Seattle City Council Budget Committee 9/26/19 Session II

Good afternoon, colleagues and friends in the audience.

Thank you for being here.

It's 2 o'clock and our recessed September 26, 2019 Select Budget Committee is now back to order and we're going to proceed with the business that we had described earlier today.

It's just 2 o'clock.

I'm Sally Bagshaw.

I chair this committee.

I want to say thank you to Council Members Juarez and Mosqueda, Council President Bruce Harrow, Council Member Gonzalez, early both times, and Council Member Pacheco, thank you so much, all of you, for being here.

So this afternoon, we're going to hear from the Human Services Department, our Office of Housing, and our Department of Education and Early Learning.

Thank you all for being here.

And as we discussed this morning, we have not gone in and done the deep dive yet on services that are provided for people who experience homelessness, but we're going to do that next week.

for a full day, and that's not only our human services department, but all the other departments that are participating in this, whether it be parks or Seattle Public Utilities, our police department, and so on.

So I appreciate all of you being here.

As we've mentioned multiple times now, public comments will be after our last presentation, after we hear from Department of Education Early Learning.

So if my colleagues can stay for that, I would appreciate it.

So any questions?

Okay, well, if I can invite our Human Services Department folks to please come up to the table.

And I believe Amy Gore is going to be joining us from Council Central staff.

Jeff Sims from Council Central staff.

Lisa Van Noble.

Thank you.

Chair Baxter, I just wanted to say I was, I'm sorry I wasn't here in the morning and I will say.

We missed you.

Sorry, I'm under the weather so.

I'm sorry.

I'm here for this one.

Good, well I hope you feel better.

Thank you so much.

Jason, may I ask for you to introduce yourself and your colleagues, and then I'm going to move to Amy Gore from our central staff to provide some opening comments for us.

Great.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Jason Johnson.

I'm with the Human Services Department.

Amy Holland with the Human Services Department.

Great.

Amy, make sure your microphone is either on or you can pull it towards you.

It moves.

Very good.

Thank you.

Jeff, sorry to interrupt.

Jeff Sims, Council of Central Staff.

Ben Noble, the City Budget Director.

Lisa Kay, Council Central Staff.

Amy Gore, Council Central Staff.

Alice McClain, Council Member Begshill's office.

Thank you.

All right, Amy, kick us off.

Fantastic.

Good afternoon.

As you know, we are here for the overview of the Human Services Department 2020 proposed budget.

Jeff and I will both be staffing the Human Services Department this year.

Jeff will be staffing Public Health and Homelessness, and I will be staffing items related to Aging and Disability Services, Youth and Family Empowerment, Mayor's Office on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.

As Chair Bagshaw mentioned, there will be a multi-departmental presentation on homelessness on October 2nd and will not be addressed today.

In the department overview, you will hear about how this budget reflects the council's recent policy direction, including Council Bill 119542 and Green Sheet 149-D-1, which addresses automatic annual inflation increases for both general fund and non-general fund contracts to reflect the rising cost of providing services.

The budget also reflects Council Bill 119551, which created a new sweetened beverage tax revenue fund and clarified expectations regarding spending of those funds.

And finally, it reflects Council Bill 119402, which created a fund for short-term rental tax revenue to support permanent supportive housing.

The 2020 endorsed budget for HSD was just shy of $200 million.

The published proposed budget includes an additional $23.5 million for HSD programs.

So I will turn it over to the department to discuss those changes, but Jeff and I are happy to follow up with any questions you might have.

Great.

And I'd just like to start off by thanking you, Amy and Jeff, for the amount of work that we've already thrown your way.

And just as you were describing, we do have some revenue sources.

We have, over the last two years, put forward 2% for contracts to help with our providers, particularly around case management and other services.

So that was 2% last year and 2% over the summer.

So what we're looking at now are other other possible investments, and I thank you very much.

It is now tied to the CPIW, which was 2.6% going into 2020. Very good.

So it's even more than we were concerned about.

Getting 4.6 over the last year is good news.

Great.

Thank you.

Jeff, did you have anything else you wanted to do?

Intro now?

No, not at this time.

Okay.

Jason?

Or Ben, did you?

Thank you.

No, Ben, you.

Go ahead.

All right.

Good to be with you.

Thanks again for the opportunity.

I always am thrilled to be able to talk about the great work of the Human Services Department that I feel very honored to be a part of.

I wanted to start with just a quick overview of the department and remind folks that the Human Services Department is the largest contributor to Seattle's safety net with a proposed budget of more than $223 million.

The HSD oversees approximately 600 annual contracts with more than 200 community-based organizations.

And I want to out the gate acknowledge our partnership with those providers.

That partnership is longstanding and it's a relationship that's critically important for us to be able to make real change.

as we address a number of issues inside of our city.

There are a number of those providers that are here today, and I just want to acknowledge how important the partnership with those contracted and non-contracted human service providers are.

We manage that $223 million through 600 annual contracts, and we do so with an administrative rate that is roughly 7%.

Just for context, our providers, we allow them, through their contracts, up to 15% for administrative indirect.

And I share this because I also, out the gate, just want to thank the 385 employees at the Human Services Department.

They are a scrappy, innovative crew that does an incredible job supporting programs, initiatives, and policies that address the department's six key areas.

And they do so with energy, they do so inspired, they do so under really tough, ever-changing conditions, and they do so in a highly political environment at times.

So, I just want to honor them and just say thank you for the incredible work that the team of employees at the Human Services Department does every day.

Thank you for recognizing.

So, our work.

Our work is preparing youth for success, supporting affordability and livability in our city, addressing homelessness, promoting public health, responding to gender-based violence, and promoting healthy aging.

Again, none of this could happen without the relationship that employees at the Human Services Department have with providers.

And so again, I just want to acknowledge that and say thank you.

That is especially heightened, the importance of that relationship during budget season.

Last year, during the budget process alone, staff at the Human Services Department answered about 125 questions, amended contracts to accommodate 40 green sheets, and also provided responses to a dozen slides.

So it really is a season of work during budget, and I know it is also the case for you.

So just again wanted to acknowledge the employees and our provider partners during this period.

All right, so last year there were three primary policy changes that affected HSD and continue to do so in 2020. First, the Seattle, sorry, sweetened beverage tax funds that are added to food and nutrition programs.

Two is the inflationary adjustment for all contracts.

And three, our investment in addressing public health.

Specifically, we invested in behavioral health as well as in a crisis connections program.

So these are investments that I wanted to highlight a couple of others that are on this slide that I'll go into a little bit more detail later.

is a new investment into the consolidated DVSA hotline, as well as an investment supporting LGBTQ seniors through a senior center program.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you.

Could you remind us what is part of the $715,000 for public health programs for new resources for accessing?

Again, yep.

So that is a $500,000 investment in behavioral health.

That investment is made in partnership with King County.

And it's also a $215,000 investment into the crisis connections program.

Can I jump on that for just a second?

Maybe you can get through more than one or two lines without a question, but with Crisis Connections, you know, many of us are huge fans of Allie Franklin and the work that she's doing.

Last year we put in the budget $215,000 for 2019, and I believe it's $400,000 and change for starting in 2020. And I know that there were some contract efforts to make sure that that money got out two crisis connections, and it's in alignment with what we're doing with our low acuity.

I want to make sure that that $400,000, assuming that it goes through the budget again this year, which I hope my colleagues will support, that that will continue and that they can have it in January.

The reason for that is that Crisis Connections is working with a lot of outside providers themselves.

They need to have assurance that that money is there and coming in order for them to start doing the work.

And since our HealthONE is going to be operational in October and we need all this good work with our partners.

I just want to make sure that money is going to continue and flow and they don't have to wait again for six or seven months.

You can answer me later.

Madam Chair, one more question.

Yeah, please.

Council Member Mosqueda.

On that first slide, on the first priorities, I saw our Office of Housing Friends walk around.

I know we'll talk about housing later, but in the $180,000 for LGBTQ senior programs, it seems like a relatively small amount of money.

Can you remind us, does this have anything to do with the housing assistance that we were trying to tee up for assisting LGBTQ seniors?

It was yours last year.

No, it's not.

This is all for the senior center program and is not the investment on the housing and housing support side.

And I know Councilmember Herbold just walked in and that this LGBTQ senior center was really something that you promoted and was later on.

It was actually mine.

Yeah, just what I was saying.

It's Councilmember Gonzalez's.

Okay.

And maybe it's Councilmember Sawant's.

No, it was Councilmember Gonzalez and I together.

Go ahead.

Hit me with this, Councilmember Gonzalez.

Thank you.

No, I just wanted to note on those last two items, the $150,000 for sexual assault services to continue providing legal services to sexual assault survivors is something that has been really important to me and that I've really appreciated the opportunity to work with you, Chair Bagshaw, last year to restore some of the funding that had originally been proposed to be cut and so I'm happy to be in a position now where we're going to continue to fund those services.

Obviously the needs for sexual assault survivors in this space is very acute and I think it is a nice complement to some of the legislative wins and changes that we saw out of our state legislature in this space as well, particularly around the statute of limitations extension for particular types of crimes, for example, so really appreciate that being included in this proposed budget and in your priorities.

Likewise, for the LGBTQ senior programs, that was an opportunity for council members to want and I to work together with organizations like GenPride and LGBTQ allyship around identifying senior center services opportunities for this particular demographic.

And last year, I brought a lot of information about how We're really the only city with such a large LGBTQ population and one that is certainly aging, that doesn't currently have the full spectrum and menu of services available to LGBTQ seniors.

So really appreciate the ongoing attention to this particular issue.

$180,000 isn't a lot, but it is, I think for now, a meaningful investment to continue that work and make sure that we're meeting the needs of that aging population.

Good, thank you for that.

Okay, please.

All right, so I want to now just highlight a few of the 2020 budget additions and Sorry, that's okay.

We're just they're just trying to get me up to up to speed that it was Ingersoll that Councilmember Herbold was working on.

Please go ahead.

So I want to start in the preparing youth for success program investment area and highlight the changes to SYAP.

So the Seattle Youth Employment Program will receive $310,000 of funding to support a new school year program.

This expands on the well-known Summer Internship Program.

SYIP is designed to engage 16- to 24-year-olds facing the greatest barriers to employment.

It helps them grow as community leaders and prepare for a future of work and career opportunities.

Young people in this program, it serves folks who are at income below 80% of the median income in Seattle-King County.

This is a program where young people will be paid a stipend for up to $300 for each quarter and will earn an hourly wage during their summer internship.

The school program is really focused on programming from October to May.

It's one-on-one coaching, support services.

They learn critical workforce skills and attend career fairs and discovery days.

During the summer, the program will operate essentially as we know it.

There's internship opportunities for up to 20 hours a week for six weeks.

They are paid internships working with city departments, local businesses, and community-based organizations.

Can you talk a little bit more about this?

I see that your goals are to help the youth in these pre-employment and development programs.

And then you talk about a year-round youth employment program and then 400 youth in pre-employment skills and mentoring, and I heard you say just for the summer.

So how do those work together?

They work, thank you for the question, they work together in that it is, I think, a great opportunity for any young person to have a summer job, to be able to learn critical skills about what it means to operate and contribute to a workspace.

But there is learning that can occur that can really help to provide a more robust experience during those summer internships that can happen all year long.

So this is this one-on-one coaching and support services are things like learning how to interview, learning how to perfect a resume, learning and engaging with a coach about what they're interested in and how that can translate to a job.

So this is taking what was a robust but short period of engagement with young people as they participate in internships and making the program year-round and offering similar support to them while they attend school.

Excellent and Bobby Lee was with us this morning from Office of Economic Development brought this up again and the system approach is something that all of us were asking questions about so appreciate your working with this because we know this is the key to success is good education and a pathway to having a good job.

Council Member Sawant has a question.

Thank you, Chair Baxter.

The chart you have for SYEP, you're talking about what will be the outcomes next year from the funding that will be allocated in 2020. What is, what are, what report do you have for this preceding year?

And the reason I'm asking is that, One, as Chair Bakhsha said, it's a very important part of ensuring young people have a healthy start to their adult life, but also because in my human services committee, we've asked the human service, your department to present on this several times.

And unfortunately, each time you said that the mayor's office was making tweaks to the program.

So I have one email from Meg Olberding, who's here.

I appreciate that.

from in May, in which it says, I'm sorry, we will not be able to present on this.

We are working with the mayor's office on some tweaks to the program and won't be ready to talk about it.

And then in July, Again, another staff member from the department said that the HSD is working with the mayor's office on adjustments to the program and is not ready to be presented at the committee at this time.

And now the entire summer has gone by.

So I'm just curious, what were these tweaks you were working on and what are the outcomes?

Can you talk about like what we've seen so far?

Yeah, I'd be happy to share that information.

I don't have the full program outcomes at my fingertips today, but happy to provide that to you.

You know, when we're talking about tweaks to the program, we're really talking about this expansion.

And the expansion has been done in partnership with other departments, our friends at DEEL and the Office of Economic Development.

And so, we are, we'll be, you know, really launching this new expanded effort in 2020 with this proposed funding.

It would be useful to look at the outcomes preceding what we, what the plan is for next year, though, and I would appreciate it if you could coordinate with my staff on that.

We'd be really curious to hear about that.

Great.

Will do.

Thank you.

Please proceed.

All right, the second highlight that I want to make inside of the Preparing Youth for Success investment area is a move of the Upward Bound Program from the Human Services Department to the Department of Education and Early Learning.

As a reminder, the Upward Bound Program is a highly respected program that supports low-income first-generation and historically underserved students.

in pursuit of their high school diploma and preparing them for successful entrance and completion of post-secondary education.

I want to acknowledge here program staff, Karen Akata, Roberto Lopez, Brenda Brooks, and Anne Christomoto.

Sorry, I just butchered her name.

Chris Ostomo are true examples of people who are living their passion at work.

These are incredibly dedicated employees who make this program what it is.

There are three main reasons that we are proposing that we move this program from the Human Services Department to the Department of Education Early Learning.

One is mission alignment.

Incorporating Upward Bound into DEAL makes sense given the direct goal in the Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy, which DEAL oversees to improve college and job readiness for Seattle students.

There is Synergy, programmatically.

DEAL oversees the Seattle Promise Program, which provides access and tuition to Seattle students to attend Seattle colleges for two years and can offer direct access for upward bound students and families to the program.

And then third, operational and cross department efficiencies.

DEEL holds the city's formal relationship with the Seattle School District and the two main high schools that this program works with are Seattle Public Schools.

Great, thank you.

Sorry, Council Member Juarez has a question.

I just have a quick point to make.

As a graduate of Upward Bound, the first class to come off the Puyallup Reservation in my junior and senior year, and look where I am now.

So it works.

It really works.

And we see it working every year.

Congratulations and congratulations to all the participants in the Upward Bound program.

I also just wanted to highlight that DEEL also has an agreement with the Seattle Public Schools to leverage data sharing and evaluation to make informed decisions about the Upward Bound program.

Great.

I think you got to the end of a paragraph.

All right.

So the last highlight in the Preparing Youth for Success investment area or program area is supports to family through the Mount Baker Resource Center.

This investment would provide one-time funding of approximately $840,000.

to support the ramp up of program operations at the Mount Baker Family Resource Center.

Services will include system navigation, housing search, and navigation.

as well as child care resources and referrals, financial literacy, family management, preventative health education, and employment services.

Programs at Mount Baker are operated by Mercy Housing, but there are also partnerships in place, thanks to Mary's Place, Child Care Resources, REWA, and they will be, this family, Resource Center will be located at Mercy's Housing, Mount Baker Affordable Housing Building.

The center will serve families living at the building as well as be open to the general public living in the surrounded area.

All right, so moving to provider support.

This year, Council passed Ordinance 125-865 provided that HSD provide a cost increase when renewing or renegotiating contracts that address escalation in costs and specifying how and when to apply the increases.

The ordinance required that the increases align with the APIW, which measures cost increases across Seattle.

The 2020 proposed budget includes funding for a 2.6% inflationary increase adjustment for all service provider contracts.

This increase supports community partners and their staff in the amount of $1.5 million.

In last year's budget, the mayor provided a 2% inflationary increase to 2019 HSD contracts supported by the general fund and an additional 2% increase to 2020 contracts.

Seattle Council provided a 2% inflationary and adjustment to 2019 HSD contracts that are not supported by the general fund so all of our grants grant-funded contracts, and the funding added in this proposal budget increases the 2020 inflationary amount from 2% to 2.6% in the amount of roughly $740,000 for contracts supported by the general fund, and from 0% to 2.6% for contracts supported by the non-general fund sources in the amount of $825,000.

Thank you for that and thank you to all my colleagues up here who worked so hard on it.

Councilmember Baxter, please.

Councilmember Mosqueda.

I just want to continue the thank yous First with the community organizations that continue to come here from the human service provider world That was about a year's worth of effort just while I was here And I know councilmember O'Brien you've been working on this prior with along with other council members.

So thanks to them Thanks to this council for passing the legislation so that We could see the inflationary adjustment reflected in this budget Thanks to HSD and the executive for including it.

I know that this is something that unfortunately got miscommunicated last year and really, I think, caused some confusion in terms of the press coverage and the way in which the dollars were intended to be used.

So I'm glad we're avoiding all of that this time around and appreciate that it's in there and it's continuous funding.

Okay, good.

And then lastly, just is there any one-time allotment included in the budget?

Perhaps I missed it.

Maybe it's there to do sort of an assessment of the historic underfund of provider wages.

That's something we had talked about in tandem with this.

And I know it's a separate issue to look at the historic underfund of some of these contracts.

Is that one-time effort included in the budget?

It is not at this time, no.

Okay.

Thank you.

Please proceed.

Okay, so I also wanted to highlight that you'll see in the proposed budget some capital investments.

There are $3.5 million in capital investments in this 2020 budget.

First, I want to highlight Lambert House.

Lambert House has a $500,000 investment proposed to support capital improvements to the building occupied by the nonprofit Lambert House.

This funding would support Lambert House's efforts to acquire and renovate the building that it currently operates in.

Second, I want to highlight two community development block grant investments.

There are two projects for which we're proposing using one-time city and federal grant resources, specifically CDBG or community development block grant.

These funds are restricted to specific community development activities which benefit people with low and moderate incomes.

The first $1 million is proposed for a health clinic developed by the International Community Health Services as part of a program of all-inclusive care for the elderly, or PACE, for the Asian Pacific Islander community.

This program is part of the Pacific Hospital North Lot development.

The second CDBG investment is a $1 million investment toward the Seattle Housing Authority.

These are upgrades specifically involved in replacing of fire panels across SHA's portfolio of apartment buildings and will allocate, again, a $1 million capital investment to do that work.

The last capital investment that I wanted to highlight for you today is for Chief Seattle Club.

This is a $1 million investment to support a Seattle Indian Health Board health clinic at Chief Seattle Club's facility.

This funding would be used to construct the shell and core of a primary health care clinic in a building also containing housing for people formerly experiencing homelessness.

It also will provide social services.

Great, can I jump in there?

Of course, we all know and love Colleen Echo Hawk, want to acknowledge the great work that's been going on.

And that I believe she's going to be breaking ground at the Lazarus Center and now is going to be called Al Al Center in early January.

My understanding.

And I just heard from Daniel Malone last week from DESC that they similarly have a project going down on Rainier and roughly Plum where there's going to be a couple of, I believe it's a couple of hundred of very low income units on top of a clinic and that they've done, they're underway for the capital project, but that they were working with Harborview Hospital to get some additional funding for the clinic.

Do you know about that and is any support coming to that project from your department?

Yeah, we would have to look.

Off the top of my head, it's not familiar, but we can look.

It wasn't familiar to me until two weeks ago, so I didn't know if it was something new or if I'd just been, you know, had lost track of that one.

Yeah, we can definitely make sure to look.

And I know that on October 2nd, we're really going to be diving deeply into homelessness and much more detailed in homeless housing.

But we can definitely look into this.

That's great.

Thank you.

Because it's exactly where another place where we need more clinics.

And this is going to be walk-in also serving the people who are up above.

And as we are working on our HealthONE initiative, having more places to be able to take people and to get good services is going to help our system effort.

Thanks, Jason.

Okay.

So I do want to highlight that the Chief Seattle Club and Seattle Indian Health Board Clinic will serve about 1,200 participants each year from King County's native community and is projected to have an exam room, procedure room, traditional healing space, talking rooms, a blood draw room, pharmacy, and staff offices for about 10 to 15 clinicians.

So it should be an incredibly important and much needed space, and we're happy to be able to make an investment.

All right, so next I wanted to switch over to the investment or program area supporting livability and affordability.

In this budget, you'll see included two positions to plan for and support the Seattle, sorry.

S for Seattle, that's a bad habit, sweetened beverage tax investment for programs across HSD and will coordinate with other city departments.

Currently, the department has received $5 million in 2018 and 2019. And in this 2020 budget, there's staff support to ensure that we're good stewards of these funds.

In addition, HSD would receive $825,000 to help more families struggling with food insecurity.

In the 2019 food and nutrition RFP process, HSD received more than $8 million in funding requests for just over $4 million in available funding.

The additional funds will help us close the gap between the amount of money food banks requested and what we were originally able to award through that RFP.

All right, so the next item that I wanted to highlight is really the consolidated domestic violence hotline.

You'll see that that is a hotline aimed to provide 24-hour support to people experiencing domestic violence or sexual assault.

This is something that is in place in our system, but right now, each agency Each shelter, each program sort of has their own way of having people connect with them and a way by which they provide intake.

This consolidates all of those efforts into one phone line and ensures that there is help available when people need it.

Typically, phone lines at agencies may be open for a specific period of time, but this ensures that There is someone to take that call when an individual needs it and I'm excited to see this investment in the proposed budget.

Great.

And if I can just add to that, Jason, I want to say thanks to you and to the mayor for this.

We learned about it again last week and there had been, at that point I didn't know that it was included in the mayor's budget and we appreciated the fact that members from the coalition ending gender-based violence were in my office explaining what it was.

So this is super and along with our crisis connections, we're beginning to get that system working together.

Exactly right.

Chair?

Yes, please.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Thank you.

This was going to be one of my areas of priority as well.

We actually heard this issue and had a lunch and learn opportunity that we did jointly with Council Member Pacheco's office where we had several of the service providers come in who work in the space of domestic violence and or sexual assaults and and this was one of the Priorities and sort of gaps in the system that they identified As needing some assistance, and I'm really excited about This particular effort because it's a countywide effort, so it's not an example of the city.

Just going at it alone it's an opportunity for us to acknowledge that people move around the county.

They could be residents here but experiencing violence outside of the city of Seattle and this is a really great opportunity for us to partner with and other agencies.

And my understanding is that King County is actually going to provide about $1.2 million for the other portion of the funding that's necessary.

So $375,000 is a bang for our buck, I think, in terms of being able to effectively buy into this regional system that will really make it much more efficient and easily accessible and understandable for people who are experiencing crisis or violence in the moment to really be able to tap into one single number and not have to own the burden of figuring out where they have to go.

We also heard from the Seattle Police Department who was part of that presentation, that lunch and learn opportunity in my committee.

or in our joint committee a couple months, I think it was two or three months ago, who said that it's also going to be a relief for them to have access to this 24-hour hotline.

A lot of folks don't know that Seattle Police Department officers actually walk around as required by law with this sheet.

of up to a dozen, I think, different places people can call and so they just hand that to folks and that has felt very unsatisfactory to police officers in terms of feeling like they're not really meaningfully giving information to survivors and victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

So I think there's a lot of benefit that we're getting here for $375,000.

Really appreciate this being included in the budget.

Excellent.

Me too.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

As it relates to both the items that are identified as the legislative and policy framework, as well as the strategic priorities for 2020, I'm wondering where the increased expansion of $750,000 for 2020 for the LEAD program is located.

Yeah, so we're going to go more deeply into LEAD on Wednesday the 2nd.

I believe what is scheduled is a morning discussion about our efforts to address homelessness, which currently LEAD is in that program area, the Addressing Homelessness program area.

But we know that LEAD is not a homelessness program.

And I believe in the afternoon, that there is to be a LEAD-specific discussion with the department, mayor's office, and others, including LEAD, at the table.

Great.

So, again, as I was saying, we understand, though, that LEAD is not a homelessness program and should not have the same outcomes and measures as our homelessness programs do because they serve people who are not homeless.

So, can I ask, Allison, she's got a little more information about the timing on this.

Wednesday is turning into more of a cross-cutting day.

So, the morning specifically will be all homelessness.

The afternoon will be additional cross-cutting issues that haven't found department time.

So, LEAD will have two panels, a community panel and a department-led panel.

And then after that, we'll go into TNCs.

Love it.

Thank you.

That's where we're going.

It's separated.

We all know it's not a homelessness program.

Is it 2 o'clock that that?

At 2 o'clock we'll be leaving.

Great, and we've asked the King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg to join us and plus one of our newest Genius Grant recipients Lisa Dugard to join us.

Please, sorry, go ahead Jason.

All right, so next slide, just wanted to highlight the overall budget.

So this is the total budget.

You can see there's a slight increase over the 2019 budget.

And one thing that I wanted to highlight is that you'll see an FTE number really jumped up in 2019 as we welcomed the navigation team to the department.

And with 2020 budget, we are proposing a net increase addition of just two positions.

This is a net increase of a handful of positions that will be added, but also acknowledges the positions associated with Upward Bound that will leave the department and move to deal.

Questions?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you.

Could you go back one slide for me real quick?

Sure.

Okay.

As you're talking about the navigation program, where on this line item budget would we see that increase reflected?

So I was just acknowledging that in 2019 there was a pretty sizable increase in the level of staffing that we got to the department.

So you'll see in the line employment FTEs and the net change.

That change was really, was the navigation team coming from FAS over to the Human Services Department.

I would say it's not, the navigation team is not 16 and a half positions, so there were some others there.

But I just wanted to acknowledge that in 2019, the bulk of that number, the bulk of the FTE that we received in the 2019 adopted budget was bringing the NAV team over.

Okay, if my memory serves me correct, the big debate we were having last year was whether or not, well, among other things, was whether or not to increase the navigation team by seven FTEs or nine FTEs.

Ultimately, nine new FTEs got included in the 2019 adopted budget, so that's the bulk, nine out of 16 and a half, I guess.

My question is, are these two new FTEs proposed specifically for the navigation team, or were you providing that for context?

They are not.

I was just providing that for context.

No, there is not a proposed expansion of the navigation team in the 2020 budget.

Again, we can dive into that more deeply on the second.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Okay.

Very good.

Thank you.

Please continue.

All right, so here we have a full budgets for the programs that I just went through.

These include what is in the base budget as adopted in 2019, then updated in the 2020 budget proposed in front of you, and the changes are noted.

For the DV hotline, it was not in the base, which is why it's showing 100% increase.

The general fund and sweetened beverage tax funding was swapped in the 2020 budget, which reduced the total HSD, SBT funding by $1.95 million.

The 2020 proposed budget also adds 1.125 million to the budget, and the net resulting is a reduction in SPT.

Funding by 13% So I thought that would just call that out since it sort of jumps out on the slide This however does not reduce any of the services as a whole and the funding is still accounted for it's just Reallocated to the general fund and away from the sweetened beverage tax Thank you questions, no All right, with my last slide, I wanted to talk about the department's Aging and Disability Services Division.

They serve about 12,000 people countywide every month who are 18 years and older and living with a disability.

They provide case management and, for many people, critically vital health services.

If not for our caseworkers, many of the people would fall into homelessness or have to live in expensive institutions.

This budget shows the increase of programs that are receiving from three federal sources.

And it really speaks to the incredible work that this team does, both in the delivery of services, but also in their consistent advocacy at the state and federal level.

So I just wanted to highlight that there are increases in these three federal grants.

And that this is, these grants are restricted, so this is money that really is there to support the AAA and the case management program that exists within the ADS division.

And what is the Older Americans Act money going toward?

Yes, so the Older Americans Act is funding that provides a variety of supportive services for older adults.

And so specifically, the increase that we have for 2020 is for senior nutrition programs, supportive services such as case management or community living connections, and also for health promotion programs.

Thank you.

Okay, those are my prepared slides.

Any further questions?

Open to any other questions.

Council Member Sawant, were you reaching for your microphone?

No, no.

Okay.

Anybody else down here?

Well, thanks again for the work that you've done on all ages and abilities.

Thank you.

Of course you can.

Okay, I'm sorry.

But let me just finish my thank you on all ages and abilities.

We've really made progress on that.

As Seattle has become an age-friendly city, what I'm happy with is, even though I've been beating this drum for a number of years, so people are kind of tired of hearing about it, I think what it's done is just increase awareness among the departments about the importance of this.

And it's not just for seniors.

We're trying to make the city a place where, as maybe an overused metaphor, that everybody can use the sidewalks.

whether you're somebody who has a walking disability, whether you're enjoying learning how to ride your scooter, if you're seven years old, whatever it might be, it's making a difference, and I just want you to know I appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you.

Thanks for being an age-friendly champion.

Appreciate your leadership.

Great.

Thank you.

Council Member Mosqueda, it looks like she's the last question.

Thank you.

And for folks who are eight and a half months pregnant who need a little help walking around, we appreciate your advocacy on a walkable, accessible community.

Just because your presentation was relatively short, I had a quick follow-up on the North Lot, the PDA.

Do you know if the funding that was included in the capital investments there that we have sort of fulfilled the amount that the city was asked to contribute?

I know it's a multi-partner effort to try to get affordable housing, clinics, senior housing up on the north lot for the PDA there.

Is there anything that they've asked us for that maybe we haven't been able to fulfill?

That's potentially one of our strategic investment opportunities, and I'm going to stop there.

Happy to continue online.

So maybe more to come.

Yes.

Good.

I appreciate that, because I flagged that as you went by, just talking about what that north lot can be used for.

So we're excited about that.

One last question, and I want to give Alice McClain, all kudos on this.

Five years ago, we moved the utility discount program from, I think, Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle City Light over to HSD.

And I think there was a goal that was to be achieved moving from like 14,000 to 34,000 participants.

Do you have any idea whether we've met that?

We're close.

We're close.

Yeah.

And I always love the opportunity to talk about the utility discount program and would you know, appreciate always the opportunity to come to council and highlight that program and the work that that team is doing.

But we're very close to achieving that 34,000 goal, and it's an incredible effort.

I mean, I started at the department six years ago and started working very closely with that program maybe five years ago.

And that was, it seemed incredibly ambitious to even double that number.

But the team at the utility discount program, our partners, our funders at the utilities, it's been an incredibly successful partnership and I've just, you know, it's thrilling to see that so many eligible residents have been signed up and are now using the discount program.

And again, as part of the systems, and I know this is something, another drum I keep banging here, but are we working with Metro so that it's a one-stop shop?

So somebody that's eligible to get a low-income Orca Pass, or to one of the items that came up in your committee this week, Council Member Mosqueda, were some programs for low-income seniors, and other people have to apply for it, but to the extent that we can make it as easy as possible.

I don't know if there's hope for the future, but I'd love to know what the plans are.

Yeah, I think there is a lot of hope.

I think, you know, we continue to work on an affordability portal where individuals who meet certain qualifications can access whatever programs they qualify for.

The UDP team does a lot of work to make sure that when they're engaging with someone in person, on the phone, online, that that individual knows what is available at the city and elsewhere.

So they spend a lot of time engaging with individuals so that they can get them on as many of the discount programs as possible, all with the goal of keeping affordable, keeping Seattle affordable for those individuals.

Great.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

And you're right.

I think what we talked about in our committee was the desire to make sure more people got access to the utility discount program, the UDP, customer service individuals, I understand, are very knowledgeable, so I agree with you.

The thing that I'm hearing from our community partners, many of whom are contracting with HSD, is they can't get through the line because it's so busy, and they're being told, can you call back later?

Or they're sitting on hold for a long period of time.

So one of the things that we've been flagging in our conversations with Seattle City Light, and I'll look at Council Member Herbold as well for the conversation around SPU, Seattle Public Utilities, is it would be great to have a warm handoff, a warm handoff line for our community partners who are trying to find assistance for folks.

I can imagine it would be a huge cost savings to those community partners like Solid Ground, for example, who said that when they have someone in their office and they're spending 45 minutes of an hour long conversation with a family waiting on hold, that's a huge waste of resources for them, the partner to HSD, and to the family who has very limited time.

Do we have anything that we could build off of that would be a warm handoff so that people had a direct line if they were a human service provider?

I'll give you one example.

When I was at the exchange board, We did this very thing for the community organizations that we had contracted with to be the outreach entities to get folks enrolled in Apple Health.

Those community organizations have the trust, right?

But they were being told to call the 1-800 number, and then they were sitting on hold for an hour or two hours just trying to get folks enrolled.

So we created a warm hand-off line that immediately somebody picked up because they were already our contracted provider.

Do we have anything like that?

And if not, can we work with you to see how we could set something like that up for UDP specifically?

Yeah, that sounds like an exciting opportunity.

I think, you know, we're always working to make hold times shorter.

We're also working primarily with our utility partners so that folks can get, you know, signed up right away without having to sort of, you know, make an extra call or access application process in a different way.

So, that sounds like an exciting opportunity.

I think it's a, it strikes me that it's one of those things that we could do that would not be a giant investment, but would really make things a lot easier.

It's like if you've ever called your physician's office, you know, push two if you're a physician.

You know, if you're not a physician, we're going to throw you off the system if, you know, but anyway, something that could make it a little easier for people would be great.

Very good.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

Jason, it's really good to have you here.

Excellent.

Well, we're going to move on to our Office of Housing and our brand new director, Emily Alvarado, is going to be joining us.

And I believe Tracy Ratzliff is going to be back.

Are you doing this solo, Emily?

I'm going to do it all, the technology, the presentation.

No, you can do it all.

Okay, so I've already introduced you, Emily.

Ben Noble.

Go ahead, Tracy.

Tracy Ratzel for Council Central Staff.

Office of Housing, do you want to say anything?

Sure.

Ms.

Mosqueda.

I will try.

I will try to not gush over our new Office of Housing Director again.

You all heard me do that earlier this week.

You know, thanks to Emily Alvarado for stepping up to want to be director, to now serving as director for officially, what is this, three days?

And for serving as interim director, I think, as you've heard me talk about before, She and her team have brought to the conversation an opportunity to leverage every single possible dollar that exists, whether it's state, county, federal dollars, private leverage that we have, incentive dollars.

And I know we're doing as much as we possibly can with very limited funding for housing, for affordable housing.

I put this in the context of the larger discussion we've been having over the last few days about the Green New Deal and global warming.

And earlier this week, as you know, we heard from Naomi Klein, who underscored how this region of the world is going to be one of the more moderate temperatures relative compared to other places in the country due to increased sea levels, flooding, drought, deforestation, desertification.

So we have a huge influx of people moving here right now, 1,000 people a week to this region, and it's only going to increase.

We have a housing crisis as it currently stands.

It's manifesting itself in displacement, people having to commute farther and farther into the city.

It's manifesting itself in homelessness that we'll talk about again next week.

So what I'm looking forward to hearing is how we can do even more with the very limited dollars that we have and recognize that the trickle-down economic approach to building middle-income housing or even upper middle income housing is not going to necessarily solve our crisis of the lack of supply.

And so some of the things that I'm hoping that we'll be able to pull out from your presentation today is the specific investments in zero to 30% area median income housing, how we're creating opportunities for those folks so that people don't fall into homelessness and that we can help stabilize people.

And of course, you know, as you've heard this council say before, We do recognize that when we create middle-income housing, it is good for the workforce that's out there so that people aren't renting units that are actually displacing the lower-wage workers.

But I appreciate that you've said before as well, Madam Chair, You know, we don't want to apply a trickle-down approach to housing when we know the biggest need is in zero to 30. So looking forward to hearing your presentation and recognizing you've been interim, and then this is, you know, day three or four in your official role.

We do appreciate that a lot of this A conversation has taken place over the transition time at OH, and just want to thank you and thank your team for working with us on council and the community to identify ways to leverage funding.

But those will be some of the questions that I think the council will be interested in hearing more about.

All right, Tracy.

Just to remind council members, you will hear today about what is sitting in the Office of Housing Budget.

It's a big year in the mayor's proposed budget for housing.

To remind you, there is additional funds that will be targeted for housing development in the longer term.

$41 million that is in finance general, subject to a spending plan that will be submitted to council in the first quarter of 2020. And another $15 million for site acquisition that is in the Office of Planning and Community Development.

that will be used for EDI projects that include housing, also for site acquisition.

Again, this is the mayor's proposal.

The council, it goes without saying, has the ability to look at these proposals and to make their decisions about that.

Great.

Thank you.

Emily.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

So I'm pleased to present the mayor's proposed 2020 budget for the Office of Housing.

There was certainly a significant amount of both city and state legislative action in the last year that has really directed additional resources for housing.

The once-in-a-lifetime disposition of Mercer properties is driving some significant capital for permanently affordable homeownership, which I'll speak more about.

The state legislature passed a bill, HB 1219, which provided local jurisdictions with the flexibility to use real estate excise tax REIT 2 for the purpose of affordable housing and A really exciting outcome of that is that it will make $25 million available for this NOFA for rental housing.

The state bill, HB1406, which provided the opportunity for local jurisdictions to withhold a portion of the sales tax to invest in affordable housing was passed at the state.

It was then implemented locally with the mayor's support and with the support of Councilmember Mosqueda and all of you.

And that will help provide additional resources for extremely low income housing, both the capital and ensuring that we're able to operate that housing as well.

And then the recent tax on heating oil providers will help to provide some opportunity to convert from oil to electric heat for low income households.

The strategic priorities for 2020, I think, complement some of the things that you've already been talking about.

Obviously, a core focus for our office is to continue to advance racial and social equity, and I believe that this budget does that.

It does it in a few ways, one through growing resources for affordable housing, but also through targeting our investments and looking at the population served, the locations of their investments, and how we hone our programs and policies of our investments to serve those with the greatest needs and who have been marginalized.

Additional strategic priority is to invest in rental and ownership housing for low-income households.

I really want to pause on this one, which is that I should have said in the previous slide what the legislative and policy framework did.

was above all, it drove the vast majority of new resources to support low-income rental housing.

So the bulk of the ads for this budget are really to provide affordable rental housing at 60% AMI and below.

Most of you all know that we invest that through our annual NOFA.

And so because of the mayor's budget, the annual NOFA, which had been published at $45 million, we will be able to make investments of $90 million.

So that's a significant addition.

And I wanted to speak specifically to your point about extremely low income housing.

So through the NOFA, we will support housing at 60% area median income and below, there are two ways that we can really achieve ELI, extremely low income housing at 30% AMI and below.

The first one is to support extremely low income housing buildings alone.

Often those are permanent supportive housing with a significant amount of operating and maintenance and services needs or in whole single-standing, extremely low-income buildings that may serve a senior population, for example.

The other way we achieve 30% AMI housing is through bought-down units in 60% AMI buildings.

So these are extremely low income units in mixed income affordable developments.

And through the NOFA, when money is targeted at 60% AMI, what we're able to do is fund buildings that serve a range of households.

And by virtue of doing that, sometimes we're able to serve people with lighter service needs.

So for example, in our last NOFA, We funded 1,429 units at 60% AMI and below.

Almost 400 of those were serving extremely low income households.

Some were in 30% AMI buildings and some were in mixed income buildings.

So the resources that we're going to talk about help to do both of those things.

We'll continue to invest and support a strategic priority around addressing displacement.

I think some of the permanent affordable home ownership strategies that we'll talk more about help to advance that.

The other is that the applications have come in for our NOFA this year, and you see a significant number of equitable development projects.

those that have been supported by community-based organizations representing or led by low-income communities of color or in high risk of displacement, and our investment helps to advance that.

We'll continue to promote middle-income housing solutions.

You'll hear more about one of those strategies later.

So in the budget summary, there is not too much here.

One thing to point out is that, like other departments, you'll see a modest reduction in the amount of general fund.

Our department does not heavily rely on the general fund.

But there's a modest reduction as we use our own housing resources to cover some general administration needs.

But most notably is the significant increase in appropriations that's going to be driven directly to our housing programs and investments.

We've had stayed fairly steady at our employment FTEs over the years.

Most recently has been an increase for an outreach position, a community outreach position.

and in the 2020 proposed budget is a new FTA to implement some of our permanently affordable homeownership strategies in ADU work.

So the major budget changes.

First, there is an increase in affordable homeownership.

The change from the adopted 2019 to the 2020 proposed budget there is $14 million.

So this is really to support permanently affordable homeownership for households at 80% of area median income or below.

with a particular focus at a partnership with Sound Transit to avail former surplus Sound Transit sites for permanently affordable homeownership in the Rainier Valley.

This kind of investment is significant.

You could see the percent change increase, and it would help us to nearly double the stock of permanently affordable homeownership in the city.

There's an increase in capital investment in permanent supportive housing, and this is largely implementation of the local option bill, which is expected to provide up to $4.5 million annually in revenue for 20 years to build 175 units of permanent supportive housing in 2020 and to provide O&M subsidies in subsequent years.

So the delta that you see there, just to clarify what that is, you know, we continue to make investments in permanent supportive housing using our existing resources, notably the housing levy.

These new resources will help us to significantly grow our annual investment in permanent supportive housing.

The oil heat conversion program, beginning in 2020, there will be the new tax on heating oil service providers, and OH will use a part of the revenue from this tax to help about 1,000 low-income homeowners convert their heat from oil to a sustainable source.

We do not otherwise have an allowable source to do that important body of work.

The home buyer education program, you see that proposed change.

We're redesigning a program that we presently have.

There was the former program or existing program did home buyer education.

And what we're doing is targeting that homebuyer education so that homebuyers are prepared to purchase a unit at the OH-funded Othello Square Limited Equity Cooperative, which was a first-of-its-kind cooperative model.

So we'd really like to target the homebuyer education to help people achieve homeownership in that model.

And the real estate excise tax for affordable housing, again, this is providing a significant amount, $25 million that will be made available for this NOFA.

You do see zeros across the line there, though, and that is because there's no change in the 2020 budget.

While the NOFA will include that 25 million, the projects will actually draw down on the funds beginning in 2021 when those resources are available.

And as I had mentioned previously, when we, although REIT is in a different line item than increasing capital investments for permanent supportive housing, those REIT resources can also help to produce 30% AMI units.

And then lastly, the Create Accessory Dwelling Unit Financing Program.

I mentioned a significant portion of the Mercer proceeds going to permanently affordable home ownership.

This is around $5.8 million that's proposed to create a pilot program that would provide low-cost loans to low- and moderate-income homeowners for the purposes of building an ADU on their residence.

And really, this is expanding on some of the action that had been taken previously around accessory dwelling units.

Mostly what it does, it expands access to credit.

And so the concept is that homeowners must be at or below 120% AMI.

Homeowners with incomes below 80% AMI get better and different terms.

Our office would be really interested in targeting those homeowners.

And then all ADU units created through this program would serve tenants at or below of area median income.

Emily, do we have any sense about the pool of available homeowners that meet that level of income like you're describing.

I'm sure there are some.

They would have had to purchase their property a long time ago in order to qualify.

Do we have any sense about how many are going to be perhaps available and interested to meet these terms?

I don't know the answer to that question, but I'd be happy to get back to you.

Yeah, I'd love to know.

I think Council Member O'Brien has been a leader in this area to help us identify opportunities for ADU Portland.

folks have been up here multiple times talking to us about their programs.

I think they had a 7 million pilot program that was funded by the Fred Meyer Family Association.

And it's similar to what you're proposing here, 5.8 million.

You know, I'm not sure how far it goes, but, you know, even if we could get another 40 or 50 units built, see how they're working, I think it's well worth our effort in doing so.

So if you can give me some detail about how your intentions will be going here.

And then the last thing is my friend Robin Kosky of your shop.

has been working on the Landlord Liaison Project, it's called something else now.

Housing Connector.

Say it again.

Housing Connector.

Of course.

And we were working with, I believe the Chamber has given us space so that we've got office space there to help work with property owners that would participate.

Can you give us a rough idea on how that's going at this point?

It is going really well is my understanding.

I expect that there will be some formal launch or announcement in the coming months.

And Skelcom, who is the executive director who was hired, has been doing a really fabulous job of identifying available units both in the private market and in affordable housing to help folks who have barriers to housing and will continue to work on making the match so that people have a Place to move into when they're exiting homelessness.

Excellent.

And is it is he working regionally as well?

Not just within the city of Seattle throughout King County Good.

Thank you for that.

I'd love to get some numbers before the end of December on just how that's going because you know I got interested in this first of all because of the work that Atlanta was doing the Atlanta open doors program program, you know, and people say, well, it's apples and oranges because Atlanta has a much lower, a much higher vacancy rate than we have.

I think that's, it's true and changing, but they've got something like 4,000 units in private property available for very low income.

That, to me, is a huge help because we can't build our way out of this fast enough.

So, thank you for all this good work you're doing.

Okay, please, Council Member Muscato.

Thank you very much.

So I have a number of questions, mostly related to the first line and the last line.

So if we look at increased affordable home ownership opportunities, when I look at the Office of Housing Budget and it says that $78.2 million of the $130 million in net proceeds from the Mercer property are proposed to be invested in transformational investments in affordable housing, Yet, I combine increased affordable home ownership opportunities at $14 million plus the accessory dwelling units at about $6 million.

It looks like only $21 million of that goes directly to those programs.

Is that correct?

Are those Mercer dollars?

Yeah, those are the specific funds that go to the programs.

So there's an additional $41 million in finance general targeted for strategic investments.

And again, as I mentioned earlier, your question about one particular project, and as I described yesterday and then in some individual briefings as well, we've identified a number of potential opportunities there, real tangible ones where we would be Investments that focus on housing, but because these dollars are somewhat flexible, also offer opportunities for the city to help develop other public benefits as part of that work as well.

And we have a process set up over the next, actually start meeting next week, and then over the next few months to identify the specific proposals there.

Right, but we have sort of been pointing to the sale of the Mercer property as an opportunity for us to enhance the dollars that go into potentially our NOFA funding.

So we've gone now up to $90 million, which is available for NOFA programs this year, which obviously is a good thing.

Gets us closer to the 2017 amount, which was around $98 million.

But it does seem like none of the Mercer proceeds are going to the 2020 NOFA to support deeply affordable housing.

We talked about permanent housing, which I think we defined at 80% AMI, but the deeply affordable or extremely low-income housing for 0 to 30% AMI, it doesn't appear to me that any of those new Mercer dollars are going directly into deeply affordable, extremely low-income, 0 to 30% AMI housing.

Am I reading that correct?

Well, it doesn't come in through here, but I think, again, saying it one other way is that the $41 million of strategic acquisition and investment may have the opportunity to provide those units as well.

I think the emphasis for that fund is to consider how we make investments in a way that thinks about the housing and the other public benefits that come along with it to really help support both residents and communities.

There may be a range of ways that we can make investments to provide more units through those resources while meeting other public benefits and goals as well.

I appreciate that, and I'll be the first to remind folks that there's no one policy or program that can help solve affordable housing crisis that we're having.

I just wanted to make sure that I was understanding of the Mercer proceeds, where they were going, and it does sound like you're saying that they may potentially be included in future strategic acquisition opportunities, which gives us, I think, a chance to have a policy discussion about the value of putting those dollars either into deeply affordable, extremely low-income housing, or potential strategic acquisition in the future.

So I just want to make sure I understood where those Mercer proceeds are and aren't going at this point.

The second question I have, and then I'll let go of the microphone, Madam Chair, but there are a number of questions that I have about the accessory dwelling unit.

financing model that's being proposed here and if I could just ask a few of these and Then I'll let them sort of answer them.

But number one It seems unique that we are using public funds to help privately finance the creation of accessory dwelling units and detached dwelling units.

As folks know, I'm hugely supportive of creating this gentle infill option and really proud of our city for moving forward with this gentle infill density model.

But when we look at using $6 million in public funds to support homeowners, and I hear I believe, moderate income being pegged at 120% AMI and low income being pegged at 80% AMI.

We are using public funds to support middle income families to build accessory dwelling units in a time where we know that even the smallest cottage is going to be helpful, but it's not going to be the biggest bang for our buck, in my opinion.

So I do want to see how we would be able to support accessory dwelling units and detached dwelling units.

But I'm questioning whether $6 million in this type of pilot assistance program is the most beneficial for our public dollars.

And so the few questions that I have here are, Have we looked at the financing model that, for example, cities like Portland have used to partner with the nonprofit or credit union opportunities, the banks there, to help individuals get access to credit and support to build accessory dwelling units versus using public funds?

Does the $80,000 in proposed average loan assume that these dollars are leveraged in any other way?

So for example, do we know that the homeowner will be able to actually build the dadu or adu at that amount?

Do we have a sense of what the general construction costs are?

How long is this project or the pilot expected to go?

And where are we talking about?

Is this specifically targeted to areas around the city that have the highest risk of displacement?

Is this intended to be citywide?

And I think lastly, as we've learned from pilot programs initiated throughout the year in our administration and finance plan update, When we provide small loans to low-income homeowners, we want them to be able to be used to build that space.

Are we working on any proposals that have been informed by past pilot projects that the ADU efforts have looked at in past ANF plans to try to make sure that people have access to small loans and low-income homeowners could be using those past experiences or existing programs to create these accessory dwelling units.

Thank you for all of those questions.

You're welcome.

I have them in writing if you'd like them.

I also did bring a fact sheet that provides a little bit more background information about the ADU program and proposal that I can hand out instead of just reading you all of the answers.

But I will read a couple of the answers.

And I'll take your last question first.

And that is that in the administrative and financial plan, we did create a new pilot program that would take our existing home repair loan program, which was focused on immediate and emergency health and safety needs, and we expanded it to help create livable space for low-income homeowners.

We have just contracted with the Urban League to do outreach and engagement on that.

program as well as our suite of other sustainable homeownership programs.

So it's a little too early to say exactly what the lesson learned is and how we'll grow from that, but we're underway in our engagement where we will learn more about the needs of low-income homeowners, and from our perspective in terms of administration, of course, want to leverage that expertise as we develop this.

You know, there are still specifics that need to be created, and we would obviously be working to do an annual report back to City Council on the performance of this pilot as we continue to hone it.

I think the real thing here that's different from what other cities is doing is that there is conventional bank resources that are available.

In some cases, the underwriting is just so stringent and complicated that there is some limited access to that capital and credit for low and moderate income people.

And so our goal is to make the bank financing more accessible and to change those loan terms so they can reach more people, really broadening the access to capital by engaging in responsible lending while being flexible on some of the criteria like credit and loan to value.

So that's the idea behind this.

The other concept, of course, is that for the 80% AMI units that are created as the ADUs where they would be regulated, those are rent and income restricted for 10 years.

which is different than other places that have created it.

Can you speak to the geographic diversity?

I do not have the information on the geographic diversity, but I'd be happy to get back to you on that, where the targeting of the program would go.

Any other questions?

Council Member Morris.

First of all, thank you.

And I actually had about eight questions, but you, but wait, wait, you answered five of them.

So there's only three left.

And some of them goes to what Council Member Mosqueda was saying.

So, and again, I'm going to be a little bit district specific.

A big challenge with District 5 responding to homeless encampments has been finding housing and services or permanent supportive housing within the district.

So I know that this budget increases the funding for permanent supportive housing.

So I have the three questions I had.

And again, if you don't have them today, that's okay.

If you can get back to us, that would be great.

Is how many units are expected to be created?

How many people served?

And what is the plan for geographical dispersion of permanent supportive housing?

And I say that because I know that we've been going on and on about change of theory and the poppy report and all of that.

And we're trying to move away from just having non-profits or churches just have a cot in a building that we actually want to get the unsheltered sheltered into transitional housing, to permanent housing, and to have those services.

And so my challenge has been working with community, not just in District 5, everywhere when we have these discussions and platforms about how this permanent supporting housing model is going to be dispersed, not only in District 5 but citywide and what kind of units are we looking at and what kind of services.

And I know that, you know, 25 million are over there.

How are you going to do the funding model?

Is it going to answer everything?

But if you can give me some generalities, that would be great.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I'm happy to report back specifically on those questions.

What I can say more broadly is that we know mostly who is seeking funding from us at this time.

And that gives a general sense of likelihood of what we are likely to fund because they have in fact submitted an application.

And as far as permanent supportive housing goes, we had made two forward commitments last year that remains to be funded.

One was at the Plymouth and Bellwether, Mad Boy on First Hill, which included permanent supportive housing.

The second project that we made a forward commitment to but still requires some of this funding is for DESC's Plum 2. You were talking about DSC's project earlier.

So we had made a forward commitment to that.

We have applications that we've received from Plymouth Housing Group for another project in 12th and Spruce, from DESC in Bitter Lake for supportive housing, and then from YWCA at 5th and Seneca for supportive housing as well.

And then there are additional 30% AMI units that we have applications for that may not have considered themselves to be PSH.

Great.

Anything else?

We're good down here.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Thank you, Chair Bagshaw.

I share some of the skepticism expressed by Council Member Mosqueda on this proposal as I have seen it and heard it described thus far, perhaps for slightly different reasons, but But before I sort of describe a little bit more about what my concerns are, I wanted to just get hopefully some answers to some questions that I had asked when I was initially briefed on this proposal several months ago.

So one of the questions that I asked the mayor's office was whether or not there was an intent to complete a racial equity toolkit on the proposal of this ADU-DADU financing pilot.

And I was assured at the time that a racial equity toolkit was underway or would be completed shortly.

Has that racial equity toolkit been completed?

I am not sure if a specific one on this financing tool has been, but what I can say is that staff have identified this as an outgrowth of a racial equity toolkit that was done previously on accessory dwelling units.

which identified an interest both by low-income people and communities of color to figure out how they gain access to capital to build ADUs.

So while not specifically on this is my understanding, this is built on lessons learned from that toolkit.

I think the answer is no.

To my question, there has not been a racial equity toolkit done on the affordable ADU financing pilot as described on this one sheet and in the budget book.

That's probably correct.

A racial equity toolkit was done on ADUs more generally.

Yeah, I'm familiar with a racial equity toolkit done on the broader policy, which was focused more on should we do it and why, as opposed to now we know we have the answers there, we have a better understanding of the race and social justice impacts related to having ADUs and DADUs as a program at the city.

But this is different because it's about giving effectively a subsidy to private homeowners for purposes of being able to accomplish those stated goals.

And where I think I become skeptical and I express this in a private meeting with a staff from the mayor's office is that I'm not seeing a clear connection or a threading of the needle between the stated intent to utilize this as a race and social justice tool and how this financing pilot is currently structured and modeled in terms of geographic locations, economically distressed zip codes.

I still continue to have a lot of concerns about where the AMI targets are being set for this proposal and just continue to be concerned about whether this is actually fairly characterized as as reaching deeply into low income communities that are likely to be displaced.

So I wanted to put that out there.

And then secondly, related to that is, I think part of the complexity with this model is that I keep hearing that this is a responsible lending program.

And I think that there are plenty of, of other models that are designed to absorb and acknowledge an increased amount of financial risk associated with their lending policies.

And I think that's kind of what Portland was doing in terms of acknowledging that interest rates are different and can be very burdensome for this population who really needs this to be able to stay in place.

And also acknowledging that and appreciating that as a lender in this space you're going to have to accept and absorb a higher level of risk in terms of default on payment or missed payments.

And I'm just, I continue to not hear, I continue to hear about this pilot in the context of more traditional lending that tends to be much more risk averse.

And as a result, continue to have, again, skepticism and concerns that although we keep talking about the ADU and DADU program as anti-displacement stay in place kind of program that the financing pilot is not necessarily designed in a manner that would align with those stated principles and goals.

That wasn't a leading question.

It's probably more for issue identification than anything else.

And if the department sitting here now currently has responses to those questions that would enlighten our ongoing conversation around the deliberation of this financing pilot.

I would be happy to hear that.

or if you'd like to come back and talk about it further.

I think what I'm hearing up here, and I know that for the last decade, we've really been looking at how can we use these ADUs and DADUs for infill.

What do you call them, Council Member?

Gentle infill.

And at the same time, I'm also hearing some concern from my colleagues about how we're spending this money.

So maybe there is a eye of a needle that we can thread that provides some assistance, make sure that we're getting a pilot kicked off and not necessarily ending up with this being one of those things that we die on our sword over because I think it's important that we get something going but we figure out something that will work and address the concerns that we've heard from Councilmember Gonzalez and Councilmember One last thing that I just want to underscore and appreciate is that over the last two decades, almost four decades now, that Seattle through our levies have produced 16,000 low-income city-funded rental housing units, and I understand that through this budget and going forward with the levy that we're on task to add another of almost 4,000 units.

So within another four years that we'll have over 20,000 units that the city through this year levy program have produced.

So this is great news and at the same time, that this is where our regional partners are so important, and the work that we have seen from many other entities say, this is great, but we still need 175,000 more units across a tri-county area in order to address the needs of the people that are flooding in.

Would you say 1,000 a week?

A thousand a week to the region, yes.

Yeah, and that's, you know, those are things working with Claudio Balducci's committee and others that I really want to underscore that you're making a tremendous difference and it needs to be scaled up.

Thank you.

Council Member Mosqueda.

I do have a few more.

I do want to underscore the importance of getting the answers to the questions that both Councilmember Juarez and Councilmember Gonzalez have asked.

I don't think we heard how many units would potentially be created and how many people would be served.

I know you also already commented and committed to getting us information about potential geographic impact that this would have.

So I just want to underscore that that's really important.

And when it comes to a strategic acquisition, a lot of questions that I've had have been referred to the strategic acquisition bucket.

And it does seem that there's a lot of unknowns there, that we may be able to do this, we may be able to do that.

In the proposed fund for the acquisition, there are up to 12 sites owned by Sound Transit that could potentially be used to build affordable home ownership.

Given Sound Transit has similar legislation that we mirrored to try to identify ways to get public land into public hands and maintain it there to build affordable housing, and I know we have a good representative here from Sound Transit, is there any chance that any of these sites will be transferred for free to bring up any of the $14 million And what is the likely timeline for beginning these acquisitions?

Do we think that this can happen in 2020?

Yeah, so on that in particular, we've had a really good relationship working with Sound Transit collaboratively on this.

They've been really good partners.

They had obviously they're effectuating any acquisition or transfers subject to Sound Transit.

forward action, so I'm going to caveat it by saying that, but the discussions that we've had with Sound Transit are recognizing that they would certainly be properties that are substantially below market, so they would be discounted, and we are working with Sound Transit to explore whether there are ways to transfer them at no cost, and I think that is a conversation that's ongoing.

Obviously our interest and the mayor's interest for sure is to get them at the lowest cost possible or at free so that we can use that amount to actually subsidize the development or accelerate the development of the permanently affordable homeownership.

We hope to finalize the deal with Sound Transit by the end of this year and really get underway.

We've already done significant community engagement on those sites, so we're ready to move.

Does the 14 million assume that we will have to pay for those properties then is there potentially?

Freedom within that 14 million if the sound transit decisions are made prior to the completion of our budget that 14 million

assumes about a $90,000 per unit homeownership subsidy, which is identified in our administrative and financial plan.

So things move by virtue of, one, being able to either front load more investment or wait for leverage or put more into development immediately as opposed to putting first round into acquisition.

So it's a moving target, but we've approximated that we would create about 150 permanently affordable homes with that $14 million.

And if we don't have to pay the $90,000, potentially that many more units and additional locations so that we'd be able to stretch the dollars further for larger impact.

That's the theory going in here in terms of remaining uncertainty about whether they'd be transferred at minimal cost or no cost.

Going down to the next line on increased capital investments, a lot of this is based on the good work that our friends at the state legislature did with House Bill 1406. How many permanent supportive housing units will be created through this mixture of bonding and office of housing funds?

And are there additional planned or proposed capital and operation and maintenance investments for permanent supportive housing in this budget outside of what we see here?

So the local option bond proposal would be to produce approximately 175 permanent supportive housing units with the operating and maintenance to support those units as well.

You know, we know that that O&M is critical.

I will say it here.

We can't operate PSH without it.

We'll continue to work with our partners at the Housing Authority.

We have an application underway now to try to get more vouchers that could cover O&M.

We have relationships with the county to figure out how we identify new operating and maintenance.

And certainly if we find that there's a moment in which we find ourselves with more O&M coming in from other sources, that would change what we have on the horizon.

But right now to move those projects of 175 units immediately forward and have them have the operation and maintenance to support it, that local option bond resources could do that.

And I just have one last question.

So before I ask my last question, Director Noble, this is related to the conversation we had yesterday where Council Member Gonzalez and I were asking about what allocation within the Office of Housing Funding is really going to help those who are in homelessness and who are on the verge of falling into homelessness.

So overall, I would still love to see the percentage of funds going into 30% AMI and below.

30 to 60% AMI and up to 80% AMI.

That doesn't even include the 120 plus category that we've talked about today, but it would be helpful for me to see in that breakdown where we really are investing in preventing homelessness as we discussed yesterday.

The last question that I had was related to the allocation of REIT funding for affordable housing.

On the $25 million that's being proposed to be used, a few questions.

Have specific AMI levels been identified as a priority for this additional NOFA funding?

And is the $25 million the maximum amount that we are authorized under the state to collect, or are we sort of limiting ourself in how much REIT funding we're proposing to use in the mayor's budget here and can you clarify again that there's nothing in the 2020 budget or the CIP that commits to the 25 million dollars at this point, right?

I will start with the first question.

I'll let Ben handle the second question.

On the first question about the AMIs for the REIT, we would anticipate putting those resources directly into the NOFA.

The NOFA is restricted at 60% AMI and below, and we have project applications that have already come to us, a significant number of units.

are proposed to be delivered at 50 and 60% in AMI, including a lot of the equitable development projects.

One of the things that we can do that doesn't come in in the application to us, but we're able to accomplish is we can buy down the debt on some of the units so that we can drive deeper affordability levels.

So even if they give us a project with a proposal that identifies all of the units at 60% AMI, We are able to buy down some of the units to achieve some 30% AMI units in those buildings that are then mixed income.

We've done them before.

It means that we have to put more money into the project, but we also recognize that there are significant benefits from doing so.

So that's one of the things that we're able to achieve with those resources.

To answer the first and second part, with respect to REIT funding, there isn't a restriction.

It's REIT II funding, which is half of the overall REIT revenues.

There is not a restriction on the total amount per year.

The change in state funding rules and the eligibility of housing only runs through 2025, so it's not a permanent change, which certainly raises questions on the O&M side.

So the $5 million, as I just described, is not the maximum.

The issue that we had in making the commitment to to affordable housing is that the REIT dollars, in particular REIT 2 dollars, have a number of other competing uses.

As an example, it just occurred to me because we had the Parks Department in earlier today, it's a source of funding for ADA compliance, as an example, also used in SDOT for sidewalks and other things.

So we were trying to strike a balance between the significant priority for affordable housing and the other significant priorities that resources are used for.

So I think that answers the question.

Was that really your last question?

For now.

Not forever.

All right.

Go ahead, Council Member O'Brien.

I was just saying, she can ask questions for two people.

That's fair.

That's fair.

That's right.

Thank you.

That's very good.

That's very good.

Double the questions.

Double the questions.

All right.

Anything else?

All right.

Thank you, Emily.

You're a star.

Thanks for coming and putting up with us.

And we'll look forward to working with you over the next few weeks.

Okay.

Deal, our Department of Education and Early Learning.

I'm looking forward to having you come up to the table.

How you doing?

Do you want to open the doors?

Sure.

Mr. Security, would you kindly open the doors, those back doors for us?

That'd be great.

Thank you.

And please, we've got Brian Goodnight, if you'll get ready to kick this off.

All right, so Duane, would you kindly introduce yourself?

I know everybody, you know what, people are talking in school here.

They're going to get sent out in the hallway.

Go ahead, please.

Thank you.

My name is Duane Chappelle.

I'm the proud director of education and early learning.

Tim Wolfe, Finance Director with the Department of Education and Early Learning.

Great, thank you both for being here, Tim and Duane.

And Brian, good night, welcome.

Sure, thank you.

Brian, good night, Council Central staff.

Please just kick us off.

Okay, great, thank you very much.

So the Department of Education and Early Learning, or DEEL, is responsible for developing and managing the city's education policies and programs.

As you all recall, in 2018, the council approved the new education levy, which is known as the Families Education Preschool and Promise, or FEPP, levy.

And then earlier this year, in April, the council approved an implementation and evaluation plan for that levy, and that regulates how the levy funds can be spent during the seven-year term.

Those levy investments just started in earnest a couple of weeks ago, with the start of the 2019-2020 school year, and we'll be funding programs for the next seven years.

And then lastly, as was discussed during Ben's presentation yesterday, one of the big changes in this year's proposed budget for DEEL is the expansion of the Child Care Assistance Program, or CCAP.

DEEL will be providing more detail on that in a moment, and they are prepared to respond to some of the questions that were raised yesterday.

But at the conclusion of today's meeting, if there are outstanding questions, I will obviously continue to work with DEEL and CBO to get any of those questions answered for us.

So unless there are other questions at this time, I'd be happy to turn it over.

Very good.

All right, please, Dwayne.

Okay, thank you, Brian.

So, first of all, I just want to thank you all for giving us this opportunity to be here and share a little high-level information with you all about our department.

This slide speaks to the legislative and policy framework And first I just want to start with, I'll start with the bottom frame where it says King County Council and I'll kind of bounce around.

Just to give you a little bit, it just, King County started their PSTAA, PSTAA process for their funding recently.

So what we're going to do is deal with, is planning on placing a marker here.

And once King County has a little bit more information and our team is able to gather more information, we would be more than happy to come back and share an update on what's next for that piece right there.

Can you remind us what's that acronym?

I believe it stands for Puget Sound Taxpayer Accountability.

What?

Transit.

Transit, yes.

Accountability.

And I forgot what the other A stands for.

Thank you.

So I'm going to jump to the top sale now that talks about the FEPP levy implementation and evaluation plan.

And just wanted to reiterate a huge thank you to you all for helping us with the FEP and moving that forward.

And Council Member Gonzalez on her work with the Levy Oversight Committee.

Just wanted to share that DEEL right now are operating with our FEP levy plans and have some adopted spending plans in place for us.

And I'll talk a little bit more about that in my priorities on the next slide.

And go ahead.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Dr. Chappelle, for being with us this afternoon and also to Mr. Wolf.

I get the pleasure of working with both of you a lot and have really enjoyed our working relationship on some of these really critically important investments on the FEPP levy implementation and evaluation plan.

based on based on my staff's read of the.

Changes to the endorsed 2020 budget.

It appears that nothing is changing as it relates to levels of investment for FEPP levy dollars.

Is that accurate?

Yes, that is accurate.

Okay.

I just wanted to confirm that we're still on track and our math is adding up there.

Yes.

Great.

Thank you.

And then so what I'll do is dive a little bit into this next middle slide where it says Washington State Legislature.

And so what this is is ultimately House Bill 2158 is fully funded, the Washington College Grant, and was modified some income eligibility requirements.

So now what I'm going to do is take us to slide two for our strategic priorities for 2020.

Quick go back to that last slide, please.

Yes.

It is.

You are absolutely right.

Puget Sound taxpayer accountability account account.

So that's going to allocate funding for early learning and promise.

So it's not Seattle promise.

But again it's outside the region.

Great.

But it's I'm sure it's compatible or complementary to the work that we're doing.

Yes.

Believe.

Yes.

Believe so.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

So for our 2020 priorities, what I'll do is start with the first one.

Super excited about all of our priorities in 2020. I think you all are as well.

The first one I really wanted to highlight was our CCAP expansion proposal.

What this proposal projects is to serve an additional 600 children by increasing the maximum income eligibility.

Super excited.

Oh, go forward on your slide now.

Thank you.

Sorry, I made you go back.

Oh, thank you.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

Sorry, Duane.

For slide two.

And what I was saying was that this is the CCAP Expansion Proposal is projecting to serve an additional 600 students, your children, by increasing the maximum income and eligibility.

And the way this is going to happen, it's going to be done in like a three-pronged approach.

And the first prong would be expanding access by increasing voucher eligibility to a slightly higher income.

And the other two prongs, or should I say the next prong would be professional development and training.

And the third prong is going to be providing provider incentives for all of our providers.

So I know this is something that Council Member Mosqueda and I spoke about just in the last couple of days, actually.

But it's fabulous that we're going to be able to serve an additional 600 children.

Do we have 600 more slots available for them so that we can give them the voucher and we can turn around and say, let's assume that there's 60 kids somewhere.

Do we have another 10 places ready so we can get these youngsters into the programs and ready to go?

That's part of the design of the proposal by focusing not just on increasing the number of vouchers, but also having some investment towards supply.

So we know that right now, a third of our providers that have agreements with us aren't actually serving any children.

So part of the design of having incentives for providers is to just have a better utilization rate with the providers that we have currently, and then look towards expanding as well.

Thanks, Tim.

Go ahead, Council Member Mosqueda.

I may want you to extrapolate on that last comment a little bit because let me just start there.

Can you extrapolate on that last comment a little bit?

I don't think your microphone's on, Doctor.

We keep calling you Doctor.

You can stop any time.

You can stop any time.

You'll find it nowhere on a business card.

deeply appreciate the need to increase the supply of childcare opportunities.

But the goal here is not just that, but rather for the folks who are actually paying for childcare now and potentially impoverishing themselves in doing so, as we all know what it can cost.

It would be a success and a victory in part, although not in whole, if parents who are currently or are soon to be facing significant cost of child care are able to enroll their children effectively at lower cost.

So it is a combination of both wanting to improve the expansion of the program in terms of folks who have kids enrolled in existing programs, and as Tim and Duane have mentioned, also at the same time, increasing the number of slots that are available.

So it's a both and, if you will.

Thank you, Chair.

So then is the expansion on CCAP both increasing eligibility from 300% to 350%, which means that...

more people would qualify based on their income alone.

Does it also include providing a deeper subsidy for those who are currently enrolled in the CCAP program and receiving subsidies?

So it's just the former.

It's expanding access.

It's focused on purely that expansion from 300 to 350. The percent voucher that families on the existing from 200 to 300 is unchanged with this proposal.

Okay, and remind me when we go from 300% to 350%, what's the income bracket?

From 3 to 350 is going from $50,730 to around $59,185.

For a family of four?

Yes, for a family of four.

Okay.

And is there, was there any other, does this model include any other modifications to the eligibility criteria other than income?

Other than income, it adds ESL classes as eligible.

And previously, if you were attending an ESL class, you weren't eligible to actually have a CCAT voucher.

So that's the only change outside of income eligibility to eligibility.

OK.

So if you're a parent who's, for example, pursuing an advanced degree, you still do not qualify under the CCAT program?

That's correct.

Okay, and then additionally on top of this, are there any kinds of reserves that have been built into this expansion plan?

So I think this gets to the point that we were just asking right now.

So for example, if we don't get enough providers for the expansion proposal, then sort of what happens to the additional dollars or the delta of the dollars that aren't being utilized because we haven't hit our forecasted utilization rates and haven't actually meaningfully increased the supply side of the question, which is kind of a weird way to talk about encouraging more childcare providers to take care of our kids.

So what I'll do is, let me get that information and I'll get back to you about that, okay?

Okay.

Okay.

I got your number.

I won't call you.

No, I do think it's a- We will follow up with you.

I mean, I think we had this policy debate during the FEPP levy when we were talking about SPP expansion, Seattle Preschool Promise expansion in particular.

So there had been an original forecast of what we thought that expansion could be or what deal thought that expansion could be.

And we scaled that back a little bit because we thought it was a little too ambitious.

And we didn't want to end up in a position where we had allocated limited resources for expansion purposes, and then set ourselves up in two ways.

One, not using the money.

And two, being put in a situation where not using the money meant not actually hitting our targets.

which could be interpreted as us failing in terms of the success rate of those types of programs.

So I just am very cognizant of the fact that while child care is a significant need from an access perspective, we also have a significant issue with the reality that we need a lot more attention paid to the number of providers who can meaningfully participate in the childcare industry because it's just such a broken industry for mostly women, mostly women of color, many immigrant women who are getting paid minimum wage or less to do this really important work.

Go ahead.

Just on the issue of the uptake rate, essentially, how many families are we serving?

Between 2018 and 2019, we increased by 28% the number of families served, so we're close to about 830 right now.

So we're actually, for the first time, overspending in our budget on subsidy.

There's a supplemental coming to actually increase our budget for vouchers.

So the model assumes a high level of growth, a continued high level of growth consistent with what we've seen for the last two years.

But that's built into the base of the assumption for the voucher growth.

I just wanted to make that point, that is that we're proposal to increase funding under the existing program.

Also just a point of clarity that 350% of poverty for family of four is about $90,000.

So that's the upper end of what we're talking about.

And again, the program will provide the opportunity to provide subsidies for a significant share of the eligible population in that new income group.

Okay, so I'm just going to, I know we're not in the issue identification process quite yet, but I won't be here next week and don't want to miss my opportunity to put this on the radar.

I know Brian and I have worked together in this space on the Seattle Preschool Promise Program in terms of the income eligibility and eligibility criteria.

spectrum as a whole as it relates to access around these issues.

So just want to flag this particular space as an opportunity for us to get additional information to get a better understanding of how the forecasting was done and what assumptions the model is relying on to both give us confidence that it's going to be a 600 additional children and also to make sure that that the projections of that are set at the right level.

It might be possible we need more based on what you just said, Mr. Wolf.

So that would also be a significant area of interest for me.

Okay.

Well, thank you for that.

And so, what I'll do is jump next to another one of our strategic priorities, which is in the bottom cell down here.

Sorry, we got person number two down here.

It's so hard for us to not talk about child care.

Know you want to move forward, but we're We are in line in terms of our questioning and so I'll try not to repeat some of those but I do want to underscore the importance of Making sure that the wages that we're talking about so we are talking about C cap expansion coming with a provider wage increase correct I

there's a market rate adjustment built into this?

Yes, so it's about an 8.5%.

So that 8.5% and that actually comes through not necessarily as a wage increase, but in the subsidy.

So the voucher amount itself is increasing, which then goes to the providers.

I see.

Okay.

Would it be fair to classify that as a inflationary adjustment like we've talked about with HSD?

So it's not necessarily a bonus for these workers.

It's more catching up with what the market currently

Essentially it's a result we do an annual market study just looking at our CCAP providers to get a sense of their rate increase every year and then true rub.

Okay.

Thank you for that clarification.

And then, in addition to that market rate stabilization amount, I'm going to try not to say wage increase, are there other areas that we are trying to look at to ensure more providers have the resources they need?

You mentioned doing more with our ESL providers.

I think that's a good addition, but are there other culturally competent ways that we're trying to reach out and make sure providers have opportunities to participate in the program where they currently don't have?

Or is there other ways to make sure that we're not promoting the cycle of poverty with our public dollars like we talked about before with HSD contracted providers?

Anything else outside of this inflationary adjustment that you would like to point us to?

So one half of the 800,000 that's for the quality supports is for professional development.

It kind of gets to a little bit of what you were talking about of access for providers to professional development.

So currently, CCAP providers are able to access the trainings and the professional development that the early learning department offers, mostly for SPP providers.

But because of the SPP growth, most CCAP providers don't actually have access to that.

We don't have enough seats for for CCAP providers to actually take advantage of the trainings that we're offering.

So a hefty portion of this proposal on the provider side is focused on expanding professional development and quality practice.

Last question, unless you had a follow-up to that one.

I don't have a specific follow-up to that one.

My last question for the CCAP expansion.

I'm a little concerned about the timing when we look at the CCAP expansion.

I know we had a lot of support out here for including that in the FEPP levy and we know it was cost prohibitive at the time It looks like the CCAP expansion began in September of this year.

So have we already started the program?

Where did those funds come from?

Was the council engaged?

I just I I think I'm concerned any time it appears that something that's in a proposed budget looks like it's already been implemented.

And I don't, I'm not saying that that's happened at DEL before.

We have seen it happen in other areas, for example, in last year's budget.

So has this expansion already occurred and what role did we have, if any, in that?

Sure, I can start on the rate increase part alone, or the, sorry, excuse me, the eligibility increase.

That, like you said, has taken effect in September, the 300 to 350. None of the other pieces of this are in effect.

So that is the one piece of this that is currently in effect.

And if I could just add a little bit.

So on the CCAP, this is not a new area of programming for the city.

We've been funding CCAP for quite some time.

So this is just a additional allocation is my understanding to continue to build on the prior work.

The biggest differences as I understand it is the change in the eligibility criteria.

And now I'm hearing for the first time, also allowing ESL classrooms to be able to qualify for the reimbursement through CCAP or subsidy as we are referring to it up here.

So I think those are good modifications.

I think there's, Other areas of the eligibility criteria we may want to consider to augment the reach of who can actually meaningfully access childcare subsidies to sort of better align with the realities of who's having children and what their life circumstances might be, which is why I brought up the example of parents who might be enrolled full-time in graduate school, for example.

We have real stories of women who've been unable to qualify for CCAP, even though they have young children, clearly don't have enough money to pay for childcare, and could really benefit from CCAP, and they're being effectively penalized by our system and our policies because they are enrolled in graduate school, and that seems unfair.

And that can be something I know we have constant check-ins and maybe we can continue that dialogue at those times.

Yeah.

So I think most of the funding from CCAP in the past has come from the levy.

Is that accurate?

Or has it always been general fund?

It's always been a mix of levy and general fund.

Okay.

And so these expansion dollars are coming this time from the sweetened beverage tax.

Is the base funding still a mixture, so now it will be a mixture of sweetened beverage tax, general fund, and levy dollars?

So our base funding, the current 2019-2020 base, the 3.1, that is now general fund.

There's a component of FEPP levy dollars, as you're referencing, that will contribute to subsidies, and now there is this expansion of $3 million that will be sweetened beverage tax.

Okay, and then in the resolution that council passed together with the levy proposal, there was a reference to a childcare mentorship program that would allocate at least $4 million over the life of the levy to a mentorship program for prospective childcare providers.

How does that relate to CCAP, if at all?

Is it, so with this, could this be another, can we follow back up with you on that one specifically to talk about how they overall all relate?

Sure.

Okay.

And I suspect that Council Member Mosqueda also has interest in that particular area.

So if you could get information to both of us, that would be super.

Okay.

Thanks.

We will do.

Thank you.

So, um, I appreciate the response and you know, quite frankly I think we all appear don't go a day without talking about the need to expand these programs and our desire to see more child care and Affordable and accessible child care across the city.

We spend almost every day at some point talking about that So this is not a question about whether or not I support expanding CCAP to additional families.

And quite frankly, when we look at $59,000 a year for a family of four, we know folks are struggling at that amount.

Frankly, they're struggling at $80,000 and $100,000 a year as well to afford childcare in the city.

We've talked already about the childcare deserts.

The issue of access and affordability is real.

My questions are more in line with the process here.

If a program has already been implemented that's being proposed in the budget, began implementation before this council even had a chance to receive the budget and weigh in on it.

I worry, Madam Chair, about the impact that that process has on our future deliberations.

One good example is I don't want us to be in a situation ever where a program has been implemented and then somehow council has to make an impossible decision about which programs to fund and which programs won't.

And again, I know that there's some levy dollars involved here, so it's not all general fund.

But in terms of process, and maybe this is better directed at Director Noble, for you to hear directly from us, I'm very concerned that a program has been implemented that's being proposed in the budget that hadn't come to council before.

Am I wrong?

I hear your concern.

I mean, I think the thing to understand here is that none of We share the broad interest, I think we all share the broad interest in providing increased access.

There is not sufficient funding in our proposal or in any obvious set of revenues to provide universal access to these resources.

The executive side determined the best way to use the resources we have and thought that an expansion was worthwhile unto itself in terms of eligibility.

But also think that increased funding to the program to increase its breadth as well was also important and worthwhile.

And the timing having to do with the start of the school year and the like forced some decisions about program structure.

Can I add just really quickly?

Sorry, I know we're trying to move along here, but I'm sensitive to Council Member Mosqueda's concerns around process, but I also wanna point back to the resolution that we passed on the FEPP levy, which specifically requested that the department look at expansion of eligibility criteria to include more families.

And so from my perspective, I see this as a, at least as a partial response to direction from the City Council in that resolution to look at modifying the eligibility criteria to allow greater access to more families for this program.

So I, for what it's worth, I received this proposal in the spirit of compliance with that resolution.

And I think right now is the time for us to have that debate and determine from our independent analysis whether or not it is in response to and compliance with what we wanted to see in terms of a policy direction when we considered that resolution.

And I am also sensitive to the department's need to have some flexibility in this space, given the timing of when these tuition subsidies are expected by families who are starting effectively their school year for lack of a better term in this space, although childcare is oftentimes year round.

I wanted to, if there was a vacuum of information that I created as the chair of this committee, I wanted to sort of take a little bit of the mea culpa away from the department in terms of any potential timing concerns that you just shared with us, Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you for that.

And just more broadly, we really look forward to this continued discussion.

I mean, it's a very rich policy space and one that we've been engaged in on our side, but also with you through the FEPP levy and now through this proposal.

And it is a deep challenge to provide both a broader set of incentives and a deeper set of incentives, I mean subsidies, focusing both on the families and the children themselves, but then also on the providers and striking that balance.

And obviously there is a shared interest from the executive, from the council, on increasing access and capacity throughout the city.

Thank you.

I think that's very clear.

I appreciate the dialogue up here.

Okay, please continue.

Sure.

Thank you.

The next sale down at the bottom is upper bound and another one that I am super excited about coming over to deal.

So one of our priorities this year is to transition upper bound to deal starting in the winter of 2020 from HSD.

I'm not sure if everyone knows about Upper Bound.

Ultimately, it's a highly respected program that supports low-income and first-generation students that are in high school, and these students are in pursuit of their high school diploma, and what Upper Bound does helps prepare these young students to successfully enter and complete post-secondary education.

So we know that this transition makes perfect sense for us, given our FEPP levy goals and looking at us with our college and career readiness as far as how this aligns with the Seattle Promise.

So we're super excited to have Upward Bound coming over to deal.

Good.

Please get on to the next priority page.

Thank you.

The next priority that we have for 2020, you'll see up here.

And all of this slide, basically what this is, this is just all about the levy.

Just so you know that everything is going according to schedule so far.

By the end of 2020, we will have all of our school-based and CBO contracts out the door.

And looking at the expansion for preschool, at the end of last year, we served around 1,470 children.

And we do have the capacity, or we will have the capacity, to serve approximately 279 more preschoolers in 19-20 school year.

So our goal, what we're looking at expecting, is to serve between 2,450 and 2,500 children.

by the end of the levy.

So we're super excited about that.

And the last priority we have up here is another one that's awesome is the Seattle Promise expansion.

And excuse me.

So first, I just wanted to just share a little background, just to remember that this is actually the first year that the Seattle Promise is expanding from the six high schools now going to 17 Seattle Public High Schools this year.

And we're looking at a sizable increase in participation.

And just for you know, for the 13th and 14th year, we have approximately, we've gone from 301 students to about 700 students.

So all of this was accomplished through our levy ramp up and the investments that we have for our young people participating in the Seattle Promise.

So we're super excited about these priorities for 2020.

Good.

Very good.

Thank you.

I will quickly go over the next two slides.

This slide, as you can see, our four-year budget.

Our general fund appropriation has been relatively stable.

That small, what looks like a dip between 19 and 20 is really the sweetened beverage tax moving out of that general fund line into other appropriation.

The growth, the other thing I'd point out is our growth in FTE, we have grown tremendously in the last four years.

This is largely, again, contributed to the FEPP levy.

As you can see, we added 23 new positions this year, and that was huge growth for us.

And the proposed budget has comparatively modest growth, 12.5, but largely funded or connected to the CCAP expansion and upward bound.

And then just circling back to what Duane has already covered, most of the items in our, the two big items in our budget are the upward bound transfer from HSD and the CCAP expansion.

As Council Member Gonzalez pointed out, our expenditures are aligned with our levy spending.

We are proposing to add three new positions this year to help with levy implementation.

As we're just a few weeks into FEPP, there's a lot to do with the rollout and making sure that we can actually operationalize that.

So that's largely what these three positions are tied to.

Good.

May I?

Please, go ahead.

Are those positions housed within DEEL, or are they housed somewhere else?

Those are all three new DEEL positions.

OK.

So they're going to be at DEEL, not at Seattle Public Schools or somewhere else, or Seattle Colleges.

OK.

Thank you for the presentation.

So I appreciated just hearing how you're including HB 2158 in your policy framework.

And we just kind of, I'm going to take a bit back to the morning.

We heard a presentation from, a great presentation from Director Bobby Lee about us having a knowledge-based economy, his concerns about automation and so forth.

In HB 2158, I know there was expansion for municipalities to expand or to opt into the Washington State Opportunity Scholarship, which is a great program, statewide program.

And given that Seattle has just a strong knowledge-based economy, is there discussion internally to DEL with regards to trying to incorporate that outside of just the fully funded college grant and the income and eligibility requirements?

Yes, there is.

So, yes, to answer your question, yes, there is discussion internally.

And we're also working with the folks with HB 121 just to learn more about it, to see what, how DEEL can align, integrate with it.

And as far as Director Lee, Bobby Lee goes, DEEL is in collaboration with OED, NHSD, looking at the changing economy and is thinking about these young people that we'll be providing resources to, figuring out to make sure that there's some type of alignment so they can have opportunities for the changing economy as well.

And just for additional context, colleagues, the Washington State Opportunity Scholarship is a program that is operated statewide where private donors are able to...

it used to be that private donors would receive a match from the state for their donation to help fund a four-year college education or CTE education for anyone that's low-income or first-generation.

It was expanded to this past legislative session to include cities and provide cities the opportunity for any graduate within their jurisdiction to receive a scholarship or be eligible for the match as well.

So I have particular interest in this particular area in terms of how Seattle can help lead in the broader statewide effort.

Because I think Seattle can be well positioned to create the new face of STEM healthcare workers as well as CTE workers as well.

So.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you for bringing that up.

Anything else from you two?

No, that's it.

Just thank you for this opportunity to present.

I just want to acknowledge your patience.

There were a lot of questions thrown at you.

Thank you, both of you.

that you know your material and it's very helpful.

One last question for me.

Can you give us a status update on Nova High School?

Last year we put in, I can't remember, 200 and some over a period of time of the levy that was going to go directly to Nova High School for their medical clinic.

Do you have an update for us?

I can tell you briefly what I know, and then I can follow back up with more detail.

Last that we checked in, I know Nova High School had been in touch with folks from Public Health King County and talking about what it would look like in the school.

But as far as developments, if we have any movement from there, what I can do is follow back up with you with a visit with folks from King County and just get an overview of where we are.

No, that'd be good.

You know, everything always takes twice as long, 10 times as long as I ever want.

But we were talking with the principal at NOVA last year.

He was reaching out, as I understand, to some of our local medical institutions, whether it was Virginia Mason, Swedish, UW.

to say, do you want to be a children's, do you want to be a partner with us?

And I'm just interested of whether that's happened and whether we'll see this.

Okay.

I'll be sure to follow back up with you with that.

Good.

Very good.

Okay.

Any other questions?

One more question.

Go ahead.

So, we didn't see it in the slides and we haven't had a chance to check in.

I know there was an email correspondence recently about the childcare on site.

And what I am still hoping that we will be able to do is work with FAS and you all to create childcare on site.

And I know that there's a model that's been projected that folks felt like was cost prohibitive, but I do think that among that analysis, there's scalable options.

can't let you leave the table without saying to our colleagues and to the department, I still think that there's incredible opportunities right here at City Hall or across the street that don't require the full scale of changes and capital investments that were being suggested in the memo and look forward to working with you to see what we can do on site as initial steps.

Thank you for that.

Look forward to it.

All right.

One more question from Council Member Gonzalez and then we're going to go into public comments.

And if you don't have this readily available, you can submit an answer later.

But on the FTEs, the additional FTEs for FEPP, do you have a sense of what part of the implementation plan they're going to be working on?

It varies.

So one of those is a public relations specialist to help with outreach and marketing, just getting the word out about the investments and really spreading that.

The team right now is a team of two.

The other one is data operations for early learning.

So there's a lot of data systems in that division and they need a lot of work and just really making sure that we are entering data and tracking, monitoring, have good data quality essentially so that we can actually do the program monitoring and quality assurance in a more effective way.

And then the last part is just peer operations.

It's an administrative position.

With the growth from last year, the 23 FTE, it's adding an administrative position in the early learning division.

OK, great.

Thank you.

Excellent.

OK.

Questions are done.

So, I want to talk about tomorrow for a moment.

And also, I want to acknowledge all of you who are here, council members Mosqueda and Gonzales.

I think you get the award, joint award, for the most questions of the day.

Appreciate so much Council Member Pacheco, Council Member Juarez, Council Member O'Brien.

Thanks for sticking with us, for really being part of the conversation today.

Duane and Tim, thank you.

We just appreciate your work so much.

And no more longer Dr. Noble.

Ben, it's great having you here.

Lisa, Brian, thank you.

So with that, tomorrow we've got another six department day.

The morning will be Transportation, Civil Rights, and Immigrants and Refugee Affairs.

And in the afternoon, again, starting at 2 o'clock, Police, Fire, and OSER, Sustainability and Environment Office.

So I look forward to that.

I look forward to all of you being with me today.

Thanks so much for that.

We're going to end this part of the meeting and move into public comment Jodi, can you grab the sheet for me?

Can I ask a procedural question?

No, I'll take care of it.

Thanks.

Thanks very much Process question, of course, and I want to thank central staff for their PowerPoint presentations in the walkthrough One question would be do you know or should we anticipate?

From central staff the PowerPoint presentations at a certain time prior to the day That we are reviewing the materials.

When do you want them?

Oh, I don't know I know that they're extremely busy so I'm just wondering like is that something that we should tee up our teams for like a 430 delivery for the next day because I know our incredible staff go through these materials like we do and having them ready to receive it is always challenging when It's coming.

Right, exactly.

And people are looking, thinking, hmm, it's now 5.30, can I go home?

Yeah, but I know that everybody's busy.

I think Ms.

McClain over here has something to say about that.

Great.

I think Patty just sent out a new version.

Generally speaking, we're trying to get it out as soon as possible.

A lot of it hinges on when we receive information in the PowerPoints from the departments in a final form.

What's our goal?

Are we trying to get things out before 4 o'clock?

I think we're trying to get them out by 2 the day before.

And then, unfortunately, we've had to refresh a couple of agendas.

OK.

That's for the department presentations.

That's not the delivery for any future agenda materials.

Yeah.

Say that again.

So that's the timeline specifically for the department presentations.

For the presentations moving forward, which are central staff driven, we're hoping to get those out earlier than that.

What's the timeline?

We're going to get them out earlier than that.

I'm not going to put you on the spot today.

Are the ones for tomorrow out now?

They are.

Very good.

All right, so there's the answer to that question.

But those are department.

Correct, for tomorrow.

Yeah.

Right, I thought that was.

Versus.

I think the question was about presentations that are generated and driven by council central staff versus departments.

is how I understood it, which is probably relevant to next week.

When you're gone.

Yeah.

Next week is also departments.

So for the following week when we get to issue ID, I can't pull off the timeline off the top of my head, but it's sooner than the day before it too, I can tell you.

Can I send that out to you all under separate cover?

Of course.

We have lots of different deadlines for lots of different weeks.

Right.

And I think that Patty and Allison, you've done a good job about putting them on one sheet and with color corrections on it and highlights.

So if there's anything anybody looks at and is confused, let us know.

It's so helpful to have all of this together.

Thank you.

So, as I said about tomorrow, again, 9.30 start time transportation, civil rights, and immigrants and refugee affairs will recess until 2 when we'll hear from police, fire, sustainability, and the environment.

And next week, I think, I'm so excited about what we're focusing on next week on Wednesday, a full day session on really focusing on the programs for people who are homeless.

But I think you said there's also going to be a TNC conversation at the end of the day?

Yeah, so it's mostly a, it's now a cross-cutting day, so issues that's hitting several different departments.

The first half of the day will be homelessness, so we'll hear from HSD's HSI department, SPU, in parks, I believe.

And then the second half of the day, we'll start with LEAD and then follow up with a TNC discussion.

Super.

So that's Tuesday.

And then as a reminder, next Thursday, October 3rd, the first public hearing, first of two, and that starts at 530, right here.

Okay.

Has everybody who wants to speak signed their name on the sheet?

And we'll get started.

Josh?

Hey, Josh.

Nice job.

You've been here all day.

Good to have you.

After that is Tina, and then Dustin Lambrou.

Good afternoon, Councilmembers.

My name is Josh Vogt, and I'm here on behalf of Fair Work Center and Working Washington to speak in support of increasing the Office of Labor Standards budget by $1 million with the express purpose of that money going to the community outreach and enforcement funds.

As you heard a little bit this morning, those funds go to community-based organizations that serve populations who are most likely to be victims of workplace violations, but least likely to come forward and report those violations.

So we're talking about people of color, immigrants and refugees, LGBTQ communities, and other marginalized workers that government has traditionally struggled to reach on its own.

Since the start of the 2017 to 2019 Community Outreach and Enforcement Grant, our collaborative, the Fair Work Center Collaborative of nine community-based organizations, has provided Know Your Rights information in more than half a dozen languages to more than 50,000 workers in Seattle.

We've also provided in-depth Know Your Rights trainings to 7,000 workers, and over half of the people we've trained have been in languages, over half the trainings we've conducted have been in languages other than English.

So we always make a point of having interpretation services available when we know they're needed.

In addition, our legal clinic has provided more than 700 free legal consultations and recovered more than $1.2 million for low-wage workers in that time.

So these funds are making a huge difference in the lives of low-wage workers across the city.

As one restaurant worker from a recent case said, you get used to putting up with a certain amount of shenanigans when working in restaurants.

And what is really needed is a culture change in the industry where people feel like they can stand up for what's right.

Too often we just go along with whatever management says because we know there's a line of people waiting to take whatever job we might have.

But workers need to know they have rights and they can't be fired for saying, hey, something's wrong with my paycheck this week.

The organizations that receive the community outreach and education funds play a critical role in creating that culture change and empowering workers because we meet workers where they're at, in their communities and in their preferred languages, and we inform them of their rights while giving them the support and resources they need to exercise them.

But there's so much more we could be doing as community partners in enforcement, including nearly twice as many labor standards today as when the current cycle began, increasing our language accessibility, and partnering with more organizations to reach more workers.

So in closing, we strongly urge you to boost these funds, these critical funds for OLS, and thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

Great.

Thanks a lot, and welcome home.

Tina, Dustin, and Katie.

Hi, good afternoon council members.

My name is Tina Sigurdsson and I am here to speak on behalf of the 45,000 members of SEIU 775 and we just want to applaud the work of OLS and of their community outreach and education fund partners.

We urge you to prioritize OLS farm funding and we respectfully request that you increase your investment in the COEF by $1 million in the 2020 budget.

As you know, Seattle's worker protections are only as strong as their enforcement.

This year already, OLS has recovered more than $2 million for workers.

98.9% of that money went directly back to the workers that were owed.

COEF grant recipients, such as organizations in the Latino Community Collaborative and the Fair Work Collaborative, have the necessary expertise and trust to reach workers in Seattle's many communities.

They've helped several thousand workers, providing trainings in multiple languages and aiding them in asserting their rights.

As the city understood when it created the COEF, it is absolutely critical that educational outreach and enforcement reach the populations of workers that need it the most.

That includes people of color, immigrants and refugees, LGBTQ workers, other marginalized workers who are also the least likely to come forward to OLS on their own.

The robust outreach and education efforts of OLS and its COEF partners are fostering a citywide culture of compliance with our labor laws, and they are working to ensure that all workers are protected.

Seattle continues to lead the way in advancing dignity and fair pay for workers.

enacting an innovative new worker protection such as the domestic workers ordinance and the recent protections for hotel workers.

We deeply appreciate your ongoing support of OLS and of the COEF and we ask that you ensure that their efforts are adequately funded as the number of laws that they are tasked with supporting increases.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Tina.

Dustin, Katie, Colleen.

Hi, good.

Is this on?

Yeah.

Good afternoon.

Chair Baggion, members of the committee, Teamsters 117 represents forklift operators at the Republic Services Facility on 3rd and Lander in Soto.

which contracts with the city to provide processing of recyclable materials.

Republic subcontracts the processing of those materials that are not from Seattle to an Arizona-based non-union staffing company, Leadpoint.

In 2016, we began an organizing drive with those workers.

During the course of organizing, we found that the workers, largely immigrants and people of color, We're not being paid the correct minimum wage rate for large businesses here in Seattle.

While our organizing drive was not successful, we felt good that we were able to direct those workers to the Office of Labor Standards so that they could pursue what they were duly owed.

After an exhaustive three-year effort, just this summer, OLS reached their largest settlement in its history, settling with Leadpoint for nearly $700,000 in back wages for 358 sorters.

It was a three-year complex company-wide investigation that involved an immense amount of witness interviews, data processing, and analysis that yielded the settlement.

Unlike LNI, which does not do company-wide investigations, OLS entered a settlement to make whole every similarly situated worker as the complainants that we had identified.

I do want to thank Marty Garfinkel and the hardworking staff at OLS for your work.

It was a great day down in Soto last month when these low wage workers got the good news of their back pay award.

It was a great example of how a limited resource, small government agency can be incredibly effective and make a big difference in the lives of hundreds of working families in this city.

So let's make sure during this budget that we protect the limited resources OLS and as they work to ensure the hard fought labor protections we've all passed since 2011 are complied with by businesses here in the city.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming.

And that is really good news.

I appreciate that and all your work.

Katie, Colleen, is it Elijah?

Okay, thank you.

And Mr. Mendez.

Hi.

Go ahead, Katie.

I'm sorry.

No, you're good.

Nice to see you.

Good afternoon.

My name's Katie Garrow.

I'm the deputy director at MLK Labor.

And as you all know, MLK Labor represents 100,000 workers in unions and worker organizations.

But we care deeply about the working class as a whole and the hundreds of thousands of unorganized workers here in Seattle.

And in that light, I'm here to express our support for a $1 million increase to the Community Outreach and Education Fund at OLS.

The Office of Labor Standards and the community-based organizations that do the important work of educating workers about their rights, enforcing the 11 city-specific labor laws that Seattle has, and teaching businesses how to comply with these laws is at its core an act of accountability.

We said that these laws would make workers' lives better, and so far, they have.

So far, they have put nearly $6 million of stolen wages back into workers' pockets in the last four years.

As the Seattle economy exploded, you pulled every lever you could think of to fight for a vision of shared prosperity.

The NLRA left out domestic workers, but Seattle legislated a voice on the job.

OSHA left out hotel workers who experienced injury levels higher than coal miners and construction workers, and you all passed industry safety standards for them.

With each new labor standard, you all have centered the people who are most marginalized and most in need of government protection at work.

And I hope you know how much that means to the labor community.

Because this country broadly, the United States Senate, and our president do not center these communities.

But Seattle, in Seattle, we do.

We said that these laws would make workers' lives better.

Let's do that together.

Thank you.

Thank you, Katie, and thanks for all of your work.

So we've got Colleen.

Good.

Thank you.

Hello.

Good afternoon.

Thank you.

My name is Colleen Fontana.

I'm the coordinator of the Worker Rights Program at Casa Latina.

Many of you know Casa Latina has worked for many years with low-wage workers, mostly immigrant Latino day laborers and domestic workers.

And this program that I helped to run has helped recover unpaid wages, and we do outreach and education on workers' rights with the help of the Office of Labor Standards COEF funding.

So really, within the past few years, we've been able to greatly increase our ability to reach workers and to help recover wages, and so I'm here to urge you to continue and increase the funding for the OLS COEF program.

As we've heard already, wage theft is a huge problem in this country affecting mostly women, immigrant workers, LGBTQ community, people of color, and especially low-wage workers.

For over 10 years, we've used worker-led direct action, community organizing methods, and our Worker Defense Committee to recover unpaid wages.

And with the support of the OLS funding since 2016, Casa Latina has been able to train nearly 3,000 workers and counting.

We've conducted over 700 worker consultations about their conditions at work.

From those workers, over 100 have taken direct action through our Worker Defense Committee, and we've been able to recover nearly $60,000 in unpaid wages just in the past three years.

We host weekly worker rights meetings.

We have a worker rights hotline.

We have a team of six worker rights promoters that are from the community, many of whom have been victims of wage theft themselves, who are doing trainings in the community in Spanish, meeting people where they're at.

And so for many reasons, we feel that workers are more confident to come to community organizations where they can be reached in their own languages and have help navigating the system.

And all of this has been made possible these past few years through OLS support.

And we really believe it's crucial to invest in these organizations that are already trusted in those communities.

And so we urge you to continue increased OLS funding.

And Eligio is one of the workers that has come through our program.

So he's going to share next, and I'm going to interpret for him.

Very nice.

And Jody, would you give them three minutes?

Thank you.

And thank you for coming.

And afterwards, Cristina.

Buenas tardes.

Mi nombre es Eligio.

Fui victima del robo de salario en un restaurante.

donde trabajé en los últimos meses del 2017 en el sur de Seattle.

Hello, my name is Eligio.

I was a victim of wage theft at a restaurant where I worked in the final months of 2017 at a restaurant in South Seattle.

Cuando llegó el día del pago, no quisieron pagarme todas mis horas, diciéndome que no tenía derechos.

When payday arrived, I was told they did not want to pay me all of my hours, saying that I didn't have any rights.

I knew of Casa Latina from before when I had come there for English classes, and so I returned there to seek help in understanding what my rights would be in this situation.

Me apoyaron en hacer calculos de unas horas, organizar mis pruebas y mandar una carta al patrón pidiendo que negociara conmigo.

They helped me to do wage calculations, to organize different proof that I had, and to send a letter to my boss asking that we negotiate the wages.

After a letter and several calls, we were able to recover more than $1,500, all the money they owed me.

After the letter and various phone calls, we were able to negotiate the recovery of $1,500, which was all of the money that I was owed.

Good.

I ask that you continue to support the Office of Labor Standards so that these community organizations can continue their impact in our community.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for coming.

Thank you.

Christina?

Yes.

Please.

Hi there.

Hi there.

Let me take it off my sweater here.

It's hot.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

I'm a first timer.

You're doing great already.

Hi, my name is Christina Harris.

I work at Fred Meyer, and I'm with one of 30,000 grocery workers from the USCW.

I've met you guys before up down there.

During my time as a bakery clerk, there were instances where I was required to stay after my shift, sometimes pulled to other departments that my pay reigned, without prior notice, without be given any heads up and I had things I had to do.

This not only happened to me, but to lots of co-workers, people who care for their parents, people who have kids, this kind of thing.

Before the Seattle Secure Scheduling Ordinance passed, this would not have been a violation.

However, these instances continued to occur even after the ordinance passed.

Of course, we had a problem.

My work site decided to report these instances to my union rep, and as a team, we decided to alert the Office of Labor Standards, and they began an investigation, which is not yet over, but they found many violations, and they began a self-audit.

As a result, I was rewarded with a A couple grand paycheck for all the times they did that to me.

Also, my co-workers also got thousands of dollars in back pay.

This is money that myself and my co-workers are owed due to our employer violating the law.

If labor standards exist but no one is around to enforce them, do workers actually have protections?

Depends on if you trust your employer or not.

Let's see.

The Office of Labor Standards is crucial to the safety and security of our workers around the state.

Employers have access to hundreds of millions to protect their own interests.

We have the Office of Labor Standards.

You know?

So anyway, without their efforts, I believe many workers' rights would have been and continue to be violated.

Please increase funding for the Office of Labor Standards.

Workers need the ability to count on them to find justice we all deserve.

Appreciate your time.

Christina, thank you for coming.

As a first-timer, you knocked it out of the park.

Thank you.

Okay.

Is there anybody else in the audience that would like to offer some public comment?

Okay.

If not, this meeting's adjourned.

Thank you all for coming, and thank you, colleagues, for hanging in here.

Thank you.