Seattle City Council Public Assets & Native Communities Committee 2/6/20

Oh, healthy people, okay.

All right, everybody, let's do a call to order here.

Good afternoon, this is a special meeting of the Public Assets and Native Communities Committee.

The date is February 6th and the time is 10.04.

I'm joined by Councilmember Herbold, Councilmember Peterson, and Councilmember, I was gonna say, I was gonna combine, I was gonna combine Mosqueda and Gonzalez and say Moscales.

Mosqueda.

Welcome back.

Thank you.

I'm glad you're here.

So I'm going to do a quick overview of the chair's report.

We have a pretty ambitious schedule, but my understanding is we're going to limit our presentations to 15 minutes per presentation.

So I want to welcome a new chapter and to our newest committee members that are here, Council Member Peterson and Council Member Mosqueda, thank you for being here.

This is the most exciting committee, just so you know.

This committee meets on the first Tuesday at 2 p.m.

Otherwise, we hold additional meetings titled special meetings like this one.

This committee is structured to provide policy direction and oversight and deliberate and make recommendations on legislative matters relating to parks, community centers, public grounds, including Seattle Parks and Recreation, the Woodland Park Zoo, the Seattle Aquarium, the Seattle Center, the Seattle Public Library System, Office of the Waterfront, and many other infrastructure and major government projects that we work on.

And we also work on Native American issues, including housing affordability, health, mental health services, services for youth, access to justice, art, culture, and historic preservation.

Our committee clerk is Nageen Kamkar.

She will aid in clerking our meetings as well as policy management.

She has provided introduction material to each of you to start off the year.

Let's see here.

The packet includes, you have two things here.

So the first one is the committee schedule and legislation deadlines.

That's the light colored document.

And then the second one is, I've labeled 2 and 2B, is the Seattle Parks Governance and Funding Chart.

And I would ask you to pay particular attention, especially you new folks, to this funding chart.

Thank you, Tracy Ratcliffe, because it's taken me years to figure this out, and now we have a nice handy-dandy chart that explains the $262 million Seattle Parks and Recreation budget.

As you can see, it's a combination of money from the Seattle Parks District funds, $54 million, the City of Seattle funds, $206 million, and state and King County funds, which comes out to about $2.3.

And as you all know, as members of Seattle City Council, you also sit on the Seattle Park and District Funds, also known as the Metropolitan Park District Board, in which we're getting ready on our six-year plan, and we will be looking at that schedule and pulling everything together probably in October of 2020. So today we'll hear from our departments and stakeholders on upcoming projects.

We have five items on the agenda.

The first four items are department overviews and a look ahead to their 2020 work plans.

Again, this is an ambitious schedule for today.

Starting with, first we'll have Seattle Parks and Recreation.

We'll have Office of the Waterfront and Civic Projects, Seattle Public Library.

the Seattle Center.

And the fifth item is going to be introductions, an overview from the Seattle Indian Health Board, a local community health center.

They are nationally recognized researchers behind the missing murdered indigenous women and girls epidemic.

For our new council members, you will learn a lot about this topic.

Last September, the city passed a resolution dedicated to address this subject.

This was followed by a city budget investment for contract work, as well as one FTE addition to the Seattle Police Department data division for the missing murdered indigenous women, girls casework.

So I look forward to hearing more of that from everybody involved.

I should add, before we actually sum up, Seattle Indian Health Board, my understanding is Esther Lucero is running a little bit late.

I wanted to wait until Esther got here to make the...

I'll make the announcement a couple times, but...

We're very proud.

The National Congress of American Indians has been around for over 65 years, and every year we meet in Washington, D.C. And we also go back to Washington, D.C.

to meet with our lobbyists for the city of Seattle, which is great.

And we also meet with not only our congressional delegation, but our senators and everyone.

So this year, I'm really happy to announce that Senator Kamala Harris will be introducing Abigail Echo Hawk and receiving a prestigious award from the Honoring Women's Nation, which is one of the highest awards you can get as a Native American woman for providing opportunity and access to justice for Native American women.

So we're excited about that.

Every year, Senator Murray and Senator Cantwell sit with us and do the introductions.

Last year, we had Senator Warren, Senator Sharice Davids, and Senator Deb Haaland with us.

and Congresswoman Shire.

So we'll have all these individuals again.

So this is a wonderful award, and I'm really proud of Abigail Echo Hawk.

So with that, public comment?

There's no people.

So we have no public comment today.

So with that, public comment is closed.

We'll move to items of business.

So first people up, we have our sale parks and rec.

That's you, Jesus.

Is it just you?

That's me.

OK.

You and a PowerPoint.

I apologize, I had to come down, I'm sure I'll mess it up, but.

Item one, Seattle Parks and, oh, sorry.

Oh, I got, I went into Nagin's territory.

Go ahead, Nagin.

Seattle Parks, item one, Seattle Parks and Recreation Department overview and 2020 work plan.

Okay, I'll just, okay, sorry.

We have one job to do and I want to do it.

Hey, Jesus, it's good to see you.

Happy New Year.

Happy New Year, thank you.

We're really excited because we got our six-year planning thing coming up.

We do.

It's going to be a very busy year.

Lots of great engagement with our communities and our stakeholders.

So we're really looking forward to the year.

So I will let you go through your presentation.

And what I do with my committee meetings, particularly with this one today, is if my colleagues have a question, just feel free to put them to the superintendent.

No need to look to me and raise your hand.

I think you guys know how this works.

Jesus is pretty good about page numbers and PowerPoints and keeping us informed.

So I'll let you take it away, Jesus.

Thank you.

And I will just share that we passed out some good sort of Paraphernalia for you, the fold out is sort of a good Parks and Rec 101, shows you some of who we are and what we do.

And then the other one is one of our reports on the park district planning that we do on a regular basis.

So you can take those, and we're happy to provide more if you need more of those.

But I appreciate the opportunity to present to you a quick overview of the department and especially for the new folks on the committee.

As the council member said, this is the best committee there is.

And so we're excited to have this opportunity to share with you in the public a quick overview of Parks and Recreation and then happy to answer any questions about our work now and moving forward.

And Seattle Parks and Recreation, I tell folks, we are really fortunate.

We have one of the best parks and recreation systems in the country.

It's one of the largest departments in the city.

I'll go over some of the specific details there.

It also has a rich history.

So Denny Park, the place where my office is, is actually the city's first park.

It was founded in 1884. We are now sort of being surrounded by very tall buildings, so I'm glad we still have that anchor there.

And then the system was really founded about 20 years later when the Board of Park Commissioners invited the famed Olmsted Landscape Architecture firm to come out and help design a parks and rec system, a system of boulevards, parks, green belts across the community.

That still serves as the anchor for our parks and recreation system.

Our mission is pretty straightforward and still anchored in kind of that Olmsted, the Olmsted origins, and it's really about providing safe and welcoming places for people to play, learn, and contemplate, but also recognizes our significant responsibility in the stewardship of this land and of the great resources that we have.

Our vision really is, and I'll go into each of these in a little more detail as we move forward, but it's about helping people be healthy, ensuring the environment is healthy, and then building strong communities.

And we do this through our values of promoting equity, opportunity, access, and of course, against sustainability.

So as we dig into these values a little bit more, it really has anchored the work that we're doing.

And we really look at, for example, on the healthy people side, look for, to participate and support a healthy white vision for a population, excuse me, a citywide vision for a healthy population.

So we envision folks that are healthy, moving around, that feel safe and welcome in our public spaces, but also that have, you know, affordable and fresh food, that practice healthy habits that prevent disease and enhance physical and mental well-being.

And of course, we can't do all of those things alone, but we really support all of the efforts of the rest of the city.

In terms of the environment, as I said at the beginning, we have a significant responsibility as stewards of a significant part of the land.

We control 12% of the land of the city.

And so, you know, we're really focused on mitigating the impacts of climate change, making sure that our urban forest stays healthy and grows, and then really providing environmental responsibility with our educational programs.

And then even with our own operations, making sure that our infrastructure is supporting these efforts.

And then the third anchor here in our vision is the strong communities piece.

And this is, again, one where we really seek to support all of the needs of community members, whether it's supporting the educational outcomes of children through our before and aftercare programs, through our childcare and daycare and things like that.

but also supporting economic development and ensuring that we provide opportunities for youth employment, et cetera, and then all of the convenings that we do in our public spaces through our event planning, our off-leash areas, and our community centers that really build strong resilient communities and make sure that folks feel like they're part of an interconnected city and a vibrant city.

Also key to our work is this idea of equity and, you know, in the last couple of years we've been engaged with the public and internally as well to craft new strategic plans that's going to guide our work over the next 12 years.

And a key component of this is a new initiative we're calling our Pathway to Equity.

And this is really focused on playing our role in supporting the elimination of institutional structural racism and really making sure that We achieve racial equity in our city as part of our work.

And so the pieces for us really focus on our work in terms of our policies and our procedures and making sure that there's an equity filter for that.

Really continue to work with our workforce and training them.

Last couple of years, we've done a lot of additional training in our foundations of change and, again, trying to move towards becoming an anti-racist organization.

And then prioritizing equity in the way we do our investments.

And, you know, one of the steps that will come out of this is creating an equity scorecard where we'll look at, you know, we'll map out and look at all the indicators that impact these issues and begin to make investments in programs and facilities based on that scorecard.

And I guess the final piece I'll say here that's really critical is reimagining, rethinking our engagement strategy and our accountability to the community to make sure that we're out engaging with folks and especially with folks that we haven't traditionally reached and looking for new ways to do that.

So this will anchor all of our work both in 2020 and beyond.

And then another aspect of this, in addition to our key values of healthy, healthy, strong, and then the equity pieces, is this organizational excellence piece.

We want to make sure that we have a world-class workforce that's well-trained, that is clear about where we're headed, that has the tools to do the work, but is also just focused on collaboration and excellence and professionalism.

We're looking to identify best practices in the work that we do, really focusing our systems and our processes to make sure we're doing the best job that we can to honor our responsibility to taxpayers, and beginning and continuing to include new technologies and innovation and best practices.

in the work that we do.

And part of that is just making sure that we're not stuck on just doing things the way we've been doing them because that's the way we've been doing them.

So really pushing ourselves to continue to work on becoming an organization, an excellence organization.

So how do we do that?

I mentioned the robustness of our park system.

We have 6,400 acres of park land across the city in 485 individual parks.

And as I said, this represents 12% of the city land.

But you can see the long list here, and there's more.

But this includes boulevards, 120 miles of trails, our community centers, our pools.

Our beaches, golf courses, we have 207 sports fields, 151 play areas, 14 off-leash areas, and much, much more.

And as we have found out and hear every day, if we were to leave it up to our communities, it would be many more of each of these things.

So folks really appreciate what we do and want more of it.

Jesus, can you hold up a minute?

Thank you.

Just a quick question.

Thinking back to your reference earlier to an equity scorecard, have we sort of used that concept to plot out these facilities?

So that's the work that we're doing.

So certainly we know where everything is.

That is known.

Yes.

But have we translated that information?

That's what we're in the middle of doing right now.

So for example, OPCD and Office of Civil Rights have done a lot of work and a lot of data on, for example, the indicators that lead to displacement for communities.

So we're layering all of that on top of this so that when we do go back and when there's a choice about an investment of a resource, I want to be able to have the data that says, well, this community has greater needs because of these indicators, and we will go there.

It's an important and can be difficult conversation, frankly, to have with our communities because I think the concept of equity is really, you know, people are open to that.

But at the same time, folks want things in their community.

So we're going to sort of have to be very...

Committing to equity means letting go of the concept of everything being equal.

Exactly.

Yes, and so we're gonna have to be very steadfast and stubborn about that conversation and we really will need and appreciate the support from the council and the other elected officials to make sure we can do that.

Councilmember Peterson?

And piggybacking off of what Councilmember Herbold mentioned, in my District 4 we've got Magnuson Park and things are dynamic, right?

We've just opened up There are hundreds of more low-income children who live there now, and they don't necessarily have access or scholarships to enable them to participate on the fields or in the programs there.

And, you know, the Magnuson Park Community Center needs to be rehabbed.

So, there are nearly 1,000 low-income residents there right at Magnuson Park that we've encouraged to live there.

We've enabled them to live there, and now we want to provide those services.

I'm happy to hear you talking about the equity scorecard concept.

Yeah, thank you.

And Magnuson absolutely is a great sort of microcosm of so many things happening in the parks and recreation system, both with the work that we do as well as all of the residents there.

For example, the community center actually is in the process of being rehabbed and expanded to add some additional programming space.

And we really are focused on making sure that there's enough either free programming or scholarship opportunities for the folks in that park.

So we'll continue to work on that.

There's more work to be done, but absolutely.

Yeah.

And to clarify on the Magnuson Park rehab, it's really just about 20% of the building that's being rehabbed right now, just sort of the entryway and some seismic stuff.

But we look forward to doing even more in the future.

Yeah.

Thank you.

First of all, thank you for this chart.

I don't know if you had given this to us before.

You know I'm big on lists.

So thank you.

I'm going to ask at some point that we expand that.

We still have this issue, I think Council Member Herbold can appreciate this, on the 122 restroom buildings, that we need more restrooms in this city.

That's something that we're still going to probably take another run at and budget citywide for more restrooms, not just in parks.

I'm guessing it would be parks or SPU that would maintain them.

That is something that we'll talk about, just putting that out there now.

And also with the stadium, are you talking about Memorial Stadium when you say we have one stadium?

No, this is West Seattle Stadium.

Oh, okay.

What's it called?

West Yale Stadium.

Okay, wow.

Chair Parks for four years did not know that.

Thank you for being here, Councilor Herbold.

Thank you.

Oh, Councilor Mosqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good to see you again.

Thank you again for this information.

I do have a few questions just about a few priorities that we've worked on over the last two years.

Let me know if you have this integrated into your presentation or if you'd rather address it now.

When it comes to the number of the kiddie pools that we had expanded, I believe we had invested in additional hours for the kiddie pools to be open.

Can you comment on that?

And then, additionally, was there...

It may have been the year before last.

I believe that we included a proviso or language in the budget to request that the fields be open for longer periods of time in the evening so that there was lit fields so that there could be unstructured play, especially as we think about our immigrant and refugee population or families within our city that don't have the resources to pay for structured play like the soccer teams that I used to be on two years ago.

You know, when we see more people out enjoying our great new turf fields in the light, that means that people are engaged in really positive physical activity.

And I think it also adds an element of healthy communities for the lights to be on and things like that.

So can you talk about whether or not we were able to implement that?

I was just struggling to remember the other day.

Sure, on the waiting pool issue in the spray parks, we did implement an extension of hours and days of operation for certain sites.

I don't have that list in front of me, but we can get that to you.

I think that is part of our longer plan as well.

It's just sort of try to figure out what's the best and most equitable distribution of those hours and those pools.

And actually, we're also thinking about how we can align that with some of our sustainability work.

So, for example, ideally, we would take those wading pools and actually convert them to spray parks.

Kids love the spray parks.

They're better for the environment.

We don't have to staff them as much.

They're healthier, safer, and all those things.

So that's part of our work there.

But again, it'll be anchored in sort of where the use is and where the need is.

But we did make some changes, and we'll continue to look at that.

Obviously you don't have any of those spray parks and kiddie pools open right now in this weather So is your timing to be done with that analysis prior to this spring and summer when they open?

So we have a schedule for opening already that that is that is based on our normal operations as well as the enhancement So that's that's continuing in terms of converting them to additional spray parks.

That's a longer term So you are already going to move forward with implementing the longer hours, but the conversation around conversion is is for the future.

Yeah, that's correct.

And in terms of the field, I think you hit on an incredibly important aspect of the management of these fields.

I'm not aware of a proviso on that, we'll find out, but it is part of what we've already been working on.

In fact, we did a pilot, and maybe it was driven by, in some ways, by the proviso, but we did a pilot To do just that, to carve out some unstructured, unpermitted community time at certain fields.

Because often we find when we invest in these fields, the local community members have to deal with the impacts of the additional use, but not necessarily get the benefit of that.

One thing we are doing, and this is also in Councilmember Herbold's district, but part of the redevelopment of South Park playfield, we have agreed to keep that field off out of our permitting system for five years so that we can allow that community to build their own programming and sort of we can provide those things.

We're working on that, and I think it's a really critical piece.

I think every field should have unstructured, unpermitted community time.

You know, and we're trying to sort of find the right balance, because all of the folks who use the fields continue to grow with their programming.

So we need to, and we have a very finite, number of hours of field space, and we're not going to be able to buy too many new fields.

Part of that also is with the partnership with the school district, and they've added additional lighting to some of their fields, and those sort of fit under the joint use agreement we have with the school district, which will provide more hours.

But I couldn't agree with you more in terms of the efforts to do more of that.

Hey, hey, Suze, I know I don't want to rush you, but we've got four more departments after you.

I only have 30 more slides.

I know, I know how many slides.

I'll go quickly.

Sorry, thank you.

But I'm happy to follow up more on those issues as well.

And then in terms of how we do this work, so we can't do it alone.

I keep saying we have one of the best parks and recreation systems in the country, and part of that is because we've enjoyed a tremendous amount of support from the community, from the elected officials, from the voters, and of course through all of our partners.

We have some, we have dozens and dozens and dozens of partners, and this is just one short highlighted list.

I will call out the Associated Recreation Council is our nonprofit partner that actually does much of our programming in our community centers and they really are a key partner and really well aligned with our mission.

We also have been doing much, a great deal of partnership with all of our sister agencies, whether it's preschool classrooms in our community centers or work with the libraries and others in our programming.

So we're just really, really pleased and feel fortunate to have this.

And I will just also call out, we have an incredibly robust volunteer core of folks, tens of thousands of individuals who work both as volunteer coaches in our community centers or forest stewards in our parks.

But we can't do the work without them, and we really appreciate that.

And then in terms very quickly on our programming, we do lots and lots of programming literally for the entire, you know, the entire lifespan of our residents and their abilities.

And frankly, I think we change lives.

You know, one quick sort of narrative here.

Just last summer we had a situation where we were just out of the blue called by one of the local corporations to receive a grant to provide additional programming.

And we didn't apply for it.

We weren't looking for it.

And we found out the reason it came to us is because the person who was in charge of doling out this money or helping out where this money was going to go is someone who had participated in our programming in one of our community centers and remembered the positive impact that that had on her life and really immediately went, well, we should put this in Parks and Recreation.

So just a small example of how we changed those lives.

In terms of the way we're structured, and this is sort of probably the drier part of the conversation, so I'll go very quickly.

We have several divisions.

This work all is divided by there, so the superintendent's office, which is policy and direction.

Our finance has all of the things you can imagine, budget and accounting, etc.

Our Parks and Environment Division is our largest division with over 300 FTEs.

And these are the folks that are out there day to day maintaining our parks, cleaning our parks, mowing the lawns, mowing the fields, et cetera.

Our Facilities Division that includes plumbers and HVAC folks and painters, et cetera, that are out there making sure that these buildings and these facilities.

We actually have over 500 individual building structures in the system, which is pretty robust to say the least.

And these folks do a phenomenal job keeping these things in the best possible condition.

I talked about our recreation division, which includes programming in community centers as well as our aquatic facilities.

And then our enterprise partnerships and community division is one that is poised for growth.

And the idea here is to leverage outside resources, both from our community partners, from our volunteers, grant sponsorships, and things like that.

So we're trying to build more of that so that we can generate additional revenue to support the work that we do.

And then finally, our Planning and Development Division manages a pretty robust capital improvement program, and they're just focused on time on budget delivery of a whole lot of, I think we have over 300 active capital projects right now.

And then just generally we have about 950 full-time staff members and about 1250 part-time seasonal folks that are part of the team.

I'm just wondering, where does the Conservation Corps fit?

The Conservation Corps actually was moved, it was in planning development, we moved it over to the EPIC division because EPIC is anchored at Magnuson, which is also where the Conservation Corps is anchored, so we want to give them additional support there.

Yeah, okay, so that's now, EPIC is the enterprise.

30 plus year old program, putting folks at work, getting them into jobs that can lead to careers.

I just want to flag my interest, as I've mentioned to you before, in exploring, and I recognize some of the challenges, but I believe that they can be overcome as it relates to council's funding of the Mobile Pit Stop program.

which is our mobile restroom facilities.

In other cities that have a mobile pit stop program, they staff those facilities, and they staff those facilities with a population of workers that is very aligned with the population of folks that we employ through the conservation core.

So I just want flag that that might be an opportunity for continued partnership with some of the other departments, whether or not it's SPU or HSD that is going to be taking the lead on that.

We'll see, but just want to.

Yeah, no, thank you.

And, you know, we're also very interested in growing that program.

I think part of the calculus and figuring out how to grow it is making sure that there's work for these folks to do and funding for that.

So welcome any opportunities to do more of that.

Yeah.

Let's move along.

Yeah, sorry.

And very quickly, just a snapshot of who our staff is in terms of gender and ethnic breakdown.

We've got a pretty diverse staff.

The majority of our staff identifies as something other than white.

Our gender, we have almost 60% male and 40% female.

And then jumping into our budget, as you mentioned at the beginning, Council Member, at your opening, we have our 2020 adopted budget is $262 million.

Of that, $175 million is operating and $87 million is capital, and this sort of shows you the various sources.

I will highlight that when we go out and we talk a lot about our budget and people talk about the Park District, I think it's important to note that the Park District, while critical and important for our work, represents roughly 20% of our total budget.

So when we launched our strategic planning process, it wasn't just about Park District, it was about all of our operations, and so that will be embedded in this.

And then finally, as we look to 2020 and beyond, happy to answer any questions about our work plan.

These are sort of the values that have been driving our planning and our work planning for our divisions.

And very quickly, this is the idea and reminder that we serve people, that we prioritize equity.

Also that we're part of a citywide solution to the challenges.

So the work that we do to support other agencies is a key part of what we do as a Parks and Migration Department.

And making sure that we recognize that our city is growing and changing in many ways, and we want to make sure that we are responsive to that.

And the last couple things here on the engagement, we work for the residents, so we need to make sure that we're always deliberately and continually engaging with folks to make sure that we're providing what their needs are.

and making sure that we honor our responsibility as stewards of this land and mitigate the impacts of climate change.

And then we do it all in a way that's focused on professionalism and excellence and best practice.

You can do it or I can do it, but I prefer you do it just quickly because I know Councilmember Peterson will do it Monday.

We're going to start the six-year planning.

If you want to just mention the three dates and locations, I have it in front of me.

Do you want to do it or you want me to?

Yeah, unfortunately I gave you my comment.

Okay, I will tell you.

We're going to start, as you know, in 2014 we approved the Seattle Parks District and we're going to start our six-year plan.

And the first community meeting will be at the Delridge Community Center, Monday, March 2nd, from 6 to 8. The second one will be at the Lake City Community Center, Thursday, March 5th, from 6 to 8. And the third one will be at the Van Asselt.

Did I say that right?

Van Asselt Community Center, Saturday, March 7th.

You'll get notice of this.

Council Member Peterson will make a formal announcement again Monday, because I won't be here Monday.

But we've been working on this, so I'm excited.

This will be our last year to put this last six-year plan together.

And how we're going to spend these funds and where we're going to look at capital needs and operating needs.

Yep.

All right.

Thank you.

And District 1. Yes.

I don't know about that, but.

Yeah, we're excited.

I thought you meant money wise.

We're excited and our oversight committee and our Board of Park Commissioners is excited to hear from our residents and community members about where they'd like to see us move forward with this next cycle of the Park District.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

We'll have you back.

You want to read the second item in?

Item two, Office of the Waterfront and Civic Projects Overview in 2020 Work Plan.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

We've got our water folks friends here.

Hey, Marshall, Dory.

Have a seat.

You guys want to introduce yourselves, and then we'll, it's 1034. So again, I told Nageen, I don't think departments can do 15 minutes, but we'll give it a try.

I don't want to really rush you, but go ahead and do introductions.

They could do 15 minutes if we would just, for the chance of that happening.

Hi, I'm Dory Costa.

I'm the finance manager for the Office of the Waterfront.

And I'm Jessica Murphy.

I'm the construction manager for our office.

Hey, Jessica.

Good morning, Marshall Foster.

I'm the director of the office.

Great.

Who's kicking us off?

You, Marshall?

Oh.

I'm going to kick us off.

Yeah.

Good morning, council members.

Thank you for having us in.

We're excited to kind of give you an overview of the Office of the Waterfront and Civic Projects and a bit of a look ahead to what you can expect to see in 2020.

I do want to add that you changed your title, and you did steal my title, some of my title.

Civic Projects, Waterfront, that was in mine, just so.

Flattery, what is it?

How is it said?

Stealing is the highest form of flattery, maybe?

Or it could be colonization, but OK.

I'm just making a joke.

Go ahead.

So what we're going to do is kind of walk you through the context for the Waterfront Program.

Our office is a pretty unusual.

office within the city, we're only 11 FTE, so probably one of the smallest in the city.

And we were created with a really specific purpose, which was to implement the vision for Waterfront Seattle.

What you have on the screen is a footprint of our program area, and I'll talk about some of the details of that.

Really, we started when the decision was made about how to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

You'll recall all the discussion we had in the late aughts, a couple of public votes culminated in the decision to build the deep board tunnel.

And starting at that time and moving forward, we really built a partnership on a couple of different fronts.

A partnership with a, we created a civic committee called the Central Waterfront Partnerships Committee that started working intensively with SDOT, with the Planning and Development Office, with Parks on how to envision the waterfront that could be created when the viaduct was removed.

And we also built a public agency partnership with the state of Washington, Department of Transportation, ferries, and King County Metro to really plan for the transportation future on the waterfront.

And what we're doing today, which we'll talk about, we're actually now under construction, is really executing, a decade later, the foundational, you know, the commitments and the partnership that really started at that time, going back to those decisions.

So on the screen, you see in the yellow color, really the footprint of what we call Waterfront Seattle.

That is the viaduct lands that have now been removed.

We all got to watch the viaduct come down over the last year.

And in its place, we are now beginning construction of 20 acres of parks and public infrastructure that really serves, obviously, the downtown community, but it really serves the whole city and the region.

I'm going to talk about the different elements of it in a moment.

There's some very important related projects that our office is involved in, but that we're not directly responsible for.

The replacement of Coleman Dock by the Washington State Ferries, that's a mega project in its own right.

The replacement of the Elliott Bay seawall, which was finished by SDOT several years ago.

Jessica actually was part of the leadership of that project.

And then a couple of joint development projects with non-profit partners.

Pike Place Market and its construction of what they call Market Front, which was finished about two years ago.

And then in the future, the expansion of the Seattle Aquarium, which we've talked about here at the Council in the past.

So I'm going to guess most of you remember the public process we had around Waterfront Seattle.

From about 2010 through 2013, we had a very large citywide conversation around the future of the waterfront.

a series of public events, very large scale, driven by what could we do with that 20 acres of parks and public space?

How could we create a democratic and inclusive vision for reconnecting our entire community back to Elliott Bay?

That was really the foundation of it.

We had a series of large-scale public events.

We had community conversations in literally every corner of Seattle, really focused on how can Seattle have that great I don't want to say Central Park, but you know, that downtown park that will support every neighborhood in the city and create a place for programming, for community events, for celebrations of our city in a way and in a space that we haven't had in the past because of the presence of the viaduct.

You know, if you go back, sort of looking at the city's history, there has been talk and clamoring for reclaiming that waterfront really ever since shortly after the viaduct was built, that was discussed.

And so in a lot of ways, the Waterfront Seattle program was an opportunity for the community to come together and really be able to kind of really see that vision realized.

I won't go through the details of the level of engagement, but we had literally hundreds of events and tens of thousands of people participating both in person and online in the development of that vision.

Early on in the process, city council and the mayor, there was a whole series of legislative actions that have really guided this from the very early days.

Probably one of the most important ones that took place was the creation of the guiding principles for Waterfront Seattle.

You can see those on the screen here.

I won't go through all of them.

Those really created the compass and the guiding light for every step of the program.

As we move through that public process, these ideas, Waterfront for All, which is really about that inclusive vision for everyone getting to use and enjoy this waterfront, Sustainable Design, which was really represented in the seawall design and the nearshore habitat enhancements that it provides, as well as with what we're doing with the waterfront, the full waterfront park in terms of stormwater management and removing some of our stormwater overflow events that happen on the bay, Reconnecting the whole city to the waterfront, and we'll talk about how that plays out.

And really telling the story of the city's history, as well as looking forward in terms of the cultural elements that are included in the design.

And then something, access and mobility, all these key ideas, something that's been especially important as we've watched this play out is the importance of having a bold vision that can adapt over time.

You know, we had to deal with the situation with Bertha.

When Bertha was stuck, we had to endure that and work through that creatively with the state.

We've had several major shifts in the design, responding to cost, responding to schedule, and changing priorities.

And I think all through that, we've been able to keep the progression a forward motion on this program across, I think we're now on our fourth, depending on how you do the math, fourth or sixth mayoral administration.

So we've had a lot of longevity over time.

So here you can see the detail of what we are now starting to build.

This is the capital program that was established shortly after the public planning process that I described in 2012 and in 2013. There was a series of key actions that took place here at the council which formed the Waterfront program officially, established it in the city's capital improvement plan, and also called for an unprecedented level of public-private partnership on the funding of that Waterfront vision.

And that's where we introduced the idea of a major philanthropic partnership with Friends of Waterfront Seattle, which is a nonprofit organization that was then created and is now in the process of raising about $110 million for the program.

And also to advance the concept of a local improvement district that would assess downtown properties for the special benefit associated with the park improvements.

And as I think you all know, the council did act to form the LID last year.

We're not going to go into that in a lot of detail today, but obviously that's a major issue at council this year, is the final steps on the LID.

In terms of the elements of the program, the backbone of this entire effort is the replacement of Alaskan Way.

So that is taking place from King Street all the way north up to Pine Street.

And then north from there, the creation of a new street that doesn't exist today called Elliott Way that connects from Alaskan Way up to Belltown and to Elliott and Western Avenues.

A long linear promenade, which is a park promenade that will run from King Street all the way north to Pike Place Market.

That's really the backbone of the whole project.

The replacement of Waterfront Park and Pier 62, which are two existing public parks over water, part of Jesus' park system that he was just talking about, which have been in need of replacement for some time.

And actually, the first phase of that is the replacement of Pier 62, which is just a couple months away from completion.

And then a series of east-west connections.

I talked about this idea of connecting the whole city and the center city neighborhoods to this new waterfront.

You'll see these fingers that connect in Pioneer Square and south downtown.

A major new connection between the Pike and Pine Corridor.

all the way down to the waterfront with what we call the Overlook Walk, which will connect Pike Place Market to the waterfront, as well as improvements to Pike and Pine Streets, where our program is reaching all the way east up to Capitol Hill, actually, through the Pike-Pine Corridor to improve those streets, and then finishing off the Bell Street Park, if you're familiar with that, in Belltown.

The last two blocks of that will be finished by our program to connect it down to the waterfront.

Thank you very much.

So I was really proud to work with the chair to help support this effort and the vision here.

And in saying that, I also know we have continued to address questions around equity and access.

I believe this is a park for all of Seattle, but there is still questions about how it's all of Seattle going to benefit from this new redevelopment.

So can you talk a little bit about the equity analysis that you've incorporated into this full kind of spectrum of what's going to happen on the Waterfront, and if there's any specific features of the project that you have incorporated in response to the equity concerns that have been raised in the last few years based on their feedback, that would be helpful for us to hear.

Yeah, so this has been a really important topic for us.

We did an analysis with the Friends of Waterfront Seattle over the last year and a half, and the focus of that has been how to take this idea of the Waterfront for All and inclusive participation in that project and really identify what are all the strategies that we're using that deliver on that concept.

And I'm just going to highlight a couple of the key things that we're focusing on in partnership with them.

What we heard consistently through the public engagement was that we needed to create spaces and venues in these parks that were comfortable and attractive to every community so that it did not read and feel like a downtown only space.

Obviously, it's going to serve downtown users, but we would proactively invest in bringing every neighborhood into the project.

So what we have essentially established with Friends of Waterfront Seattle, they are our programming and operating partner.

So they're working hand-in-glove with the Parks Department in our office, is they are directly investing in helping communities come in to use these new parks.

And that's scaling up as we're bringing the spaces online.

So for example, they've been for the last two years working with us in Waterfront Park.

to go ahead and start experimenting with how they can do the programming and activation.

They are providing direct support to a variety of different organizations to do events in the park.

Some of the examples that they've, you know, things that they're experimenting with, they've worked with an organization called 206 Zulu in Rainier Valley to bring youth participation, hip-hop, music, and art into the space.

They're working with an organization called K-Pop, which is focused on Korean pop, if you know that music, which was a total experiment.

They actually funded helping that.

There's an incredible kind of under-the-radar organization of people who are engaged in that and actually help to fund them to come in and do events.

And they're scaling that up in a variety of ways.

This spring and summer, they'll be taking on Pier 62 and bringing events there.

They're actually working with Africatown to bring them into Pier 62. and also working with the tribal community on salmon homecoming and helping to support that event scaling up in the parks.

It's not sort of a baked recipe.

They're really in an experimentation trying to see what works.

and bringing people in.

The other thing I want to just highlight really quick that we're excited about is we know the waterfront is a great venue for small business.

There's a huge amount of foot traffic, obviously the tourism, but as well, you know, a huge local population that uses the waterfront.

We are, as part of our partnership with Friends, setting up a small business incubator program, and we've been working closely with an organization called Ventures, you may know, to really make sure that we are using, we're not creating a lot of retail space, we're creating a couple, that those are opportunities to incubate small businesses from disadvantaged communities in Seattle.

And so Ventures is the partner to Friends to make sure that we can do that with those spaces.

Those are just a couple examples.

So, I think I'm going to move on from the design and just talk a little bit about construction and then our funding.

And I just want to give a shout out to Jessica Murphy here.

I think a lot of you know Jessica.

She has been very involved in a lot of the major construction in Seattle for the DOT.

Also, Angela Brady, who couldn't be with us today, who have stood up a construction management team, which is actually, I would say, three quarters of our effort easily at this point is the day-to-day delivery.

So I'm just going to highlight, and Jessica can go into more detail, this is what it looks like on Alaskan Way.

So over the past few months, we've essentially taken over the construction where you saw the state taking down the viaduct.

The crews you see out there now are now Waterfront Seattle teams.

We're doing a variety of utility replacements out of the gate, putting in new new transmission and distribution lines for City Light, new stormwater and water systems for SPU, and then the drainage system for the new Alaskan Way.

That's what you see going on right now on Alaskan Way.

A very important early piece of our project is to connect Columbia Street, where we used to have the on-ramp to the viaduct.

That is going to very soon be opened as a major pathway for regional transit.

I'm a West Seattleite.

I ride the RapidRide.

If others do, that bus has been on a temporary route for several months.

And very shortly, it will be re-established on Columbia, which will improve the transit speed and reliability quite a bit.

Very shortly being within the next?

Very shortly.

six months or less?

Within the month.

Within the month, that is very true.

We'll be announcing the date very shortly.

We're using the same language.

Yeah, yeah, within the month.

I love it.

District one I'm a little concerned about, but.

Yeah, believe me, we all, we have a lot of West Seattleites in our office, just happens to be, it wasn't planned, and we're as motivated as anybody to get that open.

RapidRide riders will really appreciate it.

Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be a lot more reliable than the current situation.

Pier 62 I mentioned, this is where we used to have our summer nights on the pier.

This is a picture of some of our contractors team out there.

It's starting to get very close to completion.

That's the new railing, the new deck.

And so we're very excited to be opening that later in the spring.

The Friends of Waterfront Seattle will really be in partnership with the Parks Department operating that new pier as soon as it opens.

You know, I just wanted to emphasize, as we leave construction, how important it is to our team that we have a really proactive plan to preserve access.

This is a diagram that shows you how we manage pedestrian access through the construction zone.

We've got Coleman Dock.

We've got the water taxi.

We've got all the transit movements.

And so this is something that Jessica and her team focus on.

every single day intensively is keeping those pathways open.

We do have temporary closures where we have to close certain crosswalks or shift people.

We work really intensively on the signage and on the communicating ahead of time to both the traveling public but also to our property owners.

And we are also working hard at keeping that mainline Alaskan Way open for traffic throughout the construction.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So this is an area that I used to bike quite a bit.

I mentioned this to the SDOT director as well.

There is no temporary bike lane that appears to be on the street.

And given the high foot traffic that occurs on our new sidewalk there, which is gorgeous, we do like that light can go in now for the marine life that's underneath the pier, but there's not a safe place to bike.

And I see that you say multi-use trail open during summer, but that also is not exactly a bike lane for commuters.

What I asked of our friends at SDOT is that a temporary bike lane be added to the street so that people who are using biking as a commuting option can stay on the street and not be, you know, trying to weave in and out of I understand that once it's finally completed, you're going to have a great bike lane.

That's not under question here.

But it is pretty scary down there right now, especially as people line up to get on to 99 South.

And I'm wondering if you've heard that concern and if there is still the ability to add not just a shero, because it gets really congested down there, but a narrow bike lane so that people know where their avenue is.

Yeah, no, we're very aware of that concern.

I think the core issues around space and how do we provide something that's a safe facility while we also have the room to build the project.

Do you want to say a little bit, Jessica?

Yeah, I'll just add that you're right.

The bicycle facilities have been inadequate for a long time.

The multi-use path has served that purpose for a long time.

a long time and we did enjoy for a while during seawall construction the somewhat quieter road underneath the viaduct that I think the cycling community did appreciate.

Now with Alaskan Way, four lanes, very busy, we are trying to maintain that access to that multi-use path and certainly that dedicated space throughout construction.

We're trying to make that optimal.

We're actually in the process of putting out some more reflectors on some of those temporary poles that have the barrels around them just to make sure the visibility is good on that path, make sure we're not encroaching on its width, and it is eight feet wide.

We will also look forward to getting that permanent facility in, and we'll work with our partners at SDOT to see what we can do on the interim.

Okay, and then lastly, just on this topic as well, another item that I've mentioned to SDOT is the need for more bike corrals down, especially by the ferry terminal.

There have been a number of people who I think have been excited to try our rental bikes that are available and unfortunately we lost one but there is still a jump bike out there.

I would love for us to see a bike corral because right now those bikes get parked right on the sidewalk and they're, you know, danger for those with disabilities or vision impairments and they're also just a danger for pedestrians and other cyclists in the area.

So that could be potentially a pretty quick fix as we get everything else.

I know this is not the entire presentation, but just because it happens to be part of this slide.

I mean, we've actually asked that question, too.

It makes a lot of sense.

that they've found at SDOT with this issue generally is how to get the users to use those corrals.

Because that's part of the thing with the bike sharing is it's just designed to be jumping.

But there is none right now.

And especially with our new, I always call it the foot ferry, the water taxi.

It's a beautiful facility down there, but still people come and they don't have a place to put their bikes.

It's something I'd love to follow up with you guys on, if you can check in now that we have the new water taxi area.

And I think I'll hold my other comments about my desire for water taxi year round, maybe bring that over to our friends at King County.

But that would be a great way for more people to enjoy the waterfront.

Right now, we have limited hours during the winter.

And I think it's just a missed opportunity for midday tourists and families and weekend families for them to come back and forth from all of our friends who live in West Seattle.

No, it's a great service.

Okay, so trying to keep to schedule.

I know you have a lot to hear from different departments.

Quick snapshot of our schedule.

The key thing to know is that we are well underway now.

Like I said, a few months in, we will be hard at work on construction into early 2024. So we have about four years of total construction.

The roadway will be the first element that will open, the first major element which will open ahead of that.

We're still working through the details of that scheduling.

It won't be that everything opens all at once in 2024. And we will see, as I mentioned before, Pier 62 will open in the short term later this spring.

There are also, you see some of the other related projects, the Coleman Dock rebuild mid-23.

Obviously, you know, more to come if they hit that target.

And the aquarium's construction is on the tail end of the waterfront construction.

It has been important to us to get the new surface road open as they begin their work as well.

This is basically our work plan.

Yeah, and that is the next four.

Because if we were looking back at the last four, we got it done.

So good job.

Well done.

All three of you.

$728 million total budget.

This is essentially the capital program that you see.

You can see the funding partnership I mentioned at the beginning, $260 million of city funds, about $200 million of state funding.

That's through the Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Program.

That's part of the funding that also included the Deepwater Tunnel and other related projects, $110 million of private philanthropy, and $160 million local.

improvement district.

Yeah, we should really give a big shout out to Friends of the Waterfront.

They've been front and center with us in raising the $110 million.

It's just been phenomenal watching the public-private partnership on that.

So again, well done.

And they have, you know, we could come and talk.

They could give you an update on their progress.

They're doing a great job of also broadening their organization right now.

They're really staffing up.

for programming, for community outreach.

They actually go out and do a lot of outreach with us now in community around how to bring people to the project.

Like I mentioned, funding community partnerships to get people down enjoying the waterfront.

And they're right now standing up their operating team.

So they're actually bringing in staff whose dedicated focus is on park operations.

And they're working really closely with the Parks Department on the selection of that team right now.

We're going to have more public restrooms down there, correct?

We are.

We're going to have several new public restrooms.

We'll have an anchor restroom right at Waterfront Park, right by the aquarium.

That will actually be a staffed restroom, which will help keep it safe and attractive to use.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

I'm not going to dive into the LID.

You're going to spend more time on this at City Council this year.

But this is just a snapshot of what the LID area is and some of the key facts and figures associated with that.

And most importantly is what you can expect going forward.

We had our first of a series of public hearings on Tuesday this week in the final phase of the LID which is the confirmation of the final assessment role.

We're anticipating that council will consider action on that in June of this year after we've gone through the hearing examiner process.

And then there's a final action regarding the bond ordinance to actually issue bonds against that funding source that would take place in the fall of this year.

So really, our major topic with this committee, and we're happy that we get to continue working directly with this committee, will be around the LID this year.

But the civic projects?

Yes, and other civic projects, yeah.

So that's the Office of the Waterfront in a nutshell.

Is there any questions we have from colleagues?

Yes, go ahead.

Thank you.

So as we know, there's a beautiful old structure down there next to the new water taxi entrance.

I don't know how old it is, but it looks original.

Is part of our redesign going to be incorporating that into some sort of park?

And for folks that don't know what I'm talking about, maybe you can explain its origination.

It's the Washington Street boat landing.

So really cool building.

That was the original home of the harbormaster.

And basically that building fell into disrepair.

We actually just finished the restoration of it.

So you've probably noticed it looks great now.

It's been completely refurbished.

It's a landmark building.

lighting, all the steel's been redone.

The building is fenced off right now.

It will ultimately, once the park is built around it, it is part of the promenade.

And so that building will be a center for how people arrive to the waterfront from Pioneer Square.

And I mentioned this partnership around small business incubator.

food and beverage.

There's a small what's called the Harbormaster's office, which is that small space.

That will actually be a small food and beverage, probably coffee, ice cream, those types of things.

And we'll be actually looking for an opportunity to bring in a partner to work with us there.

And last thing I'll say is that if you look right next to it, we have the Habitat bench that was built.

by Jessica and her team as part of the seawall and the waterfront.

And that's actually a nearshore habitat restoration that was part of our partnership with the tribal community to improve salmon habitat right there.

So it's going to be a very cool part of the waterfront right there.

You can't really use it yet because it's not, there's not enough space to really start programming.

But as soon as the park is built around it, all the fences come down and we'll be able to use it.

Marshall, we handle the concession contracts, right?

Parks handles those.

We're not going to go through the waterfront piece like we do at the water taxi place, the marination.

Do you handle those contracts or do we handle those?

Those will be handled by Friends of Waterfront Seattle.

Oh, they're going to handle those ones, okay.

But we'll be involved in those ones as well through the MOU?

We'll be setting up the license agreements for Friends, which will say what our expectations are of them as far as those concessions.

And then we'll have the same equity lens that we do on all the other small businesses and incubation, which we've been doing.

There's a whole set of commitments that this committee helped to shape around the first license agreement, which is for Pier 62, which we looked at here last year.

around Friends' commitment to public free programming.

What does she like to call it?

Hella free?

Yes, hella free.

That's what Heidi Hughes, their ED, likes to call it.

And how they're basically...

And super free.

Super free, sorry.

You can't get any more free than that.

Super free.

So they're very committed to, you know, free and open public events, bringing, you know, community into the way that they staff and, you know, provide concessions.

I guess the point I want to make is that we put Friends of the Waterfront and the Aquarium and all those folks through the same race and social justice lens as we do everything else, because that is our mandate.

So we make sure that all those contracts are representative of the people that live in the city.

Correct?

Okay.

That's exactly right.

Let's wrap up.

Go ahead, Councilman.

Real quick question.

The bonds you referenced, will they be paid back with What's the source of funding to pay the debt service on the bonds?

So we have, we're using two kinds of bonds.

We have a set of bonds that we use that are LTGO bonds that are issued by the city that are paid back with commercial parking tax that's being used for transportation improvements.

But then we also have the local improvement district will property owners can pay over time, and so we issue bonds that are backed by the local improvement district revenues.

And so those, once the local improvement district final assessments are finalized and approved, the city will sell those bonds, and they'll be backed by those revenues from the people who pay the assessments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Jessica.

Thanks, Dory.

Thanks, Marshall.

We'll see you again, as always.

Always a pleasure.

I know.

Come down and see construction.

I was down at the market Saturday.

It looks great.

It looks great.

Good job.

OK.

Bye, guys.

All right.

Item three, the Seattle Public Library overview and 2020 work plan.

We have Marcellus and T.

Good morning.

Good morning.

It's good to see you.

Happy New Year.

Thank you.

We're happy to be with you in 2020. I'm MT. I'm your chief librarian, and I'm joined by...

I'm...

Is this on?

Allison Schwartz.

I'm the community partnerships and government relations lead.

So we're happy to meet with you and talk about some of the work that's occurring at the library and introduce you to how we're organized and structured.

Welcome back, Council Member Mosqueda.

We're also happy to have you passed.

We are very happy that the levy passed.

Thanks to the council for their support with that.

And we're going to touch upon that in a minute.

We're ready to go.

So as many of you probably know, our mission is to bring information.

I don't think it's up.

Oh, it's on this screen.

It's right here.

Let me find your libraries in that picture.

I cannot do it.

I'm going to have to call Seattle Channel.

If you have printed?

We have it printed.

Okay.

Well, we'll move that route and quickly go from there.

I will be speaking from each of the pages as much as I can, but first of all, I'm on page two, just so you'll know where I'm starting from.

Our mission is to bring people, information, and ideas together, and I think we do that quite well.

We have lots of opportunities to so engage, and I'll be sharing those as we move forward.

We promote joyful, lifelong learning.

We welcome everyone through our doors.

It's easy when you think of libraries to think of books, but we do so much more than that.

We really do.

We have lots of programming, and there's a statistic later in the slide about that, but we are so much more than books, and people are starting to realize that, and that is very helpful to us.

And in fact, we have a gift for you that we're going to give you right now.

Yes.

Just me or do these guys get one too?

No, the whole committee gets it.

Oh, you got our books for the year.

Oh, this is not, this is a new one.

This is a new one.

We'll be back with that one as well.

But we're bringing you a book called Palace for the People.

And it talks about the role of libraries in cities and how we are gathering spaces for that.

And we think it's really apropos for what we do as a library in terms of bringing people, information and ideas together.

You may have heard of him, the author.

He's been to Seattle a couple of times to speak and really draws a big crowd.

I know that the Library Foundation had him in last year, so we're really excited.

Is that Mayor Pete?

Yes, that is, so.

Endorsements everywhere.

And we even had Mayor Pete in the library two years ago, one of our largest attendance crowds ever.

He really had a big showing.

I guess I wasn't invited to that, so I wouldn't know.

We will correct that.

We will make sure that you're receiving all of those.

Thank you, Marcellus.

Of course.

But again, we provide access to information and ideas and provide programming all the way from birth through older adulthood.

So we're really excited about that.

We have 27 locations with 26 neighborhood libraries across the city in each of your districts.

Central, which is right down the street from you, is the service hub for circulation, security, and maintenance, but it's also where we plan and develop the programs carried out by our 673 ambassadors who work for the system.

There are seven regions that map closely to your council districts.

And each region collaborates with community members and partners to identify and respond to their community priorities.

Thank you for putting in the council districts.

That's new.

Yes, we did that.

And we're going to I think it's we're going to go in and make sure that we have the libraries on there.

So anytime you see it, you know, the libraries in your region district.

So we will do that for you.

Just to give you some of the numbers of our system, we are a very, very busy system.

We had about 12 million items circulated last year, which means we're one of the leading libraries in the world with circulation.

We had 17 million visits, both in person and online, last year.

And we had 2,535,000 Wi-Fi and computer access sessions during the course of the year.

As you might imagine, many people come into our libraries to use our high-speed Wi-Fi access, and because of that, that number of usage or that usage is increasing, but we're also seeing a decent number of people who are still using the computers that we have in each of our libraries.

Marcel, two quick questions.

Where are we at nationally?

So we are at the top.

I would have to get the number.

We are normally leading in per capita in CERCs per year across the world.

I think Hong Kong comes in second, and I just haven't looked at the numbers recently.

And you have to recognize that we're a city system, not comparing with a county system that has a different per capita.

And we have we haven't measured yet.

How many people are coming back now that we've removed the fine issue We are expecting the first report on that in february.

So we are excited about that We will bring that to you.

What we have heard is that people are bringing books back Uh, which is the good thing because there was the concern that people would not return their books if they didn't have to pay a fine counselor.

Ms.

Gator returned her books I do have a little anecdote about this.

Um, so I have a friend who uh, she was mentioning that she was on parental leave and She and her husband were going with one income for six months.

And she went to the library and they told her that she had a $60 fine and she's, you know, middle income.

And that was a hardship for them because they were on one income at the time.

So she was like, if it was a hardship for me, imagine how hard it is for folks who are, you know, really struggling month to month to pay the bills.

And she said, once they said that I could come and my fine would be waived, we went every day with our new kiddos.

And so it really brought them back into the library.

It is bringing people back, and we're really excited about that.

And it's amazing how many stayed away just because of that one thing, and we weren't aware that that was the barrier to their return.

The Western world didn't collapse, as everyone thought.

No, it did not.

Because we waived fines and fees.

That is so true, and we are quite proud to join.

There are probably about 60 to 75 libraries doing it now.

Chicago and San Francisco coming on board, and Los Angeles is scheduled.

Didn't Chicago have like a $250,000 increase?

Yes.

I read all that stuff, Marcellus.

I know you don't think I read it, but I do.

You do, you do.

You're keeping me on my toes.

Yes, I do, Mr. Nellis.

He's out there laughing at me.

So there are some additional statistics in the slide, but we're really excited about that.

The last one I'll show you is the one where we have 101. books and materials circulated to homebound, disabled senior citizens in daycares.

And you may remember about two years ago, we revamped our mobile book service to get into the neighborhoods where they were disadvantaged or where the economic resources weren't there.

And so we're really proud to see how that increase has carried forward.

Thank you.

Just as a reminder, we're set up, we are a city department of the city of Seattle, but we operate a little bit differently from most of the departments who report into council.

We have a five-member board that's appointed by mayor and city council, who then, in turn, hire the executive director and chief librarian.

And we're structured into four areas.

We have institutional and strategic advancement, which covers planning for the future, but also communications and marketing.

employee relations, which is HR, administrative services, which is our budget and finance offices, and then library programs and services, which is everything you see when you walk in any one of our libraries.

Our funding is structured that we will have, thanks to the levy passing, a $91.7 million budget for 2020. That is very helpful to the work that we need.

And you'll also note that we receive about 64% from general fund, 28% from the levy, which will probably show about 32% adjusted for the increase, and then a small decrease in the general fund, but the other is about 8%, but it will all true out with about three percentage points of each other.

As we shared, the levy passed, and some of the promises that we made to the public are shown here.

No more late fees, that started January 2nd, and we're really excited about that, and we'll be hearing that report back to you in February or March, depending upon when we appear before you again.

We've added additional hours at each one of your libraries, so each one of the libraries in your district should have additional hours on Sundays opening at 12 noon to provide more access to our resources.

Also recognizing that we also serve the city as a warming shelter in the winter, so we're proud and happy to do that.

We have an increased budget for e-materials.

We will be taking on two additional points in June.

We will be adding some additional hours in June across seven of our locations, and we should be able to move forward on our early learning expansion.

in June of 2020. We also have some new community resource programs for at-risk youth and that will start June to fall of 2020. And then finally we have three seismic retrofits that we're working on and we have been looking at how we might enhance the vision of each of those seismic retrofits to give the public some additional resources and expectations, but we're just in the early stages of that.

And we still have our social worker downtown?

We still have our social worker downtown and the new community resource program We'll add a full and a part-time person with us.

One of the things that we're working with right now is that the program that we work through DESC does not have the youth components, so we're having to look for an additional agency to help us with that aspect of it.

You can follow up with us on that one online.

That would be great.

That would be great.

Just on that real quick, I was really excited that we were able to get that into the amended levy last year.

Thanks to you.

Thank you for your support and to the chair.

It'd be helpful to know more as you roll this out where those services are equitably distributed across the city and sort of the feedback that you get.

I'm assuming it's a drop in the bucket in terms of what you really need.

Simultaneous to that conversation around services for youth were the desire to have more social service providers at the libraries to help people get connected to jobs and housing, et cetera.

We weren't able to get that included to enhance those folks and additional, I think it was security assistance for folks who are working in the libraries.

I know that's something that is a shared priority.

So if you have more information about what the need is there, So we can proactively work on potentially adding to or supplementing what was passed in the levy on those aspects that would be helpful for later this year.

That would be certainly appreciated.

I know that a couple of quick things related to that.

Certainly having more of a presence to help us address some of the challenges that we're facing in our libraries would be very helpful to us and give some assurance to both our public and our staff, as well as many of our patrons who use us.

I say this, someone reminds me every day, many of our daily readers, which is what we call our homeless population, are looking for safe spaces as well, and they know that they'd rather be inside than outside, and so we are always looking for opportunities for that.

One of the other things that we're looking at, and I will follow up with you, is one of the RCWs, which provides provisions for the safety of the operators of buses and things like that.

We're trying to add library staff workers to that list.

Oh, we can look with you on that one.

So we would do that.

Yeah, that's the elevator.

We have it for police and firefighters and ambulance drivers.

All of them are covered, but not library.

We just did the same thing for the firefighters, I believe.

Okay.

Or ambulance drivers.

Great.

Right.

Yeah, I just want to go back to the additional hours metric.

So, in the library levy, we promised additional hours, and I think you mentioned that we have rolled out part of that, and that's the earlier opening?

Yes.

And next, is it?

In June, we just, I hate saying it publicly, we just settled on mid-June.

for the date that we will roll out the additional hours at seven of the locations.

And those were the second part of the levy's request.

And so that's for the later hours?

That would be the later hours.

Yes, that would be the later hours.

Great.

And when will there be more public information about which of the Stephen libraries are going to be receiving later hours?

So, that information we should be able to give to you.

So, I will go back and find that.

I will, if not, we were talking about when we will start the public communication about this and that will probably come mid-March to April.

We are still working with Stephen.

Fantastic.

Mr. and Mrs. Eagle, who we speak with very often, and I appreciate the library's responsiveness to their inquiries, are eagerly awaiting to find out.

Thank you so much.

You know, it's amazing how many times we don't hear from patrons about their issues.

They go straight to you, so we're always appreciative when Council forwards those over.

We do, trust me.

Yes, you do.

But we will follow up to make sure that if that announcement of the locate, there are seven locations that are getting extra hours as a part of the levy.

And then there were extra hours added to most of the libraries as a result of the extended service.

So we will get that for you.

Just moving quickly to the next slide.

Just in case we've never put this in front of you, this is our strategic direction.

We do it in three-year increments, and we will be rolling out the 2020 through 2022 in March of this year.

But it focuses on three areas, what we do for the individual, what we do for the community, and then what we try to do as a library system ourselves to improve upon it.

The items in the circles themselves are where we focus our attention.

And just so you know, we're moving from a quantitative aspect to a qualitative.

So even though it may say something like access, and you can say, oh, we added 600 or 65,000 new library cards to the system, that's just a number.

What we really try to say, when we get put out 65,000 new cards, we mean that We're giving a patron access to the collections and books that they have more opportunities for programming.

They have more opportunities for social services, such as the tax assistance help.

So the number means a lot, but it's what they are able to do.

So we're really trying to pivot our conversation about statistics to a qualitative point as opposed to a quantitative.

And I think that will show you more of what we're doing.

Did you put up there your hotspots?

So that, the hotspots are not in that one because, and that would have fallen in the purple section, what we do for the individual.

And it's not there just because we choose different things each year, so I'm not sure what will show up in this coming year.

And hotspots, we are doing a great job with it, but you could also see it in the technology and access section of where that occurs.

So we'll be rolling that one out the new update in March we focus on five service priorities youth and family learning technology and access community engagement Seattle culture and history and reimagine spaces and those are the bullet points that were in the green just a moment ago.

in that circle, and that is areas where we are trying to help the city in any of those areas.

So community engagement, if you want to have meetings in our public spaces, we certainly offer that to each of you as council members.

Technology and access is where the Wi-Fi occurs, trying to address that gap.

in the city.

We're always trying to capture Seattle culture and history and we have two major landmarks, well one major landmark leaving us right now which is the Macy's closing and we're trying to figure out do we have information on that just in case someone wanted to come back in a few years and say what was in this building 10 years ago?

What was in it 20 years ago?

So those are the types of things that we're always trying to capture and think about.

We're not as far along and we're going to retool the Seattle culture and history, but those are the types of things we think about.

And then reimagine spaces to make sure that our libraries serve the public in the way that they need.

Did you take a position on their moving the archives from Sandpoint out of the city?

So, we did not take a formal position in the sense that we had much say in it.

The state librarian has asked all public libraries in the state to respond to that and we are writing a letter in support of that as well.

You want to be supportive of that?

Yes.

I think the information that got back to us was a little muddled.

They thought they were talking about the archives here within the city of Seattle.

I didn't know that they were actually talking about that physical structure at Sandpoint, which I used to go to as a litigator for tribes to see original stuff.

that property, so we would, can you work with the Gain on that so we can do some type of, or sign on to your letter, or have Seattle City Council?

That is such a phenomenal resource at Sandpoint with the archives.

Having that moved, is it to Kansas they want to move it?

Or San Francisco?

I would have to check again.

I thought it was...

Go ahead.

Sure, so it's in District 4 and I am in contact with some of the federal officials on it.

You know, you've got the executive branch that's pushing to dispose of the property and sell it and then you have our elected officials who are thankfully trying to preserve it there and so it's still sort of in their court to preserve so any sort of support to get to keep it as an archival building would so that we can have access to those documents that you pointed out.

So we'll work with your office?

That would be great.

Sure.

And we can certainly, while I was sitting listening to Jesus and Marshall, I had received the first draft of the letter so that I could review it.

So I will make sure it's known to both of you.

And also, if you're interested, I can place you in contact with the city, with the state librarian, Cindy Aiden, who is working on this as well.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

So moving on, as you know, the whole city is involved in this, but certainly the library has this fair share of equity work at the library.

We prioritize our work centering on equity and a commitment to RSGI, that means leading with race, and just some of the projects that we've led this past year, just so you know.

is that we've had our community resource specialists drop in at Ballard and Capitol Hill in reference to Council Member Mosqueda's question.

It will also extend, I know that one of the areas that we're focusing on with youth is university library because we have a large homeless youth population that frequents that library, so we want to be able to serve them better with a community resource specialist.

The other things that we are doing through that service is trying to offer referral services for shelter, mental health, counseling, job training, all of the things that you might think of.

We loan the Wi-Fi hotspots to the homeless encampments so that they have access to that.

Those Wi-Fi hotspots are amazing in that each one can serve 15 people at one time.

So if we're able to install about four at one time, that's 60 people who will have access to the internet while they're in the encampment.

So we're really trying to work through that.

Really quickly, did we ever clear up the licensing thing on the eBooks?

We...

Fighting about that with them?

Talk about offline if it's gonna be more complicated.

It is still a wrestle with that publisher.

Okay.

Yes, it is still a wrestle with that publisher.

We'll get right on that.

Yeah.

So the last thing I'll share in the equity work is that we really are trying to push our library staff out into the community to talk to the public about what they're doing.

And that's pretty much a similar picture.

That is the Somali book that we created this past year in conjunction with the community, where they felt a need for materials that we were unable to find through publishers.

And this year's book was a counting book.

The year before was an alphabet book.

So this is something that We worked with a publisher, too, and these families to create themselves, and we made that book available to the public.

Oh, you have Denise Juneau in the picture, too.

Yes.

Superintendent from public schools and yourself.

We were able to do that at the New Holly Center just to honor them, and each one of them had a signing ceremony as authors and publishers, so it was a really fun event, and the community brought out really, really wonderful and lots of food for everyone there.

One of the final things that I wanted to talk with you about is our work toward future readying the library system.

And I know it's easy for many libraries to think about what does programming look like, what books are you going to buy, and what type of service will you offer.

But one of the ways that we're treating this is we're really trying to understand what are the disruptors going to be that are going to impact the library.

We recognize, as you'll see, that there are about nine disruptors to the work that we do that is going to impact our work.

And just as an example, climate change is one of them.

We have seven locations that do not have air conditioning.

And as we serve more of the city in their regard to being warming shelters or cooling shelters, we're going to have to face that issue.

And a second one is that urbanization and density is increasing.

And these are, I should also say this, these are not just disruptors for the city of Seattle, these are disruptors across the world.

And so we have identified these nine as the things that we need to think about for our future to ensure that we're continually relevant to the public as they wish to engage us.

So at some point, we've been doing presentations on this at library conferences, and so if you'd ever like for me to come back and present on that, I was going to say those are our disruptors as well.

Yes, they are yours as well.

So they affect every decision that you have to make and certainly we're going to have to think about those as well.

Marcellus, I have a quick question and I want to let us wrap up because we've got one more group, two more groups.

We kind of talked about this online, but if you don't have to answer, but if we can come back, are we going to be working on or looking at how we can provide library services or with the Seattle King County Jail?

So we can talk about that some more and offline about it right now.

That is a service that King County Library System is technically serving.

I know that a few years ago there was a concern as to whether they would continue that.

And King County has a new library director, and I just haven't had a chance to ask her, is she going to pick that back up?

We'd like to make that a priority, too, in our work plan.

Really, as a former public defender and judge, having people having access to those materials, I know you can't bring a hotspot in there because they don't have it, but they have the other material, and that's always been a sticking point.

So that was one issue that I'm hoping we can work on and put it in our work plan as well.

Sure.

We can be involved in those conversations, and we'd like that.

We will make sure to do that, and we will follow up with you on that.

Anything else from my colleagues?

Thank you, Alison.

And thank you so much.

Thank you, Marcel.

Sure, and we'll be sure.

Are you leaving the additional books for the other council members?

No, they don't get any.

They don't get to serve on the major committee.

Yes, you can.

This is my MO, isn't it?

Yes, it is.

Is there an effort underway between the libraries and STCI to look at how we use the airspace above our libraries?

I'm thinking of D5 and some of the child care housing conversations that we've been having, especially given the proximity to light rail.

Is that a conversation that's already in the works?

It's not as a full, and I don't want to park anyone close to a bus, including ourselves.

It is not a conversation that is happening as a dedicated or directed conversation.

We have been involved in some conversations with some community agencies who are interested in that type of thing.

The Georgetown Project, we just bought a property in that area about a year ago, I think.

and they've approached us about some sort of collaborative work there.

It does present some problems and I think you might recognize that we also already have a joint or a condominium type approach with our Delridge Library.

And so those are always conversations that we're open to having, but I will reach out to them and see if we can start a more formal conversation.

Thank you guys.

Okay, thank you so much.

All right, thank you.

Next.

Item 4, Seattle Center Overview and 2020 Work Plan.

Mr. Nelums.

It's 1130. I know you'll be snappy.

Wait, how big is your PowerPoint?

How long is your PowerPoint?

Not too long.

Not too bad.

We kind of know what's going on.

You trained me well.

Yeah, I don't like that they changed my name to Public Assets, Native Communities, because then it's Pancake.

That's what Nagin calls it.

Everybody loves pancakes.

Yeah, that's true.

It is the favorite committee.

That's right.

Mr. Nillums.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Robert Nelms.

I'm the director of Seattle Center, and I'm delighted to be here.

And I just want to make one personal comment.

I was not laughing at you.

I tell everyone that I work with that I absolutely love working with you because you read everything.

Thank you.

The most prepared.

So thank you.

So I'm going to go through our presentation and hopefully get us or keep you on track.

Beyond that.

So, I'll...

Okay.

Well, we always start with our purpose.

We have the purpose of Seattle Centers to create exceptional events, experiences, and environments that delight and inspire the human spirit to build strong communities.

And we kind of do a thumbnail of that, a shortcut.

It's just basically we like to delight the spirit and build community.

And that's what we think the value we add to Seattle is.

You know, years ago, back in 2016, we did our last economic impact study, and I like to show these numbers not to brag or not to boast or anything like that, but just to remind people about the value that arts and culture has for our community.

When we were talking about, you know, 12 million visitors or over 12,000 events or almost $2 billion of economic or business activity, over $600 million in labor income, 75,000 direct jobs, over 18,000 indirect jobs.

You know, it allows us to talk about the impact of arts and culture that we have in our community and the value of the values that this community has brought to the table, because you would not create a Seattle Center in the heart of any metropolitan area.

This was something that our community decided they were gonna do over 50 years ago, and it's still here.

So I love to be- Thriving.

Yes, they're still here and thriving.

I love that we are the stewards of that, and I love the fact that we get to work with you to make that happen.

Just to go over, you know, it's a 74-acre campus.

A lot of people don't realize that we got over 40 acres of that are open and green space.

And I think that it's important to talk about, we look at how we run this place, and we kind of have a 5P process.

And these are the P's that we look at when we're looking at being the stewards of Seattle Center.

We start with the place and the people.

We look at the programs, the partnerships, and then we look at what is our performance.

And so when we're doing our strategic planning processes and so forth, those are the piece that we focus on.

I didn't bring our strategic plan.

I didn't bring that to you because we're doing something right now as the arena is under construction.

We are in what we call a transition.

In our strategic plan, we had a plan that ended in 2018. And then we started a new strategic plan in 2019. So 2019, 2020, we're calling that the neutral zone for us because it's the time that we're, we had an ending.

The ending was the closing of Key Arena.

And in 2021, we'll have a new beginning, which will be the opening of a new arena.

And in the 1921st part of 21, we'll be developing, okay, where are we going and what is Seattle Center going to be into the future?

So, we're at a very pivotal time.

but we're also at a time where there's a lot of opportunity for creativity, et cetera.

I also didn't bring you an org chart for us because we're doing some reorganizing now to try to pivot into this time and try to make sure that as we go into our future, we are structured in a way that makes sense.

And so I'll love to share that with you once we're done with that.

We also, you know, when I talk about the P's and so forth, the partnership, the place, the performance, the programs, the people, a lot of that has to do with the big, the small, the intermediate gatherings of community, and they're defined by the shared experiences that people have.

And so, you know, we have some, you know, some of our highlight things, Festall, where we bring in all of the cultural communities and so forth, where we make sure that everyone in Seattle understands that Seattle Center is theirs, they own it.

Seattle Center is a place where they can be they can share their culture, they are welcome, and that they are part of a larger community, and that they bring all of us along to do that.

But we also do those shared experiences through marches, runs, festivals, concerts, just a bunch of things that happen.

It's kind of a catch-all.

You can't do 12,000 plus events a year if you're not doing multiple things each day.

We're also a place where some of the, where our community comes together to mourn, to celebrate, and also to provide service to others.

And so looking at, and this image has a couple of things.

One, last year we did the first ever remembrance of 9-11 with the police and fire.

And it was a beautiful ceremony.

that we did, and if you look at the bottom of this picture, there's the picture of the flower vigil that was held back after 9-11 in 2001. So we do those types of things where folks come together as one.

And we also do a lot of celebrations.

And so, you know, we've had the Storm Celebration, we've had the Sounders Celebration.

We're also celebrating different cultures.

So there's the Spirit Walk that's here in this picture.

And then we also wanna focus in on the service that we can provide.

And one of the things that we have at Seattle Center that is, a little more unique than other places is that we have assets and facilities and staff that do a lot of different things.

But we challenged them years ago to say, how do we use these assets and this expertise differently?

And what they came up with was the free health clinic that we're doing.

And the sixth one will happen next week.

And I would like to invite all of you to come tour that.

If you're available, it will be Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

And it won't be in the arena because it's under construction, but it will be in the Exxon, it will be in McCall Hall, it will be in Cornish, and so on.

And so it will be something to see and we'll still be serving different aspects of our community.

The other thing that's important to know about Seattle Center, is that we are a collection and a collective.

There are over 30 resident organizations at Seattle Center, and they provide different segments, art, culture, they provide education, they do a number of things.

A lot of people don't know we have a high school, a public high school in the Army.

A lot of people don't know that we have a school that teaches how to create video games and digital programs, et cetera.

They don't realize that we have seven theaters.

They don't, you know, there's just a lot that is there.

The thing to remember also is that when I say Seattle Center is yours, there's only three pieces of property on this campus that is not owned by the city.

And that is the Science Center, the footprint of the Space Needle, and Memorial Stadium, and the parking lot outside of that.

Everything else is our property.

And either we run it or we're the landlord.

And so that relationship is something that we have.

And that landlord relationship is something that has brought us things like Chihuly and KXP and Mopop and et cetera.

The other thing to remember about the 30 resident organizations, the facilities that are all the places and things that we own is that we develop through these virtually every facility on the campus has been developed through a P3 or public-private partnership.

If you look at the McCaw Hall with the opera and the ballet, the partnership with the rep, the partnership with the Children's Theater, the partnership with Mopop, et cetera, all of those are public-private partnerships, and all of those have elements that make sure that the broader segment of our community can participate.

We pay, because we are the city and these are public partnerships, for each of those entities, a large portion of what they would pay in rent to a private sector.

we collect as access for folks who couldn't attend.

So having access to MOPOP, having access to the Children's Theater, having access to the Rep, having access to McCall Hall, having access to those things are through either tickets or programs that those entities provide, and those are all part of our lease agreements that we have.

In fact, we have guidelines that set that up for us in the public sector.

The other thing that I would say is that I've spent a little bit of time talking a lot about what we're doing and what does that mean.

I didn't bring you a thing on our budget either, because again, we're in the neutral zone, which means right now the arena's closed.

We're not making the revenues that we were making before, so I don't want to, I'm an accountant by trade.

I'm not going to show you red ink.

You'll have a follow-up meeting.

I just wanted to do an overview for the new members.

But I wanted to tell you that the fact that the successes are plenty.

The Needle invested over $100 million in its renovation.

The Seattle Opera built this new building there.

The arena, of course, is coming.

We're getting ready to do our fourth or fifth skate park this year.

And we're going to be doing some improvements to the armory.

But we will be enhancing Seattle Center as we move forward with investments through our public-private partnerships.

We're also wanted to just highlight the fact that even though most people would think, okay, you're talking about arenas and all the other stuff, we're still doing a lot of successful stuff, so very quickly.

You know, our staff has just launched a new website.

We've completed agreements so that ORCA could be on the monorail, could be accepted on the monorail.

We've updated our mural stage and sound systems, and we're going to start with a new program to have commercial concerts out on the mural that most likely will start this year.

The clinic, of course, will return next week, and as part of the agreement with the new arena, the clinic will continue once the new arena is open.

And then there's two just just very brief things even though our arenas closed and we don't have a lot of things going on We're still providing or getting revenue from sponsorship deals.

And the thing we're most proud of, even though the arena is under construction, we actually increased the sales of our facilities, our rentals of our facilities in 2019. And so we're continuing to be successful.

And of course, I'd like to do a shout out to you all and the leadership of the chair.

for the agreement with the arena.

We're having a billion-dollar investment to one of our public places.

It's a place that's been here for 58 years.

And now, with this investment, it will be here for 58 more.

And so, there's, that investment is going to be transformational.

And I just wanted to really quickly talk about how our relationship with OBG and that arena began.

We began with three values.

We were going to put people first.

We were going to make sure that the placemaking about the arena and Seattle Center was going to be aligned, and that we were going to do this in a partnership.

And so we're moving forward with that relationship, and we're building a relationship that will last for years, if not decades.

And then as we evolve, the neighborhood around us evolves.

And so what that means is that as we start to transform, and the neighborhood around us does too, and there's investment there that is important to what's happening.

So, you know, there's the new Center Steps facility on 3rd and Mercer is being built.

The Plymouth Health has just broke ground on a new project to create transitional and affordable housing on a piece of property that was Seattle Centers that we turned over to the Office of Housing, and then now they've turned this into of this project, again, one city doing things together.

The Uptown Arts and Cultural District has been formed and they're starting to, you know, spread their wings a little bit.

And the development and growth of the density of the spaces around Seattle Center is just kind of exploding.

And so we're going to have a lot of new neighbors very soon and a lot of new patrons to accommodate.

Now that was that was the end of that's all that's all I was going to bring to you today because I was fourth and I saw that you're not going to be having a lot of time for me.

Well, what I wanted to do, though, is we're going to have a deeper, deeper dive because of the work that we're doing with OVG and NHL, the transportation piece, the NHL Training Center.

We're just not there yet, so I just want to do an overview, but we're going to have a more intense briefing where it'll probably be just you and our work plan and the budget and how we're moving forward because I know we have to vote on a lot of, are we done voting on I think we're done with all that for the digging underneath and closing off the streets and the battery.

Did the Plymouth housing thing.

So I think we're okay for now.

Like you said, we'll just have you come back.

I'll just say that there's just a couple of things that are going to be coming down the pike for you.

One is most likely there's an easement agreement at Westlake that we need to need to change so that we can make some capital improvements there to increase the capacity for the monorail by the time the arena opens.

That's one piece of legislation that would come and there may be a few others as we're negotiating with some other folks as mobile carriers about putting infrastructure on our campus, things like that.

Yeah, we have some big stuff coming down the pike.

All right.

Anything else?

Just to close without saying, we really appreciate the ongoing work from the center to work with the labor unions who are both reconstructing all of the amenities down there, and then the ongoing labor that is provided in the buildings there.

And I know that that's a strong partnership that the chair has continued to lift up, but really excited about the recent NHL conversations with our building trades folks.

I know there will be more to come, but appreciate that partnership and all the good work you're doing to lift up labor unions.

We've got a great labor peace agreement.

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Nellems.

Let's see, it's 1148, and I want to apologize to my friends, the Seattle Indian Health Board.

You guys want to come on up and have Nagini bring it to the record?

M5 Seattle Indian Health Board overview and 2020 work plan.

Yeah.

Esther and Aaron can introduce themselves.

Esther, I'll let you introduce yourselves for the record, but why don't you go ahead and introduce yourselves for the record, for the viewing public.

Okay.

Okay.

My name is Aaron Spark.

My Chippewa name is Amiyuk.

I'm an enrolled member of the Qishanamiya tribe for the native village of Chivac.

I'm the Chief Public Affairs Officer for the Seattle Indian Health Board.

And Chair Juarez, Council Members Mosqueda, Peterson, and Arable, thank you for inviting us.

Hiyate, everybody.

I'm Esther Lucero, and I'm Diné and Latina, and I have been the CEO for the Seattle Indian Health Board just a little over four years.

And what that means is you're stuck with me, Seattle.

But thank you very much for having us.

And for folks, I haven't had a chance to interact with on an individual basis.

I'm really excited to build relation with you.

Before we get started, because I want our new members to see, I've known what Seattle Indian Health Board has been doing for 40 years.

So I did give a big shout out to your organization and to Abigail Echo Hawk for being honored at NCAI.

You guys will have a table there.

and Senator Kamala Harris introducing her.

So we're very excited about that.

It's fantastic.

Thank you so much.

We've gotten, I think we're the first city in the country, and we've gotten tons of cities and governments saying, can we see the legislation?

How are you integrating this person in the Seattle Police Department?

How are you going to use the data?

We're relying on your subject matter expertise and your culturally attuned organization.

to get us across the finish line and show other cities how to do it right, including the federal government.

So thank you so much.

I'm meeting with Captain Diaz pretty soon to develop that job description.

Oh, you are?

Great.

Okay.

So I'll let you guys go ahead into your...

Oh, I see you got Auntie up there.

Arlene.

Yeah, you know, the Seattle Indian Health Board has been in operation, we'll celebrate our 50th year this year.

And so I think what I'd like to do is give you all some perspective on what we've been doing in the past four years, right?

So I can tell you as a new CEO, when you enter into an organization that has a history and legacy, you know, in social justice movements and has been kind of a pinnacle, right, when it comes to urban Indian health in the nation, You have a few questions, right?

Like we can try to keep things copacetic.

And I have to tell you, Council Member Muscat, I'm super happy that you're here because of your knowledge of healthcare systems and understanding the impact of the Affordable Care Act and how that kind of played out in local environments, which was really one of the ways that we defined who we are today.

So that's one thing.

We could have just tried to float along with the way things have always been.

Right?

Because the leadership prior to my arrival had been in place for about 30 years.

We could go out of business.

Quite frankly, that is a reality within healthcare organizations, community health specifically.

We've seen lots of mergers for that reason.

Or we could reinvent ourselves.

And so what we did is we really took a look at our strengths.

And we recognized that we're best known for health and human services.

But the truth is we are so much more than that as an organization.

And so we built upon these pillars here.

So you see health and human services, workforce development, research epidemiology and data, and policy and advocacy all centered on traditional Indian medicine.

Because really what makes us unique and makes us important to our community is that we maintain our cultural integrity.

Now that becomes challenging in this ever-changing healthcare environment, which I'll talk about a little bit.

And just to add another note on indigenous knowledge informed systems of care, we are going to go into a little bit more depth about it, but understanding that this took our entire community to help develop.

It wasn't that when Esther came in we were just going to sit down and do this, because in the past it seemed like we may have been distant from the people that we were serving.

So what we did was made sure we heard all the voices from our community as well as our entire staff, right now numbering over 210 at the moment, to really find out what are our strengths and weaknesses, what do we have to build on, how do we communicate better throughout this entire system.

So that's how we came to this place.

Sure, we're going to start about, we're going to talk about urban Indians a little bit.

You know, so I'm third generation of my family to live off of our reservation.

And so all of my history and knowledge and background is really grounded as an urban Indian, quite frankly.

You know, my mom will still go back to ceremony.

She lives in Phoenix.

And at the same time, our family has experienced many of the same things that our patient population does, right?

And so I just want you to know that as a leader of an urban Indian healthcare organization, that wasn't by coincidence.

You know, this has been like my life's work.

So for folks who are new at the table, 71% of all American Indians, Alaskan Natives live in urban environments.

That's significant.

Now I want to keep this in perspective.

So only 1% of the Indian Health Service's operating budget goes to urban Indian health programs.

That's not to say that we want to acquire additional tribal resources, because quite frankly, that entire system has been grossly underfunded.

Our tribal partners are in as much need as we are in.

However, because we're an urban Indian health program, and through the Affordable Care Act implementation of new state influence over healthcare systems, then local environments also become important.

So for example, the Medicaid transformation dollars actually came into King County.

I'm the co-chair of the King County Accountable Community of Health, now known as Healthier Here.

That was very strategic because we know as an urban Indian health program that our risk is that we're forced into the broader mainstream system and our cultural integrity is constantly challenged.

Right?

We see that a lot with the implementation, the changes from the RSNs to the BHO system, where the county became responsible for assessments, for placements into residential treatment.

Right?

Immediately when that system was implemented at our residential treatment program, we went from serving about 80% of American Indians, Alaska Natives, down to 30%.

And we had a hard time ramping that up.

And quite frankly, without our Indian Health Service funding, there's no way we could have supported that treatment program on that BHO system.

So we had to work with our tribal partners, you know, to make sure that we could maintain that continuity of care.

And so when we did that, we immediately ramped back up to 80% of American Indian and Alaska Natives in our residential treatment program.

Now, I share that with you because you all have influence over those local systems.

And understanding that we as an urban Indian health program are part of a continuum of care.

And even though our services are beneficial to everybody, because we are a federally qualified health center, and we say that we serve all people in the native way, that doesn't mean that we want to take away the resources from our folks, right, to serve others.

We can do it together and build it collectively as a whole.

And so I think Council Member Mosqueda, that's where I really count on you, right, and the Health Committee and things like that to make sure that our unique identity is preserved.

Yeah, so urban Indians, I'll be really quick.

Go ahead.

I think for the folks who are listening to the plethora of the services that you offer, it is still health-centered in that you're looking at the social determinants of health.

And the way in which you've pulled all these services together really do help people maintain or improve their health.

So I know that we, I always think healthcare, but it's so much more than that.

And I just want to put a plug in for how this relates back to that healthcare services by looking at those social issues.

Yeah, I mean, and let's be clear about that, right?

We rose from community.

And when our community said, now we're, you know, through the urban relocation program, we're now in cities.

And that doesn't mean that our federal trust responsibility ends, right?

We have rights to these benefits.

We have rights to these services.

And so when we think about social determinants of health, like homelessness, for example, that is a precursor to poor health conditions, right?

If you're living in a tent and you have to take diabetes medication, it is very difficult for you to maintain that consistency in your treatment.

So we know that that's something that we have to really support and address.

And we work with our partners in that.

I think one of the things that's beautiful that's happening is that we have this generational shift in leadership happening right here in Seattle.

And we're starting to see these organizations come together and build upon their strengths.

So for example, one of our expansion sites is actually going to be at the Chief Seattle Club.

I think it's planned now for July 2021. where we're opening up a 3,000 square foot clinic right in the building that Chief Seattle Club has just purchased, right, with 80 units of affordable housing up top.

That's important.

And the fact that we get to expand in that way, that means that we get to offer indigenous knowledge informed systems of care.

So our culturally centered services right in that space.

Yeah.

And so you're right.

I mean, so we look at social determinants of health.

The other focus for social determinants of health has been on gender-based violence.

Obviously, that is us providing services to support the work that we've done from a policy and legislative perspective.

And I just want to thank you again, Council Member Juarez, for really championing that work here.

But we also know that once we call attention to that, we put resources into that, we address the data needs, the truth is we still have the trauma that we have to heal from.

And the way we do that is providing resources to support our organizations in providing those services.

So you see an expansion in gender-based violence work.

You see collaborations around addressing issues of homelessness.

All that coupled with access to primary care, behavioral health.

We've actually added an MSW practicum training program.

We graduated our first round of students.

Workforce development is obviously a core component.

We're the only program with a chief traditional health officer, and we actually have a traditional Indian medicine apprentice program.

We have jumped in the past four years from 158 encounters for traditional Indian medicine to now we average 1,300 encounters for traditional Indian medicine, just with little investment that came through the Accountable Communities of Health.

That is powerful.

That demonstrates need, that demonstrates value, and it helps us support one of the best preventative mechanisms when it comes to poor health outcomes, which is strengthening cultural identities.

Significant, significant work.

In the past four years, the Seattle Indian Health Board has grown our operating budget by 80%.

80%, right?

And so we talk a lot about building infrastructure and investing in that transformation.

It's kind of like building a plane as we fly it.

So if I look a little tired and have this additional gray hair, now you know why, right?

It's also the reason that we work as a team.

You know, we've adopted the rapid decision-making model, so we make no decisions in isolation.

We meet regularly with community to hear from community what they need.

And that has really defined our indigenous knowledge-informed systems of care and our expansion sites and our vision for the future.

Right?

So tribal partnerships are significant.

So in addition to the planned expansion site at Chief Seattle Club, we just got confirmed by the Cowlitz Tribal Council to open up a shared space down at their Tukwila site.

So we'll be opening a pharmacy there and adding primary care services to supplement their medically assisted treatment program and also their behavioral health programming, right?

Because again, that's what we do well.

Additionally, we just received a grant to purchase a mobile dental van.

We did that purposefully.

We know that our tribal partners have a hard time getting dentists out into tribal communities, especially rural communities.

And I'll give you some perspective.

We have a dentist that's retiring this year.

We have 30 applicants for that position right now.

So at the Seattle Indian Health Board, we are competitive when it comes to getting the highest level service providers.

Many people don't know that 50% of our medical providers are Native, and many of them have Ivy League educations, right?

So our ultimate goal is not only to serve our American Indian and Alaska Native population who are from the lowest socioeconomic tiers and most marginalized and most in need, but also to serve all American Indians and Alaska Natives in the broader King County region.

There are more than 40,000 of us here.

Right?

What's it going to take to get Councilmember Guarez to come see one of our docs?

I've been there a lot.

Okay, come on.

I'm just being quiet right now.

So I mean, I would like to take the opportunity to invite folks there because we've had to do a lot of how can we make this work today while we're investing in a $42 million capital campaign to realize our future, right?

So we've done some internal renovations to implement a team system.

where not only do you have primary care and behavioral health integrated, but you also have a traditional Indian medicine apprentice as part of your panel team.

You also have a clinical pharmacist as part of your panel team.

And you have access to domestic violence advocates.

You have access to homeless case managers, right?

It is the most unique integrated model in the nation.

And that is what we're implementing today.

You also have your advocates for who have been victims of sexual assault.

Yes.

And nurses.

Yep.

And like I said, we've just expanded that program.

We received a grant through the Department of Justice to actually enhance and build that program.

Additionally, we'll be providing services to address perpetrators, you know, because we don't throw our people away.

You know, as tribal communities, we just don't do that.

What we do is we address community as a whole and we heal together as a whole.

Yeah, so, I mean, Aaron's trying to keep up with me, right?

I look at these slides, I'm all, eh, we'll just get to that.

It's kind of background noise, but yeah, so let's talk a little bit about our capital campaign.

So we are in the very beginning stages of a $42 million capital campaign.

In that capital campaign, we'll revamp our clinic services to actually enhance services and to implement the indigenous knowledge informed systems of care that I just spoke about.

And we will have four panel teams all serving a panel of patients.

So that's really exciting.

The third level will actually be a conference center, because we know that with the exception of Daybreak Star, we don't actually have access to that right in the middle of Seattle.

So that will be available for use by all of our communities.

Because of Abigail EchoHawk's leadership, we have actually grown our Urban Indian Health Institute three times, right?

So our operating project has grown there.

So we actually need to build an expanded facility for that.

So that will also be on the third floor.

Additionally, we'll have a space for ceremony, right?

So we'll have a spot where we can actually host a ceremony for up to 30 people.

And our plan is to build out our network of traditional healers.

Right now we have three, but we want to build it out with as many traditional healers from across the country.

And then we'll have a traditional healer in residence who rotates through to be able to do ceremony and to do individual.

you know, experiences.

So that will be on the third floor as well.

And then two floors on top of that, which is what you're going to be most interested in.

So it's, we plan to build 100 units of housing, 50 units each of housing.

Again, we've been working with tribal partners on that.

We've had preliminary conversations with Snoqualmie Tribe regarding that housing.

They're very interested in that so that we can actually meet some of those equity needs that are really challenging to do when you're acquiring federal dollars and you're you know, affected by, or you're responsive to fair housing and those types of things.

We know that tribal partners actually have sovereign rights to actually prioritizing American Indian and Alaska Native communities.

We respect that, we're responsive to that, and so therefore, we know that that will be a significant partnership to implement as we move towards this housing.

And I would like to add that when we're talking about the housing, currently our elders program has 40% of them being homeless.

So immediately when we build these 100 units, we can house a homeless elder program immediately.

It's one of the things that we're looking at and to know that you've done something real for our community to know that the people we cherish the most, who carried all of our cultural knowledge along with them throughout their entire lives to get to where they are.

and understand that with our history of colonialism, it is a hard thing for an elder to get there.

That's why they're so honored in our communities, and this is something that we can do.

I do want to go back, and while we're talking about our expansion of the clinic with our four teamlets, this will have all of our services in each of those teamlets, including dental and traditional Indian medicine alongside pharmacy, medical care, and behavioral health, all in that one teamlet.

And that's that unique model that Esther was talking about, where we'll be able to deliver that.

not just here at the Leschi Center, there's going to be four team leads there, but we'll also replicate that when we open up our clinic at the Chief Seattle Club as well.

And because development is now under me as a Chief Public Affairs Officer, I am going to put in the plug right now that we are going to be working with the city as far as new market tax credits and low-income housing tax credits go, because this is a very large capital campaign that we're in the middle of, and this is something that's going to benefit our entire community.

So we're looking forward to working together.

Yeah, I'd like to spend a little time on Thunderbird Treatment Center because of, you know, that lackluster article that came out in Seattle Times is really a little bit frustrating because I think it alluded to this idea that this was like some reactive, you know, not well planned out.

decision completely inaccurate, especially for folks who know me.

You know that I think of every single detail from start to finish.

You know that I take the time that it takes to actually implement good systems and process.

So I will tell you that the Thunderbird Treatment Center decision to relocate actually predated me.

It's something that the board of directors has been discussing for a very long time, mostly because we are in a building that is very challenging.

You know, when it comes to maintenance and also the property site and the location, it has been very difficult to serve the needs of our people.

When I say that, it's an old building and we had a hard time serving folks with physical disabilities, right, because of the way it was positioned.

Additionally, we needed to acquire an additional license to be able to provide mental health services in co-occurring disorders.

That became also challenging because if you look at CARF accreditation and some of the requirements around facilities, site, all of that, it was difficult to do.

We just outgrew that building.

That's right.

We started it like 30 years ago, the Thunderbird House, and it was cutting edge 30 years ago.

That was 30 years ago.

Yeah.

And so we had to make a radical move given that we know what we want.

So originally, Thunderbird Treatment Center was licensed for 92 beds.

So we now operate a 65 bed residential treatment program and we want to get back to that 92 bed capacity.

And I'm gonna tell you why.

Because we've been approached by our tribal partners consistently regarding pregnant women and needing to provide treatment for pregnant women specifically with medically assisted treatment.

We know that our tribal partners, we have a tribal partner out Fort Peck in Montana, and their next generations are being adopted out into non-Indian communities because their tribal policies say that if you're using while you're pregnant, then you lose your parental rights.

And so, you know, they came to us and they said, hey, we really need to address this.

You know, we have to preserve our next generation.

So we hear that, we hear that very clearly.

We also know that we have a need to serve parenting women, right?

And just parenting people generally.

And so in order to do that, we have to expand our site.

We have to expand our facilities.

We have to make it a secure environment.

We have to add a playground.

There are so many things that we have to do that we cannot do at our current site.

So we're in the purchasing process right now, so I'm not going to share who's actually purchasing it, although many of you may know.

I will tell you that it will be used for affordable housing, right?

I want you to know that we were very strategic about that as well, because we were not just going to sell it, you know, to somebody who wanted to develop something that wasn't in line with our mission.

So again, we've been working on this for years.

And we were very, we had a very thorough plan with transitioning our relatives, our patients out.

And I will tell you that we just pushed pause on services and that came to a close on February 3rd.

And everybody who is in long-term intensive, I believe there were three of them, were transferred out.

Most of them landed at Northwest Treatment Center, again, working with our tribal partners.

Everybody else has a thorough aftercare plan.

We will continue our traditional Indian medicine services.

And in the immediate, what our alum have asked us to do is to expand our outpatient services to intensive outpatient.

So we have a six-month plan to make that happen.

And then we feel like we can continue those services until we locate a new property.

And our plan is to build a premier center for American Indians, Alaskan Natives in the nation.

So I think we can skip over the policy platform.

I think I've spoken to you quite a few times on this.

Just understanding that we're utilizing all three platforms that we have here, working with our tribal partners.

When we talked about moving Thunderbird Treatment Center, Esther and I were very strategic in making sure that we talked to AT&I, the affiliated tribes of Northwest Indian.

So all of our tribal partners understood what our plan was.

So when we said we did our homework on this thing and we put a lot of thought into this, we really did.

But also being able to pull together our community and government partners to make sure everybody understands what that federal trust responsibility is and also to show the special nature of what we have going forward.

We're not just a community health center.

Whenever something happens when the federal trust responsibility is not working or being fulfilled or being ignored, we can work with our tribal partners to make sure that we can address that either at the state level because of the centennial accord or even at the federal level because of conferring consultation rights.

And I want to thank you, Chairman Juarez, for championing how we're going to look at this as we're going forward in the future with Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls here in the city of Seattle when we talk about confer and consult policies here with the city of Seattle.

And then now we're gonna start talking about violence against women and girls.

So we already know about all these things.

We've talked to you about this before.

Thank you again for passing this to the entire council and to the new members for supporting what we're doing here in the city of Seattle.

These are very tough numbers to look at and to understand, but these are real numbers that we have.

Also looking at all these, knowing that a lot of our women are not reported and they do not go into, and they will not report because a lot of times we're treated as a perpetrator.

rather than somebody who is a victim.

So this is something that we're addressing not only with the legislation here, but at the state and federal level as well.

Yeah.

And I'll tell you that as a local body, as a city body, you have a real opportunity here.

Because even though we've been able to present this data, right, and connect it to living in urban environments, federal legislation is really largely focused on tribal lands.

And so that means our cities really have to step up so that we can actually provide the services that we need.

Now, there are federal dollars that actually are pass-through dollars that come through the states and then into the counties and sometimes into the cities.

And that is the area where I think that we can offer change here.

Meaning, we've advocated very strongly for a carve-out of those dollars to address American Indian and Alaska Native communities specifically.

That, to me, is really aligned with the city's equity model.

You guys are getting funding from the county, though, under the Board of Health, correct?

Yeah, the Urban Indian Health Institute is right now, yes.

There's a partnership, but I don't think it's money yet.

I'm talking for service delivery.

We do get some gender-based violence dollars, but what I'm saying is that they're not necessarily connected to those federal dollars that are aligned with federal trust responsibility.

Instead, there's a carve-out for tribes, which is amazing, right?

We need to continue that.

But for urban programs, we get left out of that.

Right?

So what can we do at a local or city level to make sure that we have access to those dollars to provide culturally responsive services, not just what everybody else is doing?

Does that make sense?

And that's the policy basis for everything that we work with.

And again, thank you for helping us pass 31900. But to understand that when we were working on that, we looked at two specific pieces that we can address right now.

We're looking at the undercount and the miscount that we have with our data collection and reporting system.

So that's something that we can help with right now.

And that's what we're working to help you with as we're speaking.

to make sure that any time data is collected on missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, that does include men as well, but a lot of people keep on pointing that out, but that doesn't mean that they're excluded.

MMIWG is the issue that we're working with right now.

We're going to address this together.

So we want to end two spirits, and we want to make sure we're looking at the system overall to understand that when you collect that data, there's a correct way to do this, and there's a way that we can be responsible to our community, and that's what the Urban Indian Health Institute is doing along with the City of Seattle.

Now, what my Department of Government Affairs is doing is also looking at that carve-out piece that we're looking at to say, if there are gender-based violent services that are out there, and we have such a big problem with missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, where can those carve-outs happen to make sure that our specific Indian health service providers are working directly with our community?

Our people have been marginalized in every aspect of society, and to go to somebody else who is not from the community is not something that happens very often.

And again, when they do, they're oftentimes treated like a perpetrator and not a victim.

So that's what we're able to offer.

So we're looking at that piece, and then also looking at the different confer and consult methodologies that we can work with in the city of Seattle.

You guys will be in D.C.

next week, though, right?

That's right.

Yes.

I see you everywhere.

Yeah, we're in D.C.

everywhere.

Yeah, true.

I will tell you though, through the gender-based violence dollars that we did receive through the county, we were able to establish a partnership with the Harborview sexual assault nurse examiner's team.

And really being able to provide them with cultural training, right?

Cultural attuned training.

And that's exciting.

And also to work with an advocate who comes from our communities.

You know, so my wife is a sexual assault nurse examiner, and this is obviously anecdotal data, but just from even her experiences within that one year, 30% of the folks that she saw were Native.

Well, we're gonna have, this time next year, we will have data from our, so that's, this time next year, we will have some really good numbers.

Yeah.

So that will help you in your funding and your lobbying for that money on gender-based on the federal side and the state side.

And we're leading the country in this, and we said this earlier, 31900 really is out there.

We're working with five other states, so you've gotten calls from your states, but there are people who have talked to us specifically to say, how did you pull this off?

Because there are 12 different pieces of legislation, nine of which actually are doing something, you know, and then a lot of them are task forces not necessarily associated with any real change that's going to happen in the end.

So people are asking us, what's the methodology working with you to make sure that we actually had a responsive system here?

So what we did is we took that to the state level.

We're working with Representative Deborah Leckinoff right now to make this happen.

So we have a $250,000 proviso at the state level to bring all of our community together.

This is law enforcement, this is the justice system, this is the legislature, this is Indian country, and even county managers who are all going to get together and talk about how can we do this right.

Because a state can really only talk about the highway patrol, but building that community together is what we want to do.

And through those two years, we want to make sure what can we address legislatively and administratively together to make sure that we're addressing MMIWG the right way.

Again, initially with the data collection and reporting platforms, as well as the service carve-outs and confer and consult methodologies.

Well, you can follow up with Nagina offline on how we can support you in Olympia on that particular bill with Representative Lakoff with Deborah.

Absolutely, and I thank you for that.

There is a second bill that happened that just popped up.

Yeah, you can see this is us right here when we passed the bill, and thank you so much again.

It's something that has been such a beacon for everybody else that we've been talking to.

where people that we've never met before are calling us up and saying, thank you so much for actually carrying this thing through.

And I know you're getting those calls, too, but anybody who's associated with this.

We were just at AT&I.

I didn't see you guys down there in Portland last week.

Yeah, we were there.

Yeah, so we talked to, and Deb Haaland was there, a congresswoman, and we talked offline, too, because we're going to meet with her next week.

So they're saying the same things you're saying.

So it is an epidemic.

It's been going on for decades.

And now we're gonna start looking not just at the trust responsibility to tribes, but as you were saying, the individual when they are in the city, if we have such high numbers of missing murdered, but rape and domestic violence victims.

That's right.

That we have been overlooked, so.

You know, council members, I would just like to point out that this is an example of what we can do working together.

I mean, the truth is the work that we're doing, both from a service delivery perspective, from a policy perspective, from a research perspective, from a traditional medicine perspective, is something that can be duplicated across the country.

That's right.

And so I'll just tell you, if you want to be at the forefront of change, positive change for Native folks, continue working with us.

And that's really what we had.

I think I jumped the gun a little bit talking about the state policy efforts.

There was a second bill that popped up from Gina Mosbrick, who actually took one of the recommendations from our state highway patrol report to say that all of these cases need to be input into the NamUs system, which is a non-federal database.

It is nationwide, but it's something that the community can access, and that builds community relationships.

But again, tribes were not consulted with these, just like the first two MMIWG bills, which is why the Representative Leckinoff bill is so important.

But again, work with us on these things.

We can do this right, and we are the beacon for the rest of the country, and we are seeing a movement.

I know people are finally starting to talk about this, but we're now at the point where we're moving the needle on this.

People are doing something about it, and they're looking at us.

All eyes are on us.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good work.

Yes.

I messaged my team.

We would love to take you up on the offer for a tour.

And maybe, Chair, we could do that.

The thing of going on a tour with Esther Lacerro is you have to do karaoke with her afterwards.

I will do that.

I will do that.

core competitor along with Aaron, so they don't play.

This sounds great.

I don't know.

Yeah, we'll take you up on that.

We do work hard, play hard, that's for sure.

Is there anything else from our colleagues before we want to thank our guests for being here and the work that they've done?

So first of all, thank you.

We have a lot of work to do.

We've been working on the housing piece.

We were working with Caletz.

We met with Snoqualmie.

Big shout out to Liz Tale.

Those folks, of course, Colleen EchoHawk and all the EchoHawks.

All of them either have a medical degree or a law degree or something, all of them.

We'll see you guys in D.C.

next week.

And I cannot tell you what great partners you are.

And with that, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Let me go to the adjournment.

The next meeting of the Public Assets and Native Communities Committee will be Tuesday, March 3rd at 2 p.m.

And with that, we stand adjourned.

Thank you.