This is a special meeting of our Civic Development, Public Assets, and Native Communities Committee.
It's Wednesday.
It is not June 5th.
It is Wednesday, whatever day it is today, the 20th?
19th, and the time is 2 p.m.
Thank you, Council Member Gonzalez for joining me.
I'm Council Member Sally Bagshaw.
I'm usually vice chair of this committee, but acting chair for today.
I'm joined by Council Member Gonzalez, and I don't know if we're going to have someone else, but we might.
So thank you all for being here.
If there is no objection, the agenda will be reordered to consider agenda item two before item one.
Hearing no objection the agenda is amended and if there is no objection the agenda will be adopted as amended.
Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted as amended.
I'm very grateful that we're going to hear two wonderful reports today.
This is our RSJI, our Race and Social Justice Initiative reports from Parks and from Seattle Center, two of my favorite departments.
So we're going to ask Jesus Aguirre, if you would like to join us at the table and any of your team members We also do not have anybody signed up for public comment.
Is there anybody in the back that has any public comments?
Okay, then we're gonna move right into the presentations.
And since Parks has been asked to go first, we're just going, once you get settled in, we're gonna move forward, Jesus.
And all of you who are here at the table, is everybody like moving down?
Truly, I showered this morning.
Apparently, we're scared of you all.
Yeah, I know it.
It looks kind of scary.
Great.
Well, Jesus, would you like to start?
All right.
She's going to read something in the record for me.
Thank you.
So everybody knows Nagin from Deborah Juarez's office.
Hi, welcome.
We have item number two, 2018 Race and Social Justice Initiative Report for Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.
Very good, thank you.
Jesus, would you like to just start the introductions and just go around the table and identify yourself, what part of the Parks Department that you're working in, and just a quick half second sentence about what you're doing for parks.
Sure.
My name is Jesus Aguirre, and I'm the superintendent of Seattle Parks and Recreation.
Great.
Thank you.
I am Bea Hill, the equity engagement strategic advisor overseeing the advancement of the race and social justice initiative.
Well done.
Thank you, Bea.
I'm Jason Vining Nakamura, and I work in the Northeast District as a maintenance laborer.
Thank you.
Hi, I'm Belinda Chin, I go by she, her pronouns, and I am the Urban Food Systems Program Coordinator.
Excellent.
And would you say it's Belinda?
Belinda.
Okay, very good.
So as we go forth today, I'd like to know more about the work you're doing.
And before you leave today, please talk to me because we have an idea for another urban food forest in Belltown.
And just got the approval to go ahead with the mayor today.
So you may be busy.
Okay, don't get scared.
Please.
Hello, I'm Ashlyn Quinn Fleming.
I work with Planning and Development for Parks and Recreation.
I'm also one of the co-leads for our change team.
along with Jason and Belinda.
Excellent, thank you.
Did you have something else you wanted to add right now?
Okay, Jesus, all yours.
Sure, thank you.
So we're going to update you on our 2018 RSGI initiative, and so I'm going to do some of it.
We'll sort of tag team here.
We've got folks from our change team here as well as in the audience, and then Bea will talk through some of her work as well.
But just to kind of get us started on the presentation, and I think just by way of context, so Seattle Parks and Recreation is a large agency.
We have a significant portfolio in terms of the amenities and the programs that we provide on behalf of the residents of the city of Seattle.
And we focus really on three things, helping people be healthy, ensuring that our environment is healthy, and then building strong communities throughout the city.
And as a large agency, You know, obviously equity both in terms of our own workforce as well as our programming and the way our facilities are distributed is really critical for us.
I want to dig into talking a little bit about our staff.
So, this just gives you a very broad look at our gender breakdown.
These are employees, roughly 1,500 employees.
And we're sort of a complicated agency because we've got some full-time staff.
We've got intermittent temporary staff.
We've got part-time staff.
So, during the year, we sort of ebb and flow in terms of the staff.
that are working on behalf of the residents.
So this chart reflects essentially our permanent folks, which is about 1,500 folks.
Again, permanent, excuse me, full-time folks.
Permanent and some intermittent staff that come and go that are full-time.
You went past the first slide really quickly.
If we could just go back there.
This is where I want to doff my hat to all of you in Parks and Recreation.
I mean, think about this, 6,400 acres of parks and green space that you all care for and tend for the benefit of the rest of us in the city.
And the fact that there's 485 parks and natural areas, that is a lot for a city, any city, whether our size or larger.
But there's also 26, I think 27 community centers if you count the one in Lake City.
And certainly, Council Member Juarez would want us to make sure that D5 is positively represented here.
But it's huge.
It's a wonderful department.
You do really good work, and I look forward to your talking about all of what you have done this year.
Yeah, no, thank you.
And thank you for highlighting, because you're right.
We have a great team that does a lot of work, and they do it each and every day, committed to make sure we're serving everyone.
And we certainly appreciate everybody's efforts.
And I was corrected the other day.
I like to push my staff, and I kept saying, we have 27, we have 27. They're like, we actually have 26, because even if you count Lake City, as you know, we closed Belltown, so we only have 26.
So is Belltown closed now or closes down at the end of the year?
It's closed.
Yeah, it's closed.
All right.
But for those of us who live near Belltown, we can say thank you for setting it up, and we're looking forward to the next one, which I know is coming.
Yeah.
Thank you.
So, again, back to our staff.
We've got roughly 60, almost 61 percent of our staff identifies as male and 39.2 are female.
Then we dig in a little bit more in terms of the ethnicity by race here, and we have the majority of our staff actually identifies as people of color, 24% black or African American, 16.4 Asian, 6.1 Latinx, and then our American Indian Native, Alaskan Natives, 2%, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islanders, 1.6%, and then folks who identify with two or more races is 1.9%.
And then the balance of that, just under 50%, 48.1 is folks who identify as white.
When you look at a little deeper into the data, this is a lot going on in this chart, but I think it helps us sort of ground where some of our work needs to go in terms of our staff.
The bar on the far left here just gives us, represents in bar format what the pie chart showed you at the beginning, that roughly 51 point, or 52% of our staff identifies as people of color, and then as you move to the right, the supervisors, so these are the top 25% of our supervisors.
These are folks, HR does an analysis in terms of the number of people that individuals supervise, and so the top 25%, this is sort of the span of control of the agency, people of color are represented as 35.6% of that group are people of color.
The bar on the right looks at our wage earning, and of the top 25% wage earners, 39.9% identify as people of color.
So a couple other points on this bar, the dotted line, sort of the gray dotted line there shows where the population of Seattle is in terms of breakdown, and then the darker line atop shows you the King County breakdown.
So, certainly it shows we have a diverse agency, but we've got some work to do, particularly around our supervisory employees and ensuring that we continue to diversify that team, as well as the folks who are making the most, the highest wages at the agency.
Great.
Thank you.
And for the record here, that bar, the darker blue bar represents people who identify as white.
It doesn't come across on our chart.
You can't read it here.
It's blue on blue.
So that the next time that you want to print this, you might just recognize that that's the issue.
Okay.
I appreciate that.
Sorry about that.
And so what I'd like to do now is go into some of our initiatives programmatically during 2018. And as you'll recall, I was not here in 2018, so I'm going to rely on our folks here.
If I say anything I shouldn't say, they'll correct me.
And if you have any questions that I can't answer, they will certainly answer them on our behalf.
But because our work is so vast, we try to focus it on those three areas, healthy people, healthy environment, and strong communities.
So the reporting we'll do today is in those areas.
The first one is around healthy people.
And because we're talking about race and social justice, we know that lower income folks and people of color experience incidents of things like food insecurity, obesity, chronic illness, and things like that at higher rates.
So part of our work is to make sure that we can combat that.
The two programs that I'll highlight here, the first one is called Breck in the Streets, and this is an initiative that we used essentially to bring recreation into communities that hadn't participated in some of these initiatives.
And this is specific to healthy living, so these are physical fitness activities.
So, we selected a cadre of parks in Southeast Seattle, parks in lower-income communities, again, that don't have as many of these activities.
And what we did is we went out and partnered with other organizations, took advantage of other cultural events that were happening, and just brought recreation to them.
Really exciting program.
And through this program in 2018, we reached, I think, 1,400 individuals.
And again, these tend to be folks that aren't necessarily the ones that are coming into our community centers and participating in some of these programs.
was an example of us trying to rethink the way we do some of this and actually bringing recreation into our communities.
Do you actually close streets and invite people to come into closed streets?
Or you said that you went into your own parks.
Yeah, these were in the parks.
But part of what sort of maybe the next iteration of this is kind of what you're talking about, whether it's closing streets or bringing these activities into some of the housing projects, communities, places where we don't necessarily have parks and recreation amenities, we want to start bringing them into those.
Good.
Well, I know SDOT a number of years ago had a street program where people could close their streets.
after even 3.30 in the afternoon for a period of time that encouraged the neighborhoods to close so the kids could be out there and play kick the can, whatever they're doing.
And I don't know whether that is continuing or not, but I really would like to put a plug in.
for a coordinated effort between you and SDOT.
I think there's great opportunities that the neighborhoods have had.
I've talked to some folks in Portland, some folks in Vancouver, BC that did that.
And then, you know, they have their own whatever.
It's not necessarily an organized effort, but whether it's a skateboard or whatever they're doing just to have fun in the streets, but it brings the streets back for people in their neighborhoods.
No, I think that's right.
I love that idea.
And, you know, when you take it to a larger scale, there are places like Boca Tat Columbia where they do Ciclovia where they close major streets every Sunday for the full day to just bring the community out and be active.
They have bands, they have bicycles, like you name it.
It's just this whole culture of let's get outdoors.
And at some level we should be doing things like that.
The second program I want to highlight in this area is our destination summer camps.
And this is one where, you know, as part of a gap analysis that we did in our registration numbers across the city, we found a discrepancy in southeast Seattle.
We looked at basically the percentage of the population in that area that was actually registered for programs.
When we looked at across the city, we found that in southeast Seattle, we had roughly 2% of that population registered.
versus I think we had up to 31% in northeast Seattle and 20% in both southeast and south, excuse me, in north and southwest.
So there was a discrepancy as we dug into it, we identified that the cost was part of the issue.
So we piloted a program in Garfield Community Center where we did a couple things.
So we created these programs where we changed our scholarship program.
So anyone who qualified for 80%, we went ahead and gave them 100%.
So we met that 20% gap.
We did significant outreach into the community to sort of bring folks in.
We targeted the folks who were on wait lists and really were able to more than double the registrations in that program.
And as a pilot, we're really excited about how it turned out.
And in fact, we're gonna grow that in 2019. We're planning on doing it, continuing to do it, but just recently we received a grant from Amazon, actually, in collaboration with the Alliance for Education to grow this program.
We got a $250,000 grant to continue to do more of this, so we're excited to do that.
Do we still have the program that encourages women who prefer, I think they call themselves women of cover, to have times where they can swim in the pool and it's closed to men so that they have the freedom that they want and the privacy that they expect.
Is that still going on?
I believe it is, yes.
You're getting some head nods around the table.
Yes, it is, yes.
Because I think there was a period of time where we were hearing that it was something that people wanted to have more of and I just didn't know whether we were proceeding with that or not.
Yeah, we're proceeding with that, and as anything that is good sometimes, there is protest and there's opposition, so we're working through some of that.
We'll make sure we continue to do that, but there are other issues there, but we'll keep working on it.
Yeah.
So, moving on to the environmental side of things, and again, you know, we know that the folks that we're targeting are folks that have been disproportionately exposed to some of these environmental conditions that harm their health, and so we try to combat that.
And in our work, we tend to, at least in the examples I'm going to bring up, we focus on our youth.
So, the two examples here.
We have this really exciting Youth Employment and Trails program that is both a program that helps our trails and make sure that we're making them accessible to folks, but it also teaches youth skills and then we're converting it into sort of a job development program, so creating a pipeline for ourselves.
So we had a small cohort in 2018 of 10 young people, 18 to 24 year olds that are involved in learning how to maintain the trails.
And then we were able to actually convert five of those to full-time employees of Parks and Recreation.
So we're looking to find ways to continue to grow that.
And again, it really is a great way to continue to build a pipeline and to diversify our staffing.
That's great.
Thank you.
And I also want to just extend my thanks to all of you that were working on the Chiefsty Green Street area.
a number of years ago.
I know the neighborhood came together and we're really promoting that.
And then the kids have gotten older, which is wonderful, and they still have ownership of that.
It's their trail and the connections between Beacon Hill and down to the light rail station.
That has improved, but also the young people have gotten, they've learned a lot, but I want to acknowledge the work that you've done in just another neighborhood.
Thank you.
The second program we'll highlight here is one of Belinda's programs on the Urban Food Systems Program.
And this was a great initiative that we worked on at South Park to create the Garden Squad Program.
And so, you know, these are summer youth employment folks both in the winter and the summer.
who were able to grow produce at Mara Farms.
They learned how to appropriate dieting and real hands-on skills there in terms of diet, nutrition, and how to prepare meals.
And they actually were able to cater some of the food at the community center.
So a great program for youth, and certainly I'm sure Bethany could tell us more about that.
On the strong community side of things, there's a couple programs here that we'll highlight.
I think you're both familiar with our Seattle Conservation Corps, which is, I think, a unique program and a real important part of what we do in terms of helping homeless or formerly homeless individuals develop skills, get the sort of casework support that they need, and then become employed.
And so in 2018, we had 46 of our participants actually graduate from the Corps and gain full-time employment.
And we also had 41 of those who also were able to secure stable housing.
So it sort of shows both sides of that program.
And the other piece that's really important, we've now converted the Seattle Conservation Corps into sort of an official apprenticeship program, so that right now these folks tend to come and work with us, but now we're trying to spread that out so they can participate in other agencies as apprentices.
The Rec for All program is one that, as you might recall, was established during the 2014, during the Park District.
And this was an idea, again, of trying to bring recreational opportunities to communities that we weren't necessarily reaching or weren't coming to us.
This program is a grant program that allows us to give funding to community-based organizations who then create programs sort of on our behalf.
And it has great impact in terms of the people that we serve, but it also helps us learn how to do some of this programming.
And, you know, some of the key learnings we've already sort of taken is some of the engagement.
You know, we've hired ambassadors that go out and help us engage with the communities based on some of the work that we've seen some of these organizations do.
I'll highlight this program.
There's a, on the picture here, it's a program that we granted, we created a grant for the East African elders through the lens of coexistence.
And it's such a powerful program.
So we had youth interviewing the elders about their experiences and then documenting that to really create this, not just cultural, but intergenerational project and video, which was really exciting.
Through the REC4ALL program, we granted $250,000 to about 25 community-based organizations that are very specific in terms of dealing with communities that we don't necessarily always are successful at dealing with.
Is that video project completed?
Is it online now, do you know?
with the Ethiopian elders?
It was 2018, so I'm imagining it is.
I'm not sure if it's online.
I know it's completed, but I don't know where it is.
So if somebody would maybe just look into that and get back to me, I'd love to see if it's actually posted.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, so I'll move on to, and actually I'm gonna turn it over to Bea to talk about some of the other nitty-gritty part of what we do in terms of equity.
Great, thank you.
All right, so next we will take a look at our WMBIE data.
In regards to our consultant purchasing WMBIE utilization, we almost met our purchasing goal with a 20 percent actual versus a 21 percent stated goal.
Our data analysis shows in 2018 our total WEMB purchasing dollar amount spent was $2.8 million, and this was an increase from 2017, which yielded $2.7 million, which leads to a percentage increase from 17 to 20 percent.
2018 also yielded the highest WEMB purchasing data for the Department in comparison to previous years.
Do you have a breakdown on what the WMB, what they were doing?
One of my real objectives over the years has been to make sure that these, whatever the businesses are, that they're actually engaged in something where they're using their skills, gaining skills, and so on.
Do you have, maybe just give me an example or two of what you know about their engagement with us?
So in regards to purchasing, we're still looking into the data.
We're still doing an analysis to speak to that specific data that you're requesting and working with FAS to identify that data.
We need to do a more robust data analysis to get to the details to be able to give the documentation and justification.
The point I'm making is that when the MWBE program started, and we're talking like 19 84, five, there was an awful lot of flow throughs.
So the MWBEs might be buying from one, they'd flow through their business and then distribute, but they weren't really using their skills.
And we wanted to make sure that these businesses were getting in that capacity building we always talk about, but are also standing on their own feet so they don't feel like they're just a pass through.
They're really engaged and deeply involved.
And I'd just like to be sure that in parks when we're doing this, that the individuals are deeply engaged and that the employees are also part of something that's robust.
As we move forward with consulting, we exceeded our consulting goal of 48 percent actual versus 21 percent stated goal.
During 2018, there was an increase in women-owned business consulting contracts, specifically in planning and development.
Although the two largest contracts totaling approximately $1.5 million were one-time projects, we recognize the importance of how SPR's WEMBI efforts work to leverage the City's purchasing power to include and build the capacity of women and minority-owned businesses.
We do find it important to note that, as I stated, we're continuing to analyze and work through data collection and reporting methods due to migrating to the new financial system.
And through this continued monitoring and collaboration with FAS, our WMBI data may see an increase in totals for 2018. As we begin to look forward, 2019 and beyond, we have the same utilization goals as last year, both set at 21 percent.
We will continue our knowledge and resource-building efforts for staff and decision-makers, implement an employee engagement WMBIE advocate series, continue to participate in citywide outreach events to include SPR-hosted events, build upon our interdepartmental partnerships, and work internally to explore our systems and processes so that informative data analysis is used to set future utilization goals.
And then sort of moving on in terms of how, so our surveys and sort of our own thinking internally about how we continue to move this work forward.
We're working to try to build our own internal capacity, and I'll highlight a couple of these.
One of which is actually hiring Bea, which I'll talk about in just a second in terms of her role, and she can certainly talk about that as well.
But one really sort of exciting aspect of this that was done last year was an agency-wide retreat where literally we closed all our facilities down and brought everyone into the hangar at Magnuson to have these deeper conversations about race and social justice, and literally just create a foundation to continue those discussions to further this work.
We were able to get 84% of our employees actually attend, and then all of them were in the larger sessions, and then we had several workshops on implicit bias that they were also able to attend.
So, really a great start for this ongoing conversation.
We're already well into the planning for a second version of this that we're going to do this year at Magnuson on September 19th, and certainly would invite both of you to attend if you're interested.
But again, it's sort of the work of continuing to work, to provide both our staff with the tools to have these conversations, so that as we start and continue to make decisions, that we're really doing it through this racist and social justice lens.
So we'll continue that.
As I mentioned, part of...
Just a quick query on this.
What has the reaction been?
When you get 84% of your employees attending, did you do any follow-up?
What are people saying about it?
And what are you seeing and defining as success?
I'll start, but I'll let folks chime in.
I think what I've seen certainly coming into this is there certainly has been an elevated level in terms of the conversations at the agency, even from when I was there prior to this.
So there is the yearning for more of these conversations.
And so part of what we're trying to do with the next session is make sure that we build on that.
And, you know, these are hard conversations, and we want to both give folks the, you know, we want to elicit these conversations, but we also want to give folks the tools and the resources to have them and continue to work.
But I don't know, Bea or others, if you want to talk a little bit more about what you've seen.
Since transitioning into the position in February and working closely with division leadership and also frontline staff and working at all levels with staff in the department, there's a momentum.
There's a desire to learn and to grow and to develop.
and to truly not only just talk about it but to walk the talk.
I'm very excited and it's been a great experience thus far in seeing the level of engagement we have from employees and also from the community because it's not only internal, this is external outreach and engagement that we are doing also.
And so it's very exciting to see employees really, you know, reaching out and saying we're ready to grow and we're ready to develop and we're really ready to advance race and social justice.
Great.
Thank you, Bea.
I feel very optimistic just by your energy.
If I may, I would just like to add regarding your question about the follow-up.
There were follow-up sessions to capture the employees who were not available for the initial training.
And there were at least two follow-ups with mid and higher level management.
to increase the depth of accountability and understanding about what that accountability looks like.
Nice, thank you.
So more to come on that, and again, we'll send you the information on the September 19th event, and love to have you participate if you're available.
Continuing on this internal capacity building, so we too are excited by Bee's energy and work in this, and so she's come on as the first ever RSGI sort of strategic advisor for the agency, and she reports directly through my office, so really is the one that is leading the strategy on this and helping advise us on all this, both in terms of our direction as a department and how we make decisions, but also how we work internally with our employee engagement, and then how we work externally with our customer engagement.
So a lot of work to come on that.
Another part of building the capacity in 2018, so we obviously do our toolkits, but we did one toolkit on the strategic planning process, and that's just launched, but we did some pre-work in 2018 to get ready for the engagement that has just launched in 2019. And part of that was getting more information.
We did some surveys in multiple languages.
We looked at the data that's available in the city in terms of displacement and other race and social justice data to help inform the planning for the plan, I guess I'll say.
And then we've begun and continue to use these community engagement ambassadors that will go out and do some on the ground engagement and letting folks know about the events that we have.
And then another thing that B and others helped us do is we did some RSGI training both for our Park Board and our Park District Oversight Committee.
And these are the folks that are going to make the recommendations to us on some of the funding, at least for that, well, that will come out of the strategic planning.
So it was important for them, for us, important to us to ensure that they had that information and that training.
And then one, another final piece here in terms of our own capacity building has to do with technology.
You know, we've had a registration system that is very old, probably 15 years old, very cumbersome, not very effective.
And one of the challenges we had with that, both from a policy standpoint as well as just a technical standpoint, we weren't able to collect demographic data on the folks that are participating in our programs.
And we saw that as a gap just in terms of our ability to make decisions about how to offer those programs.
We've launched this after a pretty significant technical exercise, but have already seen some immediate benefit here.
Just to show you, of the folks who are new in the system, we had 73% of these folks who actually opted to provide this demographic information.
So we gave them a choice, and we thought that was pretty high in terms of their opting in.
And then one tiny bit of initial data just shows us that of those registrants, the diversity essentially matches kind of what the city of Seattle is doing.
So at least we're reaching the same proportion of people.
Now we have this data and we can start to be more targeted as we look at where they are and how we can use this data to better serve our residents.
Thank you.
I'm supposed to interrupt this for a public service announcement for one minute.
Apparently, since it's now two o'clock, I'm supposed to tell you that the special meeting portion of this meeting has concluded, and we're now continuing into the regularly scheduled Civic Development, Public Assets, and Native Community Committee meeting for June 19th.
End of the public service announcement.
Please proceed.
Thank you very much.
I know it was important, really.
You wouldn't want to miss that one.
We're back to the beginning.
All right, we'll go back to the beginning.
How about if we get to the change team accomplishments?
Yeah.
So, let's go there now.
And I'm really proud of our agency and proud of the folks who not only they do their very important day-to-day job, they put so much effort into this work.
So, I want to thank them publicly and the folks who are here as well as part of the change team for all the work that you do and for keeping us accountable and helping us through this work.
So, I'll turn it over to you guys.
And I will click if you want or just nod.
Thank you, Jesus.
I want to acknowledge and thank the Parks and Recreation Change Team for their support and a few of our members, as Jesus just recognized, are here.
I'd like to say thank you for being here.
Everybody waves.
Yeah.
And we're proud that our change teams represent nearly every division and staffing level in the department.
A quick shout out to our recently retired Sue Goodwin, former change team co-lead.
So, unfortunately, she couldn't be here with us today.
Regarding change team accomplishments and challenges, 2018 offered opportunities to increase the change team's engagement at strategic levels.
So, for instance, Jesus mentioned the All-Staff Foundations of Change, our all-department race and social justice training.
Nearly all of the change team members participated in that as facilitators of the curriculum that day.
And then also participated in follow-up sessions.
Related to the department's strategic plan, The racial equity toolkit specifically, change team reviewed and offered a framework of guiding questions and recommendations to take the thinking of that toolkit to a deeper level of consideration.
In this era of climate change, the change team recognizes that we cannot have environmental sustainability without equity.
And so we have begun putting together an environmental justice curriculum that will be used for staff training in future.
That's great.
I just want to underscore how important that is and how much I appreciate the work you're doing.
I hope you'll share it with the council because this is something that we would be very interested in as well.
would be more than happy to do so.
Thank you.
Regarding the opportunity to hire the department's first ever RSJ equity strategic advisor, the change team contributed key characteristics and qualifications along with the feedback of frontline staff to the job description.
And we're very pleased with the results.
My colleague, Jason, will speak to additional accomplishments as well as challenges.
Thank you.
Thank you, Belinda.
Thanks, Belinda.
So the change team worked hard to facilitate the process of normalizing conversations about race throughout Seattle Parks and Recreation.
We asked for feedback from the expanded executive team about their perceived barriers, fears, and concerns related to holding RSJ conversations.
We use this feedback to create a document which could be referenced by staff to aid in their efforts to hold these conversations.
We also advocated to include frontline staff in executive level trainings and workshops so their voices and opinions could be heard directly.
This inclusion took place on several occasions and is still continuing into 2019. Next slide, please.
Now we'd like to address some of our challenges.
Race and social justice is a hard conversation to have.
It's a longtime struggle within the department Where do we start?
How do we inject this difficult work into staff?
Well, it starts with me and it starts with everybody in this room.
It must be a part of our core work.
So how do we normalize conversations about race?
We must embed RSJ into all levels and engage everyone in the conversation.
We need to be consistent and follow up.
Now, the Foundations of Change event that was mentioned earlier helped our department get an idea of where our staff think that we fit on the RSJ continuum, and that came in just a little bit above the midway point.
So making active efforts to become an anti-racist organization, which is the highest level on that continuum, is going to be a difficult and ongoing struggle for us.
But that being said, Seattle Parks and Recreation has proven their dedication to continuing this work.
Increasing access to RSJ trainings and events is also an ongoing struggle due to capacity and staffing issues within our division.
In 2019, SPR leadership is working directly with change team and with me to try to find possible solutions and increase access for all staff.
Accountability for SPR leadership, and that's executive level and mid-level management, is a challenging element of our work.
In 2018, the change team asked division directors to create personal action plans to outline what they are going to do.
to move us towards becoming an anti-racist organization.
And moving forward, our superintendent's office and HR are considering more productive ways to hold managers accountable for their commitments to RSJ.
And the last thing we wanted to say was that streamlining the distribution of information across a body of staff who have really widely ranging working conditions has been a challenge.
And we are continuing to explore different options to bring that RSJ information and the resources to all staff in an equitable way.
Can you dive a little bit deeper into that issue where you said that you had asked the directors and supervisors to have a personal work plan and dedication towards RSJ?
And tell us what kind of conversations emerged from that.
So we wrote a copy.
It's a summary of the different things that each director...
I'd love to see it.
Thank you.
That each director...
Thank you.
Committed to doing.
Personally, I only work in one division, so I would refer, pass it over to Bea to give us more information.
And this was deemed to be a good first start, that there was like three or four bullet points that each had agreed that they would do.
Now this was an exercise that was part of our change team and executive level staff retreat.
And it was meant to kind of get the wheels turning and to get them thinking about it.
It was more of a tool for them to use than it was an official document to send out to staff.
But it was a good place to start.
And then we followed that up with, we had everybody write down their different concerns and things that they perceived as barriers to having these conversations.
And we created a document that they could reference to kind of help them get that along.
If they got stuck, they could look at things that other people had suggested or different ways to start the conversation.
Excellent.
And did you, and those of you at the group and those of you in the audience, do you have a sense that over the last year and a half that progress is being made?
Do you see stumbling areas?
And maybe the question is, are you giving each other room for grace?
You make a mistake and pick it up and start again.
Can you just talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, definitely.
One of the things that Change Team likes to say is that there's no perfect answer.
You don't have to be an expert to start these conversations.
And if you do something that is out of line, ask for feedback, look for different ways to address that and learn.
I'd say, at least in my division, planning and development, I've definitely seen change.
And I've seen a lot of efforts that I hadn't seen before.
I think maybe that's really getting at what I was looking at.
Are there efforts?
Are people trying?
And, you know, so we all stumble, but do we pick ourselves up and either ask for forgiveness or clarity and move forward?
And are you feeling that there is that change in parks?
I feel it started, definitely.
Yes, we speak a lot to offering grace to mistakes and also to recognize that mistakes will happen and this work is not always comfortable and it will be uncomfortable and you lean into that discomfort but there's still this space of grace while you're in that discomfort to learn, to grow, to do self-assessment and to do the work to get to the place that you need to be.
I feel we We use that as a key message and it's permeating throughout the department.
And as Lane mentioned, you know, the conversation started and the division leadership works with me to deepen the conversation and deepen their self-assessments and their work to be leaders and to lead us through this organizational changes and the shift with equity at the forefront and equity woven throughout.
Great.
It feels positive.
Please, Council Member Gonzalez.
Thank you.
You know, one of the things that I notice a lot in our RSJ presentations from multiple departments, not just this one, is that oftentimes it's a presentation that is really squarely focused on inward looking, right?
So sort of how are we doing as an organization?
How are we treating each other as colleagues?
How are the structures of institutional racism bleeding into programmatic work or policy work that we're doing in service of others.
And what I don't see a lot of is the realities of how race impacts the work of employees in public facing agencies like Seattle Parks and Recreation.
So I, and I've heard some stories about some really disgusting experiences of encountering ball faced racism in, by Parks and Rec employees in interaction with the general public.
And would just like to get an understanding of how the change team and Jesus, you and others are just thinking about how to address some of those really hostile, tough experiences that our employees who are interacting with the general public, i.e. not other city employees, in sort of their work, day-to-day work, and when they have those kind of experiences, you know, how are we How are we supporting our employees and our workers to deal with those really traumatizing experiences for many people of color?
in terms of, just to make sure I understand.
I might turn that off.
You're speaking to sort of the behavior that our employees are subjected to by members of the public.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, there's one thing about microaggressions, aggressions in the workplace that are coming from your supervisor, your colleague, whatever the case might be, but in organizations and agencies like Seattle Parks and Rec, people are literally in a position of your job function is to interact with the general public.
How are we addressing and centering those experiences as part and parcel of the race and social justice?
race and social justice work.
I know here at the City Council, we've been under Council Member Ernest Gueda's leadership, really trying to take a harder look at the types of interactions our own legislative department employees are having in the course of interacting with the general public, because it can be very harsh and really impactful.
And I just was wondering if you could address that.
particular point.
It's a great point, and I'll tell you, it's not something that specifically I could point to initiatives and folks at the table might be able to.
I think we do a lot of work with our employees in helping them, both empowering them in terms of how they make how we make sure that they're safe, so giving us feedback in terms of the situation that we put them in, whether it's the folks on the frontline staff in our Parks and the Environment Division that are sort of helping us, for example, with encampment removal and things like that, or the folks in the community centers who are interacting with the public and other things.
So part of it is just an employee safety piece, but I think you're right.
We need to dig more deeply into these specific types of issues in terms of what the employees deal with.
I think part of the conversations we're having across the agency with regards to race and social justice is empowering them with that information and with the ability to have those conversations.
I think we need to add more structure to that, I think.
So it's a great question, one that I hadn't thought that much about in terms of this particular issue, but I don't know.
If I could add, so in 2018, we didn't put this in our accomplishments because we didn't move much beyond the conversation stage, but we did speak with Christopher Williams, who was then acting as superintendent, about maybe creating something like a listening circle or a healing circle, that kind of thing to acknowledge that hurt was done, and that's both external hurt and internal.
And to try to give them more resources than just, you know, a few days off if something traumatic happens.
Now, that conversation hasn't gone much beyond that, but it is definitely something that we want to pursue and come up with, you know, tangible solutions to try to help there and support our staff.
Yeah, I think that would be, I mean, I think particularly for agencies that have, you know, frontline staff that interact frequently with with people in the public, it's really important to have that additional layer of work be part of this.
employees will in some cases feel that it's part of their job to take that abuse and that behavior.
And they believe that because they're good public servants, one, first and foremost, but two, because there may not have yet been a culture established that allows those employees and those workers to feel like they are empowered to say to the general public, you can't treat me that way, right?
I think it's really important for us to have leaders and supporters within agencies, particularly those who interact a lot with the public, who are really committed to cultivating that type of culture for the overall health of our workforce.
Nice.
Absolutely.
That's a really good point.
Thank you for bringing that up.
And we might reach out to some of our companion organizations.
I'm thinking specifically Alaska Airlines I know has individuals who are trained to do this and to help their employees who have to deal with irate customers.
So if you'd like me to give you the name of an individual or follow up, I'd love to.
I just, I think it's a really good point.
You know, I think oftentimes we just eat it, you know.
We take all this incoming flack and we just think we have to, we don't have to.
So, well done.
Thank you for the point.
Yeah, no, that's a great point.
And I think one, sort of place where we can start that conversation is, you know, we are working with our friends at Seattle Center and the libraries and sort of just helping our employees sort of understand how do we consistently address some of these issues, but I think turning that around in the way you're saying I think is a really powerful way to do it.
It's a really good idea.
Good for you.
All right, anything else you would like to add besides your
Our last slide.
It's happening in 2019.
We've got about 13 more slides.
I think that Robert Nellum is really enjoying listening to all my questions.
I know, yeah.
Taking notes.
Just very, very quickly, just looking to 2019, I mentioned our strategic plan.
That's probably the most important initiative we're gonna do here in the next couple of years, because it will determine the positioning of Seattle Parks and Recreation in the next 12 years.
Part of that is the park district, but just generally it's everything else.
So we're really working hard in terms of the engagement and really making sure that it's anchored in equity.
So we're doing a lot of those conversations.
So more to come in 2019. We're continuing with our initiative, Pathways to Equity, which is our recommitment to RSAI, and that's something that BE is leading and leading our entire agency through.
We can have her talk a little bit more about that.
And then finally, you know, I've already mentioned this a couple times, but continuing the conversation agency-wide in terms of this foundations of change training 2.0, and we'll keep working through that.
Nice.
Were you going to add something, Bea?
I was just going to add a little more about Pathway to Equity.
And so as Jesus mentioned, it's SPR's commitment to the advancement of the race and social justice initiative.
And the Pathway to Equity framework, will utilize the following pillars to move SPR along the pathway to end institutional and structural racism and achieve racial equity in Seattle.
And those pillars are organizing and advocacy, infrastructure, building tools and training, application and accountability, and ultimately to recognize division.
Nice.
Well done.
So we're looking forward to another great year, half year.
I'm really impressed.
You know, what's happened over my almost 10 years here on council is the way we're approaching this strikes me as being real.
It's genuine.
It isn't just data and statistics.
It's how is this impacting each one of us?
And I think Bea, you've brought a very refreshing tone to this.
And also, I just liked what you said, leaving space for grace.
Many of us will trip on something unintentionally, but being able to have the opportunity to come back and make it right with an individual, I am very respectful of that.
So thanks to all of you.
And just one more pitch, Belinda, you and I are going to be talking.
My best new girlfriend here, I am excited about what we're going to be able to offer Belltown.
People forget Belltown.
You know, they somehow think that it's a very wealthy area, that, you know, there's all this stuff happening.
Belltown is a neighborhood that really wants to grow.
It's at this intersection now between the arena and downtown, but it is one of the fastest growing neighborhoods with very low income families and individuals.
So as we're looking at making parks, you know, I'm sorry that our Belltown Community Center But, you know, it was a lease.
We understood.
There was no promise it was going to be there forever.
want to be working with you in parks to help this idea about the Belltown BOP.
Love the BOP.
It stands for Belltown Orchard and Pea Patch.
And making this real for people, encouraging the neighbors to be able to pick up and design it.
They already have the designs.
They just want the support to be able to go forward.
And as I mentioned earlier, the mayor today said that she'll support me in this effort.
So there's so much good that can come from that.
Nice.
Well, go Parks and Recreation.
Thank you.
Thank you.
OK.
And next, do I have anything else to read in?
Would you like to read something in the game?
Yes.
And I'm going to invite our friends from Seattle Center to join us.
Item 1, 2018 Race and Social Justice Initiative Report for Seattle Center.
Very good.
Mr. Nelms and crew, very good to have you here.
Hi.
Over here.
Don't go too far.
Trying to get away from it.
Yeah.
Is she here still?
We had one person, Robert, sign in.
Do you have anything you would like to add?
Please, go ahead.
We have one person who signed in, but since we had sort of a squirrelly start, we're going to go ahead, Catherine, and provide you.
Say it again.
Take whichever one of those microphones appeals to you.
And again, we'll sign you up for two minutes there.
Okay.
And please introduce yourself.
We've got you signed in and present.
Great.
Hi.
Please, hi.
My name is Catherine Leggett, and thank you, Council, for the opportunity to testify today.
I am a volunteer with 350 Seattle, which is a climate justice organization, grassroots organization.
And yesterday with Got Green, in partnership with Got Green, we presented the Seattle Green New Deal, which is a race and equity issue as well.
We presented a letter to Mayor Jenny Durkan and to the council.
And I really just wanted to take this opportunity to ask you all to read the letter or look for the letter.
It was endorsed by over 100 businesses and organizations.
This campaign has just started, and we're really excited about it.
We are ready for big change in this city to reduce our climate pollution by 2030. I appreciate so much that I was able to listen to this hearing.
We know that climate issues are race and equity issues, And we know that cities need to be the face of making these changes.
So I really appreciate being here.
I appreciate everything that everyone is doing.
And please look out for the Seattle Green New Deal.
Great, thank you very much.
Thank you for coming down.
Okay, Mr. Nelms, do you want to start introductions and we'll hear from your colleagues?
Hi, I'm Robert Nelms.
I'm Director of Seattle Center.
My name is Chris Zhang.
I come from Seattle Center, customer service supervisor.
Also, I've been with the change team for six years and recently was appointed as a co-lead.
Happy to be here today.
Congratulations.
Jessica Smith.
I work in the redevelopment division.
I'm the procurement coordinator and I am also the RSGI co-lead as of this year.
Excellent.
Thank you both.
Thank you.
I brought Chris and Jessica with me.
They're the newly appointed co-chairs of our change team and I promised them they wouldn't have to say anything.
They wouldn't have to.
Yes, we want to.
Oh, we want you to.
Great.
Okay.
So I'm going to go through, I'm going to start with the 2018 accomplishments.
And I'm going to walk through this.
First of all, we have over 16,000 events at Seattle Center and over 500 public programs and events that we produce.
We start by making sure that at all of our events we acknowledge the fact that We are on indigenous land and the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people.
And we're trying to get that so that everyone actually does that.
And it's just, you know, as a first link, a first step, and then moving on.
But that's a way we start all of our events and hopefully are leading by example and modeling the way for others to start to acknowledge the place that we reside.
So that's just a small thing.
on one hand, but a big thing in terms of on another.
That was in our equity area of arts and culture, in our equity area of health.
We produced our fifth health clinic in the arena.
So that was in 2018. We were...
blessed to be able to do that.
We actually moved it up to September so that we could get it done before the arena was turned over to OBG for the construction of a new arena.
And we're really happy and pleased to announce, and we've made it clear to a number of people, but that we're going to do our next clinic in February of 2020 at Seattle Center.
Thank you for doing that.
On the jobs and economic development piece, we spent, because of the closing of Key Arena, we spent a lot of time and energy and effort working on making sure that our full and part-time staff at Key Arena would be able to transition from those jobs once the arena was closed to maintain gainful employment going forward.
And we were very happy to report that all 31 members of the full and part-time team there were able to either gain other city employment or choose to retire at their discretion.
And we filled or we placed all 100% people who wanted to have jobs and so forth.
And a couple in other departments, a number in ours, but we're very happy about that.
The closing of the arena was a huge cultural and emotional issue for our organization, and we're gonna highlight different things that was done throughout as part of our RSJ work internally.
On the service equity, there's a podcast that I would like to steer you through.
And it's up there.
We'll send it.
There's a link in the presentation.
But it's a podcast called Yes, And.
And what it's done is we're using the narrative of a number of people, people of color in our community to expand the Fest All program.
And so there is a, right now it says that there are four podcasts, but that was when this was produced.
There are now seven, because there's one done each month.
The first four were about our origin story.
The second one was to choose the life we live, the creative hustle in Seattle.
The third one was where are Latinx in Seattle.
The fourth one was on homelessness.
For instance, the homelessness one talked to people about how the circumstances in your life may change.
would create a situation where that could happen.
And so it's something that we're very proud of and the young lady who's working and bringing all those people together is just fantastic.
In fact, just to pivot on another thing, our next luncheon learned that our our co-chairs are putting together will be on homelessness, and the panel that they're putting together will be members from that podcast.
So it's something that we do.
They do a fantastic job on Lunch and Learns.
We invite not just our own staff, but staff from all of the resident organizations on the campus, and we share different types of information with them.
For instance...
When's your next one?
When's this one on homelessness?
July 11th at 1130. All right.
Armory Law 4. Thank you.
You're welcome to join us.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Okay.
July 11th, 1130. Armory.
Yes.
And then another equity area is the economic justice.
And so one of the things that in terms of with your help as the city council, we negotiated with OBG to make sure that as the arena closed, and then when it reopens, that the people who worked in the old arena would have an opportunity to come back and work in the new arena.
A number of those people are people of color, and so making sure that they were established as qualified workers, that they had the ability to come back in, is very important to them going forward, and that's something that we're proud of.
Before you turn the page, again, I just want to say thank you personally, Robert, to you and to your team for the work you did through the OVG negotiations.
It was certainly in my tenure one of the biggest things we've ever done.
You were so front and center on that and making sure your employees were cared for and that we had workforce training going forward, that the whole community was included in this.
And of course, we're continuing to do that on, you know, I think a bimonthly basis.
But I just want to acknowledge what a huge, I think, a victory that was.
In all forms, people are cared for, the community is acknowledged and included.
And then, as you're saying about the indigenous land acknowledgement, one more superstar point.
I talked with Deborah Smith, who is the head of our Seattle City Light, last week.
and told her what you're trying to do around the indigenous art.
And she stepped forward and said she is willing and interested in talking with you about the Thomas Street substation and putting some murals and art acknowledging indigenous lands and people.
Here's the best news, she has money that she wants to spend.
So if you've not talked with her, I asked her to reach out to you and vice versa.
So it's just continuing the theme.
Well, thank you.
Thank you so much council member backshaw when we met I I told you that it would be great for you to Just get that ball rolling.
So we I will definitely take it and run with it.
Uh, so that's great So i'm moving on to a little bit more on the highlights Um Oh my glasses there so The Seattle Center arena development, we've talked a lot about that in terms of the public benefits that come from that in terms of retaining jobs and so forth.
That's something that we're proud of.
I hesitated because I didn't want to go and beat that drum too much.
So I'll just say that we're proud of the fact that the filters that were used to retain jobs were something that was important not only to us, but to our partners, OVG.
Another thing that the Seattle City Council helped us do was to transfer some land that we had on 2nd and Mercer that to the Office of Housing that will become affordable, will be developed into affordable housing.
And so something taking what was a pocket park that was very rarely used, and now going forward will be through a partnership with Plymouth House housing, Plymouth House I should say, be converted into affordable housing is something that we're all very proud of.
And the designs are beautiful and once again reaching out and including the community for some very low income and some supportive housing, and also an emphasis on art and music in that building.
It is a crash win, and I'm just, you know, once again excited for what you've done.
Well, what we've done.
You had a lot to do with that, too.
Thank you.
Then, another thing that, you know, when the arena closed, What that meant was that there were going to be a lot of uncertainty with the resident organizations on the campus, with staff that worked in those resident organizations, including ours, with the public at large about, okay, is Seattle Center closing, or should we still go, or what have you?
And we took the lead, and I really wanna tip my hat to our marketing communications.
folks led by Mark Jones and Debra Dowse, who created, Mark and his team created an incredible attract and access campaign.
I hope you've seen some of our placards all over the buses.
We have buses, we have billboards, we have, we're on social media, emails, we're on the radio, we're doing all sorts.
All sorts of things and and our first phase of the program was from February through June Was basically to talk about access to making sure people understood that you can easily get to Seattle center steel and we identified all the bus routes and all the other things that would allow that to happen.
And then starting next month, we will pivot to an attraction focus so that all of the events in the summer, fall, and winter will be highlighted and make sure that people know that once you get there, there'll be something for you to do and see.
And so we're really proud of that.
And again, that's another partnership with OBG.
Their dollars helped us with that program.
And we're not just doing things for Seattle Center and the resident organizations at Seattle Center.
We're also highlighting the businesses in Uptown to make sure that they're part of that outreach and that marketing campaign also.
Right.
And thank you.
And just extend that little bit of a pebble in the pond.
Uptown, I think, is feeling the love.
is anxious to be part of that as is South Lake Union and, you know, lower Queen Anne as well.
So it just, it brightens my heart so much just to see the community coming together.
And, you know, I mean, it's like anything else.
You know, you kind of feel a little fisticuffs sometimes, but there is a place for dialogue and an understanding.
So well done.
Yeah, and then the last thing and then a highlight.
We have a fantastic communications director who, when she puts her mind to it, can put together some things that's just incredible.
And I just want to share with you, she put together for us a five-year progress report on our RSJI accomplishments.
So I'm going to leave this with you and just say that I'd like to thank Deborah for doing a wonderful job just making sure that people understood what we've done over time.
Moving to some of the challenges and lessons learned.
One of the challenges that we are, we have identified and we're starting to work on is how do we become more ADA compliant, not just in a physical way, but in a programming and event way also.
In the physical way, you know, you're making sure that the things are at the right height or people have the mobility or accessibility and so forth to get from point A to point B.
Those are things that we all understand intuitively and can figure out and deal with.
The issue about making sure that the programs are accessible and that something like a website can be used by someone who may not be sighted or something.
How might you do things a little differently?
So we're starting to turn over those rocks to make sure that as we go forward, the work that we're doing is going to be as inclusive as possible and that we will be able to be far more compliant with the ADA community as we move forward.
So may I throw an item out, and maybe it's already something you're working on, but getting to the armory for someone who has walking difficulties is a major challenge, whether you come as close as the Space Needle or at the end of Harrison.
Do you have any mobile assists, I mean like the little golf carts that go around that can pick people up or any of that?
We do not have that yet.
we are definitely starting to have that conversation.
And some of our resident organizations have started that program.
I believe the rep does that as a little shuttle to their theater or their events in the evening.
And we're looking at the possibility of maybe piggybacking and or creating something on our own.
The key to that is when to do that and how often.
You don't want to set up an expectation that you can't meet.
And so before I make this leap into something, I want to make sure that it's something that will work.
Yeah.
I'm thinking about that from an all ages and abilities approach.
If there was even a number somebody could call and in advance say, could I meet you at this corner at, you know, seven o'clock?
to pick up to go to the armory.
Not to go too crazy or what have you, but for staff who may have some issues, either mobility or even a safety issue, our emergency services staff, you can call them and they will escort you to your bus stop or your mode of transportation mode to come to or from.
We have not transitioned that or increased that service for the general public, because we have been a little fearful that we might be a little overwhelmed.
You might get a thousand people calling every night, but I appreciate the fact that I know this is a conversation we often have, but I think part of the social justice expands to those with disabilities and all ages.
So thank you for putting it in your next five-year plan.
May I just add a little bit?
Because I work in customer service, so we are often getting calls about concern, how to get here, where's the closest place.
We would direct them to certain hours when the gates open, because when there's lots of pedestrians, we're also concerned about other pedestrians' safety.
So we direct them to the right place they can load and then enter to the building right away.
We also have wheelchair and customer service.
Sometimes we'll bring out a wheelchair to meet them at the gate.
We talk about, as a group, employee ambassador service, saying can we have a car to transport people around and there's some safety and liability issue we haven't worked out yet.
It sounds like to me the city has some concern when you use a city vehicle to transport people, there might be liability issues.
Well, those issues are resolvable.
We can talk with Metro Transit as an example.
They have, you know, I mean, one thing is that's why we have insurance, but the other is that there are ways to make it safer for individuals.
And I just would ask, I would really respectfully ask, don't let liability issues alone stop us from doing something that will make it accessible for everyone.
We won't.
We won't.
No, no, no.
No, we don't do that.
So just another challenges and lessons learned on to get to a position where we could actually do a clinic in February 2020. We had to figure out where to put it because without the arena which had all the amenities that we needed.
So, you know, we're kind of cobbling together a number of things and thanks for the partnership.
Cornish is offering their lobby.
The McCall Hall is offering theirs.
X Hall will be part of that, and the Fisher Pavilion will also be part of that.
Others, you know, the Opera's new space set, if there's anything you need.
We'll do that.
So I just want to say that as far as those types of things everyone was kind of all in And then the funders who are helping do that are all kind of lining back up and the partnerships and so forth so we're really excited about that, but the the original lesson was that We didn't know where to put it.
We tried to look at going off site to another place, but that didn't work out.
And we were challenged ourselves internally.
One of our staff members said, we got to come back to Seattle Center and figure out if we can do this.
And we did.
And so I'm just really proud that folks didn't refuse to give up.
And that was good.
The other thing I mentioned as I've mentioned these two are fantastic and our change team is in terms of lunch and learn series.
I mean we've tackled all sorts of things and they are willing to put in front of our staff the most difficult issues, abuse, workforce, equity, racism, whatever it is, they will put it together and we'll have a conversation about it.
And like I said, we invite the whole campus to join us.
And we try to develop some growth and opportunities from that.
It's not just that we have a conversation.
We try to give people some pathways to say that, for instance, if you are looking for a way to advance your career, here are some steps you need to take.
If you're looking for getting some help in how you might navigate this as a person of color and you don't believe that there are pathways or avenues for you, here are some people to talk to who have already done that.
It's a really, I couldn't be happier with the work that they're doing.
And they come to me, like on the homelessness Lunch and Learn that's coming up next month, they asked me if they could do that.
And I said, sure.
In fact, let's go, let's go forward.
Because people don't want to tackle difficult issues.
These guys do.
So I just want to say thank you for that.
So after talking about a lot of highlights and what we're doing, this is more of a low light.
So I just want to be clear about that.
We spent most of last year with our eye on the prize of dealing with our staff and our employees.
And I take full responsibility for the fact that we didn't do as well in our purchasing and consulting as I would have liked because our eye wasn't on this prize.
And so you can look at the numbers.
We always break them down by different ethnic groups and so forth so people can see what's actually happening.
And as we got these numbers earlier this year, we said, okay, this is not who we are.
And so we've been working internally to make sure that we are training our staff in understanding how to use our system, where the things are, how to find the purchasing contractors or the consultants, et cetera.
And we're walking people step by step by step through the process to make sure that they understand this.
I'm not going to sit here and try to defend one thing one way or the other.
I could have grouped all these things together and tried to say that we're not doing that bad.
But that's not how we do it.
We want to show you exactly where we are and what we're doing.
And as a collective, our executive team and our leadership team are disappointed in each other and where we are, what happened in 2018. And we will make sure that we do far better going forward.
And so I'm not going to try to suggest that there's something here that's not here.
And I'm not going to suggest that we did better than we did.
Fair enough.
Another thing that I've been asked is to do the prompt payment performance.
This is something that I can say we're doing well at.
And I'll just leave it at that.
This is a couple of years ago we were not doing as well.
We've got some internal processes in place and now we're doing fine.
I would say doing fine.
If you are able to pay an average of eight days after receiving an invoice, that is extraordinary.
It used to be that if you could get it within 30 days, that was considered the norm, but now that you have moved it down to eight, that is really excellent.
Your percentage of late payment, of course, I know you and you wouldn't like that 6% But you know, it's less than other departments by a great deal and I know you'll continue to work on that Yes, we will and and just to be clear the person who's responsible for turning that around sitting right there No, Jessica So now I'm gonna ask you a question what is your day job when you're not working on this I
I am, what's my title, admin staff analyst in redevelopment.
So I'm sure you know Julia.
Of course.
So I support the project managers.
So how did you do this?
What did you personally individually do to change the system so that you were able to pay vendors in this kind of a timeline?
A lot of the consulting comes from our immediate work group.
So we're just constantly on each other like, did you get that invoice?
Did you get it signed?
Okay, let's take it to accounting.
It never sits on anyone's desk for more than a day.
Good job.
That is the key.
The key before when we were struggling is things sat on people's desks.
Right.
Now, Jessica doesn't allow things to sit on anyone's desk for more than a day.
It's very clear.
Well, that's great.
And that includes me.
Oh, I bet.
Yeah.
You say yes, ma'am.
Yes, yes, yes.
Good for you.
Well, thank you for that.
Thank you.
Okay.
And so I just wanted to give you a couple of examples of our use of the toolkit.
And we're trying to embed the toolkit more and more and more and more into what we do.
So everything that comes up, we kind of, has it been, have we run it through the toolkit process?
So just so that that muscle is exercised over and over.
One of the things that we recognize is that we get a lot of incident report and data for people that our security staff deal with, and we don't have any real information about them in one way or another.
It's just that the numbers are here or the numbers are there.
If there's a spike, no one knows why or what's going on.
So we use the toolkit to start to say, let's collect some more data just to make sure that, one, We know who we're dealing with.
Two, we know we're not dealing with a certain population more than we're dealing with others.
And three, that there is an equity across the dealing with all of them going forward.
So we started this year collecting data on some of the demographics around who we're dealing with to make sure that everyone at Seattle Center feels like that they are welcomed, honored, and treated fairly.
And so, That's something that we're looking forward to be able to share information with going forward, but it's something that we're starting at this time.
The other thing that we used the toolkit on was the staff transition plan that I've talked about before, and that was to make sure that as we transitioned people from the key arena, that they had a clear pathway to ongoing gainful employment.
with the city as we went forward and I Would like to say that I'm very proud of the work we did for the full and part-time folks But there is a gap that we couldn't deal with and that is just like Jesus at parks We have a large number of intermittent staff and We have hundreds of people.
All of those staff work or are event-based.
Without the key providing the events, there's no work for them.
So what we're doing now to make sure that we maintain connection with them is we're training and doing things on a quarterly basis to make sure that we keep in contact with them.
In fact, we'll have our next quarterly meetings are next Monday, Tuesday.
That is a Q&A with me. and some training, and so we're making sure that the staff, while they're going through this transition from a public-run arena to a privately-run arena, they do not lose contact with the organization that they've been supporting for years.
And so this is more information on the emergency services toolkit and the use and the thing that I talked about that we're piloting this forum and we will have information.
And this is the transition plan for a key arena.
And the toolkit was used to identify specific workforce equity concerns.
And I would like to say that the work from this toolkit and the workforce equity concerns that were raised, actually led to us changing our strategic plan.
So going forward, what we're looking at in workforce planning is that as we start to, because our staff is aging, as we start to replace people who retire, et cetera, we're looking at it through this lens of how do we make sure that our staff reflects the makeup of our community?
And how do we make sure that those opportunities are spread throughout?
And that was not something that the executive, me, or my team, or anybody did.
That was something that the staff in HR said, this is what we should do.
And now they're leading that effort to make sure it happens.
So the National Hockey Subject, NHR?
No, HR, our human resources.
Sorry, sorry.
No, that's internal to us.
They're actually leading that.
And I just tip my hat to Sasha and her team for saying this is what we're going to do.
Good.
Well, congratulations and thank them for us.
And that's it.
Council Member Gonzalez, any other questions?
All right, well, I really, again, say thank you.
And Robert, you have been leading the charge on this.
I think other departments in the city have been watching your work.
Thank you, both Jessica and Chris, for joining us.
It's good to meet you, and I appreciate all that you've done, and very exciting things that are going on at Seattle Center.
Well, thank you, and I'm just amazed, because this is the quietest these two have ever been.
Ever been?
Would you two like to add anything?
Um, well, so, uh, during the parks presentation, you asked about, um, if any of the Wimby vendors like were being pushed and like being able to, to do the work and like improve their skill.
Right.
And so off the top of my head, I have two, um, Wimby vendors for either purchasing or consulting, um, that did an excellent job with us last year.
One of them was a construction firm, and it was a blanket contract for services to help build out what is now the home of Northwest Folklife inside the armory.
So that was one of them, and then the other one was we had an architect who was a Wimby firm who designed the build out for turning the next 50 pavilion into Center Park, Center Park Maintenance Facility.
So both Folklife and Park Place were housed in Bressie Garage, and Blue Spruce, which were part of the arena redevelopment.
So I just wanted to add.
Great.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That's good.
That's good feedback.
And I want to say something like, I've been with the change team for many years and we are the one actively pushing RSGI initiative, but we also get a message from the department, especially all the directors, like this is a work for the whole Seattle Center.
It should be ingrained in our culture and it is happening.
I can feel that the culture is shifting.
This is the most exciting time to be in leading this work.
And even just the fact itself that two of us are people of color, female, relatively inexperienced, and got entrusted such a heavy, you know, important role.
That make us so proud and feeling that the department is really holding up this artistry, I promise.
And what they are not just doing the talking, they walk the talk.
Nice.
Thank you very much for that.
Well, kudos once again to all of you.
Thank you for coming.
That's the last thing we have on our agenda.
So our meeting is adjourned.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
so