Human Services, Labor, and Economic Development Committee 5/15/2026

Good morning.

The Human Services Labor and Economic Development Committee meeting will come to order.

It is 9.33 a.m.

May 15th, 2026. I'm Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rink, chair of the committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Chair Rink.

Present.

Vice Chair Foster.

Here.

Councilmember Juarez.

Here.

Councilmember Hollingsworth.

Here.

Councilmember Saka.

Here.

Chair, there are five members present.

Thank you.

We will now move on to approval of today's agenda.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Welcome and good morning everyone.

Our agenda for today has two items.

The first item is a briefing discussion and possible vote on the appointment of Beto Yarce as Director of the Office of Economic Development.

The second item for today is a briefing discussion and possible vote on a resolution which addresses the next steps after the King County Regional Homelessness Authority Forensic Evaluation.

Now, as I have said in previous public meetings on this topic, and as a new member to the KCRHA governing board and chair of the committee that oversees human services, the findings of the forensic evaluation are serious and require immediate accountability.

And this proposed resolution is a swift but thoughtful measure that provides a pathway forward.

Since learning the full details of the forensic evaluation last month, I have worked in collaboration with Vice Chair Foster, our service providers, KCRHA leadership, and governing board members, and our counterparts at King County Council to figure out where we go from here.

And the proposed legislation summarizes the findings of the forensic evaluation and the timeline of deliverables expected of KCRHA over the coming months, including a corrective action plan to address all findings.

I'll speak a little bit more to this matter when we are at that point in the agenda, but I wanted to tee us up with that point to say that as responsible elected leaders, we have a fundamental duty to get people housed and do right by taxpayers.

And we plan by doing that work together deliberately, collaboratively and transparently.

So thank you to our central staff for all of your work on with the KCRHA issues broadly and for getting this before committee today.

We will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on today's agenda or within the purview of the committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up for today?

We currently have one in person and one remote.

Thank you.

Each speaker will have two minutes.

We will start with in-person speakers first.

Clerk, will you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

The public comment period is up to 60 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they registered.

Speakers will alternate between sets of in-person and remote speakers until the public comment period has ended.

Please begin by stating your name and the item you are addressing.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of their time.

Speakers' mics will be muted if they do not end their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open, and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

Thank you, Clerk, and we'll be starting with our in-person public commenters, beginning with Dr. Julieta Altamiriano-Crosby.

Any mic?

Uh-oh.

Give me one moment.

Check if the mic's on.

Hello.

Could you hear me?

You gotta eat the mic a little bit.

Perfect.

Okay, right here.

Okay.

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning, City Council members.

I am Dr. Julieta Altamirano-Crosby, and I proudly serve as a Snohomish County PUD Commissioner, and previously served as Vice President of the Linwood City Council.

I am honored to be here today to express my strong support for the confirmation of Beto Yarce as Director of the Office of Economic Development.

I have had the privilege of witness Beto's leadership and his deep commitment to community.

Beto understands, I'm so sorry, Beto understands that economic development is not simple about numbers or growth strategies.

He is about people.

It is about creating pathways to opportunity, supporting a small business, strengthen neighborhoods, and ensuring that every community feels seen, valued, and included.

Throughout his work, Beto has consistently demonstrated a genuine commitment to immigrant communities, entrepreneurs, artists, working families, and historical underserved populations.

He leads with humility, compassion, and he has the rare ability to bring people together.

across sectors and backgrounds.

What makes Beto especially impactful is his ability to build trust.

He understands that for many communities, language, culture, and access can become barriers to participation in economy opportunities.

Beto does not approach communities from a distance.

He shows up, listens, collaborates, and works alongside people with authenticity and respect.

As a Latina and elected official and a long-time community advocate, I know how important it is to have leaders who not only understand our communities, but who also believe in their potential.

And Beto brings both vision and action.

So thank you.

Seattle with grilled very benefit from his leadership at the Office of Economic Development, and I respectfully encourage your support and his confirmation.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

I believe we will now be moving on to our online public commenters, starting first with David Haynes.

Hi, thank you, David Ains.

The one hard card truth about King County Regional Homes Authority is they were supposed to keep the service providers honest and constructively criticized to keep them forthright and diligent.

And instead, we put the wrong people in charge who wanted to prefer the interpretations of policy and taint it all with racism.

And all these unnecessary sufferings continue to take place.

and yet the people who financed it, who were supposed to oversee it, failed miserably and now they wanna shut it down.

And I'm asking the council, where is the independent oversight of the service providers to help them get it right?

You all have pulled your punches because the conflicts of interest between the service providers and the city council who trades tax money for election support has watered down the integrity of the oversight.

And that was one of the main reasons why King County Regional Homeless Authority was created.

But they ruined it when they put the wrong people in charge and used a plagiarizing, fill in the blank concept of creating it.

And they tainted it all with racism, ignorant racism.

And it has really screwed it up.

And we need an audit of all the service providers who've been padding their costs and complaining about not getting paid.

They were supposed to be kept honest.

They were supposed to improve their services.

They have gotten worse, but they have gotten extremely rich and they're still buying off the city council.

Sharon Lee is the epitome of what's wrong with the homeless response, but because she owns everybody in council and finances all the activists and organizers to protest and take over the entire Council Chambers, we got nobody to keep the people honest who were using tax money to subhuman mistreat innocent people that need to be...

Thank you.

Our next public speaker will be Hallie Willis.

Good morning, Council Members.

My name is Hallie Willis.

I'm the Policy Manager for the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness.

speaking in support of the resolution from Councilmember Rank and Foster to respond to the audit of the KCRIJ.

The coalition has over 50 member organizations who house, shelter, and care for people experiencing homelessness across King County.

These organizations do the work every day to help people survive and work towards stability.

That work needs to continue no matter what.

This community has made it clear that we need a county-wide regional approach to homelessness that operates with transparency, and is a good steward of public funds.

The resolution before you today takes steps towards that goal.

It represents a commitment to get this right, and we urge your support.

As you go through this process over the coming months, we strongly urge you to include the many lessons learned during the establishment of the KCRHA and to deeply engage service providers, coalitions, and people with lived experience of homelessness in your process to determine what happens next.

It's not acceptable to simply go back to the way things were, with each jurisdiction going it alone with their own separate processes.

We need to determine our next steps together towards a better system in close partnership with King County, other cities, service providers, and people with lived experience.

It's more important to get this right together than to do it fast alone.

Thank you.

Thank you, Hallie.

We will now be closing the public comment period since there are no additional speakers and we'll proceed to our items of business.

And so moving to our first item of business, will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Item one, appointment 3469, appointment of Beto Yarse as the director of the Office of Economic Development for briefing, discussion and possible vote.

Wonderful.

As our guests take their seats at the table, I'd like to say a few words about our nominee acting director, Bero Yarse.

Bero Yarse is a business executive, entrepreneur, and nonprofit leader dedicated to advancing economic equity and entrepreneurship with over 15 years of experience driving growth and impact across business, nonprofit, and public sectors.

And from his days as a solo immigrant entrepreneur through his time leading adventures to his time leading the Small Business Administration's regional office, Mr. Diarce has always put his expertise and experience to work in service of community.

And his generosity and civic mindedness have already provided so much value to our communities.

It's been a real pleasure being able to get to know him just over the coming weeks through this appointment process, and I'm excited to hear what he has to share with us today.

Now, colleagues, after we hear from our guests, I welcome any questions you may have for the nominee, but let's hear first directly from the mayor's office and acting director Yarse.

So please begin by stating your name into the into the microphone for the public record.

Great.

Good morning, and thanks very much for having us this morning.

My name is Mark Ellerbroek, and I am the Deputy Director for City Operations in Mayor Katie Wilson's office.

Good to see all of you.

I will go ahead and make my comments and then Director Arce can make his.

And thank you, Councilmember, for the introduction.

You actually took a little bit of what I was going to comment on this morning.

I think what I will emphasize first and foremost is one of the great pleasures of my job is getting to know a lot of our directors, and Beto is no exception to that.

I think as you heard in the public comment, obviously Director Yarse has a lot of experience and that has been emphasized, but I think the piece that is most important to me and I think most important to the mayor is how he shows up and how he leads.

I have found him to be engaging people-oriented and people-centered, and I think both as a leader of people within the Office of Economic Development and, frankly, as our phase two small businesses throughout the city, that is critically important as we work to support those businesses, build thriving business centers that ultimately also support community and make those areas active and safe.

I know that Acting Director Yarse is the right person for this job.

I will also comment on a personal level.

We were just talking about this before.

I am very jealous of the way that Acting Director Yarse attires himself, and I aspire to his natty approach to that piece.

So I will turn it over to Acting Director Yarse to answer questions.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mark, for the wonderful introduction.

I appreciate you.

And thank you, Council Members and Council Member Rink.

It's been a pleasure as well to work with you.

So, I mean, I just want to start with I'm very, very grateful for the opportunity to lead and the opportunity to have a remarkable experience that I have implemented into my ability to lead Office of Economic Development.

I would like to start with a comment that how I like to lead as a leader that is like a servant leader.

I will start with internally.

So I like to kind of think about how we are going to develop my team and really kind of elevate what is needed internally.

I've been very, very inspired of how that team leads and how they just show up.

I will say OED is like a startup, which for me is very, very, very close to what I like to do.

It's super innovative.

They come together, they are like very experienced, it's such a diverse group of people who show up every day.

And for me, it's like I really want to elevate the work that they do and how I can support them and give them the needs, the resources that they need to kind of elevate the work.

and that's how I like to start sharing my vision of how I lead economic development because if we don't have a good foundation and we don't have a good team and we don't have an engaging team, it's gonna be more complicated to achieve the challenges and the opportunities that we have in economic development.

with that also expanded of collaboration.

How do we collaborate and do integration across the city with departments?

OED has a lot of initiatives and a lot of work that we need to do a lot of collaboration.

So that's another thing that I just did on day one is how I kind of create a system and strategy on kind of collaborate across departments, across the different levels with the mayor's office, with council members, and I'd like to kind of build relationships, meaningful relationships, because when things are working, we are celebrating our work together, but when things are not working, how can we just solve because we have a personal connection?

So I would like to start just like that's how I see internally.

In the big picture, how do I envisioning the city economic development?

I would like to start with a vibrant city which is equitable, that we have vibrant neighborhoods, that we have economic opportunity for those communities who have been marginalized and underserved.

That's what I've been doing for more than two decades.

Really kind of looking on how do we meet people where they are?

What are the resources that we have?

How do we really activate those small businesses and recovering from pandemic that we still have some of those challenges?

And the team has been showing off fantastic with the resources that we have these days.

and at the same time they were responding with that emergency and that reactiveness of what is needed in the small business and the recovery.

We also have to think big on what is the opportunities that we have to a unique time that this city has of diversifying our economy.

How we are diversifying, we've been concentrated in very heavy on tech and I will say that we've been very lucky to have that and we are appreciated and wonderful to have those investments.

At the same time, we have an opportunity to do investing more in maritime, workforce, the clean energy, AI, and I'm really, really excited to kind of like invest in more on our key industries and elevate that work to create a more equitable economy that is more sustainable long term.

And that's kind of like my big vision that I have in terms of how we are going to have a more equitable economy for Seattle and for everybody.

We have seen how the city has grown fast and is pushing people out.

And I think we can do it because we are in a prosperous region.

My background, I come from perspective.

I'm not from Seattle, but I've been here for 24 years.

but I've come from a different perspective.

I come from a country who has a lot of limitations and when I come here and I see the different experiences that I have, I have lived in international, I have lived here, I have lived in other cities, we have a prosperous city, we have a beautiful city that we can just have an opportunity to pivot and change and elevate and make it like a really amazing place to live for everybody.

So that's like how I wanna start, the first comment that I have, what is my vision about economic development for our city.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Acting Director Yarse.

Colleagues, what questions do you have for the proposed appointee?

I think I have my hand up, Madam Chair.

I'm seeing that now, Council Member Juarez.

Apologies for that.

You're recognized.

It's not your fault.

Normally I just butt in and I can never get to the little hand thing.

So thank you for that, Madam Chair.

First of all, congratulations, Beto.

It's so good to see you again.

I'm going to do a little walk down history lane here with you.

I met you well over a decade ago and the work that you did with the Small Business Association and in my former life working with tribes with the Small Business Association and the difficulty of banking, business plans, helping people take a vision and transforming it into brick and mortar for businesses, communities, building wealth, giving people that pride that they can access capital and build and create that legacy of wealth for their families and their children.

You were part of that, and I remember meeting you in your adventures.

and then we kind of cross paths back and forth, back and forth.

And the thing that I think I always admired about you is how easy it was to get to you and to talk to you about how we built wealth.

And I want to focus on one thing, though, that we worked on.

And I think you remember this during 2020. post-COVID recession, and we had the what they call the social justice reckoning, that trifecta of what happened after 2020, where a lot of small businesses were ruined and destroyed.

And working with you and also Council Mayor Rivera under, at the time Council Mayor Rivera was the Council Member for Mayor Jenny Jerkin, but you worked with us on the equitable task force.

where we got $30 million out the door.

And I was very proud of that to be able to be, the mayor appointed me to be the ex officio on that.

Councilman Rivera at the time was working for Mayor Durkin and was in charge of that.

But I remember working closely with you, attending those task force meetings, getting your reports.

But I think the thing that struck me the most is, I know we say this a lot, sometimes, but I'm not trying to do performative politics here.

But what always struck me the most about you is that you were so passionate about business, economic vitality, vision, making connections with communities, with people who normally wouldn't, would have a great idea about a business, but wouldn't know how to go about to get there.

And so Beto, you're a good man.

I'm glad you're going to be here.

And I watched you through some of your political issues.

and I've always been a big supporter.

So I'm really happy to see you here today and congratulations after we take this vote.

So thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Thank you so much, Council Member Juarez.

This has been wonderful and I really remember those days when we were on the screen trying to figure out those $30 million and we did great work together and I'm very proud that the $7.5 million that we distributed for support small business was like the first injection that OED had to grow their budget.

And OED has been growing and it's growing with a lot of impact.

I think it has opportunity to continue growing and making more impact for kind of really helping the needs of our city for economic development.

So I'm very, very excited to participate and lead my team and helping them to kind of advocate for more growth in our department to kind of make more impact in our city.

So thank you for acknowledging that.

Well, you know, it was tough.

I mean, we went through a lot that summer and that fall.

And, you know, people like you, you know, you stepped up, you posted up, you showed up, you showed us like how to get this money out the door.

Who are the groups that need it?

Who are the community groups that need it?

How do we fix small businesses?

How do we start them?

How do we fund them?

How do we help them with business plans?

And I did that in Indian country for tribes and individual Native Americans that wanted to start a business inside the reservation and outside.

So when I meet a fellow person that understands, you know, basically economics, Wall Street, capitalism, business, I always enjoy that about you, that you and I could have those kinds of talks.

So thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you both for your work.

Recognizing council member Saka,

Thank you, Chair, and Acting Director Yarse.

Just want to say congratulations on getting to this point.

From my early experiences with you, getting to know you, and sitting down with you earlier this year, I've been very impressed by you, your background, your journey, your leadership approach, your vision for the department, and all that you bring collectively to this role.

I'm also, as an aside, very proud of my personal and my office's relationships with the broader business community, businesses of all sizes, small, medium, large.

And I consistently hear a lot of praise from the business community about you and your ability to lead this department.

I think you are the right leader, the right moment, the right time in our city for this really important department.

And we have roughly 40 or so city departments or agencies, ballpark, and they're all very important.

I don't want to undermine or trivialize the work.

They all do critically important work in advancing our city's key priorities and bringing them to life.

But now more than ever, I think OED, your department, is one of the most important strategically departments in our city's history, especially in a moment of a lot of pending uncertainty at all levels of government.

and the broader economy.

So, I appreciate you.

I appreciate your comments earlier related to, you know, the just recognition that we've historically invested a lot in tech.

And yes, we shall continue.

and as we invest more heavily in some other sectors and some other industries agree, supporting our maritime and industrial economy, maritime manufacturing and industrial economy, AI.

We'll grow there as well.

We're not gonna draw down our investments or de-invest in some of those other areas, but I appreciate you your leadership, your comments earlier about and your preference, strong preference for adopting a, let's see, servant leader approach and bringing a servant leader approach to this work.

It's something that I try to aspire to as well.

and I also wanna take this opportunity to, in addition to praising you and your work so far and your abilities, I also wanna take this opportunity to praise your team, many of which members are sitting here behind you.

And many of which have been here much longer than both you and I.

And a few people in particular, I wanna specifically highlight Deputy Director Alicia Teal has been amazing.

And actually, I think she briefly led as acting director of the department as well.

Deputy Director Teal has been amazing to work with for me in my office, implementing any number of key strategic initiatives for our city and working closely with me in my office to do exactly that.

One example is the maritime manufacturing and industrial economy, you know, investment to support sound transit impacted businesses in West Seattle, Soto, eventually Ballard.

We're gonna get to Ballard too.

but navigating like up here at this dais and upstairs on the seventh floor, we write policy.

but you and your department and the 39 other departments across the city actually implement it.

And when we write policy, we have blind spots sometimes.

We don't always anticipate every single scenario.

That's why departments like yours are so critical, because you're the tip of the spear in implementing.

And Deputy Director Teal expertly help manage a very delicate situation with multiple stakeholders involved from the West Seattle Chamber and the Rainier Valley Community Development Fund and countless others, you know, to bring solutions and to really bring to life that policy vision and goal.

So you're lucky to have Deputy Director Teal.

You're also lucky to have Eduardo Rojas and Philip Sitt from my office who are So small business support is a very important priority, a strategic priority for my office, and I think the broader city as well.

And at a time last summer when the Menashe, the famous Menashe jewelers in the junction of West Seattle were broken into in a high profile heist, made national headlines over a million dollars in merchandise, stolen in a brazen daytime attack.

I responded personally, The chief of police was there personally.

It's a great moment of community, but within hours, or it might have been a day or two, so did Eduardo and Philip responded and provided them with immediate relief from the city's perspective.

We had this storefront repair fund that this council expanded to provide not only reactive response to break-ins of small businesses, but proactive security prevention measures.

So help them and other businesses like them receive critical resources at a time when they need it the most.

You have a great team, and that's just a few.

I think you have a great team overall.

And by the way, I was gonna write an email to you, Mr. Ellerbrook, the mayor's office, praising your great team, including Deputy Director Teal, but I'll save some words, because on paper, we all write enough emails around here and letters.

What better than to publicly praise verbally for you to see, for the mayor's office to see, and the members of the taxpaying public to see, because their taxpayer dollars are hard at work and having a ton of impact.

So thank you.

I'm excited to be able to support your candidacy whenever we vote on it.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Council Member Saka.

I really, really appreciate your comments.

I will summarize some of the things that I hear.

Definitely the support of small business, mid-sized business, and large businesses, I see have alignment with you of that.

It's an ecosystem, and that's how I want to lead.

Definitely what you're saying, 100%.

I've just been so, so grateful for my team.

It's been a little bit more than two months and just being just so kind and grateful for my leadership and really set me up for success every day.

I see how they show up every day.

They are super inspired by the work.

They inspire me about the work.

We do have a really, very, very talented, diverse group.

And when I talk about diversity, I've been hiring in the past to kind of create diverse groups.

That's what people ask me to do.

I already have a diverse team, which is super high.

Big kudos to the city for having that.

And I'm just looking forward to collaborate with them and expand.

And I really appreciate your support of our growth, the need of our growth of our department, which I will be an advocate.

with the specific outcomes, strategy, I really have an idea of how can we just really back up that grow, because that's how I like to lead.

It's not just about grow, it's about have strategy, it's about have a specific goal, ambition, and I have it with my team.

Also, they have the same desire and clarity, so we're on it.

So thank you so much for your support and your kind words, so I appreciate you.

Looking forward to continue collaborating with you.

And I just want to add, I so appreciate the positive comments for departments, OED, and I will accept written comments, I will accept all the positive comments for departments, because they do such hard work.

So thank you so much for saying that, Councilmember.

No, my pleasure.

We're not always, there's 14,000 city employees and they all do terrific work, very critical work.

We're not always at our best in operating as we should every single time in every single instance.

That's normal across every single organization in this planet, by the way, not specific to Seattle or any government.

And sometimes those instances, when it doesn't go well, are very public and high profile.

And we should address those.

But we should also be intentional about pausing and reflecting and celebrating the many times, the many more times when work does go well and is implemented appropriately and expertly and professionally and in a responsive manner.

That's a little bit about what that was in part about.

But thank you again, and I encourage you to, you have a great team, great department, encourage you to learn from the team, but you are also the leader, so guide the team, set the vision, strategy, and let's go get it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Saka.

Council President Hollingsworth, you are recognized.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And thank you, Mr. Ellerbrook for being here and then Director Yarse.

I'll be quick with my comments.

Very happy to vote this appointment forward.

I've known Director Yarse for over a decade and very grateful to his leadership.

But also the one thing that mattered, obviously by being a kind human being, which is important all the way.

The one thing that stuck out to me regarding Director Yarse was his understanding of how all businesses, small, big, medium, whatever, all of them in between, how they all play an integral role with each other and how they're intertwined and the impact that they have in one business can affect another.

I remember when Simpson Lumber closed in Shelton, 600 jobs lost overnight, the ripple effect of that with restaurants, downtown, grocery stores, like a whole downtown decimated because of the ripple effect.

And so just understanding that the big businesses we have here, you know, we know the national ones, but there's a lot of smaller ones that still have a big punch in impact.

Nordstrom's, Brooks, you know, regional ones, Dick's, a lot of these medium-sized businesses, PCC, that have integral roles in these conversations when we're talking about different ways that our region is trying to grow.

So I think we're at a really pivotal moment in Seattle where I think we're understanding about all of the services that businesses provide, not just being a business, but the jobs that they provide, the wealth that is being stimulated back into community, those local businesses that reinvest, the small businesses that a lot those large businesses partner with to be able to provide certain things and services for their business.

So just that understanding I think is excellent because at every single level there are different businesses.

The second thing that stood out to me the most too as well is their understanding of public-private partnership and how oftentimes focusing on outcomes you know just trying to get the job done and figuring out the best pathway forward and that you can have a private sector piece philanthropy piece to what government is doing that is important because oftentimes government is not the only pathway we can be cumbersome we can be bureaucratic and private sector or philanthropy can get help unlock some of those things.

We've seen that with the waterfront.

We've seen that with the Elliott Bay Connector.

We've seen it with Climate Pledge.

We've seen it all over Seattle impact our community positively.

So just understanding that piece as well.

And looking forward to working with Director Garce, Economic Development.

We'll double down what Councilmember Saka has said about Director Teal.

She's been phenomenal in their work.

and I'll put a plug in for us continuing the work in Eastlake during the construction impacts as well and just really appreciate economic development in that piece because I got a lot of small businesses in that core that we want to keep staying alive.

So thank you all, really appreciate it and looking forward.

Can't wait to vote for Director Yarse and thank you Mayor's Office and Mr. Ellerbrook for putting forth this nomination.

Thank you so much.

It's been a pleasure working with you for all these years and definitely very, very excited about this strategy and the ecosystem of the importance of the multiple levels of businesses in our community.

I have been able to work with all kinds of business and the vision that I have as a public servant is we have to serve everybody.

Everybody have different needs.

and that's how I kind of show up, is like who needs the most, who needs, some people need cash injection or access to capital, some other people will need just resources of connections, some people need just to be, feel like validated and then they are welcome to do their business here and I feel able to do that over my career.

So I'm really looking forward to collaborate with all of you on how do we send that message to all our business community.

And in the other, the public-private, that's something that I'm very, very, very excited because of my private life as a fundraiser, a nonprofit leader.

I love to ask for money, I love to fundraise for money, which is a very unique skill.

People say, not everybody like it, but I do.

And I already kind of have this kind of vision of how do we come and invite philanthropy and private to kind of fulfill the gaps that we have as a public sector.

So stay tuned because I have a big goal for that and I'm going to need your support to kind of really serve our community and our city the best way possible.

Again, we live in a very prosperous city.

I come from perspective, the place that I come is not as prosperous as it is here.

So I see the funding and the money is there.

It's just how do we build, how do I set up the table to make that happen, which I like to set up a table and entertain and making sure that people feel welcome to do that.

So I just very, very excited to do that work.

Thank you, and thank you, Council President Hollingsworth.

Vice Chair Foster, you are recognized.

Thank you so much, Chair.

Thank you so much, Chair.

And I'm so pleased to have you here, Interim Director Yarse, and thank you so much, Mark Ellerbroek, for bringing the Director Yarse forward into the mayor's office.

I'll just say, you know, I've gotten to meet you just recently and was just so instantly thrilled.

about your leadership and we'll just say briefly, you know, we met at the, well you've been at the table a few times actually, but we met formally at the small business round table or community round table in Lake City and I was really grateful for what I saw which was your commitment to the businesses of all sizes in that community as well as your commitment to partnership with other leaders within the city and just reflecting on what you said multiple times around being able to collaborate with Department of Neighborhoods, being able to collaborate with SDOT and your understanding of that collaboration being needed in order to deliver for our business community is something that I just instantly appreciated.

And I really look forward to your ongoing leadership in the department.

So thank you.

Thank you so much, Councilman Foster.

It's been wonderful to work with you as well.

And I feel like that's part of my style of, like, coming from a nonprofit sector, we don't have a lot of resources and we need to build capacity and partnership.

What I see the need here in the city and the opportunity is more integration and more collaboration, which I am already doing it with four departments, new directors, and we already start kind of happy, happy hours.

kind of like how do we build that relationship in order for us to work together better and kind of bouncing ideas.

How do we really build that meaningful connection?

Because this is the only way that we really kind of coordinate, integrate and serve our community the most way possible because sometimes we work in silos and I want to kind of be the glue or the bridge of trust on doing that.

So thank you for making that comment and I'm looking forward to continue that work.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair Foster.

Colleagues, it is great to hear your enthusiasm for Director Yarse.

I share in it.

This is a tremendously important role.

We all know that.

And I do want to ask one question for today.

just something that I think is front of mind for many residents as we're seeing so many closures of beloved small businesses.

And so I wanted to ask you, Director Yarse, what strategies are you hoping to deploy or really put forward to address the rising cost facing small businesses?

Absolutely.

So we are in a pivotal time that we've been responding the needs of small business by all the work that we're doing at OED with technical assistance, affordable capital, how do we meet people where they are, kind of connecting with the resources that they need, but we can do even more.

So one thing that I've been hearing, and then also I'm an advocate for that, is how do we create a more expedite process for permitting?

So something that we hear is like business need predictability to make sure that they are, when they are really thinking about opening a business in Seattle, like really what is the timeline, how I'm going to be able to be open my business.

So time is money.

As a former also entrepreneur, you need to kind of have that in your business plan.

So one of the things that we're working and we're really advancing is how do we expedite our permitting processes?

How do we really help those businesses of all the sizes, but especially those who are more marginalized, underserved, they have not a lot of cash flow in their business, so they're just opening their first business.

We really need to kind of expedite that.

So that's one of the strategies.

And I think we're making progress with the sub cabinet of governance, but also like work that has been done, even previous my leadership.

So I'm supporting my team in moving forward with that.

Another thing that I think that we are ahead is affordable capital.

So creating under our department of building wealth, we have affordable capital.

We partner with a lot of CDFI's community development financial institutions on how do we match capital, how do we get access to capital removing barriers, but also like the capital is more affordable.

I think that will help businesses to kind of be more sustainable and be more competitive and continue also helping those businesses in terms of listening and hearing from them, what would be helpful for them?

One thing that we're just kind of bouncing is like subsidies for businesses as we do have subsidies for low-income individuals.

How do we kind of create, how is the city can do more subsidies for businesses in public utilities?

How can we do that some things that we can just change internally on the resources that we have as a city to make the business more affordable?

Things that we can control as a city, is things that we cannot control because geopolitics and by we I think in this city we have the resources to kind of start showing up and how we make those business more affordable.

But I'm also, I got hired, if I get hired for this job is I'm not really coming just with these are my ideas or this is, I ask someone who want to listen and I want is like what the community need, what the small business, that's what I'm trying to do, a lot of convenience and sitting around because I don't know what I don't know and I don't want to say this is what you need, it's more like what I'm hearing but also with data, collection data that is very important of what we're hearing and then we implement and we create policy and we make change and impact.

Thank you for that response.

Excited to partner with you on that work and just excited about your leadership over the Office of Economic Development.

Colleagues, if there are no further comments or questions for the appointee, I'd like to move forward with voting to confirm the appointment.

So I move that the committee recommends the confirmation of appointment 3469. Is there a second?

Second.

It is moved and seconded to recommend the confirmation of the appointment.

Are there any final comments?

Hearing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to confirm appointment 3469. Chair Rink?

Yes.

Vice Chair Foster?

Yes.

Council President Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Council Member Juarez?

Aye.

Council Member Saka?

Aye.

There are five in favor and zero opposed.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the appointment be confirmed will be sent to the June 2nd full council meeting.

Congratulations, Director Yarse.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Just say something else.

Please.

I just want to thank you all for your support.

It's been a wonderful experience to be here.

I want to thank you, all the community that came and support me, friends, family.

And then I want to also thank the mayor's office.

Thank you, Mark.

And thank you, Mayor Wilson, for giving me the opportunity to employ me.

My team that I've been just praising, and they've just been wonderful, and thank you.

for being here and supporting me.

And also one of very, very important people in my life that is my family.

I don't know if they're watching.

They're probably watching because I sent them the link, but I don't know if they can watch it from here, so I didn't do that research.

But I just want to thank them because family is so important to me, and they don't live here, but we are very connected, and especially to my mother because she's so influential for my leadership.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

And with that, we will now move on to our second item of business.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

Thank you for coming to committee.

We will now move to our second item of business.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record?

Item 2, Resolution 32202, a resolution regarding next steps after the forensic evaluation of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority requesting that the Seattle Mayor and King County Executive take steps to immediately safeguard public funds, determine if it is feasible for KCRHA to adequately address all of the findings in the forensic evaluation, Submit a set of next steps on how the city will approach the dissolution or restructure of KCRHA if determined to be necessary and submit monthly reports to council for briefing, discussion and possible votes.

Thank you, clerk.

Now, before we move into our central staff presentation and hearing from the mayor's office at the table, I would like to recognize Vice Chair Foster to provide comments on the resolution.

Our offices have been working together in drafting the legislation before us, and thank you, Vice Chair Foster.

Your partnership has been absolutely vital.

Thank you so much, Chair, and I am excited for the conversation that we're going to have in committee today.

I want to start off with saying, as we all know and we've talked about publicly, obviously the results of this audit have been incredibly challenging.

We as a city have a huge responsibility, we as a region have a huge responsibility to ensure that we are addressing homelessness.

We know that it is one of the top priorities for residents all across Seattle that we are working to bring our neighbors inside and that we are doing so in a way that's going to be impactful and lasting.

We know that homelessness is not an issue that stops at city borders.

It is a regional challenge.

And that was part of the genesis of building KCRHA.

So when these audit findings came back to us, when we were presented with them in April, I think many of us, all of us, were really challenged to see the results of the audit, including the lapse in internal financial controls and the questions regarding the negative deficit there, as well as just the, I would say, the lack of structure internally in the agency over the years.

I will want to appreciate the mayor's office, the executive's office, and the governing board for the work that we did together to begin to create some structure and to create some requests into the agency.

So that work has already been done, and this resolution really builds on that.

We know that many people have questions around what's next, and I would say Councilmember Rink and I are bringing this resolution forward because we want to ensure that we have a clear and a guided pathway for determining what happens next.

So that means as we go into this discussion today, we want to have not just the clear deadlines for the agency reporting, but we want to have space to analyze those results to then be clear about what we're building towards or what we need to change from.

And I believe that my office believes, and I know Council Member Ring shares this, that having that foundation is necessary to ensure that we deliver on what is the most important thing, which is addressing homelessness in our region.

So we think that this approach that we're bringing forward with this resolution allows us to have that clear pathway so that we can get the agency's information out to the public and that we can determine how to move forward in council.

This resolution, and I know we'll speak about this as well, is also, I would call it a partner resolution.

The county passed a resolution that is quite similar to this, again, with the same intent of ensuring that we have information that comes into our two bodies so that the bodies can make smart decisions on how we proceed.

So I want to thank you, Council Member Rink, for your leadership on this effort over the last several weeks.

Your office has been fantastic in drafting this resolution.

I want to thank central staff, Jen Labreck.

I don't know who's been busier than Jen in these last few weeks, so thank you so much, Jen.

and I want to thank the Mayor's Office for your partnership as well.

We know that it's really important that we have, you know, all four corners here from City Council, Mayor's Office, King County Council, the King County Executive, as well as our partners on the Governing Board with Lived Experience and Sound Cities Association.

We cannot do this with one body alone.

So thank you so much for that.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Vice Chair Foster.

Very well put.

Appreciate you and your work on this.

With that, I will now turn it to central staff and our presenters for today to take us through the presentation and discuss the legislation.

I believe starting with Jen.

Great.

Thank you.

And Councilmember Rank, just for clarification, this presentation that I'm about to go into does essentially present the presentation or present the resolution as if the amendment one passed.

Would you like me to discuss that amendment first?

That would be helpful.

Just for clarification.

Thank you.

Okay.

Jennifer LeBreck, and I am here today to talk about resolution 32202. Councilmember Rank does have one amendment called Amendment 1 that I think we will vote on later, but just to provide you the presentation that I'm about to do essentially assumes that Amendment 1 passes.

and so has that context to it.

Amendment 1 just makes some small tweaks really to timing in order to align.

As has already been mentioned, King County Council has, I think what Councilmember Brink calls a cousin resolution that has some similar next steps and processes.

And essentially, Amendment 1 just syncs up the timing of the King County resolution sponsored by Councilmember Barone with the City of Seattle resolution so that there's sort of an interim report provided to Council on June 15th and then a final report and set of recommendations made to Council on August 1st regarding, you know, essentially a recommendation on whether to continued, dissolved, or restructure KCRHA, and if dissolution or restructure is recommended, a set of next steps or a plan about how to go about doing that.

So just know that that's what this current presentation assumes.

And I think, Kayden, I'm going to have to tell you when to go to the next slide.

So next slide, please.

Thanks.

All right, I don't have control of the presentation at home, so we'll just need whoever...

We've got it, Jen.

Thank you.

Sorry about...

So it's at the table.

Okay.

So we're figuring it out.

All right.

So before I launch into the resolution, I just wanted to provide a little bit of background on the interlocal agreement.

So as I'm sure you are all aware, in December of 2019, Seattle and King County entered into an interlocal agreement to establish the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

And the goal was to provide a coordinated regional approach to homelessness that would result in better outcomes through the better and more coordinated delivery of services.

In November of 2024, Seattle and King County amended the ILA for the main purpose of streamlining the governance structure to improve transparency, coordination, and oversight.

I do want to take a couple moments to talk about essentially the terms for termination and dissolution of KSRHA under the amended ILA.

To be clear, that's not what today's resolution is recommending, but I do think it's important for everybody to have clarity about the terms of the ILA and sort of the difference in some of the terms that we are using.

Under the amended ILA, the ILA can be terminated by a City Council resolution or a King County motion, which is essentially the same thing as the resolution.

To be clear, either party can take action to terminate, so it can be unilateral.

It doesn't have to be both Seattle and King County Council.

The effective date of the termination has to be at least 12 months after King County or Seattle pass their resolution or motion unless the Mayor of Seattle and King County, unless the Mayor of Seattle and the King County Executive jointly agree that termination can and should occur more quickly.

And I do want to make the point here that there's a difference between the decision to initiate termination and the process of dissolving KCRHA.

King County Council or Seattle City Council They are the ones who decide to initiate termination through passage of a resolution, but obviously termination would never occur immediately.

There's a process of dissolving the agency, and that process of dissolving the agency is the responsibility of the executives.

Next slide, please.

Now I want to talk about the forensic evaluation.

In 2025, Clark Neuber was engaged by both Seattle and King County to conduct a forensic evaluation of QCRHA.

And that evaluation covered the period of mid-2021 through July 2025. So there is a period from essentially August of 2025 to present that is not covered by the forensic evaluation.

The focus of the evaluation was on financial condition, governance, and risk management practices.

One of the purposes, or I would say one of the driving reasons behind it, was to understand what factors were contributing to KCORHA's ongoing negative cash balances and also just identify opportunities to strengthen oversight and processes.

The evaluation was released in April of this year.

and I know as you are all familiar with, it identified many issues at KCRHA related to internal controls, unreconcilable receivables, financial reporting, and accounting practices.

So Resolution 32202, as amended by Amendment 1, as we just discussed, does a few things.

First, that recognizes that the following commitments have already been made.

In April, the KCRHA governing board created a finance committee, and that finance committee now oversees and has to approve any new obligations, any new hiring, and any new discretionary spending that KCRHA engages in as a way to provide some immediate controls and safeguards.

Additionally, there is a cover letter that went along with the forensic evaluation that was sent to KCRHA, and that cover letter required KCRHA to submit by May 8th, which was last Friday, essentially a report on how they would address five of the highest risk findings in the evaluation.

That report was submitted by KCRHA on Friday and was sent to all members of the governing board.

And additionally, the mayor and the King County Executive committed that they would continue to coordinate to ensure that there were sufficient accounting and oversight controls at place in KCRHA.

Next slide.

The resolution also requests information and reporting from the executive.

So first, it requests that no later than June 15th, The Mayor, or her Disney, provide to the Chair of the Human Services Labor and Economic Development Committee an initial assessment of the Corrective Action Plan submitted by KCRHA.

So I want to talk about that Corrective Action Plan for a moment.

As I mentioned, there was a cover letter sent to KCRHA that accompanied the forensic evaluation.

That cover letter had two dates in it.

One was just by May 8, KCRHA needed to provide a plan on how they were going to address five of the highest risk findings.

Additionally, by May 23, KCRHA needs to submit a plan for how they will address all of the findings in the forensic evaluation.

So essentially a comprehensive corrective action plan on all of the findings.

And so this is asking for the mayor or designee to provide an initial assessment of that comprehensive corrective action plan after it's been submitted.

Then additionally, no later than August 1st, the mayor or her designee should make a recommendation to the chair of the committee, the Human Services Committee, on whether the city should do one of three things.

Terminate its participation in the amended ILA and dissolve KCRHA, restructure KCRHA, or continue it as is.

If the executive recommends dissolution or restructure, then the mayor or designee is also requested to provide a plan that addresses the following components.

Guiding principles, including Seattle's shared values such as minimal disruption to services and maintenance of a regional approach, A commitment to engaging with stakeholders, which includes providers, homeless services providers, as well as other regional stakeholders.

Options for how the city can use this opportunity strategically, for example, such as rebidding homeless service contracts, which have not been rebid since 2017. This is an important one, an update on potential approaches for continuum of care.

KCRA is currently the continuum of care lead entity and it performs many necessary and required functions.

Let me put that differently.

It performs many functions that are necessary and required in order to receive federal continuum of care funding.

The region currently receives King County $67 million.

in federal funding from the continuum of care.

So understanding how to approach our options in a way that does not put COC funding at risk or further risk is extremely important.

Ensure that HSD has sufficient capacity and staff to directly administer homeless service contracts again.

So as a reminder, in 2022, the vast majority of the city's homeless service contracts were transferred to KCRHA for administration.

And so at that point, HSD shrunk.

There were a lot of positions that moved from HSD to KCRHA in order to administer those contracts.

Any option that has those contracts returning to the city means that we need to think about how to staff up again to administer those contracts, and that's not just thinking about staffing, for example, to administer the contracts, but also ensuring that HSD has the appropriate systems, internal controls, and leadership to provide oversight to that new function.

Next slide.

Other components of the plan include options for how Seattle and King County will continue to maintain a regional approach to addressing homelessness, including a severe weather response.

KCRHA has established a system where they have different defined thresholds for severe weather events.

And when we meet certain criteria in terms of temperature or amount of rain or amount of snow, it triggers certain responses from the homeless system in terms of what kind of shelter or other types of responses are initiated or activated to be able to respond to those events.

So how would that coordinated approach continue?

Options for what organizations or entities will take on KCORHA's existing right-of-way contracts.

The right-of-way is a state-funded program and KCRHA currently has money from the state that they are using to master lease apartment buildings and then contract with providers to operate services.

So these are buildings that KCRHA has the contracts to that are essentially operating like permanent supportive housing and would need to find a new home if KCRHA were to be dissolved.

Opportunities to continue and strengthen the work of the OMSBOT office.

This is a new office that was formed when KCRHA was formed.

and so thinking about where if it continues to have a home.

And finally an estimated timeframe and budget for increased city costs relating to dissolving or restructuring KCRHA and an explanation of the fund source for those costs.

Next slide.

And the final part of the resolution is a request that the mayor or her designee should continue to report monthly to the chair of the Human Services Labor and Economic Development Committee on the potential dissolution or restructure of KCRHA if that is what is recommended.

And that is really to ensure that there is continuous and regular communication with council as we take next steps that would have a significant impact on the provision of homeless services in Seattle.

and I will stop there.

Thank you.

Thank you for that overview, Jen.

And before getting into questions, I do want to recognize that we have Mark Ellerbrook and Lindsay Garrity at the table representing the mayor's office.

So inviting you both if there's additional information or perspective you'd like to share on this work.

Yeah, thank you very much.

Again, for the record, Mark Ellerbroek.

I'm the Deputy Director for City Operations in Mayor Wilson's office.

Thanks very much for having us today.

I actually thought, and Jen, it is good to see you again.

I thought Jen did a great job on the briefing and provided a good amount of background and current information.

Happy to answer questions.

I think, as Councilmember Foster highlighted, I think there is urgency as we consider KCRHA that we hold front and center the folks who are living homeless in our community.

We cannot in any way step back or not consider both their needs and, frankly, their voices as we consider the current state and any future state in this space.

So I want to just emphasize the good point that Councilmember Foster made on this.

I think I'll leave it there.

Happy to respond to questions.

We obviously take this matter very seriously.

We appreciate the partnership with both you, Chair Rank and Council Member Foster and others on the Council as we consider the current state of KCRHA and what its continuity looks like and the continuity of those services.

So we look very much forward to working with you in tandem and partnership.

Thank you.

Colleagues, opening it up for questions on the resolution before us.

I am not seeing any hands at this time.

Colleagues, I will note we do have an intent to vote on this resolution and committee today in service of, as Vice Chair Foster mentioned, the county has moved on their, as I call it, a cousin resolution, and so we're doing work to try and align some of those timelines.

I do see a hand from Councilmember Saka.

Thank you, Chair, and I just want to thank you, Chair, and for your leadership and that of Councilmember Foster for bringing this forward.

I want to thank Ms. Labreck.

Let's see, Mr. Ellerbrook, Ms. Garrity.

I think I got it.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for the overview, the presentation.

It's very important.

This is very important work.

The results of the audit, very concerning.

and this is an important response from the City of Seattle's perspective to figure out what we need to do to get this right.

And whatever we do, whatever our approach is, it needs to be thoughtful.

We're not...

can't shoot from the hip here.

It needs to be thoughtful, measured, and to the full extent possible, collaborative.

At the end of the day, depending...

where the chips may fall, who knows?

there might be a less distributed model in carrying out this critically important work.

Who knows?

But can't just pull the cord immediately and think that's gonna solve all of our problems.

And so that's why I appreciate this approach because it is thoughtful, measured and I think appropriate for where we're at.

And we'll see where this work takes us.

This is a critical next step.

And that doesn't absolve KCRHA from, you know, their duty and responsibility to make immediate, you know, corrections, implement appropriate financial controls, all the things, even in the absence of this legislation, but it is, so they retain that.

But this is an important piece of legislation to help get us where we need to be.

Question on, for Ms. Labrecki, let's see.

Can you help me better understand, so I understand that this is, Chair referred to it as a cousin resolution.

So there is a similar piece of legislation that passed the King County Council recently.

And I'm not concerned about the specific language and do a side-by-side, dot-compare, redline and, you know, what are the word textual differences?

Don't really care about that.

But what I am concerned about is, or not concerned, curious.

What I am curious about.

Frankly, this is for anyone here at the table, or Ms. Lebrick, but what are the high-level differences between our respective pieces of legislation here?

What are the high-level features that are, you know, a little more unique to Seattle where we depart a little bit from King County, again, at a high level from a provision standpoint, not a language standpoint.

I'm happy to respond to that.

Okay.

So I, you know, first, as I mentioned, the timing is the same.

Just like the resolution that's before you today, the King County motion asks that the King County Executive provide them an interim assessment of the Comprehensive Corrective Action Plan by June 15th and then that they come back to the King County Council on August 1st with a final recommendation on whether to dissolve, restructure, or continue as is.

So those are the same.

I think that there are some differences I would say that King County is in an interesting position because they are essentially KCRHA's lender when KCRHA has a negative cash balance that is coming out of the King County cash pool and so I think King County has a particular interest in understanding KCRHA's sort of current cash position how they are going to sort of reconcile those receivables that they haven't been able to collect on yet so that they can get the cash and that they can, you know, essentially get out of that negative cash position to the point possible.

And then I think just some other questions too around maybe some more specific questions around the, you know, what their plans are to address some of the findings in the resolution.

So I am happy to send you, if you're interested, Councilmember Saka, a copy of the King County Resolution, but I think that's as much detail as I can speak to it right now.

Thank you.

No need to send.

Again, I'm less interested in the specific language, but let's just talk offline.

No need to.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Very helpful for my initial, for responding to my initial questions.

Thank you.

So I have a question and I will take guidance from you as chair.

Um, are we going to,

talk and then vote on the amendment and then the resolution and then discuss a little bit more in depth about what we received on May 8th from the King County Regional Home Association in regards to the forensic audit or are we holding that discussion for a few questions with having Jennifer here on the line or how do you want to do that Madam Chair?

Thank you for that.

I had not planned on that discussion today.

However, it is pertinent to this discussion of naturally.

And so having that before us, I'm wondering maybe before we take the vote, let's have a little bit of a discussion on what we've received.

Yeah, I had a question that I wanted to ask Jennifer and then I'll follow your lead, Madam Chair.

On page six of the PowerPoint, Jennifer, and I have in front of me, unfortunately, because I'm a nerd like the chair, the resolution when the Seattle and King County established the King County Regional Homeless Authority back in 19, and when we signed it, and of course the amended ILA and the Clark Nuber Forensic Evaluation.

So on page six, I didn't catch this the first time, but Jennifer, when you talked about the right-of-way contracts, that that's state funding, was that addressed in the audit and how much was that?

Or is that even, it might just be nitpicky here.

That's a great question.

I don't recall that the audit found any problems specific where they specifically called out the right-of-way contract, but of course they called out in general issues with things like unreconcilable receivables where they paid a provider but now they can't they don't have enough documentation to be able to go back to the funder and get reimbursed for that.

I don't know whether or not the right-of-way contracts are involved with that or not.

I don't think the audit provides that level of detail.

Does that answer your question?

It does.

I was just highlighting it because you made it your second bullet on page six and it was the first time that I realized that the organization will take these existing right-of-way contracts.

I wasn't aware that a chunk of it came from the state, and I didn't know how much.

So I guess that's something we can follow up offline.

I'm happy to follow up with you until you came out.

I don't know off the top of my head.

And this is why I like what the chair and the vice chair are doing in taking this measured approach to before we fix the plane, let's not fix it while we're flying it.

Let's figure out what the facts are, where the money is and where it went, and then address some of the issues.

So just very briefly, Madam Chair, the question I was concerned about, and I'm sure you can respond as well to help me out, is when we received the King County Regional Homeless Authority's response dated May 8th to the forensic audit, when we were looking at specifically the timelines that they laid out, May 23rd being the corrective action plan that Clark Neuber said, these are the things you need to respond to, we will respond to them by May 23rd.

I'm wondering how that changes or if it does change the tone or the conversation for an additional resolution or anything else from us, Madam Chair or Jennifer, what do we anticipate from that on the 23rd?

I mean, they kind of laid out, and I'll just say it to be straightforward, a lot of this is just government word salad.

it's not really telling me what's going to happen on May 23rd so I'm wondering if there's some more information you could perhaps provide what do we anticipate on May 23rd that the forensic auditors are telling King County you need to respond to this corrective action and if we anticipate any more work or ordinance or resolutions coming out of Seattle or we're just going to remain cousins with King County

Can I respond to that for a moment?

Because I do think I'll walk you through, I think, the logic of the timing and then see if you have additional questions.

So I think the timing, the dates, there are two dates in the resolution in which the executive has to report back.

And they are based on, in part, when that corrective action plan has to be submitted.

So we had the initial findings on May 8th, responding to the five highest risk findings.

May 23rd is the Comprehensive Action Plan.

The June 15th, so the resolution requests that the Seattle executive report back to council on June 15th with their initial assessment of the Corrective Action Plan.

So at that point, there should be the executive's assessment of like, we think this is feasible, or we think these parts are feasible, but these parts aren't feasible.

So I think I would describe it as an interim check-in based on the information that's provided.

through the corrective action plan about do we think there's a feasible path forward to continue KSRHA as is or not based on essentially the corrective action plan that they've submitted.

And then we fast forward to August 1 where the executive comes back to council and says, okay, now we have for you.

a final recommendation on whether we should continue case RHA as it is, restructure, dissolve.

And that recommendation, you know, should be based in part on an assessment of the viability of the corrective action plan, both in terms of possibility, timeline, and cost.

Sorry to interrupt.

No, that's okay.

Madam Chairman, I just want to follow up.

So, August is the go, no-go date.

and then King County will address it first and then we'll look to leadership of council member or Madam Chair to kind of guide us and Vice Chair to kind of guide us like what are our next steps.

I guess, I don't know if this has ever happened.

It would be interesting if King County says don't go forward and then we say, you know, we've contributed 60% of your budget.

A lot of our contracts migrated from HSD over to King County Regional Housing.

if we were to, would there ever be a scenario where we would disagree?

It only takes one party to terminate the ILA.

And so there could be a scenario in which we could disagree, but we only need one party to disagree.

It's not a mutual termination.

Okay, you just hit it on the head and thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Chair, for indulging me.

Thank you, Council Member Ruiz for those fantastic questions and for really grappling with kind of the complexity of the situation that we are in.

And I do want to recognize as well, Vice-Sheriff Foster, who currently sits on the KCRAJ Finance Committee.

Thank you so much, Chair.

Thank you so much, Chair Rink, and thank you so much, Councilmember Juarez, as I like to say, always with the fine-tooth comb.

I want to just say one quick thing by follow-up to make sure that we have this clarity, because I appreciate you asking the question around the May 23rd date.

And so just as a reminder, and I think Jen did touch on this, but I'm just going to restate it a little bit just to make sure, that date was first identified in the cover letter that was provided to KCRHA.

in a joint letter between the King County Executive and the Mayor's Office, and that requests a corrective action plan that addresses each of the findings in the audit.

So while it is true that there was only sort of a high-level mention of it in the May 8th response, I wanted to take us back to, I believe, what was sent on April 22nd, which has the outline for May 23rd.

So maybe that was helpful or maybe that was more confusing, but we want to just make sure that what we'll receive on the 23rd is that corrective action plan that addresses each of the audit findings.

And then the only other thing I wanted to highlight was, Council Member Juarez, you spoke to August as a go or no-go, and I just want to highlight that that is meant to be a recommendation that we receive on August 1st from the executive.

So that's how we've outlined it in this resolution.

So receiving a recommendation from the executive to the body that we will then have the opportunity to engage with.

So there's a little bit further engagement after that date.

So just wanted to make sure we were clear on those two points.

Thank you so much, Chair.

And I believe our speakers may.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you very much.

I really appreciate this conversation.

Just a couple of points to make.

I think, thank you for the conversation about the dates.

That aligns with our understanding as well and the purposes of both the June 15th date and the August 1st date.

So I think we are in alignment there.

I think the other thing that I wanted to say, and again, Vice Chair Rink, Foster, you commented on this.

This really is a four corners approach and I want to sort of emphasized that we are in close contact with the King County Executive's Office on this, making sure that we are well aligned.

There was a comment made, and I think it bears sort of pausing on it.

The Regional Homelessness Authority is very complicated.

It includes funds from a variety of different funders, the county, the city, the state, the federal government.

The Regional Homelessness Authority serves multiple purposes.

It is obviously a major actor, the city's major actor in homeless spaces.

It is the same for the county.

It's a regional convener of this topic.

It also serves critically important federal functions that are not easily unwound and that are ensure compliance for the city and the county to receive a substantial amount of funding.

So I just want to emphasize that it's beneficial to hear how aligned we are and I think clear in our communication because as we sort of embark on this path and receive the information from the Regional Homelessness Authority on the 23rd, evaluate that, provide our feedback to all of you and our recommendations.

that we remain very closely aligned because the significance in how these dollars show up and how this organization leads and how we hear from our service providers and how we hear from the lived experience coalitions and folks is paramount in how we do this well.

I just want to emphasize and really appreciate this conversation and the spirit of alignment in this space as we step forward.

So I am happy to hear from any and all of you with questions you might have as we step forward.

It is complex.

I have spent a good portion of my time in public service working in housing and homelessness spaces.

Lindsay here to my right has stayed with this for many, many years as well and knows this probably as well as anybody.

and I know both, I know Council Member Rink, you as well have deep experience in this space as do others.

And so I feel like we are well equipped to take these steps and we also take these steps with seriousness.

So thank you for the discussion.

Happy to answer any additional questions.

Thank you for that.

Recognizing Councilmember Juarez.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My question is to the city and the folks at the table when you keep saying this four-corner approach and I'm just going to say the elephant in the room.

Yeah, I was around when we created 2019 with then Council President Harrell and then Mayor Jenny Durkin and I believe Councilmember Dombowski signed the original and of course then at the time, Executive Constantine, and I was going back and looking at those original creation organic documents.

So when you say we are aligned with, how are we aligned with other cities who maybe don't feel the spirit of alignment right now that we have been seeing, that are not happy with what has happened.

Has the mayor's office reached out to some of the cities that are not happy and are proposing a complete dissolvement of this organization?

Thanks for the question.

I think we have not heard directly from other cities at this point.

I think obviously that's a space that the county and the Regional Homelessness Authority also are operating in, and I think we try to remain aligned with the county in particular as sort of the regional government.

But I think to the point that you're making as well, Councilmember, I think it is very important as we think about the current and I think future state of the Regional Homelessness Authority, the core premise to creation of KCRHA was the regional concept of a collective approach to homelessness.

And that has worked better and worse to certain degrees as we sort of stepped into that space.

I think that conversation still needs to be had in a public way from all of the other 38 cities in this county about how those entities want to I think contribute and participate in that conversation and I think we will look to I think ourselves to the feedback that you all get as elected officials but I think the KCRHA and also importantly King County as the regional government in that space.

So I hear you really clearly to say like let's ensure that we are hearing and open to comments back from other jurisdictions.

Yeah, I understand why it was created, I get it, I was there.

And I want to thank the Chair, Council Member Rink, because she understands it from a molecular level as well.

My point is, when you're talking about the spirit of alignment between the City of Seattle and the King County Council, and then creating this, and City of Seattle, and correct me if I'm wrong, Madam Chair, contributes at least 60% to the King County Regional Homeless Budget, So I guess my point is, how is the mayor's office reaching out to the other 38 cities or whoever, what other cities have contributed?

Because we've seen it in the press where they're not happy.

What is your media strategy?

What is your alignment strategy?

What is your communications with some of those cities that, if you will, using your words, need to be brought into the spirit of alignment?

Yeah.

So I think what I can, I think we are committed, and the mayor has said this, committed to the continuation of a regional approach.

And I think when we come back in June to present our findings, I think we can also talk about how we are doing the connections and the outreach to the other cities throughout the the county in this space.

And then I think to the point that you also made, council member, one of the, and as you know, one of the original ideas was that the KCRJ would be sort of a galvanizing presence to bring in funding from multiple places and multiple jurisdictions throughout the city to support, or not the county, to support homeless efforts and I think by and large with potentially a few exceptions that hasn't sort of materialized as one of the main outcomes of this and so I think that spirit remains and I think we need to continue to figure out how we actually make the actions in that space happen.

Okay, let me try this again.

This is what I'm getting at.

What is the mayor's office doing right now to talk to the other cities that have contributed and are part of the King County Regional Homeless who are not happy about the 8 million missing and everything else?

What are you guys doing right now talking to these cities.

I know we got May 23rd as a date for the corrective action and we'll know more information.

And if there isn't anything going on, that's okay too.

I just need to know for when we hear from other cities offline, all of their electeds, what the mayor's team is doing to outreach to those folks who also sit on the King County Regional Homeless Authority Board to say, hey, this is what we're working on.

This is how we're going to handle this.

Is that happening now?

That's what I'm getting at.

Yeah, got it.

I am unaware of an active conversation that we've had with another city on this topic presently.

But I hear you loud and clear about that that should be occurring.

And if you are hearing those comments or questions from other jurisdictions, we very much want to hear that as well as we work with those cities, our Office of Intergovernmental Relations, to make sure that we're making those connections.

Well, it's been in the press.

It isn't, you know, me getting a phone call every other day.

It's been in the media.

They're saying, you know, dissolve it.

We don't want to be a part of this.

We're not giving you any more money.

And so I'm not going to belabor the point.

So anyway, thanks.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for that question, Councilmember Juarez, and good to hear again the focus and the ask to the mayor's office to be ramping up this engagement.

I want to uplift.

I know Vice Chair Foster and I have been doing our own respective outreach, particularly to SCA leadership, to engage early on when The initial audit findings came out and then as well over the past couple weeks that we've been navigating these respective resolutions through this chamber and through King County Council.

So we're committed to that and would love partnership from the mayor's office and really navigating those communications.

So I really appreciate that question.

Thank you.

And recognizing Council President Hollingsworth.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I'll be super quick, just sending my appreciation to you, Chair, and Council Member Foster for bringing this forward and having this, obviously, this difficult conversation.

And I do want to just reiterate Council Member Juarez's piece, and if I heard this wrong, I think where and what I hear is that Seattle has to lead on this.

We provide a large amount of King County Regional Homeless Authority.

You said housing authority.

My mom would be very disappointed in you, Council Member Warriors, but because she worked there for 30 years, it is not the same.

But the funding that we have to lead on this.

And so that's why I really appreciate the leadership that you have, Chair and Council Member Foster, with bringing this forward saying, hey, we need to look at this and figure this out because this is something that, number one, we have to lead in, that we have to be, if there's not an alignment with King County regarding this, but we see it a different pathway, we need to be loud and clear about that.

I also know that as we know there's a lot of people that are frustrated and so a measured approach making sure that our communication is on point when we're articulating things and also that there's a plan so I'm going to be looking forward on the dates because I personally and I've stated this I don't feel comfortable voting on anything financially in addition to give King County Regional Homeless Authority until there's a plan we see forward, me personally, to figure out how these dollars are being spent well and the plan to implementing so they have the greatest impact.

So I know that you all are working hard on that and again just really appreciate this being brought forward, measured approach so we can kind of continue that process forward.

So really, really appreciate your work on this.

Thank you.

Madam Chair, if I may interject very briefly.

Certainly, you are recognized.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to follow up with Council President.

You're right.

I keep doing that.

It's homeless, not housing.

Madam Chair, I just want to thank you and Vice Chair Foster.

I've been watching your leadership and watching you shepherd the shelter issue, the tiny house issue, the legislation that has been transmitted to the legislative branch, City Council, and now trying to shepherd, manage in a measured approach this issue.

We're all trying to have all hands on deck, but it's been you too that have provided the leadership.

And I hope people see that and the conversations that we have on how we address this, how we fix this, your participation in the King County Regional Homeless on the board, how you get the information back to your colleagues.

And all of this dovetails with the shelter legislation that we're dealing with and I just want the public to see that this is really hard work and you guys have really stepped up to do it.

And I'm just very proud to be a colleague and honored to work with you two and watch you grow as leaders, which you are already leaders, but I mean in these difficult, and I don't like using these kind of words, in these difficult spaces, it's not easy and you're doing it.

So I want to just kind of, to echo what Council President just said.

These are difficult issues and I want to thank you both.

And you too, Jennifer, thank you.

You've been in all of it.

And thank you for putting page numbers on the PowerPoint.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Waters for those generous words.

Don't make me tear up while I'm trying to chair a meeting.

I appreciate you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My gosh, thank you.

And recognizing Vice Chair Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair.

And we know she had to end about the PowerPoint being numbered.

That was a classic ending.

I'm going to be really brief.

I just wanted to respond to Council President Hollingsworth and just make sure if there's anything you need.

We didn't dive into this in depth today, but one of the actions that was brought forward at the governing board level was establishing a finance committee for KCRHA and that was something that I want to appreciate King County Councilmember Barone who was already working on that at the beginning of the year prior to the audit and then appreciate the work that the Mayor's Office did to bring forth additional changes to that resolution establishing the finance committee.

And just wanted to highlight for you, Council President, I'm serving as co-chair of that finance committee where we're working on some of the nitty gritty details around this.

And so if there's anything that we can provide to you in that role, I just want to make sure you know that you have access to that.

And I hear your point around the concerns with the resourcing.

So just wanted to make sure you have that awareness.

Thank you.

Thank you for providing that information, Vice Chair Foster, and thank you for your service to the Finance Committee and co-chairing it.

I'm not seeing any additional questions.

Colleagues, thank you for the robust discussion and for your engagement on this.

We have our work cut out for us on this one, and I sincerely appreciate the partnership, the kind words.

Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.

We are going to move forward with the legislation today for a vote by way of process.

I'm first going to move the resolution, and then we will move Amendment 1, which is that technical amendment, just in terms of process.

And so with that, I move that the committee recommend adoption of Resolution 32202. Is there a second?

Second.

It is moved and seconded to recommend the adoption of the resolution.

And now I move to amend Resolution 32202 as presented on Amendment 1 on the agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It is moved and seconded to amend the resolution as presented on Amendment 1. Are there any additional comments or questions on Amendment 1 before we take a vote?

Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment 1?

Chair Rink?

Yes.

Vice Chair Foster?

Yes.

Council President Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Council Member Juarez?

Aye.

Council Member Saka?

Aye.

There are five in favor, zero opposed.

Thank you, the motion carries and amendment one is adopted.

Are there any final comments on the resolution as amended?

With that, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to adopt the resolution as amended?

Chair Rink?

Yes.

Vice Chair Foster?

Yes.

Council President Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Council Member Juarez?

Aye.

Council Member Saka?

Aye.

There are five in favor, zero opposed.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation to adopt the resolution as amended will be sent to the June 2nd full council meeting.

Thank you, colleagues.

Thank you, Jen.

Thank you, mayor's office for being here today.

Appreciate it.

And we have now reached the end of today's agenda.

Is there any further business to come before the committee?

Hearing none, the next meeting of the Human Services Labor and Economic Development Committee will take place Friday, May 29th.

Hearing no further business, we are adjourned.

It is 11, 11 a.m.

Have an amazing weekend, everybody.

Thank you.

Oh, my gosh.