to add anything?

Absolutely, thank you.

So I think these additions help address some of the concerns that we've heard from folks as the The navigation team has shifted its focus away from doing 72-hour prior notice encampment removals that not only have prior notice but that also give access to individuals, to alternatives to their current outdoor living situation.

The shift to what are called or referred to as obstruction removals.

And the request for a theory of change for those obstruction removals is so that we as policymakers, as we vote on budgets that include funding for the navigation team, for us to understand what the purpose of those obstruction removals are.

Are they simply about removing people?

Or are we as policymakers to have expectations for how those removals impact people.

As it stands now, it's not clear that the folks that are doing the obstruction encampment removals are in a way that is consistent, contacting the navigation team and linking people to services.

And if that's not happening, we need to understand it.

We need to understand whether or not the intent is to connect those folks.

If it's not, I think this council needs to decide whether or not that aligns with our values as representatives of the city to try to help people as we also make places safer.

That's the intent of the additions in this new version of the reporting requirements.

I also want to highlight that I I'm asking the executive to respond to the council on how it is exactly they're defining obstruction, specifically as it relates to obstructions in parks.

It's unclear by reading the definition whether or not an encampment in a park is automatically an obstruction and in being called an obstruction, the people living at that location do not get 72 hours notice, do not get access to resources, or whether or not for it to be called an obstruction and is in a park, it actually has to be interfering with the park use, like in the middle of a playground.

On one hand, I can understand the decision to remove an encampment within a park without proper notice, if it is actually interfering with the legitimate use of a part of the property that is programmed for a use.

But if it is not having that sort of an interference with the use of the park, then I think those encampments should be subject to the 72-hour prior notice.

engagement with the NAB team, which is not clear that that is happening on an ongoing basis.

So that's the other part that we're trying to get at here.

One of the other items relates specifically to our central staff's request, as well as the city auditor's request, to attend meetings that the executive coordinates.

I've been very interested in promoting a recommendation of the city auditor that the city's approach towards addressing outdoor encampments be, replicate a model used by other cities and incident command, incident command, let's see.

There's an S, incident command system, let's say.

But it's a way of coordinating the actions of many departments on an ongoing basis.

And so we've been trying to get HSD and the executive to allow our central staff and the city auditor to sit in on the meetings that they do have so that we can compare the elements of an ICS system to what it is the city's doing and see whether or not it conforms with that kind of a response.

The executive has been resistant to having central staff and the auditor participate in those meetings.

So instead, what we're asking for is information about what occurs in those meetings, so agendas, dates, and meetings, and minutes of all meetings.

So again, that will give us something that we can analyze about how those meetings are being held and whether or not those meetings include elements of this sort of best practices incident command system approach.

And then lastly, I just want to note that Council members may recall that in previous years, I think the previous two years now, we have been getting weekly reports from HSD about encampment removals that are scheduled for the following week.

Because we are requiring that information to be provided as part of these quarterly reports, we do not have a slide or a proviso for 2020 for the weekly reports.

So, on one hand, we might be adding some things to these quarterly reports, but we're reducing the requirements for the weekly reports.

Okay.

Further comments?

Those in favor of adding your name as a co-sponsor to item number 11, raise your hand.

Thank you.

All right, item number 12. And by the way, colleagues, just looking at the clock, we are on item number 12. We've got 44. So we're going to plan to go as long as you want and then take a break.

I just had a question on 11. You went right to the sponsor issue.

Thanks for putting all this work together, Council Member Herbold.

Can you talk a little bit about how this is very granular?

And I think intentionally so.

Can you talk a little bit about how you came up with all of this information?

Is this from your office or working with the department, executive?

Rob, you say hum a few bars on the development of this.

Sure.

So this is basically a replication of a proviso of this council with the additional items that I mentioned today and a few additional items that Jeff mentioned last time we met.

But it's basically a replication of the proviso that this council passed in last year's budget process.

And the structure comes from the city auditor's quarterly reports that relates to the theory of change for the navigation team.

So the Human Services Department has developed a theory of change.

And we have required that the executive make reports on how they're fulfilling the components of the theory of change.

It's very similar to requiring outcomes for any other human services department homelessness program.

It's a very simple question.

So I think what I'm hearing you say, it came from the auditor's report, is very similarly Described in the former proviso, but then you added a little more That's that's yeah And the part you added were the clarification on whether parks can be used in active areas and that kind of clarifications that added part correct If I could add to that as well

Council President, if you're looking at the items that would be required every quarter, there's a rather long list, and as you note, they're rather granular.

Each of those items were either previously included in the proviso, or they are items that HSD has recently begun to provide to us, most particularly looking at the rates in which individuals that are referred to a shelter arrive at the shelter and the frequency in which a community police team officer or bike patrol officer engage with the navigation team to provide services.

So those are items, that's where earlier when I said that some of these might need nuancing, but these generally speaking are items that we've already added to the, we've already either had or would be just items we're already receiving.

I don't mean to be rushy, but it was just a simple question and I'm trying to just keep punching.

The reason why it doesn't feel like a simple question to me is it's two years of work that I've been doing on an ongoing basis.

They come to my committee and report.

So I recognize a lot of it.

It's hard to just like distill it to a simple answer, but thank you.

I appreciate it.

I mean, I recognize a lot of from previous work, but I was trying to decipher as you were speaking, what's new because of what the reporting requirements that we put in place.

We're good.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Okay, any further comments?

All right, so we've already voted on this item.

Item number 12 is HOM 20A-1.

This is a statement of legislative intent requesting a report on good neighbor agreements with HSD contractors.

It would focus on contractors located in environmentally sensitive or critical areas under the city's broader wastewater permit.

and looking into their willingness, potential barriers, and also the potential savings that could be achieved by having those agencies enter into a good neighbor agreement, which is where that agency would take responsibility for picking up trash and waste within a certain distance of their facility.

This is put forward by Councilmember Herbold.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

So as Jeff mentioned, the Good Neighbor Agreement would stipulate that contracted agencies work with the community and the city in identifying locations and need for trash and waste removal within a certain distance of their facilities and maintain overall cleanliness.

This is modeled after programs in Portland, San Francisco, and Vancouver that have these sort of good neighbor agreements included in their provider contracts.

Specifically, we want to make sure that HSD and Seattle Public Utilities are focusing on areas near waterways that are critical to public health protection and water quality.

We have heard more, and I think we are going to be hearing still more soon about the impact of of the impact of outdoor encampments on the quality of our waterways.

And so we need to be really creative in how we're dealing with it.

This is not intended to add an additional burden onto contracted agencies.

It's intended to use a model that other cities that are struggling with the same things that we're struggling with are using.

But, and I, I think it's important that we think of this as a partnership, whereas we're looking at contracted agencies, perhaps doing sort of adopt an area approaches in the collection of garbage.

that we look at Seattle Public Utilities as a partner in not charging those agencies for the refuse that they collect and that that should be a cost if we find out that there is a cost after this statement of legislative intent because it again it's a statement of legislative intent If we find out that there are costs associated with garbage collection that are borne by SPU, I think that's where the city has to work with the contracted agencies to make sure that we're the ones putting the bill.

Okay.

Further comments?

All right, those who would like to add your name to item number 12 as a co-sponsor, raise your hand, please.

All right, item number 13, and this also is a Council Member Herbold recommendation.

Item 13 is a statement of legislative intent, HOM 21A1.

This requests a report examining or exploring needle collection by agencies that are contracted currently to provide homeless outreach services.

It will be a report due by January 31st to the council.

It was put forward by Council Member Herbold.

Yes, thank you.

So again, we're looking at whether or not we can explore amendments to contracts with agencies that do homeless outreach to include needle collection.

We know that we have an unmet need to collect more needles.

SPU does a great job of responding to needle reports and collects them within 24 hours.

We need to be more proactive.

Cities such as Boston, San Francisco have dedicated teams of 10 to 15 employees that proactively collect discarded needles.

Again, this is an item that we are going to be hearing more about in the upcoming weeks.

And I'm, with this statement of legislative intent, am trying to be proactive in advance of some recommendations that I am anticipating related to needle collection.

Good.

Further comments?

Okay, those who would like to add your name as a cosponsor to item number 13, raise your hand.

Thank you.

And item number 14 is primary sponsor is Council Member Muscata.

Does anybody have speaking points for her on this?

I have.

Okay, good.

Thank you.

Please.

Item 14 is Council Budget Action HSD20A1, which would impose a proviso on HSD's utility discount program funds.

As you recall, the proposed 2020 budget included $169,000 and two FTE to be incorporated into the utility discount program.

This would impose a proviso on half of the money, the half that would be towards the end of the year, and require that HSD submit a report to council demonstrating the establishment of a dedicated service provider line and a warm handoff process for incoming calls before the remainder of the funds are released in July of 2020. And again, it's from Councilmember Mosqueda.

Great.

Thank you.

Councilmember Herbold, did you want to speak to this?

Absolutely.

So this really builds off of the information that we have about what happens when people are are working to make sure that their clients are able to access the UDP customer service phone line.

Providers are reporting really long wait times.

The idea is that a dedicated line and warm handoff would assist in the enrollment of new UDP customers and be a more efficient use of service providers' time.

The program itself is available to both Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utility customers.

And though it's a generous low-income utility assistance program, it is very, very underutilized.

We know that large utility bills are a factor for households struggling to make ends meet.

ends meet as Seattle becomes increasingly unaffordable.

And we need to just really make sure that we are doing everything we can to remove barriers that social service providers have in assisting their clients as well as ratepayers themselves are having in trying to access the utility discount program.

So this warm handoff approach I think would be really, really helpful and I'm excited to hear from the executive on how to implement it.

Good.

Thank you.

Other comments?

Those who would like to add your name as a co-sponsor on item 14, raise your hand.

Okay.

Very good.

Item 15 is legal support for sexual violence survivors, and I believe this is Council Member Sawant.

So, Amy?

Item 15 is Council Budget Action HSD40B1, and it would add $186,300 for legal support for sexual violence survivors.

To fund this, it would cut $186,300 from SPD for recruitment and retention initiatives, and it is sponsored by Council Member Sawant.

Very good.

Council Member Sawant.

This is something that has been advocated for by the Seattle Human Services Coalition.

We know sexual violence survivors get caught in really complicated legal situations as the criminal justice system investigates and or prosecutes the assaults, which means we need There's a need for defending the survivors' privacy in investigations, the need for defending survivors' workplace rights if the attack happens at work, and similar needs if the attack happens in school.

So this budget amendment would fund legal support that is single-mindedly focused on supporting the needs and wishes of the survivors.

And there is something that is contracted with the YWCA for similar work, but just to clarify, that money funds caseworker advocates on legal matters, but not an actual lawyer.

This would fund an actual attorney.

And as far as where the funds would come from, it would be a cut to the recruitment and retention of the Seattle Police Department.

So, nothing new from before and I don't need to have a, I hope we don't have a, we don't need to repeat that discussion and debate because it's the same source of funds.

Okay.

Comments?

Those who'd like to add your name as a co-sponsor to item 15, raise your hand.

Okay, item 16.

All right, Yolanda.

And this is Councilmember Pacheco, sorry.

Council Central staff.

Yes, so the item, agenda item 16, OED7A1 is a statement of legislative intent sponsored by Councilmember Pacheco that was discussed previously.

This statement of legislative intent requests that the Office of Economic Development assess the types of strategies and amount of funding that would be needed to support residents experiencing unemployment and underemployment in the event of a recession.

Okay, Council Member Pacheco, would you like to add anything?

No, I think she did a great job summarizing.

I just want to provide, really quickly, again, Director Bobby Lee, when he came here, he had mentioned how during recessions, women and communities of color are most impacted and hurt.

And so, it's also the best time, sorry, not the best time, but that's the time that that it can be used for people to start businesses as well as to go back to school.

And so wanted to see what opportunities are available within OAD or what the city can do in addition to that as we had seen in the headlines in the last couple of weeks about the potential recession here in Seattle and so forth.

And so hoping to leverage that opportunity for us as the next year to have that conversation about what more we can do.

All right.

Any other comments?

Those who want to add your name as a co-sponsor for item 16, raise your hand.

Good, thank you.

All right, it took me a long time.

All right, item number 17.

Item number 17 is Council Budget Action OED 9A2, which is sponsored by Council Member Herbold.

This was a proviso that was previously discussed as well.

This would impose a proviso on funding for a Creative Industry Policy Advisor position in the Office of Economic Development.

This proposal is slightly amended.

based on the chair's initial balancing package, which contained council budget action OED 12A1, which cut $65,000 related to this position, effectively delaying the hire of that position until about June 1st.

So that is the key amendment here.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

So I think the proposal in the Chair's balancing package and this proposal work really well together.

My initial proposal was to simply proviso the funding.

I think the recognition that the Office of Economic Development is not going to be hiring for this position on January 1st allows for additional time for the Office of Economic Development to meet the terms of proviso and engage with the film and music industry stakeholders as it develops the responsibilities for the new position.

Okay.

Good.

Further comments?

Those who want to add your name as a co-sponsor, raise your hand.

Good.

All right, item 19.

Item 18 is OAD 14A1.

This is a statement of legislative intent sponsored by Councilmember Herbold, and this would request that the Office of Economic Development provide a progress report on the development of a dedicated business opportunity support program to be funded by 1% contributions from capital improvement projects.

Good.

Council Member Herbold.

Let's see.

Item 18. Item 18. Thank you.

So this requests a progress report on the development of a dedicated business opportunity support program to be funded by 1% contributions from capital improvement program projects for our large departments that build things.

Elements of OED's inclusive economy agenda include a small business stabilization fund, and construction mitigations for small businesses impacted by public or private large-scale projects.

I've met several times with businesses in the Luna Park neighborhood in West Seattle about the Avalon roadway project, an earlier example of a large city capital project that had impacts was the project of 23rd Avenue in the Central District where OED was able to create a stabilization fund.

And similarly, we are having similar conversations with the business owners and have been having similar conversations with business owners along Font Le Roy.

And so what this action does is it recognizes that the Office of Economic Development is interested in replicating a mitigation fund that they've used successfully in the past before.

And OED has sort of identified this as an important big idea item that they want to pursue in 2020. And it just makes sure that they're working together with the council as they work to develop that important big idea to help our small businesses.

Good.

All right.

Other comments?

Okay.

Those who want to add your name as a co-sponsor to item 18, raise your hand.

Okay.

Good.

Thank you.

And item number 19, and this is Council Member Swantz.

Correct.

Agenda item 19 is OED 15A1, sponsored by Council Member Swantz.

This is a statement of legislative intent that would request that the Office of Economic Development and the Mayor's Office convene a volunteer search committee to provide recommendations for hiring OED's new Creative Industry Director, which is a position that is currently vacant.

Thank you.

This Statement of Legislative Intent requests that the Office of Economic Development actually work with the workers and the unions in the film and music industry when selecting a director for the city department that is in charge of supporting those industries.

Ordinarily, this should not be controversial.

Unfortunately, the Mayor Durkin's office has, in what seems to be happening, is attempting to punish the workers and the unions in the industry for daring to criticize her.

Just for the benefit of members of the public, what I shared with my colleagues is a copy of the opinion editorial that the Seattle Film and Music Coalition published in The Stranger yesterday, and actually, sorry, not yesterday, on Monday.

And just to very quickly let everybody know, the Film and Music Coalition includes leaders and members of The following unions, IATSE Local 488, Studio Mechanics of the Pacific Northwest, IATSE Local 600, International Cementographers Guild, Teamsters Local 174, Motion Picture and Theatrical Trades Division, SAG-AFTRA, the Directors Guild of America, AFM Local 76493, and the International Guild of Symphony, Opera, and Ballet Musicians.

So it's a coalition of the unions that represent the entire spectrum of the film and music industry workers.

And it's unfortunate that the mayor's office has taken the position that they have taken in a letter that was sent by the director of the office of It's clear that they are extremely angry about this public editorial that the Coalition of Unions has written, and they say that they really no longer welcome the participation of the Film and Music Coalition.

for decisions like this one, and I think it's important that the council say that it is a reasonable demand for the unions to have that they should have a say in the creative industries director, so this is simply a statement of legislative intent, it simply makes the request to the Office of Economic Development to work with these unions because hiring this director is under the mayor's purview.

However, if the executive refuses to accept this, then we will need to continue to organize next year to ensure that the workers' voices are respected.

Further comments?

Council Member Herbold.

Yes, I do support this statement of legislative intent.

I think, you know, more people at the table to help make these decisions about the direction of the Office of Film and Music is better.

And that includes hiring the inclusive creative industry director.

I do want to acknowledge for the public the fact that the executive, in response to questions that this council has asked about the future of the Office of Film and Music, The executive has responded that the Office of Film and Music will lead, so that entity, as a division of OED, will lead on the Inclusive Creative Industry Initiative.

The Office of Film and Music's name has not been proposed to be changed.

So it's not clear to me if that is a result of the advocacy that folks have been doing around this issue and the concerns, or if there has been a misunderstanding about what the executive's intent was.

Nevertheless, I think it's important for us to note that the executive is not intending to change the name of the Office of Film and Music.

Okay, any other comments?

Those in favor of adding your name to item number 19, raise your hand.

Okay, very good.

Colleagues, can I just get your thoughts for a few minutes?

I would propose that we go on to 1230 and hope we can get through item at least get halfway before we bridge and take a break.

So if you're game, I'm going to say let's hold on for another half an hour and see if we can actually get through item 27. It gets us, you know, way past halfway.

Absolutely.

Very good.

I know I won't have support on this, but I would also support powering through.

But I don't know if that will happen.

Well, it depends on, I think it's going to take us way longer.

I thought we'd be done by noon today.

And obviously, I was wrong on that.

So let's go for half an hour, see where we are.

Certain people need to get lunch.

And I know that.

I will.

That would be miraculous.

Yeah, really.

All right, so let's keep going.

Let's see how far we can go.

Item number 20.

Council members, Tracy Ratz of Council Central Staff.

The next item is OH7B1 sponsored by Council Member O'Brien.

This council budget action would add $67,000 of one-time fund balance from the Office of Housing's Operating Fund for homebuyer counseling for first-time low-income homebuyers who will be future owners at the Othello Square co-op project.

This less than nuanced new CBA is different to the prior CBA 7A1 that was proposed and not included in the council member Bagshaw's balancing package in that it is proposing to use fund balance in the office of housing versus a general fund appropriation.

Council Member O'Brien.

I'll be short to keep things moving.

We talked about the power that this investment has made.

We've funded this position for a number of years.

The grant funding that had previously been used got reprogrammed in this year's budget, leaving the current provider of these services without this funding in a tight bind where they'll have to lay off people at the same time when they're trying to do the exact time outreach.

to find potential homeowners for their project, something that I think is consistent with our commitment to homeownership opportunities in the City of Seattle.

This one-time money would allow Bridge to get through that kind of selling point and allow them to find other sources to fund this in an ongoing way.

Did you talk to the Office of Housing about it?

I have not.

Council central staff have we connected with Office of Housing about this.

Oh, they know about this CBA.

Yes, okay Do they have unfilled positions at OH right now?

They do not But they have some resources that could be used on a one-time basis for this effort Further comments

Okay.

Those who want to add your name as a co-sponsor to item 20. Raise your hand.

Okay.

Moving on to item 21. This is a Councilmember Muscata item.

Does somebody have speaking points?

I do.

Okay.

Thank you.

Hi, Karina Bull, Council Central staff.

This is OLS 2B1.

It is a different option of a previously submitted budget action, and it would add $202,000 one time to the Office of Labor Standards Community Outreach and Education Fund.

and it would cut 100,000 general fund one time from high barrier pilot support and transfer 102,000 finance general funds one time from the unrestricted cumulative reserve fund.

I would like to clarify that there is more nuance to this budget action than is reflected in the title and in the text, which indicates that the 100,000 cut from the general fund would come from the high barrier probation pilot support, but the intent of the budget action is to cut it from the probation case conferences and rapid re-entry pilots, and that will be corrected moving forward.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Okay, so we've talked about this almost ad nauseum at this point, so I don't need to go into excruciating detail here.

So this is, again, a request that is being advanced by Council Member Mosqueda, and I am speaking to this request budget priority on her behalf.

So since our last increase in community outreach funding, the City Council has added five new city-level labor laws that require outreach and education.

The workers these laws aim to protect are disproportionately hard to reach.

Women, people of color, immigrants, youth, low-income workers, and members of the LGBTQIA community.

Councilmember Mosqueda initially requested $1 million in increased outreach funds to be distributed to community outreach organizations, business outreach organizations, and the Office of Labor Standards with the bulk of the funding going to community outreach.

This new balanced request adds $202,000 in funding for community outreach only.

This money comes from two streams.

One, the unrestricted cumulative reserve fund and balance, and two, savings from provisos on new criminal justice measures.

I understand that Council Central Staff has spoken with the City Budget Office about the imbalance usage and apparently CBO has expressed that they don't have concerns about the usage of those funds for this purpose.

The criminal justice provisos ask for more information on new high barrier initiatives by the end of first quarter 2020. The provisos are included in the chair's balancing package, but the savings realized from the provisos are not reflected in the budget proposals yet.

So I think that's what Karina is referring to.

And since those are my provisos, I'd like to.

just editorialize and say that I'd like to get some additional information about that before next week.

So in any event, I think the spirit of Council Member Musqueda's intent here is pretty clear and it has been downsized significantly from the original $1 million to 202.

All right, thank you for that.

Further comments?

Those who want to add your name as a co-sponsor to this, raise your hand.

All right.

Moving on to item 22.

Agenda item 22 is OSC2C1, and this would cut about 2.3 million one-time sweetened beverage tax from the Department of Neighborhoods related to the P-PATCH program and redirect it to priorities, other priorities in alignment with the sweetened beverage tax.

financial policies to the Office of Sustainable Environment, Human Services Department, and Seattle Parks and Recreation, and the Department of Education and Early Learning.

I will note that in the Chair's initial balancing package, OSC 2B1 is within there, and that actually cuts 2.5 million SBT from the P-PATCH program.

So this is a So OSC2C1 sponsored by Council Member Herbold and OSC2B1, which was sponsored by Council Member O'Brien.

So this poses an alternative to that budget action that is already included in the initial balancing package.

I will say the key nuance here is that whereas the current OSC2B1, which is included in the initial balancing package, leaves $500,000 in Department of Neighborhoods budget for the pea patches.

Council Member Herbold's proposal would provide $725,000 for the pea patches.

Otherwise, the spending priorities are the same.

Councilmember Herbold, would you like to speak to this?

Oh, could I amend that one?

Not quite the same.

The one difference is that in Councilmember O'Brien's proposal, there would be $225,000 allocated one time for the Fresh Bucks vouchers.

And so Councilmember Herbold's proposal would take that one-time funding and shift it over to Pea Patches.

Okay, thank you, Council Member Herbold, and then Council Member O'Brien, I'm assuming you're gonna wanna speak to it, and then Council Member Warris.

Thank you.

So this proposal I'm bringing forward in follow-up from our last discussion, where I expressed a hope that we could maintain some of the dollars associated with the P-PATCH program.

and in the mayor's budget, and I heard agreement from the original sponsor, Council Member O'Brien, that it seemed appropriate to find some middle ground with an understanding that the number of peat patches in the city that serve tenants, low-income people, and particularly people who have identified themselves as food vulnerable, that there's a really high return for folks in particular neighborhoods that meet that demographic.

And the thought behind redirecting the money from Fresh Bucks is that it's important that the mayor's proposal, the funding for that is their one-time dollars, and the P-Patch money would also be one-time dollars, whereas the additional funds for FreshBooks is that it might create an expectation of higher funding levels that the city can't meet every year.

And then finally, because of a previous conversation from the council that they think it's really important, and I agree, that we need to prioritize P-Patch funding in particular geographic areas in this city, areas where all three factors, low income, longer times to healthy food, retail outlets, and higher percentage of unhealthy food Unhealthy food, I'm not quite sure what the word is supposed to be here, but unhealthy.

Unhealthy food.

Unhealthy food options, perhaps, are present.

And so, again, the budget action directs the dollars for P-Patch funding to only those neighborhoods where the P-Patches are serving folks who meet all three factors.

Great, thank you.

Are you down there?

Yes, I'm down there.

Thank you.

Would you like to speak?

And then Council Member O'Brien has some comments.

I was sharing, telling Council Members who want what to do.

It doesn't work.

I think I got her on this one.

So I want to thank Councilmember Herbold because I'm really excited about this because this kind of is a great addition to the fact that we wanted to add money in the budget for menstrual projects in our community centers and other areas as well.

So number five on here.

One of the priorities listed as a hundred thousand to deal to provide grants that provide diapers to families who lack access to diapers where it presents a barrier I do support this food banks and shelters are great opportunities to fund to serve families in more ways than one and We should be able to provide diapers for families who need them and I should add that the two food banks that we work with that are in district 5 just specifically not I know all about all of them, but we have the the baby Closet and the two things that are gone immediately are diapers and formula.

So, thank you.

Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you.

Councilmember O'Brien.

Thank you.

I'm tentatively supportive of this.

I appreciate Councilmember Herbold's work to find a kind of creative approach to thread this.

I'm waiting to hear some feedback from the community advisory board who I think have a few of them have seen it and they're just having some discussions and so I will share what I hear back if they don't share with everyone else directly.

I think that I want to just highlight again what Councilmember Herbold said which I believe this the proviso in the bottom of this that says of the appropriations in the budget for the Department of Neighborhoods 725,000 it was 500,000 previously of the appropriation for capital improvements for pea patch gardens located within healthy food priority areas as presented in the Healthy Food Availability and Food Bank Network Report, published, and it goes on.

This was something that we hadn't, I don't believe we had discussed at our previous meeting, but it was language that we worked out, and I believe was in Council Member Baggio's balancing package.

But I think this was really important to the folks on the Community Advisory Board of the Sweetened Beverage Tax, because it really focused on those neighborhoods most in need within the PBETCH program.

I do want to mention the FreshBucks program has been a great program.

I do not share the concerns necessarily about one-time money there.

You know, what the program does is it essentially gives vouchers to people so they can get access to healthy food.

And to say we're not going to give vouchers to healthy food to people this year because we're not sure we'll be able to give them to them next year, I think whatever money we have, we can give them this year, and if next year we don't have enough money to do it, we've helped them for a year, and that's a good thing.

But I I believe this I'm hoping that this is an acceptable trade-off There's still a significant increase in the fresh bucks program in the mayor's underlying budget, which I think is great and if the Community Advisory Board sees this balance of investments fairly to then I will certainly think highly of it Councilmember Pacheco

So I think there's some generally there's some really good things in here and I'm open to Keeping more or getting more money into the P patch fund However, I just have some concerns for two reasons one.

My office has reached out to some of the folks in the community advisory board and what the feedback we've gotten is that this is not a This is not something they would desire in terms of trying to increase money for P-Patch, more specifically because of the Fresh Bucks program.

As I mentioned last time, here's the headline for the Trump administration unveils more cuts to the food stamp program.

The Fresh Bucks program is providing direct direct access to food right now.

And I think families need that access immediately.

So while I'm open, I don't think that this is it.

Okay, thank you.

So I will, let's all share any information we get from the CAB and share that with you, Council Member Bageshaw, and I'll get clear in the next day or two on what my firm position is on this based on some of the feedback we get.

Great.

And I would like to also follow up with you about an organization called Green Plate Special that I've just heard about, which is both education and fresh food and information.

So I'd like to see what the CAB has to say about that.

Okay.

Any other comments here?

So this is item number 22. Those who would like to add your name as a co-sponsor, raise your hand.

I have my tentative one here.

However you guys want to mark that one.

That's good.

I like it.

OK.

Next item is 23 for updates to green building standards.

And I believe this is Council Member Pacheco.

Correct.

Ketel Freeman, Council Central staff.

So item number 23 would have impose a proviso on $63,000 appropriation, which is roughly equivalent to half an FTE, to develop a proposal updating the city's green building standards.

The updates would include a recommendation related to incentives for using cross-laminated timber.

There's a slight modification to the proviso in this budget action compared to the previous budget action, specifically The proviso would impose a limitation across the department as opposed to just as opposed to in just one BC BSL and STCI That's in recognition of the fact that the update will need to draw on expertise from other areas of the department.

Great Thank You Cato.

Councilmember Progetto, do you want to add?

I'll be brief.

Just our green building standards and green building incentive programs have long been in need of the comprehensive review and update.

This amendment would provides a half of SDCEI's co-development team to carry out the work of reviewing these programs and making recommendations to improve them.

It also requested a specific piece of that review.

SACI make recommendations on how these programs can incentivize the use of cross-laminated timber in new construction, an area the United States has been far behind.

Again, cross-laminated timber has been championed by Governor Jay Inslee, Washington Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz as well, so.

Good, very good.

Comments?

Council Member O'Brien.

Council Member Pacheco, I appreciate you bringing this forward.

I'm generally supportive of it.

I think cross-laminated timber has a lot of potential to really reduce the carbon intensity of how we build our buildings and obviously with timber in the region, assuming it's done harvested wisely, has a potential to be a boost to our economy too.

That wisely part is the one area that I hear concern from the environmental community about is what's the source of the timber that would be used for cross-laminated timber?

FSC certified timber, I believe, is the highest standard that a lot of folks in the environmental community represent.

I realize that this is just analyzing green building standards, but I may be interested in adding a little language that talks about at least an intent that if the city, as the city moves forward with this, that there would be standards such as sourced from FSC certified timber sources to qualify for the program.

Thank you.

Further comments?

No, I'm just, we can exchange notes.

Those who want to add your name as a co-sponsor on item 23, raise your hand.

Okay, item 24, this is the request from Council Member O'Brien.

All right, item 24 is a slide sponsored by Council Member Bryan, which requests that STCI and OPCD develop regulations to propose to Council that would implement prospective comprehensive plan policy changes.

Those policy changes would limit development of new fossil fuel production and storage facilities.

This slide is consistent with Council direction and Resolution 31896, which is the annual comprehensive plan docketing resolution, which dockets future comprehensive plan consideration of policies that would limit new fossil fuel production as storage facilities.

Okay, great.

Council Member Bryant.

So this is, as Kito mentioned, this follows on the action we already took in the docketing process for the comprehensive plan.

It just reiterates that we want to see this happen.

It's consistent with some of the county's work to also limit siting of fossil fuel facilities and production and storage facilities.

And so I think the intent, I believe, from our previous action is that we will be getting this back, but this reinforces that we want to see that work done.

Further comments?

Those who want to add your name to item 24, raise your hand.

Good.

Item 25 is Council Member Swantz.

Item 25 is Council Budget Action SCCI 6B1.

It would add $607,000 for renter organizing and outreach This is different than a budget action that the council previously considered, in that it would fund that organizing and outreach through a reduction in incentive funding and SPD for sworn officer hiring.

That's a reduction of an $814,000 appropriation to buy $607,000.

Okay.

Council Member Swann.

This is something that I brought forward earlier in the budget committee sessions.

This would fund crucial renter organizing and outreach.

As we know across the country, there is a deep housing crisis as real estate speculation has driven up rents and other housing costs and led to massive housing stability for renters.

And this would fund the work of the various areas of work.

One area of work is building Know Your Rights forums for renters, which has been done very effectively by Be Seattle and other organizations where they've carried out renters rights boot camps.

And as I've said, my office has co-sponsored several of them.

We also are setting aside $200,000 for operating a call line for renters, which plays a big role in renters being able to push back against some of the exploitative landlords, and this work is done really well by the Tenants Union of Washington State, and also funds for LGBTQ allyship, which specifically organizes LGBTQ seniors who are renters so that they can have a voice in their affordable rental housing or market rental housing communities.

And this budget amendment would fund that work.

And then also for organizations like Washington Community Action Network, which have successfully advocated for eviction reform.

And a lot of the work that they have done is also door-knocking on renters and helping them get organized, which has been a backbone of WashingtonCAN's work.

We know that this is important because there's a giant power imbalance between landlords and renters, especially when you take into account that a lot of these renter apartments are owned by corporate landlords.

But when the renters get organized, they can have an influence, and I hope council members will support this to generate the funds.

To support this, I'm proposing that we reduce the funds or the money that the mayor has allocated to the Seattle Police Department for, I believe it is for, I believe it is hiring bonuses.

That's correct.

You had to reduce a proposed appropriation of $814,000 for hiring bonuses for new recruits and lateral hires.

Right.

So just to be clear, this is not wages for the current police officers.

It is bonuses for new hires.

And I would say the reality is the housing insecurity that our people are facing.

If that is addressed and if we increase housing security, that will have much greater impact on crime and public safety than throwing more money at policing.

Comments?

Those who want to add your name as a co-sponsor to item 25, raise your hand.

Moving on to item 26.

All right, so the next action is the final new action for STCI.

This would add approximately $420,000 for eviction legal defense and fund that by reducing an SDOT appropriation for congestion pricing outreach.

This budget action would be in addition to the $115,000 appropriated in the chair's balancing package for eviction legal defense, which would bring the total appropriation to approximately $535,000, which is sufficient to fund six tenant rights attorneys.

It would also reduce an appropriation in SDOT's mobility operations BSL for congestion pricing outreach by $420,000 to fund the new ad.

Okay.

Chair.

Please.

Oh, sorry.

Go ahead.

I was going to ask Councilmember.

Go ahead and ask a question and I'll speak.

I just wanted to know how much is left in the budget for the congestion pricing outreach.

So the $470,000 would be carried forward in 2020 to do the congestion pricing outreach, so $50,000 would be left.

I'm sorry, what?

Fifty?

And that's a carrier forward from the funding that I think million dollars in funding that the council allocated in last year's budget.

Calvin Chow, council central staff.

Yes, that's the million dollars that was included in the mayor's budget for this year.

Council Member Sawant.

So last year through the People's Budget Organizing, we advocated for the city to fund six full-time attorneys, eviction attorneys for short, but that's kind of misleading.

It's not like the attorneys help the evictions, attorneys prevent the evictions.

So attorneys for helping renters who are facing evictions through the Housing Justice Project.

That would go a huge way to guarantee the right to a lawyer, city-funded lawyer, for every renter in the city facing eviction.

Ultimately, last year we were able to win the funding for one eviction attorney.

But what's remarkable is that even with those limited resources, the Housing Justice Project was able to significantly increase the number, dramatically increase the number of people and households who were able to maintain their tenancies and not have an eviction on their renting record.

And, you know, to be fair, the legal support was not the only factor.

There were also reforms to eviction law that were passed in Olympia, again, thanks to organizing by grassroots organizations, which were really important and went into effect this summer.

And since all of this happened at the same time, the first ever city-funded eviction attorney and the changes in the laws, all of that happened in the same time, there's no way, or at least we haven't done that study to accurately divide out what portion of renters who avoided eviction was exclusively a result of the legal representation.

However, we know for a fact that the legal representation, having or not having legal representation, trained representation, is a make or break on whether you can avoid the eviction or not, especially when we see so many eviction notices being handed out in a very, very unfair manner.

And so what we saw from the Housing Justice Project was that there was a 400% increase in people avoiding eviction.

This budget amendment would we we we have already in this in the existing balancing package won the funding to continue the funding for one eviction attorney, but this would increase the number of city funded eviction attorneys for renters facing eviction.

There are other cities which have made access to lawyers for eviction as a right, most prominently this is true in New York State.

And so I think this would be very important and we also intend to attach to this legislation that will add to the Seattle Municipal Court that renters have a legal right to counsel, and my office is developing that legislation right now.

To fund this, what we are proposing is that we reduce the money allocated in the mayor's budget.

It says congestion pricing outreach, but in my view, this is really going to be in some shape or form propaganda to support the putting the tolls in the downtown street.

There is overwhelming opposition to more tolling on our city street.

And I don't, and I've said this many times before in other contexts, I do not accept that the city will spend, should spend another half million to push this idea because it's, I mean, just from an economic standpoint, I have not seen any congestion model actually in existence that is equitable.

And so by definition, they tend to be regressive.

And I believe these funds would be much better spent guaranteeing the right to counsel for any renter facing eviction.

Comments?

Please.

I do not support this because I believe that this work on the congestion pricing is going to be critical in designing that very equitable congestion pricing system whenever we get there.

I've been disappointed at the pace at which the city has been working on congestion pricing.

We've put funding in the last two years' budgets, and I think there's just been a lot of delay in getting reports.

I've also been somewhat disappointed in the substance of some of those reports.

But I think the work that is intended to be done next year, and someone will need to continue to provide oversight here, is the critical piece of work, which is really understanding how low-income communities can and are being impacted by tolling and understanding that is key to designing a congestion pricing scheme that could potentially be equitable.

And there are a number of ways one could do that, but without having good data and not just surveys that are done, but actual conversations with communities that represent folks and organizations that represent folks who would be most impacted by it.

I think that's a critical step in moving forward.

It could also be information that could be helpful for us understanding how existing tolls, including the one that just started a few days ago, are impacting those same communities and could be a tool for us to be advocating with the state to, if we see impacts that could be mitigated, to be more equitable.

It could be a tool that could help us advocate with the state for perhaps changing those policies.

I don't want to be premature on that though.

Thank you for that.

Further comments?

Council Member Herbold.

Yeah, I want to...

So I would like to see whether or not there is a way that we could carry over into 2020 some number of dollars other than $50,000, some other larger number that allows this work to continue.

But I do support the ad and so I'm going to indicate my support of the ad and also verbally say that I would like to see whether or not we could reduce it or find additional funds from another source in order to meet the need.

And I know council members want, you know, I've talked about this or at least I've talked with your staff.

And I appreciate what you're saying about added attorneys are really making a difference.

And when you first brought this up, you said, you know, one is better than nothing, two is better than one and so on.

So we can look into it to see if there's another source of funding to add at least one.

We'll see.

Just briefly, and I am briefly.

I just wanted to ask Council Member Herbold that she agrees in principle that we need more tenant lawyers, but this particularly isn't the pot of money to take it from.

the congestion pricing piece.

I just want a point of order or point of clarification.

I'm not philosophically opposed to reducing the funding allocated for the congestion pricing work.

I'm questioning whether or not it is going to cost that much.

So, some smaller reduction allowing the work to continue is my preference.

Yes, Council Member Swan.

Just in conclusion, yeah, appreciate all those comments.

I mean, just...

Just very quickly in response to Council Member O'Brien, and it's not new, Council Member O'Brien and I have discussed this many times.

I strongly believe and I continue to believe that the best way to address the carbon emissions and also the traffic snarls is to massively expand public transit by taxing big business.

And I hope everybody has seen the incredible results of the poll done by unions that was released yesterday in The Stranger.

which shows that there is overwhelming support among Seattle voters to tax big business, to fund our vital services, and transit is included in them.

So I think that's the way to go, not to try to impose congestion pricing, which I said is quite unpopular if actually if you talk to voters and people.

But just on the eviction attorney stuff, I'm totally open to looking into other sources of funds and also, as you said, Chair Bagshaw, at least if a fraction of this could be funded, I would want to push for that.

Council Member O'Brien.

And I'll state two things.

One, I do support the ad if we can find a path to do it.

And I'm absolutely supportive of a massive expansion of public transit and making it affordable, as you know.

The thing that we see when you look at cities around the country, around the world, no matter how much transit you have, what you find is the roads still remain congested and are a source of pollution.

And so we need to both produce massive amounts of transit and make sure it's affordable and accessible to everyone.

And if you want to address the carbon emissions, We need to figure out how we reduce those emissions and congestion pricing is a tool that will get those things moving freely and I think will help our carbon goals too.

I support the quite candidly to add as stated, unconditionally as stated, Again, I think we've had, in years past, adequate resources to do some of the studies on the congestion pricing and some of the outreach, and so I just think this is a logical add, and I think it's a much-needed service.

So my little difference is I support as stated in the Form C. Is that clear?

You look obvious.

I support as stated.

How can I be clearer than that?

Are you supporting five?

The add to five?

I'm supporting the sheet as stated.

All right.

All right.

We got this item.

Raise your hand if you want.

That was a clear statement made this morning.

No.

Those who want to add your name as a co-sponsor to item number 26, raise your hand.

You're doing one of these.

Yeah.

Very good.

All right.

Good.

All right.

So, we got one more item, if we can hang in here, to bring us to the bottom of page six.

So, if we could jump into this one is also Council Member Bryant.

Item 27 is a sly SDOT 2C1.

It requests that SDOT report on current maintenance spending for bicycle infrastructure.

This is a revision to an item that was included in the initial balancing package.

It adds language to identify specific locations in conjunction with the bike board.

Originally proposed a million dollar proviso on the roughly $38 million maintenance budget for SDOT for maintaining its roads and dedicating a million of that towards maintenance on new bicycle infrastructure.

That did not make it into the balancing package.

I don't believe that speaks to the chair or the mayor's intent not to do that work, but this slide would simply build on some work that's already happening within the department to be understanding how they plan to move forward and what are the priority routes for maintenance.

And this asks that they report to the Seattle Bike Advisory Board on what those priority routes are and the goals to achieve so that the maintenance can continue to work just without the proviso.

Okay.

Thanks.

Comments?

All right.

Those who want to add your name as a co-sponsor with Councilmember Michael Bryan, number 27, raise your hand.

Excellent.

Got the count?

Good.

We're going to take a break.

We got people getting silly up here.

They need some food.

We will reconvene at 2 o'clock.

So those of you who would like to speak at the conclusion of our 2 o'clock session, we still have quite a number to go when we get back, but we'll see if we can move as expeditiously as we have this morning.

All right.

Thank you.

We are at recess until 2 o'clock.