Human Services, Labor, and Economic Development Committee 07/02/2026

Good afternoon.

The Human Services Labor and Economic Development Committee meeting of Seattle City Council will now come to order.

It is 2.05 p.m.

Thursday, July 2nd, 2026. I'm Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rink, chair of the committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll and let the record reflect that Councilmembers Juarez and Saka are excused.

Chair Rink.

Present.

Vice Chair Foster.

Here.

Council President Hollingsworth.

Chair, there are three members present and two excused.

Wonderful, thank you.

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

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Welcome everyone to today's Human Services Labor and Economic Development Committee meeting.

We have a short agenda today with a vote on four appointments and reappointments to the Domestic Workers Standards Board, as well as a briefing, discussion and vote on a routine ordinance brought to council by Seattle Human Resources Department and the Seattle Police Department, which establishes the forensic digital evidence job title series and corresponding pay rates.

As a reminder to my colleagues in the viewing public that this committee was briefed on April 3rd by the Domestic Workers Standards Board on their important body of work, if anyone would like to go back and watch that meeting.

Additionally, as a note, today's meeting, we will have a Ukrainian language interpreter to support our appointees today.

And with that, we will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on today's agenda.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up for today?

Currently we have zero in-person speakers and zero remote speakers.

All right, going once, going twice.

Seeing as that we have no public commenters for today, I'm going to keep us moving and say the public comment period is closed and we will move on to our items of business.

So will the clerk please read items one through four into the record?

And colleagues, we are reading items one through four into the record so we can discuss all of these items at the same time.

Items 1 through 4, appointments 03156 through 03519, appointments and reappointments of Danielle Budd, Estefania R. Harry, Serhai Folkata, Jared Lorrie as members of the Domestic Workers Standards Board for a term to February 28th, 2028 for briefing, discussion and possible votes.

Wonderful.

Our appointees are coming up to the table right now.

And we'll note again for the viewing public, the Domestic Workers Standards Board is a board we've had come present on their work here in committee.

And we have a few reappointments to consider today.

So as folks get settled in at the table, we will have staff with the Office of Labor Standards start by introducing our appointees and ask everyone to just introduce themselves for the record.

Great.

Thank you, Chair.

Hello.

My name is Diana.

She, her, ella pronouns.

I'm a policy analyst at the Office of Labor Standards and also am lucky to serve as the board liaison with this amazing group of people.

I am here today to introduce the board, the work they do, and then I will pass the mic for folks to introduce themselves.

So the domestic worker standards board is a 13 position board that was created when council passed the domestic workers ordinance back in 2018. The purpose of the board is to bring to the table domestic workers, hiring entities, employers, members of the community to continue the discussion on domestic worker labor standards.

They are able to provide policy recommendations and overall implementation feedback to not only us at OLS, but as well as Mayor's Office and City Council, which Councilmember Rink referenced.

They were here earlier this month to introduce themselves.

And with that, I will just conclude that Currently the board is facilitated in three languages.

We have English, Spanish and Ukrainian and I think that that speaks to the level of involvement that the community wants to have around domestic worker issues.

So I'm really excited to be a part of that and I will let folks introduce themselves.

Hello, my name is Jared, I live in District 2, and I am a scheduler and a green cleaner for Green Cleaning Seattle.

Yeah, and my boss and a former board member for the DWSB, Gia, recommended me for the role, I assume, because at some point she heard me talking about how I was interested in supporting the community, and at that point I started sitting in on the board meetings, and I was surprised to basically learn more about how broad what is domestic work is, and just how like how much bigger it is than cleaning.

Like there's like, oh wow, there's just so many different, what is it, groups.

I was surprised at how, what is it, like, I guess, little protections there are in other cities, and I was surprised and kind of proud at how much of a flagship city Seattle is in our domestic worker support.

So I'd like to be a part of that, and that's the reason I'm here.

Hello, my name is Danielle Budd.

I hold position nine on the board as a community representative.

I bring to the board three and a half years of working experience in the international labor movement, working on programs related to domestic workers in Latin America and South America.

Additionally, I received my training as an organizer at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C.

in May of last year.

And I continue to hope to bring my advocacy efforts to expanding rights and protections and access to benefits for domestic workers in Washington State and the Seattle area.

Hello.

Hi, my name is Estefana Heri.

My pronoun is Aki, Her.

I am Garifuna, and I am caregiver.

I have the domestic worker.

My position is number six.

I represent caregivers, CNAs, medical assistants.

I've been serving the board since 2022, if I'm not mistaken.

And recently, I was part when my community was a champion the statewide domestic worker bill that recently passed, and it's an honor to serve as a Garifuna and a black woman, the community, and I'm happy to be here.

Hi, my name is Sergei Fulitka.

Now I use translator because I'm from Ukraine.

Good morning.

I would like to say that my name is Sergei Fulitka, I'm from Ukraine and this event is happening right now.

My name is Sergei Filika.

I'm from Ukraine.

That's why I'll be using the services of the interpreter to clearly explain my thoughts.

The event is very important, because all the activities that are happening in cities and in terms of the protection of private workers is very important.

I am here at this event because it is very important to me.

Again, for the reason that domestic workers in the area that I am participating in, I see that is very important.

It will be very interesting to work in this organization or organization that is dealing with these issues.

It will also be implemented a little bit of a local and European legislation.

I would be interested to participate in this organization or the board to learn more about what I can implement locally.

In the future, as the previous speakers said, it's very broadening and very broadening.

There are many moments in which it will be interesting to be useful in this organization.

and as the previous speakers mentioned in the future, I would like to be a part of the team that improves the local domestic workers.

Thank you very much.

Thank you all so much.

It has been a real honor in my office's capacity to work alongside the Domestic Workers Standards Board.

The work is tremendously important and we've made incredible strides in policy in this area as the city.

So I am also really excited about the appointees before us today, colleagues reviewing your appointment packets.

You all are bringing such incredible expertise to the board.

And so very excited to learn even more about you today during this discussion.

With that, I want to open it up to you all first, colleagues, for questions you have for our appointees.

Vice Chair Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair.

Excuse me.

First, I just want to say thank you to all of the appointees for your service.

Boards and commissions are, I think, a really incredibly important part of what we do at the city and a helpful way for us to get information.

Should I pause?

I just want to check in with the interpreter if you want me to pause.

Great.

I'll pause momentarily.

Go ahead.

and so thank you, you have my gratitude for your service and I think one question I have and everyone can respond or one or two folks if you like is if you can share your hope for the way that we as council members engage with the Domestic Worker Board.

please proceed.

If I may, I guess what is it, the thing that I know when I was starting to sit on the board and like hearing the discussions, they've been very excited about how much they've been able to discuss and work with you, like more easily and access being more what is just available and they've greatly appreciated that.

So just communication, I know it's simple, but what is it like that kind of, what is it connection really makes a big difference.

Council, do you mind repeating the question, please?

Sure.

Just your hope for how Council will engage with or collaborate with the board.

Thank you.

Like my partner was saying, communication is very important.

One of the things that we're definitely fighting is equal payment.

We want to make sure that every domestic worker now, thinking what is the status, they can be equal.

And those are the things.

We know that Seattle City has the lab already, and we just passed the one from the statewide.

Now we're working really hard.

to implement that.

So being in communication and contact, make sure that you can provide us the information we need and how can we implement that so everybody can have access to the information and the rights.

I would like to say that on this stage we are going to be a very important stage in the political committee.

Thank you for the questions and your willingness to collaborate with us and help us.

In the political committee, we're working on very important questions in the current time.

We will try to present you new ideas, a new vision, how we see our work, our support of the domestic workers more structured.

In our committee, I just clarified, Sergey is talking about the board.

They have very great communication and collaboration.

As a result, I hope that our decisions and information that we come up with will be delivered to the councils very fast and effective way.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, and thank you so much, Chair.

Thank you for that question, Vice Chair Foster.

I'll close with one question to everyone who would like to answer this point.

I'm just wondering if you can speak to right now what some of the biggest challenges you're seeing are facing domestic workers and what you're hoping to bring forward in the next year or focus on in the next year.

I can answer that question.

Violation on their right.

We know that there's a lot of organizations, companies over there that they're not complying with the law.

And people are afraid to come up and say about it.

So we work in diligence.

trying to make a safe space so the worker can come out either to OLS or to us and report those violations.

So definitely violations of the rights and the law.

To build on that, a lot of the issue is that a lot of workers don't actually know their rights or what they are, so they can't come up to actually communicate them if they don't know what they are.

So working on making sure that the very disparate groups actually know this is how they are governed and this is what rights they have, and then they can report them.

That's also of great importance.

I would like to add a very interesting thing.

I know that the law was approved in 2019. Currently there are so many domestic workers in the Seattle area.

And in my opinion, it was very important that such an organization like ours, in the same way, it would contribute to them to consolidate them, and to find all of them, so that they could see the exact number and number and number, which we can use.

In my opinion, it is very important if we somehow bring all of the Seattle domestic workers together so we know at least approximate number how many people we have and how many people need help.

And I think that in the committee there is a division of information policy and our, he will make the only program that will work effectively.

Yeah, and I believe that the department or the part of our committee, our board, is responsible for the spread information and the marketing.

So we can reach out to as many as possible people and we will work as an effective team.

I just want to reiterate all the points my colleagues made.

I also believe those are all priorities for us.

Additionally, the board is currently working on some amendments to the domestic workers' ordinance.

A few of those being getting more protections for retaliation or against retaliation for workers who are trying to take time off or leave, formal contracts and record keeping for employers to keep better records for the domestic workers.

And additionally, with these changes, these amendments that we're proposing, We additionally will need some continued funding and potentially more funding in order to further educate and spread awareness about changes that will be made to the ordinance and also for the Office of Labor Standards to be able to hold the capacity in supporting us and our agenda and our goals.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

Thank you all for those responses.

And again, just want to reiterate how excited I am that you are rejoining the board or continuing your service to this board or for our new members that you will be joining this board and bringing your expertise.

So thank you so much for those responses and for being in committee today.

Colleagues, unless there's any additional questions, I am going to move us forward with taking action on these appointments.

but before we move and vote on these appointments, we will consider appointment 3516 separately so we can amend it to include a signed notice of appointment by the board chair of the Domestic Workers Standards Board.

So just a little technical move for today.

So I hope y'all will ride it out with me.

So with that, I move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointment 3516. Is there a second?

Second.

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

Now that the appointment is before the committee, I move to amend it to add the signed notice of appointment by unanimous consent.

If there is no objection, the appointment packet will be amended to substitute the unexecuted notice of appointment with an executed notice of appointment.

Hearing no objection, the appointment packet is amended to include and execute a notice of appointment.

Are there any further comments on the amended appointment?

Hearing no further comments, will the committee clerk please call the roll on confirmation of appointment 3516. Vice Chair Foster.

Yes.

Council President Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Chair Rink.

Yes.

There are three in favor and zero opposed.

Wonderful.

The committee recommendation that the appointment be confirmed will be sent to the July 14th City Council meeting for final consideration.

And now we will be taking up the additional appointments.

So moving forward to vote to confirm appointments listed on agenda items two through four, I move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointments 3517 through 3519. Is there a second?

Second.

It is moved and seconded to recommend the confirmation of these appointments.

Are there any comments?

Hearing none, will the committee clerk please call the roll to confirm the appointments, 3517 through 3519. Vice Chair Foster.

Yes.

Council President Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Chair Rank.

Yes.

There are three in favor and zero opposed.

Wonderful.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the appointments be confirmed will be sent to the July 14th full city council meeting.

Congratulations, Danielle, Estefana, Sergi, and Jared on your vote.

Wonderful.

Thank you all so much for being here today.

Take care.

All right, colleagues, we'll be now moving on to our next item of business.

Will the committee clerk please read item five into the record?

Item five, Council Bill 121207, an ordinance relating to city employment, establishing the forensic digital evidence classification title series and corresponding rates of pay in the Seattle Police Department, briefing discussion and possible votes.

Wonderful.

And this point, I will invite our colleagues from SDHR up to the table.

Council President Hollingsworth, I know you're not with us in chambers, but you missed a very cute hugging and celebration moment over here.

I'm sorry I missed that.

I'm hugging from afar.

Thank you.

Wonderful, and for our folks coming to the table, once you get settled in, if you can take a moment to introduce yourself by stating your name and organization into the microphone for the record, that would be great.

Hello, my name is Alyssa Pulliam, Interim Director.

One moment, let's make sure the microphone's on and we can hear you.

Hello, test?

Perfect.

All right, thank you.

Please proceed.

Thank you, Councilmembers.

My name is Alyssa Pulliam.

I'm the Interim HR Director at the Seattle Police Department.

Hello, I am Sarah Smith, Chief Operating Officer of the Seattle Police Department, and I'm very excited to have Alyssa here for her first time in her acting role.

My name is Shane Eubank.

I am the Compensation Program Manager with the City, with Seattle Human Resources.

Good afternoon, everyone.

William Winfield, City's Labor Relations Director.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Thank you all for being here.

Please proceed with the presentation.

Alright, I'm just gonna kick it off before we actually get right on into the slides and say that I am very excited to be here in order to support our staff who are here, to really support our staff in making sure that they're classified in the way that is competitive and accurate for their technical skills.

Our staff do fantastic work and so I am so pleased to be here today to showcase that.

I am also super appreciative of our SDHR companions and colleagues who are here because without them we would not be able to get this kind of to the finish line.

So thank you everyone.

Really excited for this today and Alyssa's actually going to be leading.

If I can figure this out.

Arrow button.

I can continue to filibuster by saying I am very excited to be here today with my colleagues.

Perfect.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Well, thank you so much.

So just to start off, this is a routine request for a new classification.

The previous classifications that were used for these positions hadn't been reviewed in 40 years.

And so this request came about because the type of work that is being done by the employees in this unit is much different than the classifications that are currently used.

So these positions routinely respond to crime scenes, collect video and audio evidence from a variety of sources, analyze processes and evidence for the use in prosecution.

So these folks are doing very important work for the department and the request came about so that we can properly have titles that align with the SBD's business and technical needs.

Before I say anything else, I'm really pleased that we have the employees here as well.

I didn't know that was going to be happening.

A lot of the work that my team does is behind the scenes, creating new titles, modifying classification specifications.

We know that it goes out in the world and that it benefits the city, but we don't often have an opportunity to meet the individuals that are doing that work, so it's nice to meet you.

See you here.

So my team, the compensation and classification unit within Seattle Human Resources, is responsible for maintaining the city's compensation and classification structures.

Maintenance of these structures is necessary to ensure that ultimately we are paying city employees rates of pay that are both internally equitable and externally competitive in the labor market.

Maintaining our classification structure is especially important because, as Alyssa said, the nature of work being performed by city employees changes over the decades, and it does so in order to meet the current needs and changing needs of the city.

So the legislation before us today is a collaboration between my team, Labor Relations and SPD, and its purpose is to create a new classification title series, four title series, so that we can accurately capture the work that is already being performed by city employees within SPD.

All right, so this classification series...

Sorry, I'm not wanting to talk right into it, but...

So this is classification series.

It creates four new titles.

It accurately changes what the work that's being done by the video specialists and the photographic service supervisor positions.

It's accurately looking at the nature of the work that's changed, It is making sure that it's capturing all the technical work that they need to be doing so that they can review digital evidence in order to support investigations, support prosecutors, support the crime victims.

I guess I'm jumping ahead to the next slide because I know that.

And that all of that work culminates in being able to clear and solve cases.

a very technical piece of work that they're doing, and it's different than what the classification is currently exists.

We've been working on this for quite a long time to try and get this to fruition for these folks to get a classification that will properly support the work that they're doing.

And so, I think from the next slide.

So this legislation, it establishes the new titles only.

SBD will be able to absorb the costs of the change of the classifications at the salaries that were determined.

This affects 11 positions within the Forensic Digital Evidence Unit.

So any questions?

Wonderful.

Thank you all for the overview and a high hello to the workers that we're talking about.

Thanks for joining us in council chambers today.

Colleagues, what kind of questions do you have?

Vice Chair Foster.

Thank you so much.

I'll be brief.

I just wanted to make sure I heard you correctly.

Did you say we haven't looked at this in 40 years?

So some of the classifications at Class Comp haven't been looked at since 1990, and so the VideoSpec 2 position that we're using to classify into one of the four positions that is being created is just to reflect accurately today what the work is being done, so yes.

That's helpful, and I heard that, and I just, my ears I just want to say, excuse me, just to commend you all for your work on the internal equity and the external competitiveness, especially going back and looking at something that hasn't been reviewed in a long time.

So appreciate the work of your team to do that, to make sure the rest of your team has fair and competitive pay.

And as Shane mentioned, without the work of class comp at SHR and with labor relations, we wouldn't have been able to make this happen.

This was a long time coming and a very collaborative effort.

Thank you.

Any additional questions, Vice Chair Foster?

No?

That's it.

Thank you.

I have my ears perked up at that as well.

And I have to ask, I mean, is the driver behind taking so long to address this issue primarily because of the complexity of the matter, or do we understand why it took so long to...?

It's the fact that the nature of work does evolve so slowly over time.

It may have been appropriate in 1991, when most of our classification, specification, classification titles were created, that the work was accurately represented, and that may slowly drift over time.

It's a question of at what time do you look at it and say, Hey, this no longer makes sense.

The work has sufficiently shifted that we need to go through the work and identify what are the unique bodies of work being performed in a unit, and then go through all of the, you know, the details and dot the I's across the T's and say, let's document what it all is.

And that process started a couple of years ago, and you have to do your due diligence.

We go through the process a number of times, all the documentation, verify, that the work is now accurately documented, and then we start this legislation process to cement it.

Something that's really unique about this specific unit is no one else in the city does it, right?

Like, no one else is looking at photo digital evidence, and it's a lot of body-worn video.

It's a lot of crime scene evidence that folks are looking at, so there's nothing to compare in the city of Seattle, and so our team had to to go through the due diligence to actually look at the other jurisdictions and competitive rates to make sure that we're doing this the most effective way and the most equitable way, which is what I really appreciate is we didn't make a snap decision.

We made the right decision with our labor partners to make sure that folks were going to get what they should be getting.

Yeah, and I will just add to that the collaboration that LR has with Class Comp when it comes to these situations and making sure that classification work aligns with the actual work.

So that classification aligns with the work is very important.

So we'll continue to work very closely on those matters in the future.

Certainly.

And as a follow-up, just a question to our folks at SDHR.

Can you speak to how this legislation reflects maybe a shift in how SDHR is handling department requests for classification and compensation changes?

Yeah, happy to.

So, historically, you may recall that we have combined different requests like this, title changes, compensation changes, into a single bundle.

and what we realized is that that was not sufficiently doing justice to each individual change that was going through the process.

So moving forward, this is a process that I'm excited about.

We can focus on things like forensic digital evidence, get that through the process, make sure that we can speak to it and that it gets done, and then we'll move on to unique other legislation, you know, with Seattle IT, with FAS, et cetera.

Thank you for unpacking that.

And a final point here, just with this in mind and the way that this unit in particular is very specialized in understanding the process we went through here, how is SDRJ thinking about just consistency in such changes moving forward across the city?

Do you mind repeating the question?

Just consistency as far as video production work?

Yeah, I understand we have like a federated model in a lot of ways across the city.

And so if SDHR can just speak to how we're working towards ensuring we're having some level of consistency across the city, that would be helpful.

Yes, a really, really good question.

So this is a challenge and oftentimes a judgment call in classification work where, as Alyssa said, at one point, you know, the classification of a video specialist may have been accurate, but now the work is sufficiently different from a standard, you know, a standard video specialist that may be elsewhere in the city that it makes sense to differentiate it from that title.

That is often to ensure that we're, you know, being internally equitable and externally competitive in the marketplace where rates may demand higher rates of pay for specialized work like that.

Part of our due diligence in the creation of this title series is looking at those existing titles.

So, you know, for example, we are keeping some of the video specialists because that work is still being done across the city.

where other work is not being done anymore, so we're retitling it to make it specific to this function, SPD.

Thank you so much for that response, and thank you all for being here today.

Colleagues, any additional questions before we move forward on this?

I'm not seeing any.

All right, so with that, I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 121207. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It is moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill.

Are there any final comments?

All right.

Will the clerk please call the roll in the committee recommendation to pass the ordinance?

Vice Chair Foster?

Yes.

Council President Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Chair Rink?

Yes.

There are three in favor and zero opposed.

Wonderful.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the July 14th full city council meeting.

Thank you all so much for being here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I love hearing applause in these chambers.

With that colleagues, we have reached the end of today's agenda.

Is there any further business to come before the committee before we adjourn?

All right, hearing none, the next Human Services Labor and Economic Development Committee meeting is scheduled for Friday, July 17th.

Hearing no further business, we are adjourned.

Thank you all.

Have a good weekend.