Seattle City Council Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers Rights Committee Special Meeting 8/1/19

Good morning, everyone.

Today is August 1st, 2019. The Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee will come to order.

It's 9.03, and I'm Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the committee.

We are going to be joined today, I am sure, by Councilmembers Bagshaw and Councilmembers Juarez.

and probably at the last half of our meeting on the hotel worker legislation with co-sponsor Council Member Gonzalez and perhaps others.

So thank you all for being here.

Just by way of reminder, we do have two sort of sections of public comment today.

I know I saw a lot of folks lined up.

We tried to get you up here as soon as possible.

Sorry.

for folks for waiting in line.

But for the hotel worker legislation, that will be the last half of the part of our agenda.

So we do have folks who are still walking in, make sure you get a chance to sign up outside.

We have two table tents that show the first portions of our agenda today, which are focused on two housing items.

It will be a briefing and discussion on the multifamily tax exemption.

which is our MFTE program, and a briefing discussion and possible vote on the resolution and ordinance that relate to the city's intent to impose a 0.0146% sales tax and use tax to fund affordable housing and supportive housing.

And this is related to House Bill 1406, which we really appreciate our state partners for passing to make it more possible for us to build the housing that is needed in our city.

Those will be the first two components of our agenda.

We'll take public comment on those two first.

If you don't hear your name called and you're interested in testifying on the hotel legislation, that will be the third item on our agenda.

We will have public testimony right before that.

So it gives folks a little bit extra time to get here.

And I know that many people have been already waiting in line.

So thank you for waiting, but did want to make sure that that was clear.

We will have the second part of our agenda on the hotel worker legislation, and we'll do public comment right before we begin that.

Okay.

Well, those are our three items on the agenda.

If there's no opposition to our today's proposed agenda, so adopted, we will go ahead and go into our first item of business, which is public comment.

And I have two people signed up.

I believe there's more folks potentially signed up that have just come in on housing items that have come in from the outside.

So we'll grab those items as well before we close the hearing on this topic.

The first two people that we have on MFTE or 1406 legislation is Patience Malaba and Laura Lowe Bernstein.

Hi, Patience.

Good morning, Madam Chair.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide comment today.

As mentioned, my name is Patience Malaba.

I am the policy manager at the Housing Development Consortium of Seattle, King County.

Our association of 180 diverse member organizations works each day to ensure that all people have access to affordable, safe, healthy housing within communities of opportunity.

and I'm here to speak in support of implementing House Bill 1406 and the renewal of MFTE.

We're excited to see the city move forward.

The state legislature gave you a tool to begin to recapture a portion of your sales tax and invest it in affordable housing for the next 20 years.

And we're excited to see the city put the pedal to the metal and really demonstrate the sense of urgency that the crisis of affordable housing demands.

As you know, it's one thing to produce the units, and it's another to keep the lights.

We appreciate that your resolution of intent is geared towards doing both, and we support that effort.

We urge you today to adopt the resolution of intent to use the revenue and the bonding authority for affordable and supportive housing.

And we also stand ready to work with you in finalizing the ordinance.

In speaking in support of the MFTE program renewal, we believe that those who work in Seattle, those that we rely on every day, must be able to live in the city.

As you consider potential amendments, we encourage you to do a thorough financial analysis of actual developments that use the program and ensure a carefully calibrated tool that balances public benefit and incentivizes production so that this tool can continue to successfully meet the growing need for affordable housing.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Patience.

And I'd love to have a copy of your written comments if you get the chance, because I think that is our goal.

Laura, it's great to see you.

Thank you for coming back and feel free to come on over to this microphone if you feel too far away.

And I think we have a few more folks, Farideh, who signed in for this section as well.

So I'm here with Share the Cities.

We're an all-volunteer organizing collective.

We advocate for regional solutions and we will be engaging in grassroots organizing to support House Bill 1406 in Seattle and beyond.

First, we wanted to thank you for allocating this money to supportive housing and to the operating costs.

Just like we make sure we allocate money to maintain our bridges, we have to maintain our supportive housing stock.

Housing is a right and a public good, and we need to treat it that way.

The allocation of this money will hopefully inspire other cities across our state to find creative ways to work together to make the best use of these funds.

Other cities will have to do that.

They will have to work together.

They won't be able to just take advantage of this really by themselves.

We really want to emphasize that housing should be a human right, and that means long-term public investments like this one.

Additionally, we want to thank you for renewing MFTE, but we also hope that the city's lobbyists can work in Olympia to extend MFTE to a much longer time frame instead of 12 years, maybe 20 or 30 years.

12 years is not enough time and contributes to housing insecurity.

I know the city can't make this change on its own, but the electeds here can use their voices in Olympia to explain how the short time limit is hurting our residents.

It can be extremely confusing for tenants.

Many of these MFT tenants are balancing multiple low-wage jobs and raising children.

The way that it's calculated, the way that they're notified, and the way that they have to advocate for themselves leads to evictions and a lot of housing emotional insecurity.

Once again, we're an all-volunteer group, and we're gonna be advocating on both these issues.

Thank you so much.

Excellent, thank you, Laura.

And if you'd like to share your written testimony too, that'd be great, really appreciate it.

We have two more people on the MFTE and 1406 section of our agenda.

This is the housing portion of our public testimony.

Billy Hetherington and Dale Bright from LIUNA 242. Thank you so much for being here bright and early.

Really appreciate it.

Welcome, Billy.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you for giving me a time to speak on the issue of affordable housing.

We all know that this is a hot issue in Seattle, and the decisions the council makes on this issue will shape the way the city looks in the future.

Seattle's MFTE program makes up a significant portion of the overall state's program, knowing that the city is bound to the standards of the state legislature, has established, we'd ask the city to join join us lobbyist and pushing for language in the state's program to increase labor standards, apprenticeship language, and wages for the workers on these projects.

We feel it's important that those individuals that build out our city skyline has the opportunity to live and enjoy all it has to offer.

We are not recreating the wheel when it comes to this notion of high quality labor standards on MFT projects.

Cities such as New York and LA have built programs for a win-win for developers and skilled craftsmen on these projects.

Lastly, We like the opportunity that you're looking at the sales tax revenue source and using those for future housing.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Billy.

And be sure to know that we have communicated the desire to add this item to our legislative agenda with our friend, Lily Wilson-Codega, who's running OIR.

Hi.

Welcome, Dale.

Always good to see you.

Always good to see you, Council Member.

And nice to see the committee this morning.

Thank you.

I'm here to speak about the MFT program.

It's a giving of a public benefit and an asset.

And as such, it should include prevailing wage and apprenticeship language.

Patient mentioned that people who live in Seattle should be able to live here.

The people who build these projects should be able to live in Seattle also.

And we should be training the workforce of tomorrow on these projects.

We should be providing access to middle class careers in the building trades on these projects.

And I'd like to see that added into these MFT programs.

And everybody should remember, the best social program is a job and a middle-class career.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Amazing.

Thank you so much.

Is there anybody else who would like to speak on 1406 legislation or the MFTE legislation?

Welcome.

Thanks for being here.

And just state your name for the record and we'll get you signed in.

Thank you.

Good morning, Councilmember.

Paul Ambrose with Plymouth Housing.

I'm going to speak on behalf of myself and Danny Malone, who's the head of DESC, who couldn't be here this morning.

So we're here to support House Bill 1406. We have a couple of things that we want to add to the discussion.

In the fact that both of us organizations, the two largest organizations providing permanent supportive housing to people who are chronically homeless on our streets.

And we have a crisis going on.

We each have several projects under different stages of development that are going to be coming on board, and we're really excited about that.

We want to even do more.

And so as far as House Bill 1406, we want the council to look at both the capital needs that we have around housing, but also the operating and service needs.

And if there is a balance between those two, that would be most effective, I think, in moving us all forward.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you, Paul.

And I got you signed in here.

I think that's all we need, because I know how to reach you.

Was there anybody else on the housing portion?

Welcome.

Go ahead and state your name for the record, and I'll try and capture it here.

Hey, I'm Jesse Simpson.

I volunteer with the Capitol Hill Renter Initiative and Share the Cities.

The MFT program does provide thousands of units of affordable housing within the city of Seattle.

As such, it should be expanded and protected.

There are a few issues I see with the program.

Namely, the rents are rather high in current MFT units.

$1,500 for a one-bedroom is not exactly affordable.

These rents can increase substantially year to year, leaving tenants out on the lurch.

There is no centralized city database of what MFT units are available.

There's only one PDF printout.

And overall, the 10-year limitation on the whole MFT program leaves units unsubsidized, and I think the overall sunset period should be expanded to maybe 20. Thanks.

Thank you very much.

Is there anybody else who would like to speak on the housing portions on today's agenda?

Okay, thank you all for your comments on MFTE, the multi-family tax exemption and House Bill 1406. Today will be a briefing and discussion first on those topics.

First for MFTE, there will not be a vote today.

So your comments are very timely for us to include some of the ideas that you talked about.

And then the ideal timeframe would be to make a vote on the August 15th date.

So please do send your comments if you haven't already.

I captured many of these and Aaron House will be back in touch with many of you on some language.

So with that, seeing no other people jumping up on housing, though I know you all support it.

We will move to our first item of business, Farideh, if you could read into the record.

And for anybody who's just joining us, there is still time to testify on the hotel worker legislation, which will be our third item on the agenda, and we will take public testimony just before we get there.

My hope, my intent, was to make sure that people didn't have to Get up too early to come sign in for that portion if you were here for that I know a lot of people did so I appreciate that and want to be also respectful of your time to get folks out of here on time We're gonna go ahead and move on with our housing portion and then we'll get to the hotel worker legislation Welcome everybody at the table and Friday if you could read into the agenda item number one and then we'll do introductions agenda item one multifamily housing property tax extension program for briefing and discussion Welcome.

Would you guys like to introduce yourself for the record?

Sure.

Tracy Bradsliff, Council of Central Staff.

Allie Panucci, Council of Central Staff.

Jennifer Labreck, Office of Housing.

Emily Alvarado, Office of Housing.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

So, Tracy, would you like to kick us off here?

I will just very briefly just to introduce the Office of Housing that is here today to, in fact, present the mayor's proposal for renewal of the MFTE.

That program does expire at the end of this year, so action is required by the council to extend it should we choose to do so.

And Office of Housing will now talk about the mayor's proposal and also give just a little bit of background for folks who aren't familiar with the program.

Okay, great.

Great, and Emily, do you wanna open it up?

Yeah, thank you very much.

So a few days ago, Mayor Durkan made an announcement on her Housing Seattle Now plan.

One of the key elements most immediately coming out of that announcement was to renew our multifamily tax exemption program, which you'll learn from.

Jennifer is one of the highest production affordable housing programs in the city, and we're excited to talk to you about its outcomes and about the proposal.

Excellent.

I want to say thank you Council Member Bagshaw for joining us this morning.

We're just on that first portion which is our two housing elements on the agenda.

Good morning.

Thank you for having us here.

So, as mentioned, we are here today to talk about the multifamily tax exemption program.

We will begin by providing an overview of the program, including results, and then go on to talk about the proposed legislation for renewal.

In general, the proposal for renewal proposes renewing the program as is, with a few changes to improve it.

A quick, a little bit of background on the Multifamily Tax Exemption Program.

It provides a tax exemption on the residential improvements portion of the building for up to 12 years.

The city has had the program since 1998 and renewed it four times.

The state statute authorizing the program does set some minimum requirements, including a set aside of at least 20%, but local municipalities do have a lot of discretion to set other conditions and terms.

Overall, this is, as Emily mentioned, this has been a high production program.

We have a little over 200 buildings participating in the program for a total of 21,684 units.

Of those 21,000 units, 4,455 are affordable to income qualified households with another 1,300 in the pipeline.

And I do want to take a moment to note here that the numbers shown on this slide are for projects in market rate buildings that don't have any other affordability restrictions.

So there are sometimes projects that use MFDE that have other affordability restrictions.

These are really for projects that wouldn't have affordable units if not for the MFDE program.

In general, this program is successfully serving low and middle income households, with almost all of the units serving households between 65 to 90% AMI.

And not surprisingly, most of the production is studios and one bedrooms, which is what we're seeing in the market overall.

Can I ask a question about that?

At one point was it between 60 and 80% AMI?

Has that shifted?

I know that the income limits for the program have changed over different iterations of the program.

I'm turning to Emily for a second.

For the past few years, the program has largely been set at studios, one bedrooms and two bedrooms at 65, 75 and 85% AMI.

The households have to be below that level.

So typically you'll see that for a 65% AMI unit, the person might be hovering around 60 to 63% AMI.

And this 90% AMI here is for three bedrooms and we have not produced that many three bedrooms.

So most production is serving households between that 65 to 85%.

Thank you for flagging that because we'll be coming back to that later.

Okay.

The participation rate for the program is around 44% and that's calculated by taking the number of completed multifamily units, number of multifamily units that have completed in the last three years.

and comparing that to those total number of units that are taking advantage, that are receiving a tax exemption through the MFTE program.

Great.

So in the current program, we require 25% of the units to be affordable to income-eligible households.

If the building provides a minimum number of two bedrooms, then the set-aside percentage is 20%.

And generally that minimum number is around 4% of the total units.

And then the affordability levels vary from 40% AMI for CDUs, and we just talked about this, 65% AMI for studios, 75 AMI for one bedrooms, and 85% AMI for two bedrooms.

And if there are questions about what those income limits are, we will get to that in just a couple of slides.

Great.

This program has been very successful in providing affordable units throughout the city.

So we have seen participation in almost all urban villages.

The program is available in anywhere that multifamily is allowed.

And again, we've seen participation really wherever multifamily development is happening.

And not surprisingly, the highest level of participation is also where we're seeing the highest levels of multifamily development.

Have we done a racial equity analysis on the program itself to try to assess how well we are matching this opportunity, especially in areas where we see the most need for affordable housing?

We have not done that analysis.

Our focus on a racial equity toolkit that was completed about four years ago was specific to how tenants were able to access the units.

So there was a comment earlier about centralized database.

We did do a toolkit about affirmative marketing and ensuring that units were accessible to communities of color and other marginalized communities, but not more broadly on program geography.

Okay.

Could you share that with us, your report from four years ago?

Sure.

Thanks.

And I'd also like to see this PDF mentioned.

I know it's one of the things I've been asking for is online interactive tools so you can find where these MFTE units are online, but I haven't seen that yet.

So if you can share whatever you do have with us.

Will do.

That'd be helpful.

So this slide shows market rate rent as compared to affordable rent as well as income limits.

I do want to note that this slide is using 2017 information both for market rate rent data and income and rent levels.

And the reason we chose to use 2017 information is because that's when we had the best data available on market rate rents.

That was the last time Dupre and Scott produced their reports.

For those of you familiar with MFTE income limits, for those of you watching at home, this is going to be different than what the 2019 rent and income limits are.

So I just want to flag that for folks.

And we're happy to provide that updated information.

In general, rent buy-down is $600 for a studio, $750 for a one-bedroom, and almost $780 for a two-bedroom.

Again, that's comparing what market rate rent is in 2017 versus what the affordable rent was, assuming that the tenant paid all of their utilities.

So overall, this program is producing many benefits.

We have affordable rent, as you saw, typically hundreds of dollars less than what would be available in a comparable unit on the market to over 4,400 low and middle income households.

We're providing affordable units in private buildings throughout the city.

And units are secured for income qualified tenants.

So tenants do have to show that they are income qualified in order to receive one of these units and provide documentation.

I want to take a moment just to talk about the costs associated with the program.

So as we talked about, a property that's participating in this program is receiving a full exemption on the residential improvements portion of their building for 12 years.

And there are two different impacts regarding those costs.

A portion of those unpaid taxes are shifted onto other taxpayers.

For a median price Seattle home, the impact of that shift is about $22 a year on the annual property tax bill.

Another portion, another impact is a portion of the taxes are just simply not collected at all, meaning that they are foregone.

And in 2019, we saw that there was about, for the city experienced about 7.25 million in foregone revenue.

Is the $22 an increase over or is that what it is for the median price house?

You said one thing and that's it.

That's the impact on a median price Seattle house, so a $22 increase.

Okay.

Thank you.

I wish that was our property tax bill.

All right, so as we considered program renewal, our overall assessment was that this is a valuable tool in the toolbox for creating affordable housing.

We have a high production affordable housing program that is successfully creating housing, affordable apartments for middle, low and middle income households between 60 to 80% AMI.

And there's a healthy participation rate among private market rate buildings.

As a result, in our renewal legislation, we really propose maintaining the program as is so that it can continue to produce those same benefits.

25% of the units are required to be affordable to income-eligible households.

And again, having the same structure where that set-aside percentage drops to 20% if a minimum number of two bedrooms are provided, essentially 4% of the total number of units.

with the same affordability levels.

We also propose a few changes to improve the program.

One of them is adding a moderator for years where area median income increases a substantial amount.

The moderator will change the program so that income and rent limits will not increase by more than 4.5% per year or decrease in cases where AMI would decrease.

We added requirements regarding affirmative marketing and equal access to amenities, which is similar to requirements in other incentive programs like MHA.

and what we just did in our administration and finance plan.

We provided added flexibility to the program, so the deadline for this program used to be issuance of a building permit, which meant that a developer would have to decide very early on whether or not they wanted to participate.

We have extended the deadline now to be six months prior to issuance of temporary certificate of occupancy, which really just provides the developer more time, sometimes several years more, to decide whether or not they want to opt into the program.

And then we made a number of other small changes just to enhance readability and clarity and streamline program administration.

That's it.

Questions?

Not so much of a question, but just recognizing, as we had talked the other day, that this particular program alone is not going to solve our affordable housing need, but it is, as you've mentioned multiple times, a tool in the toolbox.

We want to continue doing it, and the sooner the better, and the longer the better.

I feel like that's a good caveat for every time we talk about a housing program.

A lot of folks say, well, how is this going to solve the housing crisis?

And I think with each one of these tools that we're putting in the toolbox or each piece of the puzzle, we're helping to create a broader portfolio.

I would agree this is an important aspect of the entire portfolio that our Office of Housing has at its fingertips to help encourage and incentivize the creation of more affordable units, especially as you just saw for middle income units.

I do appreciate the three things I want to call out.

Thank you to the folks in the Mayor's Office, Office of Housing, For the language that you included around the moderator, the median income moderator, I think we've seen AMI or the average median income in our city really be skewed by potentially more folks coming in being able to earn a higher wage.

It's great that they're able to earn a higher wage.

However, I don't know that it's reflective completely of how much it actually costs.

to rent a unit in the city, especially for middle and low income folks.

So I think that moderator and a cap of 4.5% regardless of the AMI increase in those areas is going to be really important.

And I think that recognizes our growing city, which we are excited about, but we also need to make sure that it's affordable and to match that growth with an increase in development capacity.

I just want to say thank you for the inclusion of that.

I also appreciate the extension of the application deadline.

We know that often developers are telling us that they need more time to apply for MFTE, and many of our partners would be more able to participate if that extension was allowed, so I think that's a good addition as well.

Obviously, I'm a huge fan of affirmative marketing and community preference language, so we're excited to see those components in there as well.

Thank you so much, and welcome Council Member Juarez.

Thank you for being here.

We're just on the first item, which is MFTE, and we got a briefing on it.

Just for our community and committee colleagues, I want to flag a few things of interest to me, and again, my intent is to bring this back on August 15th.

If we do not have the ability to do a vote and amendments on the same day, I'm happy to look at time in September as well.

But there's three main issues that I think I really want to flag for our council partners and then for the community at large.

One was brought up by our friends at LIUNA, the Laborers 242. I think we need to take every opportunity, as we have done with each piece of housing legislation that's come before this committee in the last year and a half, to incorporate labor standards, especially since we have an example out of New York that we can draw from.

New York recently passed policy which incorporates prevailing wage requirements.

for large multifamily residential buildings alongside of affordability requirements in exchange for those tax exemptions.

So we're doing some modeling right now and really excited about looking at the language and strengthening it, as you said, from our partners in New York.

At the same time, I think that there is an opportunity for us to look at affordability levels for different size units to see whether or not we need to make any adjustments.

So I'll be doing some research to see, for instance, if for some of our developers or builders of small accessory dwelling units, If there is a requirement that the standalone buildings, let me say that again.

We've heard from builders of small accessory dwelling units that the MFTE requirements may be such that it's not possible to create standalone buildings with 100% of these unit types.

And we also know that there may be an opportunity to lower the affordability threshold for some unit sizes, such as studios and one bedrooms.

I also would love to do more to incentivize the creation of three bedrooms, and let's be so bold as to think about four, but definitely three bedrooms so that we can create more opportunities for families to live here.

And with that, I think that some of the comments that we've heard today from the community partners as well who've testified, we'll be looking at some of those ways to strengthen it.

I think everybody recognizes this is an important tool, and we all benefit when we can strengthen it and really direct that public benefit back to the public and ensure that we're also incentivizing development at the same time.

So it's trying to strike that right balance.

Council Member Tracy.

Oops.

So just in terms of next steps, Council Members, Ali, Panucci, my team, member on this project and I will be working with you in the next week and really probably want to get together with you in the next week to hear of any other issues, options you want to bring up for conversation at the August 15th meeting.

We do not anticipate actually having all of the pieces together that we might need to actually draft amendments on the 15th.

So I think we are looking at a September date and we'll try to work with you as quickly as we can.

Obviously we have recess in the middle of there as well that provides some challenges, but we will work as quickly as we can to identify the desired amendments so that for sure in September, we'd be ready to take a vote.

And then for August 15th, just that we would get to you quickly and hear from you quickly about issues and options you want to raise up for your colleagues at that meeting.

Excellent.

And in order for you to have sufficient time and for us to have a deadline, can we give ourselves a deadline of August 8th?

That's a week from now for any ideas that we have on MFTE to be shared with Tracy.

Feel free to come to me as well.

But obviously, if you want to work with central staff to draft those up, that's the most important thing so that we can then brainstorm.

And that'll give us a full week before coming back to this discussion on August 15th.

Do you see rocks in the road that we haven't discussed today?

Is there anything that we need to address rocks?

Well, as staff, we always have, you know, ideas.

So we, but I don't think any major ruts or things that would give us pause, for example, related to the mayor's proposal.

I think that there are some potential little tweaks that could be done.

And I think we will be discussing some of which have been mentioned today and some other things that we've identified

So I think that might close our MFTE section.

I do wanna say thanks again to the executive for her work with this through the office of housing and for continuing to forward this policy to council so that we can move forward with this additional tool in our toolkit and to sharpen it as we move forward to construct.

Did you get these puns that I'm making?

To construct more housing.

Okay, I'll stop at that.

I had one more about the foundation of building house, but I'm going to just leave it there.

Thank you so much for being here and we'll move on to item number two.

Agenda item number two, resolution 31893, a resolution relating to taxation, stating an intent to adopt legislation imposing a local sales and use tax at the maximum rate authorized to fund investments in affordable and supportive housing for a briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you, Farideh.

And just so I'm clear, can we also do two and three together?

Did you read those?

Okay.

Agenda item number three, Council Bill 119590, an ordinance relating to taxation.

For briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

So we're really excited about this.

Before we jump into our discussion about the resolution and the ordinance to implement House Bill 1406, let's do introductions again.

Tracy Raths of Council Central Staff.

Leslie Brinson, Mayor's Office.

Emily Alvarado, Office of Housing.

Welcome.

Leslie, are you kicking us off, or Tracy, are you kicking us off?

All right.

I will go ahead.

Tracy, thanks for kicking us off and giving us an overview of House Bill 1406. I will save my excitement and my comments about this for after we've gone through the presentation, but this is a really, really great opportunity.

And as the mayor said at her press conference, this is a way for Seattle to lead the state in implementing this new tool that has been offered to us through 1406. So let's get this kicked off.

Wonderful.

So you have done a good job of mentioning the legislation that was passed by the state legislature this past session that authorizes this new revenue source.

We're tickled to have that authority.

The legislation that the legislature adopted does require us to both adopt a resolution that states our intent to impose a tax, and then an ordinance that actually authorizes the sales tax.

And what you have in front of you today are both those pieces of legislation that we would have to act on.

Tracy, can I ask for just a slight clarification?

Sure.

As I've been talking about this, I've been reminding folks that this is not a new tax.

This is a tax that's already being collected.

Can you comment on that?

It is.

It has kind of been mischaracterized, I think, as a new tax.

It's a new tax for us in terms of the revenue.

How this will get operationalized as we understand it is that we will collect this tax essentially from the state who will essentially not collect a portion of what they have authorized to collect.

So the language is very odd, and we've all looked at this piece of legislation like, boy, this could have been done a little bit clearer.

But it is not, in fact, going to be a new tax that the consumers will pay.

It is an existing tax.

The state will just back off from their collection of their piece and give the revenue to us.

I'm just hearing a few comments there.

This is not a new tax, this is an existing tax.

Was there any other comment on this for clarification?

Okay, great.

I think that's an important thing for folks to know because we do really appreciate the authority to be able to access these dollars, but this is not a new tax that consumers will need to pay.

Exactly, that's correct.

If we approve the legislation, we would actually plan to begin collecting the tax on October 1st, 2019. The amount that we can collect will be based on the amount of taxable retail sales that were generated in the city in fiscal year, in state fiscal year 2019. Right now, we anticipate that that might be about $4.5 million a year.

The tax expires 20 years from the date it is authorized by the city.

Again, as was stated earlier, the revenue can be used to, for the development of affordable housing, and that can include the acquisition, rehabilitation, or new construction of affordable housing and it can also be used to fund the operations and maintenance costs of new units of affordable and supportive housing.

Housing and services must serve people under 60% of AMI.

The state legislation and our legislation as well state our ability to use the revenue to bond against if we choose to do so, so that it will be an option that the city has.

As it relates to how we're gonna specifically spend the money, We will in fact continue conversations with the mayor on this and we expect in the 2020 budget is where we will actually allocate the resources that are authorized by these two pieces of legislation.

Other comments?

Sure, I just want to thank you Council Member Mosqueda for your partnership on this and the urgency on implementing this as fast as we can get access to this new revenue.

And also thank both the folks in the room, Council Member Mosqueda, I know you and Council Member Gonzalez were essential for advocating in Olympia.

our leadership in Olympia with Representative June Robinson, Representative Nicole Macri, Speaker Frank Chopp, Senator David Frockt.

I think for years we've been talking about wanting to partner better with the state in increasing resources, especially to address the crisis of homelessness.

And we are now in that space where some of that hard work has paid off.

And I think that while this tool is available for housing under 60% AMI, this is a very important tool in the toolkit for the mayor with regards to her commitment to serving those folks most in need.

So really thinking about this as a source for permanent supportive housing, both building and operating units, if that's where we land, and just thinking about what it takes to really make a difference for our neighbors experiencing homelessness.

Excellent.

Council Member Baxter.

Thank you.

Are we focused on permanent supportive housing here or zero to 30 AMI or have we decided how it's going to be spent?

I think the conversations so far have been around permanent supportive housing and the extreme need for that, especially as we look around and we know that it's successful.

We know that it works and we know that we need to build more of it.

So, again, we do have an ordinance and a resolution in front of us.

Any other comments?

I see Emily reaching for the microphone.

Thanks for being here again for this portion, Emily.

Thank you.

Just one thing to notice is that part of the history of this bill in the state legislature is that it was in part rewarding local jurisdictions who have already taken action on affordable housing.

Part of the reason why our city would be able to access a higher rate of revenue through this proposal is because we have what's considered a qualifying tax.

And for us, that's our Seattle housing levy.

It has been a tried and true way to deliver affordable housing in the city for nearly 40 years.

And so we, in taking action quickly on this proposal as well, are leading in that second way of saying we're gonna do the most we can locally, and then we're gonna take advantage of new state resources that are rewarding us for taking that local action.

And I'll just elaborate on that a little bit.

And I have a number of thank yous that I want to also echo before we get to a potential vote today.

But I'm really excited about the opportunity for us to move forward today with the intent to work closely with the Mayor's Office and the Office of Housing to create a spending plan for this revenue.

We have absolutely, as you and I and the entire council has discussed repeatedly, we have underscored almost every meeting the need for additional dollars to build housing.

And as we've heard from our partners at DESC and Plymouth, we also know that as we create permanent supportive housing, there has to be that supportive element of it.

So I think that there's a general interest in figuring out what that right balance is.

And I think there's also an emphasis in recognizing we also need to move forward with construction as fast as possible, given the needs.

So finding that right balance of both the supportive element and expediting the construction side is, I think, where we have a lot of shared interest.

And I think ongoing operating costs as well, because it's pretty fine and people feel great about building the new structure, and if we don't have identified Are they on?

They are.

So, sorry for our viewing audience, which we know is robust and very excited about watching Seattle Channel at 9.30.

We are going to continue.

We were just saying some closing remarks on the House Bill 1406 legislation, which is Council Bill 119590 and Resolution 31893. And Council Member Bagshaw, you were in the middle of saying something before that we lost electricity.

operating costs.

I just want to make sure that as we're going forward that we don't just build and assume that things can continue unless we've got solid operating money.

And I also want to acknowledge that what you're doing here is in complete concurrence and alignment with what I'm hearing from our muni court, our superior court judges, that they need to be able, in all of the diversion programs that we're trying, they need to have places where they can have people go with a roof over their head and the supports that they need.

And without that, people are right back on the street.

So amen, and thanks for moving forward on this.

Council Member Herbold, thank you for your leadership on this as well and your past leadership on bonding for dollars.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

Before we get to a vote, do you have some comments you'd like to share?

I would.

I would just like to express my hope, this may have been addressed before I walked in, but express my hope that we can look at using this bonding authority this year.

I understand we can't actually use it until next year, but we can do like we've done in the past and basically commit funding generated from the authority this year as part of this year's NOFA, as part of like an inter-fund loan, so we can increase the dollars that we get out from the Office of Housing to our non-profit developers who are ready to build.

Excellent.

Any comments on that?

I think Council Member Hurley.

I'm going to stumble over your name a little bit.

Absolutely.

I think, you know, the mayor is committed to urgency and making sure that we put this to work as soon as possible.

Excellent.

So I do want to say a few thank yous for folks because we have been talking a lot about this legislation prior to this committee meeting up on the dais, in this committee as well.

There's been a lot of comments that we've put out in our public communications around our immense amount of appreciation for the state legislators who advanced this bill and I want to thank the Office of Intergovernmental Relations led by Lily Wilson-Kodega and her incredible team and our lobbyists in Olympia who worked hand in glove with the co-sponsors.

I specifically want to thank Representative Macri and Representative June Robinson, who were the two prime sponsors on this, acknowledged the leadership of Senator Frocked as well, who really lended a ton of support from the Senate.

And to the Speaker, Speaker Frank Chopp, for his work on getting this through as one of the last items that he did do as a Speaker, we've appreciated his leadership on housing as well.

So I want to applaud him and also congratulate, in the same breath, our new speaker, Lori Jenkins, who got appointed yesterday.

Really excited to continue to work with those state partners as we advance our joint interests in addressing the housing crisis.

So this is a huge opportunity for us to move forward, and I appreciate the council's willingness to consider this legislation, both the ordinance and the resolution together.

We do need to pass the legislation by September 1st to authorize the executive to give a 30-day notice to the Department of Revenue.

And according to the state statute, we also need to pass the resolution before we do the ordinance.

So what we're going to do today with our council colleagues, Grace, will be to pass the resolution first and then we'll do the ordinance.

And given that we have an upcoming recess, which we all really need, we believe in rest and recovery and time off for being with family and just to take some time for ourselves.

What we're gonna do is ideally pass it today.

We will hold it for a week as we continue to have conversations with our partners at King County as well.

This is an important partnership that we maintain with them as we think about how to access these dollars for our region and recognizing the need that Seattle has to act with urgency and lead by example.

And given the housing crisis that is largely in the city of Seattle, but recognizing it as a bigger piece of the concerns that the county has We're going to have some ongoing conversations with them over the next week and a half, and then ideally we will bring it to full council on August 12th.

So if you want to mark your calendars for that.

Yes, please.

And as you said about the county and our regional partners, I want to extend special thanks to Claudia Balducci, who has been leading the Affordable Housing Committee over there, and I know that you have been deeply involved in all that.

We got some requests from her to be, as we're moving forward with our own resolution, to consider also the support for sound cities, encouraging them to be able to coordinate or perhaps pool the resources.

Maybe there's something that we can contribute to that.

I'm not sure what that looks like, but her point too was, consider directly funding the highest need.

So she was focused on, you know, zero to 30% AMI or at, you know, zero to 50% to make sure that we get things built.

And just as Councilmember Herbold's been pushing, we know we need more.

And they're talking about 44,000 units every how many years?

Five years?

That was a number that Claudia came up with.

Recognizing that that's just a dent, and I want to appreciate the Eco Northwest, and we saw an individual who just walked in the door that was supportive of the Eco Northwest study.

We're 175,000 units over our tri-county area.

below what we need.

That's 175,000 units just to come up to level right now with the jobs that are here.

So we know this is the right direction, and having the support that we've had from the business community to acknowledge that, yes, we need a ton more housing, we're going to have to figure out how to pay for it, but this is a good start.

Yeah.

Excellent.

Excellent.

So thank you all so much for your work on this.

We will, as Councilmember Bagshaw has mentioned and Councilmember Herbold has alluded to, we will continue to work with the Executive's Office on the spending plan, the right balance in terms of how much we're bonding and how much can go into capital versus operation and maintenance.

But I think we're all really excited to move this forward.

We also know that if we move forward today we can begin to work towards the October 1st date to really pull together that spending plan and that will be essential.

So are there any other comments on House Bill 1406 or otherwise I should probably read into the record the actual title for our committee here.

Okay, first I'd like to move forward on the resolution.

I'd like to move the committee recommend passage of Resolution 31893. Are there any additional comments?

Seeing none, all those in favor of Resolution 31893 vote aye and raise your hand.

Any opposed?

No.

Tracy, can I just make sure that I have the number correct?

You do.

Okay.

Can you read it into the record for me?

31893. Okay, I think I said one extra eight.

The motion carries and committee recommends passage of resolution 31893 to be sent to full council again on August 12th for final consideration after we continue our discussions with our county partners.

All right.

So let's see if we can do that again because we have the full ordinance to pass.

I'd like to move the passage of Council Bill 119590. Are there any other comments?

All those in favor of the committee's passage of Council Bill 11950, please vote aye and raise your hand.

Any opposed?

None.

It is unanimous.

Now we can applaud again.

And that full bill will be sent along with the resolution to a committee full council on August 12th.

We thank you for your expedited work on this, both central staff, my staff, Aaron House, and all of our appreciation to the mayor, the executive team, and the office of housing.

I know this is a really exciting day for you as well.

So let's get you some more money.

Thank you so much.

Council colleagues we do have about an hour and a half for this last section on our agenda and we will Well, I I will be here till noon I know some folks have to leave at 1130, which is our normally scheduled departure time So we are going to go ahead and move into public comment on the hotel worker legislation Like we did last time we're going to do a minute and a half for folks on We do recognize that a lot of the issues that folks are here to talk about potentially will be addressed with some amendments that the committee is considering today.

And just by way of reminder, we also have a number of other meetings coming up.

So we will have a briefing and discussion today on the other two items that we haven't yet talked much about, really related to safety procedures and healthcare in the future.

We're going to just do a briefing on those.

First, we will have a conversation on really the ancillary business, retention items, and what am I, the other item I'm forgetting.

Item number one and three.

And so we're gonna have the discussion, overtime, thank you.

We'll have a discussion today, we'll have a discussion on the 15th of August, and then we will have a discussion again on September 5th.

So there will be plenty of time for public testimony and plenty of time for discussion of amendments over the next three meetings and over the next six weeks.

I just wanna say thank you again for everybody coming.

We know a lot of folks, oh, not again.

We know a lot of folks have been waiting for a very long time, so we will get going as soon as we can.

Am I good?

Okay.

So I'm not sure what's going on with the Seattle channel, but since you can hear me...

Hello?

All right.

Okay, it says recording in process.

Again, my apologies for the technical difficulties.

Haven't had that happen before, so we really apologize.

Let's go ahead and get started again.

Let's do public testimony.

This is public testimony related to items on the agenda that are related to our hotel worker legislation.

So we have items four to seven that are related to the hotel worker legislation.

I believe I have all of the sheets in front of me, and we will do a minute and a half for each person.

Please come forward, Elizabeth Salgado and Carmen Lopez.

Wrong?

Oh, that's OK.

You signed up on the wrong sheet?

That's OK.

Did I miss you before?

Did you want to talk about housing?

Okay, okay, I apologize.

Dan Austin and Mike Barnett, welcome.

Thank you for letting us speak today.

I'm here representing the West Seattle Chamber of Commerce.

We have concerns of the ancillary businesses being added into the legislation.

We do have hopes of a larger hotel coming into West Seattle at some point with the light rail and the redevelopment of the triangle.

And we'd like to see that filled with an expanding local business or two.

And with the current expense of over $1,600 a month for part-time employees, that will literally not allow that to happen.

I have two restaurants myself.

If one of my West Seattle restaurant was in a hotel, it would actually take the profitability of both of my restaurants to negative just from that healthcare requirement.

So I would really love to see you guys remove the ancillary business aspect from this legislation.

Thank you very much for leading, Dan.

Mike Barnett followed by Rick Keller.

Good morning, Councilmembers.

My name is Mike Barnett.

I've worked in the hotel industry since I was 16 years old, started out as a front desk agent, became a room attendant, a banquet server, basically any operational area in the hotel.

Today, you're considering amendments on two ordinances, and I'd like to highlight just a couple of items, if I may.

The conversation that is happening within our community that hotel companies do not care about employee safety and well-being is simply false.

We have always regulated work rules to protect our employees from injury.

It's important to identify exactly what we're talking about.

Penalizing workers who want to work for more hours by forcing companies to pay an entire day's work for one square foot more than is regulated by law.

I really urge you to rewrite this section of the law so that your intent is to protect workers from unintended injury does just that.

Additionally, in a couple weeks, you'll be discussing medical ordinances, and I respectfully ask you to considering the following.

Healthcare is an extremely personal matter, and I fear that by dictating employers to provide an amount to our colleagues, your unintended consequences will result in not getting quality access to care and will actually result in worse coverage for all of us in this room today and not better.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mike.

Rick Keller, followed by Jeremiah Zaldachi.

Hello.

Hi, Rick.

Hi.

I'm Rick Keller.

I am here on behalf of the West Seattle Chamber of Commerce.

I am the chair of the Government Advocacy Committee, lovingly known as GAC.

The West Seattle Chamber of Commerce is the leading advocate for the business community spanning the greater West Seattle Peninsula.

We've got Nucor and The Port, Salty's and The Kenny, but most of our hundreds of members are small mom-and-pop businesses collectively employing thousands.

We support the initial intent of Council Bill to protect and improve the working conditions of hotel workers, but we object to the additional regulations on small, family-owned businesses that aspire to lease space in a hotel's lobby, the ancillary hotel businesses, who are already in compliance with the ACA.

As a small business person in District 1, as the West Seattle Chamber, You, the City Council of Seattle, are making not just regulations, but culture.

To propose a bill that says it is there to protect hotel workers, something that everyone supports, and then include language that stifles the ambitions of small business, is either duplicitous, onerous, or simply bad governance.

Please don't do this.

Please remove ancillary businesses from the bill.

Thank you very much.

Jeremiah Saldachi, Lula Hale, and then Stiliano Hiboroch.

Hi.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Jeremiah Saldachi.

Sorry for the handwriting.

I've been in food service since I was about nine years old.

My aunt and uncle owned a small bakery in the town I grew up in.

I've been working in Seattle for about 15 years in restaurants and the banquet industry.

I helped put myself through college working restaurants and banquets.

I got back into the industry shortly after my first daughter was born, so I could be a daytime father to her.

At times, I worked four jobs to maintain my night and weekend schedule.

And even though I could work 40 to 60 hours a week, I'd still not be eligible at any specific property for health insurance, which could be trying at times when my kid's mom was in between jobs.

Pardon me.

At one point, presently I work at the Edgewater Hotel.

I've been there 13 years.

A number of years ago, I also worked at the Deck Hotel, which is owned by the same corporation.

They leased out their restaurant to a smaller company.

The benefits offered, the pay, everything was drastically different between a nice union job at a hotel and a hotel that leased out their restaurant.

I want to say that hotel restaurants are a key part of attracting guests, whether they are operated by the hotel or its management company.

Workers need health care.

Excluding subcontracted workers from protections and health care requirements, you will encourage outsourcing, which lowers the standards for everybody.

Meanwhile, the hotel owners still make comparable profits off the work provided by the people who work there.

Thank you very much.

Lula Hale, Celiano Hebroj, and Michael Hirsch.

Welcome.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Lula Hale.

I work at the Edgewater Hotel Housekeeping.

My question is, every time, whenever I come, it's about my panic button, because that one is still, I need it, because I'm assaulted with a hotel guest.

So still, I'm looking at my shoulder all the time, whenever I walk the hallway or I walk into the room, especially when I walk in the nighttime.

So, still, they went into the court to decide whatever to give us or not give us.

But this is, I won't say it's police.

I need this one.

For all house workers, women, we need it.

This one is because it's not that kind of hard.

I understand when the hotel manager or hotel owner maybe think it's hard.

What about us?

Because the reason we're doing this is because we're making good money for the hotel.

But we need our protection, too.

So everybody be going good to everybody.

This is perfect.

We doing good job, and they will give us this kind I-24.

I hope the court is be decided for us.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Lula.

Stiliano?

Stiliano Hebroj?

He's not here yet.

Oh, OK.

Let's move to Michael Hirsch, Roma Howell-Roland, and then Kimberly Spice.

Welcome, Michael.

Good morning, members.

Thank you.

My name is Michael Hirsch, and I represent the ownership family of 13 Coins and the ownership group of the Lodge Bar and Grill.

We have two impacted properties potentially with the ancillary language.

We've absorbed a number of city-led initiatives in our industry that we've not supplied any comment for.

We've done what we needed to do.

We have different margins than hotel business.

We never intended to be in hotel business.

It's hard enough to just be in restaurant business.

We would like to continue to do that.

The impacts for us, just for our city of Seattle, number of employees is about 150. The financial impact is going to be about $150,000 to $250,000 if it's left in all of the initiatives that it's mentioned.

We would ask that you would consider removing it.

We would like to continue to serve chicken parmesan at 3 a.m.

Most of you have been there for that.

We also serve it at 3 a.m.

as well as 3 p.m.

So, you know, come all of those times.

Appreciate our partnership with the City of Seattle.

And if we really want to get into the conversation about investment and safety, we would welcome a conversation with city-controlled property in Pioneer Square and the safety of our employees as they move around that area.

There's a lot of opportunities.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Roma Rolland, followed by Kimberly Spice, followed by Yanding.

Hi there.

Good morning.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Roma Rolland.

Sorry, I'm not used to this microphone.

Oh, you can pull it.

I know I can do all kinds of things.

And I'm the Director of Human Resources for Motif Seattle.

I have been in hospitality and human resources for over 20 years.

The reason I have been doing this profession for over two decades is because I care about people.

The actions I take every day are for the well-being of our colleagues.

I'm here today because I'm very passionate about what you're proposing, and I'm very concerned for its consequences.

I'm asking you today to please listen to the industry experts who have come before you today and work towards a more reasonable resolution.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Kimberly Spice, hi, welcome.

We have seen you before.

Welcome back.

Thank you.

Let's restart the time, Farideh.

Thank you.

My name is Kimberly Spice, and I am the owner of Biscuit Bitch, a restaurant with three locations, downtown Seattle, one of them in the Belltown Inn.

And like I said the last time I was here, I totally believe in taking care of my employees, and I also believe in protections for housekeepers.

I stand with the housekeepers and hotel workers and want them to have their protections and healthcare.

I personally provide an excellent benefits package to my staff that includes insurance, retirement plan, paid vacations, and profit sharing.

And I'm here to ask you to consider rewriting this legislation to get non-hotel employees and small businesses like mine, the ancillary businesses, out of it.

or at the very least allowing us credit for what we already provide and the autonomy to structure our benefits package to fit our unique industry.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Welcome Yan Ding, Zhang, and then Stefan Mortz.

Welcome.

Hi, my name is Yan.

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning.

So I'm here today is talking about the worker, the workloads.

We are not asking the money, but we are asking please get us the healthy.

because a lot of housekeeping getting injury.

We are asking the overtime roll, that means we asking for a mixed management, so not push us working a lot alone.

by the day, by eight hours, because we, I heard last hurling, so one of the managers say, I will go light to overtime.

We like money, but we need to our healthy is very important, because the money is important also, but what about our healthy and safety?

Because if the worker push along to working more alone, they cannot be in like safety because they would need to work faster and more alone is not going to be healthy.

Please keep this law, don't change that.

We really need that protecting for it.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Welcome back.

Good to see you again, too.

Hi.

Good morning, everybody.

My name is Hong Zhang, and I'm a housekeeper.

I work in the W Hotel by Sitaka Airport.

It has been for five years already.

And as everybody knows and recognizes, housekeeping work is a very hard job.

And all of, every day we lift the heavy mattress, we wipe the bathrooms, we dusting the rooms at countless times a day.

It cost different parts of our body pains for all of our housekeepers.

And the workload is very important for our housekeepers.

And one day, the whole day over time is not the, something about the money, because the more rooms you give to us, the more pain and the higher risk of injury of our housekeepers will occur in our workplace.

So compared to our health and the money you give to us all the time, it's not in proportion.

And the law I-124 actually is a love, care, and respect the hotels give to our workers.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Sounds good.

followed by Jeremy Rollins and Jenny Reyes.

Hi, Stefan.

Good morning, council members.

Hi.

Stefan, if you could just get real close to me.

Yeah, I want to address some of the possible amendments that are being discussed today.

On the ancillary businesses, we're concerned by sort of the new language that we've seen that too many people that really need protections are going to be left out with this amendment.

And I would say that we're committed to continue working with you and having these conversations to make sure that we get these definitions right, because they are, I think, a key, you know, really important and gonna affect a lot of people.

On housekeeping safety, I think as you've heard from the folks who spoke here today, we're concerned about health and safety and the long-term health of workers.

And What's the amendment that's proposed today, we think lowers that bar and we don't support it.

And we really wanna see the protections kept in place the way they are proposed.

So yeah, thank you for continuing to work on this and being engaged in this conversation.

And we are looking forward to continuing that.

but we really wanna keep the intent of the initiative that was supported by 77% of Seattle voters intact because that's what the folks in Seattle voted on and clearly sent the message that that's what they want.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you very much, Stephan.

They are available also on our website for anybody watching online, and any of the amendments that are coming in that are being walked in today are available on the dais.

Is that correct over there, Farideh, that there's a pile?

Okay, so are there handouts available for people?

Okay, so please feel free to take a handout if you have not already received that.

Now, where were we?

Jeremy Rollins, Jenny Reyes, and then Amanda Parsons.

Welcome.

Hello.

My name is Jeremy Rowlands.

I'm the Area Engineering and Security Manager for the Marriott Residence Inn and Moxie Hotels, downtown Seattle.

I worked in the hotel industry for 15 years.

If you are trying to protect hotel workers, then you should protect all hotel workers.

If you cannot protect all employees, then this legislation is not good for hotel employees.

It must be rewritten to be inclusive for all employees.

Legislation should not be written to single out one department over another.

It is unfair to devote such time and effort trying to protect one group of workers while ignoring others.

Engineering and security hotel employees are rightfully upset that you purposely exclude them from your ordinance.

You are creating division amongst coworkers and deciding unfairly that one group deserves considerations while others do not.

Until ordinances can be written fairly without excluding employees, then these ordinances should be put into effect.

Fairness for all employees should be the focus.

Employees that I manage in engineering and security are worried that these ordinances discriminate against them, and I agree.

Please start over and make ordinances fair for all departments or do not make ordinances at all.

If you were really concerned about hotel workers' safety, you would address the homeless drug addict problem that my engineering and security staff has to deal with daily.

Thank you very much.

Welcome back.

Oh, there you go with Jenny Rays and then Amanda Parsons.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Jenny Reyes and I am the HR partner at the Residence Inn in the Convention Center.

Today I want to share my experience while working the details of the hotel worker legislation, specifically the health care and workload ordinances.

We support this legislation and the protection of our associates.

Even before this ordinance, our hotel already had guidelines regarding the amount of rooms an associate can clean.

Giving them more than what they can handle leads to room not being serviced according to brand standards.

And as a result, unhappy guests.

No guests coming back means no business to run.

We are aware that giving more than what they can handle will have an impact in their health and safety.

And as a result, time loss.

No businesses want that.

We take care of our associates so they can take care of our guests.

There are times in all business that you are needed extra time, and nobody is forced to do that at our hotel.

But if you do, you get to pay over time.

And we are happy to do that, but requiring to pay entire shifts over time, even if an employee exceeds the minimum workload by one square foot, needs to be revised to be equal to other industries.

As per the healthcare requirements, our hotel offer benefit options that are competitive with the market and the portion of the premiums paid by the employer is more than fair and sometimes above what other industries offer.

Why is the hotel industry the only one being forced to offer a goal plan to all associates and pay additional compensation?

I suggest that the focus be shifted towards the type of coverage.

Thank you very much for the opportunity.

Thank you.

Welcome back, Amanda.

Good morning.

Thank you.

My name is Amanda Parsons, and I'm here to discuss our joint efforts to protect our hotel team members from injury.

The definition of a strenuous room cleaning includes a change for stayover room that has not received room cleaning for more than 24 hours to be defined as a strenuous room.

I'm asking you to consider amending the time to 48 hours.

This would avoid an issue of the actual time the room was cleaned.

If a room is cleaned on Monday, not Tuesday, but again on Wednesday, it doesn't necessarily matter the time that it was cleaned on that day, so as long as it is serviced.

I wish to avoid a squabble over the time of day and focus more on the intent of this proposal.

I believe a 48-hour amendment to this piece of the proposal would satisfy that intent.

Many hotels have different check-in and check-out times, which affect this.

In addition, hotels have groups that check-in and pre-register, meaning we check them in and have their keys ready for a group arrival.

In these type of events, the check-in time in the system or computer is not necessarily the time the guest occupies the room.

If a group pre-registers on a Monday night for a Tuesday morning early check-in, but the room was cleaned on Monday and not occupied until Tuesday, you see how all these pieces can cause a lot of unintended work around simply trying to be fair to the team servicing the room.

Again, 48 hours, in my opinion, allows enough flexibility to alleviate most of these concerns and upholds the intent.

With all this being said, my invitation still stands.

I'd love for you to come join me for a detailed tour of how our business works.

Thank you.

The next person is going to be Braxton Myers, Sean Vick, and Joe Orford.

Hi.

Welcome back.

Good morning, council members.

Once again, here representing a first-generation Korean family that owns Quality and Suites in downtown Seattle.

What I want to discuss today is basically a question as to why this industry and why specifically this position is being called out in this type of a legislation.

It doesn't quite make a lot of sense to try to force an industry to manage a business in an equitable and responsible manner by calling out one specific position within an entire city.

No one in this room will dispute the fact that housekeeping very, very, very difficult job.

I've been in this industry since I was 17 years old.

I've never done anything else in my life.

It is a very, very difficult industry and no one, absolutely no one disputes that.

However, at the same time, I have to wonder how and why a city council would consider legislation like this without also extending it to their own employees.

Why don't we put pedometers on police officers and as soon as they walk one step over 20,000 in a day, let's pay them for an entire day's worth of overtime.

Why don't we put in...

If this is the type of legislation that we feel is going to be effective to manage businesses within the city, then why don't we allow everyone within the city itself to have these types of ordinances and have these types of restrictions on their employment?

It doesn't help an employee.

It doesn't help a business.

It certainly doesn't help small businesses within the city.

And I can once again remind you folks that not all hotels are owned by multinational corporations.

We are small family-owned businesses here in the city as well, trying to survive just like everyone else is.

Thank you, Braxton.

Welcome.

And then Joe Orford, if you could line up as well.

Good morning.

It's Sean Work.

I'm at Romeo's Pizza again.

I want to talk about this answer rate thing.

You guys keep bringing this in.

We work hard for like, you know, every day.

And now, all of a sudden, we are the ancillary business.

Romeo's Pizza used to be on Howell location, lots of people.

It was there for 37 years, until the city ran an eminent domain on us for public good, and then end up putting a 27-story building, privatized it, and tried to sell it.

And then, for that displacement, we have to move up.

one block up.

And now I invested every single thing, all of a sudden you guys are asking us to pay $1,680 to each employee as a cash benefit and putting it on health care.

And how all of a sudden this health care is our job.

I mean, I have a hard time getting health care for myself.

We work hard for it.

I mean, it adds up to around $228,000 for or my business, that's not even the profit I make.

For a long time, I mean, everybody talks about, you know, everybody needs health care.

That's understandable.

So the bigger question is, for small businesses, the model used to be 30-30-30 and 10. So that means 30 in labor, 30 in food cost, and 30 in lease, and 10% we get to take.

That essentially means if we do million dollars in sales, we get to take $100,000 home pre-tax, just to let you know.

Thank you.

But just to wrap it up, you guys change the minimum wage, you know, that rate star thing at 40.

I need you to do a final sentence for us.

My final sentence would be, if you guys want to go ahead and keep doing this, I'm not sure what the city is doing for us small businesses.

And you run two faces.

One face, you say you want to help us.

On the other side, you're just going to destroy us.

I hear you.

Thank you very much.

Hi, Joe.

Following Joe is going to be Sameer Nassar, Terry.

Welcome back.

I see you there, Terry.

And then Sean Verk.

Good morning.

Thank you for this opportunity.

I'm Joe Urford, Director of Security at the Higher Regency Seattle.

I've only been in hospitality for less than a year.

I've got 22 years in law enforcement.

Last six years, I had the honor and pleasure of serving as a police chief.

I'm here to speak specifically about 14-26070 section B, which is requiring the hotels to do the investigations of these criminal acts.

I think it's a wrong idea.

You're now placing that burden on the hotel to do these with untrained professionals to do these investigations of criminal acts.

and determined the finding.

As a former officer-in-chief, I feel the responsibility should stay in the hands of the police department.

They have the trained professionals.

You guys got a very well-trained and professional staff here at Seattle City, Seattle Police Department.

What this does to the victim, I now have to investigate and interview a victim that's been alleged from assault.

Now she has to go back and get interviewed again and relive that traumatic incident that happened to her.

If we just take us out of it and leave it in the hands of law enforcement, they do the one interview of that victim, they don't get repeatedly violated for having to tell her story over and again.

So I think you should reconsider that part of it.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Samir?

Hi, welcome.

Hi, my name is Samir Nassar.

I own a hair salon at the Renaissance Seattle.

over 35 years, and I'm here just to say we need you guys to keep us open, not to close businesses.

So we need all the help we can get.

If you keep adding little here, little there, it's going to close us down.

So that's all.

Thank you very much, Samir.

Thanks for being here.

Terry, welcome back.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Thierry Rautureau.

I have a restaurant called L'Oulé in the Sheraton Grand.

The only thing I have in correlation with the Sheraton is I have a lease.

I have nothing to do with their worker.

They probably don't even know who I am.

My workers have nothing to do with the Sheraton.

We're all a separate entity.

And I'm here to talk, of course, about the ancillary wording that you have in the legislation.

It is not well written, you need to remove that the way it's written.

And I just got a handout to the new legislation that you wrote, and it's still not, it's exactly pretty much the same in terms of what we are concerned about.

If this legislation goes through, the insurance program you're proposing will kill us.

I'm just gonna say that.

And you might want to think about how you're writing these things down.

Remove ancillary.

I have nothing to do with the Sheraton except I'm in the same building.

But it's their business.

So please really consider what this gentleman just said.

If you want to keep us in business, you have to think about phrasing these differently.

Thank you so much.

And remind us how many employees you have.

I have 58 employees.

OK.

Plus I have another restaurant in Madison Valley.

with about 14 employees.

So no way in the world I can satisfy the under 50. I could fire eight, but I still would be over the ledge.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate you being here.

By the way, I've been doing business in Seattle for 30 years.

You're making it really hard to still want to put my heart into this.

Thank you, Terry.

Thank you.

Do we have a Charlie from Renaissance here?

Charlie?

Okay.

Or maybe I said the name wrong.

Is there somebody from residence in here?

Please come forward if you're interested in speaking, or if you don't want to, that's okay, too.

I didn't mean to call anybody up that might not want to.

Just state your name for the record.

Good morning, Council Member, and good morning, everyone.

I thank you for having me here to speak freely on behalf of Housekeeping Windows on Seattle Hotel.

My name is Marissa Simon, and I'm working there for 25 years.

And the reason I'm working there because I've been treated equally.

For housekeeping, cannot make overtime, I think it's like a burden for them.

If you guys, with all due respect, if you guys wanna help, you guys need to help everybody.

The one who doesn't wanna make overtime, and the one who does, because the one who want to make overtime, are complaining, they're crying, because they need more money to pay bills, to buy food on the table.

So since there is a new law said they cannot make overtime, they come to me as a supervisor of housekeeping to ask to make overtime secretly.

I can't, because I can't break the law.

Please.

Listen to the people.

The one who doesn't, the one who does.

So let it be an open choice for whoever want to make overtime, they freely can make it.

The one who doesn't want to make it, they got choice not to make overtime.

That's all I want to say.

Thank you, Maureen.

And apologies for reading the handwriting wrong.

It definitely says Marie, so I apologize for that.

Dawn Blankney.

You're our last person.

If there's anybody else who did want to testify, feel free to line up behind Don.

If there's anybody who didn't get a chance to sign in, please do sign up.

And Don, thanks for waiting.

Yeah, of course.

Thank you.

Good morning, council members.

I'm Don Blakeney.

I work for the Downtown Seattle Association.

We're an association of businesses, nonprofits, and residents, about 1,600 different members and we have been hearing you know concerns about this ancillary business legislation.

We have the largest concentration of hotels in the region in downtown Seattle and these hotels that you've been hearing today all have small businesses that will be affected by this and we think that those businesses are the lifeblood of the vibrancy for downtown and we'd like to see you consider taking that part of the legislation out because it doesn't really seem to get at the heart of what that legislation was set up to do.

So, and I hear there's some new amendments coming forward, but I don't think that they are addressing that.

Yeah, I don't think they address what we were concerned about.

I think we are concerned that this applies kind of to a small business setting when it really is about the hotel.

So thank you.

Thanks, Don.

Really appreciate it.

Before we close public comment, is there anybody else who would like to testify?

Go ahead and come on up and introduce yourself and I'll write your name down here for the record.

Hi, good morning.

How are you?

My name is Eunice Hao, and I have a couple of points to make.

Number one, we heard the argument that hotel housekeepers are not worth protecting because not all workers in the city are being protected.

And it's right for the city to protect housekeepers because housekeepers are disproportionately affected by hotel work and cleaning rooms.

And that is why it is the right thing for the city to do to protect just housekeepers in this case.

And number two, to talk about the argument that ancillary businesses So basically, right, the big hotel corporations are the ones that own the businesses and make the profits off of ancillary businesses and the workers that do the work inside those businesses.

And therefore, it is a responsibility of the big hotel corporations to provide healthcare for these workers because they're making the profits off of them.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

Okay, we just took public comments on item four through seven on today's agenda.

We're going to take these one bill at a time, I think, because we do have a lot of content to them.

For folks in the audience, again, there's some amendments that council members have walked in this morning that are sitting on the desk there, and as Freddie mentioned to me, they're going to be posted immediately after committee.

I want to welcome Councilmember Sawant, Councilmember Gonzalez.

Thanks for staying here.

Councilmember Herbold, Councilmember Juarez, and Councilmember Bagshaw.

And welcome to the table, Dan.

Fede, could you read in agenda item number four for the record, please?

Agenda number item four, council bill 119554, an ordinance relating to employment in Seattle requiring certain employees to limit room cleaning workloads for certain employees for briefing and discussion.

Wonderful.

And Dan Eater from central staff, thank you for being here with us and working with all the council members on various amendments and for prepping us on two items that will come before us again on August 15th.

I just want to confirm, in terms of process, are you good with us doing one piece of the ordinance at a time, or should we read into the record all seven?

I mean, four through seven.

Your preference, Council Member.

Okay.

Well, let's go ahead and stick with agenda item number four, which is Council Bill 119554, related to protecting employees from injury.

And Dan, why don't we have you go ahead and give us an overview.

Before you do that, I will mention this is the seventh time that we're hearing the hotel worker legislation in this committee.

I want to thank Anna Boone from the Restaurant Lions in Seattle.

Hotel Alliance, and Stéphane Moritz from Unite Here, Local 8, and all of your members who have been writing in to us and engaging with us as we've been thinking about potential legislative changes.

Dan Eder from Central Staff has been tremendous to work with and has spent an immense amount of time working with us as we wrestle through some of the suggested policy changes that are coming from community and coming through council members.

um two weeks ago we had issue id with possible solutions for issues related to workload which is council bill one one nine five five four and also related to worker retention which is one one nine five five six so today as a reminder we will go through those possible amendments on those two pieces of legislation and today we're beginning with one one nine which is related to workloads.

And when we do have staff come back, we will try to get the items that are being considered for amendment on the screen so everybody can see it and there won't be any confusion.

All right, go ahead, Dan.

Very good.

I thought it might be helpful to start with a very brief encapsulation of what the bill as introduced would do and that can queue up a discussion about amendments that council members may be interested in moving.

So, in brief, the Protecting Hotel Employees from Injury, Council Bill 119554, would require qualifying hotels to provide employees with extra pay when the employee cleans more than an established maximum floor space in any one shift.

Maximum floor space is a defined term.

It means 5,000 square feet in a shift.

This amount is reduced in proportion to the number of hours in any shift that's less than eight hours.

It's also reduced by 500 square feet for shifts that involve 10 or more room cleanings that are considered to be strenuous room cleanings, and that also is a defined term.

The extra pay that is required for any employee who has such a shift with an assignment of more than the maximum amount of floor space is 1.5 times the employee's regular rate of pay for all the hours worked in the shift, The legislation allows employees to opt in or opt out of assignments with more than the maximum floor space, so it's up to the employee to decide whether he or she wants to accept such an assignment and the extra pay that would go along with that assignment.

It also allows hotels to divide the maximum floor space evenly among multiple employees who are assigned in a team cleaning arrangement.

It also allows employees to opt in or out of team cleaning assignments.

As the chair mentioned at the July 18th committee meeting, council members discussed issues that members were interested in seeing worked out as amendments, and flowing from that conversation, there are several amendments that were posted to your committee agenda.

And I'd be happy to turn it over to sponsors who want to discuss their amendment, or I can introduce it however council members would like.

Great, so just by way of reminder for council colleagues here, on Council Bill 119554, as just described by Dan Eater, we do have three amendments, and I think we'll just take one amendment at a time.

My interest is in having a discussion and then a possible vote on those amendments individually so that we can keep clear what the issues are, but you will see, as Dan mentioned, I almost said Council Member Eater again, that we are we are intending to try to Provide various policy changes to this overall component to protect workers from extraneous situations where they have exposure to Work workplace injury and are more likely to have long-term health complications by way of reminder in this industry we know that there are higher rates of back injuries injury in hotel work than there are for coal miners, and construction workers.

And so this is really not, as we've said before, I think every council member up here has said, this is not about how do we get additional dollars per hour for workers, this is how do we create a disincentive to work overtime.

Before we begin with the amendments, Council Member Gonzalez, as a co-sponsor of the base legislation, did you have any other comments on the legislation before we begin?

Only that I think the amendments that are before us are, I think, partially responsive to some of the concerns that we've heard, but also, I think, continue to work hard towards making sure that we're centering the exact point that you just made around making sure that Ultimately, the goal here, similar to what we did in secure scheduling, is about prioritizing the health and safety of this class of workers that is currently working in this industry with very little protections.

So I am excited to have a conversation about these and to hear what our colleagues think.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Are there any other comments from our council colleagues before we start with the amendment discussion?

Go ahead, Council Member.

Just to once again commend and thank the workers in the hotel industry who have testified repeatedly and also described eloquently the conditions that they face, and also wanted to thank Unite Here Local Aid, which has done tremendous work over years to bring us to this point.

Excellent, thank you.

So thank you, Farideh, for getting the amendments on the screen.

And for folks who are in the audience, I think that there are still some handouts available.

But we will look at amendment number one, which is the definition of strenuous cleaning.

I will acknowledge we did hear testimony today from folks asking for 48 hours.

Initially, when we did have conversations with both the workers and the industry, the 36-hour threshold was identified.

And one of the things we wanted to do was to be responsive to that initial concern that we heard.

So we have drafted the amendment based on that initial feedback and would be putting forward for the council's consideration, striking 24 and inserting 36 hours.

I think again, one of the goals is to make sure that if a room hasn't been cleaned in over a day, it is more likely to be strenuous cleaning.

And I also think that we recognize that this is, in part, an environmental policy as well.

When we don't have cleaning for longer periods of time, that could potentially save water as well, with fewer towels being washed and fewer cleaning happening.

So that's a good thing.

But we also recognize we have to make up for that in terms of the type of work that is being asked of the workers.

This would help us out with our green cleaning goals, and I think also address that there is additional strenuous cleaning happening here.

Amendment number one is what I'm referring to, and it's sponsored by myself and Council Member Gonzalez.

Dan, did you have other items to add to that summary?

No, I do not.

Council members, questions?

I am wanting to look a little bit further into the number of hours.

36 hours doesn't make sense to me as somebody who, if you go into a hotel one night, let's say you get there late at 10 o'clock at night, let's say on a Monday night and you check out Wednesday, I'm wondering if it makes more sense to look at the night's stay rather than 36 hours from what point to what point.

So I'd like us to give that a little bit more consideration.

Don't object to the direction it's going.

I'm just not sure that we've landed on 36 hours is making sense.

And again, the entire base legislation will be before us on September 5th, so if folks feel comfortable with the direction that we're headed on amendments or in theory their concept of where the change is headed, there is an opportunity to vote today and then to continue working with council colleagues and central staff and the community at large to consider additional amendments specific to these two pieces today at future meetings.

I will acknowledge that one thing that I'd be interested in looking at as we move forward is the time of entrance into a room that was brought up today, piqued my interest.

But at this point, I'm still really interested in the 36 number, given that it came both from worker advocates and from the hotel industry.

I think it was a nice balance of trying to respond to those initial concerns.

and appreciate you raising that and happy to look into those questions too.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Dan, I have a quick question for you.

In terms of the language that we see in Amendment 1, and in light of some of the concerns we heard during public testimony and that we're hearing from Council Member Bagshaw around sort of the concept of when does the clock start, as I'm going to describe it, Is that something that based on how this language is drafted would be subject to rulemaking in the director rules process?

That's a good question.

I would guess that the answer is yes, but I don't honestly know with any, I can't say definitively.

The language suggests that it is more than 36 hours from the time of the cleaning that last happened in the room, but it is possible that the Director of the Office of Labor Standards could interpret that and provide an explanation to employers about what exactly it means that is slightly different than that.

I can't say definitively.

So if we wanted to make sure that there was, I mean, there's going to be rulemaking process for this legislation, just like there is for lots of our legislation, correct?

That's correct.

So the question is, is what are the things within the legislation that are subject to rulemaking that are in need of additional clarification and interpretation by a director?

Correct?

Yes.

Okay.

So if we wanted to make sure that the issues related to when that clock starts, we have an opportunity between now and final passage of this legislation to perhaps work on this language to allow for that additional direction to occur.

Absolutely.

Whether or not you explicitly call out that an issue is subject to rulemaking, the director of OLS can issue and will be issuing rules on many of the items that are included in the legislation.

You could decide to explicitly call out that you intend for the director of OLS to issue rules that clarify when the clock starts on this particular topic.

Okay, I would suggest that, setting aside the question of how we define the period of time, I think Dan's point is that the language that says, means the cleaning of, could be subject to an interpretation of when the room was last cleaned.

And so I do think that there's, there's an opportunity for us to learn a little bit more about whether that's the appropriate start time of the clock or whether it's check-in time, for example, that is the more appropriate time to start that clock.

In terms of the 36 hours, that's about a day and a half, effectively.

And I think that setting aside when the person actually got in the room, I do think that 36 hours seems to be a fair compromise between what the base legislation said, which was 24 hours, and what we're hearing today for the first time, which is 48 hours.

So I think it seems to be a balance between the two, but always happy to take in additional information to learn more about why 36 hours is perhaps not appropriate either way.

Thank you, Councilmember.

I would encourage our colleagues to consider voting yes on this amendment.

I still support the concept of 36 for the reasons that was just articulated by Councilmember Gonzalez.

I also think that as we originally rolled out this legislation, we used these green clean lists as a 24-hour marker, but It was conversations with the hotel managers and conversations with the workers that we learned that many times the room may be cleaned at 10 a.m.

one day and then 8 a.m.

the next day or 8 a.m.

one day and 10 a.m.

the next day.

So we tried to figure out the right sort of window or grace period between 24 and 36 hours, giving us sufficient time to recognize it might not be exactly 24 hours.

I'd still like us to consider moving forward and then having these conversations that The council members have articulated whether it's at the point in time a room is occupied or a more flexible time frame is to be discussed, but I agree that this is a good balance and would encourage a yes vote.

Other comments on this?

Okay, we're moving right along.

I'm going to go ahead and make the motion.

I'd like to move amendment 119554 with amendment number one, which amends the definition of strenuous room cleaning to include stayover rooms with cleaning for more than 36 hours.

Second.

Are there any other comments?

Seeing none, all those in favor of amendment number one, please vote aye and raise your hand.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

Okay, we have four yeses and one abstention.

Thank you very much.

And we will go on to amendment number two.

We have five yeses.

I didn't see.

Yeah.

Do you mind if I do this again just for the record?

For all those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

None.

All those abstaining?

One.

We have five yeses and one abstention.

Thank you very much, council members.

And I will keep working on the questions that you answered.

Okay.

I like the direction.

I just want to make sure we've got some clarification.

And just for the record here, we had Amanda Parsons talk about this, invite us to come and see the hotel and the issues that she was raising.

So I've already got her phone number, contact information if anybody wants to join me.

Thank you.

We'll do it.

Let's move on to amendment number two.

Thank you, Freddy, for projecting that.

Dan, do you want to start with some opening comments on this one?

Or do you want me to ask the council members to?

I defer to the council members if they want to talk about it.

Otherwise, I'm happy to do so.

Sure.

Why don't we jump in, because I think we've got a pretty good handle on what the issue is about.

Council Member Baxter.

Thank you.

So in the last conversations we've had publicly, there were concerns, and I completely concurred that We're trying to do two things.

One is to protect the workers.

The other is to make sure that there is a disincentive to tell a worker at the end of the shift or at the end of the 5,000 square feet, you must continue working.

So after having conversations with many people in the industry, what I'm proposing is an opt-in list similar to what we did with the restaurant secure scheduling so that an individual worker can sign up on an opt-in list.

And this also addresses the issue that what I'd heard previously is that people want to work overtime in some cases.

They're healthy.

They want to work.

They've got bills to pay.

And so what my objective here is to have an opt-in list.

And if there are lots and lots of rooms that need to be cleaned that day because there's a convention that is moving out, and we know that there are going to be additional hours worked, that there would essentially be an all-call saying, are there individuals who want to work additional hours that day?

They could be on the list.

They might be working, but at the end of the 5,000-square-foot day, that they could continue working at time and what we I think we're now looking at time and a half for those individual employees that want to continue working.

But the employer would be sending out an all-call saying, we expect that there's going to be additional needs for additional rooms, and that's what I'm trying to accomplish here, so that it doesn't roll back to minute one of their shift.

Great, thank you very much Council Member Bagshaw.

I want to say thank you for thinking through the concerns we heard.

We also know from past experience that it's important for people to be able to opt out of that opt-in list.

You never know what's going on with family, you never know if their back currently hurts, if they need to go pick up their kiddos, what have you.

So we've included a small section to your amendment to make sure that if a worker is on an opt-in list, They don't and they don't want to work overtime on any given day.

They can absolutely decline and there will be no penalty and there will be no intimidation or assumption that they will have to say yes.

And I encourage our other council colleagues to comment on this.

Council Member Gonzalez and I have signed on to this amendment with that additional language included.

And if there's any other comments on this and how it relates to past work that you all have done, that'd be great.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I also would like to sign on to this amendment.

This is consistent with the approach that we used in secure scheduling as it relates to a practice that we wished to discourage in secure scheduling.

the practice of clopening, having people come in after a closing shift, having to come in to also open up a retail or restaurant establishment in that case.

And so we were listening to the fact that workers wanted the flexibility to, on occasion, take co-opening shifts and listening to the voices of employers in wanting to be able to offer those shifts similar to what we heard today in public comment.

But we still wanted to hold on to the principle that there should be premium pay associated with that because it was a practice that we even though we understood the employees' and the employers' desire for flexibility, but that we thought there should be a premium pay associated with it.

So I'm really supportive of this approach.

I appreciate you bringing it forward.

And just want to add my name to the sponsor list.

Thank you so much.

We will definitely add your name.

Any other comments?

I was going to say exactly what Council Member Herbold just said, so I appreciate that my co-sponsor on the secure scheduling legislation that we did a couple years ago spoke up on that aspect.

So I think it's pretty clear what the intent is here.

We want to give folks the flexibility to continue to work overtime.

I think there was a comment during public testimony that overtime is illegal, and that is absolutely not true.

Overtime is not illegal.

It's illegal to not pay people overtime if you're asking them to work.

more than 40 hours per week.

But this bill doesn't make overtime illegal.

And I think that's reflected by this amendment, which allows employers to, similar to in the secure scheduling context, maintain a voluntary emphasis on voluntary opt-in list and allows employees to opt into that list with also the understanding that we don't want that list to be leveraged in a inappropriate way when overtime hours are required or requested by employers of employees, which is what led us to the additional language to allow employees to refuse to accept those overtime And my only other question here, because I cannot recall it in my brain right now, is whether or not we have a clear anti-retaliation provision in this bill.

I believe we do, and I will look through and confirm that.

We've been focusing on the little granular details, and I neglected to this morning confirm whether or not we have an anti-retaliation clause like we do in many of our other labor standards around these particular components.

So for purposes of standardization, let's confirm that.

And if it's not in, I think it would be important to incorporate it.

Thank you.

Thank you for flagging that.

Any other comments on this section here?

Okay, well, seeing none, I would like to go ahead and see if we can move amendment number two.

Would you like to move that or would you like?

Okay, I'd like to move amendment number two to council bill 119554. Any other comments?

Seeing none, all in favor of amendment number two, please raise your hand and say aye.

Aye.

There are six ayes.

There are no nos.

There are no abstentions.

It passes unanimously.

Thank you very much, council members, and thank you for flagging the work to do on confirming anti-retaliation languages incorporated as well.

Moving right along.

Dan, did you have something else to add?

Yes, I can answer Council Member Gonzalez's question.

There is a protection from retaliation provision in the bill.

Great.

I thought that was the case.

Dan, do you want to show off for the record where that is at?

Well, the notice for it is in section 14. It's in the bill that would add a new SMC section 14.27.100.

That's notice and posting.

Great.

Thank you.

Wonderful, so we are moving on to our third item related to this specific topic and Councilmember Gonzalez, myself, and Bagshaw again are putting forward this potential change regarding the overtime pay.

Dan, do you mind just briefly summarizing for us what the current legislation says and then we'll talk about what the amendment says as it relates to overtime calculations.

The current bill provides that if an employee works in a given shift and, generally speaking, cleans more than 5,000 square feet, then they are paid time and a half for the entire shift, whether that be eight or nine or seven hours, it doesn't matter.

It's the entire amount of time that they have cleaned in a shift more than 5,000 square feet, they get paid 1.5 times their regular rate of pay.

But that's, I mean, that was our current legislation.

That's the current legislation.

That's not what the amendment does.

That's not what our amendment to did.

Would you like to describe the difference in what's being proposed here for amendment?

It's also the initiative was the one point.

That's correct.

Yes, that's correct.

Did you want to elaborate on that Council Member Herbold?

No, I'm just looking at the comparison chart.

Good.

Thank you for the reminder.

Yes, some, we are not making these things up out of thin air.

So why don't you go ahead and describe to us what the amendment does so we can talk a little bit more about that.

Yes, of course.

So the amendment would make two changes.

First, it would say that an employee who cleans more than 5,000 square feet of floor space is entitled to an extra rate of pay beyond their normal rate of pay for not the entire shift, but instead for the amount of time that it took to clean the floor space in excess of the maximum floor space.

So if you cleaned 6,000 square feet, you'd get paid for the time it took to clean the last 1,000 square feet.

That's the first change.

And that's the assumption that they've completed the 5,000 square feet and then been requested by the employer to continue?

Yes, or they were given an assignment at the front of the shift that was 6,000 square feet and they knew going in that it was going to be that kind of a day.

The second change would be to change the additional pay that they're entitled to from one and a half times to three times the regular rate of pay.

Just for the last bit beyond the $5,000?

Just exactly as you said.

So a little bit of context as well around this before we entertain comments and questions and a potential vote.

We did have a discussion about this at our June 27th committee hearing.

And I just wanna reiterate the intent behind this entire section, including the original language around overtime pay and this potential new calculation is to really deter folks from having to work clean additional square footage over 5,000 square feet.

We heard in that public testimony a 2010 American Journal of Industrial Medicine study on occupational injuries and the disparities that we see in the hotel industry, where we see employees of hotels having higher rates of occupational injury and sustain more severe injuries than most other service industries.

In fact, we see 40 percent increase in injuries in the job in hotel workers as compared to other service sector workers.

And the study also noted that this was just comparing unionized sectors.

If it were to look at non-unionized sectors, the study indicates that the rates would be much higher for non-unionized work.

So again, the goal here is not to only consider the additional pay, but to try to see how we can use this as a policy decision, a deterrent from having individuals be overworked.

And we recognize that sometimes there is situations which people are asked to work extra.

Sometimes there's situations like we just addressed with the previous amendment where people do want to take potential additional shifts, but given the high rates of injury, The real intent here, I think, from a policy perspective is how do we include policy provisions to deter additional work.

Additional comments on this amendment, colleagues?

Council Member Hurvold and then Council Member Baxter.

So, I recognize when I said that the initiative, I-124, originally had one and a half time pay as premium pay, that that was, I believe, for the entire shift, not only for the hours.

This change has it go to three times the pay, but only for the number of hours.

I mentioned...

The additional hours, over 5,000.

Yeah, the additional hours, yeah.

I mentioned my...

appreciation that this policy, as it related to the opt-in list and the ability to opt out of that list as well, that it mirrored the secure scheduling practice that also sought to discourage the practice of clopening for safety reasons.

And that was a premium pay of one and a half hours only for the additional time.

So I think I'm going to...

abstain on this one, because I just need to get a little bit more information about why we think that the three times the pay is the right number to really strike that balance that we're trying to hit between an employer not relying on a policy that over time is detrimental to employees, while still allowing employees to, on occasion, do the additional work when they choose to.

Thank you, Councilmember Hurwold.

And we have done a little math with our friends, both in the industry and the worker side.

And Councilmember Gonzalez, I don't know if you wanted to talk about some of the calculations, if you want me to, if you want Dan to.

I am notoriously bad at math.

I collect raw data and then I give it to people who are much better at it.

Council Member Baggio as well.

You and I have been both doing the math with some of our colleagues.

I'll very briefly summarize this and then perhaps Dan can help us out a little bit as well.

So the concept here, okay, the concept here is if on average we know that a hotel worker earns around $20 an hour, If the individual were working a full day and cleaned 5,000 square feet, we know that for a full day that's about $160.

If, however, that individual were to work overtime and clean more than the 5,000 square foot, and we did the calculation that's currently in the bill, and applied it to the entire day, basically the rate of pay would be closer to around $300, I believe is what we calculated at the current legislation rate.

And please, everybody, do not hold me to these numbers.

But in concepts, here's what we're talking about.

That's why I don't do math.

We know that this is not, and the intent is not to reach a certain dollar threshold.

The intent is to have this as a deterrent.

But if we look at the concerns that we're hearing about, How do we disincentivize individuals from having to work more than the 5,000 square footage amount?

And we recognize that sometimes they may be asked to just clean an extra half hour.

Sometimes they may be asked to clean an extra hour.

Perhaps it is a more balanced incentive to encourage employers to only allocate the 5,000 square foot if we are applying the overtime pay for the amount that they are working over the 5,000 square foot, recognizing that in those situations there should still be a higher threshold of overtime pay, not just time and a half, because often people will write that into their calculations and we hear more and more.

even at two times the amount, many employers are asking folks to stay and work overtime.

We need a disincentive that is enough to indicate that our desire is to stay within that 5,000 square foot, but also are recognizing the concerns that we heard about having that amount applied over the entirety of the day.

So it was an attempt to try to get the right balance between the disincentive for folks being asked to work overtime and also recognizing that if they are, it should be applied to the extra hours worked.

Council Member Sawant.

Thank you, and Dan, if I could get your help on this as well.

Thank you.

Yes, I'm sure my math was totally off.

Yeah, I mean, I don't actually have a problem with math myself, but I just do, I want to make sure we're on the right track here.

We and my staff member and I are communicating on this question.

and you just want some clarification.

First of all, the basic idea is we don't want to, we want to disincentivize overtime because we know that there's too much occupational injury in this line of work.

So given that that's the baseline, I believe the current language, you know, without the amendment, with the current language, a worker who has only one hour of overtime, who does one hour of overtime would be paid more than a worker who would end up doing three hours of overtime.

This is with the current language without the amendment.

And I believe with the amendment, It actually means that if you do more hours of overtime, you end up coming out ahead as opposed to doing fewer hours of overtime.

In other words, what I'm trying to say is that it depends on how many hours of overtime you do, whether or not you can say that the amended language is better than the current language.

Am I right?

Yeah, I think that it is confusing when I think about it as overtime.

It's easier for me when I think about it as the split of time devoted to the first 5,000 square feet and then the other amount of time.

I think you're right, yes.

That can all happen in an eight-hour period.

So the way I've sort of thought about it is if in an eight-hour period, you do 5,000 plus square feet of cleaning, you're entitled to time and a half, that's the equivalent of getting 12 hours of pay, because it's eight times one and a half.

And that's under the as introduced bill before an amendment.

I have two scenarios for your consideration with the amendment.

If the same eight-hour shift is split seven hours cleaning exactly 5,000 square feet and one hour cleaning more than that, you would get paid regular time for seven hours.

so that would be seven hours of regular time pay, and one hour at three times pay, so that's 10 hours of pay.

So that's gonna be less than the original bill, which gave you 12 hours.

If, however, it took you only six hours, to do the 5,000 square feet.

So this is another scenario.

And two hours of cleaning beyond the 5,000 square feet.

Now it's six times one is six hours of work.

Two times three for the extra.

Now you have another six hours of work.

Now you've broken even as an employee.

You get the same 12 hours of pay.

And these are the two scenarios with the amended language?

That's correct.

I don't know how frequently it happens that you can clean 5,000 square feet in six hours, or if it always takes more than eight hours.

I'm just saying this is a logic game that I'm just trying to play out on a fly here.

But just going off what you're saying, what you just laid out, Dan, seems to me that if we want to disincentivize occupational injury through too much work, over a given period of time or trying to squeeze in 5,000 square feet over a shorter period of time.

It seems to me that the amended language sort of points towards workers if they want to make more per extra of the, you know, per anything over the 5,000.

they are, with the amended language, it seems to me that they're incentivized to finish the 5,000 square feet as soon as they can with the, you know, so over six hours rather than seven hours because then the, whatever you, whatever cleaning you do beyond those 5,000 square feet, then you get three times space.

So in other words, if our goal is to disincentivize working too hard because you are already prone to, stress and injury, then I'm not clear that the amendment helps towards that.

Council Member, thank you so much for asking that question.

The other kind of comparison that I'm hoping we can craft either on the fly here with Dan or maybe a one-pager is to compare to the existing language because what I'm concerned with is that the existing language also provides that incentive for those who may need additional cash to feel the pressure to clean more than the 5,000 square foot in a day.

The way that I had initially calculated it, and I see Dan doing the math over here, is that if we keep it at one and a half times for anything in the day, over 5,000 square foot, and we apply that to the full hour's work, let's say it's a seven hour day or something like that, if you apply it to the full day, the way that I was reading it is that it is an unintended incentive right now for workers to try to get through that.

And we keep talking about what the worker may want to do.

I also want to acknowledge that the other policy goal here is to have a disincentive for the employer to require it.

So I would love to see the math on the current language as well.

And I know you have one more comment, but maybe before Dan goes into it, do you have another comment?

Yeah, just very quickly, just to clarify, yeah, I'm not My questions about the amended language does not necessarily imply some sort of 100% faith in the current language, because as you outlined, there are complications.

But that's my worry, that I don't want to rush into it not knowing which is better.

And I would also...

I would prefer to have some guidance from the union and the workers on this, and I think the complication here is precisely what Dan said, because the metric we're using is not the hours, it's the floor space, anything beyond 5,000, and that's where all these variables come in, because then it's a question of, is a worker feeling pressure to quickly finish the 5,000 square feet and then in fact the pace of the work in adversely impacting their health that that because that's much more of a complicated variable than this number of hours, I feel like I'm not clear which way to go.

So if you move this amendment to a vote, I think at this moment, I would prefer to abstain.

Okay, thank you, Council Member.

Dan, did you have a response to that?

Well, not to that in particular.

I've penciled out a couple other scenarios, but I don't know if it's fruitful to walk through them.

Go ahead on the one that you penciled out, and then what I would ask is for you to take that document and apply it to, as Council Member Sawant has suggested, apply it to square footage, potentially, as well as the hour calculation you've done, so that we can maybe more accurately see the square footage, and then for us to then have that comparison document in the future would be helpful.

Before we move on, though, can I just acknowledge our friends from the Magnolia Montessori School.

Hi, guys.

Hi, guys.

Thank you so much for being here.

And this is the Magnolia Montessori School, is that correct?

Excellent.

Well, we really appreciate you coming by.

We're working on legislation to protect hotel workers and try to incorporate some amendments that we've heard from our friends, both in the industry and workers.

So thank you guys so much for coming.

Did you get them on TV?

Yeah.

Do you see them?

Seattle Channel.

How old are you guys?

Two and a half to five and a half.

Two and a half to five and a half.

Well, thank you for coming by.

Bye.

You're four?

Very nice.

He's like, I'm not two.

Thank you guys for coming by.

I appreciate you being here.

Council Member Sawant, I'm sorry to interrupt the line of thinking there.

I do appreciate that and if this amendment doesn't move forward and you abstain, I absolutely agree with you, we will do some additional work to run numbers and scenarios by folks who are stakeholders.

Dan, did you have anything else on this?

I can walk – the scenario that I walked through was a couple of different looks at how an eight-hour day might be split.

If an employee was working a 10-hour day – I think this is another way to think about it – if an employee is working a 10-hour day and cleans more than 5,000 square feet, 10 times one and a half times the rate of pay in the introduced legislation means they would get 15 hours of pay.

Under the amendment, if it took eight hours to clean the first 5,000 square feet, and the next two hours, the remainder of the 10-hour shift were spent cleaning the however much additional square feet, that would be eight times, under the amendment, it would be eight times one, the regular rate of pay for the first eight hours, or eight hours of pay, and two times three times the regular rate of pay, That's another six hours of pay.

So there it's 14 hours of pay.

So it's not exactly the same, but it gets to be closer and closer.

So Council Member Gonzalez.

Yeah, Dan, may I suggest that as we continue to refine this particular policy issue, I think it would be helpful to have the scenarios you just laid out in a chart for us to consider.

I know that at least a couple of council members have indicated that they're likely going to abstain if we decide to advance this.

I think we should advance it.

so that it's on the table and we can continue to work through it.

And I just, you know, I think there's a couple different policy questions really at play, and maybe it's really three with the points that Council Member Sawant just brought up and sort of, as I think about this issue, I think about, you know, the first policy question being that we don't want to completely, you know, create a policy that will result in zero use of overtime.

What we want to do is create a non-reliance on overtime as sort of the go-to mechanism because we know that that is harmful to the health and safety of workers.

And so I think that's one policy issue.

The question is how do we get there?

And I think what we're trying to balance here is how do we create a rubric in terms of the mechanism that is available to us, which is overtime, to discourage that heavy reliance on the usage of overtime hours for purposes of getting additional work time and hours in production from workers in this sector.

And I think the other avenue that is being flagged by Council Member Sawant is sort of the question around the maximum floor space and the level that that has been set at and whether that needs to, or maybe you're not saying that, but I just was hearing a lot of stuff about the maximum floor size.

And so maybe it's more of a question like, are you thinking in terms of the maximum floor size?

No, I wasn't questioning the number that we're using for the maximum floor space.

What I was saying is that part of the reason why it's not very clear which is, whether the current language is better than the amended language or vice versa, is that the metric we're using is not how many hours over a certain number of hours, but how many hours over the first 5,000 square footage.

And that's where it's not very clear.

And as Dan was saying, we can map out various scenarios to either show that the current language is better or the amended language is better.

You can pull out all kinds of scenarios.

The question is, which is the most typical scenario?

And I think this is where I think we would be advised by workers and the union and if there is any statistical data on that.

Got it.

Thank you for that clarification.

I appreciate it.

Thank you both.

I really appreciate it and I too am in the same bucket of hoping we can advance this today.

Recognizing abstentions mean more questions need to be answered for folks before it comes forward.

I would love to entertain a vote on this.

Council Member Bagshaw is a co-sponsor.

Any final comments on this?

Thank you for that but we've been talking about being advised by the workers.

I also want us to be advised by the hotel industry so we have a better understanding about, does eight hours equal 5,000 square feet?

Otherwise, it seems to me that if somebody could actually get done in six hours, which I find amazingly, that somebody could do that, but what happens next?

And then I also want us to spend a little bit more time for somebody who is opting in on overtime.

What does that look like?

So if at the beginning of the shift, you know you want to make some more money, you've said yes, what is that?

And we haven't gotten that nailed down yet.

So what I'm hearing is some folks who are interested in having a vote and then people who will continue to do work with us.

This is a point in time amendment to indicate that we are going to continue to do work on this and that there's questions to be asked of both the workers and industry.

My intent is to move forward on amendment.

I'm seeing nods.

So I would like to move amendment 3 which adds additional Amendments to the overtime pay requirements for employees who perform room cleaning beyond the maximum floor space second It's been seconded.

Are there any other comments all those in favor vote?

Aye.

Aye 3 opposed None.

Abstentions?

Okay, great.

This amendment has been hung with three abstentions and with that we will commit to working with all of you and all of you as we look at the additional calculations.

Dan, thank you so much.

We have one other bill that has potential amendments on it and I know Council Member Juarez has a hard stop as well and we want to make sure to hear from you and Council Member Bagshot before you guys leave.

So let's go ahead and introduce for the record item number five, Council Bill 119556.

agenda item number five council bill one one nine five five six an ordinance relating to employment in seattle seattle adding a new chapter 14.29 to the seattle municipal code for briefing and discussion excellent thank you and farideh there's just one amendment to that section if you don't mind grabbing that and dan do you have any other opening comments for us on this section yeah i can provide a just a brief overview of what the bill would do is to set the table for your consideration of an amendment um the

Bill would require that qualifying hotels and qualifying ancillary hotel businesses, a defined term, create a preferential hiring list of existing employees when the ownership of the business changes.

Ancillary hotel business is defined as a business that has a physical presence at the hotel and either of the following other additional attributes Either one, it is connected to or operated in conjunction with the hotel's purpose, or the second one is that it provides services at the building.

But in either event, it has to have a physical presence at the hotel.

The bill exempts ancillary hotel businesses that have fewer than 20 employees worldwide.

Incoming owners must hire from the preferential hiring list for a period of 180 days starting upon the transfer of ownership.

And finally, the incoming owner must retain for at least 90 days all employees that were hired from the preferential hiring list.

During this 90-day transitional period, the incoming owner may discharge employees hired from the preferential hiring list only when the employer either determines that fewer employees are required or for just cause.

Wonderful.

Sorry, Dan, did I cut you off?

That's it.

Okay.

Council colleagues, I want to say thank you to all of you for your feedback on various ideas for policy.

I know Council Member Gonzalez and I have heard from a number of you and also have been working directly with community partners as we try to think about how to strike the right balance.

And to me, the right balance means making sure that we're incorporating businesses who truly do provide a service to the hotel guests and recognizing some of those businesses that happen to be adjacent to the building might not be providing a direct service to those guests, and wanted to hit the right balance of how do we define ancillary business.

So with that in mind, we have crafted legislation, sorry, amendments to the legislation, and look forward to having a robust discussion about that.

Council Member Moraes, I know that you have some general comments on this topic, so I'd love to turn to you first, given your tight timeline, and then we'll open it up for additional comments.

Thank you.

First of all, thank you for accommodating my schedule, Madam Chair, and also for your leadership on this.

We've been going with the Domestic Bill of Rights that you passed under your leadership, and I have to say that you and Council Member Gonzalez are the most energetic women that are going to have babies that I've ever seen, so you're certainly making us keep up.

So with that, there's some general comments I want to make, and then as you know me, I want to get a little bit more in the weeds.

I will be abstaining instead of voting no, because I think there's room here to talk more about from the discussions that we've had with labor and the discussions that we've had with the hotel industry.

Everyone, I believe, to my knowledge, believes in hotel worker safety protection and we want to acknowledge their hard work and we want to honor the work that they do.

My concern is about the word ancillary hotel business and I should add that we've come a long way from the very first definition and certainly what we looked at under the prior legislation or prior other hotel definitions.

So ancillary, as you know, when you look at just the definition, it means providing necessary support to the primary activities or operation of an organization, institution, industry, or system.

The development of ancillary services to support its products.

And what we know is that a hotel's product is its lodging.

So I want a definition that, and we need a definition that recognizes not only the safety of the worker, of all workers, but about business, common sense, and how it's applied fairly.

And that's been my main concern since we've gone around and around about this particular definition.

So, and thank you, Dan, for reading into the record the actual definition.

There are certain verbs in here that concern me, and I'm going to pull a few out, and then I'm going to talk in general.

One thing that concerns me is that when we talk about operates from a physical location that is within a hotel, has direct interior access to the hotel, or both abuts the hotel and is an amenity to the hotel guests.

So when I see the word abuts, I'm guessing that means that that business is outside the physical four walls of the hotel.

The other issue is on B, businesses that contract with the hotel for its core function of providing guest lodging.

Not all businesses that provide amenities to the hotel contracts with them.

For obviously the bottom ones, housekeeping, room service, laundry, parking, that makes sense to me.

Other services concerns me.

Does that include the shoe store?

Does that include the chocolate candy store?

Does that include the hair salon?

Now, this is why I get concerned.

We did, and the voters overwhelmingly passed I-124 back in November, which I supported.

We know that it's been through four courts now, and now it's pending in the Washington State Supreme Court.

And so there are some issues that we're going to have to be addressing down the road.

I would just want to add to people listening that this is a very complex and nuanced piece of legislation, but it needs to happen under no uncertain terms.

I want today's actions, I believe that some of today's actions are a bit premature.

I think they're premature in purpose, intent, and application, and how we race forward.

We are looking at pieces of legislation where the base legislation has not been passed.

And so what I'm concerned about when I talk about the word premature is this definition is going to be used to encapsulate to make sure the other pieces of legislation that we're gonna look at further down the road, that these other hotels or other business, ancillary hotel businesses, are subject to that final piece of legislation.

So this isn't just a definition for definition's sake.

It's a definition to capture other businesses as the definition defines, and I feel that that's overbroad.

I feel that it's, overreaching and to some degree a bit arbitrary.

Now let me just go back to an example.

I've been meeting with labor, I've been meeting with hotel owners and small businesses and people that would be affected by this law.

There's a couple hotels that own a hotel, they own a restaurant, but the restaurant is not connected to the hotel.

In fact, a couple of them, one is in the same area, one is across the street.

That means that hotel owner and the fact that they own that restaurant would be subject to this law, but the five other restaurants that also provide services, not under contract, would be subject to this law.

And that, in good conscience, does not make sense.

And that's what the Supreme Court, I believe, would be addressing, too.

I've been finding all of these kind of scenarios, fact-based scenarios, where it doesn't make sense.

And we all know, and I know we have a couple lawyers up here.

I know Councilmember Gonzalez will catch this as well.

Bad law...

Bad facts make bad law.

And that's what my concern.

I mean, it's not addressing this particular issue, though it is addressing the seven pieces of I-124 on single subject matter issues.

That is factually incorrect.

Oh, OK.

Thank you.

it's only addressing whether or not the single subject issue.

It is not getting to the merits or the substance of the issues that we are legislating currently.

Currently, you're right.

It is getting to the seven sections about I-124 and ERISA is pending in the other court.

You're right.

So let me just go back here.

I just want to clarify that there's multiple times you've said, Council Member Juarez, that the Supreme Court is going to address the merits of the initiative, and that is not what they are addressing.

They are addressing whether or not the single subject rule under the Constitution was violated or not.

And that is different than whether or not the Supreme Court is going to dig into the details of the merits of the substantive issues that appeared in the complaint filed by industry against the city.

You're correct.

I'm sorry.

What I should have said, and I stand corrected, is that I-124 was looked at by King County Superior Court, the Washington State Supreme Court, the U.S.

District Court on the ERISA issues, and is also the Washington State Court of Appeals.

So you're right.

They are not going to address this specific issue.

But in general, what I'm concerned about is when we raise these issues, that the hotel industry will come back, and I want to make sure that we are not, in using these terms, arbitrary and capricious and overreaching, that we have something that withstands that kind of purview so this good legislation moves forward and is applied fairly.

That is the point I'm making, so thank you.

So I feel that this definition is for a larger purpose than just a simple definition.

I feel that it's a way, it's on its way, this law is on its way to becoming more encompassing piece of pending legislation that's to come.

where we are going to look at applying here other responsibilities and liabilities and costs to businesses that were not required to perform and be responsible for these tasks before.

I'm concerned about some of the businesses that have brick and mortar that are outside of the physical location of the hotel or simply provides an amenity or a complimentary services that does not have a contract.

with the hotel.

And I know that there are a few more additions and amendments to come that we will be discussing.

So I want to thank the chair for giving us room to have these discussions.

So for me, I want to abstain because I believe that there's more work to be done, but not a whole lot more work on the purpose, the intent as it's applied to all those that work in the hotel industry.

And I want to ensure that this definition and this proposed ordinance is not overreaching or arbitrary.

And unlike the I-124, which is being addressed on the single subject rule in the Washington State Supreme Court, that we don't have it hung up in the court system, that we do it right.

And that is my point.

Thank you, Matt.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

And I know you do have to go, Council Member Baxter also has to go.

We'll have some clarification here about how these businesses were actually included in Initiative 124 to begin with from Dan in a minute.

And I just want to remind folks, we do have in the current legislation, a different employee threshold, even though the basis of the definition for ancillary business would continue to apply.

We can continue to look at the difference in employees in various sections.

So that's what we currently have, but we'll continue to take your comments into consideration.

Council Member Baggiano, you have to go as well.

For the next minute, I want to acknowledge this is the toughest one.

And having talked with a number of folks in the industry, both workers and the people that are managing and owning the hotels that It is not in any way our intention to impact Romeo's Pizza.

If Romeo's Pizza happens to be on the same block, we would not consider that to be a main food or beverage provider to the hotel.

It's not my intention anyway to suggest that Storyville Coffee that leases space at the Alexis Hotel would be included in this.

They simply lease the, however many thousand square feet that they have, that they're not providing direct services to the hotel guests.

They're there for the public as a whole.

I want to exclude retail more clearly so that, again, using the Alexis Hotel as an example, the perfumery there would not, in my mind, be covered by this.

But if we're getting into a restaurant that is inside the hotel or connected directly with the hotel, not a little door that people walk in and out of, but that's clearly part of the hotel, that makes sense to me if they're providing room services and they're doing what would actually be part of a hotel service.

That said, I think we've got a lot more conversation that needs to happen around here.

I felt we came up with a compromise that dealt with many of the things that I've heard, but I also think we've got more work to do here.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you.

And thank you for your sponsorship on this and working with us on this language.

Thank you for flagging your concerns, even though you have to go, and we will continue this conversation.

Council Members.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Yeah, I just want to also speak to the fact that I think my instinct here, although I need to look into it further and talk to additional people, is that as it's drafted, it feels overbroad to me.

I am supportive, as Council Member Bagshaw said, of including businesses that they are clearly part of the hotel and is an amenity to the hotel guests.

but it looks to me like the sections AI and a small double I go beyond that whereas a Triple I looks good, as well as B.

So I appreciate everybody's work on this.

I think we're getting close, but I think there might be a little bit more to do.

Thank you for articulating the goal.

Council members Gonzalez or Sawant?

Council member Sawant.

Is your microphone on council member?

Point of process are are we voting on this?

I would like to yes.

My goal just again is that we get these two pieces of legislation out in an amended format so that if there are amendments to these two pieces and we will bring them back on September 5th along with the other two pieces of legislation so we can consider any final amendments as a amended package.

But that's not to indicate, Council Members Hwan and to our other colleagues who had some questions, that there wouldn't be the opportunity for additional amendments on this going forward.

I think really the intent of the amendments is to show that there is additional work that needed to be done.

We heard clear concerns with the base language that came forward and wanted to clarify.

and at least indicate that there was interest in working on it.

So I understand.

You have more to say, go ahead.

So I, I mean, just maybe just state some basic facts, I mean, basic points as far as my position is concerned, because I think My concerns may be quite different than the concerns that were stated.

I think that, I mean, obviously all workers deserve all the workplace benefits that, the best workplace benefits that are available to some workers.

So in other words, Council Member Juarez is correct that yes, this is not just a definition for definition's sake.

This is a definition in order to, clarify in the law which of the workers are going to be eligible for better health care benefits and things that are related to workplace benefits.

That is absolutely true, and I don't think it serves as any purpose to To present this as just a definition, obviously it is a question of what actually the law will say in terms of what workers gain.

And to remind everybody that 77% of Seattle voters said that all workers who are in any way connected to the hotel industry, which means retail, food and beverage outlets within the hotel premises, should be eligible for all the benefits that we're talking about, but principally among them that the workers are concerned about is health care, obviously.

And just for the businesses who have been here, you know, you're still complaining about $15 an hour and also saying that, well, I'm a restaurant, why should I pay?

No business has any God-given right to exploit workers.

No worker should be exploited.

All workers should get high-quality benefits and a living wage.

And so from that standpoint, if any business feels like they should not be paying health care, then I urge you to join me in fighting for Medicare for all.

But short of that, right now health care is going to come from the employer, and we will fight for the best possible benefits from employers.

And if employers don't like that, then let's join together fighting for Medicare for all, because that will actually enable workers to get healthcare through a public source rather than depending on employers.

But having said that, I actually like that there is an expansive definition in this of what businesses we're talking about in terms of whether they're operating from a physical location that is within a hotel.

So that's point number, small i, Roman numeral one.

And then two, has direct interior access to the hotel.

And then three, both abuts the hotel and is an amenity to the hotel guests.

All of this, I think, is very good clarification.

And I don't actually agree with the substance of some of the objections that have come up from some of the, not the hotels themselves, but from restaurant and retail speakers who have been here who say that, well, I'm not the hotel, why am I eligible?

But you're complete, first of all, just the baseline is all workers deserve the best healthcare and also no business has any God-given right to exploit any worker.

So that itself, it needs to be set out the door.

But outside of that, if you're a business on a hotel premises, you are getting business because customers are coming to the hotel.

So I don't see, I don't understand what the logic is of being absolved from that because clearly you're benefiting from being inside the hotel or around a hotel and you're getting the business that the hotel is bringing because their people are coming to stay there.

So I actually have no objection to having an expansive definition on clarifying all of that.

My specific concern comes from the fact that this amendment, It says, and maybe Dan could shed some light on this.

There's a pending question for you Yes, I just wanted to clarify that in this amendment we're saying food and food or beverage business which means retail would be excluded from this whereas I'm just I'm this is my question.

I'm not I'm not making a statement.

I'm asking a question whereas in the initiative that was passed by voters, it didn't say which businesses, which means all the businesses on the hotel premises would have to be eligible for that.

Is that accurate?

Thank you for teeing up that question, because that's exactly what I was trying to orchestrate with Dan, too.

We have that chart that shows what was included in the initiative, and then what we're proposing, and then also what Long Beach and Oakland have considered.

So perhaps we could walk through that, Council Member Sawant, because I think you're getting to the point that I was thinking of as well.

How does this compare to the original initiative, which was, I think, broader than people remember?

Yes.

Yes.

So what's labeled Attachment A, a comparison chart for hotel employees' safety protections, This chart is provided as a link to your agenda under Council Bill 119556, and it walks through a comparison of how The initiative 124 treated each of a series of policy questions, and then how the introduced, that's the first column under I-124.

Then under proposed Seattle is the introduced bill, how did it deal with it?

And then we compare against Long Beach and Oakland, California, who have some similar provisions.

Okay, hold on a minute, because I think we're looking at the wrong attachment.

Can we pull up attachment B?

It's attachment B, not A.

And it should be titled Comparison Chart, Ancillary Hotel Businesses.

And I've reorganized all my stuff, so I don't know what it was attached to.

It's on the screen behind you.

Thank you.

There we go.

Thank you, Farideh.

The good news is that it has the same squares that I wanted to talk to, so I think that's why I was confused.

My apologies.

So the initiative defined hotel broadly.

It didn't have the term ancillary hotel business.

The definition for hotel included the same words that we are now using for a defined term, ancillary hotel business, just about.

So you can see that it is any contracted, leased, or sublet premises that is either connected to or operated in conjunction with a building's purpose or provides services at the building.

The proposed legislation defines an ancillary hotel business to be that same subset of the definition that in the initiative applied to a hotel.

The one minor, in my mind, but maybe not in yours, the distinction is that whereas the initiative said the building's purpose because it was talking about a hotel, we now say the hotel's purpose because we have a separate entity, the ancillary hotel business.

Just to clarify to everybody who's listening, so you're saying that the existing language in the bill that the council is considering is very similar to the language that was passed by voters.

except for that buildings purpose versus hotels purpose.

And I just want to clarify that you're comparing it to the existing language, not the amended language.

That is right.

And I don't want to speak for the sponsors, but I believe the intent of the amendment was to provide some clarification and limiting, not further broadening the application of what an ancillary business is and to provide a little more direction about who qualifies and under what conditions.

As one of the co-sponsors, I think that's an accurate description of the purpose.

So the purpose is to create a clear nexus between the types of ancillary businesses that are located within a hotel or or sort of, as I've described it, on the property footprint of the hotel, that are truly an amenity to the guests that are staying there.

So it's building on the concept that we recognize and we've heard from from many folks that hotel owners design their property and they have control over how they design those properties, including whether or not there's going to be doors in certain places.

And what we want to be able to do is recognize that hotels and hotel owners and management still are making the decisions as to how those spaces are designed, for what purpose those spaces are designed, and who ultimately they're going to rent that space to.

And that's a direct benefit to the hotel owners and to the guests that will be staying at the hotel, all for the purpose of encouraging more people to become guests at those hotels.

So if you go onto websites for hotels, which I've been doing a little bit of myself lately, is you will always, almost always find a section that says dining, for example.

And that is on the hotel's website.

And even though you might have to walk out of the main entrance of a hotel and down the street a little bit, it is still in the same building, effectively.

And it is still being billed as an amenity to the people who stay at the hotel.

So I think the intent is to capture those types of ancillary businesses that are clearly intended to be an amenity to the people who are staying at the hotel and are being characterized as such.

And that amenity is being facilitated by deliberate decisions being made by designers of hotels and owners of hotels to create those kind of spaces.

as sort of the evolution of this business model.

That's what I have personally experienced in staying at a lot of hotels, but also it's what I have heard from folks at Unite here, both here and in Long Beach, around how a lot of these facilities are actually designed.

Council Member Swann, I'm going to say one comment and then hope that we can close up this discussion.

I was going to say debate.

It's not a debate.

We're just discussing amendments.

One of the goals that I'd like to underscore for our council colleagues is the business model that we've seen more and more of contracting out what had originally been considered kind of a core service, a core service of either a bar or a coffee shop or a restaurant that had otherwise always been part of a hotel Simply trying to put maybe a wall up between the entrance is what the amended legislation acknowledges as well.

We don't want to facilitate or encourage people to put a wall up between what was otherwise an entrance into a coffee shop or a bar and recognize that in some cases, not all, but in some cases, that type of business model could potentially be used.

If it's an actual benefit to the hotel, if it had otherwise been incorporated, and if it has historically kind of been seen as an amenity to the hotel, I think it's important, as you said, to acknowledge that we do recognize the benefit to the guests and also the importance of incorporating those workers, but potentially a place like Biscuit Pitch and this coffee shop that Sally Bagshaw mentioned, We're never really part of the hotel amenities.

But this is trying to recognize a shifting business market where we do want to include those individuals as much as possible.

And so I'll just leave it at that.

I think you get my point.

As I said, I don't have any specific, at this moment anyway, I would, you know, this is something I want to check with Unite here on the explanation that exists here mainly about, you know, what is defined as, you know, in terms of geographic location, what is ancillary.

That is, as I clarified earlier, that is not where my question lies.

My question is about which workers would be excluded, and in the existing language, it says, ancillary hotel businesses means any contracted, leased, or sublet premises connected to or operated in conjunction with the hotel's purpose of providing services of the building.

Now, if this amendment said ancillary hotel businesses means any business with and then with the one Roman numeral one two three that you have here then I wouldn't have a quibble with it at all the problem is not with the extended power earlier today and it's happened now for the third time and sorry guys before that started yes yeah although the lights are on is that through power backup colleagues it's

Can I continue?

There's the microphone.

All right, we're good to go.

Please, Seattle Channel, help us fix this in the future.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Sawant, you were in the middle of saying something, so I want to turn back to you and apologize for the interruption.

I'll try to, yeah, quickly wrap it up.

I mean, I just wanted to clarify that my concerns were not on the the more detailed geographic description of what counts as an ancillary business.

My concern is that the amendment says food or beverage business, which in my, Dan should correct me if I'm wrong, but which implies that retail businesses that are located in any of those, you know, one, two, three Roman numeral definition of location will, the workers, in those retail businesses that fit that physical description will not be eligible for the benefits that the food or beverage businesses will be eligible for, in contrast with the existing language, which is in line with the voter initiative language, where all the businesses that fit that geographic proximity location of workers in all those businesses will be eligible for those benefits.

Thank you.

Am I right?

Broadly speaking, correct.

There is some question about the second half of the definition refers to all businesses, but then modifies that to say so long as they contract with a hotel to further the hotel's core function, and it provides a description of what the hotel's core function is. that has one open-ended item, and none of them say retail services, but they do say other services.

So that would be a subject for a director's rule to clarify which other services.

And Council Member Sawant, I think your point is really well taken on the question about retail businesses and how folks would be affected.

I want to look into that a little bit more.

But I do think that what we heard from folks is the real interest was including food and beverage establishments, and that's where we really focused on making sure that those entities are included.

Also, just want to reiterate, and I think everybody knows this here, but the gift shop, for example, that is hotel employees, those folks would be included because they're already hotel employees.

I think your question is still valid, though, about the contracted out.

But I'm not talking about hotel employees.

Clearly, I'm talking about workers that are employed by another incorporated business, but would not be included here.

And Dan, thank you for sort of mentioning that the original or the existing language also has some, I don't know how much, I mean, I'm not a legal expert, so I don't know what the language that you read out implies.

To me, however, and I would like you to comment on that, but to me, however, the amended language makes it very clear that only food or beverage businesses would be eligible, not retail.

So in that sense, it seems like it is, the amended language would exclude retail, and there's no ambiguity in what I think it is.

In section A, it is exclusive to food or beverage, but in section B, it's more expansive, right?

It is.

I think Dan's point is that it would be up to a director's role to determine whether other services would include things that are not listed there already, which could be retail.

if that business is contracting with a hotel to further the hotel's core function.

For example, if it was a gift shop that was inside the hotel or budding the hotel but wasn't owned by the hotel chain and they have a contract of some sort to have exclusive ability to provide those services to their guests, then they would be covered.

Yes, instead of buying a teddy bear at a gift shop with cash, you could just sign your room number because the business will charge it to the room through a contract understanding that they have with the hotel.

That would be covered, potentially, in other services that are covered under Part B of the definition.

Sorry if I cut you off.

No, no, that was perfect.

Council Member Swahn, your questions and your point is well taken, and I appreciate you raising them.

So I think what we would ask our friends at Central Staff to do is give us maybe some scenarios, if that's okay.

And I think to your point as well, though, and I was just honest with our viewing public, you know, really I was looking in that first part at the food and beverage establishment, recognizing That's why I've heard the most concern.

But let's take another look as this move forward.

My hope is that it would still move forward and that we could continue to ask the question around how do these other types of business establishment fit into this rubric.

I agree that we have heard a lot of concerns about food or beverage, but we've also heard repeatedly workers and the union saying no, they don't want any workers to be excluded.

And also, I don't think we should need them to say that we shouldn't want any workers to be excluded.

So I feel that in that sense, this amendment is not, it seems to be saying, again, I agree with Council Member Horvald that there's a, I mean, the A and the B, I'm not sure whether B sort of, and I mean, A clearly excludes retail, but then does the B clause imply that, okay, then A doesn't apply, or all the businesses that contract with the hotel will be liable for all the benefits that the workers in the hotel would get?

I'm not clear on that.

It seems to me that the existing language is, Here's what I would say.

I understand that a lot of things would have to be ironed out through director's rule, and I have no quibble with that, but I feel that the direction that the more general language that is present in the existing legislation gives a much better direction for where to go, and the direction I want to go is all workers in the hotel premises being eligible for it, whereas if this amendment becomes part of the legislation language and the direction that is given to the staff that will be formulating the director's rules is to exclude retails.

And I think that it just gets very murky as opposed to just keeping it very clear all businesses on the hotel premises, which would be my preference.

So I feel compelled to vote no on this.

Okay, thank you, Council Member.

Council Member Herbold.

Yeah, I have a question or maybe not a question.

It's more of a I think a statement as it relates to the employee threshold okay, I know that the Mayor's small business advisory Commission has been doing a lot of work on the what the definition is of a small business and we have sort of different definitions sprinkled throughout different pieces of legislation throughout the city.

And I just think it's really important to think about this proposed 20-employee threshold to see whether or not it's the right one.

You know, some of the comments that I heard today about the intention of the city to support small businesses and in doing so we have historically treated small businesses differently in many of our labor laws from paid sick and safe leave to to secure scheduling, to minimum wage.

And in all of those policies, we define small business a little differently.

So this is just an area that I'd like to get a little bit more granularity in and also talk to SBAC about their thinking about where they're going with a definition for small business.

Thank you very much.

Council members want to close us.

Sorry, I just forgot to mention one thing.

If you are, I mean, if the amendment is moved as is, then as I said, I have to vote no.

But if you were open to just striking out the words food or beverage, then I'm totally fine with the rest of the amendment, and I actually like the clarification that exists in terms of defining the geographic location.

So, just wanted to throw that out there.

Thank you for offering that.

Council Member Gonzalez, any comments or questions from you?

I think both of our colleagues have raised important issues.

I was just having a sidebar conversation with Council Member Herbold around the employee threshold question.

And I know that when we originally proposed the threshold where it's at, we understood that that was an opportunity for further conversation and we just don't have it represented in front of us.

And I think that that's probably an issue that we should have identified for purposes of being able to have a conversation at the table, and I would be interested in continuing those conversations.

As it relates to whether or not to strike the language of food or beverage business, again, I was sort of operating under the assumption that that's what we needed to prioritize in that first section, which is why I supported having it there with the understanding that when we layer subsection B on top of that, we are capturing other businesses that may be sort of facilitating the contracting out of services that we've heard is a real concern.

to some of the workers.

And so I was operating under the assumption that the A section was really sort of getting at the crux of the main concern in terms of the types of businesses that are generally more likely to be located within a hotel space or adjacent to a hotel space for purposes of being an amenity to those guests, while focusing B, on those types of businesses that may be utilized to contract out services that would ordinarily stay in-house for existing hotel employees to be able to leverage.

I felt like we were striking a good balance to try to reasonably capture those types and classes of businesses that we can expect to be engaging in those types of amenity relationships with hotels for purposes of delivering better service to guests.

So I would need to think a little bit more about whether or not to strike that food and beverage aspect.

Otherwise, I think if we strike food or beverage, A and B, I think, potentially become one and the same?

Not necessarily, I think, because I think they're taking into account various types of characteristics that would make a business an ancillary business under the definition.

So I don't see necessarily a conflict between the two if we remove food or beverage, and that Yeah, I mean, that would be my strong recommendation.

Okay.

Council Member Swann, I want to thank you for suggesting that and also for your comments around how the current language compares to who's covered, especially in retail under the existing ordinance and initiative 124. I, at this point, am not going to support striking food and beverage, but I will definitely want to work with you, the folks at Unite here, the folks in the industry, to think about the various scenarios and who's covered, especially as we heard from, I believe, the folks, especially in Unite here, about the concern around food and beverage versus retail.

Would love to engage in those discussions with you.

I totally understand that We have a little bit more time on this and the questions have definitely been raised.

Dan, thank you for helping us look into this.

I would like to go ahead and move this amendment as is with the commitment to continuing to work with our council colleagues and the stakeholders.

on some scenarios and potentially coming back to this on September 5th if needed, but do want to underscore my understanding for where each person has raised concerns and will work with you.

If that sounds okay, I'd like to go ahead and Since we're a few minutes over, go ahead and move the passage of amendment number three.

I'm sorry, amendment number one to council bill 119556. Second.

Are there any additional comments?

Okay, all those in favor, raise your hand and say aye.

Aye.

Two.

All those opposed?

One.

Any abstentions?

One.

Okay, so with a vote of two to one to one, it does appear that this amendment will move forward, and we again want to underscore our appreciation for the concerns that have been raised, but also for the ongoing dialogue on this.

That is going to signal to us that this bill, these two pieces of legislation that we've amended today will stay in committee.

We will bring those back on September 5th.

And then also for our council colleagues and the stakeholders at large, I'm going to hold over items number six and seven, which is Council Bill 119557, which is protecting employees from workplace violence and harassment, and Council Bill 119555, which is improving employee access to medical care.

Those two items were slated for briefing today.

Thank you for the memos on that.

We will have those briefings and possible discussion on amendments in August 15th date with the desire to bring forward all four pieces of legislation on September 5th.

And comments for the good of the record?

No, thank you.

Chair, can you please remind us what our deadline is for amendments for the August 15th hearing?

Thank you.

So we do recognize that there is a need to work with central staff on some of the details on this.

I'm going to give folks the same deadline that I gave earlier, which is a week from now, if that's okay with folks.

But I'd like to make it early in the morning.

So nine o'clock on Thursday, August...

That would be 16. Somebody's helping with math over here, it says nine.

Nine plus seven is 16. Thank you.

So a week from now, if we could try to have those in the morning, that will give us Thursday and Friday prior to the upcoming week.

So that's Thursday, August 8th by no later than 12 p.m.

Okay, no later than 12.

Yeah, I'll be flexible.

But what do you want me to do?

Sagel's looking at me.

Is it 9.30 a.m.

or what?

Council Member Swanton, do you have one more item?

You just wanted to say I might miss the August 15th meeting because of family obligations.

I just want to let you know.

I'll try my best to make it, but I'm not sure I can.

And we really appreciate you coming to every one of these meetings, too.

So thank you for your presence here.

Any other comments for the good of the order?

I would just say that I will actually not be here on August 15th because I have a work trip out of the country.

but we'll be working closely with you as a co-sponsor on this full package to look at the various amendments that might need to come forward on the 15th of August.

Excellent, thank you.

Before we adjourn, can I just confirm, looking at our staff and central staff, what is the deadline that you prefer for amendments on the two sections that are forthcoming?

August 8th at noon.

Thank you for the record.

That's very helpful.

So August 8th at noon is where we will have our amendments due, but we will also make sure to push out via our communications the central staff memos that have been provided on these two sections.

With that, I want to thank especially our team, Brianna and Sejal, who've been working with central staff.

Thank you, Dan Eder, for your work on these amendments with us.

Fadi, thank you for your flexibility in hosting us today.

Really appreciate it.

For the folks who are still here, thank you for continuing to engage in this.

I want to remind people at the next meeting, we will again have the hotel legislation on the second part of the agenda.

So if people don't feel like you have to come right at nine o'clock, we're trying to bump up our start time to nine so that we can include our two pieces of Seattle City Light legislation and potential I'm happy to also hold over the vote on the MFTE discussion to give us more time on hotel worker legislation since that was cut short today.

And we will include in the first part of the agenda MFTE discussion and possible review of amendments.

This new solar program that we're working on in addition to the Seattle City Light Western Energy and Balance Authority ordinance.

These are two pieces of legislation that help us fulfill our goal around the Green New Deal.

And then we will get into the heart of this last two pieces of legislation.

Council Member Gonzales.

Thank you for being here, and we wish you the best of safe travels on your trip.

Excited that you are able to do that.

And again, on September 5th, we will have the chance to review all the legislation.

So your presence will be still felt on the 15th, and thank you and your team for working with us in advance of those upcoming meetings.

Thank you all.

With that, today's meeting is adjourned.