Seattle City Council: Select Budget Committee 9/27/19 Session I

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to September 27th, our Select Budget Committee.

This is our third day of hearing from departments.

We're going to start today with Department of Transportation.

Thanks to all of you for being here, and appreciate it very much.

And Marco, we'll be getting into your department second.

So, I want to just review what we've done and where we're going so the public has information about that.

And while we're doing this, Mr. Security, would you open the doors for us so we can get the light in?

Thank you.

So, yesterday we heard from our Office of Economic Development, thanks to Bobby Lee, Department of Parks and Recreation, Jesus Aguirre, and we did hear from Office of Labor Standards, Marty Garfinkel.

And then in the afternoon, Human Services Department, Jason Johnson, Office of Housing, of course, our brand new Emily Alvarado from our Office of Housing, the new director, and Department of Education and Early Learning.

And Duane Chappelle was here.

So thanks to all of the directors for hanging in with us.

So today, we do have both a morning session and an afternoon session.

And at the conclusion of our morning session, We will hear or take a recess and then in the afternoon we will reconvene and proceed with the agenda.

So this morning, as I mentioned, we have Department of Transportation, our Office for Civil Rights, and the Office of Immigrant and Refugees Affairs, OIRA.

Then in the afternoon, we'll have a public safety budget overview, Seattle Police Department, Seattle Fire Department, and our Office of Sustainability and Environment.

After that, we will have time for public comment.

So with that, I also want to remind us that next Wednesday, all day long, October 2nd, we're going to pick up the day dedicated to what we're calling cross-cut issues.

And these specifically are things such as the work that we're doing for people who are experiencing homelessness.

And our Human Services Department, Seattle Public Utilities, and Parks will come and talk about their programs, what they're doing.

and how we are addressing the problems that we're dealing with, particularly around the services that are provided to people who are experiencing homelessness.

Then in the afternoon, we're going to have a special session that's going to be dedicated to LEAD.

That's our Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Program.

Lisa Dugard and our King County prosecuting attorney, Dan Satterberg, will lead off.

And we'll also have a department that will be describing what they're doing and what the anticipated efforts and results of LEAD will be.

And then we're going to have another special session for TNCs.

Thank you very much for opening the doors.

So with that, also a reminder to the public that next Thursday, that's October 3rd, we will have our first public hearing.

People will be invited to come offer testimony for two minutes.

Of course, we'll have a group time like we always do of five minutes for a group of three or more people.

And we encourage the public to come, and we will be here as late as it takes to hear everybody's comments.

So, with that, we will have to invite our Department of Transportation, SAM, Zimbabwe, and crew to come on up.

Calvin Chow, you will be doing the introduction, so once Sam, Ben, everybody gets settled in.

then Calvin, I'm going to turn it over to you.

Mike, did Councilmember O'Brien, did you have anything that you wanted to say as an introduction?

Not as an introduction, but I'm looking forward to the report and I'll ask some questions as we go through it.

And thank you to Councilmember Juarez and Councilmember Sawant, Councilmember O'Brien, Council President Harrell, Councilmember Gonzalez for being here this morning.

So let's just start down with you, Calvin, if you'll do introductions, please.

Sure, good morning.

Calvin Chow with Council Central Staff.

Lisa Kay, Central Staff.

The Noble Budget Director.

Sam Zimbabwe, SDOT.

Kevin Lowe, SDOT.

Thank you.

Sam and Kevin, thanks for being here.

Calvin, do you want to kick us off?

Yes.

Council members, thank you.

Just a few preliminary comments on transportation funding to start us off.

I just wanted to remind folks that for the most part, the funds in SDOT's budget are restricted to transportation purposes.

There is about $45 million of general fund in SDOT's budget, but this is a requirement to meet the floor in the Move Seattle levy that protects against supplementation.

Just a couple of reminders that the Move Seattle levy generates approximately $100 million a year, and 2020 represents the midpoint of the nine-year levy.

So as you'll recall in last year's budget, a lot of the focus was on the reset of the levy spending and the delivery of the levy projects.

Lastly, I'd also note that 2020 is the final year of the Seattle Transportation Benefit District Proposition 1, which generates about $50 million a year for transit.

About half this funding does come from vehicle license fees, so this may be impacted by Initiative 976 at the November ballot.

If that initiative passes, we would have to take some adjustments to modify spending before the final budget.

Great.

Thank you.

And on that note, I turn it over to the department.

All right.

Thank you.

Sam, welcome.

Sounds good.

Thank you, and thanks for the warm welcome.

It's a pleasure to be here today to talk about the proposed budget for 2020. I'm now at the end of my eighth month as director of SDOT, and it's been a wonderful time to be at the head of such a dynamic agency.

I want to give credit to my staff.

It's a hardworking, dedicated staff of almost 1,000 people that has made my transition as smooth as possible, and I'm continually impressed by the commitment exhibited by SDOT employees on a day-to-day basis.

It's been a big year for us as we manage through the Seattle squeeze and continue working to build and maintain a safe, reliable, efficient, and equitable transportation network.

On top of a huge portfolio, we're deeply appreciative of our voters, advocates, community groups, and others we work with to deliver the Move Seattle levy, the Seattle Transportation Benefit District, and all of our programs.

I want to highlight a few things as we jump into the presentation.

The first is our commitment to delivering on those voter commitments.

The budget submittal continues and advances our commitments to multimodal transportation investments, and the budget increases funding to deliver those capital projects that enhance transit speed, reliability, access, and safety, and also includes funds to build projects like the Northgate Pedestrian Bridge.

improving connections between the east and west sides of the Northgate community in preparation for Sound Transit opening the next extension.

It also continues and enhances our speed and reliability investments through the Seattle Transportation Benefit District.

The second big area is enhancing safety and mobility.

The budget submittal reflects our strategic investments to maintain our assets and increase multimodal access, building curb ramps and funding Vision Zero projects throughout the city while implementing our bicycle and pedestrian master plans.

Specifically, the budget adds $16.7 million from the sale of the Mercer Mega Block to support these projects and efforts.

The budget also adds a one-time increase for the city's purchase of Seattle Transportation Benefit District transit services.

This will be the final planned service add under the current STBD.

And then lastly, the budget builds and sustains our organization.

Mayor Durkan and I are committed to building our capacity to deliver on the commitments and invest in the human capital and supporting functions on which we all depend as an agency.

and the proposed budget converts some of SDOT's temporary and term-limited staff positions and creates full-time positions because of the ongoing work that we continue to do.

These efforts are critical for us in building and maintaining a robust organization that can deliver on all of the commitments that we have.

With that, just to set the scene for the proposed budget a little bit, there are four major legislative and policy items that influence the development of SDOT's budget in 2020 and beyond.

The first is the federal consent decree on curb ramp construction.

The city is required to install 1,250 ADA-compliant curb ramps annually through 2035. So we're in the second full year of that commitment.

2020 would be the third full year.

These ramps are delivered through multiple means in our projects, by other city departments we partner with, and by private developers.

And we're currently on track to deliver the required ramps in 2019, and our budget continues to provide funding to ensure the city is successful in achieving these annual targets.

This is a legal requirement, but it's also good policy at making a more accessible, more equitable transportation system overall.

Sam, can I ask a quick question?

If somebody is interested in knowing in their neighborhood how they rank in terms of priorities, where is that information available?

So anybody can go and request a curb ramp.

We have an opportunity to do that through our ADA program website.

In terms of our annual work plan, we're delivering ramps through our capital projects, so whenever we're doing doing substantial work on a street.

We're building the curb ramps there.

And then we're doing spot improvements at all times.

So I don't have a map yet of where we would be building all the ramps in 2020. But if people have an intersection that they're particularly interested in, we have a way for people to request curb ramps.

And there's a requirement under the consent decree that we direct a certain amount of resources towards those customer service request ramps.

Great, thank you.

The second piece of the legislative and policy framework is the Interfund loan for the Center City Connector streetcar project.

The recent passage of that Interfund loan provides us with $9 million to advance the engineering and design of the Center City Connector.

And this Interfund loan is anticipated to be repaid with proceeds from the pending sale of the Mercer Mega Block properties.

Third, our funding climate continues to include significant assumptions about the availability of leverage dollars, which has the potential to impact the delivery of Move Seattle and core projects.

There are three or four areas of uncertainty that I'll discuss.

First, Move Seattle, the levy through today plans for over 500 million dollars of leverage in the full program.

We're at, as Calvin said, we're at the halfway point of the levy in 2020. We've secured about half of the leverage that we anticipated for the overall program, but the federal funding landscape continues to change, and there's the possibility for the state funding landscape to change as well.

Is that in a good way or a bad way?

Mostly in a bad way, and we can talk about some of those risks as well.

The levy among those unsecured grants include our FTA grants for major transit capital programs the Madison and Roosevelt rapid ride and the Center City streetcar project and Additional opportunities for federal major federal investments in some of our capital projects We've made very good progress over the course of this year this week We had a risk workshop with the Federal Transit Administration as we prepare for the Madison FTA small starts grant, and we think that we're on track to continue to receive those funds, but want to point out that those are still unsecured.

Another area of uncertainty is our local funding.

Projections for our commercial parking tax revenues have been trending lower.

These funds support a wide range of capital and operating projects throughout SDOT's portfolio, and lower revenues would increase our pressure on our ability to deliver on those commitments.

The third, as Calvin said, is funding uncertainty related to initiative 976 that would affect both our purchase of metro service through Proposition 1, but also the provision of some basic services as well.

I'm sorry, Council Member O'Brien.

Sure.

On the initiative 976, that's come up a couple times so far, and I get the uncertainty and the threat is real.

I'm curious what, you know, before we complete the budget, we'll likely know the outcome of the vote.

I imagine there'll be other legal things that will happen after that, depending on what happens.

Should we be planning a plan A and a plan B, depending on what happens?

Does the department have a backup?

Even some specifics on how soon would our collection of certain funds stop?

We are considering some options, and perhaps it would be worth coming to visit you and to discuss those in greater detail.

But at the moment, current law budget has the resources available, and we are otherwise planning on them.

OK.

I think it'd be useful.

You know, I don't need to state my opinion on 9976, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to up here or not.

I'll be careful about that.

The concerns are real.

Can I ask you a question, Council Member O'Brien?

The possible reality that on November 6th, we're just about done with our budget process and we have to scramble to do some stuff, it may be worthwhile for us to have a few conversations about what that would mean in advance, just so we can start to deliberate a bit.

Just descriptively, it may not be apparent, that affects not only transit resources to SDTBD, but some non-trivial resources to SDOT's base budget, as Director Zimbabwe has described.

Yeah.

And I can talk a little bit more about those resources.

There's two components of the Seattle Transit Benefit District that would be affected by I-976.

The one is $20.

vehicle license fee that covers basic maintenance services, potholes, street paving, and a number of other programs that we have.

The second is the $60 component that's part of the Proposition 1, which mostly covers transit service, low-income access to transit, and some of our transit capital improvements.

So we don't yet have a spend plan for what would happen if those resources weren't available.

But the $20 component generates about $8 million a year, and the $60 component generates about $24 million a year.

This isn't the first time that we've been in this position.

Obviously, elections happen always during the midst of our budget process.

There's a real threat there.

And so Calvin, I look to you to help us navigate that a bit.

And I'd rather be a little over-prepared than under-prepared, but recognize There may be, even if we knew the outcome, there's probably still some uncertainty about what that means.

We'll work with the departments to try to flesh out some options.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I just want to make note, it doesn't appear that there's a good time to do it, but just because there are words on the page that say streetcar, I'm going to use this opportunity.

I want to make note that this council two years ago requested a funding plan for operations that we've not yet received.

And I think that's something that we need to consider given the identified gaps in the plan as it stands for how we would fund a center city streetcar.

Just in general, I also want to make note that the council asked for a funding plan for the capital side.

And obviously, with the transportation network tax, you've gotten partially there with the proposal.

But the CIP entry shows $92 million is to be determined.

And $56 million we've got for TNC, $20 million for bond financing.

It looks like, again, there's still a gap on the capital side as well.

And so the request of the council from two years back was for a plan for both of these to be filled with at least a proposal.

And even though The way I'm asking this question, it makes it appear that there's only a $20 million gap in the proposal for a capital plan.

I would say that given what we know about the uncertainty of the federal funds, that that is another TBD that we should have a backup plan for if this project is going to go forward.

That's another $75 million.

And I'm very concerned that we're talking about allocating $56 million for this project when we may not have those federal funds.

Thank you sure if just on the the CIP entry there were some errata in what was printed and we and CBO will be Submitting some some modifications.

So there's a there There's about 45 million dollars of bonding expectation from the commercial parking tax revenues that Is part of that 92 million dollar?

unsecured or on that part of the CIP entry.

So where it says 20 million in bonding it should say 45 million is that what you're saying?

I haven't looked at the sheet in front of me so what we know is that there's sufficient bonding such that the additional 56 from the the the TNC tax would be enough to close the funding gap that remains.

And it was a technical error on our part.

We have the resources set aside in the commercial parking tax financial plan, but we didn't get them into the spending forecast for the project itself.

So it's an errata that we will send you shortly.

That's part of a normal correction process.

Great.

And just building on Council Member Herbold's question, I think last year we spent a lot of time talking about the operating costs for the streetcar addition.

If we do the connection, what the operating costs are going to be because we know it's going to fall to SDOT I think in 2023. So as you're putting the ERADA together, if you could also identify what our expectation is and what resources we're going to be able to do if we're going to assume that responsibility.

Council Member O'Brien.

I'm going to turn to Calvin again to help navigate this.

recently approved the inner fund loan of the nine million dollars to move forward and My recollection of that discussion was that we did have I think the numbers were discussing with the prices that we expected but there was still a lot of engineering work and design work that needed to be done and including understanding what bridges would need to be rebuilt and which cars we're ultimately going with and all those things.

And so I appreciate that there is a number and a plan, but my understanding is those numbers are still moving and could go in any direction.

And so, Calvin, as we move through this, we have the budget decision But there's a policy decision that I believe the council still wants to retain until that work that's funded with that $9 million comes back, and we understand that.

And so just to be clear that regardless of how we move in the budgeting this year, I think at least we want to be explicit about whether there are gates that need to come through the council before an ultimate decision is if we're going to move forward or not.

And my understanding is that the way the TNC money is being presented, it'll be, it'll come forward as a resolution identifying a future spending plan for those resources.

So the future decision is still up to council, future council to make those decisions.

You're correct that we don't actually have any new data on what the dollar amount is.

So the nine million was shown against what we knew from about a year ago.

And we expect that there will be a different number.

We don't know if it'll be higher or lower, but it's sort of the only information that, the most recent information that was available.

So you're correct on that.

There's still a lot of uncertainty on what the actual number is as well.

And so, Chair, I just, I think we will be making, there's still a lot of work to be done on the streetcar analysis, and so we have a budget decision before us that we will be weighing in on, and then there's also a future policy decision about where we go to, and how we allocate funds for a future decision is, it's a little complicated, but we'll navigate through that.

Okay, thank you.

Please continue.

Okay.

So just continuing on, yep, and just so where we are, I forgot where we are.

We're on our presentation here.

Who is this?

So just wanted to walk through our priorities as they're reflected.

I've talked about these a little bit just to reiterate with some more information in front of you.

The first priority is delivering on voter commitments, and that is expressed through the Seattle Transportation Benefit District and the Move Seattle Levy.

So on the STBD side, we continue to increase transit options through our investments in transit service.

The 2020 proposed budget uses STBD revenues to add 25,000 metro transit service hours in March 2020 and continues funding for first and last mile transit service.

That's the ride to in West Seattle and Southeast Seattle as well.

These gaps support an increased mobility in areas where there are transit service gaps, including nights and weekends and off-peak hours, as well as adding peak service.

The proposed budget also adds $5 million to STPD's capital improvement program to fund items such as new bus shelters and pads, bus pads, transit-only lanes, Q jumps and other spot improvements to enhance transit speed and reliability.

You see some examples of that right outside the door here.

We just installed some red bus lanes, red markings on the bus lanes on Fifth Avenue.

We've done similar on Pike Street and Westlake in the last week.

Funding in the proposed budget continues to promote affordability and accessibility of transit options through the ORCA Opportunity Program, which provides passes to students, including Seattle Promise scholars.

And as Calvin said, again, the STPD Proposition 1 measure will expire at the end of 2020, and this assumes the continuation of that through the 2020 budget year.

I'd just like to interject.

What a great job you guys have been doing on this.

I am really pleased that we are having More and more buses downtown that are moving Third Avenue moves I think there's a lot of skepticism that we could pull that off so I just want to acknowledge all of your as top folks who have been working on that project and I believe that that we're demonstrating that people will use buses when they're predictable and they come often and

And then on the Move Seattle side of this, the budget provides construction funding for significant capital projects, including the Fairview and Northgate Bridges, the Delridge Way Southwest slash Rapid Ride H Line, the Multimodal Corridor, and the completion of the Lander Bridge.

The 2020 proposed budget continues to support the Move Seattle levy plan by including capital project staffing support, sidewalk and ADA improvements, bridge rehabilitation, and school zone safety enhancement.

The mayor's budget supports the levy, adding funds to the Northgate Pet and Bike Bridge, Safe Routes to School projects, and then leveraging the Mega Block sale into new sidewalks some intersection improvements, bike safety, 1.8 million of that is shown in 2020 and the additional 14.9 of the proceeds are shown in future years delivering those programs.

Our next strategic priority is enhancing safety and mobility and the proposed budget includes several items that improve pedestrian and bike safety.

I talked a little bit about the consent decree and our curb ramp efforts.

The budget adds $7.2 million to the ADA curb ramp program to provide 273 additional ramps to meet the legal requirements.

A portion of this is funded from anticipated lander street, the lander overpass project savings and some of our school zone camera funds.

Those would be directed towards school zones.

The budget funds the North Lake retaining wall, which is a retaining wall at the north end of Lake Union that's deteriorating.

It's a multi-year major investment needed to replace the Warren structure with something that will better suit the needs of local businesses and the public and prevent catastrophic collapse of that into the lake.

As part of our, the budget right now funds the work to begin design on that effort.

We've done some conceptual design work already.

And as part of the capital monitoring and oversight process, this project will be used as a pilot for the new partial funding approach being developed by the Project Delivery Executive Committee, which is a group of the capital subcabinet, which Director Noble and I are happy to talk about as well.

Yes, so just real quick, which you'll see if you dive hard into the CIP document and look, is we are not quoting you a firm project estimate, cost estimate for this project, because we know that we don't know.

What we are asking you for is the funding needed to bring a design to 30% so that we can bring you a reliable cost number.

We think, if you will, in the business case sense, that there's every reason to spend this initial money to scope it out, because the project is ultimately critical.

But we don't want to give you or ourselves a false sense of certainty about what the ultimate investment will be needed.

So this is, again, it's a process we've been working with capital departments on and our plan is for larger projects and projects that are by their nature uncertain in terms of cost.

They're unusual this case you can involve work potentially in water and the like That we would bring you estimates of this form and then with an agreement that we're going to come back And we won't be able to move on to construction until we get further authorization and indeed appropriation And I'm sorry timing on the when you think you get to 30% design That would be in 2020 Sometime in 2020

We've already done some pretty advanced conceptual design of the right approach, but there's a lot more that needs to be done.

And so this would fund our work in 2020 and then be able to come back in the 2020 budget formulation, the 2021 budget formulation with taking us through final design.

Thank you.

The budget reflects increased investment in Vision Zero projects, our transportation safety projects.

As I said, 1.8 million of that will be used in 2020 for pedestrian, bike, and safety projects, and the remaining 14.9 has been programmed against additional safety projects scheduled in 2021 through 2023. intersection improvements at Highland Parkway and Holden, and then additional resources for the Bicycle Master Plan and Pedestrian Master Plan implementation plans and advancing the projects that are high priorities in those plans.

The budget adds money for safe routes to school, a total of $1.25 million, adds $1.25 million for a total of $4 million for additional safety improvements around school zones.

Some of those key projects include neighborhood greenway connecting Lowell and Meany Middle School, Lowell Elementary and Meany Middle School, Speed Humps at Sacajawea Elementary School, and walkway improvements at Cleveland High School.

Can you take a pause there, Councilmember O'Brien and Councilmember Herbold?

Sam, I really appreciate the significant investments in Vision Zero.

So if you see the mayor before I do, please pass on my gratitude for that.

I really, my smile aside, and we've had some rough figures this year on increasing both fatalities and serious injuries.

It's taking us in the opposite direction we want.

It's not always clear what's going on, but clearly we know there's more work we can do, and I just appreciate the opportunity of the Mercer Mega Block to make those significant investments.

I wanted to dig down a little bit on some of the specifics and get your feedback on this.

You mentioned some pedestrian intersection improvements that are driven by some safety concerns and I think it's great to see in the budget that level of detail and I applaud that for the pedestrian improvements, which is great.

And when we get to some of the bike infrastructure improvements, it's a little more vague.

And so I imagine that is for a reason.

So maybe you can explain why in some cases you're saying we will fix this intersection and other cases saying we'll do something in this area.

So, you know, we spent a lot of time this spring on the bicycle master plan implementation plan.

I think we heard from a lot of folks about the need for increased investment.

We didn't, when we did that, we highlighted resources or projects that were funded through design and some that were funded through planning, we did not, within that plan, prioritize exactly which of those projects was first on the list, neither in our planning nor in sort of our work with the bike board and advocacy groups.

So we've been able to do the first part of that and identify additional resources to bring to the implementation program, but we haven't, we don't feel like we've necessarily going back and said, this is exactly what that funds.

But we anticipate it's coming from that list of things that are either funded through design, funded through construction.

And what my preference would be is to use these resources to accelerate our implementation and bring Whichever projects are ready forward and and build them as quickly as possible and then continue to seek additional revenues to Either either project savings or additional funds to build out that implementation plan and then be working on what the next wave of projects is

Yes, thank you.

I first want to thank also yourself as well as the mayor for providing some funding to a CIP project that we created in last year's budget, what we're now calling the Highland Park Transportation Safety Project, I believe.

We had been calling it the Roundabout Project.

And in last year's budget, we had created a CIP project, identified some already secured funding.

And then later mid-year, we identified a goal with the TBD.

And the mayor, along with yourself, has identified some funding to fill that TBD.

So that is very, very appreciated.

And the community thanks you for that.

There is concern, though, about the broadening of the The sort of...

definition of where we're going.

The roundabout was a design that was identified by SDOT as the preferred complete solution several years ago.

There have been repeated efforts to get matching funds at the state legislature for that particular design because it was identified as a preferred solution for that area.

And I understand that there may be some other options that are worth pursuing.

I'm very supportive of doing that.

The objective is to actually have a complete solution, not sticking to a particular solution because it's one that we've talked about before.

But all of that said, there is a request from the community for a potential redesign of the roundabout.

And they have put forward some ideas about how they could do that and do it at a much more cost-effective way.

And we have sent that on to SDOT.

So we'd really like to, because the CIP project has a definition attached to it.

I think using this budget process to sort of flesh that out a little bit more and try to come to a conclusion whether or not a roundabout as a solution still remains worth pursuing or if we should be focused on some other set of options for that project.

So I look forward to getting that feedback from SDOT about the proposed redesign that the community has submitted.

Great, thank you.

Okay.

Okay, moving on.

So the last piece of this enhancing safety and mobility is investing additional resources in our commercial vehicle load zone and traffic permit counter staffing.

So this is sort of a customer service, but also ends up translating into how we are able to review and monitor our our traffic, especially our commercial vehicle enforcement program that's backed by permit fee revenue ultimately, but we've seen increased deliveries, increased commercial, the need for commercial vehicle enforcement, and that is something that we could think as an incremental addition to the budget that we feel is important for maintaining the safety of the traveling public.

This has been especially important as we continue through the Seattle squeeze and the period of maximum constraint, as we have these changing traffic patterns, as we anticipate some more changes with the start of tolling in the tunnel and how trucks and buses operate in the downtown area.

Sam, can I ask you a question on this slide, the commercial vehicle load zone?

As we're looking at streetcar, over the years, and I'm thinking back to probably three years now, your department had a fantastic group that was looking at freight mobility downtown.

Can you give us an update on that?

Because one of the things that we've been talking about is other alternatives than business as usual, whether that's having smaller vehicles or allowing freight to be downtown, you know, 9 p.m.

to 6 a.m.

kind of thing.

Can you give us an update on that?

Yeah, so we continue to advance those efforts.

We've got a great partnership with the UW Urban Freight Lab as well, where we can call on resources from a research perspective.

And I think that's really a partnership that's unmatched anywhere else in the country around some of these freight mobility, freight delivery challenges that we're facing.

And we've also got innovative partners in the private sector as well.

UPS is looking to relaunch their bike delivery pilot in Pioneer Square.

And we've continued to see opportunities for how to how to manage this emerging need in a better way.

So we've got people from across the agency, from our transportation operations, from our policy and planning groups that are engaged in the urban freight discussion.

Do we have schedule for a new plan of any kind, anything comprehensive?

We're working sort of overall to integrate all of our modal plans as we look at some of these needs.

So we don't necessarily have a comprehensive downtown freight plan right now.

I think there's so much that's been changing about how commercial vehicles access downtown and what both the development Changes that have happened in downtown and the freight demands are we see it as a an opportunity for continuing to experiment and try new things rather than Trying to put it all into one big comprehensive plan when it's changing so quickly, okay I think at some point before the end of this year I'd love to get an update on what where we are just as a status update to businesses that are living and residents that are living along for a second between the

sound up to the freeway.

There's a lot of concern about how to, as it's building, as we all know, in an unprecedented way, but people keep talking to me and asking me questions about what are we doing on first and what, how are we gonna continue to move goods and services, or people and goods in that area.

So before December 15th, I'd love to meet with you and your staff to get an update.

Okay, that sounds great.

All right.

Council Member Mosqueda also has a question.

Just before you move off the slide, in case you had more on this slide.

I was about to, but go ahead.

I'll wait until the slide's over.

Okay.

All right, please continue.

Okay, the last of our strategic priorities is just about building and sustaining the organization.

The proposed budget shows an overall increase of 25.5 FTEs.

Of that number, 19 are positions that have been term limited and we would be looking to add full-time positions doing some of those same functions.

Those are positions that would be sunsetting at the end of this year or in 2020 that we would be looking to continue that, the work that's going on there.

In terms of new positions, the budget adds the two staff I mentioned before in commercial vehicle load zone and permit counter, plus four and a half additional staff to support core programs in our department, two to support the design and inspections of our ADA ramps, one to support our interagency program coordination, including SR 520 and other projects affecting downtown mobility, one staff to support climate action, and converting one part-time arboriculturalist in our urban forestry program to full-time to support basic maintenance and delivery of our Move Seattle projects.

We feel like this staffing level will allow the organization to continue to provide the basic services as well as those voter-approved projects.

Lastly, the information technology investments that we have in our proposed budget that we're working very closely with SDOT and have appreciated the work of the new director in being a collaborator and thinking about what the future of IT investments that we need to make as an agency are.

and how we think about service delivery and enterprise-wide permitting and mobility technology improvements.

The proposed budget includes funding for the department to develop a comprehensive and consolidated IT strategic plan for both emerging transportation technology and our operational needs and technologies as well.

And then we have some very technical needs to archive some of our legacy system for closing out existing permits.

And maintaining the inventory of work orders and permits that will enable us to continue to be efficient as an agency going forward.

I can answer any more questions, and then I'm going to turn it over to Kevin Lowe to just talk about some of the mechanics and the details of the budget itself.

And then, obviously, I'll be here for additional questions after that.

Great.

Council Member Mosqueda, did you want to pick up?

All right.

Sam, before we turn it over, I've got two very specific questions.

What's the status of the funding for Thomas Street, as I want to commend?

Susan McLaughlin for the work that she and we did this summer on the design charrettes.

It was pretty amazing work that your staff has done to follow up with that.

So, can you give me a status on that?

And then also, the pilot for age-friendly benches, I think we got to walk about with your team sometime next week.

Yeah, so on the Thomas Street, we've worked this summer to develop a community-driven concept plan for the corridor.

We anticipate that the L clip funding source would be the primary source of Funding of implementation funds along with bicycle master plan and the nodo map funds Along with there's some that would be dependent on private development partnerships as well.

So we think with with those sources we were able to fund the pieces that we're committing to to to construct and then there's pieces that would be dependent on the adjacent private developments to complete as well.

So are we close to having the funding we need?

So we're pretty close.

Good, thanks.

And then age-friendly benches, you said?

Yes, it's a pilot program.

Yeah, so I might have to follow up on the details of that, but I know that we are looking to advance that program.

I think we're also concerned about making sure that we have the right ability to maintain keep benches in good working order, that's a challenge often, is just the asset maintenance and management of that.

So making sure we have the ability to have inventory or standardize the pallet enough to be able to keep those in good working order.

broken benches don't help anybody.

That's right.

So I appreciate that.

The chief thing I've been most interested in working with your staff is the design that for age friendly what we have learned and I'm talking international models now is that the design is really important to have particularly to have arms on the benches so that people can push themselves up, people with, that are having difficulty standing or sitting.

And also, the angles of the benches, and irrespective of the materials that are used, but there are a lot of models now that we can point to that look good, fit the space, and again, can accommodate people with certain disabilities, whether they're temporary or permanent.

I'm having a walkabout with some of your team.

I think it is next week.

And I'd just like to emphasize how important this is for the community.

Council Member Morris.

Yes, I'll be brief.

Talk about, I'm getting texts from moms in Northgate.

up in the district, so yeah.

Talk about customer service.

Can you go back, Sam, when you were talking about, I wasn't paying attention, I apologize.

I had a question teed up for you about safe routes to school and some projects.

I know that we talked about some of this offline, but didn't you guys have a project teed up for Sacajawea?

Yes, so we have speed humps going in next year at Sacajawea.

Yeah, that's in the program for 2020.

And the other issue is just this is, again, I apologize if this is kind of just basic.

How does SDOT work with Metro when we start deciding where to add new transit and service hours in light of light rail at Northgate and East and West?

And then hopefully, 130th will come in earlier.

But can you just briefly touch on that as well?

Sure, so we work very closely with Metro on both the service hours that we purchase through the Seattle Transportation Benefit District, but also as they think about major restructures.

So Metro has started a process around the Northgate link extension that looks at how the bus service can best integrate with that.

And we're an active participant in that work and trying to understand what the service provision needs and then how it affects things like bus layover needs, bus facility needs, and then even what it would mean for downtown mobility and downtown congestion as well.

Madam Chair, may I ask a follow-up?

Of course.

One of the things that we have been hearing about and looking at, and one thing we're hearing in community for light rail right now, just at Northgate and East and West, is whether or not SDOT will be working, and this kind of goes to our Green New Deal, whether we'll be looking at electrifying, is that the right word?

Smaller buses, not those big diesel, but smaller electric buses that are more nimble to get in and out of neighborhoods East, West, because as you know, The north end was annexed in the 60s and so therefore that infrastructure hence the consent decree for sidewalks and curbs So I that's a continual question that keeps coming up, and I want to thank your staff They've showed up at a few community meetings to answer some of that So I was hoping on the record those are that are watching can hear a little bit more from you about that sure so

I think Metro is working on how they're going to electrify their fleet and has piloted some electric buses.

It's a place where the national industry continues to change and evolve.

Metro is really the lead on the vehicles that They need to purchase and how they operate those and you know that is based on Their maintenance facilities and where and how they can do that.

So I don't know if I can speak to the size of buses we're definitely interested in anything we can do to support the continued electrification of the of the system and to address our greenhouse gas emissions through transit.

Transit is both a large benefit in terms of reducing climate emissions, but also does have its own impacts, and so the more that we can reduce from transit itself, the better.

I think Council Member O'Brien has something he'd like to add.

Pivot a little bit, Sam.

Wanted to just spend a second getting your feedback on the Transportation Equity Program.

I know it's not highlighted here, but it's an initiative that's been getting off the ground the last couple of years and doing great work.

You and I, I think it was the first meeting of the Transportation Equity Work Group that we both had a chance to go to.

And it's great to see that work group coming together.

I think my understanding is that work group's gonna continue their work into next year, because it's got started a little late this year.

But any thoughts on how the equity work within the department is influencing the broader kind of SDOT work, and are there things in the budget we should be paying attention to if we want to prioritize equity?

Sure.

So, I mean, the equity program has been great to get off the ground, and it's been very fulfilling, I think, for our team to hear from the workgroup and really get that work going.

The timing of the workgroup's work, they've been spending a lot of time sort of iteratively learning about the various aspects of SDOT and what the equity implications are and thinking about how we frame an equity program going forward.

That work is expected to continue through April.

And because we sort of got started a little bit We spent the money a little bit slower than we had anticipated.

We think that work is covered through 2020 in the budget already and doesn't need additional resources beyond what's in the budget already.

And we would expect that that would greatly inform our 2021 budget formulation.

Thank you.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you.

So before handing it over, I will direct some of these questions at you and do let me know if they're going to be covered more in detail in your subsequent slides.

So we talked about the Move Seattle Levy component, and I echo our colleagues' appreciation for that amount being included.

$109 million for pedestrian and bike safety and $69 million for pedestrian Bike improvements, but tell me a little bit more about the location of these investments I think obviously as we look citywide we're still really concerned about the disparity in terms of infrastructure and the historic legacy of North the north end and the south and not having bike investments So can you break down the new bike lane miles versus upgrade bike miles?

And how these miles would be distributed across the city and then remind us of the new miles how many new miles are we talking about?

Sure, I'm not sure if I have a specific number of new miles that I can but we can follow up with with the details on that in terms of projects that we anticipate it being installed in 2020 They are projects all in throughout the throughout the city and They include the North 34th Street protected bike lane, Bell Street, King Street Greenway, West Seattle Greenway Phase 2, the Wing Luke Elementary School Greenway.

Those are all projects that are expected to be completed and delivered in 2020. We also, in addition, some of the pedestrian master plan projects all over the city as well, a lot on the north end, Lake City Way, 30th Ave, Northeast, New Sidewalks, and then Greenwood Ave, New Sidewalks.

Those are some of the projects that have started construction now, expected to be delivered and completed in 2020.

Just to follow up to that, wanting to bike to our childbirth classes in District 2 and seeing zero real safe ways to get there, what are some of the specific projects in D2?

Can you speak to that or do you need to get back to us?

So it depends on where in D2, but it's a big district.

So King Street Greenway and the Wing Luke Elementary School Greenway are both projects that are in Council District 2 that are expected to be done in 2020. We've also completed a number of other projects this year in D2 as well, but we know that that's an area for continued investment as well.

Definitely and then speaking of geographic distribution Wondering and you know my colleagues have been working on this this year.

Thank you guys for your work on the bike corrals and additional corrals for future transit options What I'm wondering is how does this budget?

Reflect any changes in the areas where we're creating off-street parking corrals for either bike bike shares or future scooters Especially as we put it in light of the conversation.

You've been having councilmember backshaw about Mobility concerns for those with limited mobility or folks with scooters, or you know wheelchairs.

We want to make sure that those Roadways are clear so thanks again councilmember checo for working on that.

And I'd love to know more about the geographic distribution.

Sure.

So we can provide a map of where we've installed spaces this year.

As of last week, we'd installed 834 new bike parking spaces this year, with about 300 more in the construction queue.

Our goal this year, and this has been largely funded through the bike share permit revenues, was to install 1,500 1500 new bike parking spaces and that's a mix of racks and then marked areas adjacent to those for wheel lock Bikes so we've still got about 350 left to identify and install this year so we're about on pace in terms of our of our work constructing and installing that 1500, which is really a major expansion over what we have done traditionally in terms of installation.

Those have been installed.

Again, looking for geographic spread of those.

We've continued to do engagement with adjacent property owners, adjacent businesses around the locations of those and make sure we're not unintentionally impeding operations for how people are using curb space.

A lot of those spaces have ended up being in street rather than on the sidewalk to keep those keep bikes in street and we would anticipate that those spaces especially the areas next to the bike racks would be part of our scooter parking.

space available as we look to pilot a scooter program.

Excellent.

Just to follow up, that speaks to what we've done so far in 2019 and some of the projects for the 350 more to do, I would assume that's part of your 2019 plan.

Yep.

What's the 2020 plan?

And how is that reflected in the budget?

Right.

So the 2020 plan would continue to be funded through permit revenues.

and anticipating roughly similar permit revenues from the bike share program.

There's been a lot of change in that industry and market already this year, so we don't have a full sense of exactly what that will look like.

that' s what we' re looking at.

I' m not sure who will be interested in operating bike share next year but we would anticipate we' ve been putting about half of the permit revenues from the bike share program into new space allocation we would anticipate continuing that same breakdown between our oversight and staffing of

Great, thank you.

I think Council Member Pacheco has a question.

Thank you.

I'm just going to want to quickly build off of Council Member Mosqueda.

I was more specifically going to reference the resolution that the Council passed earlier this month, Resolution 31898. Can you, Sam, in this binder I've been looking.

Tell me where the reflection of what the 2020, up to 3,000 bike and scooter parking corrals are going to be located, because I'm looking.

I can't find them.

Yeah.

So I don't think that the response to that resolution has fully made it back to you, and I apologize for the delay in that.

I'll be candid and say that 3,000 parking spaces would be a major challenge for us.

And that is a reflection of staff capacity to do that work.

And that's the siting as well as the crew capacity to deliver and install those spaces.

We've made the push, and we think we're on pace for 1,500 this year.

And doubling that again next year would be a challenge.

As a quick follow-up to that, the other thing that I was trying to look for was, given that you said that some of the bike share money has been reallocated back into building out this infrastructure, with the anticipation of scooters, how does that then increase or lead to the increases?

Because I don't see those increases reflected here either.

Sure, so we are formulating what our scooter approach would be and anticipate having a pilot program next year.

The budget does not yet reflect permit revenues from a scooter program because we have not yet defined what that is.

We anticipate this fall being able to come back and work with the council on what a fee schedule would look like and what we would see in terms of 2020 revenues, but right now the budget As Director Noble said, it's a current law budget, so we don't have a scooter program yet, so we haven't started to allocate the resources for what a scooter pilot would be.

Continue, please.

Well, I was just going to say, we're building out the anticipated revenue potentially for the TNC tax, yet we haven't collected that yet either.

I believe it's $9 million that's reflected in this budget.

So I'm curious how we do that for some forms of transportation, but not for others.

I can answer the question.

As part of the budget, I mean it's a technical kind of bureaucratic answer, but it is the real one.

We have sent you the legislation with this budget to authorize the TNC tax.

So if you pass the full package of budget legislation, you will then have authorized that revenue stream.

that ESSAT is working on, but we're not prepared to bring you the details of a proposal for a scooter program that would generate fee revenue that could be then spent that way.

So that's just the technical difference and distinction there.

But again, in anticipation, if we can formulate such a program and plan to, we'd bring forward both the proposal and then there would be some associated revenues, and we could bring a supplemental to allocate those resources, presumably to scooter-related issues.

So one last quick follow-up on that.

I mean, I appreciate the mayor's involvement on the issue of scooters and her changing her position, evolving on the issue.

But given that it's five months since that announcement, I would think that the budget would be reflected, or the budget would have been drafted, or at least some more of the framework in terms of what the scooter pilot would look like would have been done.

So I mean, the last few months we've been doing outreach and trying to formulate what a scooter program looks like.

I think that the issue of budget really is going to reflect the scale and fee structure.

And those are pieces that we're trying to gain community input and advice about.

And I think it would be premature at this point to reflect that in the budget at this point.

Okay.

Council Member Gonzalez and I think Council Member Herbold.

Okay, great, so just really quickly, the response to that resolution actually was delivered to our inboxes last night at about 5.30 p.m.

So I have it open in front of me now, so thank you to Shana Larson for getting that over to us.

And it does talk in the response to the resolution about the cost to deliver $3,000 micro-mobility parking spaces over the 2020 year, and it estimates that it will cost approximately $1.4 million with additional long-term financial impacts that are, you know, continue to be described in and throughout the response.

So in that response, it does seem to signal that there needs to be an appropriation change to the 2020 budget in the amount of $1.4 million.

And there's also a note that talks about estimated revenue change to the general fund for 2020 as negative $402,000.

And so I think Councilmember Pacheco's line of questioning is a good one in the sense that it appears from the response to the resolution that there will need to be some sort of modification to, potentially modification to the mayor's proposed budget based on this response to the resolution.

So can you Help me understand that particular piece of information that we just got from SDOT late last night.

And then help me reconcile the difference between the 2020 estimated appropriation change of $1.4 million and the estimated revenue change of negative 402 in the general fund.

I'm assuming it has something to do with the permitting fees, but take it away.

I might have to follow up with you on the specifics of exactly where the negative is coming from.

I do want to stress that the shifting resources to build 3,000 additional parking spaces would have impacts and would have impacts on the agency's ability to deliver overall on our program.

Some of the question was about whether scooter revenues would go towards that.

And that's, again, where we haven't planned for scooter revenues yet.

If that's the place where we find additional revenues to do some of this work, then that is a discussion that we can have.

Yeah, it looks like the $402,000 negative to the general fund for 2020 is actually as a result of a loss of paid parking removal in order to install the spaces as described in the response to the slide in terms of the corral issue.

So we would lose paid parking.

to the tune of $402,000 to SDOT's budget.

Yep.

So just again, and some of this is estimated.

Thanks for jogging my memory on that.

I'm just throwing you a bunch of softballs.

You're lucky.

I don't usually do that.

I know.

So as I mentioned before, we've installed the majority of the 1,500 that we've done this year in the street.

And some of those do come at the expense of paid parking.

Revenue and so we tried to make an estimate of continuing that same level of breakdown and What the potential loss in parking revenues would be from general, you know So I think just a bottom line it it seems to me that from the response to this report

to the resolution that we got last night, this budget that we're looking at now does not include that $1.4 million estimate.

So we now have the response and council at this point needs to make a decision about whether we want to include the projected $1.4 million cost estimate based on the department's response to the resolution.

Is that accurate?

That's accurate.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you.

All right.

So there's two things that are happening here.

One is we would like to see the creation of these parking corrals, whether it's for existing bikes or for future scooters.

Let's be real.

Part of the frustration that we continue to hear from folks who have limited mobility or limited eyesight is that these bikes are in the way.

We know that that's true.

We just dinged the very bikes that are providing mobility options for people who don't have a car.

who don't have access to transit that rides frequently.

And for me personally, this is how I was commuting for the last six months until about three weeks ago or four weeks ago.

This is a really important option for folks to be able to get around the city, especially with the transportation improvements that we're making.

I'm gonna put that in a positive light because there's a lot of construction happening right now and it's a good way to get around.

So we know we need these.

I guess the frustration that I have is We have asked for these through resolution and the question that I would have is is there any scalable option is if we're hearing for 1.4 million dollars and there's a potential revenue loss of 0.4 because of parking are there scalable options that we can include I don't expect you to answer that question It sounds like the reports already been sent last night But that'll be something that I would like us to consider if there's some sort of scalable option to get to the 3,000 that councilmember Pacheco has outlined in his resolution and The second thing is related to scooters.

And since we're on that topic, I just want to extrapolate a little bit here.

We have, I think, through the good efforts of Councilmember Pacheco and Councilmember O'Brien and myself, and actually the entire council has constantly said we want to see scooters in the city.

I frankly have a seven-point piece of legislation that we've pulled from from really great cities.

like Portland, like Chicago, that we've talked about have included community input, have included labor standards, so it's not just outsourcing or independent contract work in the gig economy that folks are relying on, but these are good jobs as well.

I don't see anything in this budget, or perhaps you could point me to somewhere in this budget that looks at any allocation for planning and implementation, and maybe this is more for Director Noble too, The mayor's been on the record saying that she now supports scooters, wants to do a feasibility approach.

So should we assume that the department has all of the resources it needs to do the outreach that you've talked about, begun engaging in already?

and that there is going to be no cost associated from other programs to do this scooter pilot or this scooter program creation.

I'm not going to say pilot.

The program creation so that we can see something in 2020.

Right, so two questions to answer both of your questions.

First, I'll answer second first, there's no additional resources necessary to develop the scooter program, which we do see having a little bit of an iterative pilot approach similar to what we've done with a bike share program of learning from and scaling.

As long as it's geographically distributed equitably, unlike what we did with Jump, which left out the south end and other parts of the city and the north end.

Well, they quickly corrected that.

That was, yeah.

Yes, understood.

And so to launch the program, I think we would see, we do see the need for permit revenues to be used for the enforcement and oversight of the program itself.

I think some of the concerns that we hear the same concerns about the condition of bikes, the location of bikes, and things like that.

And so we've invested about half of the permit revenues in the enforcement and the oversight of the program from the bike share program.

We would anticipate the same sort of approach with the scooter program.

And then the other half of those revenues would go towards the installation of infrastructure that's supportive, and primarily parking at this point, because that's where we have a substantial deficit.

So I think in terms of the answer to is that scalable?

Yes, it's scalable based on that sort of breakdown of About half of the revenues going towards Towards better parking Councilmember herbal did you want to follow up?

Okay.

Okay.

All right Kevin did seven Kevin finally Good morning, and thank you

As Sam mentioned, I'd like to take you through some of the key details of SDOT's proposed budget for 2020. First, we have a four-year overview of SDOT's that shows the 2017 and 18 actuals, the 2019 adopted budget, and the 2020 proposed.

The intent of this slide is to give you a snapshot of our overall budget picture.

But SDOT's budget is fairly complex with a lot of different funding sources and moving parts.

So it can be a bit challenging to capture at this high level.

But I'm going to try to do my best.

Coming up in the next slide, I'll focus on some of the key changes that Sam recently highlighted with the dollar amounts that we're adding into the 2020 budget.

So to summarize this slide, the first three rows of this table show the general fund appropriations by year.

The 2020 proposed general fund budget is $45.8 million.

This reflects a $2.6 million or 6% increase over 2019 adopted.

The primary drivers for the increase is related to appropriations to enhance the commercial vehicle load zone and traffic permit counter.

As Sam mentioned, that would be permit revenue coming back to the general fund.

and anticipated annual wage increases that's related to the general fund component as well.

The next section is the appropriation other, which represents funding sources for SDOT's operations and maintenance programs, which are not general fund.

Some examples of those funds are Seattle, Seattle Transportation Benefit District, commercial parking tax, and other various funding sources that make up SDOT's transportation fund.

So that's essentially the combination of both is like our O&M program.

The 2020 proposed for the appropriation other is $275 million.

This represents a $30 million or 12% increase over the 2019 adopted amount.

The primary drivers are related to additional investments in transit, reimbursable waterfront work, transaction costs for the Mercer Mega Block, and appropriations to pay off SDOT's underfund loans.

The third row represents SDOT's capital programs.

The 2020 proposed is $404 million, which represents a 59 million or 17% increase over 2019. The primary drivers are related to SDOT's continued work on delivering the Move Seattle projects, enhancements to things like curb ramps, greenways, the waterfront capital project, and investments in Seattle Transportation Benefit District transit capital.

So we've also added a total role in the bottom in bold to provide a little better view of changes in the SDOT budget year over year.

As you can see, most of these changes are related, driven by SDOT's ramping up of Move Seattle.

So in 2019 and 20, essentially a lot of the projects that we had completed design, we're actually getting out the door and doing in the ground, such as the paving and bridge projects.

So that represents the primary drivers of the year over year changes.

Any questions?

Sorry, was there a question?

No, she's going to wait until the end.

I'm happy to wait until the end as well, but you mentioned the Mercer sale.

Is this an appropriate time to ask a question about that?

Absolutely.

The Mercer sale proceeds, we know that they're not reflected in full here, but you mentioned it and we know that there's $9.2 million allocated to offset the commercial parking tax revenues.

Can you talk a little bit about why these were so much lower than anticipated and what projects these are allocated for?

Sure, would you like me to answer that, Ben, or do you want to?

I can talk a little bit about the change in the revenues, and you can probably talk more about the projects.

So we had seen a long history of regular growth, annual growth in the commercial parking tax revenue stream.

However, last year, growth in an order of magnitude of 4 or 5 percent per year.

Last year, we saw none, which was a bit of a surprise and unexpected.

And candidly, we still don't completely understand why that happened.

We have seen a modest return to growth this year, more in the order of negative 3 percent.

So our revenue forecast going forward projects growth at roughly that level.

program that money out for multiple years, and in fact, we had bonded against it for several significant projects.

So what we're doing here is, and I cannot, as I sit here, tell you exactly what the fall off in revenue is that we're projecting, but because it's a decline in the growth rate, it's one that compounds over time.

So what we're proposing to do here with that $9 million is to fill that gap for a few years here so that we are able to meet the debt service and other funding commitments that we had built into our longer term capital plans for the commercial parking tax.

And I think Kevin can tell you more specifically about what those projects are.

Correct.

And thank you.

Thank you, Ben.

Before you do that, I'm sorry, Director Noble, the answer, I guess, was we don't know why there was a decline and we've seen unprecedented growth and new businesses opening.

So do we have any guesses of why there was a decline in the commercial parking tax?

One thing is that we may have actually been successful in getting folks to come to work.

It's particularly downtown where we collect revenues.

It's essentially downtown and major institutions, like hospitals and the university outside of the downtown area.

And even those major institutions, we've been working hard to get people to drive to work other ways.

So we may have been too successful for our own good, if you will, in that very narrow, narrow sense.

But again, we've seen a return to growth this year.

So this is one that we're monitoring closely.

We have actually dug into this.

We don't have the best geographic data because of the company's report for their total sales, if you will.

And there are operators.

You may know them as you pay these places that operate multiple locations.

So we don't have really good granular data on where people are parking.

But that's our best explanation.

And we're watching this one tightly.

And again, it's with some modesty or whatever humility that I admit to you that we don't completely understand this one.

Ben, if I may, I think the difference is about something like $3 million a year, I think is what the offset was.

That's what I recall.

And again, there's a compounding element to that.

But yes, I didn't want to.

Thank you.

And Council Member Mosqueda, to answer your question, as Ben mentioned, actually, there's a majority of, a major portion of our commercial parking tax revenues are actually dedicated to paying debt service.

So a lot of these larger projects that we did many years ago, bridges, the Spokane Street widening project, et cetera, had some bonds sold.

I would say over 60 to 65% or more is dedicated to this debt service.

So there's that.

And I can't remember every project, but spot paving is our arterial major maintenance project is one that gets a lot of the commercial parking tax.

There's also sprinkled throughout the entire SDOT portfolio to leverage a lot of our Move Seattle programs as well.

So a lot of projects have that.

I'd be more happy to get back with more details if you want to see some of the actual CPT.

Just a follow-up on Mercer dollars one follow-up on Mercer dollars.

Thank you for that answer It's helpful and relatively good news that people are driving into the town less 16.7 million of the proceeds from the Mercer sale going to vision zero bicycle and pedestrian projects but between 2020 and 2023 with only 1.8 million of these proceeds going for next year's budget as I read it.

So is there any way for us to expedite projects in 2020 and front load it instead of Put the money in on the back end and can you tell us more about the distribution of the neighborhood projects?

Sure, so as I as I mentioned In response to Councilor O'Brien, you know for those bicycle and pedestrian master plan projects We're looking to accelerate those as much as possible.

This this is These are the projects that are listed in especially the bicycle master plan as being You know Funded through design only or funded through planning only and so looking to pull those forward as much as possible We would like to you know We want to be accurate about what we anticipate those funds going to in 2020 and then work on pulling projects forward as much as possible.

So to answer your question, yes, we would like to accelerate that.

We don't want to be sitting with money in the bank.

We don't know yet exactly which projects those will go to, but we anticipate trying to pull as many projects forward as possible.

There are a few that were identified in the budget where we had some gaps in closing projects.

The two that are specific in there are the Highland Park Holden intersection safety improvements and then the 43rd Street Northeast access Northeast 43rd Street access improvements trying to Fit that project in with the anticipated light rail opening

Just one last follow-up on that.

When we talk about accelerating projects in neighborhoods, do you have a sense that you have sufficient funds to address the priority projects now?

Is it that you don't have enough workers to actually do the work, or we don't have the subcontractors online?

What is causing, or what gaps could we fill to really implement some of these?

And in particular, I look at downtown.

and wanting the bike lane connections so that people can ride their bikes and not have big gaps on the streets?

Sure.

So we've made some pretty significant and are continuing to make some pretty significant connections in downtown.

This year, we've started construction on the southeast, the south end connector, installed Pike Street protected bike lanes, 8th Avenue, 9th Avenue.

The resource needs, it's sort of a mix of everything in terms of, but mostly it's making sure we have our delivery processes in place so we can do the community outreach and engagement that's necessary, line up our design and make sure we're being thoughtful about the design and addressing issues, and then having a good way to transition those into the delivery, the actual construction process.

We've made some significant improvements there already this year in terms of thinking about how we move projects through the agency to get them built.

Great.

I appreciate that.

And I do want to acknowledge that there has been great progress on certain projects.

And there's still what I consider to be some significant gaps in safety.

And I know I've talked to you about this a lot.

Fourth Avenue is my poster child for it's great for about five blocks, and then suddenly You know, it's the good luck school of bicycle riding.

And, you know, it's not a sense of that where we want to be safe.

We want to encourage people to bike.

But if those gaps exist, even for a few blocks, it becomes really scary.

Absolutely.

So anyway, Godspeed.

I hope that we can see that the transition and the movement going forward.

Thank you.

Please continue.

Sorry, you keep getting interrupted.

Thank you.

No problem.

Okay, the last section on this slide, the bottom two rows essentially related to the S Department's FTE counts over the four years.

As you may recall, Council, in 2018 and 19, we came to you with a request to add additional positions related to staffing for project staff, program staff, designers, engineers, and crews out in the field to help us deliver curb ramps, signal crews.

So that represents the 2018 and 19, the majority of the 2018 and 19 increases year over year.

And as Sam just mentioned earlier regarding the 2020 increase of 25 and a half, there are 19 term limited or temporary positions that are set to sunset next year that we're requesting to create new FTEs to continue the body of work that's required to meet our commitments.

And then the remaining balance of six and a half are related to the two staff to provide engineering and inspection services for our ADA curb ramp program, two staff related to our commercial vehicle enforcement and traffic permit counter, one for climate action, and one half-time conversion to full-time for Arborist services.

Okay, I have no questions.

I'm gonna go to the next slide.

Okay.

Do you have questions, Council Member Herbold?

I do not.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

So...

One second, sorry.

So this last slide highlights some of the key themes.

between the 2019 adopted and 2020 proposed budgets.

As Sam mentioned earlier, it's grouped by the three strategic priorities, voter commitments, enhancing safety and mobility, building and sustaining the organization.

So these are the items that Sam spoke to earlier and I wanted to just kind of highlight some of the major categories and just comparisons of the 2019 adopted amounts for some of these programs comparing to the 2020 proposed.

So for the first item, the Move Seattle projects, the figures that you see here are the 2019 adopted, which is encompassing all of the Move Seattle portfolio with Move Seattle local and leveraged dollars.

So in 2019, our Move Seattle portfolio was $284 million.

Continuing our investments, our enhancements of delivering the levy, the 2020 proposed, more products are essentially going out to construction, and so there's additional increase in requests there of $18 million or 6% above that, so with a total of $302 million.

And then for SDB transit investments, with 2020 being the last year of the Seattle Transportation Benefit District at this time, this compares the $62.7 million adopted amount of transit service and capital investments with the 2020 proposed, which is an increase of $13.4 million, or 22%.

As Sam mentioned earlier, this includes a one-time addition of 25,000 additional transit service hours, about $5 million addition for transit service capital projects that enhance speed and reliability.

It continues programs such as First Last Mile.

So this is just noting our department's investment of increase for transit investments.

Council Member O'Brien.

Quick question on this one.

The number that I've thrown around on the sale transportation benefit district revenue is that we raise about 50 million a year.

That is correct, but that's, so that's including the STB, the $60 VLF and then the 0.1% sales tax.

That's correct.

And so, and I know that we have been ramping up that investments in bus.

So I'm assuming in the first couple of years, we were probably under that.

Is the, and so is that how we're at 76 million now because there was essentially underspend in early years.

So in addition to the 50 ish million we'll collect next year, we have some extra money.

That's right.

And it's more like 55, I think.

It's been going up.

It's been going up, especially the sales tax component of that.

So this does reflect the ramping up and the material change that happened last year, sort of getting the transit capital investments.

moving and then I think it also reflects some of the revenues associated with budget reconciliation with Metro and the service hours that they deliver and sort of making sure that the accounts are accurate.

Essentially they were running, have some of a fund balance.

They also have to carry a reserve if in case the, if we don't renew the proposition and we have to ramp down service, we have to carry some service for the first quarter, essentially, till we get to the service date.

So there is some float in the fund balance to accommodate those types of things.

So my question is, it's hard for me to even imagine a world in which with buses as full as they are today, that we would have to cut service.

And obviously, we talked about I-76, what that could do, but even regardless of that, the renewal of the Seattle Transportation Benefit District, which is something we'll need to plan for next year.

I'm trying to understand what the kind of baseline number of this 76 million is, that if we want to, you know, at the bare minimum, maintain existing, what will be the existing service levels next year, Is that the new baseline or does that include significant capital projects that are really one-time projects?

In the 76 million, sorry?

Yes.

Yes, that does include one-time capital projects of about five million dollars that we're adding.

Okay.

I think the 76 you should think of that as using some fund balance in there and and going forward we should be thinking about what the revenue source would would bear which would be roughly 55 million.

Revenues the current revenue source bears 55, but our our investments in bus service are closer to 70 million Is that right or not that includes the that includes capital investment as well, so I think the ongoing cost of Just the service Component of it is more in the in line with what?

what's collected on an annual basis.

And this is also a place where Metro has been adding additional capacity to deliver service.

And so I think as we look towards a renewal of Proposition 1, we would be able to better understand like what service we're actually able to buy.

We don't wanna sort of overcommit to buying service that can't be delivered.

And then also what additional fare programs would look like.

We've made significant improvements or investments in low-income access to transit and sort of what the mix of that is.

And that'll be a question as we go into 2021.

One of the key elements of the Proposition 1 was no supplantation of Metro funding.

And so as Metro's finances have changed, they have taken back responsibility for some of the routes.

So it changes what we're paying for from year to year.

It can make it a bit of a moving target to identify.

I mean, it's a cost of negotiation to figure out what we're spending our next money on and what we get reimbursed for our past investments, essentially.

It doesn't, this line of questioning doesn't impact our budget action here, but it'll be good to hone in on what the types of ongoing costs are.

Capital projects obviously are different.

ORCA lift ramp up is kind of a different beast.

I think we want to continue the youth ORCA passes, and obviously the bus service.

Obviously if we can find other people to pay for it, that reduces our burden there.

But knowing what that is going into 2020, so we can plan for 2021 will be important.

Right, and just very specifically to answer your question, I don't think that $76 million is the new baseline.

The real baseline is something below that.

But then there's a discussion of how do we continue these capital investments, which are all about speed and reliability, which end up benefiting the service hours that we buy.

Thank you for bringing that up.

We've heard a lot about lately and we know that King County Metro is looking at some alternatives.

Are we anticipating any activities in 2020 that would look at mitigating or ending fair enforcement on our end?

I recognize we have a lot of projects we're also trying to fund, but obviously fair enforcement is not the mechanism to fund these by and large.

So are we planning anything in 2020 that would help us tee up removing fair enforcement or mitigating the impact of that?

So King County Metro and Sound Transit do fair enforcement on their facilities and their vehicles.

We've talked about ways to increase some security presence on our streetcar and try to address some of the security incidents that we've seen, not in a sense of funding.

That's certainly not seen as a revenue generation mechanism.

The most straightforward way to do some of that work would be to have some of the King County Metro fare enforcement personnel who do that work on buses be available to be on streetcars, and we've had some discussions about that.

We haven't instituted that program.

We've had some continued community discussions as well.

There's no part of our budget that views fair enforcement as a funding mechanism for any of our investments, and I don't think we would recommend that.

Great, so the conversation around fair enforcement and security and safety on public transit seems to get conflated sometimes, and so I just wanna decouple those.

As it relates to the budget, are you saying that if we were to do more to ensure that folks felt safe on streetcar, for example, we would need to reflect the safety personnel on streetcar and make sure that it's clear that they're not doing fair enforcement anymore and they're just there to be safety assisters?

I think that there's, that is something that if we end up pursuing that and have an agreement with King County Metro to do so, we could define what the expectations are through that agreement.

Okay.

Council Member.

Thank you.

I have some questions that are not on the presentation, but I know are part of SDOT's work that I'm assuming are continuing.

I was hoping I could have an opportunity to chat about that now.

So the first one is around the body of work that the executive has undertook regarding congestion pricing.

So we know that between 2018-2019 budgets, about $1.2 million was allocated to explore the concept of congestion pricing in the downtown core.

My question is really less about the particulars of the program, but more about as it relates to the budget, whether or not the entire $1.2 million that has been allocated in prior budgets has been spent, and if so, has all of it been spent, some of it been spent, and what have we, what do we have in terms of deliverables for whatever portion of that 1.2 million that has been spent?

Sure, so the funds have not been entirely expended.

We continue to work on that body of work.

We released in the spring sort of the first stage of that work, looking at the state of the field, looking at some of the equity considerations that would go into any kind of pricing program.

Since that point, we've been continuing to advance some of the technical aspects of what That was really what is more definitional, what are we talking about, what is this?

We've worked more on the technical side of like what would we potentially see from pricing approaches and started some of the engagement around with community about what concerns or sort of that equity aspect of it.

We see that work continuing, not reflecting additional appropriations.

at this point, other than some of what we discussed, one of the FTEs that's in the budget being a climate-focused position, and that would be both work on congestion pricing and some of the other climate initiatives that we have in coordination with Office of Sustainability and the Environment and Seattle City Light on electrification in particular.

I appreciate that, thank you.

But sitting here now, you can't tell me how much of the $1.2 million is still on the books?

I don't know that I do have a fund balance.

If we can get that as a follow-up, that'd be great.

And then I'm assuming, and maybe this is a question that's better suited for Ben, that at whatever that unspent fund amount is just rolling over into the 2020 budget?

Correct.

Okay, as part of the base 2020 budget?

Yeah, and if it's not expended this year, we would expect to carry it forward.

I can't tell you whether we've I need to check what's in the base for 19 and 20, but we're not...

So two primary questions.

How much has not been spent and two, is that total amount going to be in a carry forward scenario or is it being absorbed in some other way?

I'd like to get a little clarity around that.

And then the second...

The second set of questions that I have is related to Sound Transit 3, our favorite topic.

So I just wanted to get a little bit of an update from you all about SDOT's role and plans and approaches regarding third-party funding, in particular on the West Salem Bound Link extensions.

And I'm not asking you to Sort of give the city's official position in terms of third-party funding But I do think that it's an issue that is obviously coming to head in terms of the Sound Transit Board's ongoing deliberations around some of the different preferred alignments that have been identified both by elected officials and community members that inherently will require additional funds.

And I know that the topic of third party funding has come up quite publicly and privately in those conversations.

So really, at the end of the day, what I'm interested in understanding is if this budget reflects any additional capacity or acknowledgment of the work that SDOT is going to need to do in 2020 with regard to developing a work plan to engage or continue to engage in those third-party funding conversations with Sound Transit.

Sure, so our budget does reflect our continued work in coordination with Sound Transit on the environmental review that's underway now and the technical side of developing those alternatives to a greater level of specificity, which will also come with cost refinements as it goes through the environmental process and the development of a draft environmental impact statement.

And that's not just SDOT.

That's multi-agency work, including Department of Neighborhoods, OPCD.

SDCI, a whole bunch of people.

The budget for that sort of sits primarily with SDOT and then working on that departmental work plan with our partners.

In terms of the third-party funding in particular, the 2020 budget doesn't reflect any commitment of third-party funding at this point.

that will be an issue for future budgets to address.

At this point, where, and I think it's a bit premature to know what the level of investment would be, even for any of those alternatives.

Sound Transit has identified some numbers, but those are very preliminary and I think need to be understood within the context of the environmental process as well.

And then it's also not clear exactly what of that would be the city's share versus other potential third parties as well.

And I appreciate that nuance, and I think that that's exactly why I'm asking the question, is that I continue to be concerned both while I was on the elected leadership group for the Sound Transit 3, West Seattle to Ballard extension, and now I continue to be concerned that We continue to have the approach of, like, we'll figure that out later.

And even in part of your response where you talk about future budgets, we'll have to address this.

You also, in the course of providing me that answer, identified some unknowns in some areas of work and issue development that need to happen.

And I'm worried that we're going to come to a head on this third party funding conversation.

and have it be years that potentially cause additional delay on rolling these projects out into communities.

So I think it would be really important for us to be much more intentional around how we are providing the department with the resources necessary to be able to start doing our own in-house evaluation of what we might be able to do or not do based on what we know to date.

And of course, I'm not saying that everything is set in stone.

There's a lot of questions.

There isn't an actual alignment identified yet.

I recognize that there's a lot of moving pieces, but I think that there's potentially enough information there for us to at least begin to scope out what the work plan is going to be when the question ultimately gets called.

And I mean, we know that it will be.

So it would be wise for us to plan now, I think.

consistent with that observation, I want you to know that in the past, it's actually been now more than a month, a couple of months, we at the budget office, in some coordination with SDOT, have engaged Sound Transit's finance group, so we can dive into their funding model and come deeply understand the revenue streams, the assumptions they're making about, if you will, first and second party funding, and what it would mean, what value the city could be bringing in terms of in-kind sorts of contributions as well as, you know, implication ultimately of cash as well, if you will, but share that we need to really understand where they are and what they are assuming and what it would mean to have additional resource on top.

What's the base, if you will?

Absolutely.

So that work is underway, but I share your concern about urgency.

The scope of this is huge in a financial sense, but we are diving in.

Yeah, and this is obviously a very important project to the region, not just to us, for a lot of reasons, economic development reasons, climate reasons, a lot of reasons why this is so important to us here at the city, but again, across the region.

And so I just, I really wanna make sure that as we are looking forward, in this 2020 budget process that we're making sure that the department is well positioned to be able to do that work in sort of a more systemic, structured, supported manner because I don't want to be in a situation where we end up being the reason why things get delayed.

And I think there's a real danger of that.

So I don't have the answer to that yet, but I do know that I have a concern in that space and appreciate the opportunity to continue to develop that throughout the rest of the fall.

And thank you for raising that, and I just want to underscore that.

I also want to acknowledge our 36th district, legislative district, has been really helpful in the legislature.

We got, I think, the first million dollars to study this, the whole freight quarter in particular, and how that's going to work.

So I want to appreciate Gail Tarleton and Senator Reuben Carlisle.

And Nicole, they have come together with the port, helping us look at that.

And in particular, it was responding to the good work that SDOT has done to look at alternatives for the Magnolia Bridge.

That is not...

to in any way compete with what Councilmember Gonzalez was talking about.

But particularly as we get close to Ballard, we're going to have to figure out Tunnel or Bridge, and which bridges, and whether or not that there is a way that we can coordinate.

But I know many people in Magnolia continue to beat the drum.

It's something important to them.

And yet I know it doesn't fall in the highest priority for SDOT.

So thank you, Council Member Gonzalez, for bringing that up.

I know there's several more questions.

And I just, for a public service announcement, I'm going to ask for a 10 minute recess after we finish transportation.

So Marco, I want you to know that if you and your team want to take a half an hour break, We probably have 15 more minutes, more questions.

So I'm just conscious of the fact that everybody's sitting here waiting and questions for transportation are important and there's still some to come.

So Council Member Gonzalez, Council Member Herbold, do you have any other questions along these lines?

Council Member Herbold.

I was gonna wait till we get to the next section, enhancing safety and mobility.

Yes, okay.

Thank you.

On to the next section.

Starting planning and design of the North Lake retaining wall, Vision Zero enhancements and safe routes to school, and then also effective management of the public right-of-way, which was related to the commercial vehicle load zone officers.

Just a reminder that these are numbers purely comparing 2019 adopted to 2020 proposed.

So for ADA curb ramps, we are increasing that program's funding in 2020 to assist in the department's delivery of ADA compliant curb ramps.

Just a reminder that other SDOT projects as well do assisting delivering curb ramps and our utility partners and private developers as well in helping the city meet its 1,250 annual curb ramp consent decree target.

Great.

Northlake retaining wall, as Sam mentioned earlier, $2 million is for the first year in In 2021 in the CIP, we are planning to request another $2 million for a total of four to hopefully get us to design.

But sometime next year in 2020, we will come back to council once we get to 30% design and have further conversations of where to go.

On to Vision Zero enhancements and Safe Routes to School.

Just wanted to note that these are just the Vision Zero and Safe Routes to School CIP projects.

So they may, so I don't want to surprise you, they look lower.

These are just the numbers in the CIP projects.

There's other safety projects that are done in PMP crossings and other CIP projects.

But just wanted to clarify, we're just comparing the capital, the CIPs together over, and showing that the 2020 has a, 50% increase over 2019 I Wanted to ask whether or not that 15% increase represents a restoration of the commitment of Enhanced camera enforcement funding to

this particular line item, we dipped below the 20% that council had passed in previous legislation.

I believe many of us had expressed an expectation and hope that we would go back to 20%.

Wondering how much we are dedicating to this purpose and if that counts for the 15% increase here.

I believe, yes, that is a portion of that.

I would also like to note that this does anticipate about two additional school zones to be installed sometime in 2020, so there's a partial revenue of that as well, but yes.

Okay.

I guess we would like to recognize council and thank you for reinstating some of that funding back to the Safe Routes to School Program.

Okay, fantastic.

Thank you.

That's it?

Okay.

Okay, on to the last section.

I just wanna be mindful of time.

So building and sustaining the organization.

The first item is the annual wage increase.

So this is the central, pending the city's contract negotiations, there is a estimated number that we have in our 2020 proposed budget to account for the salary adjustments for the staff in the department.

The second item is positions to support continuing operations.

That's essentially tying in with the conversion of the term limited positions to the new positions that we're requesting.

As Sam mentioned earlier, because these are temporary positions, their budget was already built into the 2020 base budget.

So this is just the incremental amount.

Our 2020 ask is actually primarily asking for position authority for those positions.

And the last item is just the strategic investments that we discussed earlier related to an IT strategic plan and Hanson archiving, which is switching over the department from a legacy permit system to the citywide Accela system.

I have a couple questions one councilmember Gonzalez touched on in her comments, but I want to just follow up around congestion pricing I'm interested in also interested in better understanding where we are I I see congestion pricing as a Well, very controversial, I'm sure.

One of the best tools we have to address our climate and congestion challenges we're facing.

And at the same time, I'm kind of disappointed and frustrated at the pace with which the work is going, and frankly, the lack of clarity of what the work even is.

Two years ago, we put a small amount in the budget to do a study.

I was hoping that would take about six months.

It ended up taking 18 months.

I'm not sure what the next phase is.

So I want to be very supportive of an aggressive plan to do work to better understand how we might do it and have some public engagement around that.

And if there's really no plan for that, then I propose we use the money on other things that will actually get done.

So some clarity on what's going on right now.

I know there was a Bloomberg grant we got that wasn't actually money, but support and help.

But I would love to learn a little more about that so we can make an informed policy decision about what's going to happen in the next year.

And if the reality is not much.

then let's understand what that money is and what other priorities might be going for.

My preference is to know that there's some really awesome things that are about to happen and get some clarity on those and we can make sure that it's funded properly.

Was that a question?

It's a flag for Calvin to do a little research.

I mean, if you all have some answers right now.

We're happy to follow up with you on that.

That'd be great.

I have another one that is a question, and I'm not sure who to ask, but SDOT is the place where I'm going to start.

And this is around the scope of work and what's being done by the position that was created at the end of the year for the Citywide Mobility Operations Coordinator.

From what I understand, this position doesn't report to SDOT, so I'm going to make some statements here.

Feel free to jump in if you have answers, but I absolutely don't want to put you on the spot for things that aren't directly in your chain of command.

I, really trying to understand, we asked a number of questions a few weeks ago through our question asking system.

And we recently provided responses including a number of attachments of the deliverables that have been developed.

Yeah, and so I've seen a lot of those.

I still have just ongoing questions about, you know, I know in the original job posting it talks about accountability metrics for city departments related to their operational impacts on mobility.

It's been nine months.

Do we have the accountability metrics?

Do we know what's happening there?

In some of the documents you said, it cited things like ride transit every morning and afternoon to observe and get...

I don't know if you had the most recent, I think it was even as recently as yesterday, delivered a more complete response.

So the work has been, and actually I think Sam's going to help me here too because he knows.

It's to coordinate across the departments, so the position is elevated above SDOT because getting that coordination across departments is difficult to do from within any single department.

It's a bureaucratic reality, if you will.

So I'm working both on city-specific issues, but then also on regional coordination for particularly emergency traffic response.

And so that involves coordination with multiple agencies.

WSDOT, Metro, and the like.

But then also, again, focusing very much on the city's own response.

Just as an example, a lot of work, each of the departments that would respond, City Light, SPU, SDOT, even at Times Park, they all have their own independent dispatch systems, and making sure that there is better coordination among and between and across them is an example of the work that has been done.

It's great, I guess for me when I, this is a fairly, I'm not sure how to characterize it, but the salary is worthy of a high profile position, and as chair of the transportation department, it's been extremely low profile.

Not to say that doesn't mean work's not happening, but I am not aware of any of the work.

So I will review the documents that maybe came over as ladies yesterday, but it'd be really helpful for me to understand what is actually being done, and what are the outputs, and are we seeing benefits here?

Not to say that there aren't some benefits, but in a trade-off when there's lots of other demands, just questioning the value of this position, because I haven't received any of the value.

I understand the question, and actually, maybe the best thing would be to set up a direct briefing in your office with Mike Gordon so you can get a better sense of the work he's doing and the value that we believe it's bringing overall.

Just to chime in here Ben I think there's a lot of interest in this up on so it's great that you want to Give one council member a briefing, but I'll bet you there's more in that We certainly do that more broadly as well.

I didn't I was only responding to make the moment, but yeah It may be it may be useful in one of the follow-ups to have someone at the table to ask some of those questions I mean instead of having nine separate meetings Thank you, and as it relates to that I think we have a pretty

good and timely example where I think some work from the person in this position on an issue that I know SDOT is aware of, I am certainly aware of.

We've received probably about three dozen emails associated with the backups around the bus lane.

And I want to just be clear on the bus lane on 99. I want to be clear.

These are backups not only for cars.

These are backups for our buses.

So the irony of there being a backup for buses with the creation of a bus lane is just, yeah, it's a head scratcher.

So it'd be great to understand, given that this This position is specifically about traffic incident management and congestion management, and it's a cross-department, citywide effort.

What involvement the person in this position has had on this particular issue I think would be a good sort of real-world demonstration for us on how the person in that position is able to respond and sort of, you know, get to the bottom of problems like this and recommend changes to address them.

Sure.

So, I mean, if I could just talk a little bit about this issue in our response specifically.

You know, just there was a bus lane on Northbound 99. It was removed as part of the tunnel opening.

In coordination with Metro and WSDOT, we made a decision to reinstitute that.

And there's a couple reasons why we made that decision.

One is that buses were still experiencing slow and unreliable travel times on Northbound 99. And then, as we prepare for tolling, some of the places where people would—the best way through downtown will continue to be the tunnel, but we anticipate that there will be some number of people who would like to seek other routes.

And one way that they would potentially do that is getting off at Dearborn, which could back up through where the bus lane does start there.

This past weekend, WSDOT reinstituted the bus lane after that coordination that happened this spring.

It has had some unintended effects and unanticipated effects of where and how those changes have occurred.

I've certainly personally experienced those as well as gotten some of the same emails that you've gotten.

And so we are not just, I think this shows some of the changes in our responses to evolving conditions throughout the squeeze.

We've already been in conversation with Metro and WSDOT about how we could possibly tweak that.

We do see benefit of having that that bus lane northbound on 99, but think that right now this week has shown that some of how it was designed and reinstalled may have had those unintended consequences.

So we're looking to how we can balance that and do that quickly so that we know there's been a lot of impact this week.

Yeah, and I really appreciate your awareness of the problem.

I appreciate your willingness to work with my office, as well as Metro, as it relates to the needs of bus commuters through Pioneer Square.

You guys have been great.

But I'm interested, as it relates to this particular example, I think It would be helpful for us to understand the role of this particular position by using this example to see how this person is involved in doing just what you described the department as doing, which is identifying the unintended consequences and figuring out how to respond to them.

So I appreciate that that's something that the department has taken on, but it's my perception that that is within the job purview of this particular position.

So I want to understand how this particular position has worked on this problem.

Right.

So, I mean, I think that there's, we continue to have ongoing interagency discussions and There's work that happens across agencies about how to respond to these types of things.

Sometimes that takes convening.

Sometimes it's identifying where there are gaps in those response plans.

I mean, this is one where this week has been very focused on the leadership and the staff from each of the agencies quickly coming together to figure out how we solve that.

So there hasn't necessarily been a gap.

You know, we just need to work together to identify the solutions and figure out the implementation of those.

So I know that's probably not a satisfactory answer to what you were looking for, but, you know, that's an interagency coordination that is functioning well right now.

OK, any other questions?

Is the general involved in helping to guide the department and the other departments in finding a solution to the unintended consequences here?

I think that's all I'm trying to.

That is my understanding of this person's role.

And I just want to know, is that something that he's working on?

What it's been described is the job.

His focus to date, as I understand it, has largely been on an emergency response.

And I'm not sure this sort of fits that scenario.

So that's a distinction that may be relevant here.

I think it's also been in places where there are not good connections between agencies trying to help facilitate those.

In this case, our connections with WSDOT and with Metro on this issue are very strong and robust.

And so I think that we've been able to address those within and between the agencies.

Okay, all right, so do you want to continue just one more that's our last slide.

We're are you done on that?

Okay one more question just along this Line of concerns related to the director of citywide mobility operations coordination With the salary for just this position of up to $199,000 what is the total amount of money director noble that's been allocated for this position and Any additional support that's been allocated plus benefits we I think we need do need to know those total dollars as it relates to the budget and then Lastly to the point about briefing council members.

I agree with council members Orion and herbal that you know and customer back shot chair Bagshaw mentioned we'd all benefit from this I have not received the update as of last night that you mentioned that was sent to Councilmember O'Brien and I think beyond us up here the general public would like to know so it would be helpful I think for us to actually have a briefing memo that provides a summary of what this position is actually doing because when I look at the Job description duties.

It's not specific to emergency response issues.

It's more about monitoring metrics interdepartmental coordination Some of these issues that appear to be as it says operations and planning Association associated with general management of the squeeze which is an ongoing emergency So it'd be helpful.

I think for the general public to have that type of briefing.

I

Great, and I think Council Member Gonzalez has a follow-up on this.

Just really quickly, I mean, I think at the end of the day what these questions are about is that we're paying, taxpayers are paying $195,000 for a director of citywide mobility operations, and we want to know and have a sense of confidence that we're getting what we're paying for.

Traffic congestion is at an all-time high in the city, particularly as it relates to the ongoing Seattle squeeze.

We expect that to go on for a longer period of time.

And like Councilmember Mosqueda, I have made the observation as well that based on responses from the department to questions from Council Central staff on the role and responsibilities of this position, you know, addressing emergencies or dealing with major traffic incidents are but two bullet points of a list of bullet points that we have received with regard to what this position is intended to do.

So I think, you know, I think that there is probably some value to having this position exist and I think what you're hearing from us is we'd like to We'd like to understand what that value is and have assurance that we actually are receiving some value and product as a result of a close to $200,000 investment for this position in the context of the realities related to traffic congestion and the transportation issues that I know all of us collectively both experience personally and certainly hear from our constituents day in, day out.

I'm happy to provide additional information in written form, so I'm hearing the request quite clearly.

If there's another form that council wants to provide for a briefing of some format, I'm happy to take advantage of that as well.

So some of this is.

Thank you for that.

We'll we'll continue and figure out what's the best way it might be in a both end to have Imagining such and I think some of these questions madam chair come in light of the fact that we have a highly capable director of Transportation with great experience that he's bringing from the city of DC And I know when he was appointed a lot of people were excited about that experience that he's bringing especially around multi modal transit options so especially because of the Capabilities that the individual director and his team have I think that's where many of my questions come from Why would we need to have this additional layer?

And so I just want to put that out there.

This is about efficiency and effectiveness and councilmember Ryan Please go ahead.

I didn't mean to cut you off.

I was only gonna say that Sam's so good.

We really don't need anybody else I need a lot of other people so I

I do want to emphasize the cross-departmental coordination is really something that actually needs a layer up, but we'll bring you the additional information and explain that.

Great.

Any other questions?

Anything else for our Director of Transportation?

Okay, so with my colleague's approval, I would like to have a short recess for 10 minutes.

And I'm hearing no objections, so it is 1136 at 1146. We're going to reconvene.

Thank you very much.

Transportation, all of you are here.

So 1146, 10-minute break.

And this is our recess.

Lunch will be coming after we have two more departments.

So thank you very much.

I am coming back from recess and invite you to come as well.

We've got our next item, which is our Office for Civil Rights.

Marco Lockhart is here and Marco.

Thanks for coming.

And Asha is here, so why don't Asha and Mariko, why don't you come up and we will move forward with this.

And again, I'm inviting my council colleagues to join me here on the dais.

So, Mariko, once you get settled in, if you'll just introduce yourself for the record.

Asha, thank you for being here.

And we will go forth.

Asha Venkatraman with Council Central staff.

Thank you.

And Marco?

Mariko Lockhart, Director of Seattle Office for Civil Rights here.

All right.

Thank you.

So, Asha, would you like to kick us off?

Sure.

Thank you.

So, as Marco mentioned, this is the department overview for the Office for Civil Rights.

SOCR is the home of the Race and Social Justice Initiative.

They do policy work citywide and enforce all of our anti-discrimination laws.

This department is wholly funded by General Fund.

And as you'll see, there's been a lot of legislative changes, but only a couple differences here in the proposed 2020 budget.

So I'll be continuing to work with OCR and CBO to get any questions you all have answered and can follow up with you at that time.

Very good.

Thank you so much, and I appreciate it.

And the two people that I think most deserve this break are back here first, so thank you, Councilmember Gonzales, Councilmember Mosqueda.

I know, Councilmember O'Brien, that you've got another commitment, so thank you for joining us.

Okay, well, do you want to just dive right in, Marco?

Thank you so much for being here.

Sure, thank you so much, and thanks to Council for giving us this opportunity to discuss our priorities and our budget for 2020. And I also want to just take this moment to express deep gratitude to all of the Seattle Office for Civil Rights staff, a small but mighty team, and their amazing dedication to this work.

I am also doing the slide changes.

And we don't seem to be in the right mood.

Thank you.

Okay, so I'm gonna walk through the legislative and policy framework and I would say probably all of this council is very familiar with because we're very grateful for all of the legislation that has led to additional protections for people in vulnerable situations.

So the first one there is the Fair Chance Housing Ordinance made effective last year in February.

and that provides protections for people living with criminal history.

in protecting them from discrimination in housing.

Most of the violations that we've found so far have been through our testing program and through directors' charges, as opposed to individual complaints.

The next one up is the removal of the first-in-time provision.

So we are currently waiting, I'm sorry, most of the, we're waiting for a court decision.

It's been challenged in court.

And so we don't know when that will come through.

So, excuse me, Margo.

Yes.

It says that the change is that you are going to remove it or you're proposing to remove it depending upon the court outcome.

So the first in time provision is currently on hold because it, Was challenged in court right and We are waiting there were oral arguments and there's it's actually it's being argued by our office of the city attorney and Looking at a constitutional issue, which is actually quite broad, right?

Do we have any sense of?

When we'll hear I know it's always You don't think we do we have no control over this obviously yeah, but have you heard anything any estimates?

Have not okay for a while.

Yeah The third one there an extension of the statute of limitations, so thank you councilmember her bolt And that allows longer period of time for people to come forward with complaints than the Domestic Workers Ordinance, effective July of this year.

Much of the enforcement falls to the Office for Labor Standards, but our office is charged with enforcing violations of civil rights of domestic workers, so we are working together.

with OLS on the education and outreach on that, and we'll be coordinating on enforcement as well.

Thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda.

Then closed captioning ordinance.

Of course, the city was ahead.

I've been watching your closed captioning all morning.

That requires businesses to provide closed captioning if they have televisions, most commonly known for, like, bars and restaurants.

We're especially concerned about immigrant-owned businesses as we do education and outreach, because we'll want to make sure that we are reaching them in ways is accessible to them in the right language, et cetera.

And then finally, the anti-displacement executive order, and we have a policy advisor who is working with the Office of Housing and also OPCD on guidance for community preference, which many of our community partners are very interested in ways to It's an anti-displacement strategy and looking to provide ways to allow people who've been displaced from their communities to come back and reside as new housing is being built.

Is there any questions on any of those?

Council Member Herboldt has a question.

Just a clarification I think might be helpful.

Chair Baxter, the words on the paper say removal of first-in-time provision.

I think that's in reference to the fact that the first-in-time provision was part of a larger piece of legislation.

The primary focus of that piece of legislation was around source of income discrimination protections.

And so whereas nothing's been removed from the legislation, they have removed the enforcement for the first time, because that part of that larger bill has been challenged.

It's also, I think, important to note that the Fair Chance Housing legislation has also been challenged.

SOCR is enforcing that legislation, but they've made the decision to not be enforcing the first-in-time provision.

Thank you.

Very helpful.

Thank you.

So I'll begin with our strategic priorities for 2020 and one thing we are really excited about is the work that we're doing in our enforcement division.

For the past, I've been in the position for almost close to two years now, and we've been engaged in deep strategic planning, and it has impelled us to rethink how we defend civil rights.

And our current model allows for investigation, and if we are not able to investigate, we refer to other agencies.

But it rarely provides satisfaction.

or restoration to the complainant, and we have a limited ability to change respondent behavior.

So with that in mind, the team has been strategically planning and has developed a restorative practice model, which we plan to implement in the coming months.

That includes pre-charge options with, you know, mediation, facilitated conversations, technical assistance being among those options.

We received some funding in Q2 supplemental for a temporary part-time mediator position that will allow us to pilot that new model.

We'll be continuing our civil rights testing program.

Did I just skip over outreach?

So outreach, we also received in Q2 supplemental on a temporary basis, a part-time position to increase outreach.

And so one of the long, time considerations that we have as we enforce new laws, and we're grateful for the additional protections, is that we are in constant need to continue to educate community about what new protections are available to them.

And so we're looking at developing a comprehensive plan that involves partnering with other departments.

If they have resources for outreach, how can we partner with them in terms of, you know, like when they have events or mailings, and then also with this temporary position, double down and create materials and set up events and trainings.

Chair?

I just want to highlight that the fact that SOCR does not have full-time permanent outreach staff is, I think, a real problem that we need to put our heads together to fix.

The Office of Labor Standards, for instance, has several dedicated outreach workers.

The regulatory expectations that we have of OLS and SOCR are very similar.

One is obviously enforcing civil rights law, the other is labor standards, but I think it's really important that we strive to give SOCR, the same resources that we are giving other regulatory departments that are enforcing laws that the council has passed.

So this is something I want to flag for trying to address within this budget cycle.

I do have a question about the civil rights mediation.

I appreciate that we're exploring new approaches to resolve cases.

I'm just wondering whether or not, and again, I know we're still sort of in the scoping part of this exercise, or working towards this new policy.

But I'm wondering, have we thought much about how we are planning to gauge success in the strategy as in comparison to more traditional modes of enforcement.

And I know one of the hopes is to free up capacity for the enforcement division to handle those more important cases.

But I'm just wondering, do we have even sort of some back of the envelope calculations on how it's going to impact your caseload backlog, which I know is significant?

I think that is one important goal.

But I don't want to sacrifice the ability of individuals with complaints to get fair adjudication of their complaints by overemphasizing the use of mediation for the purpose of addressing a caseload backlog, although I really appreciate that you're being creative in doing so.

So I guess what I'm saying is I hope that's not the only policy goal that we're trying to accomplish with mediation is simply a caseload case load backlog, although I am interested to know what we think we might be able to reduce.

That's a great question.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

So I should reframe how I described that new model because our primary goal is providing more options for our complainants.

It will address backlog, but that's not our primary motivation.

What we find is so many of the people who come to us with complaints, the bar for finding a reasonable cause for discrimination is very high.

The amount of investigation and evidence that has to be provided is very difficult to achieve, and I think it's about only 7% of our charges result in a reasonable cause finding.

And so, but when you read the complaints, you find that there is certainly behavior or things that have happened that require some kind of resolution and should be addressed in some way.

And we have not had the tools in our office to do that.

Other than sort of after the charge, you know, time frame, there is always an option for mediation currently.

But what we would like to do with this new model is pilot before a person decides that they want to go forward with an investigation.

An investigation is always on the table for them.

We want to offer them an array of other ways to address their complaint, including, I mean, we, you know, are even thinking of, you know, maybe in a future time looking at a sort of a circle process where we're bringing together both the complainant and the respondent.

Some of cases or some incidents are much more, you know, amenable or viable for that kind of situation if there's a relationship that needs to be, that could be healed, that is ongoing.

You know, when there's an incidence where someone has been evicted and they really don't need any kind of ongoing relationship with the landlord, for example, that's not a situation where we would look for that kind of resolution.

We're really looking for ways to be more aligned with our mission, which is driven by equity.

And one of the limitations that we have found in enforcing civil rights laws is that they are grounded and come out of the civil rights movement, which is driven by equality.

And in so many cases, there's a gap and we're looking to fill that gap with this new model.

So we're really excited about it and we look forward to bringing back more information to you as it rolls out.

Thank you.

Please continue.

And thanks for the question.

It was an opportunity to clarify.

So we continue our civil rights testing, which has been a really wonderful enhancement to our ability to defend civil rights because it allows us to work with community partners to identify areas where there may be violations of the civil rights laws that we don't know about, that people don't come to us with complaints, and so we can identify them through testing.

I think most people are very familiar with the two-person model, the in-person testing, where you have two people, one of a protected class, for example, and one not.

But we have other ways of providing testing.

For example, with our fair chance housing law, which protects against discrimination for a criminal background in housing, we can often look through Craigslist postings.

We can send a single tester to apply for housing, and depending on the conversation that's had or the requirements that are asked of that single tester, we can find violations of that particular ordinance.

So we have lots of ways to test for violations, and we continue to do that each year.

And the next priority that we have there is strengthened support for our commissions.

And I should mention that we have, as you know, been undergoing a racial equity toolkit analysis over the past about a year, a long process.

And you have the final report, which has five recommendations.

One of the recommendations is to strengthen the autonomy of commissions and the support that we provide them.

And the report noted that we have, we've had severe limitations in our ability to support them.

And they're a critical bridge between government and community.

And so one of the positions that is in the proposed 2020 budget is to make permanent a second commission liaison.

So currently we only have one commission liaison, or we have had only one commission liaison, and then we've had to share some of that responsibility among our policy staff, which has not been a good or efficient use of resources.

So we have been, I would say, piloting, but it's actually going back to a model that existed a number of years ago where we have two commission liaisons, each one supports two commissions.

And in the mayor's proposed 2020 budget, we'll make that second position permanent.

So we'll be able to continue that level of support.

So we're really delighted with that.

We've also had changed the reporting structure.

So they report, they're no longer in the policy team, but they report directly to the deputy mayor.

I'm sorry, to the Deputy Director.

And I think the feedback that we've gotten from the Commission so far is they're really appreciative of the level of support that they're getting.

So another priority here is implementing citywide train-the-trainer model for the Race and Social Justice Initiative.

One challenge that we've had, as you can imagine, is with, I hear different numbers, but let's say about 13,000 city employees that we're responsible for providing training to and the 30-plus departments that we provide technical assistance to on their racial equity toolkits and other challenges that they have and issues that they have in advancing racial equity is that with a team of seven people, it is challenging and it's not something that we can do with just staff alone.

And so we have done a little piloting of training additional facilitators that are just other city employees in helping us roll out those trainings.

And we're now formally working with the Department of Human Resources and Arts to develop a train-the-trainer model where we will be seeking out and supporting a network of trainers and facilitators throughout the city to help us deliver those trainings.

And we will gain a position in the proposed 2020 budget of an additional RSGI trainer, or I should say, a strategic advisor.

And that person will largely have a big responsibility in helping us roll out that train-the-trainer model.

Can I ask you a quick question?

Are you intending to promote somebody from within the city who has already been involved in this work?

Or have you made a decision who the train-the-trainer coordinator will be?

We would post the position and certainly encourage from within the city network of folks who are familiar with and have experience with RSGI.

Maybe I missed you saying this, but what's your timeline on that?

So, well, if that position is included in the final budget in November, we would post immediately and begin our hiring process.

We would hope to hire in early Q1 of 2020. Good.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much related to the RSGI trainings we know that your office has received around 94 requests both internal and external and from community organizations and that the equity toolkits often require more than just one RSGI staff member and sometimes they extend beyond the calendar year, so can you talk about what, if any, difficulties have come up in supporting this RSGI work with the staffing limitations that you currently have?

Yeah, thank you for that question.

Well, I would say that the team is always stretched pretty thin and it's hard work not in the sense of like there's so many jobs that are hard in the city.

This is a very emotionally taxing type of work because It is in every one of those, you know, the training, the technical assistance, supporting RETs, an effort that requires deep assessment of harm that's been caused and people to reflect and share that harm, sometimes for the first time.

So it is, I mean, it's just, it's very taxing.

So, yeah, I mean, we are somewhat limited, obviously, in how much support we can provide departments.

We do think that with the addition of the staff person and developing a train-the-trainer program, we'll be able to expand our capacity.

And it's also, I mean, more than just expanding the capacity, it's building a network of people who have advanced skills in delivering race equity support to departments.

So we think that they'll have a multiplier effect.

Thank you.

For your question, excuse me. per your observation, the idea is to leverage staff and resources in other departments in just the way that Marco described and bring others up to speed in a position to train so we can expand the network, if you will, but then also build the capacity within each of the departments because much of this work gets done within the departments as well.

So rather than just having it done from OCR, have it really become ever more embedded.

Great.

Do you have a follow-up?

Yes.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm familiar with the Train the Trainer models as well, and I think that they're a great example of how we can take in-house expertise and make sure that folks closest to the trusted staff or programs or issues that are being faced have that direct experience and can bring that trusted perspective into new environments.

But when we say volunteer, it does raise a question for me.

Are these folks volunteer in that they're stepping forward to be RSGI trainers within their departments, but they're still getting paid full time and there's some sort of, like we've experienced with the change teams in the past, that there's recognition that this is new work being added to their plate and that there will be some sort of offset in their current workload.

So we're not expecting them to do their full workload and be these volunteer RSGI quasi-staff members that are stepping up in a volunteer role.

They're still paid in full and we've recognized that in terms of workload.

Yes, that is correct.

So we're not, this is not...

a volunteer effort in the sense that we're asking them to do it in addition to their workload.

And so that's one of the aspects of developing the program that adds quite a bit of complexity and bringing in.

labor because, you know, some of those folks will be represented.

And, I mean, it also adds to the scale of the effort because, for example, because it will be something that they will do on paid time, they may only be able to do it once a month or once a quarter.

And so we may, you know, eventually need a very large number of folks who are doing this work because they'll only have a certain amount of time available.

Yeah, not volunteer unpaid.

Thank you.

So alternatives to the criminal legal system, very appreciative of all of the support from council and investing in this.

This is another opportunity for us to look at our mission and how we do the work and work to align our process with how we want to be accountable to community.

And so rather than roll out a traditional RFP process, we are developing and actually in the process of implementing a collaborative grant making process, very much like if you're familiar with the Social Justice Fund, and there are other models around the country where we'll have community partners involved in developing the actual criteria and be part of selecting and supporting those grantees.

And these are alternatives to criminal legal system and other strategies that look to reduce the harm of the criminal legal system.

And then equitable development, this is an ongoing priority for us.

Something specific that is in the mayor's executive order on anti-displacement is asks SOCR to work with Office for Housing and Office for Planning and Community Development on developing guidance, again, I think I mentioned this earlier, for housing developers who are looking to ensure that people who have been displaced from their communities can come back and have some type of preference in the housing that they're building.

And so we're working on that.

Marco, can I go back to your alternatives to the criminal legal system?

This is an area that many of us up here have been working on for years, and I would like to know what kind of system improvements or coordination are you doing with outside agencies?

In particular, I'm thinking about the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office has looked at some and is working towards improvements, including something like LEAD, but we also are looking at mediation alternatives.

So can you just tell me what efforts that your organization has made to bring these efforts into a coordinated structure?

That's a great question, Council Member Bagshaw, and I think we would certainly like to be doing more at the systemic level.

So in terms of this particular funding source, it will largely depend on the type of organizations that are doing that work.

but we will be looking always for what could help us lead to systems change.

Some of the work that our policy team and our RSGI team are doing is supporting the city attorney's office, for example, and Seattle Municipal Court as they look to assess their own processes and practices.

So we're trying to support them in doing racial equity analyses of their work and changing those policies and practices.

And I would use as an example the city attorney's office and their pre-filing diversion work as largely coming out of that partnership.

Great.

So, you know, I see there's such good system work happening.

What I oftentimes worry about is that we don't have somebody who is really keeping other departments and the council informed about strong actions.

that are being made, and you brought up both the city attorney and the municipal court.

We know that there is a lot of interest in seeing these alternatives being supported.

So, for an example, some of the judges have said to me, you know, there are a lot of things we have been able to do with Drug Court, Mental Health Court is more King County now, but the worry is, They don't have places to put people, particularly housing with case management.

I know that there's been conversations about probation alternatives.

The system review is what's really needed and it's something that I would love to know who's in charge and, you know, what steps we can take to support you.

Thank you.

Chair Baxter, may I?

Please, yeah, Council Member Gonzalez.

Unless, Mariko, you wanted to add something to that before I chime in on this.

Well, I was just going to say that, I mean, the alternatives to the criminal legal system is indeed just that.

It is a way to test and provide, I'd say, proof of concept that we don't have to always count on the criminal legal system to deliver the outcomes we're seeking.

So this is also, you know, well, it may not be called out in that way is also a systems change effort Councilmember Gonzalez.

Thank you chair Bagshaw.

So this is alternative to the criminal legal system is a Follow-through on much of the work that this City Council did last year in response to some Advocacy done by the broad coalition of budget for justice.

So this is a follow-through on that and as As Director Lockhart just mentioned, it's self-evident in the title, Alternatives to a Criminal Legal System.

that is leading us in a direction towards looking at community-based alternatives to the criminal justice system.

So as opposed to having the lead agencies being institutions that are rooted and based in the criminal justice system, we're looking at ways to invest in community-based organizations that are centered in a harm reduction approach for purposes of making sure that we are We are meeting the needs of people who might be involved with the criminal justice system that, again, is rooted in community spaces as opposed to rooted in law enforcement, which is fundamentally our prosecutors and our court system.

So I think the work that you and I have been participating in, Chair Bagshaw, with Mayor Durkan and King County Executive and others around high barrier individual work groups is related, but I would say on a parallel track to some of the system reforms that we are doing.

I know we're gonna have a larger conversation about that later this afternoon in like an hour and a half or so.

And so I think we'll be able to dig into those law enforcement systems in a way that perhaps might be more responsive to your line of questioning.

But I think the Office for Civil Rights is following through on the commitment that the city council made to have, I think it was about $1.2 or $1.4 million of investments in community-based organizations in the 2020 budget season.

And this is a follow-through on structuring those grant processes in order to invest in additional harm reduction community-based programming.

that will be an alternative to criminal legal systems.

So these are our, you know, choose 180 organizations, community passageways, organizations that are structured and designed to be a place for people to go in order to divert them effectively and successfully from the criminal justice system.

So I know this is a large body of work.

We also, and it's, you know, we're not gonna get it done next year.

quite literally undoing legacies and generations of harm caused by racism and institutionalized racism.

And this work is not going to be done in a couple of budget cycles.

So I think that this is definitely a first step.

And it is, as Director Lockhart mentioned, a proof of concept in many ways.

And it is one piece of a very large, complex puzzle that we just have to keep chipping away at.

And I appreciate the ongoing work.

I think Cadman in your office has been working really closely with Asha and with Brianna here in council and really appreciate the hard conversations that have had to happen and the good work product that is really allowing this work to continue to move forward in this way.

And I'm really pleased that the mayor's budget includes preservation of these dollars that we made a commitment to fund.

So I just wanted to give a little bit of context for that because we've been working on this for about a better half of a year and have really tried hard to steep our office in this.

And then, of course, Carlos on Council Central staff who's with us through the middle of this next year is also been the point for Council Central staff on looking at how we can pull all of these efforts together into one comprehensive package so that we have a clear understanding of who's playing what role as we look at reforming our criminal legal system.

Super.

Thank you for that clarification.

Appreciate that.

So please continue.

Yeah, that's a wonderful context and absolutely on point.

It also just sort of gives a preview to, as we lead into the next slides, which are on budget.

And I'll turn it over to Latrice Ibarra, who's our finance coordinator.

manager and operations manager, but that the funding that you referenced is the, you know, the lion's share of that increase.

Thank you.

Did you have a question?

Yes, please.

Before we move on to the next slide, just because this slide's three and four are all about strategic priorities for 2020, and I know that enforcement is absolutely a priority for the department and the strategic priorities for 2020 are focused on things that you're doing more of.

I do want to, again, as I did earlier around outreach and education, point to concerns I have around the fact that we're not doing more to make it possible for you to make enforcement a higher priority.

One of the things that we did last year is we compared the number of investigators that you had to the number of investigators that Office of Labor Standards has.

And it's a very similar number.

The fact that your investigators actually have to include doing outreach and education on the laws that they enforce because you don't have dedicated investigators means that this is part of what's adding to your backlog.

There was a period of time this year, I believe, when you had to stop taking cases.

And I think that is a situation that is unacceptable.

And then I think the comparison of FTEs between between SOCR and OLS was it may have seemed to be at first a useful exercise.

I have grown to understand to a greater extent that the types of investigations SOCR does are very different from the types of investigations that OLS does and that they actually aren't a good comparison because of the legal standards that SOCR has to meet.

And I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit about the complexity of those cases.

Well, I don't know a lot about OLS's cases, but...

The complexity of your case.

Yeah, so...

So ours, you know, one thing I would say just to give a sort of a bit of understanding about the breadth of our enforcement, we enforce local and federal civil rights laws in housing, employment, public accommodations, contracting and as far as employment is concerned it is both external city employers as well as internal and you know housing as well.

And so we deal with both private respondents and complainants as well as internal.

So that alone is quite complex and different from most other offices that deal with discrimination or complaint type situations.

in other departments.

I think I talked a little bit before about the level of the bar that we have for determining reasonable cause.

It's extremely high.

The quality of our investigations is regularly used as a standard.

I know when our investigators go to national conferences, the quality and the extent and the depth of our investigations is above and beyond most other civil rights offices in the country.

So I'm not sure if that was the information that you were looking for, Councilmember.

I think it would be helpful to understand sort of an average case, like the amount of time it takes to go from intake to resolution on an average case.

So I think that would give us a little bit more of a measure to look at the number of investigative staff that you have and the number of cases that you have in an average year and see whether or not we need to make adjustments in order for you to sufficiently address your caseload.

I know our labor standard laws have a maximum number of days that we expect those laws to have been completed their disposition.

I don't know if SOCR, I think you have goals, but I don't know if you actually have it in statute like we do for labor laws on the number of days cases are supposed to take to resolve.

So we don't have a time limit on how long it takes to complete an investigation.

The average case age for us over the past year was 202 days, so quite extensive.

We have each investigator has a caseload of 20 to 25 cases, and you're correct in mentioning that we had to stop taking complaints at a certain point last year because we just couldn't accept anymore.

So currently we have a case backload of 40 cases and those are cases where the complainant has signed the charge.

Then we have an additional 50 intakes that we have Not yet asked the complainant to sign those are also in backlog Just we don't have any the capacity to assign those to investigators and then there's an additional backlog in our testing program, so Violation potential violations that have been identified through our testing program But that we also haven't had the capacity to assess and assign to investigation Thank you

All right, please continue back to numbers

Yes, thank you for the opportunity.

So as you can see, this year, just 2017 and 2018 are the actuals, and our 2019 adopted budget, the change is about 36%, and most of that is, of course, is the $1,080,000 for the alternatives to the criminal justice system, and then the minimum wage, the annual wage increases, and then our two positions that we have gotten this year.

So it's not a whole bunch, it's not a real robust budget, but those are the things that we're moving forward.

And the most budget changes that we have, again, the million dollars was endorsed last year, and in 2020 we'll be implementing that program with those funds.

And then we also received the training position for RSJI, as well as the commission position, which is embedded in our policy division right now.

Good.

And so I'm on the fourth page.

And so we had a 19% change with the RSGI division and a 37% change with the commission division.

And those includes all the adjustments that were made in the year.

Great.

And not just the positions that we gained.

Good.

Thank you.

Any questions on those?

All right, so anything else that you would like to add?

No, not at this time.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Well, thank you for coming.

Thank you all for waiting through the very long meeting we've had this morning.

And I appreciate the fact that you're doing such good work.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

So, we'll move right on into our next group, please, if you would like to join us.

All you.

So, our Office of Immigrant Refugee Affairs.

Great.

Nice to see you again.

So, we're going to have introductions again, and then Amy Gore from Council Central Staff will lead us off.

So, how about if we start introductions down on this end?

Good afternoon.

I'm Ku.

I'm the Director of our Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs.

I'm Joaquin Wee.

I do External Affairs and Policy for the office.

Thank you.

Megan Kelly-Stalling, Citizenship Program and Policy Specialist.

We still have Ben Noble and Lisa, Amy Gore.

Amy Gore, Council Central staff.

We are here obviously for the overview of the 2020 proposed budget for the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs.

I'm your central staff support for this department.

As you know, OIRA provides critical support for Seattle's immigrant and refugee families.

through their range of programs, including the New Citizen Campaign, the Ethnic Media Program, and more recently, the Legal Defense Network, which is funded by both the city and King County.

Last year, council passed Green Sheet 27-1-A-2, which continued the city's funding of the LDN at $1 million.

in both 2019 and 2020. Council members have probably noticed a decrease in the department's 2020 budget from both the 2019 actual and the 2020 proposed and are eager to hear about those changes.

So I'm going to turn it over to the department.

Very good.

Thank you.

And of course, that is the first thing that jumped out to us is that there is a over a million 1.1 reduction, but I think you've got an answer to that.

I do.

So I think we're going to start with just kind of the big picture, and that is our 2020 budget reflects level funding from 2019, and this allows us to not only support the mayor's investment in education, affordable housing, transit and public safety, which are all bread and butter issues for Seattle's immigrant communities, but also to continue to deliver our two overarching priorities.

And those are to, one, strengthen, and two, to protect our immigrant residents and workers.

So our goal to strengthen immigrant communities reflects our core long-term investments, and those are the immigrant integration programs that have an economic benefit.

There's naturalization, and English as a second language with digital literacy supported with wraparound services, for example.

It also includes our work to improve information, access, and engagement through our nationally recognized ethnic media program and immigrant family institute while advancing language access goals across the city.

Our goal to protect Seattle residents and workers includes the host of policy work to fight those harmful federal immigration policy changes that many of you have read about, such as public charge, and also to provide free legal defense for people who face removal proceedings or face the threat of deportation.

So that's the big picture.

And when we delve into the legislative policy framework.

In 2019, we had two slides.

This year, we've had to add a third slide because we continue to face threats and the headwinds have not let up.

Starting with the two top things, which is the enforcement, this is playing out in the news every day.

You may have heard about the ice sweep on Monday this week in two locations in Port Orchard.

And among the people that ICE arrested was a Latino man who was a US citizen.

And he just happened to look like the person that they were trying to, quote unquote, target.

In some other cities, you might call that racial profiling.

Other cities, ICE calls it direct targeted enforcement.

And these are some of the examples of ICE's increased interior enforcement efforts.

We have for you here the national data And what ICE shows and has reported is that we saw an increase from 2017 to 2018 of 11% in arrests and 13% in removals.

But I would argue that the more helpful comparison is actually looking at a comparison of 2016 to 2018, because 2016 includes the last nine months of the Obama administration, and 2018 includes a full year of the Trump administration.

And we don't have that number up here in front of you.

It took us a little bit longer to do that analysis, because if you look at some of the PDFs that ICE provides for you, you need a magnifying glass to read some of the numbers.

And so when we looked at that comparison between 2016 and 2018, we see an increase of actually 44%, which I think better reveals the true intensity of the Trump administration's deportation efforts.

In the Seattle enforcement removal operations area, which includes more than the state of Washington, we saw an increase in arrests and removals there as well.

And when you look at the comparison between 2016 and 2017, which we provided you with last year, that was an increase of 88%.

And that trend has continued to rise when you look at 2018 against 2016. And what alarms me is that number has nearly doubled.

So up here we have 96%, but I think I double checked the numbers and it might be actually closer to 92%.

But it's nearly double the rate from about 2,000 who were arrested in 2016 to 4,000 according to ICE in 2018. So as you can imagine, there's a significant impact.

You don't have to be the target of ICE to feel the fear, and that is their intention.

And there have been reports that have highlighted the negative health and wellness impacts.

Kids are stressed out.

And we've heard about some national studies that say that Pregnant Latino moms are experiencing difficulty during their pregnancies.

And all of this, if you look at some of the data and when that is happening, it corresponds with some of these harmful federal policies that came into play.

And then there's DACA.

It just doesn't get any, you know, I mean, you think that it's worse or better, but it doesn't get any better.

So DACA is in jeopardy, and we have three federal courts that have ruled against the Trump administration's attempt to eliminate DACA.

The issue right now sits before the U.S.

Supreme Court, and their experts expect that there should be a ruling sometime in November.

So we have no new applicants since DACA was announced to end under the Jeff Sessions era.

There is fear to renew.

Those who actually have renewed face barriers to applicants or to new because the cost is almost $500.

And that what keeps me up at night is actually if the decision, the Supreme Court decides in Trump's favor, which I think a lot of us are expecting, because we're not going to bank on, we're not going to plan for a different outcome.

We want to plan for the worst scenario.

If that happens, then we're talking about a few scenarios.

One is, that they allow DACA youth to maintain their status indefinitely, but allow no new renewals.

The other is that they say that the program is unlawful, and when the DACA status expires, then those youth who number approximately 700,000 across the country 16,000 in Washington State and more than 7,000 in our Seattle metropolitan area, they lose their employment status.

And that is what is keeping me up at night.

I think about this in very personal terms.

I've talked to our HR folks about it.

We have in our workforce DACA employees.

And I think, you know, it's not just an equity issue, but these are folks who, depending on what the Supreme Court decides could lose their livelihood and retreat further into shadows and most of all experience the threat that so many others have experienced under this increased enforcement era.

Last year, we brought to you the Trump administration's effort to eliminate temporary protective status, which is a form of temporary status that allows people to stay in the country due to economic conditions or environmental or other conditions that threaten their livelihood or health and well-being.

The Trump administration has announced last year and previously that 10 countries would now no longer be under that status.

And you can see some of those countries listed at the bottom of the slide.

The outcome of this is that approximately 320,000 people in the U.S. could become undocumented as early as January 2020. And the key word here is could because this issue now is mired in a bunch of court cases.

And we have, according to conversations we have, the timeline for the resolution of those court cases is unknown.

But we do know that these folks have been in the country for decades, and many of them have U.S. citizen children.

So a threat to that TPS is a threat to not only those who have TPS, but our own U.S. citizens.

And then there's public charge, which has been an issue that's been reported in the news.

And now the final rule has been released with October 15th as the date for implementation, unless the federal courts in six court cases impose an injunction on the rule.

That public charge rule would affect people who are trying, or could adjust their status, but also if they receive Medicaid, SNAP, housing vouchers, TANF, or SSI, it could be used against them if they try to adjust their status.

And this has created a chilling effect where people are self-drawing, we're hearing real anecdotes from our community partners.

It was relegating U.S. citizens and children to second-class status, and obviously undermines our Seattle equity values and programs.

The one that we shared with you, a story last year, and the most one that we heard more recently was when the mayor met with a group of young Latinos Shortly after the El Paso, Latinx I should say, shortly after the El Paso shooting, a young woman shared that because of public charge, her mother who has stage three cancer has decided to opt out of treatment because she's afraid that that treatment would jeopardize her ability to adjust her status in the future.

Yes, please, Council Member Juarez.

I have two quick questions of you, Ku.

I didn't catch the last number on the DACA students.

You said nationally.

I got the Washington State number.

What was the city number?

The Seattle metropolitan area, which includes Bellevue and Tacoma, is more than 7,000.

I think, Joaquin, you've got the exact number.

7,340.

And then the second issue, and I've been hearing the public charge, more intensely, I'd say, in the last month out there.

But for the viewing public, can you kind of just, I know for us, because we know what it means and what, there's two ways of what it really means, if you could just maybe do just a brief.

Description what that means for the viewing public?

Yes, I'd be happy to do so.

I think here I'm going to turn over to my two policy experts who've done the lion's share of the deep policy work and have written our public comments, one of which that the mayor and nine council members have signed.

So the federal government uses the term public charge as a label for any immigrant who wishes to, or for any immigrant who they think will be primarily subsistent on federal cash-based programs living in the United States.

And it actually dates way back in U.S. immigration history.

And it's a label that they use and there have been many changes to how the U.S. government determines that someone has that label.

And the best way to think about it right now is that the U.S. government has made it, the federal administration has made it much easier to apply that label to immigrants who are not legal permanent residents, but they're here in the country authorized or legally, and they wish to become legal permanent residents or apply for their green card.

And so there's kind of two ways that the U.S. government will, two tests that the U.S. government will use to apply the public charge label.

One is the totality of circumstances, and that's basically when an adjudicator or someone who is talking with an immigrant runs through a list of interview questions to determine things like health, age, how able-bodied they are to work, and from there, determine whether or not there'll be a public charge, or if they've used a certain set of public benefits within the past three years, totaling up to a year of that three years, and that includes Medicaid, cash-based public assistance like TANF and Social Security income, SNAP, which is formerly known as food stamps, any housing choice voucher, or if you've lived in a federally funded affordable housing unit, and Medicaid, if you use any kind of Medicaid.

So especially for a long-term a long-term residency in a Medicaid-funded facility.

And really, one part of this is that, yes, this affects immigrants who are trying to become legal permanent residents or green card holders, but another major part of this, which we think is part and parcel with what the federal administration's been trying to do, is this chilling effect.

It's that immigrants will hear that this public charge thing is happening, and even if they're legal permanent residents, even if they have a refugee status, even if they don't qualify to be a public charge, they'll hear it, become fearful, and try to disenroll from very important social programs, which is what we're hearing from our community-based partners, not just in Seattle, but all over the U.S.

And this is also probably part of the federal administration's efforts to encourage what the Trump administration likes to call self-deportation.

If any immigrant feels that the environment is so hostile to them and so hostile to their whole existence as a person and to their family, then they'll try to remove themselves or immigrate away from the United States back to their home country or someplace else.

And this is a term that we've heard policy officials such as Stephen Miller use in the Trump administration, this effort to encourage people to self-deport.

Wow.

Thank you for the question.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Thank you, Chair Begshaw, and thank you, Council Member Juarez, for that question.

So we've been staying in close contact with OIRA around the work that they've been doing in this space.

Because we're having this conversation in the context of the budget, I will highlight that the work that OIRA has been doing in the space of public charge, and frankly, most of the areas listed in their PowerPoint presentation have largely been policy-oriented and focused within existing resources that they have.

So with the exception of the Legal Defense Network, which has seen a sort of steady hand in terms of funding, these other areas are being done.

by the people power at OIRA.

And so it is largely policy oriented, policy advocacy type of work.

I do think that as we continue to go through this slide, you all up here will continue to hear sort of the ongoing, persistent, deep attacks on immigrants and refugees from the federal administration.

that frankly I think merit a conversation around the potential need for additional resources to be able to actually allow for the resilience of our communities in the face of these ongoing attacks, not just in the context of the Legal Defense Network, but in some of these other policy areas in terms of what we might anticipate being the real harm, both in economic terms and in mental health terms of how these policies really impact the very large immigrant refugee population that we have in our city.

So I just wanted to put a pin in that for future conversation around how we can better utilize the talent at OIRA that is both policy oriented, but also making sure that we are acknowledging that policy advocacy is important, but so is investing in the resilience of immigrants and refugees throughout the city.

Great.

Thank you.

Council Member Pacheco.

I do apologize because I had to step out.

But first, I just want to thank you for the work that you're doing.

I know that your work is just, it's not just meaningful, but just tireless in your advocacy to Councilmember Gonzalez's point.

Last week, I had an opportunity to meet with Unidos and of which Council Member Gonzalez, I also want to recognize her leadership there on a national level, as well as her prior leadership in terms of increasing your resources in the last budget cycle.

And one of the things that I was talking to them about is what more could we do?

More specifically, and they outlined very much the same concerns that you have outlined today.

And they said that they were recommending that people and families to renew TPS as well as their DACA renewals.

And I applaud a lot of the public-private partnerships that you have done to help steward that.

So I'm just curious if that's also your same position with regards to stewarding folks to renew their TPS and DACA renewals, because we know that in the next year the landscape may change.

And so I'm just hoping to kind of get your assessment as well.

I think you've touched on an area where it's really difficult to have a broad message.

So we're generally aware of that because immigration is a very complicated issue.

And very rarely do we say any two cases being exactly the same.

But overall, having said that, I think overall it is important for us to be thinking about how do we improve community confidence.

and let people know that a lot of these things are intended to instill fear, and they really should seek legal counsel, the expertise of their community service providers, others who would be able to understand their particular situation and guide them towards the right decision.

So, and I think overall, that a lot of people are confused.

And unless they do that, we could see more and more folks opting out of benefits and services that they would otherwise be legally entitled to and that in reality would not jeopardize their future plans.

So I think I'm just giving you a more nuanced answer, but in general, I think that that is true.

And I would turn to Megan or Joaquin if you have anything to add to that.

Thank you.

Did you have a follow-up?

No, I just kind of wanted to echo Council Member Gonzalez's point about wanting to flag this a little bit.

And so, because again, here, I think all of us on the dais want to do more, would love to do more, and so this is something that an area that, especially with regards to he who should not be named, we want.

I agree with that.

Yeah, I think I might have already used a name But we all want to we see what happens and we and I've had in in the district office meetings from constituents who want to do more and want to know what the city can do more and I think this is an area where us facilitating, specifically your office and the partnerships that you've created, and what more we can do to support over the next year to help relieve as much of the anxiety.

And I understand and I hear the anxiety of so many, and my own individual frustration as well as the collective frustration of District 4. And so I just wanted to put this as a pin for us.

Understood.

I just say one thing that I think so much depends on what happens at the Supreme Court and what options, if any, are available for, you know, current DACA beneficiaries or someone that has become eligible for DACA in the interim.

So our hope would be to mobilize if there's, you know, regardless of the outcome.

I want to acknowledge my colleagues up here, but also just the compassion and empathy that you are leading with, and I respect that greatly, and also that frustration of we're just bulldozed by what's going on by POTUS 45. And I would just as soon have, you know, if we can be supporting you in ways that is going to bring the community better, I would just love to lead with that.

So, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Looking at this, the new stuff that we've had to bring before you, one thing is actually a positive, which is that last November voters decided that they wanted to see a different U.S.

House of Representatives, and Democrats then became the majority.

And then overnight, what that meant for us here in Seattle and other cities across the country is not only do we have to weather the storm of these federal attacks, but now we also have to step up our efforts to advocate for good bills.

And here we have at least three things that have come up over the last year, since January I should say, including the New American Dreams Act, which has been a work by one of our important state advocates, One America, and working in conjunction with friendly members of Congress.

And this bill would provide federal funds towards immigrant integration programs, much like what we have in Seattle for naturalization.

And we also have the Protect and Dream Act, which would provide a path to legal status not only for undocumented youth, but others who have other in categories including TPS and DED.

And then the Dignity for Detained Immigrants is a bill that Congressman Jayapal just introduced and had a hearing on yesterday, and that is looking at the private federal prison system that detains our immigrants.

And so you will see that there's a lot of effort among House members to try to forge a different path, and obviously we know that the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate provides many obstacles, and yet cities have a really important role to play in holding up those bills, those proactive, positive bills in the House.

One of the things that we have put a lot of energy towards is fighting those naturalization barriers for lawful permanent residents.

And there have been many that the Trump administration has introduced.

One of which you have heard about was the USCIS inextricably decided and then had a community meeting only then to say that they've already made the decision to relocate naturalization interviews to Portland and Yakima.

We had a lot of concerns about this and I'll talk a little bit about the public partnerships that were then necessitated for us to address this barrier.

Then there's been a rule change to introduce the change or elimination of the fee waiver, a possible fee increase.

Some projected that might go from $790-something to more than $1,100.

and then the notice to appear, which means that if you apply to naturalize and your case is adjudicated and you are not deemed approved to naturalize, USCIS would now refer your case directly to ICE.

And that all of these things together mean that there's increased risk and difficulty, particularly for low-income applicants.

And let's be clear, a lot of these rule changes are directly affecting immigrants of color and immigrants who are low-income.

We're getting towards the end here.

So refugee reductions, you all heard that the Trump administration threatened to reduce this cap down to zero.

The latest headline was that it's going to be about 18,000, which is a huge drop from the high of 110,000 under the last Obama years.

And this significant reduction not only is casts the narrative about who we are as a country, and particularly Washington State, which has historically been a leading refugee-receiving state.

My family decided to resettle here because we heard then-Governor Dan Evans stand up to California's governor at that time, who didn't want to welcome refugees.

Dan Evans was the first one to say that we welcome Vietnamese refugees.

So my uncle decided, while he was in the refugee camps in Texas, that we were going to not live in Texas, we were going to relocate to Washington.

And he sent a letter, which is now in the state archives, to Governor Dan Evans saying that please resettle my family here.

And he listed every name, and the heightened weight of description of our extending family to make sure that we would not be confused with someone else of the same name.

That's the history that this policy change threatens.

It also threatens our Five, they call them Volags, but these are community partners who receive a combination of federal and state money that provides housing and other vital cash assistance and services for those critical early months when refugees arrive in our country.

And obviously, we have, the city has made one of the largest investments in naturalization services between the New Citizen Program and our New Citizen Campaign.

It is over a million dollars when you add up city, state, and other resources.

And refugees are one of those populations that have the most direct path to naturalization.

And if that number is reduced, then what we're doing, what essentially will happen also is the reduction of eligible population for our city's naturalization services.

Then we get into family separation and indefinite detention.

These are issues that have played out and have caused such the public outcry and have prompted the mayor to lend her voice in national media outlets.

And there it's, The story and the effect is in significant trauma for kids and stress on our community partners, particularly those who are in border towns and cities who have to respond to this and busloads of hundreds of people arriving who need to get to their final destination.

And then we're paying attention to those little administrative rule changes that just don't pop up unless you pay attention.

And one of those is the proposed reorganization of a Department of Justice office called the Office of Legal Assistance or Legal Access Programs.

The proposed change now is to eliminate that office and reorganize it under a new office of policy that would report directly to the Attorney General.

And this is a direct threat to the ecosystem, I guess you could call it, that gives strength to our legal defense network, our new citizen program, our new citizen campaign, because OLAP is the entity that provides the accreditation and other services for our nonprofit partners to provide excellent legal services.

So, take a breath.

That's a lot.

And, you know, I think...

And there's more.

And as serious as this is, what we try to do to get through the day is hold our sense of humor about this.

And it's hard, for sure.

And we also have to be very strategic about the resources and the way that we apply our time.

And so what we have here for you for our Strategic priorities for 2020 and we've broken it down because it's a complex some of these complex issues Affect us at the local level some are playing out at the state and some are federal that are more policy oriented So our strategic priorities for 2020 we've we've broken it into three levels.

And again, I want to make sure that Our council understands that this slide right now is focused on our laws and policies and then we'll get into more of the programmatic work and in the next slide At the local level, our strategic priority will include, again, a heightened attention to those administrative rule changes that the Trump administration is using to rewrite and redefine our immigration system.

We're going to focus on the Supreme Court's decision on DACA.

And our goal there is simply, as I mentioned at the outset, to protect residents.

And some of the outcomes that you will see, including our continued work on public comments, making sure that Seattle is a leading voice in those processes, making sure that our partners and our community members are educated about what's at risk, but also opportunities for them to lend their voice to some of those supportive house bills, for example.

And the city attorney's office has been such a great voice with filing friendly court briefs on a number of cases, and we want to continue to support those legal strategies, along with staying connected to the Washington Attorney General's office, as well as coordination with our partners at the county and state level.

And last year, I'm sorry, not last year, because we're not in 2020 yet.

Earlier this year, Governor Inslee signed the Keep Washington Working Act.

And that bill was to ensure that in the day-to-day course of an immigrant resident's life in Washington state, they are able to go to get their health care, go to school.

if they need to use a shelter or go to the municipal court that they can do that with the assurance that our institutions have in place protocols that protect them.

And so we want to make sure that the city is ready for that and not to wait and to do the minimum to meet a compliance but to lead on this.

So we're in discussion with the mayor's office to update the mayor's directive from 2018. and also to look at possibilities and ways in which we can most effectively have city staff prepared and trained.

At the federal level, we mentioned the House bills, so we want to support that federal registration, and the work there is making sure that we're part of the partnership with our members of Congress to endorse these bills and to join in partnership with both cities, counties, and other entities to advocate for these new bills.

And I want to put a call out for a particular partner that has been an incredible policy and advocacy resource for us, which is Cities for Action.

We just hosted a convening this past Monday with 32 municipalities, and that is a partnership that continues to provide more policy capacity for us.

Moving on then from all of that, we have for 2020 some high-level priorities.

And here, we intentionally kept it this way because the landscape is always changing, but there are general North Star principles that will guide us.

And one is engage and collaborate and coordinate, and making sure that we're connected to the community's priorities and bringing that into the work that we do, sharing that with the mayor's office, sharing that with council, and being aligned so that we're meeting the specific needs of what we're hearing from community members.

And some of that is...

Looking at how we find and leverage those public-private partnerships, a good example is the Uber-Lyft partnership that you heard about recently.

Uber and Lyft contributed $10,000 each that will go towards defraying the expense of both applicants and our community service providers to go down to Yakima and to go down to Portland and do that naturalization interview.

And that was something that our staff, and I want to give them credit for this because In the course of the day, we and I rely on the staff to carry some of this initiative.

And it was their work that made that LIFT partnership and contribution possible.

And then, of course, Uber chimed in when we gave them the opportunity as well.

And we want to make sure that we're continuing to support the mayor's vision and particularly around community engagement and council's priorities.

And there, since it's 2020, is a significant priority for us.

Public charge education here.

This is a really important area because as much as we were trying to do to prepare our city departments, what we're hearing from community leaders is that there's a lot of confusion and they need our help to improve that community confidence.

And then our other North Star principle that guides us is to maintain our excellent services.

And here, do what we say we're going to do.

Be accountable.

Ensure high performance.

Be attentive to, as I've heard a couple of mentions here from council members, the resiliency of our service sector and advancing the city's language access goals there.

We will be in year three since that executive order.

I think that would bring us to our last slide.

Here I want to explain a little bit about, if you noticed in the 29 adopted column and the 2020 proposed column, it looks like we might have lost $1.3 million.

That is not the case.

These are technicalities that reflect our base budget and revenue streams then that should be accounted for separately.

So that $1.3 million can be explained in both the $810,000 that we were expecting from the county for the legal defense program And at the beginning of that conversation and what had been true during the initial phase was that Seattle managed those contracts.

But because of the county's VSHS levy money and its structure and their ability to manage contracts, we decided that as a partnership it made more sense to have Seattle contribute our money towards that infrastructure.

And Seattle would maintain a lead policy and program role.

And so that 1.3 is 110,000 of that is reflected there.

And then we have revenue streams from the state DSHS, Seattle Housing Authority, and other small items that have been consistent, but also are not guaranteed, and so we've backed that out of our base budget.

So what you see here at first level might raise some alarm, but I want to make sure everybody understands that this does not change anything that we do, and is really technicalities and budgeting.

Thank you.

This has been an extraordinary presentation.

Could I just ask if you would send me by email your notes and presentation today?

I would, I'd really like to keep that close as we're going through the budget.

We will.

Thank you very much for doing that.

Council Member Gonzalez, I think you probably have lots to add.

I won't add too much because I know we have to be back here in 45 minutes and that requires some just opportunity for us to get off the dice and be human for 45 minutes at a minimum.

So I'm going to just do it really quickly, just lots of thanks to the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs.

I do want to acknowledge that, again, as I mentioned earlier in this portion of the meeting, that I continue to be impressed with the amount of volume of work and production that OIRA can put out there, given the relatively small budget, but I continue to be concerned that y'all are going to need a little bit more capacity as we continue to deal with the realities of what this administration is doing to our communities across the country and here at home.

So I'm looking forward to hopefully looking at some potential opportunities for evaluating that capacity in light of the amount of work that you all are doing.

And then also just really want to continue to acknowledge as well that I appreciate the partnership that we've had with King County on the Legal Defense Network.

I have some ongoing concerns about the rollout and how Things have been going in that regard that we don't need to talk about now publicly, but I just want to frame up for the City Council that there may need to be a conversation later on with regard to how we currently structure our partnership with the county to create greater level of efficiencies for getting these really important dollars out into community for the Legal Defense Network purposes.

So I just wanted to...

Give folks a little bit of a alert that Even though I have appreciated the relationship with King County we have it has not been the smoothest in this most recent transition and I continue to have concerns about the impact that that transition is causing to community-based organizations that we have been funding in this space and to our good staff at OIRA who have to deal with those transition pains.

So more to come on that as well.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And I, too, would like a copy of your notes, because I know we and I want to follow up with Council Member Gonzalez and her leadership in the last three and a half years and working with you as well and what we've been seeing in the immigrant community.

And I just watched Congresswoman Jayapal pound the gavel on the other guy from ICE today.

And it's getting worse.

But I'm so inspired to have you guys in front of us to see that we can work on this so we're not depressed every day when we look at the news.

So thank you so much for the hard work that you do.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Great.

Well, I really appreciate your presentation.

This is an area that is jaw-dropping to me every day as you read the paper.

And I think I saw it today in Seattle Times that this administration was putting something like a limit down to 18,000 refugees.

I mean, it's just stunning.

That's from 110,000.

Exactly.

It's gone from.

Right, and anyway, thank you for everything you're doing.

Thank you.

Okay, so we are now at recess, and thank you for giving us 45 minutes, as you said, to enjoy ourselves.

We'll be back at 2 o'clock, so this meeting is in recess.