Select Budget Committee Session II 10/16/20

Yes, we do.

Wonderful.

Well, good afternoon, everybody.

Thank you again for joining session two of the Select Budget Committee.

It's October 16th, 2020, and the time is 2.02 p.m.

My name's Teresa Musgate.

I'm the chair of the Select Budget Committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the reconvened Select Budget Committee meeting?

Council Member Peterson.

Council Member Sawant.

Here.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Herbold.

Here.

Council Member Juarez.

Here.

Council Member Lewis.

Present.

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Chair Mosqueda.

Present.

Seven, present.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

As noted earlier as well, Council President Gonzalez is excused, and I believe if there are any other council members, we will make sure to announce them as they arrive.

Council colleagues, I want to draw your attention to a notice that I just received that our public comment link was kept live.

So individuals who came to sign up for public comment still had the option to sign up for public comment in the afternoon.

It is our hope that we have public comment for the first 30 minutes of each of the public meetings.

and we did take 30 minutes this morning, but given that the link was still live and we have four people signed up to take public testimony right now, I would like to honor that since the link was live and we do have four people on the line.

In that case, I would need to just amend the agenda.

If there's no objection, I will amend the agenda to include a second session of public comment very briefly before we get into items on our session two agenda.

Is there any objection to adding public comment?

hearing no objection, the agenda is amended.

And we will go ahead and open up for public comment.

Again, I wanna apologize to folks in the viewing public.

It is just our hope that we will be able to have public comment in the morning.

And I do wanna thank you for dialing in today to provide public comment.

So with that, just note that on Tuesday at 9.30 and Wednesday at 9.30 is our next chance for public testimony.

We will have that link ready for you to sign up at 7 30 a.m.

I'll just recap what we said this morning.

You will have two minutes to provide public comment.

You'll hear 10 seconds at the end of your allotted time.

Please use that 10 seconds to wrap up your comments.

If you didn't get the chance to finish your comments, please do send in your written comments to council at Seattle dot gov. Please note that after you provide public testimony you should hang up and listen in on the Seattle Channel or the other listen in options on the agenda that has been sent out.

And I'll just read all four names that I have here.

Again, an apology to the viewing public.

It was on my end.

I'm sorry about any confusion out there, but we do want to honor the folks who have signed up.

I have Katie Neuner, Adrienne Carroll, Holly Runsell, and Jesse Hagley.

Happy to have you provide public testimony.

And sorry for any confusion.

Very happy that you are dialing in to provide comments.

And for anybody else who's listening in, we do look forward to hearing from you on Tuesday at 9 30 a.m.

Hey Katie, good afternoon.

Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon.

This is Katie.

I live in District 2. I'm a small business owner here in Seattle as well as an activist in regards for the Black liberation and Indigenous liberation.

I just want to call in and remind us that we are only going to be hearing from four people right now, but also that it is hard for many of the Black community and many of the Indigenous community to have access to even comment at all during these sessions or write in and things like that.

So although just making sure that we keep in mind that the small voices matter too not the small voices.

Also I just want to remind us that we need to get the navigation money reallocated into the hands of Indigenous people and Black people.

Like yesterday, the bathrooms in Kyle Anderson need to be reopened.

I went to a meeting yesterday with Parks and Rec and as well as a couple other agencies here in Seattle, and they want to offer money to about $55,000 to, you know, help the homeless community, yet we don't even want to open the bathrooms in which the shelter was taking place or the kitchen was taking place there.

So there are things that we can do immediately to help the homeless community and instead we just keep going around in circles.

So that is one thing that could help immediately and immensely the unhoused population throughout the winter is just opening up that kitchen and opening up those bathrooms in Kyle Anderson Park.

And also I want to also urge the council to help us in going for our state and local representatives to urge for us to start doing progressive taxing instead of regressive because the- I yield the rest of my time.

Sorry.

Excellent.

Thank you so very much.

The next person is Aiden.

Good afternoon Aiden.

Hi.

Thank you.

I am a District 6 resident.

And I agree with what Kay just said about homelessness and all the rest.

I had a very informative conversation this morning with a homeless neighbor in Meridian Park, and I was reminded of a whole bunch of things about how difficult it can be in this escalating crisis, thinking about different ways to help people and the complexity involved.

I see neighbors getting annoyed that things are seemingly nothing is being done because that's the perception they're having of the scale of the problem.

You know how enormous it is.

I just want to emphasize, I guess, that things should move as fast as they possibly can.

and uh...

the the taking taking money away from the the the punitive system and getting it to serve those needs as fast as possible because it's not enough to the coal plant if you're left with no electricity you have to have that both the perception and reality of the people who need to be met and that you know the safety needs to be addressed people are going to be able to let the people with to have racist uh...

system than to have like nothing at all protecting us from from theft and assault.

I'm like no that's not the two choices here.

But sorry I'm being kind of rambling but I think I think we all understand the importance of making sure that there is a real solution that's addressing the root causes of the things that cause crime and unsafety.

And everyone deserves to be safe including the homeless.

And please defund the continue.

Thanks.

Thank you very much for your time today.

And you were not ringly at all.

We appreciate your public testimony.

The next person is Holly.

Good afternoon, Holly.

Hello, my name is Holly.

Can you guys hear me?

Yes.

Thank you, Holly.

Thank you.

I am a longtime member of the community.

I'm a health care worker.

And I just want to implore you guys to continue working through the budget changes.

I think the decision to defund the money from SPD from the navigation team was the right choice and as we continue forward I think it's the right choice to work on defunding SPD so that we can continue to make positive change for the people that need it in our community.

The current people who are supposed to be serving the community are not doing the job credibly.

We have a great deal of houseless people as we get into this cold season.

And the funds from dismantling the navigation team to go to the Black and Indigenous unsheltered people now.

There are too many people being turned away from shelters.

There are too many people whose children have to sleep on the couches of other individuals.

And we have the resources to help and assist those individuals.

We have to keep moving forward with community action that makes this not okay.

We have got to take care of these people and continue to stop funding things that are needlessly wasting money when we could be investing in things that would reduce the rate of the things happening.

Investing in Black and Brown communities, taking care of the housework, and making this city a better place for all and not just for those who work in the front yard.

Thank you for your time.

I yield my time.

Thank you very much for calling in.

this afternoon.

The last person to speak is Jesse Poglie.

Thanks for waiting, Jesse.

Please go ahead.

Yeah, thank you for taking my comment.

My name is Jesse Huey and I'm a District 2 voter.

I'm calling to again ask that the City Council cut funding for the beloaded Seattle Police Department and invest in desperately needed community public safety for Black and Indigenous people.

It should be acknowledged that Washington State has one of the most regressive tax policies in the country and most of you showed your true commitments to the local ultra-rich with the head tax failure in 2018. You write the budget for one of the wealthiest cities on the planet yet allow staggering rates of poverty and one of the worst housing crises in America.

While even public school students go without basic access to education the city spends the lion's share of our money.

on shiny new weapons for a militarized and unreformable police force.

We cannot move quickly enough.

People need housing tonight.

Students need laptops and Internet access for school on Monday morning.

I'm confident that each of you could speak at great length about the legal constraints and speed of bureaucracy that slow progress.

However each of you should have been aware of everything I'm saying when you took office.

You should know that violent systemic white supremacy is an emergency in Seattle.

You were elected to ensure that our taxes are used to protect and enrich our communities.

And every day that you refuse to address the safety of your constituents you fail us.

The performative speech and absolute inaction is pathetic.

Last night I happened to cross a small protest on the sidewalk on Capitol Hill.

I watched seven police cars and a dozen bike cops following a harassed a group of 10 protesters for an hour.

They also forcefully arrested several people for apparently shining flashlights in the faces of the police.

These are some of the highest paid public employees, and this is how they spend their time.

As a taxpayer, it's embarrassing.

Defund SPD immediately.

Put that money into black, brown, and indigenous communities today.

Thank you so much.

Okay, folks, thank you so much for accommodating the special public hearing session there.

I appreciate you all amending the agenda.

And as a reminder, folks, we will do public testimony at the beginning of every meeting, 9.30.

Public testimony sign-in starts at 7.30 a.m.

And we will end this afternoon's special public hearing option given the link was open and we appreciate that IT and communications made that possible to be able to hear from folks who had signed in.

So with that, public testimony is closed for this afternoon.

I want to also acknowledge Council Member Peterson.

Thank you so much for joining us.

You joined right as we started public testimony, so thank you so much for being here since the very beginning as well.

All right, Madam Clerk, could you please read into the record item number four with our continued agenda from this morning?

Agenda item four, miscellaneous issue identification.

Well, that sounds so exciting.

And it should be because there's over 60 items according to the table of contents and the memo that we received.

So we have 61 items to cover in this topic.

It is going to be pretty packed.

So council colleagues, again, I'm going to ask you to keep your remarks brief.

We'll ask for you to make a short statement after The central staff has a chance to walk through.

the presentation on each of your items.

Again, I'll take myself off mute if we're headed over two minutes, just so you know that I'm hoping that we can wrap up the comments on that point so that we can move forward, and also to see if the other council members have any questions on those items for our discussion this afternoon.

With that, we have with us today a whole list of central staff members.

So I'm going to turn it over to Ali and have you kick us off, and then we will get right into it.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair Mosqueda, council members.

Today, central staff will present council member proposals submitted to central staff by October 8th for changes that would affect departments or offices that are not scheduled for a standalone issue identification presentation.

In addition to those council member proposals, the miscellaneous paper also includes a high level summary of the 2021 proposed budget broken out by department or office and a summary of the 36 pieces of legislation transmitted with the mayor's proposed budget that will be introduced on Monday.

We will not be presenting those portions of the memo today, but can answer questions and are happy to talk with you individually about any particular department.

I'll note here, too, related to your question this morning about how changes to the Office of Sustainability and Environment's proposed budget compares to other departments and what the average is overall for departments that saw a reduction.

But in Section 1, there is a table for every office or department that notes whether the department's budget overall is an increased, decreased, or has not changed compared to the 2020 adopted budget.

We'll follow up in writing with more details about the overall averages for departments that saw a decrease after we sort out some of the outliers that muddy the data and can provide some distinction between what it looks like for smaller departments or larger departments.

And unless there are questions now, I will hand it over to my colleague, Asha, to start us off with the council member proposals related to the Office of Arts and Culture.

Thank you so much, Allie, and to the central staff team.

Again, let us know if that request was going to be more complicated than necessary.

I think one of the things that we saw from this morning is There's one department that's over a 16% increase, another department at just over 10% decrease, and then one department at 1% increase.

So just to give folks a sense of where each department shakes out is helpful.

But if it ends up being more work than necessary, we have the data in the materials you've already provided.

That summary sheet will be helpful.

But we also know you've done a tremendous amount of work already, folks, so we don't want to add too much to your plate.

just keep all of us updated on any of the requests that we're making to let us know if there's something that's really going to add too much to that to-do list, since we know you're already working around the clock.

Thank you.

We appreciate that.

And I will just note, in the summaries, there is a brief, for departments that don't have a standalone paper that have a deeper summary of the proposed budget, it does note whether or not the changes are an increase or decrease, and also, tries to point out where sometimes there is a net increase, but there were reductions.

There were cuts to programs or services or positions in a department that are noted in those brief summaries.

So happy to follow up.

And I think we'll be able to get you some high-level averages.

But we appreciate the option of not spending a lot of time doing that analysis so we can move on to the next phase in the budget.

And I'll turn it over to Asha.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The first item we have here is an ad of $25,000 to support Martin Luther King Jr.

Day programs.

This is to the office of arts and culture.

It would support an organization providing programming and awareness of the legacy civil rights action and call to action and recognition of.

MLK Junior Day, such as the MLK Junior Commemoration Committee.

I just note that there is $25,000 that is ongoing in the 2020 budget towards this purpose.

And this is sponsored by Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Thank you, colleagues.

I think this one might have been an oversight for us.

I do understand that it is in the baseline budget for the arts department, but we did want to make sure that that was the case before we.

submitted or after we submitted this.

So I do want to clarify with Asha because the purpose here is to make sure that the annual events that are held to honor Martin Luther King Jr. will continue to be funded.

So I did not intend to add $25,000 if that is not necessary and I just want to touch base with Asha about that.

I believe that is the case that it should be ongoing funding to support that.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you so much.

Questions on that folks.

I am seeing none.

Let's, let's keep going.

Good afternoon members of the Select Budget Committee, Tom Mikesell with your Council Central staff.

This item in the City Budget Office, this is a proposal from Council President Gonzalez to create an Economic and Revenue Forecasting Office.

that is independent of the executive and legislative branches of government through redeploying existing staff in the city.

The models that currently exist in the state of Washington include the King County Office of Economic and Financial Analysis and the Washington State Economic Revenue Forecast Council staff, which provides similar independent forecasts and economic analyses to those branches, to those levels of government.

Thank you so much.

And Council Member Lewis, do I understand correctly that you might be providing any additional context for Council President Gonzalez today?

Yes, thank you so much, Madam Chair.

You can hear me okay, right?

Oops.

Yes, we can.

Thank you.

Okay, good.

Sorry, calling in, I'm never quite sure.

Anyway, no, yes, I'm glad to share a couple of thoughts.

on behalf of Council President Gonzalez.

I mean, this is a practice that is similar to what King County and the state of Washington do.

I think it could be a good practice for the city as well, given the division of powers between the executive and the council and might foster a better access to information to all parties.

I'm interested in continuing to look into and learning more about.

And like I said, a lot of regional and state governments, this is the practice.

So looking forward to diving into this more.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Any questions on this?

Okay.

Thank you.

And thank you, Council President Gonzalez for this item.

City Light.

Let's keep going here.

Thank you very much.

Eric, welcome.

Hi, Eric Carnegie, Council of Central Staff.

There's two proposals here for your consideration.

The first and both are from Council Member Sawant.

The first would temporary cancel City Light and Seattle Public Utility bills for low-income Seattle residents.

That was short and sweet.

Thanks, Eric.

Sorry for the delay.

I'll slow down next time.

Oh, no problem.

Council Member Sawant, please go ahead.

Thank you.

As we know, Seattle has already suspended utility rate increases for everyone during the COVID emergency.

Similarly, we have the statewide moratorium on rent as well.

But across the country, as the cancel rent movement has been saying, all rent, mortgage, and utility bills really need to be canceled and not just have moratorium or rate increases be installed and without debts incurred because people are, otherwise people will have huge bills that they will never be able to pay.

It will be impossible.

So in that vein, as the cancel rent movement is demanding that everyone who has lost income due to the COVID emergency have their rents canceled.

In the same vein, I think it is important that we also show that support for utility payments and That's why this budget amendment would address one part of that demand, which is canceling utility bills for the people who have lost their livelihoods due to COVID.

And with Seattle's public utilities being public, it is the least we could do.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Council Member Sawant.

Any questions on this one?

Okay.

I would just ask a quick question.

I know Council Member Swann has chaired City Light.

I have had the chance to as well.

Now Council Member Peterson.

Is there any comments, Eric, around the requirement in code for the city to try to collect payment?

I know that that's very different than going after payment and collections, which we have opposed as well.

So as long as an attempt to Attempt to get the payment done is that is that still a requirement or would this work.

Yeah, I'll try to answer a few parts of your questions.

1 is that yes, it's true right now.

City light is not turning off anyone's power.

They're not sending folks to collections, those sorts of things because of the status of the emergency and so on and so forth.

In fact.

City Light right now is encouraging people if they're having trouble paying their bills to contact them to defer payments.

Also, as you know, there's been an extension of the time when penalty for late payments is completely waived.

So that's a circumstance that we're in right now.

Also, there's a utility discount program.

And for all the utilities, if a person is having some trouble paying their bill and is not participating in the utility discount program, they're encouraged to self-certify into that program, which reduces the percentage of the bill based on their income.

And City Light and Seattle Public Utilities is allowing folks to self-certify into the program right now, which speeds that up.

So that's just for kind of quickly kind of where we're at now under current circumstances.

The proposal to cancel the bills, where there'd be no payment, there'd be some things to explore about that.

The way that the state law works, it allows for the utilities to provide for folks who are having trouble paying their bills.

That's why we have the UDP.

But the proposal to have folks pay nothing at all would take some more exploration.

And so if council is interested in doing so, I would take that up with the utility and with a law and find out what the dimensions of that might be.

I'd be interested in that question.

Council Member Sawant, thank you for outlining this issue.

And for context as well, many of those programs and the changes in terms of policy are We have a lot of issues that were.

Needed and sort of daylighted because of the audit that we had asked for at city light with auditor Jones.

Now, a year and a half ago.

Many of those issues predate.

Deborah Smith and really appreciate that the changes have been put into place, but.

much needed and appreciated now during the COVID crisis.

But I think as was stated, a desire to make sure that folks are not being settled with a long bill in the long run is important too.

Council members, any other comments or questions on this?

Okay, Council Member Swatt, please go ahead.

Yeah, I mean, just to make one point in relation to the points that Eric made is that certainly even doing, I mean, we're talking about households that were formerly not enrolled in the utility discount program, presumably because before the pandemic, they were making enough income to be able to pay their bills and weren't under that sort of eligibility for the discount.

think there's nothing wrong in saying to households that have lost income that they should self-certify but I think I just wanted to remind the council that you know we we made a big effort in the last years to turn the whole utility discount program into an opt-out rather than an opt-in, because studies show that putting the burden on the households actually ends up in lower eligibility.

So in that spirit, just a mathematical thing that if the city can afford to do a UDP, extend the utility discount, and reduce bills by 60%, then we might as well go all the way and reduce the bills by 100%.

Just want to make that point.

Okay, thank you very much.

And the next one I see is also Council Member Sawant in City Light.

Go ahead, Eric.

Sure.

This proposal would add appropriation to City Light for energy conservation programs.

Council Member Sawant?

In the mayor's proposed 2021 budget and in her media statements about it, she has highlighted the small city light funds dedicated to transportation, electrification.

And I'm saying small, the mayor's office did not present them as small.

It sort of gives the impression that it's a big thing.

But anyway, of course, even as small as it is, it's an investment that my office is extremely supportive of.

But the press releases from the mayor's office fail to mention that these are not new investments.

And when you look at the whole package of city lights, climate funding, including transportation, electrification, and conservation programs, the mayor has actually proposed reducing the funding for green programs.

in the net.

This budget amendment is intended to restore those cut funds.

With the help of Eric and central staff, we are attempting to identify exactly how much has been cut, but this is complicated because of the many funds that were moved around into different budget summary levels in this proposed budget, but that's the intent.

Thank you very much.

Are there any questions on this item?

I'm not seeing any.

Okay, not seeing any.

Great.

Thank you very much, Council Member Swatt.

Thank you, Eric.

Let's move on to Office of Civil Rights.

For the Office for Civil Rights, and just a note for those of you following along on the memo, I'm on page 21. The proposal is to create and add funds to staff an indigenous advisory council.

And this council would advise elected officials about issues relevant to urban native populations and how the city can more solidly serve that population.

It's sponsored by Council Member Juarez.

Wonderful.

Council Member Juarez, would you like to add some information to this?

Yes.

So I have two minutes.

You can start the timer.

I'll start it for you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm excited to introduce this proposal to create an indigenous advisory council for the important purpose of providing direction, guidance, and subject matter expertise to advise Seattle elected officials and city departments on issues pertaining to urban native populations as well as tribal issues.

As you know, we added native communities to our city council committee structure in 2018, and it's been quite successful.

The Indigenous Advisory Council will not only work closely with the Public Assets and Native Communities Committee, but with other city council members, the executive, and city departments to coordinate overall policy development.

The Indigenous Advisory Council will not duplicate the work of the PDA, Seattle Indian Service Commission, which advocates for funding for human services.

I envision a council structured to attract and empower community leaders, professionals, tribal council elected officials, to bring forward indigenous knowledge and perspective and skills and life experience to the table that we so need today.

This is also happening, I should add, on the federal level as well.

Just a quick background on some data.

Today, 71% of American Indians and Alaska Natives live in urban settings.

Urban Indians are often an overlooked population in society, even though they represent the majority of American Indians and Alaska Natives throughout the country.

American Indians and Alaska Natives experience disproportionately higher rates of gender-based violence, homelessness, health disparities, including chronic disease, racism, poverty, and barriers to education.

We have an opportunity here to shape the future of Native individuals and families.

Currently, we have a gap to fill.

Other cities have successfully created a position similar like the Indigenous Advisory Committee.

Portland has an active tribal relations director who is positioned to assist the city council, the executive, and all city departments in strengthening relationships and coordinating overall policy development with tribal governments in the Portland area.

I hope we can do the same here.

We have this opportunity to not only strengthen policy priorities that impact Native communities, but also to build positive relationships with our indigenous people and local and regional tribal governments, and that includes working with them not only on services, but leverage of state and federal dollars.

This item would utilize available funds to either fund a .5 FTE or one full-time or one FTE.

And I'm currently, if Asha can probably chime in here, Asha and Lish, to assess the appropriate location for the Indigenous Advisory Council.

and some of the options may be the Office of Civil Rights or Department of Neighborhoods.

In any event, thank you, central staff.

You guys have been great.

I look forward to getting back more feedback, and I hope to gain some support from my colleagues.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you very much, Council Member Juarez.

Are there any comments or questions?

Okay.

Council Member Juarez, thank you so much.

Really appreciate you bringing this forward, and I know you're still looking into the total dollar amount, total TBD at this point.

Is that correct?

Yes.

And I just want to say, I just want to say a really big thank you to my colleagues back in 18 and recently and the successes we have of folding in native communities into our city council structure.

I don't think any other city has done that.

I know the state legislator has finally, finally did it a few, a few years back with Senator John McCoy.

So I'm hoping to duplicate that and have the same success.

So thank you.

Excellent point.

Thank you very much.

Okay, let's move on to Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection.

Council Central staff and there are 11 proposals for the Seattle Department of Construction inspections.

The first is from the chair of that committee, Council Member Strauss, and it's a statement of legislative intent requesting quarterly reporting on permanent turnaround times for complex projects.

Thank you very much, Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Ketil.

We continue to see a long backlog of permit applications with Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, which is affecting our ability to bring needed housing online quickly, especially as the development cycle begins to flatten out.

SDCI has taken good steps in recent years to address this backlog, and this statement of legislative intent will help us identify additional opportunities to improve permit review times and would ask SDCI to report quarterly to the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on those review times and their progress and addressing this backlog.

I have worked with Director Torgelson on this issue throughout this year.

I know that he is committed.

I know that he is putting in the appropriate effort and that he is making good progress on this effort.

And this slide would help us ensure that that reporting would come to this committee on a quarterly basis.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Keetil.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Strauss.

Any additional comments on this one?

Okay, thank you so much.

Councilmember Strauss, just one question from you.

Looking at the description here, would you also be interested in getting a report back from SCCI on policy recommendations they have, or is this sort of just a report back on the timing?

Yes, the intent of and as I spoke to Director Torkelson about this, the intent of this is to identify how we can improve the process and also call it both demonstrating to the public how SDCI is working through their backlog.

and what improvements are needed.

This is not so different than when Seattle City Light had a backlog in their billing a number of years ago.

And we watched as Seattle City Light made immense efforts and put immense resources behind reducing that backlog and did so successfully.

So I see a similar process here for Seattle Department of Construction inspections.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Very interested in this as well.

We heard from the city of Austin that they had some interesting strategies to move forward.

Very large projects, also projects that included a high number of unionized positions.

So just put that feeler out there for us to come back to later.

Thanks so much.

Let's go on to the next one, which is also Council Member Strauss.

So the next proposal, also by the Chair of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee, would restore The housing and zoning technician position and the property owner and tenant assistance group at and also provide funding for that position.

This is a position that the council added last year, which was not filled.

Thank you, chair.

Thank you to last year.

The council funded a position in property owner and tenant assistance group to provide outreach for tenants and landlords navigating new regulations.

The 2021 budget redirects this funding and position authority to add an elevator inspector to address an increased inspection workload.

My proposal is to retain the inspector position and add funding and position authority back to the property owner and tenant assistance group as the need for this outreach will likely be greater, larger than ever as we deal with the economic fallout of COVID-19.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Ketel.

Thank you very much.

Are there questions on this one?

I want to double check, is this building on the elevator inspector that our office had worked on one or two years ago?

Does anybody remember that?

So yeah, Ketel Freeman here, it was actually, it was an electrical inspector.

Okay.

And that position authority for that electrical inspector, just to remind the council members that electrical inspector would perform a body of work that is currently performed by the State Department of Labor and Industries.

That position authority is still at STCI.

I understand the intention is to fill it in 2022.

That's right.

Okay.

So it had not been cut, but it had not been filled in the last year.

Correct.

Okay.

Thanks so much, Council Member Strauss.

I was getting our inspector positions completed there.

So thanks for putting this forward.

Any questions?

Great.

Let's go on to the next item.

The next proposal is again from Council Member Strauss.

This would increase funding and amount to be determined for tenant outreach and service in anticipation of increased demands related to COVID-19 eviction moratoriums, eviction moratoria.

Excellent.

And for folks following along, more information than We're on page 22 now in the memo.

Councilmember Strauss, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Ketel.

Similar to my last proposal, this recognizes the economic reality of COVID-19 and the rise in evictions I fear we may see as the eviction moratoriums and federal government support disappear over the course of time.

The outcomes heighten our need for tenant protections and outreach contracts, which is why I'm bringing this proposal forward.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much.

Are there questions on this item?

Council Member Sawant, please go ahead.

Not so much a question, but just wanted to add, I have a proposal coming up, which is similar, and just wanted to let Council Member Strauss know that my staff will reach out to your office to see if, I mean, because it's in the same spirit.

Thank you very much, Council Member Sawant.

Okay, Council Member Strauss, I'm not seeing any comments on this one.

Let's go to your next item, number four.

The final proposal from Council Member Strauss would increase funding at SDCI to provide position authority for additional tree protection staff, including arborists and code compliance staff.

Wonderful.

And we spoke about trees a little bit this morning.

Would you like to provide more context on this one as well?

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Ketil.

As I noted earlier, my office continues to work with SDCI on a number of strategies to improve tree protection in our city.

As we work on those strategies, I continue to see that too often we don't have the capacity to fully enforce the tree laws that are already on the books, sometimes because an inspector cannot make it to a site before a tree is removed.

This proposal would increase funding for the team of arborists and inspectors that enforces tree regulations so they can respond faster and prevent violations before they occur.

Thank you, Chair.

Excellent.

Thank you.

I am not seeing anyone with their hand raised.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Strauss.

Continuing with our tree theme, let's go to the next one, which is Councilmember Peterson's.

So moving on to a suite of proposals from Councilmember Peterson, the first relates to tree protection regulations.

This proposal would impose a proviso on a portion of appropriations in STCI's government policy safety and support budget control level.

That proviso would be released when the tree protection bill contemplated by resolution 31902 is submitted to the council.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you, Ketel.

And as we talked about this morning, older, larger trees have incredible environmental and social justice benefits.

And the city council has been trying to work with the executive to update and strengthen the city's tree ordinance for many years.

And this will help to improve the quality of life as well as our environment and to provide and retain health benefits for all communities.

The Council adopted Resolution 319-02 in 2019 to achieve this result, a new ordinance in 2020. Unfortunately, due to a variety of circumstances, we still don't have that tree ordinance.

This proviso would encourage SDCI to prioritize this work in 2021. And as originally, because we want this sooner rather than later.

Yeah, this would proviso funding from that budget summary line item so that they would deliver the ordinance.

Well, thank you so much.

I see a hand.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Strauss, please go ahead.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

I just want to again applaud and thank you for all of your work.

I know that we've briefly discussed some of the intervening variables into both this and the other proposals, and I just signal that I look forward to continuing to work with you on this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sorry about that.

Let's move on to the next one.

Moving on to the next proposal from Council Member Peterson.

This is item number six on page 22. This would add $250,000 to SDCI and or OPCD where they should exactly be placed as remains to be determined to develop and implement a displacement monitoring program.

Thank you very much Council Member Peterson.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, chair.

Thank you.

So I know we all support additional affordable housing throughout Seattle.

And while we support new construction, we also want to make sure we have a net gain in the amount of affordable housing and when adopting major new land use changes to support the creation of affordable housing.

The potential loss or demolition of existing naturally occurring affordable housing and the displacement of low income households has not been well quantified or mitigated.

And the same issue comes up every time a permit is granted for the construction of new buildings that may result in the demolition of existing residential buildings.

And the council attempted to rectify this problem in resolution 31870, which asks the executive to implement data collection and reporting on the status and trends of displacement of low income households, looking at rent levels, vacancy, demolition.

So how much is new construction leading to the demolition of existing affordable housing and the displacement of existing low and moderate income residents?

What are the net impacts?

This more detailed data is needed to get the facts and if warranted to consider potential course corrections or mitigation in city policy to better achieve our goals of a net increase in affordable housing and economic integration, less displacement.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Peterson.

Any questions on this one?

Okay, just a quick question on my end.

I see would include rent levels, vacancy rates and demolitions of affordable housing units.

I'm wondering if your proposal here is also considering demolition, but also replacement with X number of units so that there is that balance.

It's like a single family home was torn down, but six to eight apartment units were created.

Are you doing that sort of analysis as well?

Absolutely.

Yes, this will be a net impact.

So not only will we compare the quantity of units after the new construction, counting those newly constructed units, we'd also look at the affordability of the newly constructed units versus what might have been demolished.

And that way we have a better picture of what's truly going on.

Right now the The data is very high level census data.

It doesn't drill down to each residential building like it could easily, I believe.

Thank you very much, Council Member Peterson.

I don't see additional questions on this one.

Let's go to the next one on your list here.

Okay, number seven, again, this is on page 22 of the memo, and this relates to after implementation monitoring of the mandatory housing affordability program.

This would request a report by January 31st of 2021 on payment versus performance under the MHAR program.

The reporting is consistent with the requirements and the MHA framework bill ordinance 125-108.

Rosemary Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair.

So as many of you know, the framework for the mandatory housing affordability program adopted in Ordinance 125-108 in 2016 requires real estate developers to include housing affordable to low-income households in their housing projects or pay a fee in lieu of performance to the city's Office of Housing to contribute to construction of affordable housing years later.

That ordinance sets policy on the balance between on-site performance and payments in lieu.

as follows, quote, the council will consider raising payment amounts to avoid a bias toward payment.

So in other words, we're striving for a balance of 50-50 of building on site versus writing a check.

So building on site implements important social justice principles, such as building the affordable housing immediately instead of years later, and integrating the affordable housing within each neighborhood instead of concentrating it elsewhere.

So while the current status of that ratio is supposed to be reported annually by the Office of Housing, it's better if we see the data more frequently.

And we also incorporate data from the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection, because developers indicate their choice when they apply for permits.

So this item requests that OH and SDCI produce the data to confirm clearly, one way or the other, are we meeting the 50% goal or not?

Thank you very much, Council Member Peterson.

Are there questions on this item?

The question that I would have for Kittel is how does this differ from the existing requirements that were included to analyze the payment versus performance measures that I believed were already in statute?

So it is similar.

Currently, the council receives a report every March from the Office of Housing that details payment versus performance under the Mandatory Housing Affordability Program.

Councilmember Peterson just described a nuance that is not included in that report, which is what developers intend to provide at the time they apply for a master use permit.

That information is not included.

in OH's report, which just looks at actuals after the project has been developed.

So that's a distinction that is different from what OH reports in March.

Great, thank you.

And am I reading this correctly, that this would be, there's no dollar amount associated with this.

It would be basically adding that requirement in?

Correct.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member Peterson, anything else on that?

Yes, correct.

Excellent.

Thank you.

I am seeing no additional hands on this.

Thank you.

Councilmember Peterson.

Okay, let's move on to number 8.

Okay, the next 4 proposals are from Councilmember Sawant.

The 1st is in the nature of a slide request that SDCI design.

an administrative structure and provide a cost estimate for the city to maintain a transferable rental history background check report database.

Council Member Sawant, please go ahead.

This statement of legislative intent requests that the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections design an administrative structure and estimate associated costs for the city to maintain transferable rental history background check reports.

The intention is to do the administrative planning that will allow the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee to draft and pass an ordinance creating a structure to allow the rental history of tenants to be transferable from one landlord to the next.

This will allow prospective tenants who have paid for a background check to reuse the results for each house or apartment that they apply to.

It will also allow the city to set policy for what is and is not acceptable content for a background check.

For example, I think renters should be able to remove attempted unjust evictions that were not upheld by the courts from their rental histories.

Right now, there is no technically feasible way to prevent that information from being sent to prospective landlords.

And this is the idea of transferable rental histories has been around and it has been brought up by rental rights organizations like the Tenants Union and Washington Community Action Network.

There are real administrative challenges to maintaining transferable rental histories, IT challenges, privacy concerns, others.

So this statement will ask the STCI to think through how to address those challenges.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Are there any questions for Council Member Sawant on this item?

Okay, Council Member Sawant, I'm not seeing any.

And again, this is a request to sort of do that further evaluation, that next step.

Is that correct, Council Member Sawant?

To create that?

Yeah, I mean, whether we do it as a slide or we do it separately, regardless, to pass such an ordinance, the city would have had to have a clear idea of how they would administer this program.

Thank you very much, Council Member Sawant.

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

And folks, feel free to ask any questions that you have, burning questions.

This will help inform other council members as to what questions may need to be addressed before their Form Bs are completed.

The next proposal also from council member Sawant, similarly in the nature of a slide, would request that SDCI work with the Seattle Renters Commission to draft standard terms for residential leases.

Let's go ahead, Councilor Oswalt.

Thank you.

This statement of legislative intent requests the Department of Construction Inspections to work with the Seattle Renters Commission to draft standard terms appropriate for all residential rental increases with input from organizations representing renters and landlords.

In the last meeting of the Sustainability and Renters Rights Committee, chaired by my office, we heard from renters whose landlords prohibited them from displaying Black Lives Matter signs in their window.

And we've heard similar problems in the past as well, but we just saw a huge number of such complaints from tenants this year during the Justice for George Floyd movement.

And this is just one of the many outrageous and unjust lease terms that renters end up having to accept in their leases because the overwhelming majority of renters don't actually have the power over what is in their lease.

The idea that the lease is some mutually agreed upon and negotiated document is really a fiction in most circumstances.

The balance of powers is quite in favor of landlords and property management corporations.

So the intention of this slide is to prepare for a future ordinance to require all residential rental leases to contain certain standard terms.

Obviously, there will be other parts of a lease that will change from home to home.

But there will be some standard terms that should make up basic rights and responsibilities for all renters and for all landlords.

And it will require broad community input to know what lease term should be universal.

You know, it's not something that we can just come up on why it needs to be studied.

It needs a lot of community input.

So this slide requests that the SDCI and the Renters Commission make those recommendations based on the feedback they receive.

Okay, moving on to the next proposal from Council Member Swann.

This one relates to eviction legal defense.

It would add $750,000 SDCI to contract with an organization to provide eviction defense for tenants.

Should I go ahead?

Sure, why not?

We lose Council Member Let's get that.

Let's take a vote.

Is Council Member Herbold on?

Is she vice chair?

I am on.

Probably wait.

Yeah, I think it's probably better to wait.

Okay.

Oh, wait, Council Chair Mosqueda just texted that she cannot get in.

Oh, dear.

So I suppose while we're working on that, let's continue on with the presentations.

We are, I believe on, are we on 10 or 11?

We're on 10, I believe Council Member Sawant was going to, I put more meat on the bones for my description of number 10, eviction legal defense.

Fantastic.

Council Member Sawant, meat on the bones, please.

Thank you.

So this budget action would add $750,000 to the Seattle Department of Construction Inspections to our contract with our renter eviction defense organizations, such as the Housing Justice Project of the King County Bar Association to provide free legal defense for any renter facing eviction in Seattle.

If the council supports this, my office will also propose an associated ordinance to create the right to counsel for all renters facing eviction in Seattle.

And this is increasingly something we are seeing as a demand from renters throughout the nation and in other cities as well.

There are about 1,200 eviction court hearings, sorry, court filings each year in Seattle, not counting unfiled evictions or pre-eviction notices.

The Housing Justice Project estimates that $750,000 would fund an additional five attorneys and two paralegals and would be sufficient to provide the legal, provide the right to counsel for renters.

facing eviction in Seattle.

Studies will show of course that there will be an absolute wave of evictions after the emergency moratoriums are lifted and in addition there will likely be an increase in the overall number of tenants facing eviction due to the economic downturn and lost jobs and lost incomes.

And as council may remember, the People's Budget Movement was able to win the first city funding for eviction defense attorneys.

The council supported that.

And the following year, we increased that to two eviction defense attorneys.

And the Housing Justice Project estimates that a 56% overall success rate has been had since 2019 in keeping tenants housed up from less than 24% two years ago.

And this is not the only source of funds.

They have other sources of funds, but together, all these small investments have had a big impact and really life-changing difference for tenants to not have an eviction on their record and having a trained attorney by their side in the court makes all the difference as we know.

And so this amendment would provide sufficient funding to make access to legal representation a right for renters facing eviction in Seattle.

Thank you, Council Member Swann.

I see Council Chair Mosqueda is back with us.

Madam Chair, back to you.

Thank you very much, Madam Vice Chair.

Thank you for stepping in.

Apologies for that, colleagues.

I lost internet connection, so I am with you via cell phone, and we'll try to get back on the computer here soon.

Thank you, Council Member Swann.

Sorry to miss some of that presentation.

Are there any questions?

And you will need to say your name instead of just raise your hand, as I cannot see everybody at the same time anymore.

Okay, I'm hearing no questions, Council Member Sawant.

Thank you very much for that.

Kito.

Great, moving on to the final proposal here for SDCI.

This one is again from Council Member Sawant.

This would add half a million dollars in general fund to SDCI to increase funding for greater education and outreach.

Please go ahead, Council Member Sawant.

Thank you.

And I was going to say all of the difficulties we are facing with the internet.

I think it's a good case for municipal broadband.

So this budget action would add $500,000 to the SDCI budget to increase funding for renter rights organizations to support renter right education and organizing.

You know, organizing organizations like Tenants Union of Washington State, BC, Seattle.

Sorry.

It's just background noise here.

Okay.

These organizations do essential work to help educate renters about their rights and also help organize buildings to bargain collectively, especially against abusive landlords and slumlords.

They do heroic work, as we know, with totally insufficient resources and often running just on their dedication.

But given the deluge of evictions that is expected over the next year in Seattle and around the country, I think it's essential that we increase the funds as much as we can, and so this budget action would add $500,000 for that purpose.

Thank you very much.

Council members, please say your name if you'd like to ask any questions.

Okay, Council Member Sawant, I am hearing no questions on this item.

Thank you very much.

And I will just ask one other quick question.

You mentioned I believe you mentioned the Renters' Rights Commission.

Is this an item that came directly from them as well?

No, I mentioned the Renters' Commission in connection with The studies that need to be done in order to have ordinances for the legal defense and also for the transferable rents and specifically for, sorry, transferable rents and standard residential leases.

But I have no doubt that the Renters Commission also would support this.

But this specifically has come from the feedback we've received with organizations that are on the ground and actually helping renters and tenants.

And like T, Tenants Union, and especially Tenants Union, really, but also BC, Seattle, and Waukan.

I mean, these are organizations who actually get phone calls every day from renters who need help.

Thank you for that background.

Colleagues, any questions, please say your name.

Okay, I am hearing none.

Thank you for that.

Thank you for covering this robust section here.

We appreciate your time and thank you for the walkthrough.

For folks who are following along, we are on page 23 of the memo and we are moving on to the Office of Economic Development.

Hello, Yolanda.

Hello, Yolanda Ho, Council Central staff.

We have five proposals.

for the Office of Economic Development.

The first one would restore the nightlife business advocate position proposed by Council Member Lewis, which is proposed to be eliminated in 2021. So this proposal would add 156,000 in general fund and position authority to bring this position back in 2021.

Thank you very much.

Please go ahead, Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So my understanding is it's possible that some of the duties of this position might be getting absorbed in some other way by the department.

And so while the personnel and the policies might be shifting, the general service might be remaining.

To err on the side of caution, I kept it on as a form A while I worked with the department and with nightlife advocates to see if that is in fact the case.

I do think it's really critical as we come out of the COVID downturn, which has had a massive impact, obviously, on nightlife, on performance venues, on all sorts of things related to this really critical part of our cultural identity and our economy that we have the resources in place to assist and help with that recovery.

If it's planned to be done in a different way, I'm certainly amenable to that, but I want to make sure that those are ideas that have been negotiated in coordination with some of the nightlife boosters and that we can make sure that that critical service that we can provide as a city stays in place and in 2021. So, you know, stay posted for some developments on this one as we move into kind of the form B land of our deliberations.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Herbold, did you have a question on this one?

I just wanted to indicate my appreciation for Councilmember Lewis taking this on.

I do understand that the Office of Economic Development is moving towards sort of a broader catch-all, the creative industries.

I have long felt that the nightlife and film positions should be maintained in order to really focus on these, particularly as it relates to music, a really, really important part of our economy here in Seattle.

So I really appreciate you taking this on and look forward to learning more.

Thank you very much.

Okay, so the second proposal is from Council Member Strauss.

This proposal would add $50,000 of general fund for the port jobs program that is proposed to be eliminated in 2021. Thank you very much.

Council Member Strauss, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Yolanda.

Of the $400,000 of workforce development funding cut in this city in this budget, $50,000 was intended as the city's contribution to the ports jobs program, which connects low income job seekers with family wage jobs in and around our port.

We know that the working waterfront provides good, well-paid positions that don't require an individual to take on educational debt to be successful and support their family.

This program aligns with the city's broader maritime and industrial work, and I believe it should be retained.

And just as a side note to the nightlife business advocate position, I think that we are all also very appreciative of Scott Pluskalec's work in and around our city, as he has made immense contributions for residents all across our city.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Yolanda.

Thank you very much, Council Member Strauss.

Any questions on this one?

Regarding the port jobs program, can you remind us about the matching amount that comes from the port as well?

I do know that there is a match.

Yolanda, could you help me out with the exact figure so I don't overstate or understate?

I believe it is, our 50,000 is just a portion.

Yeah, it's a very small amount.

I don't have the specific number on hand, but there's, oh, 2.5 million is their total budget.

Okay, thank you very much.

So we're making up the 0.5 in theory here.

It's 50,000.

Oh, sorry.

Thank you very much.

Okay, so 2.5 is the total and the ask here is just 50k.

Correct.

Excellent.

Council Member Schatz.

It might seem like a small bit in the contribution.

I would say that when I think of this, I think about the rippling effect that $50,000 has and how that then changes one person's life and how that then increases the amount of sales tax revenue that we receive because they are a successful part of our community contributing to our economy.

So that's how I approach this.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for that.

Okay, I am back on the computer.

I can see all of the squares in front of us, so do feel free to raise your hand, members.

If you have anything else to add, I'm seeing none at this point, Yolanda, so let's go to the next one.

All right, the third proposal is farmer's market permitting process revisions proposed by Councilmember Strauss.

This is a proposed statement of legislative intent that would request that OED, the Seattle Department of Transportation, Seattle Fire Department, and Seattle Parks and Rec draft legislation for council consideration that would implement changes to code and permitting practices that would reduce barriers for farmers markets.

Excellent.

Council Member Strauss, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Yolanda.

As we know, farmer's markets have been so important this year as people look for ways to get their groceries while remaining physically distanced and outdoors.

Farmer's markets are, in many ways, our farm-to-table grocery store.

I've worked to ensure that we reopened the farmer's market in a timely manner this year.

And through this process, I have identified many, as well as the farmer's markets, have identified for us many barriers and challenges they face.

when navigating city bureaucracy.

This statement of legislation, this slide would ask OED to make recommendations for code changes or business practices that the city could implement to reduce those barriers to farmers' markets, including reducing fees and permitting requirements, then formalizing administrative rules that have existed in pilot phase for many years.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

I'm not seeing any questions on that and appreciate you bringing it forward.

Okay, Yolanda, let's go to the next 1 here.

Sure.

So the next 1 also sponsored by council member stress would create a farmers market advocate position.

This proposal would add a position of funding to.

that would provide dedicated permitting support for farmers markets in Seattle.

The position classification and funding amount would need to be solidified with OED should the proposal move forward.

Excellent.

Please go ahead, Council Member.

Thank you.

As I noted before, our community farmers markets face a complex web of city bureaucracy that they must navigate, especially in a year that has required flexibility in market layouts and safety protocols.

This proposal would fund a position in OED to act as the coordinator, the hub coordinator and advocate for farmers markets as they navigate different city permits and departments.

Hopefully the slide will be able to allow us to streamline and formalize to have an easier time navigating our bureaucracy, making this position unneeded.

But for the time being, I think that this would be a helpful position to have in our city.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much, Councilmember.

And this is year-round, is that correct?

That's correct.

Okay.

Any questions on this?

Okay.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Strauss.

And Yolanda, from Council Member Peterson, the last item.

Last one is construction impacts mitigation for small businesses.

This proposed statement of legislative intent would request that OED and the Seattle Department of Transportation propose a strategy for funding and distributing financial assistance to small businesses that are adversely impacted by the construction of city-led transportation projects with the goal of establishing a program in 2021 or 2022. Thank you to tell us more, Council Member Peterson.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you, Yolanda, for your work on this.

I know we appreciate the work that our Seattle Department of Transportation does to improve our streets for pedestrians and all modes of travel.

Yet we, and especially small businesses, know that construction work on our streets temporarily disrupts access and enjoyment for residents who want to eat, shop, buy services from our neighborhood businesses.

So there's a good argument to make.

I think that if the city government's causing the disruption, then the city government should do more to mitigate these negative impacts.

There's been some assistance in the past, but it seems limited to micro businesses of five or fewer employees, which allows us to use the federal community development block grant dollars that are not limited by the state of Washington's so-called gift of public funds.

This statement of legislative intent would direct the executive to get more creative and identify funding options available for vulnerable small businesses to mitigate temporary but material negative impacts from city-led transportation projects.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Is there any questions?

Okay.

I am also interested in this one and will look forward to learning more information about this customer Peterson.

I don't see any questions on this one.

So we will thank you, Yolanda.

Thanks for getting us through Office of Economic Development.

And I was going to let our vice chair know I keep getting notices that say I am on unstable Internet.

So thank you for standing by.

I did miss just a second from that presentation, but it came back on.

So thank you very much, Council Member Peterson.

And if I have any questions on what I missed, I'll give you a call.

Okay, let's move on to the next subject here in front of us.

And I see, Brian, good night.

Hello, Brian.

Good afternoon, Council Members.

So next up are proposals related to the Department of Education and Early Learning, or DEEL.

And for anyone that's looking at the memo, these can be found on page 24. The first proposal would add funding in an amount to be determined to deal to support culturally responsive and identity affirming programming for Black girls and young women.

And this proposal comes from Council President Gonzalez.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Lewis, did you have anything you wanted to add on behalf of the Council President?

Go ahead.

Sorry.

Sorry about that.

Council Member Morales, did you have something to add on this one?

Yeah, sorry.

I should have texted you before.

Okay.

Council President Gonzalez did ask if I would address this for her since she is out this afternoon, if that's okay?

Excellent.

Yes, my apologies.

I thought the first note that I got was for all of the items from the Council President, so that is very helpful to know.

I'll make sure to make that ask.

when we get to various items.

Council Member Ramos, please go ahead.

Sure.

So I think she asked if I would mind speaking to this, because we are both very interested in making sure that we are increasing our investments for Black girls in the city.

So the proposal, the form A that Council President has would be one step in the city supporting additional programs for Black girls, similar to DEEL's Kingmakers and My Brother's Keeper programs.

Currently, there are modest investments made through the FEPP levy that are through an academic lens with Spin Girls focusing on STEM pathways and My Sister's Keeper in partnership with Aki Kurose Middle School.

Council President would like to see additional funding support for more identity-affirming programs for Black girls.

Thank you very much.

Council Members, any additional comments?

Council Member Morales, anything on behalf of yourself?

On this number one, no, this is great.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Okay, great.

Let's continue.

Okay, thank you.

So the second proposal does come from Council Member Morales, and the title for this proposal should read, Education Investments for Black Girls and Young Women.

The proposal would request that DEEL evaluate whether and how the city's education investments are serving black girls and young women, and it may include a proviso on one-time funding that the executive has identified for addressing systemic racism in education, but for which a spending plan has yet to be developed.

We are very interested in looking at additional ways to support

And so we want to start early in making sure that young girls get the attention and support that they need to be successful.

So what we are looking to do is ask DEEL to create a plan for what a shift in their investment would look like so that we are able to directly serve black girls and young women of color with more targeted investments in the city, from the city.

Thank you very much.

Any questions on that?

On these last two, these would be additive, is that correct?

Not trying to spread the peanut butter thinner for those investments?

Yeah, well, so the statement of legislative intent is to study.

The first step would be to evaluate.

Because the Our Brother's Keeper program really is sort of mission-driven to focus on young men, We could potentially be needing a different mechanism to shift investments.

This is a conversation that has happened over the last several years.

And because the mission is so specific, I think there has been a little reluctance to move away from that.

So part of what we need to figure out is whether we needed a different mechanism for making these kinds of investments.

And so there was also, as Brian said, a proviso for a certain portion of the funding that is left, which I believe is 1.2 million.

So there would be a proviso for a certain portion of that remaining funding to be used to create a plan for how some investments could be more targeted for young women.

Excellent, thank you for that summary.

All right, let's go to the next one here, restorative justice.

Okay, so the third and final item for deal relates or would, excuse me, would fund a pilot program for a limited number of schools in partnership with community organizations to implement restorative justice practices.

The funding would allow the schools to have restorative justice coordinators or teams, and they would facilitate school-wide trainings for teachers and students to build and strengthen relationships, address behavioral issues in a culturally responsive and trauma-informed way, and assist with conflict resolution.

And this proposal also comes from Councilmember Morales.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Morales, please go ahead.

Thank you.

So I was very excited when we heard from the school district that they were going to stop contracting with SPD for school resource officers.

That's actually something we've been talking about for a couple of years here in the South End, which is where the school resource officers are located.

So that is an important step one in this process, but step two is to replace that kind of a presence in the schools With restorative justice coordinators.

So the idea here is to create a pilot program so that and we do have some Cleveland High School.

has a restorative justice coordinator and they do use some FET levy money there.

Emerson has a partnership with Wablock.

So as Brian mentioned, the idea is to create a pilot program so that we can expand the opportunity for more schools to see what kind of work a restorative justice coordinator could do.

And in my perfect world, we would eventually move to be able to provide that kind of really holistic trauma-informed support to young people so that we provide that holistic approach rather than resorting to suspension and expulsion when there are behavioral issues in a school.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

I'm not seeing any questions on this.

Appreciate you bringing this forward.

Brian, I think that that summarizes the deal.

Is that correct?

Thank you for your time today.

And we'll turn it over to Tom Meisel.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So this is on page 24 of the memo.

This is a proposal from Council Member Sawant to rescind the $30 million cut to the Strategic Investment Fund that's there to address displacement as proposed in the third quarter of 2020 supplemental bill.

Council Member Sawant, carrying off of a discussion we had yesterday, thank you for flagging this.

Please go ahead.

Yes, as you said, we had a discussion on this yesterday.

The mayor describes this as a cut to the quote unquote strategic investment fund in the third quarter supplemental budget, but that language is, in my view, intentionally designed to be very.

vague and really hide what's being cut.

It's very different from the language that was used by her during last year's budget when she trumpeted that she was creating this fund and would work with community organizations to invest these $30 million to address displacement in black and brown communities.

And as I pointed out yesterday, the mayor talked about these $30 million last year exactly the same way she's talking about $100 million this year, but she's neglected to actually invest a penny of these funds in real terms.

and yesterday many council members correctly objected to the mayor breaking this promise and at that time I had mentioned that my office has submitted a form a to cancel the cut which is eliminate the cut, which is what we have before us right now.

I really hope council members support and co-sponsor this budget amendment to follow through in practice what was expressed yesterday, which is correct the opposition to this cut.

And also there was some discussion about how this could be paid for yesterday.

There are several good options.

And in this form A, we have not been prescriptive.

It could be funded by increasing the tax rate of the Amazon tax or the payroll expense tax, funding.

It could be funded by defunding the police by 50% which would free up an additional approximately $170 million or it could be funded in other ways discussed yesterday.

If councilmembers support restoring this funding and eliminating the cut I would be happy to have a conversation about what the funding source actually is as long as the funding source is

So just so I'm clear, you're talking about a funding source that's progressive to fill where the $30 million was going to go so that the existing $30 million can continue to go to strategic investment fund.

Exactly.

Although I would just say that also say that it's now it's a given the recession is also a question that sort of almost multiplicative because the same question applies to $100 million as well.

But this is where it started, you know, there was there's a there's an unfunded promise of 30 million from last year.

Yeah, and I think that the comments made yesterday about the strategic investment fund being for historically marginalized communities, folks who are facing higher rates of displacement and higher rates of disinvestment from the city.

There's a lot of overlap there, too, in terms of where the BIPOC communities would benefit.

So I'd be interested in exploring as well what I'm not seeing any additional hands let's move on to the next one.

to generate an additional $232.8 million in 2021 with the intent to use this new revenue to stop budget cuts as proposed in the mayor's budget.

Council Member Swann, please go ahead.

You're on mute Council Member Swann.

Sorry about that.

Sorry, I was just saying that some of the comments I just made for the previous item apply here as well.

Basically, given the recession, given the reduced revenues that are coming in because so much of the revenue generation is still regressive.

We really face a stark choice, you know, are we going to allow a budget that has huge amounts of cuts that are going to affect not only working people and for people as a whole, but disproportionately affect black and brown.

communities that are already marginalized.

And so it is really, again, it's a mathematical question.

It's a question of generating the revenues that don't exist right now.

So it's not something immutable.

It's not something that cannot be avoided.

It's really a question of whether the council is willing to increase the taxes on big business, which can be done legally.

And in addition, it's again, the question of defunding the police by 50% as well.

And also, you know, we, as you, Chair Mosqueda, and I, we've made it clear that actually the mayor's proposed budget would have been far terrible if the tax that was passed by the council had not been passed.

And the cuts would have been even deeper.

But even with the Amazon tax that has, you know, generated future revenue starting next year.

As I mentioned earlier, the proposed budget still has very deep cuts.

And it's really, in my view, a sleight of hand that the mayor is not counting a lot of the cuts as cuts.

So I don't accept some of the way things were presented in the presentation by the mayor's office.

Really what, as I said before, what we have is well over $200 million in our 2021 budget that are being cut, and these are coming in the form of cut library hours, cuts to transit, you know, buses, roads, affordable housing, closing of community centers and pools.

So all of this, again, affects the same communities that are already being impacted by racism and police violence and so on.

So I think this, again, it's a concrete question.

Are we going to increase the revenues?

And of course we need progressive sources.

for questions, colleagues.

Okay, I just have two questions customers want.

Um, I don't see in the details here.

Have you already identified at what rate folks would be taxed that or are you talking about dropping the threshold for the size of the, um, total Seattle payroll for various companies?

Um, Obviously, it could be done either way, exactly.

And so I would really urge colleagues to say what their preferences are.

But one way to do it is to change the rates of businesses with payroll $7 million to $999.9 million, the compensation.

of $150,000 to $500,000, a rate of 1.46%, compensation $500,000 and above, a rate of 2.92%.

And again, same with businesses with payroll of a billion and above, you can change the rates there as well.

And so we have some numbers and my staff will be sending around these details tonight to all council offices for your review.

I think increasing the tax rate on the top corporations that are already under the tax by the ordinance passed earlier this year is a good idea.

Because I mean, if you look at some of the top corporations and Amazon is not the only one, Amazon is just the most prominent one.

They've actually increased their rate of profit during the pandemic.

So it actually makes sense to tax them more.

Thank you very much, Council Member Szilagyi.

I'm not seeing additional questions.

Let's go on.

Thank you very much, Tom.

Does that conclude the finance general section here?

Are we ready for FAS?

Great.

Moving on, bottom of page 24, we're in Department of Finance and Administrative Services.

Good afternoon.

The first item for the Department of Finance and Administrative Services is to increase the amount of funding available in the municipal energy efficiency program.

It's a proposal from Councilmember Lewis.

The 2020 budget included $4.5 million for city building energy efficiency projects.

21 budget includes $2.5 million for those projects, and this would increase funding for municipal building energy efficiency projects.

Excellent.

Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks for queuing that up, Lish.

You know, this is in the spirit of my office's interest in potentially pursuing a carbon tax and looking a little more intently at really trying to increase the sustainability of our built environment.

And any standard we set should obviously start with us as a city and the buildings that are within our power and within our footprint.

And I would like to make sure that even in difficult times like this, that we look at ways to make sure we're maintaining those investments and maintaining that commitment.

And this has been a particular area of interest of Parker Dawson on my staff.

So I look forward to continuing to work with them on developing this and reaching out to more offices in the days to come.

Excellent.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

I am not seeing any questions at this moment or hearing any.

Let's go ahead to your next item here, micro business tax relief.

Thank you very much, Lish.

or Tom.

Hi, Tom.

Hi, Chair.

So this item is a proposal from Council Member Lewis for a micro business tax relief from third quarter and fourth quarter business and occupations tax.

So that's the city's gross receipts tax.

The eligibility criteria that are proposed would draw from those criteria used for the Small Business Stabilization Fund program, which was generally defined as microenterprises of five employees or fewer and low income in nature of the business.

Thanks so much, Tom.

And just a reminder to maybe yell a little bit on the Zoom for us.

It's just a little hard to hear you.

I'm going to turn it over to Council Member Lewis.

We did hear you, so thank you.

I'll turn it over to Council Member Lewis to provide any additional content.

Right.

And I just want to say, too, before jumping into it too much, it's been great going back and forth with Tom a little bit on some of the complexities of exactly how something like this might work in practice, given the extent to which B&O tax liability attaches for businesses this small and that it may not ultimately be something that could give a considerable amount of relief given that a lot of these businesses may not even have reached a level of gross receipts where they would be paying B&O tax into the city.

That said, to the extent that it is practicable, it's something that I wanna look at in this budget cycle to see if we could develop some kind of program for next year to remit back some B&O taxes for very small or for small businesses that have really taken a hit during the COVID crisis due to the need to socially distance and the reduced demand of people going out and patronizing businesses But there's still some work that needs to be done.

Obviously, we'd also be talking about potentially remitting revenue back, and at a time when we already have a big deficit, that's something that we'd have to be very cognizant of.

But given that we are in a position where we cannot provide gifts of public funds, relief from taxes is one of the only other mechanisms potentially available to us.

So I'd certainly like for us to see There's a square that could be circled here that could get some relief out the door next year for small businesses that have really taken a hit and haven't been able to take advantage of the limited relief we have been able to provide.

And that's where this currently sits.

Excellent.

Thank you very much, Council Member Lewis.

I'm not seeing any hands.

Council Member Strauss, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Just briefly, Chair, I wanted to thank you, Council Member Lewis.

As you know, I've asked similar questions regarding, and I look forward to seeing more of this proposal as it moves forward, and let me know how I can help.

Thank you both.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Very similar to the comments I was going to make.

We know that this has been a longstanding issue.

Even prior to Council Member O'Brien's departure, he was looking at various ways to amend the B&O tax.

We know it's been a need prior to COVID, and as you articulated, Council Member Lewis, especially needed given the impact on some of our smallest businesses in the city.

So look forward to learning more from you all on this item.

Okay, I think that that concludes the FAS section.

Thank you both to Tom and to Lish.

Moving on over to Greg Doss for Seattle Fire Department.

Thank you, madam chair, Greg Doss.

Thank you.

Members of the committee for those of you who are following along, you can find the Seattle fire department items on page 25 and we have 4 items for the Seattle fire department.

The 1st, 1 is funding additional training for Seattle firefighters.

And this one is from Councilor Mosqueda.

The proposal would add funding for training that would focus on de-escalation, scene safety, evasive defense, all of which will keep firefighters safe and increase solid transactions with persons in crisis and those suffering with mental illness.

So Councilor Mosqueda, this is your item.

Thank you very much, Greg.

You summarized it well.

Much of this we've been talking about over the last few months and actually a few years here.

I know that this is an area of interest to many of us.

Our first responders really do take care of us and they are the first people to show up on the scene.

In many cases, they see very traumatic things every day as they're dealing with assisting others with the trauma that they see.

and part of, I think, our city's responsibility is to take care of those who are providing medical care for our city and the well-being of our city residents.

This really also was underscored for me when I did the HealthONE ride-along, which I know Council Member Lewis has done, and I know other council members are very interested in as well.

Many of the firefighters and the case managers that I talked to talked about the experience that they've had with HealthONE, being able to spend time with individuals Instead of just feeling like you have to respond to that next call, they've really gotten a chance to know the individuals that they're helping.

Instead of seeing people just cycle in and out of Harborview or in and out of homelessness, taking the time to get to know them, to work with case managers, to get to know some of their family members, to care for not just their wounds, but the wounds that are inside, either mental health trauma or or substance abuse in some case issues that they help respond to.

This is calls that they're going to for folks who are both housed and unhoused.

And the takeaway from many of their interactions have been how important it is to process what they're dealing with on a daily basis, process it so that they can be better first responders for our firefighter department and Wanting to extrapolate much of what is learned within health one team and also within the peer support training team that already exists and the mental health first aid course that many firefighters take.

I know Councilmember Herbold, you're probably very familiar with many of these programs, but just wanted to put this.

Form A out there because I think especially right now as we're seeing more and more people without services due to COVID who need mental health counseling, case management, are dealing with PTSD and have fewer resources because of so many programs being scaled back under COVID.

This is an excellent way for us to apply many of the trauma-informed care and training to other firefighters across the department.

Customer Herbold, would you add anything to that?

Let's see here.

Let me make sure I'm off mute.

I am off mute.

Yes.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

The thing I would add, and it also ties into one of my budget actions, but I'll mention it here.

We've heard a lot today about the fact that the attritions, or otherwise known as separations, of the Seattle Police Department are higher than anticipated.

Every year, the city does a projected staffing report, and it includes in that staffing report the numbers of people that they anticipate coming on, as well as the numbers of people that they anticipate leaving.

And of course, it's all in the news today, how many more people how many more officers left in September than projected to leave in September.

But it's also, I think, really important to note that this happened for the fire department as well.

The annual separations number for the Seattle Fire Department is 38 firefighters.

And as of the end of, I believe, August, 45 firefighters have left.

And I think that's really a reflection of how stressful it is for our frontline workers to be managing multiple crises.

And I really appreciate that you are identifying this need for this type of support and training in recognition of the impacts of doing this life-saving work.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Vice Chair Herbold.

Any additional comments on this one?

Okay, thank you so much.

And you mentioned multiple crises that folks are dealing with at the same time.

And I also think that that is manifesting in the people that they see, right?

We heard from the HealthONE case managers and firefighters that they had shown up to quite a few folks' house recently.

who had probably lost their job, had lost their income, and were dealing with so much more isolation than they usually do.

folks have been starting fires within their own homes.

And I think that that is an example of where those multiple crises are overlapping.

Isolation, mental health needs, and lack of resources or economic downturn is causing people to try to figure out just how to stay warm.

And that's where our first responders are showing up too.

So I appreciate your adding to that piece and look forward to working with you all on this.

Let's move on to other items.

Council Member Herbold, you are up next in the firefighter department.

Greg, we'll turn it back over to you.

Yeah, thanks.

As you mentioned, the next item comes to you all from Council Member Herbold.

It is adding funding for automated external defibrillators or AEDs.

And this proposal is it would allocate additional dollars to propose to purchase AEDs.

The city firefighters and paramedics use AEDs on a daily basis.

And this proposal recognizes the importance of maintaining and replacing the department's complements of AEDs, complement of AEDs.

And it also highlights the importance of maintaining a device on every single SFD apparatus.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Just as far as some narrative to add to this.

Thank you, Greg.

I think that's a pretty complete description.

I guess the only thing I would add is the fire department currently owns no AEDs, otherwise known as Lucas devices, and we have a pretty broad spread between estimates of the number of devices that would be optimal to outfit the fire department and it's important that we support this effort.

The ambulance transport environment is really dangerous because of high-speed driving, risky maneuvers, and hazardous road conditions.

This poses a significant safety risk for the EMS crew who are often standing and unrestrained in a confined I was still waiting for the budget office's response, but we understand that the fire department could purchase refurbished AEDs for $1,000 per unit.

And again, like I mentioned, we have a kind of a broad range of what the need is between what the fire department is estimating they would need and what the estimate is from the union.

So we'll get back to you on this.

Councilmember Herbold, thank you very much.

I don't see additional hands.

I will just also add my appreciation for you bringing this forward.

And you mentioned the union, IAFF, Local 27, the letter that they sent us all on October 8th includes this item as their three items on their list, which you have included all of them here on this slide.

So appreciate you bringing that forward.

And we appreciate Kenny Stewart and the folks at IAFF 27 as well for sending over their list of needs in this crisis.

Okay, Greg, let's go to the next one.

All right, the next one also from Councilmember Herbold is adding additional funding for bunking gear.

And this proposal would increase funding for bunking gear, which is getting older, expiring, wearing out, and may not provide first responders with solid technology that they need to keep them safe from extreme fires and dangerous emergencies.

Thank you.

Councilmember Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

The only thing I would add to that is the utility of bunking gear in the fire service allows firefighters to more aggressively attack fires and rescue victims.

Not only does it protect firefighters, but it contributes significantly to saving lives.

The budget ad itself might be expanded to include the addition of the fire department.

We are working with the fire department to develop what are called ballistic sets.

CBO has reported that the fire department has 142 ballistic sets and believes 230 would be optimal.

These ballistic sets protect firefighters and paramedics at scenes of violence and give them peace of mind about entering these scenes early and rescuing highly vulnerable patients.

Thank you for summarizing that piece for us and also good, good example of how those are life saving devices in the city of Los Angeles from that letter as well.

Okay, Greg, let's do the next 1. all right.

The last 1 under the Seattle fire department is reinstating council funding for.

To reverse the cut of fire exams and also to reverse the cut of 20 firefighters from the SFD recruit class in 2021 from council member her bold and this one is. targeting a couple specific actions in the proposed budget.

One would reduce the class from 60 to 40, the number of recruits that would be in the SFD class for 2021, as well as to suspend on a one-time basis the department's annual testing for firefighters.

And so these actions would reduce the budget by $1.3 million and $219,000, respectively.

The proposal recognizes that the fire department has been experiencing a higher than normal separation rate and that 412 firefighters are currently eligible for retirement.

It would ensure that the fire department has enough stable and solid funding in 2021 and in 2022, should the department incur additional unplanned separations.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I'm so sorry.

Allie, did you have something to add before Council Member Herbold?

I just wanted to acknowledge that we inadvertently left item number four out of the miscellaneous paper.

So for folks following along in the memo, this one was, it was submitted by the deadline, but we inadvertently left it off.

But I will note that Greg did include some discussion of of the fire department staffing issues on page 17 of the memo that sort of support, I would say, this proposal a bit.

So, or not support, but help provide some context for this proposal.

So I just wanted to acknowledge that.

Sorry for the interruption.

No problem.

For folks at home, use your pen and write in number four in the middle of page 25.

Madam Chair, I'll include this in the police department paper so that it's on record.

Okay, no problem.

Council Member Herbold.

And thank you to everybody.

I'm sure it took about a dozen people working together to get it into the PowerPoint today, replacing the slide and all of what that took probably about an hour before the meeting began.

So thank you.

Thank you for doing that.

The only bit that I would add to this is just a reminder to council members that last year we increased funding in order to grow the size of the fire department recruit class.

The issue of separations combined with large numbers of firefighters eligible for retirement is an issue that needs some ongoing attention in a way where we maintain sustainability in order to address that.

We started that last year by increasing the size of the fire department recruit class.

I was disappointed to see that the proposed budget did not include that movement in the right direction.

And just look forward to working with folks on this item.

Thank you very much, Vice Chair Herbold.

And thanks, Greg, for your summary here.

I am also appreciative that this item got included in this discussion today.

I think this is actually the underbelly or the undercurrent of why there's so much stress right now among various firefighters.

And if we might just For context, refer folks to the data provided in the letter comparing Seattle to San Francisco, where we see that San Francisco with just about 100,000 more residents in their city, they have a significant amount more allocated to their residents per capita than the city of Seattle does for their fire department.

So $296 annually per resident to the city of Seattle's fire department.

compared to $481 annually per resident in San Francisco's fire department.

Quite a difference.

So thank you for calling that out.

The only reason I didn't reference that is because of all the controversy about using a per capita analysis for purposes of determining the right size of the police department.

I don't know if that same controversy exists for the fire department.

Um, I, I, um, I, I think, um, the, the, the point that I'm, I'm, I'm really trying to focus on is, um, getting ahead of this wave of, um, of retirements that are, that are coming and are going to continue to come well said and good reminder.

Thank you for that.

Okay, moving on.

Thank you very much.

Office of Housing, Tracy Raskliff.

I see you up there.

Good to see you again.

Hello.

Good afternoon, council members.

You will find the description, the full description of these proposals on page 25 of the memo.

that you have attached to the agenda.

Moving along, so the first proposal would add funding for the Ethiopian Community Center Village Project.

This is sponsored by Council Member Morales.

This proposal would add $2 million of funding to support this mixed-use project that will include community space in the ground floor and low-income housing for seniors in the upper floors.

The proposed funding would be used to support the construction of the community space.

The housing portion of this project is fully funded.

Excellent.

Council Member Morales, please go ahead.

Sorry, everyone.

I'm trying to get comfortable in this hard kitchen chair.

Okay, I got my hot pad.

Pete, can I go in here for my back?

It's long days here, so please go ahead whenever you're ready.

Thank you.

Well, so I don't have a whole lot to add.

As Tracy mentioned, this project is important here because it would provide approximately 90 units of affordable senior housing to vulnerable low-income seniors in the East African community.

At least that is part of the hope that some folks would be able to participate and benefit from these units.

It would also provide a gathering space.

And as we have talked about when we're talking, when we're considering these community-led projects, A real challenge with these projects is not finding the funding for the housing portion, but actually finding the funding to finance the ground floor construction.

And that's what the issue is here.

So the project is expected to begin construction in May.

And of the $9 million cost to build the non-residential part, the Ethiopian community has raised $7 million.

And so they are asking us to support the final completion of the project with the $2 million ask.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

I am not seeing questions on this.

I will ask, though.

Can you remind me, did you already say this?

and I may have missed it, what the state match on this is, or state investment, is there any?

I don't have that.

Tracy, do you have a breakdown?

I don't.

I can get that.

I'm sure on the housing side, well, I don't know for sure though on the housing side.

I think they actually do have housing trust money, maybe community building money.

I can find out though.

And I do know that they are also talking to the Department of Commerce and trying to get additional state-level funding for this portion as well, so we can get an update on that.

Yep.

Excellent.

Thank you very much, Council Member Morales.

Next is acquisition of property with Councilmember Juarez's item.

So this proposal would provide $1.5 million for the acquisition of property on Aurora Avenue that would be redeveloped to include office and service space for the Aurora Commons community organization.

co-located with a health clinic and low-income housing.

In addition, this proposal would also provide $200,000 in funding to conduct a feasibility study to develop a solid proposal for the development of this property as low-income housing and the Aurora Commons office and service space.

Council Member Juarez.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Juarez, please take it away.

Sorry, I was filling out my ballot.

So, back online here.

No problem.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

We have a real success story up here in North Seattle with the Aurora Commons under the tireless leadership of their CEO, Elizabeth Dahl.

Aurora Commons supports and provides services to vulnerable populations such as people experiencing homelessness and those who are housing insecure, people with substance use disorder, women who are commercially and sexually exploited and victims of human trafficking, women who are fleeing domestic violence, and victims of sexual assault.

They remove barriers by providing basic needs such as hot meals, laundry, hygiene, and clothing, and provide advocacy and community support so people can access next steps towards health and stability.

They currently partner to offer three clinics, including a comprehensive women's health clinic with Harborview Medicine Clinic, a buprenorphine clinic with Neighbor Care, and a wound care clinic.

They also partner with public health to support testing and treatment of HIV.

The majority of the funding would help Aurora Commons expand their service capacity in this high-needs corridor of Aurora Avenue North.

They are presently occupying about 2,000 square feet, but have the potential to acquire the whole building they are currently in and have close to 10 times more of their current footprint.

I also believe this project is a good candidate to leverage other public dollars, both county and state.

King County is looking at supporting efforts to get people off the street through the Health Through Housing Initiative, and Aurora Commons could be a candidate for funding after a determination from the Housing Feasibility Study portion of the funding request.

State capital budget is another solid opportunity for acquisition dollars due to their desire to support shovel-ready job-producing and service expansion projects.

I believe there's a plan underway to discuss these areas with state lawmakers about the Aurora Commons project.

I want to add a few more comments.

The co-location of service providers also makes the Aurora Commons an attractive project for public funders because there's a need to fund one site versus multiple.

and provides a one-stop shop for people seeking services.

And that's what they have been doing since they've been in our funding cycle since 2017. Furthermore, Aurora Commons is in a good position when it comes to their operating dollars due to their partnership with Harborview Medical Center and the UW Medicine.

And this should lessen the cost of any operating costs in the near future to the city.

So we have invested in the Arroyo Commons in the past budget cycles to build capacity, to expand services, to address homelessness, addiction, and healthcare, and they have been successful.

They are an actual program, brick and mortar, that we can actually point to and say, we gave these folks money, and they did, they done right by it.

We have a real success story of community-based, of a community-based organization delivering social services.

Now we have an opportunity to help them build low-income housing.

Currently, they are zoned for another 75 feet, which I think is seven floors, in which they hope to build low-income housing, expand their clinic in space and hours, and provide on-the-spot shelter for those seeking and waiting for a treatment bed.

Just to end this on a note to give some perspective here, I would say that Aurora Commons is probably where Chief Seattle was about three years ago.

So we have spent three budget cycles, like we did with Chief Seattle Club, investing in the capacity of the administration and investing in the brick and mortar of the organization, which has allowed them to expand services.

And everything we've been talking about for the last six months about giving money to community organizations that provide services that not only shelter the unsheltered, but also prevent homelessness and address many of the medical issues and some of our encampment issues in the North End.

So with that, I'm hoping that my colleagues will take a second look at us looking at expanding the Aurora Commons.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Council Member Strauss, question from you.

Thank you for your leadership, Council Member Juarez, for the Aurora Commons.

As you said, this is a real success story, and I think that that's putting it lightly.

This is a program that I'm excited to support with you, and in the interest of time, I'll hold my remarks because the accolades I can give to the Aurora Commons could last from now until Monday.

So thank you, Council Member Juarez, for your leadership.

Thank you.

I gotta go back to filling out my ballot now.

Dual duty civic responsibilities.

I appreciate it.

I'm multitasking.

Thank you very much.

I did have the chance to see a similar type health care clinic offered at the North Star Helpline when we went up there to do a tour and it was very impressive.

I hope their clinic is going well these days.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Okay, let's go on to the next one.

Moving to item number three.

This proposal would add $49 million in funding to increase the housing investments in 2021 to match the funding level included in the 2020 adopted budget for the Office of Housing.

This is sponsored by Council Member Sawant.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Thank you.

In the mayor's proposed 2021 budget, the office of housing has $49 million fewer, including a cut of $35 million directly to the fund used to build affordable housing compared with the budget adopted last year.

As the economic crisis leaves people jobless and and also consequently, if they don't have other resources homeless, the city should be massively expanding the construction of affordable housing.

And instead the mayor has decided to invest $0 of the city's discretionary general fund in affordable housing.

I do want to clarify that the office of housing budget is an example of what I was talking about before, which is that how you count a certain change You can have a slight of hand and call it a technical change, which I believe the mayor's office has done with several changes, as opposed to recognizing that this is actually a cut compared to last year.

And so this is one of those examples where they are terming it, quote unquote, technical change.

But it really depends on your point of view.

And the reality is the mayor's budget does not acknowledge the cuts to housing, even though the actual budget is $49 million less than was last year, their excuses that.

The funding for that 49 million last year was one time funds, which is yes, it's actually accurate.

However, from the point of view of working people struggling to find affordable housing, it really does not matter whether the city's revenue sources, levy, the general fund, the MHA program or proceeds from a property sale.

It doesn't change one shingle on the housing.

What matters is that the mayor is proposing $49 million fewer dollars this year than last year at a time when affordable housing should be highly prioritized, not to mention the good jobs, the construction and maintenance of the housing would create.

So this all can be funded by the budget amendment I spoke to earlier, increasing the rate of the Amazon tax that was passed earlier.

And I hope the council will support this proposal to, you know, at least for a certain degree to prioritize affordable housing.

Thank you very much, Council Member Swat.

Council Colleagues, any questions on this?

Okay, Council Member Sawant, I'm gonna ask a question, not to challenge the summary that you just provided, because I think it is important for us to recognize a difference in the amount of money from this year to next year, but just so that I better understand what the executive's office is saying.

Obviously, a $49 million cut is something that would be concerning.

How did the executive's office frame this, and what is the rationale again, Tracy?

So council members, to remind you, last year, the Office of Housing, in fact, did receive one-time allocation of the Mercer Mega Block proceeds.

So that was a big part of the $49 million, but they also received some of the sales tax, the new sales tax on affordable housing.

That's actually one, that's an ongoing allocation, mostly, except that we gave them kind of a forward funding of that, and the same on the REIT, remembering that we authorized them to go ahead and spend $25 million, knowing that they would get $25 million a year in revenue over the next five years to repay that.

So I think legitimately the one-time property tax sales from Mercer Mega Block were the one-time.

And they are honest about saying, this was one-time money that we provided last year.

And we all knew that that was one-time money.

It wasn't going to be continued.

OK, thank you, Tracy, just for that reminder on how it's being explained.

Uh, customer, so did you want to speak on this one again?

Just very briefly.

Yeah, I don't think that they have in any way factually been accurate.

As I said myself, that it is yes, it's true.

It's one time funding.

And in reality, you can look at this, this particular budget amendment from my office as simply something that is used some previously existing number to make sure that we have at least that much going forward.

But really, we could just as well have done a separate budget amendment where we recognize that funds for affordable housing are extremely low and extremely inadequate, and we need to increase that by X number of dollars.

So in that sense, it really doesn't matter whether this particular set of $49 million was a one-time the city Council should do this one way or another.

Number four, so this proposal would add $20 million in funding to increase, oh, I'm sorry.

Yes, $20 million in funding to increase resources for converting homes from gas or oil heating to electric.

And it would expand OH's existing weatherization program.

And this is from Council Member Sawant.

Thank you.

Council Member Sawant, please go ahead.

Thank you.

So this budget action would add $20 million to the Office of Housing to subsidize retrofitting homes to use electric instead of natural gas or oil heating and to subsidize building weatherization.

These are some of the most important Green New Deal investments that will be funded by the Amazon tax starting in 2022. And this is something that the tax Amazon movement was fighting for to be funded starting immediately in 2021 and we know all of that was of course preceded by the environmental justice movement and indigenous people and others fighting for the Green New Deal resolution and so on last year.

So the smoke-filled skies this fall have underlined that we cannot wait until it's convenient for big business to start investing in Green New Deal, that's not going to happen.

So it has to be done publicly and this budget amendment would start those some of those investments in 2021. The funding level is consistent with what is projected to be generated by the tax starting in 2022. I would also add that part of the idea of the Green New Deal is to create green jobs because working class people need a climate that we can live in and we need living wage jobs in the green economy.

And in the context of the massive job losses and the recession that we are seeing unfold around us, these Green New Deal jobs will also be essential for the livelihoods of working class people and some of the same communities actually that are most impacted by the climate crisis.

And in this format, My office has not been prescriptive of where the funds should come from, but of course, it could be funded by increasing the Amazon tax rate.

It could be funded by defunding the police department by 50% or any other progressive revenue sources that council members might think about.

Thank you very much, Council Member Sawant.

Are there any questions on this item?

I'm not seeing or hearing any.

Let's continue.

Councilors, moving to the last item, the last proposal, number five.

This proposal would provide additional funding to be determined to expand the Home for Good pilot program.

The 2020 adopted budget included $750,000 for this program.

The pilot program will provide housing subsidies for low-income seniors who are at risk of losing their housing due to the loss of income associated with switching from a state assistance program to a lower-paying federal assistance program.

This program will also provide housing subsidies to move low-income seniors living in shelters to affordable housing units.

This proposal is from Council Member Gonzalez.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Herbold, are you teed up to speak on behalf of Council President Gonzalez today?

I am indeed.

This was a top priority for the council last year, and I co-sponsored this with Councilmember Gonzalez, so it's nice that I get to speak to it.

Today in her absence, there's a great need for this bridge solution for seniors who are qualified but are waitlisted for housing subsidies.

And as it relates to the funding that we provided last year, it did take longer than anticipated to conduct the RFP.

A contract has been awarded to launch the program.

and funds will be carried forward to support the program into 2021. This program was always intended to be a multi-year initiative.

Doing so is necessary in order to provide the stability needed to make it successful.

In council, President Gonzalez had asked me to mention that she feels it's really important to add funds to adequately support and expand this program's operation in 2021. so that more individuals and households can remain stably housed, particularly during the current public health and economic crises.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

I am not seeing any questions here, and you underscore the point that I wanted to clarify.

This includes dollars that had not been spent this year because of that later than expected start, and so you're carrying those forward in this proposal.

Great.

And just clarifying, had the mayor, do we know, had the mayor already allocated for the use of those dollars in other ways?

No, these, these monies have been secured.

In fact, we did a fund swap of general fund for, I think, ESG as part of the second quarter supplemental to secure it from any of the reductions that might've been required because of the general fund reductions.

So it's, it's funding is secure through 2021. Smart.

the swap.

Councilmember Herbold anything else?

the reason for the swap at the time or one of the reasons for the swap at the time was in recognition that we did not want this to be one-time funding.

And so by doing the swap we made it possible for us to be identifying an ongoing fund source.

Councilmember Muscata, to respond to the question about state money in the Ethiopian Community Center Village Project, my understanding is that it has gotten an award from the Housing Trust Fund of $3 million.

That was fast work.

Thank you very much.

I will make a note of that.

Yep.

$3 million from the Housing Trust Fund.

Yep.

All right, Tracy, it's been great to see you again.

Take care.

We'll see you the next time around.

And welcome, Amy.

Amy Gore, good to see you again.

Moving on to Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

This is Amy Gore from Council Central Staff.

There is one potential council action for the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs.

It is found on page 26 of the Miscellaneous Budget deliberation paper.

This proposal would add $190,000 for the legal defense network.

This would restore the city's contribution to the network to the to its 2020 level of $1 million.

This action is sponsored by Council President Gonzalez.

The legal defense network was established in 2017 by Seattle and King County to provide support to immigrants and refugees impacted by changes to federal laws.

Without this budget proposal, total funding for the network, which includes funding from King County, would be $1.6 million in 2021. With this add, total funding would be increased to $1.8 million in 2021. Excellent.

Council Member Herbold, would you like to speak to this one?

Thank you so much.

So I think it's important to put this issue within the context of the rights that are guaranteed to people to have legal representation, but a recognition that when it comes to deportation proceedings, a lawyer is not appointed for individuals.

And the studies show that having legal representation means that you are four times more likely to be released from detention.

The city's work in this area has shown many individuals facing deportation actually qualify to apply for asylum.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And thank you and Council President Gonzalez for bringing this forward.

And thanks for speaking on her behalf today.

Any questions, colleagues?

Okay, I'm seeing none.

Council Member Herbold, thanks again.

Moving on to Office of Inspector General for Public Safety.

Hi, Greg, and goodbye, Amy.

Good to see you again, Greg.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of committee.

If you're following along, it's page 26 of your memo.

The Office of Inspector General for Public Safety, the OIG, has one item, and that is to add funding to provide additional resources for the OIG to conduct a Sentinel event review.

It's plural here, but there's one in particular that Council Member Gonzalez is interested in.

She's bringing forth this item to have additional funding added so that the OIG can look specifically at the demonstrations, the Black Lives demonstrations over the summer for which they are conducting a Sentinel event review and may need more funding.

So that's the sum of this one.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, would you like to speak on behalf of Council President Gonzalez on this one?

I would very much.

And I also have met with the Inspector General about this item and am very supportive of it.

The interest in having the Office of the Inspector General do a sentinel review as a way to address issues that in some cases may not result in findings of wrongdoing or sustained complaints, but still there's very clearly things that went wrong.

And the CPC, the Community Police Commission, Last year asked that the Office of the Inspector General put the effort to pilot a Sentinel review on its work plan.

They made that request last year.

And I'm just really pleased that the OIG is acting on that request by the CPC.

Key aspect of the review requires intensive community engagement.

And I understand that the Office of the Inspector General needs some additional funds really to support the success of this really critical body of work and to do that deep community engagement.

The goals of the Sentinel Review is to focus on community perspectives and concerns around a significant event, identify the root causes of negative outcomes, and improve systems to minimize the likelihood of future tragedies or harm to the community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Colleagues, questions on that one?

Okay, I'm seeing none.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold and Councilmember Gonzalez.

Thanks, Greg.

We'll move on to the Legislative Department.

Hi, Kytle.

Good to see you again.

This next proposal from Council Member Peterson would add $450,000 to the Legislative Department to complete necessary studies to implement two potentially interrelated transportation impact mitigation programs, one authorized pursuant to the Growth Management Act, and another authorized pursuant to the City's Transportation Benefit District Authority.

Thanks, Keydahl.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chairman Skater.

Thank you, Ketel.

As we seek additional revenues, it's important to remind folks that our state government already allows us to collect impact fees to pay for some impacts of new real estate development.

The state government provides two paths, and we can use one or both.

The Growth Management Act GMA and or the transportation benefit district.

Impacts from new real estate development include the increased costs and demand on our streets, bridges, schools, parks, fire stations.

Most jurisdictions in King County and Washington State and in California and other areas charge real estate developer impact fees.

When we adopted the ordinance for the Seattle Transportation Benefit District, we added five recitals to that council bill stating our general support and interest in impact fees for transportation, including one that said, whereas in response to public requests that the city pursue progressive sources of revenue to supplement the STBD, the city council intends to consider imposing a transportation development impact fee under RCW.

which could fund necessary capital and other transportation investments that support transit capacity.

So this budget action would provide the funds necessary for the studies that are required to implement this greatly needed revenue source in Seattle from both potential paths.

Thank you.

Thank you very much Council Member Peterson.

Questions on this item?

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I just like a little bit more understanding of the required study as it relates to the comp plan path.

I thought we were already on the track to implement the comp plan path, and I was unaware from the work that Quito's been doing of any future studies that were needed to implement it.

Eric can speak to that a little bit.

I think it'll depend in part on what on whether the Council wants to continue with the project list that former Councilmember O'Brien identified.

If the Council does not want to continue with that list, then we'll need a new rate study.

If the council does want to continue with that list, the city would nevertheless need to update some of the assumptions that went into that study to update the maximum supportable fee.

So under either circumstance, there is work to be done on the GMA authorized route.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Keto.

It was my understanding that the update to the current list did not require any additional studies.

And, you know, so the the it's it's dated.

It's, you know, the information sort of the assumptions about the costs of different capital investments date back essentially to about a year ago now.

So some of that would need to be updated, but Sort of a bigger threshold question is, is that still the list that the council wants to proceed with?

And that list was based on a variety of projects that were identified in the city's modal plans.

If the city wanted to pursue a different list or wanted to add potentially capacity related improvements to bridges to that list, we would need an update to that study.

Thank you.

I'm really supportive of this direction.

I am concerned about updating a list in a way that would slow down the work that we've been doing.

We've had an appeal.

We recognize that we have to go back and make some adjustments to the current list, and I would just hate, and perhaps it doesn't cost us any more time to do what is being suggested here, but I'm concerned that the analysis that you're talking about would take some more time.

We would then risk another legal appeal.

and we would be significantly slowed down.

We've been plugging along on this for years now, and I would really like to see some progress on the comp plan related transportation fees.

Council Member Peterson, any comments?

Or Council Member Lewis, I'm sorry, did you have something to say as well?

Yeah, just really briefly, Madam Chair, and I appreciate Council Member Peterson taking the lead on this, obviously very supportive as well.

I have a question for Ketel as pertains to whether the study for the transportation benefit district fees is perhaps more necessary given, my understanding is we have not really started that process to solicit fees under that authority yet.

And so I could, I just wonder if you could clarify whether regardless of where the GMA prong stands, if we're still in a place where we need to do some level of study for the Transportation Benefit District, which as I understand it has a lot of different considerations that are separate from the GMA that we would need to Similarly, do some work on before moving forward.

Yeah, so the with the transportation benefit district authorized under a program authorized under the TBD, we would be starting essentially from scratch.

That's because the kind of analysis that would need to be done for that.

program differs from the analysis that's done for the GMA authorized impact fee program.

Part of it has to do with the desire by council to use a TBD mechanism to fund ongoing maintenance.

And that is one of the, there's some trade offs under either program, but that is one of the benefits of proceeding under a TBD authority is that revenue from that program can be used for more than just capital improvements that are related to growth.

So there is, we are starting from square one with the TBD study, and the cost of that study is essentially a little bit uncertain.

$450,000 probably represents a high-end estimate for what we may need to do here.

But a study to authorize a TBD-based impact program would be novel in Washington, and so we're assuming that it may require some some high-level investment to make sure that it sticks.

Well, and Kiel, just as a quick follow-up on that, so would it be accurate then to say that kind of regardless of where we are with the GMA fees, we would have to do a study like this no matter what to really seriously pursue the Transportation Benefit District authority, regardless of where we are in the GMA process, and then regardless of if that's the case or not, This number, as I understand it, represents the total cost of looking at both the Transportation Benefit District and the GMA.

So it's not like each of them would cost this much money combined.

This is what we estimate the whole study footprint to be for impact fees generally under both authorities.

Those are just the last two questions that I would, I want to clarify.

Yeah.

And so I'll have to, you may have to restate the first part of that question, but the response to the second part of that question, whether or not the 450 would fund both, the answer to that is yes, it would.

If you could just restate your first part, the first part of that question, please.

Yeah.

So, so my, just in following up on, on your earlier clarifications on this, What I heard you say, but I want to make sure I heard you correctly, was that regardless of where we currently stand in the process that Council Member Herbold alluded to with the GMA-based fees, we're still in a position where we are starting from scratch on the Transportation Benefit District fees and would need a study like this regardless of where the GMA process is.

Is that the case?

That is correct.

Okay, great.

I just wanted to check in on that.

So even in the case where that GMA process is sort of where we want it to be.

And I guess this is just another question.

Would those measures be severable in the sense that that GMA process could continue along on the track that has been set by previous councils while the Transportation Benefit District 1 is starting?

The answer to that is yes.

We have had some initial discussions just because TBD-based impact fees You know, they're authorized by the state, but to our knowledge, no other jurisdiction in Washington uses them.

So we've had some initial conversations about what that would look like mechanically and procedurally And there is potentially a tie in between both the GMA authorized fees and the TBD fees and that tie in is that For both we may need to amend the comprehensive plan.

We certainly do for the Growth Management Act authorized fees, but we may not for the TBD fees, but likely we would.

So that tie-in is significant because it affects the timing of when council can act.

The council can only amend the comprehensive plan once a year with some exceptions.

So while they are distinct, they are both constrained by potentially the same kind of procedural requirements that go along with amending the comprehensive plan.

Right, totally understand, but I don't know.

I think we can follow up on this offline.

I maybe have a couple of additional questions, but I appreciate what we were able to get out there, because I think it is important for considering this as we go down the line on how these two different fees interact and how the processes could be severable and how, no matter what, we do still need that new study for the transportation district one.

I appreciate those questions, and I will certainly be in touch on this one, and appreciate your work on this.

Councilmember Peterson, did you have any last comments or items?

I'm just excited about the interest in this.

All right.

Thank you as well, and thanks to Ketel for summarizing this component.

I see we have Asha back.

Asha, are you going to lead us through the Seattle Municipal Court?

Yes.

Great.

Thank you.

This council proposal would add $220,000 and two positions for staff at the Court Resource Center.

One of the staff members would staff day-to-day coordination, provide solid service provision, and the other would be a housing and employment coordinator, connecting clients to services.

And this is proposed by Council Member Lewis.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Welcome back, Council Member Lewis.

Would you like to speak to this one?

Well, you said I couldn't quite hear you just now.

You tuned out a little bit.

Can you queue it up again?

I'm sorry.

Sure.

No problem.

We're talking about the Seattle Municipal Court's add of $220,000 and two positions to support the Court Resource Center.

Great, thank you so much.

Yeah, so I thought we had a pretty good presentation the other day from the Seattle Municipal Court.

There's a lot of work that they're doing to adapt their practices to be a lot more progressive and restorative, focus more on services and diversion instead of incarceration and surveillance.

A key part of that has been my office communicating with the Court Resource Center throughout the year on some things that their staff has been seeking out and requesting that would be helpful to their mission to be successful and make sure the folks on their caseload have the tools that they need for success.

This position and these resources would go a long way to providing that and making sure that the court, the reforms the court is imposing can stick and can thrive, and that folks who have a contact with the court do not have future contacts with the court.

So this is a position that has been requested by the Resource Center.

I think it can make a big difference, and I look forward to working on this over the next few weeks.

Excellent.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Lewis.

Are there questions on this one?

Okay, the question I have is just trying to figure out how this fits in with those reforms that were presented and the reforms that the SMC is currently undertaking.

We got a little bit of a walkthrough on that.

So, Asher, remind me how these two positions would fit into that.

So the idea is that the coordination position would essentially help, would be a social worker that's helping people navigate through Seattle Community Court.

And so the Community Court is one of the newer things that's happened over 2020. to divert low-level misdemeanors through that specialty court.

And so the coordinator is intended to work with the community court to help those specific clients.

The housing and employment coordinator is a request that would serve, I think, any priority access for people going through community court, but really anyone at the court to help them find access to housing.

One of the things I think we discussed during, I think it was when the court was presenting, was an ask for some reserved housing for people coming out of community court.

And so rather than specific housing slots, this would be a specific person that is helping to coordinate housing to the extent that it's available for people coming out of community court.

Okay, excellent.

Council Member Lewis, anything else to add on this item?

Yeah, I mean, I would just add that, you know, it's in keeping with some of the observations of an audit that was requested by Council President Gonzalez a few years ago at the Court Resource Center.

You know, I do think under the current leadership of Presiding Judge Gregory, This has become something that's a little more integrated into what the mission of the court is going to be.

So it makes it an even more prescient investment.

And that, you know, in a lot of ways, the court has kind of slid backwards.

I mean, you know, from my conversations, they used to have not only sort of system navigators like this that were integrated into the Court Resource Center, like this proposal would seek, But they did have some dedicated housing resources, particularly for the the mental health specialty court that in the last recession was cut and never restored.

So, you know, I think it's it's kind of a tall order, unfortunately, right now to get them dedicated housing slots.

But this this could be a good way to patch them in as another point of referral.

So at the very least, people on their caseload have access to the general shelter and housing referral systems that we have set up.

So I think it is important.

It's a priority for the judges.

And it's something that I think could end up making a big difference in a lot of the new practices they're trying to do.

Thank you very much Council Member Lewis.

Thanks for that explanation.

And I don't see any additional comments.

So thanks to you and to Asha.

Appreciate you joining us.

Okay, let's move on to OPCD.

Hello again, Lish.

Hi.

This is a proposal from Chair Mosqueda to repeat a proviso that was added on the 2020 budget.

funding was provided in 2020 for a major update to the comprehensive plan that funding was cut this summer because the state has moved deadlines for the city action back by a year and so the mayor's proposed 2021 budget includes funding again for kicking off the next major update to the comprehensive plan.

This action would add provisos to those funds to ensure that an environmental impact statement for the major update includes an alternative that looks at housing diversity in single-family areas and other strategies for minimizing displacement of low-income and BIPOC communities.

And the council has an opportunity to comment on the outreach and engagement strategy that will be part of that major update.

Great.

So thank you very much, Lish.

I will time myself, colleagues, because I got a lot to say on this topic, and I'm going to keep it to two minutes if I can.

I think it's important to provide additional context.

Thanks, Lish, for the summary as well.

In the 2018 budget session I sponsored and the council included, a racial equity toolkit with the purpose of evaluating Seattle's exclusionary zoning policy, which was supposed to be initiated in 2019, and it was, but the work is ongoing.

The toolkit evaluates the impact of our current zoning policies, which restrict multifamily residential and mixed-use development to just 25% of Seattle's residential land, leaving 75% of Seattle's residential land just to single-family detached housing.

The intent of the racial equity toolkit was to ensure that we are working towards making sure we create and stay on a path towards a more equitable growth strategy, a more inclusive Seattle.

Last year we secured two equitable growth ads passed during the council's budget.

for fiscal year 2020. First was a proviso on the comprehensive plan environmental impact study funding to require the EIS include a study of housing diversity across the city, including duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, along with anti-displacement measures in the upcoming comp plan update to be passed in 2023, codifying our 20-year vision for growth in Seattle.

A provision was also secured on the community engagement funds for the racial equity toolkit on the Seattle growth strategy, requiring presentation of a community engagement plan to ensure culturally responsive and inclusive engagement with a focus on addressing historic and present-day zoning and land use inequity.

These measures help to continue to lay the groundwork to right historical wrongs related to past policies like racist redlining, restrictive covenants, and increasing exclusionary zoning that we have seen over the past few decades, so that we can create a more inclusive zoning and more equitable growth in our city.

But to summarize, In the 2020 rebalancing budget, the comp plan EIS and community engagement funding was cut, anticipating the comp plan will be adopted in 2024 based on the one-year extension that Lish just mentioned.

Now, funds for the EIS and community engagement were reinstated in this year's budget, and therefore, from a process standpoint, we need to reinstate the provisos as well.

So as Lish mentioned, what the provisos would do, an analysis of alternative growth strategies for additional housing capacity and diversity, including duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, row houses in areas of the city currently zoned exclusively for single family use.

Second is to develop strategies to minimize displacement of low-income residents and communities of color.

And third, presentation to council of community engagement plan and the racial equity toolkit progress so that we are involved in the process as it unfolds.

These are the actions that we are interested in moving forward.

So there are concrete policy options to make sure that we are moving in the right direction as we engage in the comp plan update.

Thanks for letting me go over a little bit.

Any additional comments or questions?

Okay.

All right.

Seeing none.

Thank you so much, colleagues.

I'm hopeful for your support on this piece.

And Lish, anything to add to that or clarification needed?

No, thank you.

Okay.

Thanks for walking us through that piece.

Okay.

For folks following along at home, we are on page 27. And all we have to do in the next 25 minutes is get through page 27 and 28 of the memo in front of us.

That concludes the presentation that we would have.

So we have about eight more items, and I'm going to turn it over to Brian to walk us through Seattle Public Utilities.

Great, thank you very much.

There are two items for Seattle Public Utilities, or SPU, and as you said, they're on page 27 of the memo.

So the first proposal would request, through a statement of legislative intent, that SPU assess the methodology and recommendations of King County's Still-in-Development Clean Water Plan and analyze potential alternative approaches for treating the city's wastewater.

SPU would be asked to evaluate the costs and benefits of the city owning its own wastewater treatment facilities and whether a change in the regional governance structure could result in savings for the city's ratepayers.

And this proposal comes from Council Member Peterson.

Hello, Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you, Brian.

King County is preparing a comprehensive clean water plan, which includes potentially passing increases in wastewater treatment rates directly onto our ratepayers.

that we cannot control.

Despite the pandemic, King County increased wastewater treatment rates by 4.5% to Seattle residents this year, and the county's poised to burden our residents with another rate increase next year.

Thankfully, our Seattle Public Utilities team has been able to keep overall rates on SPU bills steady because they share our concern about the regressive nature of utility bills.

This statement of legislative intent would direct SPU to consider specific alternatives, including assessing the costs and benefits to the city and its rate payers of various changes in wastewater treatment governance.

such as the city potentially owning its own wastewater treatment facility so we can control those costs to our rate payers.

Excellent.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Questions on this?

Okay, I'm not seeing any questions.

I know that this has been a longstanding issue that folks have been trying to address, so look forward to hearing more about this.

Thank you.

The second item, back to trees.

Council Member Strauss, thank you so much.

Brian, would you like to walk us through number two?

Yes, thank you very much.

So this is the second and final item for SPU.

And it would request through a statement of legislative intent that SPU explore the expansion or an expansion of the Tree Ambassador Program.

At a minimum, SPU would be asked to assess how the program could train volunteers to potentially become resident arborists who could perform basic tree maintenance.

And as you said, this proposal comes from Council Member Strauss.

Excellent.

Thank you very much, Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Brian.

Seattle Public Utilities currently has a tree ambassador program.

I was looking into if we could create a citizen arborist program, which is what this slide is the product of that.

The tree ambassador program allows volunteers to lead neighbors Neighborhood tree walks and work parties.

This slide would ask SPU to work with other departments to explore expanding the program to include resident or citizen arborists who could take on greater role in nurturing and protecting trees, whether that is tracking exceptional trees or pruning trees or protecting trees in some other fashion, as we know that oftentimes our city arborists are at full capacity.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Brian.

Thank you very much.

I have a neighbor right now who would benefit from a resident arborist, so I'm interested in learning more.

I don't see any questions on this.

Thank you so much for flagging these items and walking us through this, Brian.

Okay, moving on to Seattle Information and Technology.

Who do we have?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Hi, Lisa.

This is Lisa Kaye.

My camera worked all day today, except for when I need it to right now.

Of course.

No worries.

I was desperately trying to adjust all the things I could adjust and didn't find the right one in time.

So my apologies.

If you're okay with me just speaking, I will go ahead.

Absolutely.

No problem.

Okay, thank you.

This proposal on page 27 of your memo is from Councilmember Peterson.

It would ask the City Budget Office to add a section on Internet for All to the Information Technology Department chapter in the adopted budget book.

The addition would report the unanimous adoption of Council's Internet for All resolution in July 2020. And it would describe the executive's reports on the Internet for All action plan.

It would also summarize progress on initial strategies to increase access to and adoption of affordable and reliable Internet service, including setting up dashboards to track results.

Excellent, thank you.

Customer Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you, Lisa Kay.

So this is the easiest budget action ever.

It is simply adding a paragraph to mention the efforts ongoing with our Internet for All resolution that was adopted unanimously, Resolution 31956 in July, which led to the action plan.

This was A resolution co-sponsored with Council President Gonzalez and Council Member Juarez.

Information technology is doing a lot of work on this through eight strategies, including short-term solutions.

They'll be back to our committee in first quarter of next year, but the budget doesn't talk about this.

It doesn't highlight these efforts that are very important.

So we're simply adding that information for the benefit of the public and to continue to hold everybody accountable for moving forward with this great measure.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

I was just wearing my upgrade Seattle shirt the other day, so really appreciate your work on this.

Council Members, any additional comments on this item?

Okay, not seeing any.

Thanks for flagging that this needs to be addressed and codified in the budget.

Looking forward to working with you on that.

SIRS.

Hello, Tom.

Hello, sir, Michael.

Would you walk us through the Seattle Employees Retirement System?

Somebody's got to end this meeting before I start going into the dad joke realm.

You know I will.

I will do, Madam Chair.

So just a little bit of context setting for this item.

When there are two components of the Seattle Retirement System, so this is the employee pension system for non-uniformed employees in the city.

There's CSRS 1 and CSRS 2. CSRS 2 is the plan that applies to anybody who's hired on or after January 1st of 2017. So the proposal from here before you from Council Member Peterson is to request a report from the employee's retirement system on the performance of that new plan that was put in place.

in 2016, including calculation of the impact on the plan funding ratio, which is an assessment of the liabilities over the assets, and an estimate of the total cost savings across all funds from the CSRS changes.

The report would also include recommendations of changes to the CSRS system to meet either of the outcomes of achieving 100% funding ratio, so assets equal to liabilities, sooner than 2042 or decreasing the total retirement system costs.

Thank you, Tom.

Council Member Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda and Sir Mike Sol.

Actually, these three items are related, but I can address them all three right now.

It's really just to provide more information to the general public about the retirement system and systems that we have.

So it's asking for information.

While we want city government employees to have access to retirement benefits from a sustainable retirement system, I do have a concern that do pay an increasing amou programs of our city go This, uh, so there are v The third one will get to simply quantifies highlights these expenses paid by taxpayers, just so the general public is made more aware of these costs and the upward trend.

We want a sustainable retirement system for our employees.

At the same time, we're conscious that every extra dollar paid by taxpayers to support the lifetime pension is money that could go to other urgent needs.

So we just want to daylight and track trends here of the pension system that we do have.

Also, when we look at CSRS 2, which was put in place to try to get a more sustainable system for new employees, there were five options presented to the Murray administration, and they picked uh, they sort of picked a version of that.

Um, it's version and, you know, ne I'm hoping in addition to for the general public, is it may lead to a discussion of, do we want to look at other options for new employees, future employees?

We can't change the pension and agreements already in place on pensions, but for new employees who may be more mobile, who may not be looking at a career for 20, 30 years in local government, but we want to attract that talent to the city government family.

They may want a different kind of options for their retirement.

So this is all leading to just getting more information about something that is a big cost to the city and seeing if we want to refine it even more.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you very much for walking us through that.

We hope you still have power.

I'm glad you're with us still via the internet.

So we'll keep going here, but thank you for that summary.

Are there any other questions for the Council Member on this?

My first question, I don't have a ton of questions, but the question that comes to mind is in terms of getting the report, can you remind us when a report back to the council would be made so that it could potentially inform any future decisions?

Yes, we don't have a hard date on that.

I was going to work with Tom on what might make sense and just be practical from a workload standpoint.

We might combine these three items.

He's going to talk to the other two items.

We might combine these three items into one form B for statement of intent.

Okay.

Wonderful.

Tom, did you want to provide any additional context to items two and three, please?

Certainly, Madam Chair.

So item 2, this relates to the budget as proposed.

In June, the CSRS Board of Administration voted to send a budget proposal that would not appropriate investment management fees.

So the CSRS fund is $3 billion that's managed by private investment companies.

And the fees that are paid are a function of that that body of investment and their earnings thereof.

So it's in a way not necessarily under the control directly through appropriation to set the level of appropriation of those fees, though it has been appropriated in the past and it's a proposed change in the budget.

And the proposal from Council Member Peterson would add back the appropriation into the budget for visibility.

Yes, Madam Chair, if I may.

So on CSRS here, it's items one and three would be combined into the slide.

Item two that Tom just mentioned, it's really just how visually we present the CSRS expenses.

Right now, there's a separate line item, an appropriation for the investment management fee.

And that makes it visible.

There's no real net change in appropriation.

It's just the visibility of having that line item in the budget.

I think we should have the greater transparency and detail on the budget.

Because when we look at the budget right now, it shows 2020. It shows the investment management fee amount.

But then in 2021, it just disappears.

And so that caught my attention and thought, well, why not actually provide greater detail?

So it would require changing the budget document, but it would have no net impact on actual appropriations.

Very helpful.

Thank you.

I don't see additional questions on this one.

Thank you for walking us through that.

And then additional context for item number three, Tom.

Madam Chair, I believe I don't have anything additional to add other than as Councilor Peterson has mentioned, this would be combined with item number one as sort of a fuller slide or some request for some form of a report, which in this case would cover a period of 10 years for both CSRS 1 and CSRS 2.

Excellent.

Okay, customer Peterson any final comments on this section here.

No, thank you.

Okay, appreciate appreciate you getting in that bad joke though.

Let's move on.

I think we're in the last.

section, folks.

So three more to go.

And central staff, you can correct me if I'm wrong.

We are in the city wide section and I'm seeing a big thumbs up from Ali.

So let's get through this and see if we can get through any questions.

Hi, this is Karina Bull from central staff.

And indeed, we are on the last page of today's agenda.

It's page 28. The first proposal is from Madam Chair, and it would add about $3.6 million to restore position authority for layoffs due to budget reasons as to programmatic or policy reasons.

Preliminary information from the City Budget Office indicates that about 23 of the 33 proposed layoffs fit into this category, and central staff will work with the City Budget Office to solidify these numbers.

Thank you very much, Karina, and good to see you this evening slash afternoon.

Colleagues, this is a very important Form A that we are submitting here today, and I know it's been a long day, but if you'll bear with me for just a second, we heard yesterday about how our Jump Start proposal that we passed, the spend plan was very detailed, and we would have provided sufficient funding through the Jump Start spend plan to stop cuts to essential services and to contracts providing vital services to Seattle residents who are especially hurting right now while still allowing for there to be a surplus that we could either use or invest back into the reserves.

With the tough choices that the mayor made, we are seeing how some of those choices are resulting in harmful cuts, including around 20 employees who were given layoff notices already based on the financial decisions that the CBO and the mayor's office have contemplated in the proposed budget.

Those employees were not told that they were being laid off because we took a look at the city services and decided that those lines of businesses don't need to continue.

In fact, in many cases, they were given notices that they would not have a job next year.

Their home budgets could be potentially affected by these notices and city services that they provide on a daily basis either would be ended or absorbed somewhere else in the budget.

And that is what we're trying to address today.

How we can soften this blow that we had tried to stem with the funding that we passed earlier this year.

We knew that there was going to be potential layoff decisions coming.

That is part of the reason that we included the majority 75 percent of the funds for next year 2021 were intended to go to soften the blow and to reduce the need for layoff decisions to move forward.

And the choices that we have in front of us are to really try to figure out how we can prevent these layoffs that have been notified from going forward.

I'm disappointed that we have a situation where the dollars that we had initially intended to use to prevent layoffs are not being used that way.

And again, I'm looking to The strategies that we have in front of us right now to help pick up the pieces and ensure that our residents are both well served and that we are not laying off these 20 some employees.

These are Seattle employees who have received their war notices and I'm sure.

we are sending a notice to all of you that this is not a final budget yet, so while we don't have any magic ball to determine where the budget will ultimately go, I hope that you hear the message that we are fighting to help make sure that these 20 positions are addressed in this budget, and this is not a flashy item.

It is one that I think is a responsible item for us to act as responsible employers.

trying to stay true to the word that we made in the jumpstart proposal and making sure that we not only have those employee positions retained, but that we are retaining those critical services who, as we talked about, in many cases, those employees are stepping beyond the call of duty and stepping into new roles to provide services to those who are experiencing the impacts of COVID.

So I know that this is part of our longer term recovery conversation.

And if you will recall, in the spring when we had a presentation on The impacts of previous recessions, the biggest takeaway from national economists was that a budget that engages in slashing employee positions actually creates longer harm.

It's a longer recovery because you don't have those vital services for those who are slipping through the cracks right now.

So with that, obviously more work to do, as Karina noted, to identify all of those positions and confirm, but wanted to flag this as a big priority for me as we continue these discussions.

Karina, anything else to add to that?

No, that covers it.

Any questions, colleagues?

Okay, I'm not seeing any questions on this.

Council Member Peterson, you are up next in the citywide bucket here, and I'll turn it back over to Karina.

No, thank you.

So yes, this proposal is from Council Member Peterson and it would provide for options for generating savings and the proposed budget by eliminating or reducing adjusted wage increases referred to as a W eyes.

The options would align with the elimination of AWIs for many non-represented executives, managers, and strategic advisors that are already represented in the proposed budget.

And these options would be subject to bargaining for represented employees.

The four options that are on the memo on page 28 begin with option A, which is eliminating the 2021 AWI for all employees.

Option B would reduce the AWI to 1.9% for all city employees.

And for context, 1.9 is the consumer price index, so that would reflect the rate of inflation and would not represent the additional 1% that is proposed as the AWI that is 2.9% for most city employees.

Option C would eliminate a 2021 AWI of 2.9% For all employees earning 60% or more of the Seattle medium income.

So that would mean that employees earning $62,000 or more would not receive an AWI, but employees earning less would receive a 2.9% AWI.

And then last is option D, which is the same trajectory is option C, except it would eliminate an AWI of 2.9% for all city employees earning 80% of the Seattle median income, which is $82,000 or more.

There are some estimates of the savings that would be generated by these options that are on the memo.

These are very preliminary ballpark estimates that I will continue to work with the city budget office to further refine and solidify.

Excellent.

Thank you, Karina.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

So colleagues, I just wanted to throw, we wanted to do this research and put this, put these ideas into the mix of things as we try to prioritize our investments.

And so yesterday I mentioned this, I tried to present it as an opportunity to redeploy millions of additional dollars to, for example, shelter those experiencing homelessness, to invest in Seattle's BIPOC communities, to fix our crumbling bridges.

Seattle government employees did receive raises in 2019 and 2020. And during this time of back-to-back budget deficits, we can still get more money out the door to vulnerable populations and to address our city's aging infrastructure by foregoing the planned 2021 salary increases for city government employees.

When so many people are out of jobs and our city has such deep needs, I personally don't think it's the right time to increase the pay of city government employees again.

So this proposal on page 28 of the memo offers different options ranging from 15 million to 42 million by simply forgoing these pay raises next year or iterations of that or subsets of that.

So I would encourage folks to consider this, the opportunity to reinvest millions of dollars for additional shelter, mental health supports, BIPOC communities, safety of our bridges, investing in these things rather than putting the money back in the city government pockets.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

I'm not seeing any questions on this and thanks again for flagging it yesterday.

So perhaps folks got a chance to hear a little bit more about it yesterday and their questions answered.

Let's go ahead to the last one and Council Member Peterson, you're going to close us out.

Karina, please take it away.

Oh, I believe this one might belong to Sir Mikesell.

Okay, wonderful.

Let's go back to Tom.

Hello, okay, so this one is on page 28 of the memo.

It is a proposal from Council Member Peterson to contingent on any increase in the budget or proposed increase identified by council of a progressive revenue source to offset a portion of that increase with a decrease in the city's sales tax rate.

with the intent to introduce further progressive system by way of impacting or making a reduction to the regressive sales tax rate.

Thank you very much, Tom.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chairman Skater.

Thank you, Tom.

So, you know, this form A was put together not knowing what other form As would be.

So this may not need to move forward.

The concept here is that if we were going to put forward new progressive revenues, either established by us or if something happened with the state government or the county government, this of a legislative intent would signal our strong interest in also partially reducing regressive taxes with a focus on the sales tax collected by the city, which is, I believe, about 1% of the 10.1% sales tax.

We'd still want to retain a net increase in revenue to the city treasury if we had new progressive revenues, but at least we'd work to partially reduce the sales tax so that the overall system would be less regressive, more progressive.

to provide financial relief to low-income families.

Now, again, this may not be necessary to move forward if there are no additional progressive revenues being proposed at this time, since we just did implement the new payroll tax.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

Questions, colleagues?

Councilmember Herbold?

Thank you.

I just want to express my appreciation to Councilmember Peterson for remembering that one of our proposed progressive revenue measures, the high earners income tax, included a commitment that if we were to implement an income tax, We made a commitment to reduce other more regressive forms of taxation.

And I think there's been some, you know, questions of whether or not we would be seeing a proposed income tax in light of the fact that the courts have authorized the city to do a flat income tax.

So appreciate that perhaps this was proposed in preparation for a potential proposal in that area.

Thank you very much, Council Member Herbold.

Any additional comments?

on this item.

Yeah, this may just be more of a question for central staff.

To what extent does the city, just given that we're in this multi-layered system of county, city, state when it comes to the sales tax as a source, to what extent could we acting just as a council and the city government unilaterally decrease sales tax?

because this is certainly something I'm very interested in, you know, tax equity broadly, including reducing regressive taxes.

But I would just be curious, you know, like what is sort of the extent to which we could reduce it?

I know Council Member Peterson talked earlier about how much currently is remitted, but like I wonder if some of that is locked up in like, you know, levy commitments or, or maybe a portion of another jurisdiction sales tax, but that we collect and then remit.

Just curious what the answer to that would be.

Thank you for the question, Council Member Lewis.

So the overall level of sales tax charged to transactions in the city is 10.1%.

The city of Seattle has, I believe, about 3% of that, though only 1% of that goes to the city's general fund.

The other pieces go to other funds and are used to support services in those funds.

Of the 1%, .15 is retained by the King County for administrative costs of implementing the tax.

So I believe it's somewhat flexible, though, I think the intent is, and I defer to the council member, though, the 1% that the council member refers to is the general fund piece.

So that is, I think, what we're talking about here.

Great.

Excellent question, Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Peterson, anything to add to that?

So thank you.

OK.

Tom, anything else in this category?

No, Chair Muscata.

I believe that is the last form A.

All right.

Thank you.

And we still have Ali with us.

Ali, there's our final summary slide.

Anything to share with us as we wrap up here?

No, Council Member, Chair Mosqueda.

I don't think I have anything to add.

I'll look forward to continuing the issue identification discussions next week and seeing the next round of proposals that will be submitted by the deadline on October 22nd at 5 p.m.

Excellent.

October 22nd at 5 p.m.

I think we're going to recirculate our calendar again just so folks have that at the top of their inbox as well.

It has been a very informative day.

Thank you council colleagues.

It is not even 5 10 p.m.

yet so we are going to end within a 10 minute time frame from winter.

meeting was slated to end.

I don't see anything else for the good of the order except for to remind you that on Tuesday at 9 30 we will have 30 minutes of public testimony and then we will go directly into parks.

Let's hear it Council Member Juarez.

Let's hear it Parks!

Yeah!

That's what I'm talking about.

And then transportation Council Member Peterson.

All right.

The same level of enthusiasm was just visually made for folks online.

And then we will have the entire afternoon with a presentation from Seattle Police Department.

Thanks to our public safety chair, Councilmember Herbold, for any I can't see you right now, but I know you're there and excited to hear more about about those items in that bucket on Wednesday we will start again at 930 with public comment, followed by a presentation on community safety and in the afternoon a presentation on homelessness response and our human services department so.

Huge thank you to Central Staff for getting us through today.

And with that, our next deadline again, Form B is due Thursday, October 22nd at 5 p.m.

If you already have them ready, please do turn them in early so our Central Staff can start working on those and give you the appropriate feedback.

And we can get you directed to the Central Staff person who is in charge of those.

If there is no further questions, thanks from all of the council members to all of the central staff for helping us get through today's presentation.

And Council Member Herbold, anything for you?

Nope, just wanted to say with my face and my words, thank you to everybody and have a great weekend.

Excellent.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone.

We'll see you on Monday for a full council meeting.

Bye.

Have a great weekend.

Thank you.

Bye.