Seattle City Council Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers’ Rights Committee 9/12/19

Good morning, everyone.

Today is Thursday, September 12, 2019, and the Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee will come to order.

It is 9.05, and I'm Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the committee, joined by Councilmember Gonzalez.

Thank you so much for being here.

And co-sponsor of the legislation that we will be considering for the first part of today's agenda.

As we've done before, we're dividing the agenda into two parts.

The first part today is going to be on hotel legislation.

So thank you all for being here in the past.

We have done some other business before getting to hotels, so we're going to start with hotel first.

So I appreciate you all coming back for public testimony.

The first bill that we'll discuss will be Council Bill 119555, which is related to medical care.

And then we will go back and revisit any possible changes and consider final vote as well from committee on council bill one one nine five five seven which relates to hotel employee safety protections council bill one one nine five five four protecting employees from injury and the penalty pay that we talked about with the last committee and council bill one one nine five five six which relates to employee job retention after we consider all four of those bills then we'll go to part two which i don't know if anybody is here to stay for but that relates to MFTE, the multifamily tax exemption, and we will entertain public comment on MFTE at 11. If we do, I see one person that might be interested in talking about MFTE.

If it's just one person at this point that wants to talk, no?

Okay.

I'm just going to ask this when we get into public testimony.

Before I wrap up public testimony, if there is somebody that wanted to talk about MFT, I thought there would be a lot of people here to talk about that as well.

If there are a lot of folks, we will hold over public testimony so that we don't delay our conversation on hotel worker legislation.

Those are the two parts of our agenda today with the goal to get out of here by noon.

And if there's no objective, if there's no objection, I will move today's agenda be adopted.

Hearing no objection, so ordered.

Let's get into public testimony.

Thank you all again for being here.

We have a relatively short list compared to previous days, so instead of a minute, let's do a minute and a half so folks can get through some more testimony.

And thank you, Farideh, for putting that time on the clock.

The first three people that we have are Margaret Didums, Alan Collins, and Chrissy Smith.

Hi, Margaret.

We're moving fast here.

Sorry to catch you off guard.

Hold on just a second, Margaret.

Let me make sure that that microphone's on for you and then we'll restart the clock.

And again, if folks are coming in to testify, we are still taking public testimony.

If you want to sign up, you're welcome to.

And is the little green button on on the microphone there?

On the stem here?

Okay, just.

Try again.

Oh, there it's on.

Okay, we are good to go.

Thank you for being here, Margaret.

All right.

So I work with SEIU 775, and as a union, we want to applaud your work on this issue to protect the health and safety of hotel workers.

We represent more than 45,000 caregivers in Washington.

We're staunchly committed to supporting the economic stability, health, and well-being of low-wage workers.

We believe that all workers deserve the right to a safe working environment where they can work without the fear of injury or harassment.

We support the initiative that voters passed in 2016 and believe that this legislation should be at least as strong.

Workers deserve to be protected from sexual harassment.

Our home care members experience high rates of harassment because they're isolated in the home, not unlike hotel workers who are often isolated in rooms with guests.

When co-workers and managers are not around to disrupt harassing behavior, other measures are needed to ensure worker safety.

Workers should also not be expected to complete more work than can be done safely.

Our nursing home members experience high rates of sprains, back and shoulder injuries, and chronic pain.

Housecleaning is a similarly physically demanding job because of staffing issues, and no one should be pushed to work at a pace that causes injury and unnecessary stress.

A square footage cap with 1.5 times the pay on days that house cleaners are required to exceed the cap will help to disincentivize employers from requiring unsafe workloads.

These are crucial changes for the city's workforce and will promote greater racial and gender equity in public health in Seattle.

Thank you for your consideration and commitment to workers throughout the state.

Thank you very much, Margaret.

Alan Collins, Sustainable Living.

Okay, why don't you go on up.

I think that we have very few folks.

I'm sorry to complicate things so that way you don't have to It's equally important.

I didn't mean to put it in second.

Thank you.

But you know how it is.

Good morning, everyone.

Morning.

Can you pull that microphone up?

There you go.

You're taller than most folks.

Is it on?

Yeah.

We're good to go?

OK.

Good morning, everyone.

I'm Arlan Collins, President of Sustainable Living Innovations.

We're a Seattle firm that's developed pre-manufactured panelized method for building multifamily high-rise buildings.

Our technology helps us construct buildings more efficiently, more quickly, and at less cost than traditional construction.

Our technology enables us to deliver high-quality, zero-net energy building in Seattle's urban core on small lots.

Our business model and company vision direct these capital cost savings towards sustainable energy efficiency and construct more units for tenants that qualify for income-restricted housing.

We currently have a pipeline of six buildings totaling over 1,400 units, which dedicates 25 percent of each building to MFTE, middle-income renters.

We will be breaking ground this year on the world's first zero net energy multifamily high-rise in Belltown, and we're pleased to be able to offer 27 affordable units to middle-income tenants.

We received high praise from the Neighborhood Association for this building.

We're particularly interested in providing rent-restricted units, and we're ready for tenants to move in in 2020. Our business model relies on the MFTE program, so we can appreciate Council's work to renew this program.

and provide certainty for our pipeline and projects.

Since we're constructing high-rise buildings in high-rise zones, we believe we can be an engine to provide affordable housing in downtown Seattle.

We have a little handout for council and staff that shows our project pipeline.

Thank you.

Appreciate it, and look forward to chatting more about MFT next week as well.

Christy Smith, followed by Deanne Sholley, followed by Anne Vande Hei.

Hi.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Christy Smith, and I'm the general manager of the Crowne Plaza Hotel.

I've worked in the hospitality industry for over 35 years, and I've worked in various positions in hotels before becoming a general manager.

We've been talking about this legislation for weeks.

We've heard and felt alignment on health care around this table between our industry and council members.

Why are we back here today talking about arbitrary cash expenditures instead of quality?

instead of quality of health care coverage.

My hotel provides high quality gold level insurance to all of our employees, which I thought was the intent to begin with, not the cost of the coverage.

We have also been talking about what an appropriate penalty should be for those who choose to offer cleaning assignments over the maximum square footage.

With no advance notice, outreach, input, or opportunities for review and discussion, you introduced and passed an amendment changing the underlying maximum square footage.

This impacts the entire industry.

Not once in this time period has there been any discussion at the committee table or in public comment about changing the square footage.

We have been very sincere in our interest to provide feedback and help develop solutions.

It is disappointing that the same sincerity is not shared by this committee.

There has been a lot of time and effort made in providing thoughtful feedback on this legislation, and we all question what we have spent the last 11 weeks doing and are very disappointed at the lack of progress that has been made.

Thank you.

Deanne Shawley, followed by Anne VandeHei.

I'm shorter, sorry.

That's OK.

Good morning.

My name is Deanne, and I'm the HR manager at the Hilton Seattle.

I've been working in the hospitality industry my entire life.

I started out as a room attendant and worked my way up, corporate manager, and now in HR.

We've been talking about this legislation for over two months and heard the alignment between the hospitality industry and the council committee.

We are very disappointed that we are here again today talking about arbitrary cash expenditures instead of quality coverage, which we all thought progress was being made.

We've also been talking about the penalty pay for square footage, which there was no advance notice given us the opportunity to discuss.

We've been sincere about providing feedback from our industry to come up with a solution that would benefit everyone and very disappointed that we were not given that opportunity.

We are in an industry that cares about their workers and take their safety and well-being very seriously.

As we all know, if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have a business to run.

We ask you to please consider all the testimony that you've heard these past 11 weeks as we are concerned about the lack of progress that is being made.

Thank you.

Anne Vande Hei, then followed by Bill Wise, and then Mark Sundberg.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Anne Vande Hei, and I'm the Director of Sales at the Hilton Seattle.

I've been in the industry over 35 years in a multitude of different roles, hourly and management.

I've found some of the testimony I've heard in these sessions dismaying, implying that we do not value our team members, housekeepers in particular.

It's just not true.

There is a responsibility for more due diligence.

There are so many benefits we offer all of our team members as an industry.

We have mandatory training on safety on a monthly basis.

We have training on harassment, diversity, respect in the workplace.

There's programs like tuition reimbursement.

and continuing education through platforms like Hilton University.

These benefits are not unique to our hotels.

All of the hotel companies offer them.

I know not one hotelier in the room will disagree with me when I say that Bill Marriott said it best, if you take care of your team, they take care of your guests, and everything else takes care of itself.

Thank you.

Bill Wise, Mark Sundberg, and then Amanda Parsons.

Good morning again.

Good morning.

My name is Bill Weiss.

I'm the general manager of the Super Cloud Stadium Hotel.

I've been there for 14 years.

I've been in the hotel industry for 42 years, and I started as a busboy and a dishwasher.

I've worked all different varieties of jobs from housekeeper all the way to director of operations.

I'm a little upset about we've been going through this for the last 11 weeks, and we've gone here and there.

been part of the process.

And I feel like we've, that the council has betrayed the process by having additional amendments that are just a surprise to us.

For the last three years we've been operating on the square footage that has been agreed upon.

And now we've got the last minute to reduce it even further without discussion, without study, without anything.

And it's really going to affect our business and how we operate.

Right now, we have to spend at least an hour and a half to set up the boards every single day, and now it's going to put an undue burden on our people.

Also, I'm just wondering about the penalty as well.

I mean, we've gone from one and a half to three times, and we've been operating under this for the longest time, and I'm wondering why we're still going forward with that.

My last question is, Why have we been here?

Why haven't we concentrated on maybe the homeless crisis and spend this time for that?

Right now it seems like the council has a non-impartial third party driving this train and we really don't appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mark Sundberg, Amanda Parsons and then Leah Lever.

Good morning.

My name is Mark Sundberg and I'm the owner of IPM, and we provide parking services in the city.

My wife, Tracy, and I have owned the company for over 21 years.

It's my wife and I.

We live in Seattle.

Our kids are educated in Seattle.

We shop in Seattle.

We support Seattle.

I have nothing to do with running a hotel.

I just don't we don't run hotels.

And I'm not sure why my business is going to be included in an ancillary business.

Running a small business in this city is hard, and having legislation such as this makes it even harder.

By including businesses like mine without understanding shows that you really don't care about what it takes to operate a business in Seattle.

Last week, you decided to move forward with the definition of an ancillary hotel business without understanding who it impacts.

Not only is this irresponsible, but it's unconscionable to leave this definition vague and left to rulemaking, the rulemaking to still be covered at a later time.

I ask that you guys really reconsider including ancillary businesses.

I would hope that you would take that to heart, and I appreciate your time.

Thank you very much for being here.

Amanda Parsons, Leah Lover, and Mike Barnett.

Hello again.

Good morning.

My name is Amanda.

I want to take a moment to say how encouraged I am to see the Council taking swift actions on issues that are important to them.

Adjusting the square footage from 5,000 to 4,500 was amended and voted on in the same meeting just last week.

I'd like to ask for a similar swift amendment to the full-time status as currently defined at 80 hours per calendar month.

My recommendation is to define full-time as 30 hours per work week because no schedule is written based on a calendar month.

In addition, the enrollment definition should not be left for rulemaking.

This is a huge, huge component for this ordinance.

Huge.

The intent is to provide care, and there are many questions that need to be clarified before moving forward.

When does an employee become enrolled?

What is the waiting period?

Is it the same for new hires and existing employees?

There needs to be a waiting period to allow employees to select the plan they want and to gather documents to submit for dependent verification, et cetera.

What about seasonal employees or employees who work on call, like banquet servers?

If they work 100 hours one month and 40 hours the next, do they gain coverage and then lose coverage?

Is that the intent?

If an employee works 72 hours or is currently proposed 80 hours but then resigns or moves forward, how do we handle that?

These are very severe questions that need to be answered and it's a big section that needs clarification now, not later.

Leaving this to rulemaking is irresponsible and I ask you to reconsider.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Hi, Leah, good to see you again.

Mike Barnett and then Steve Vazovsky.

Good morning.

I echo the 80 hours.

I have a lot of questions around that piece and would love to provide feedback on that, but want to spend my time this morning to talk about the health care expenditures.

In the case of the hotels that I work with, it's still an immense increase over our current expenditures.

Our plan is not a national plan.

It's a Seattle plan.

It's gold.

It's compliant with I-124.

I testified previously that the amounts were a great increase over the total cost of the premiums that we currently pay, and while there has been a reduction to these amounts, and it's still a large increase for us.

In our case, it's a 14% increase for the employee and child component, a 19% increase for spouse or domestic partner, 21% increase for family coverage, and a 51% increase for single coverage.

That's on the 2019 rates without considering the inflation rates.

We've received our inflationary rates for 2020, and they're at 6.5%.

So I'm concerned about the inflationary rates that we might see as proposed in the legislation, and that's going to continue to widen that gap.

I've listed the price that we pay here, and I'll leave my written testimony for you so you can see that.

But in my history in HR and medical plans, I've not seen increases anywhere near those amounts.

I mean, 51%, double digits is a lot.

The goal with I-124 was to provide quality health care and I ask that you consider putting back in the amendment that you brought up on August 15th here in this meeting that stated if a quality health care plan was in place from an employer that the employer was compliant.

And I have notes on what that was from that meeting here as well.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And I appreciate you getting those numbers for us.

We really appreciate that.

We have Mike Barnett, Steve Viswosky, and then Michael Clark.

Good morning.

Morning.

It's good to see you guys again.

Good to see you again.

So good morning, I'm Mike and I want to start by saying I have all the respect in the world for what the City Council is trying to do with the intent of the health care law.

Health care is the single most important issue for my family and the families of those that I work with.

My two-year-old daughter has a disease called cystic fibrosis.

If you want to know what it's like to have this disease, I brought this straw.

Feel free to breathe through it for the rest of your life.

Sign up for a lung transplant in 20 years and start hoping for a cure now.

That's what it's like to have CF.

This is one example of a chronic illness at my property.

I hear personal stories of others every single day.

The basic healthcare profit model is to collect as much in premiums as possible and pay out as little in healthcare coverage as possible.

That's not my point of view, that's the point of view of Elizabeth Warren.

She said it in the last Democratic debate.

She's right and I agree with her.

By the city council dictating the terms to insurance companies of how much to charge businesses for coverage, I fear that the quality of coverage for not just my child, but for the children of everybody in this room and the people that I work with is going to be sacrificed.

So I leave you with two questions I implore you to consider.

Are we ready to sacrifice quality coverage to pad the pockets of insurance companies?

And OLS recently received funding for community outreach and education, which is fantastic.

But is it possible to shift just a little of that to do some research on how we can achieve quality coverage for everybody in Seattle?

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Steve Visotsky, Michael Clark, and then Jurgen Oswald.

Good morning.

My name is Steve Visotsky, and I'm the general manager of the Grant Hyatt and Hyatt, all of eight.

I don't need a minute and a half to talk about my disappointment in this whole situation.

I think that what you're looking for is the community to get involved in different operations and communicating what's going on.

And what I've seen over the last 11 weeks is really a lack of collaboration, a lack of understanding, a lack of ability to listen.

I find this is pretty simple.

It's a union organizing.

And quite honestly, this whole approach has gone backwards.

time and time again.

You waste a lot of important people's time trying to do the right thing and trying to get through and it just hasn't worked.

It couldn't be more disappointing.

What you should focus in on governance.

I think you have more to worry about putting panic buttons in every citizen's hands.

I worry more about my employees getting to my hotel versus when they're in the hotel.

This is a complete sham.

I couldn't be more disappointed and it really is a crying shame because hospitality is an important part of Seattle's economy.

Thank you, Mr. Wazowski.

Michael Clark, Jurgen Oswald, and then Caitlin Alcorn.

If there are other folks here to testify, please do sign up.

Farideh, if we could put one more sign-in sheet maybe on the other podium so folks can, if they are coming to sign in on hotel, then they can do that.

Hello again.

Thank you for being here.

Good morning.

Thank you for having me.

My name is Michael Clark.

I'm the general manager of the Renaissance Seattle Hotel and a member of the Seattle Hotel Association Board.

We've heard from dozens of Unite Here workers over the past 11 weeks about examples of isolation, danger, unsafe working conditions, and how important that issue is.

And it's very difficult to understand why this legislation would not cover those workers as well.

You know, that could also be extended to square footage.

You know, we recently had a change without any opportunity for discussion.

It was introduced late in the last committee meeting after many and many folks had even departed.

Collective bargaining agreements often calculate square footage.

Instead of using square footage, they use number of rooms.

So if that square footage is so important, why doesn't it apply to workers who are covered under CBAs?

I just fail to understand that.

I just don't get what is happening here.

We're talking about arbitrary cash expenditures again.

Council Member Mosqueda, you introduced what we all thought was really great.

You know, was it two committee meetings ago or the last one?

I can't even remember now, but we thought that was such progress and then now here we are again.

And it's just very difficult for us to understand and not have a voice in all of that.

the 4,500 square foot minimum too, that's going to have unintended consequences.

I'll give you an example.

Previous legislation caused my hotel to eliminate turndown service.

and that eliminated three positions in my hotel.

So those jobs went away.

Luckily, we were able to replace those individuals, but at the same time, those jobs are gone forever.

So I think that just doing this without more discussion or study is gonna have unintended consequences that the committee should really understand before they proceed.

Michael, thank you.

Jurgen Oswald, Caitlin Alcorn, and then I'll take the next sign-in sheet if it's available.

Good morning, Councilmembers.

I'm Jürgen, I work at the Hilton.

One last chance to strike a balanced approach.

You know, there really seemed to be alignment between our industry and Councilmembers on healthcare.

Lots of progress was made.

So why are we back here today talking about arbitrary cash expenditures instead of quality of coverage?

Last week, out of nowhere, you pass an amendment with no advance notice, no stakeholder outreach or input, no opportunities for review or discussion to change the maximum square footage.

That's not what 77% of the voters approved.

So why do you override the will of the voters?

You've come up with a definition of ancillary hotel business that kicks much of your work to the rulemaking process to determine who's covered.

Isn't it a basic role of a council member to do this type of work?

So my current score is A for ideology and F for compromise.

So you have the power to change the score.

Use that power wisely.

One last chance.

I know we have a lot of ideology here.

I think Councilmember Mosqueda, Gonzalez, you know, you've been hijacking this process.

Councilmember Pacheco, you're all by yourself, but if you have some help from some other councilmembers, you have an opportunity.

So I'm talking to you.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

Kaitlyn Alcorn, followed by Stefan Moritz.

Hi, Kaitlyn.

Hi there.

My name's Caitlin Alcorn.

I'm a graduate student at the University of Washington.

I study labor issues, so I just wanted to come and state my support for the council bill extending additional labor protections for hotel workers.

I think Seattle voters kind of clearly demonstrated that they are in favor of such legislation when they voted overwhelmingly in support.

of Initiative 124 three years ago.

I think all workers deserve kind of as a minimum the right to a working environment that's free of harassment.

Working behind closed doors in private rooms, hotel workers are at increased risk of harassment and therefore in need of these additional protections.

And I think this committee showed great leadership when they extended the domestic workers Bill of Rights, extending additional protections to domestic workers who face a number of kind of similar issues as hotel workers.

So I hope that you do it again by extending these protections for low-wage hotel workers.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And last we have Stefan Moritz.

Good morning, council members.

I want to thank you for listening to some very important people right here in this room and who have come to speak to you previously, which is the folks who work in hotels every day and you know, experience with their own bodies, the hard work that they're doing, and whether it comes to health care or workload or protections from harassment, I think this bill is an important and big step in the right direction to protect hotel workers.

Now, if you look at the legislation before us and compared to the initiative that voters passed in 2016, I think a lot of work has gone into the legislation.

I think a lot of listening has happened.

I think if you look at the logs of who lobbied city council members on this legislation, you will see that a lot of folks from the industry have actually spent a lot of time talking to folks and that there has been a lot of dialogue.

And I think that what the four pieces of legislation that you see here today are the right balance of moving forward.

As you will see, right, there's changes in accommodations for small businesses that have been made, right?

Like nobody says that here, but this is actually like there's been some big steps that have been made.

And I think that's why we need to move forward with this bill today because it's going to make a difference in the lives of thousands of workers in our city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

to have signed in to testify on the hotel worker legislation or would like to.

OK.

I'm just going to make one more ask.

Is there anybody here that wants to talk about MFTE?

If there's only one or two folks, OK, please come on up, and we'll get you signed in, and then we'll move on to hotel worker legislation.

I see some of our building construction trades folks in the back.

MFTE testimony or just here to observe?

OK.

Great.

Welcome.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Mallory Van Abema.

I work with the Housing Development Consortium as an advocacy and policy manager.

We are in full support of renewal of the MFTE program.

We recognize that it's produced thousands of affordable units in Seattle.

We also are encouraged by this recalibration to ensure that there's the greatest public benefit and we aren't just giving away a huge handout.

This is an incentive program, so we do need to provide something to incentivize participation rates and to sustain the level of participation that we've been able to achieve in the city.

So, we're encouraged by this revision of the program, and we'd also encourage a lot of collaboration and calibration that will have the greatest positive impact on affordable housing production in our city, because we know we need it.

So, thanks.

Excellent.

Okay.

I think that concludes our public testimony for this morning.

I'm going to leave public testimony open just in case anybody does want to talk about MFTE when we get to that portion.

But why don't we go ahead for today and have you read into the agenda item number one through four.

Agenda item number one, council bill 119555, an ordinance relating to employment in Seattle requiring certain employees to make required healthcare expenditures to or on behalf of certain employees for the purpose of improving access to medical care.

For briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Council bill two, I'm sorry, agenda item number two, council bill 119556, an ordinance relating to employment in Seattle.

For briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Agenda item number three, Council Bill 119557, an ordinance relating to employment in Seattle requiring certain employers to take certain actions to prevent, protect, and respond to violent or harassing conduct by guests.

For a briefing discussion and possible vote.

And finally, agenda item number four, Council Bill 119554, an ordinance relating to employment in Seattle requiring certain employers to limit room cleaning workloads for certain employees.

For a briefing discussion and possible vote.

Okay, wonderful.

Thank you so much.

We need our central staff out here, so if we can have one more second.

Councilmember Pacheco, thank you for being here.

Councilmember Sawant, thank you so much for being here.

And we are going to ask the folks who are here to testify or to speak to the hotel worker legislation from central staff to join us.

I will grab them.

I want to just acknowledge there's some vinyl printing happening and we're gonna have to go ahead and do health care as we get the materials that come out here.

So why don't we go ahead and review some of the technical amendments, final amendments that have been considered for the other three bills briefly and then we will return to health care.

Council Member Dan Eder, Council Central staff, would you like to take up?

And Farideh, can you help us get the items on the screen here?

Which one would you like to take up first, Dan?

Why don't we do protections against injury?

Okay, I apologize to the committee, but staff was not able to pull together the kind of matrix highlighting the changes to the previous iteration of the bill as we have done in past iterations.

So for the viewing audience, Protection Against Injury is Council Bill 119554, and that's item number four.

There are, I'm pulling up on the screen so you can see, it's mostly unchanged.

I'm just going to highlight the changes that have been made to this iteration.

They are mostly, I would characterize as technical cleanups.

I'm just going to skip forward in case there are any things that are not merely reference errors or words that are just oversights and missing and have been replaced or punctuation.

So Dan, does this have any of the definitional changes that we had been considering for the other bills such as ancillary business and hotel purpose included?

Ancillary business is included.

There are no changes in the substitute, but I believe there is Oh, I'm sorry, no.

We're in...

Are we in protections of injury?

Am I looking at the right bill?

Protections against injury?

Which bill did you say we were taking up?

You said we were taking up protections from injury, Council Bill 119554.

Okay, so this one has no ancillary business definition.

Okay, what are the technical amendments?

They're exclusively missing words, corrections to internal references and typos.

So this is purely technical.

Are there any questions from our council colleagues on this bill?

So seeing none, I think I would like to go ahead and move the committee consider Council Bill 119554, protecting hotel employees from injury.

It's been moved and seconded.

Is there any other conversation?

Seeing none, all those in favor of moving Council Bill 119554 as amended from committee to full council, please say aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

Okay, that council bill will pass out of this committee with a vote of four to zero for full council's consideration on Monday, September 16th, I believe.

And Council Member Pacheco, did you have a question?

So, I have a definition regarding ancillary business.

Did you want to talk about that?

I think that the next bill that we will take up, we'll get to that.

Okay, great.

So, Dan, thanks.

Please let us know what other bill you would like to take.

That was agenda item number four, which has been read into the record and then moved and voted out of the committee.

What bill would you like to take up now?

The job retention bill.

Okay, job retention is Council Bill 119556 for the viewing audience.

And if we can get that pulled up on the screen.

And that's item number two on our agenda today.

I'll go ahead and talk about the changes to this bill.

As with the previous bill, there are a number of purely technical changes here.

commas, dashes, making sure that the right citation is included in each section.

The only substantive change is the added definition of hotel purpose, which clarifies what the hotel purpose is in the definition of ancillary hotel business.

To refresh memories, ancillary hotel business means any business that routinely contracts with the hotel for services in conjunction with the hotel's purpose, leases or sublets space at the site of the hotel for services in conjunction with the hotel's purpose, or provides food and beverages to hotel guests and to the public with an entrance within the hotel premises.

So there's three kinds of businesses that can be considered an ancillary hotel business.

Hotel's purpose on page four is defined to mean services in conjunction with the hotel's provision of short-term lodging, and then it specifies exactly what kinds of services.

And before I read these services, I'll mention that they come directly from the NAICS industry code definition of how to define a hotel for statistical purposes.

Those services include food or beverage services, recreational services, conference rooms, convention services, laundry services, and parking.

For those who would like to look up the NAICS code, it is 721110.

Thank you.

So we had a pretty robust discussion about this at last committee's meeting on hotel purpose.

The NICS code, thanks to Council Member Gonzalez, were read into the record there.

And then we've circulated the NICS code to our council colleagues for reference as well.

We thought that this was an important component, as we've heard from folks, that it was important to have a little bit more clarity around what the hotel's purpose was according to how the industry also defines it in other areas.

and wanted to make sure that as we had our ancillary business definition, which references hotel purpose, that we were very clear here to help guide rulemaking and provide greater clarity at the point of the legislation itself passing.

Council Member Gonzales, did you have anything else to add to the desire to include hotel purpose here?

I think that's a good description.

Okay, and I know we do have some other language.

Council Member Pacheco, you referenced your potential amendment around ancillary business, but before we move to that, on hotel purpose, do folks have any questions on the inclusion of this language?

Okay.

I appreciate all the council responding to the feedback that we did hear from the community, which was to help further define this area.

We're not going to take them one by one.

As you can see, this is a striker bill.

So what we'd like to do is consider the striker as a whole as it comes forward.

But let's go ahead and move on to ancillary business discussion because I think it ties in.

Council Member Pacheco does have an amendment on that ancillary business.

So let's talk about that if we can.

Council Member, may I suggest that you may want to move and take action on the substitute?

Oh, okay.

Is this really the only substantive changes in this legislation?

It is, and I believe Council Member Pacheco's amendment is to the substitute, so if you have that as a new base, it'll work out.

Let's do this.

I would like to move that the committee consider amended version of Council Bill 119556. I'm sorry, 5-6?

Correct?

Okay.

It's been seconded twice.

Any other discussion?

Okay.

All those in favor of amended Council Bill 119556, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

None.

Any abstentions?

None.

With a vote of four to zero, the committee has passed the retention bill, Council Bill 119556, out of committee with the goal to bring this forward to full committee on September 16th.

And now, I'm so sorry, can I bring it back?

Bring what back?

Bring that back to the discussion about the amendment to the bill.

Sorry, my apologies.

I thought that we were voting on bringing the substitute bill forward.

Yes, okay.

So the substitute bill has been amended.

We will entertain a potential amendment to the bill.

Council Bill 119556. Go ahead Council Member Sawant.

No, just to just a process clarification, I think Yeah, just we I think what we did was voted on substituting the amended version in place of the original and now you're opening the discussion.

So we have a amended version of Council Bill 119556 on worker retention.

Specific to worker retention, Council Member Pacheco has an amendment that I think is mirroring the language in other components of the package in front of us, but we will take them one at a time.

This is related to ancillary business and Council Bill 119556 on hotel worker retention.

Council Member Pacheco, would you like to speak to it or would you like central staff to start?

I can speak to it and just before I begin, I want to address a comment that was heard through public comment about not caring for, that the council should care for, what People getting to the hotels are not what happens to the people that are in the hotel.

I think it was that sentiment that led to the election and the passage of Initiative 124, because I think it's the collective desire of the community to try to care for the hotel workers, which is why we are where we are today.

That said, I'm going to start my comments.

I commend my colleagues for the extensive stakeholder outreach and countless hours put into improving this legislation that voters asked for to provide protections in healthcare for hotel employees.

I think we found good middle ground in most cases and the collective desire of interpreting voter intent.

The one remaining issue that I have and I bring for discussion today is voter intent and the definition of ancillary hotel business.

Reading through the initiative again, it was clear to me that the main intent was protecting hotel employees.

Beyond lodging and housekeeping, I see hotel services as including functions like laundry, hotel services, and parking, services that primarily are for hotel guests and not the public.

The line for me is including restaurants and other food and beverage entities that are leasing space from a hotel building or have an entrance to a hotel and also serve the public.

I am for health care for all, and I would like to see all industries providing quality health care for employees.

I do not feel that this legislation, through which to do that, however, and I do not think that it is not what voters expected.

The goal of my amendment is to slightly narrow the definition of the ancillary hotel business.

I have introduced the same amendment for each bill with ancillary hotel business defined for consistency.

The amendment removes food and beverage entities that simply share an entrance with the hotel It also amends the definition of hotel's purpose to include room services instead of food and beverage services with the intent of only including restaurant and beverage businesses leasing or subleasing from a hotel if they are also provided room services to guests.

In short, the goal is to still include restaurant bars owned and operated by a hotel or contracting to provide room service to guests.

Restaurant and beverage companies leasing space or abutting a hotel that also serve the public would not be included.

I ask my colleagues for consideration and for passage of the amendment.

Thank you, Council Member Pacheco.

This is similar to a conversation we had at the last committee meeting where folks had talked about the intent to make sure that individuals who are working in the restaurant industry but are part of the hotel in that they have an entrance into the hotel premise And recognizing, as we heard in public testimony, that many people still work in the hotel industry.

They got their start in restaurants and bars and in coffee shops.

And one person mentioned a busboy, for example.

This is an element that many people anticipate when they go to a hotel to have a restaurant, a bar, a coffee shop.

If there is an entrance into that hotel, we've really gone far away from the initial discussion around just being close to or proximity or even within the building premises.

I think that your point is really well taken about wanting to make sure that we stay true to the intent of the hotel.

initiative and the voters will and with 77% of the voters supporting the initiative in that included the addition of restaurants and food and beverage services I think that our existing ancillary business definition coupled with the new language that we've included for hotel purpose I think helps to get at that desire that value that I think we share that we are in line with the vision of the vote will of the voters but I think that our initial language that you saw from the beginning really does meet that purpose.

So I really appreciate you bringing it forward.

I'm not going to be able to support the amendment today, but would welcome any additional comments or thoughts.

Okay.

Thank you for bringing that forward.

And also, I do hope that with the inclusion of hotel purpose, folks feel that the language that we've pulled directly from the NAICS code, which talks about food and beverage services, helps stay in line with that same value.

I appreciate you bringing that forward.

Did you want to move the amendment or would you like to reconsider?

It's up to you.

I move the amendment.

Okay.

The amendment's been moved.

Is it been seconded?

I'll second for the sake of discussion.

It's been moved and seconded.

As I mentioned before, I'm not going to be able to support it, but I appreciate you working to try to raise the issues.

Any other comments?

If I may just really quickly add, I think I also am unable to support this amendment.

I spoke a little bit about why in the last committee hearing.

I do think that it's important to include food and beverage services to hotel guests.

First and foremost, it appears as one of the sort of part of the definition of the NAICS code that defines hotels purpose and also in the state statutes that define hotels and the services they provide.

But also I think this amendment is not is not reflective of the reality of how hotels oftentimes market and talk about food and beverage services that are available on-site, on-premises, as an amenity to guests.

So in just a short, quick review on Google, if you go and you look at many of the local hotels here in downtown, you'll see that one of the things that they do under the amenities on their websites is list all of the food and beverage opportunities and services, so restaurants, coffee shops, whatever the case might be that are located on site as a direct service to the guests who are staying and lodging at that particular hotel or who might be there for a conference.

And so I think that there is a direct correlation between the business model and the choice of siting your food and beverage location within a hotel that is really fueled by the motivation of having a built-in customer base that will support the business choice for locating or co-locating with a hotel.

So again, in my search of the internet and my own sort of Personal experience of visiting hotels is very often the case that hotels market and advertise as a hotel amenity to guests or convention goers who are using conference rooms at the hotel, that in fact, these businesses are a direct hotel amenity to the individuals who are frequenting those hotels.

And frankly, I think that the average common person has very little understanding of what the contractual relationship is between those hotel, those businesses co-located in hotels and the hotel.

And I think it's fair to acknowledge through this regulation that there is a benefit there and that this is a business model that exists and that in the event that the choices are made to do business in this way that it would be appropriate to to cover ancillary hotel businesses in this context.

Now I feel good about the fact that we've now defined hotel's purpose in a way that further refines and narrows the coverage of ancillary hotel businesses to really create that direct correlation between the type of business and the service that is being provided and the actual location and I think that we've been able to arrive at a good place as it relates to the the unamended version of ancillary hotel businesses so I will continue to support our our substitute version for those reasons.

Councilmember Swann.

Thank you, Council Member Esqueda.

I will also not be supporting this amendment, and I support the language that exists in the substituted version of the bill that we just talked about.

First of all, just to echo some of the points that have already been made by yourself and Council Member Gonzalez, that this is The definition of the ancillary hotel business is derived from the standard definition of hotel itself that has been adopted by the industry as a whole, so it's completely consistent with that.

Secondly, also as was stated, the customer base of the restaurants on the hotel premises are derived for, you know, to a great extent from the customer base of the hotel itself.

And so there's, as was said, there's a direct correlation.

But I also wanted to add one more thing.

You know, one more point, I mean, in light of what was just stated also that a lot of most ordinary people will not know what the contractual agreements are between a restaurant based in hotel premises and the hotel itself.

And a lot has been made out of this idea that while these are small businesses and you should not be including them in the definition of ancillary business, I don't actually think that that's true in the sense that it's not like, a small coffee shop in my neighborhood in the central district will have the wherewithal to set up at the Sheraton.

That's just not happening.

So I think we have to clarify that we're not talking about your traditional small business that is struggling to get by in your neighborhood and has to independently build its clientele or customer base.

and does not have an expensive hotel with an upper class clientele that is automatically sort of leading into your restaurant as a customer base.

So I think just making a distinction between what we traditionally think of as small businesses that are finding it hard to get by, which is true, and businesses that are located on a hotel premises, I think those are two separate types of businesses we are looking at.

And with that in mind, It is appropriate to include the food and beverage aspect in the ancillary hotel business definition.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Pacheco, any other comments before we go for a vote?

Again, I commend my colleagues just for the extensive work that's been done in trying to interpret voter intent.

where in the last, I've been a part of a few of the committee meetings where I've been trying to do my best is to try to both interpret what we heard from voters, the messaging that was given to voters, and when I hear the restaurant owners that have come before us, I try to be mindful of acknowledging that they, price elasticity of demand for restaurants.

And so that's why I'm trying to both be intentional about who we're impacting and the industries that we're impacting.

So.

I was just going to respond to that really quickly because I don't want this vote to be interpreted on this amendment as somehow as though we have disregard for the restaurant and food and beverage industry.

That can be further from the case.

For me personally, you know, my husband's in the restaurant industry, has been in the restaurant industry for 20 years, worked his way up from washing dishes to now being a general manager at a very popular restaurant, which I will not mention because then you'll you'll want reservations.

But I take really seriously this industry and the workers in this industry in large part because I consider my family to be part of that industry by virtue of the two decades that my own husband has worked in this industry, an industry that he truly deeply loves and appreciates and really enjoys working in.

I spend a lot of my time talking to workers and owners in the restaurant industry in my own personal time because of that connection.

And I understand profoundly how important this industry is to our economy and to workers.

I also understand that workers in this industry really deeply want to be treated well in the workplace and they want to be given a fair shake and an opportunity to continue to be resilient and successful in this industry.

This is, in my mind, not a choice between whether we want to support the workers or whether we want to support the service industry.

It's an ecosystem and I think that this bill and the intention of this bill and all of these bills together really, in my mind, creates greater opportunity for that resilience to continue to occur in a way that really begins the process of equalizing the playing field for workers who are disproportionately impacted by a lack of protections in this space.

So I continue to appreciate the intent with which you're bringing this bill forward, but I feel very strongly from my own personal experience that it is right to request that these industries do right by their employees.

And I'm not saying that they don't.

I'm just saying that I think that these bills together accomplish a better environment for all to be able to achieve success and see the product of the hard work that everybody is contributing to the success of that system.

Thank you Councilmembers for your robust discussion on this and again for bringing this forward.

I appreciate the spirit in which you brought this forward and I think that Councilmember Gonzalez's comments along with Councilmember Swan's summarize my sentiment on this which I mentioned earlier.

I do appreciate you bringing it forward but I am optimistic, I am hopeful and I'm confident that the language that we've included in especially hotel purpose along with our ancillary definition gets at the nexus between the hotel and the industries that are serving that hotel.

So let's go ahead and vote if that sounds good to council colleagues.

It's been moved and seconded that we consider amendment number one to job retention council bill 119556 sponsored by council member Pacheco.

All those in favor of the amended definition of ancillary hotel business and hotel purpose, please say aye.

One.

All those opposed say nay.

Nay.

Any abstentions?

None.

Okay so this amendment does not pass by a vote of one to three.

Appreciate you bringing that forward and that means that we do have the existing underlying bill that we have amended that we are going to now vote out of committee.

That would be item number two, Council Bill 119556, as amended by this committee.

I move that the committee move amended Council Bill 119556 from committee to full council.

All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

None.

Any abstentions?

None.

Thank you very much, Council Member Pacheco.

I know you have another meeting that you have to run to, so thank you for representing our city well there and for bringing that amendment forward.

Thank you.

I want to confirm with him that he is wanting to pull the other two amendments given the vote.

Do you mind?

Thank you, Brianna, very much.

Sorry to ask you to do that.

We have one more bill to consider before a discussion on the health care bill.

I believe it's item number three.

It's Council Bill 119557, related to safety protections.

Dan, are you able to walk us through that?

I'll continue.

This bill has a number of purely technical amendments.

Again, dashes, commas, and making sure that the words in a couple of situations accurately reflect the intent.

Very minimal technical changes.

The only substantive change is the addition of a definition for hotels purpose, which is the same definition that is in job retention bill.

And the ancillary hotel business definition is the same definition that's in the job retention bill as well.

Thank you very much.

Any questions?

I want to say a quick thank you.

There's been a lot of engagement on this issue specific to hotel safety protections.

I'm particularly proud of the policy changes that have been made in last committee that no longer ask for the hotel to do an investigation, no longer quote-unquote bans a guest but still protects all the workers in the hotel from accused harassers and I think that the language that we have carefully worked with the folks at the King County Sexual Assault and Prevention Coalition and the prosecutors, King County prosecutors, along with the folks here at Central Staff and our council colleagues, you all have helped to make this at least include some of the basic protections that we'd like to see so some of these very vulnerable workers do not end up in the situations that we've heard from the very beginning of this discussion prior to my arrival to council when you all worked to support initiative 124 as well.

I do think that while the policy content has changed slightly, the protections that we've included, especially with some of the guidance from the ACLU, One America, REWA, et cetera, has been very helpful.

So thanks to all of you, and again, thanks to our teams, Brianna and Sejal.

Sejal has spent a lot of time checking in with various stakeholders, so thank you for making These final edits possible with central staff, we do appreciate the content of the bill.

As you just heard from Karina, there's not a ton of substantive changes besides the ancillary definition and the hotel purpose here.

So are there any other comments on this section on hotel safety?

Okay, seeing none, I'd like to move the committee amend Council Bill 119557 by substituting version D8 for version D5.

Second.

Any additional comments?

Seeing none, all those in favor of Council Bill 119557, amended version D5, please, I'm sorry, amended version D8, no, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Too many versions.

I know.

Any opposed?

None.

And then any abstentions?

None.

Great.

So we are going to recommend the committee move to full council.

Council Bill 119557 as amended for full consideration on September 16th.

Excellent.

So central staff, that gets us through the three bills that we had previously considered and discussed.

And before we move to health care, Council Member Swan, Council Member Gonzalez, I'd like to just take a quick recess.

We've had a lot of printing in the last 24 hours, and I want to make sure that we have all of our materials set up for us to go into this discussion.

And according to the clerk, we are allowed to take a recess.

Folks here in the audience, please feel free to stay.

We're going to take at least a 15-minute recess, so please do stay, and maybe sooner we can come back.

Let me give a specific time.

1.20, that gives us 12 minutes.

At 1020, we will reconvene here.

That gives us 12 minutes for a quick recess.

Central staff, if you could also join us to make sure that we have all of the materials in place.

Council colleagues, I apologize for the delay, but we've, as you can tell, been drinking from a fire hose.

So let's get all the materials in hand, and we will keep this committee open.

It has not been closed out, and the viewing audience is welcome to stay.

We'll be back at 1020. Thank you.

Bye!

Bye!

do you

Thank you very much.

Do you want mine?

Welcome back, everyone.

It is 1026. Thank you for taking a short recess.

And without further ado, we are going to consider the hotel worker legislation related to healthcare.

Dan and Karina, you have some opportunities to walk us through a number of amendments on this.

And we will get into some of the policy details, and I have some comments specific to healthcare after you walk us through some of the overarching amendments that have been included.

For the viewing audience, we're going to be looking at D4, which was posted to the agenda as well, and we're going to get it up on the screen as soon as possible.

Karina, if you could begin walking us through that, that would be wonderful.

Thank you.

If it's all right, to make sure I'm meeting your intent, I was going to go through the bill as the changes appear in the bill.

I'm sorry, Karina, what was that?

I was going to go through the bill and talk about the changes as they appear in the order that they appear.

Yep, that sounds great.

So the first change is in the recital section.

It's adding the word additional compensation.

recognizing that additional compensation to pay for high quality affordable health coverage can create greater workplace satisfaction and has other benefits as well.

The additional compensation is also reflected in the intent section, but I'll get to that in a moment.

In the definitions, we're looking now at page two.

There are a number of new definitions.

First is the addition of ancillary hotel business, which was not defined when this bill was last considered.

The definition that you see now matches the same one that's in job retention and safety protections.

Moving on, annual enrollment period is a definition that is added to help clarify the meaning of qualifying life event.

This definition reflects pretty much the same language as is seen in the federal regulations governing the Affordable Care Act.

I'm just going to continue going on.

If folks have questions, please let me know.

On page 3, there's a definition of covered employer, simply stating that covered employer means an employer who meets the criteria for coverage in this law.

Moving on to page 4, the definition for gold level equivalent is struck because it is no longer used in this version.

Health coverage, also on the same page, has a definition.

Hotel's purpose is added, again, reflecting the same definition of hotel's purpose and job retention and safety protections bills.

Hours is added.

This definition actually is already in the Office of Labor Standards rules for Initiative 124, 14. and this definition is helpful for employers and employees trying to figure out what hours they count when they're determining whether or not they've worked an average of 80 hours to be covered by this law.

On page five, is a definition of qualifying life event.

It is moved to be in alphabetical order from the end of the list to here in its correct alphabetical placement.

This definition is a little bit different than the last one in that it's a little bit more open and broader, gives more latitude for qualifying life event.

Rate of inflation is added.

This rate of inflation is the same definition that is used in all of the labor standards here in Seattle.

It's what the Office of Labor Standards uses to increase its civil penalties and fines each year.

Special enrollment period is defined on page six.

Again, reflecting language that is similar to the federal regulations governing the Affordable Care Act.

That's all for definitions.

Moving to page seven in the intent.

As I previewed, it is clarified that the intent of this law is to provide employees access to high quality affordable health coverage through additional compensation.

It's a key term, additional compensation.

On page seven, there are some clarifications on what happens when an employee may have an opportunity to waive their coverage by this law, and that would happen in a situation where the employee receives health coverage from another source than their employer, and they would rather maintain that coverage than be covered by this law.

And what this amendment does is that it clarifies that when an employee says that they wish not to be covered by this law, the employer must offer them a waiver free of coercion under penalty of perjury, that the employee does have access to that high quality and affordable health coverage from a different source.

and that the employer must offer the waiver on a form issued by the Office of Labor Standards and provide the employee with written information about the rights that they are no longer going to be covered by.

It is, I think, the most significant change in this is that the employer is not required to obtain that waiver.

Instead, they are offering that waiver to the employee.

Moving on, the next round of substantive changes are on page 10 under 14.28.060, required healthcare expenditures for covered employees.

I want to acknowledge up front that the way these track changes show up can be hard to follow.

That's what happens with track changes.

Computers do wacky things, so I have a clean version here that I might refer to at certain times.

So most significantly in Section A are the amounts of the required healthcare expenditure.

What you'll see is that these amounts are lower than what was voted on last time.

Last time, the amounts had a 20% haircut from the amounts that were in the original bill.

These amounts reflect a 25% haircut of the amounts in the original bill.

So it goes down to $420 for a single employee, $714 for an employee with only dependents, $840, and $1,260.

Also in, let's see, in Section B, the ordinance says that covered employers have the discretion as to decide how they're going to meet the requirements of this monthly required health care expenditure.

The ordinance already sets forth that they can do it through cash, additional compensation, healthcare services made to honor behalf of covered employees.

And then number two, it did say it's been broadened.

So it's not just a health savings accounts.

It includes tax favored health programs.

And there are some examples included in the language now of what tax favored health programs could be.

There is a fair amount of removed language under number three.

And if it goes on to page 12. It begins, if a covered employer makes its monthly required healthcare expenditures.

This language is referencing situations when an employer is making their monthly required healthcare expenditure through an employer-sponsored plan, and the plan has a waiting period, which is, of course, common to most plans.

What happens then with the employee's coverage under this law and the employer's requirement to provide that monthly payment of some kind.

So this just clarifies that.

The basic premise of it is the same, that if there is a waiting period, the employee is not covered the sooner of 60 days from the date of hire or expiration of the waiting period.

Next on page 12 is a section that, again, is hard to read, but I'm going to go ahead look at it from the accepted changes version.

This is a situation in D where an employer has made an offer for the monthly required healthcare expenditure that fully satisfied us all of the obligations of the amount that needs to be reached and the employer has offered a way of paying that amount to the employee through its own decision to do it through additional compensation, tax favorite health plan, providing an employer sponsored plan or some combination of those.

If what the employer's offers does, does satisfy all of those monthly required healthcare expenditure requirements and the employee declines that offer, then the employee doesn't have a right to get that amount under this law.

And the employer is required to offer a waiver that's similar to the other waiver is in a form issued by Office of Labor Standards and give the employee written information about the rights that they are waiving and of course the waiver must be free from coercion and under penalty of perjury.

After this I believe that most of the changes are technical, but do want to bring attention to the removal of an exemption from the law if an employer is offering a gold-level equivalent health care plan.

That has been removed since the last version.

So the way that an employer might not have to make this payment is if the employee declines the way that the employer is offering their monthly health care expenditure or if they are not covered by the law at all because they receive coverage from another source.

Do you have anything else?

One more thing.

This is important.

I'm glad you asked.

The effective date.

When this was last passed, it was April of 2020 and it has been extended For ancillary hotel businesses with between 50 and 250 employees that contract lease or sublease with a hotel, as of the date of passage of this law, for those employers, this law will take effect upon the later of July 1st, 2025. or the earliest annual open enrollment period after July 1 of 2025. For all other covered employers, this law will go into effect in July 1, 2020, or again, the earliest annual enrollment period for health coverage after that date.

So there is more time for employers to get ready for the implementation of this law and for workers to know their rights.

And that's in harmony with what we did in the other legislation.

We wanted to harmonize that date.

Okay.

I do have one question and then I'd love to open it up to council colleagues.

You mentioned the 80 hour a week threshold and I'm looking for that.

I believe it's on page seven of D4 and I'm not seeing it jump out at the page at me.

Sure.

It's after line five on page seven.

Okay.

Thanks, Dan, for scrolling back to that.

So we did hear some public comment around how 80 hours a week is calculated, and I know we have specifically included in there a reference to rulemaking and director's rule.

Can you talk a little bit more about how that 80 hour a week, sorry, 80 hour threshold potentially could be calculated by the folks at the Office of Labor Standards.

Any additional insight as to how that may be calculated or options that they may have as they look at that?

I believe that the Office of Labor Standards is going to be the expert on how to calculate that and I do believe that their rules do address this issue.

Dan, do you have anything to add?

No, I don't.

I think this is consistent with the way 124 approached the same provision to determine who was going to be covered.

And I know that there were rules for 124, but I'm sorry, I don't know exactly how this particular item was treated.

So I would love to follow up with Office of Labor Standards so we can address some of the questions that came up today.

In previous discussions around labor standards legislation, when we've had similar types of calculations, Office of Labor Standards have often looked at an average.

So for example, if one month somebody works 75 hours and another month somebody works 85 hours, if there is an average that they look back upon, that would be helpful to know.

I also think that it would be helpful for us to have a sense of our intent.

I think our intent as the legislative body and the council members who've been considering this is to ensure continuous coverage.

And so similar to previous conversations, we just want there to be continuity.

And so I think we'll follow up with the question around continuity of how this 80-hour threshold is applied and I think they will be able to give us a robust answer but it is a valid question that's been asked and I want to make sure that we address it as it comes forward on Monday.

That was one of my questions.

The other question that I have is Is there any other amendment that you would like to consider today?

I know we had initially thought about some additional amendments.

I believe those have been all pulled.

This would be the content of what we'd be voting on today.

Okay.

Council Member Sawant, you have been great about articulating the fact that we wouldn't be in this situation if we had universal healthcare.

And we wouldn't be in the situation that we understand from many of the employers where healthcare is becoming increasingly expensive.

And we wouldn't be in the situation where workers are constantly having to bargain their wages compared to healthcare.

at the bargaining table for those who have representation and it does seem like that it is worth elevating those points again as we think about final passage of this.

Would you like to comment on that because I think it's a point well taken and some frankly employers have also expressed that if we had a better system nationwide or even at the state level we potentially wouldn't even be in this situation.

I'd love for you to comment on that.

That's right, and I appreciate Council Member Mosqueda, you including this even in this final discussion in the committee.

As you said, we've made these points before.

I believe all three of us have made those points, but I think it is important to reiterate because If we had had a real Medicare for all system in this nation, then neither employers nor workers would be, you know, this wouldn't be a topic of conversation for either of us because then we would be guaranteed quality healthcare regardless of where you worked.

Even if you were unemployed because you were on disability, you would have all your health care needs guaranteed.

And especially I think we should mention the needs of women and the LGBTQ community, especially the trans community members.

But I also think that this is a good opportunity for us.

to also highlight that the companies and the employers who are maybe not thrilled about this, to keep in mind that the best way that you can address this issue is the same way that we are attempting to address this issue, you know, in the movements, which is fighting for Medicare for all.

Ultimately, you are also getting squeezed by the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry.

And the only way to solve this problem is to unite on that basis.

But it cannot be on the backs of workers.

So I don't think there's anything inappropriate happening here.

This is absolutely the bare minimum that our city council should be doing in our city to protect our hotel workers, some of the most vulnerable workers.

And no, you know, books can be balanced on the backs of workers.

And if this is burdensome, which it may be for some employers, it actually, you know, points towards the need for us to unite to win Medicare for all, which is urgently needed.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate you raising that point earlier and wanted to make sure that that was included as sort of as the framing of this.

We are really interested in making sure that if there is the possibility of getting extra dollars in hand for people to potentially purchase on the exchange, that's an option.

But that we also look at what we can do holistically across the state, across the country to make sure that folks who especially are in sometimes very demanding positions have access to comprehensive care.

and that they have the means to purchase it.

So thank you for raising that.

And speaking of the means to purchase it, hopefully getting that element out of our healthcare system at the local level and at the state and national level.

At the local level, we'll have some more conversations next year about looking at what San Francisco and Los Angeles have done around regional health plan concepts and looking forward to working with you on that too to see what else we can do locally.

So thank you.

I would love to sort of jump in with some pieces here and then maybe conclude with some thank yous.

But I think folks know that the bill that we have in front of us has had tremendous amount of feedback.

As you heard, a lot of people have provided us with edits, direct line item edits, concept edits.

We've received numerous calls and emails from worker advocates, from the industry, from community members as a whole, and I take to heart some of the concerns that we've heard about not all of those ideas being incorporated in this last bill.

I think there has been a sincere effort to include feedback and your feedback has been received, appreciated, and while not all of the language that we've all discussed over the last 11 weeks has been included.

It has been a very, very, it's a tremendous honor to be able to work with all of you as you've provided that feedback specific to the health care legislation.

It's something that I know we are interested in making sure and that we will continue between now and Monday to get additional feedback on how well we have done with this draft here.

But our intent is to really make sure that the folks who are going with hours and hours of working, whether it's within the restaurant, in the hotel, in proximity to the hotel, whether it's the folks who are cleaning the rooms on a daily basis, and whether it's the folks who are basically, you know, putting their bodies on the line with making sure that we all have access to clean and healthy hotels.

We want them to be able to have access to purchase high quality health care and or have it offered.

And I think that this is an attempt to try to get us away.

As you heard Stefan mention, this is a good first step.

You mentioned this is a good first step, and we will continue to run the language here through stakeholders and others between now and Monday.

I'm really excited about some of the work that we've done to make sure that those especially who, as we've heard, have higher rates of injury than coal miners and construction workers, do have the ability to go see a doctor, have preventative care, and then have emergency care as well.

So I think that we are moving the ball forward.

It doesn't include all of the elements that we've heard over the last few months, but I'm really appreciative that folks have engaged with us and I hope will continue to.

as we finalize this process and then probably more importantly as we think about rulemaking and implementation and overview.

This has been a labor of love to get this health care piece in front of you all today and we will continue to work and just want to express my appreciation for all those who have written and provided us with content.

I know that not everybody is satisfied with what they see in front of them and acknowledge that and also appreciate their past work.

So I'll save some of my other thank yous for everybody who has been part of that labor of love in a moment, but want to turn it over to Council Member Gonzalez if you have anything else to add.

Sure.

I just wanted to really quickly address a quick technical component, well not technical, but a quick component in terms of the amendments that we're considering today that we heard some public testimony about certainly today, but also in previous hearings that we've had in this committee.

and also have received correspondence about this primarily from employers.

And that's on the issue of our decision today to remove the language related to specifying a specific level of healthcare plan.

I do think it's important for us to articulate that The decision that we're making today as co-sponsors and as supporters of the overall effort in this healthcare bill are really designed to and are consistent with the original intent of the ordinance, which is to improve access.

to healthcare coverage.

It's my belief that these amendments bring the ordinance within a framework of a similar type of ordinance that we saw come out of San Francisco.

Council Member Mosqueda referenced this, that's the Healthy San Francisco Law, which similar to this law, though more broadly applicable, applied to uninsured individuals within San Francisco health care coverage and that was again focused on the access piece to health care coverage.

That law has been on the books since 2006 when it was first considered and passed by that city and was challenged subsequently by their restaurant industry.

and ultimately was upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

We sit in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals here in Washington State.

And the Ninth Circuit has found that that structure in terms of the healthy San Francisco law was an appropriate way to model at the local level, this type of policy decision.

So, again, the U.S.

Supreme Court had an opportunity to weigh in on that particular case, declined to review that case, and At least in the Ninth Circuit, that structure, that ordinance is good law.

And I think that this particular amendment, the amendments that we're making now, as represented in this substitute bill, do create a feasible framework to achieve the ultimate goal of employee access to high quality and affordable health coverage.

while also taking into consideration and balancing the realities of the various ways that employers can comply with the intent of the ordinance, as well as addressing some of the difference in cost between those options.

So I believe that we have been able to, through those amendments, really create the balance and the choice that is necessary to be more aligned with precedent in the Ninth Circuit that makes me feel comfortable with proceeding forward with the substitute version.

So I didn't want to miss the opportunity to state for the record and for the viewing audience that that that is sort of the intent and the motivation by which we as policymakers are being guided is this precedent in the Ninth Circuit that really is giving us the opportunity to both consider this as a bill, but also do it in a way that it comports with pre-existing regulation in this area.

I'll just sort of transition from being a wonky lawyer for a moment back into, you know, sort of the real issues at hand here.

And I couldn't agree more with both you, Chair Mosqueda, and Council Member Sawant around sort of the realities of why we find ourselves in this situation in the first place.

A few months ago, the Seattle City Council became the first city council in the nation to consider and pass a resolution in support of Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal's Medicare for All bill that was introduced and overwhelmingly sponsored by many, many representatives in our Congress.

And, you know, we had a very robust discussion at that time about how our healthcare system is deeply broken because it's designed for profit of healthcare insurance companies.

And the reality is that in this country, we rely on our employers to be the providers of health insurance, and your health insurance and your health and your livelihood of both yourself and your family are largely dependent on whether or not you have a job and whether or not that job is with an employer who is big enough and lucrative enough to be able to even access the very expensive products that are offered within the healthcare insurance industry.

That is an unfortunate situation for all of us to find ourselves in.

So to me, this isn't a conversation about whether or not employers are wanting to skirt some sort of social compact to provide healthcare.

I consistently hear from many employers that they really wish that they could, provide more affordable healthcare.

And so I think what we're trying to do here is thread the needle between the realities of what we know are the challenges for employer-based provided healthcare coverage with the realities of what it means to have to function in this society without any access to healthcare at all if you're a worker.

This issue is extremely personal to me.

I spent more than 30% of my life without any healthcare insurance by virtue of not working in low-wage retail industries.

I've worked in hotels, I've worked in department stores, I've worked in fast food.

I understand what it means to hope and pray that today is not the day that you're gonna need healthcare.

And I also come from a migrant farm worker family.

And in my family, as a migrant farm worker, we were absolutely cut out of any sort of healthcare conversations for sure.

And we weren't covered by many labor protection laws either.

And I, as I sit here and think about the issues that we're facing, I think about my mother who worked all her life as a migrant farm worker in Central Washington State.

and had really severe health conditions, and still does, that are typical for low-income, impoverished communities.

She's a hardworking woman.

She's committed.

She believes in providing for her family and being a productive member of society.

And she had to wait until she was 60, and until her food processing plant was organized by Teamsters.

to even be able to access a few days of paid vacation and healthcare.

She was 60 years old before she had the opportunity to be able to feel that she wasn't in a position to be stressed, to go to the doctor, to take care of herself, and that is unfair.

And it's not right.

And we have an opportunity today to correct that for thousands of women who are primarily immigrant women who work in this city and labor in this city, oftentimes in the shadow, invisible and not being seen.

So this is about their health.

It's about the health of our families.

It's about the health of women.

And it's about trying to do what we can, what we are obligated to do in this city where we can to really create a more level playing field for the people who need it the most.

So I'm really thrilled that we're in this position to be able to use a limited tool that we do have to really provide this important relief to so many women and their families to be able to access this healthcare.

I think it's the right thing to do and I really sort of am getting emotional because Because I do this in sort of the spirit of the strength of my mother and women like my mother who I know outside of this chambers right now.

are struggling to make ends meet and they make decisions every day about whether or not to be healthy.

And it's all based on finances and economics.

And I think we all have an opportunity to come together, both industry, employers, and workers, and say this, we're gonna stand together here and we're gonna make a difference.

So with that being said, I look forward to voting this out of committee and to having a bigger celebration on Monday.

Thank you for sharing that story.

Thank you for grounding us.

Yes, you can applaud if you'd like to.

I didn't mean to cut that off.

Thank you both for grounding us in the intent behind this legislation.

I think you've both articulated well the intent is to ensure that people have access to healthcare.

And by one way or another, that we help to encourage more people like the story that you just shared about your mom to be able to be in a position to have a healthy life from the beginning and not have to wait until they're 60. The intent is not to engage in a game of gotcha.

The intent is not to vilify any one industry or any person.

It is to make sure that the folks who are working in our city are healthy and safe.

And I appreciate you both grounding us in that.

And I look forward to having more conversations around the intent of this legislation on Monday, but could not underscore more what you both just shared.

So thank you very much.

I want to say a quick thank you as well to Dan and Karina, who have been working with us as we've been thinking through the various amendment language.

Thank you very much, Dan and Karina, the unsung heroes of the drafts, multiple drafts, as you've heard us talk about before.

And for folks who have been waiting for those, there's materials still on the table that you can grab.

Really, this has not been possible without you, so thank you for participating in that.

And Karina, this is one of your first opportunities to work with the council on labor standards legislation in your new role, so thank you for jumping right in, and Dan, for working with us throughout the process, and your ongoing patience and willingness, both of you, to engage with us and various stakeholders as we've tried to incorporate as much amendments as possible from the community.

And if you don't mind, maybe I'll just read through a list of folks who I think have been helpful, instrumental in helping us craft the legislation in front of us.

Erica Franklin and the rest of the folks at the City Attorney's Office, thank you for continuing to provide us with feedback.

I know we'll probably continue to engage with you between now and Monday.

Our teams, Sejal Parikh from my office and Brianna Thomas from Council Member Gonzalez's office, for their leadership and their work with various stakeholders over the last, I would say, six months, but it's been more like nine to a year, nine months.

Council Member Sawant, thank you to your team as well.

Ted has been great engaging with us and you've been here at almost every single meeting.

So thank you for participating with us and being a leader on both the issues that we're trying to raise and the broader concepts.

And I want to also thank Jan, sorry, Janine, sorry, Janae.

I see you out there, Janae.

Thank you from the Office of Labor Standards for engaging with us early, as well as folks from the Executive Office and Councilmembers who have been engaged with us at every single meeting, including their staff.

Alison from Bagshaw's office, Susie from O'Brien's office, Brendel from Juarez's office, Alyssa from Pacheco's office, I already mentioned Ted from your office, Alex from Councilmember Herbold's office and Vin from the council president's office and then our communication team, Dana, Stephanie and Joseph.

There's been a lot of communications back and forth on this.

We also want to acknowledge that the folks who have been testifying day after day on this issue, I know that you are industry experts as well as worker experts from your own lived experience.

You have shared stories on a weekly basis almost about the need for these provisions and from the industry, the need to incorporate some of the edits.

All of those were not included from both of the stakeholder perspective.

We are hopeful that you have seen some of those components included and we'll continue to work with you to make sure that this is implementable and that the goals, the intent, again, is accomplished through this legislation.

So first, thank you to Anna Boone and John from the Seattle Restaurant Association, Restaurant Alliance and Seattle Hospitality Association and as well as Leah and Teddy who've been providing us with feedback.

I want to thank Stefan and Abby from Unite Here for advocating with us and who've been advocating us to make these changes in statute here.

And looking forward to continuing to hear more from your members about how these policies potentially impact the goals and desires that you wanted to see.

So thank you for engaging with us.

Again, I understand both of those stakeholders, not everybody is satisfied with everything in all of these four pieces, and don't want to indicate by my way of saying my appreciation for you engaging with us that there's, you know, buy-off on any and all of these pieces, but I know that a lot of you have spent a lot of time, so I want to thank you.

And last week, we thanked the folks who provided us with feedback from the Sexual Assault Victims and Crime Prevention Program, so I just want to specifically thank Rebecca Johnson and Andrea Piper-Whetland, Mary Ellen Stone, Ben Santos from the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center and the King County Prosecutor's Office, Allison Holcomb and Eric Gonzalez from the ACLU, Ann Sidmon and Tamar from the Office of Civil Rights and Rich Stoltz and Eli Goss from One America, Manaz from Refugee Women's Alliance for all of their work with us on the hotel safety protections.

And I think I'm leaving a million people out because this has been a process that not only we have engaged in over the last nine months to a year, but that folks have engaged in over rulemaking with OLS when you were working there, Karina, on various rulemaking iterations.

I know that that was an intensive process as well, and the folks who then initially drafted Initiative 124. If I have left anybody out, I really apologize, and we will have a chance to again revisit the legislation, the four components, as well as any other framing concepts, policy questions that folks have, and reiterate our thank you on Monday the 16th.

Any other comments?

Okay, central staff, thank you once again.

I started with you, but I want to end with you.

Any other comments from you all?

Okay.

You've all done really tremendous work.

So you've burnt the midnight oil on multiple occasions, and I'm going to not say anything else today.

Okay.

My pregnancy hormones are obviously extremely high right now.

We're happy to have all of the sentiments that you both shared and the public testimony that we've heard.

So we know that this is not an easy process.

If it was, it would have already been done.

And we have really put the work in to make sure that the four pieces of legislation are reflective of the goals that we started with.

And Council Member Swann, please.

I mean, first of all, I wanted to thank you and Council Member Gonzalez and your staff and, of course, central staff.

Also, a special, I think, mention of Unite Here Local 8 and all the organizers with Unite Here Local 8 and also the members, many of whom have been in city council chambers, some of whom are here today, who not only take on real difficulties in their own lives in terms of all the, you know, the conditions that we have described many times, but on top of that, take on the task of advocating not only for themselves, but collectively advocating for everybody who's in the situation.

Just one other point I wanted to add.

which I think we should reiterate in the city council meeting also.

There's been a lot also said that maybe this is second-guessing voters' intent.

I wanted to state that very clearly.

There is no second-guessing of voters' intent.

The voters' intent was very clearly to make sure that all hotel workers in Seattle have healthcare and all the other, you know, benefits that we need in order to make sure that they have a decent standard of living.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much.

Anything else on voter intent?

I was like, yes.

Anything else?

Okay.

So thank you for reiterating that in the closing comments.

And I think that moves us to final consideration of Council Bill 11955. I'd like to move to substitute version D2 for version D4.

And that's again, Council Bill 119555. It's been moved and seconded.

Are there any additional comments?

Seeing none, all of those in favor of amended version of Council Bill 119555, please vote aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

None.

Any abstentions?

None.

We have now moved Council Bill 119555 out of this committee to full council for consideration on September 19th, 16th, September 16th.

To reiterate, all four bills have now been moved out of this committee for consideration on September 16th, that's next Monday.

That's Council Bill 119555, Medical Care 119557, Safety Protections 119554, Protection from Injury and 119556, Job Retention.

And we look forward to working with you guys on Monday to address any additional questions.

Central staff, thank you once again.

I'm sure we will be following up with you on the drafts in front of us.

All four bills have now moved out of this committee and I really thank you all for your engagement with us as we've worked to get these bills out of this committee and had robust discussion.

Thank you again to everybody who's come to testify, and we look forward to seeing many of you, I am sure, on Monday.

And with that, we will move to our final piece of agenda.

It's item number five.

Agenda item number five, Council Bill 119615, an ordinance relating to the Multifamily Housing Property Tax Exemption Program for briefing and discussion.

And for folks who are joining us for item number five, please join us at the table and let's go through a walkthrough of MFTE.

I want to again reiterate that we kept open public comment.

If there are folks here who have signed up for public comment on MFTE, now is the time to line up at the microphone.

We have, I believe, pulled the sign-in sheet, which we'll put back up there, and we'll make sure to get you signed in to testify.

Before you go, Councilmember Gonzalez, it's been a real honor and privilege and pleasure to work with you on the hotel worker legislation, and I just want to say thank you as we head out of this committee and into full council.

Appreciate all of your work and all of your tenacity to make sure that we get this right.

And thank you very much for everything you've done on this.

It's been my pleasure as well.

Thank you.

Sorry to leave you by yourself.

You are good, you're good.

You're in good hands, though.

Yes, we are good.

And I see a few folks that have signed up for public testimony on MFTE.

We did hear from two folks prior to moving to this agenda item.

I see Charlie LaFomme from MLK Labor.

Charlie, I'm sorry if I said your last name right.

Charlie, please go ahead and testify.

And we gave folks a minute and a half prior, so if you could take a minute and a half.

And if you folks are here to testify on MFTE too, we'll make sure to get you in.

I'm up first?

You are, Charlie.

Hi.

Hi.

I'm Charlie.

I'm with the King County Labor Council, and we represent more than 150 unions and more than 100,000 union workers across King County.

And we strongly support the multifamily tax exemption because it really checks the boxes for so much of what working families in Seattle need today.

It provides good union jobs to those in the building and construction trades, family wage jobs that lift people up in an economy that's stacked against workers.

It also provides income-restricted housing to working people in Seattle who might otherwise not have somewhere to live in this city.

In fact, it's been one of the most effective tools to provide this type of housing.

It houses people all across the workforce, from educators to healthcare workers to public servants.

And as a whole, the workers living in these units make about one third of market rate residents in the same unit.

So it provides true mixed income communities.

And we do not want to see this successful program tweaked in a way that impacts its viability.

So we're asking the council to renew the program without changes to the AMI restriction or reductions.

which would delay housing projects that qualify for this incentive.

It's really important that we get this right for the working people who might otherwise be priced out of the city.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you.

And other folks that have signed up to testify, thank you so much for joining us.

And we have about a minute and a half on the screen for you.

Yes, Pedro Espinosa, thank you again with the Carpenters Union.

We're in strong support of this.

We feel that our communities are greatly affected by people that are not, you know, allowed a right to live.

And also it's, you know, as we know, our city is growing and that's what the growing pains are.

But if we keep pushing these folks out, and not allowing them to live.

They live further and further away, which then add to the congestion, which then again, it causes a problem.

But we're also looking at that, you know, pushing this would help us greatly monitor these developers when they create these developments for these folks to live in.

that they also get a chance to have a livable wage added to their living, because as the gentleman before us, some of these people that build these facilities can't even afford to live there, even though it's called affordable living.

So we're advocating for this strongly that, you know, it passes, and we thank you for your support again, too.

Excellent.

Thank you so much, Pedro.

The last person we have signed up to testify is Jesse Scott.

Canola?

Canola.

Say that again?

Jesse Scott Candle.

Thank you.

So my name is Jesse Scott Candle.

I'm with Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters.

One of the largest problems we see in these multifamily residential projects is piecework.

You know, we need to add some, I'm in favor of this, the multifamily tax exemption, but we need some stronger teeth in it for tracking the projects, making sure that people are actually making a livable wage for these projects, can afford to live in them.

You know, I see a lot of piece work on these projects.

There's no reporting structures.

So we are giving a huge tax exemption with no tracking.

And so I really think we need to add something in there.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate that feedback.

And is there anybody else here who'd like to testify on NFTE, the multifamily tax exemption?

Oh, okay.

Oh, welcome.

And just state your name and I'll sign you in.

I see Nicole Brandt is here.

Yes, hello, Nicole Grant from MLK Labor.

And the comments I would like to make are in support of the multifamily tax exemption with an eye towards the priorities of unions like mine, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Seattle Building Trades, and, of course, the carpenters here.

We know we need housing and I feel like the tax exemption is fair and it's stimulating to our goals of getting that housing that we're basically desperate for.

But there has to be a mechanism to make sure that the people who are Building the buildings are not themselves in poverty.

And I think that the way that our brothers have spoke to that issue today is very effective.

And I appreciate their words.

Thank you very much, Nicole.

Is there anybody else that would like to speak to MFT?

Okay, excellent.

Well, I really appreciate you all staying for the folks who testified earlier on MFTE and for the people who've been here for the entire morning.

And for folks who've been tracking this issue, we are going to have one more conversation next week on Thursday.

So, perfect timing to hear some of the feedback that we've received on tracking and ensuring accountability.

It's something that we did with the K site, and we have also included in other pieces of legislation.

So perfect timing.

Thank you so much.

And let's see what we can keep working on.

With that, that will actually close out public comment today.

And we have already read into the record item number five.

So why don't we go ahead and walk through some of the materials that you have.

And is there any presentation today?

Not today.

Okay, great.

So welcome, Tracy.

Why don't you start with introductions again?

Sure.

Tracy Ress of Council Central Staff.

Allie Panitchi, Council Central Staff.

Jennifer Lebrec, Office of Housing.

So we are here to have yet another conversation about the renewal of the multifamily property tax program.

The committee was briefed on August 1st regarding the program and in particular, the mayor's proposed changes to the program.

Today, Ali and I intend to walk through the proposed changes that were included in the council bill 119615 as it was introduced last week.

Those changes will be in addition to what the mayor had proposed in terms of changes.

So just to remind everyone, kind of preaching to the choir here today, but so the MFT program does provide a 12-year exemption from property taxes for both rental and homeownership projects that include a percentage of units with specific affordability requirements.

And those affordability requirements vary by unit size, one bedroom, two bedroom, etc. and whether it's rental or for sale housing.

The exemption does apply to all of the units, affordable and market rate and related spaces, but does not include the land or the non-residential improvements.

So as it relates to the changes that were proposed by the executive that were incorporated in the council bill as it was introduced, those key changes include the following.

So language was added as it relates to the area median income and rental rates and specifically, language that would not allow those rates to decrease from year to year.

And most importantly, that they cannot increase by more than 4.5% from year to year.

And this is really intended to address the significant fluctuations that we have seen in the last couple of years, in particular around the area median income, which tied directly to the rent rates that can be charged, particularly for the affordable units.

And so it felt like it was appropriate to put some boundaries on those increases so that we wouldn't see those kinds of significant fluctuations, but also provides an appropriate level of increase as increases do occur for the operation of housing.

So I feel like it was a balanced proposal that came from the executive.

And so that's been included in the council bill.

The second addition was to specifically add affirmatively furthering fair housing as an additional purpose of the tax exemption program.

In addition to kind of, Amplify that, it does require project developers to implement an affirmative marketing plan that has to be approved by the Office of Housing.

Those plans will have to provide information about the availability of those affordable units and that it be provided to all individuals regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, et cetera.

And particularly focus on individuals who might not otherwise know about that housing or the availability of that housing.

Another change is that the deadline for submittal of completed applications has been changed to now allow developers to submit an application up to six months prior to completion of a project, which is documented by the issuance of a temporary certificate of occupancy or a permanent certificate of occupancy.

And then this is really a change from what is currently required, which is that the application be submitted prior to the issuance of the first building permit.

So this is a big change in terms of providing greater flexibility for projects to come into the program now six months prior to completion versus prior to submittal of that issuance of that first building permit.

And then finally, the mayor proposed that the program continue for another four years and that it would expire December 31st, 2023. The current program, as we remember, is going to expire if we don't extend it December 30th of 2019. I think now we'll have Allie walk through the changes that are included in the proposed bill that were specifically suggested by Council Member Mosqueda.

Before you do that, I just want to also acknowledge for our viewing audience, we do have a central staff memo that was linked in the agenda and the text of the legislation as well has been linked in the agenda.

Allie, would it be helpful at all if we put the central staff memo up on the screen so that folks can walk through that?

I'm sure we could do that or I can also just refer to the page number if people are following along at home so they know where I'm speaking from.

Let's do both.

Okay.

Okay, wonderful.

And we do appreciate, thank you Tracy for the reminder that this is our second discussion on MFTE and the first discussion was on August 1st.

So for folks who may be tracking this at home, we will again bring this up next Thursday at 9 a.m.

Great.

Go ahead, Ellie.

Thank you.

So the following changes I'm going to describe were amendments proposed by Councilmember Mosquitto that were incorporated into the bill prior to introduction.

The first change, and I am starting from the bottom of page three of the central staff memo, if you're following along.

The first change modified the affordability levels for studios and one bedrooms.

by reducing from 65% of AMI for studios to 60% and 75% of AMI for one bedrooms to 70% of AMI.

The executive's proposal retained the current affordability levels, however, our analysis indicated that there was an opportunity to have a minor reduction in the affordability levels for studios and one-bedroom units while still providing a benefit to developers but continuing to serve households at a deeper level of affordability.

And I think here it's worth noting that a household in 2018 that was at 65% AMI, if they didn't see their income change, they would be closer to 60% AMI in 2019. The second modification, and I'm now on to page 4 of the memo.

relates to the affordability levels for small efficiency dwelling units, also referred to as CDUs.

The proposed change increases the affordability level for buildings where there are 100% of the units are CDUs from 40% to 50%.

This is in response to input we have heard from developers who have said that the 40% AMI requirement really didn't work for 100% CDU buildings.

For projects where there are less than 100% of the units are CDUs, so we often see buildings that have a mix of unit types, those CDUs would continue to be required to be provided at 40% of AMI.

The third change is to increase the requirement for how many two-plus bedroom units must be provided in order to achieve a reduced set-aside by increasing the number from 4% of the units to 8% of the units.

If this requirement is met, 20% of the total units in a project must meet the MFT affordability requirements.

If you did not provide 8% of units as two or more bedrooms, 25% of the total units in and projects must meet affordability requirements.

When looking at recent project participation, we found that over 80% of projects participating in the program are already providing more than the minimum number of two plus bedroom units, so this is another strategy to continue council's policy goals of encouraging more family size units.

The fourth change is expanding or refining the language around the comparability requirements for affordable units.

The current program and the executive's proposal for the MFT program had requirements for comparability in terms of the mix and configuration of all units.

in a project, the proposed change, or the change incorporated in the bill as introduced, just made that language similar to what is required for other affordable housing projects like the MHA, the Mandatory Housing Affordability Program, that includes a little bit more detail on the number and size of bedrooms, bathrooms, net unit area, access to amenities, functionality, and distribution of units in the building.

And the final change that was incorporated into the bill would be to require that the Office of Housing analyze changes in the housing market when they are preparing their annual report and if they notice changes that could impact program participation or could better improve the program to make recommendations on modifications the council may want to consider.

So those are the changes that were incorporated into the bill as introduced.

Also attached to the central staff memo is a proposed substitute that introduces a few primarily sort of technical changes on page 38 of the bill.

It incorporates some changes to just refine how the requirement for paying fees to cover the King County Assessor's administrative costs will be handled by the office.

And then on page two, a modification in the annual reporting to also look at changes to state law.

There has been some efforts recently to try to make changes at the state level to the program, and as those occur, to look at our local program and make sure those adjustments are incorporated, and also to collect some information on the demographics about people living in MFT units and see if we are achieving our goals.

in terms of who the program is serving.

So those are the changes that were covered by the staff memo.

There are a number of other potential amendments that we're in discussions with and we will distribute and prepare a memo for discussion at next week's committee meeting.

Excellent, thank you so much.

So we briefly talked about the case site and how we've included some language last year trying to look at some of the metrics.

I think that ties in with the public testimony that we heard today.

While it is not directly related, I think it's a good example of where we've tied in some requirements for reporting back.

Tracy, I don't want to put you on the spot, but I think I'm putting you on the spot.

Do you mind reminding us what we included in the K-Site legislation?

If you have it up top here?

So if I think I remember you, if I think I understand what you're referring to, they're not reporting requirements, they're actually requirements as it relates to that project.

So for the public's interest, the K-Site is a city-owned piece of property that is being developed by Plymouth Housing.

And it is the first in which we would actually have them enter into, and I think they've now completed a community workforce agreement that would impose prevailing wage requirements, as well as pre-apprenticeship requirements, as well as WIMBY requirements.

So it is more than just reporting, it is actually imposing those requirements on that project.

And the intent around that is to actually test out and see what are the implications in terms of particularly cost, but also the efficiency of developing that building.

by imposing those requirements on an affordable housing project.

So it is a bit slightly apples to oranges here in terms of that issue because those are actually requirements that we're imposing.

And I don't believe you're looking at imposing those on this.

That actually is, I think that project is actually intended to be a good test case to see what are the implications of imposing those kinds of requirements on the development of housing in the city for the possibility of then expanding it beyond just that one project.

Thank you for the reminder.

I think it also serves as a good example of some potential categories of labor standards that we could be looking at for reporting back the accountability provisions that you heard some folks testify to and the desire to see where we stand as it relates to those categories of labor standards in future work on MFTE.

So I look forward to working with you all as we think about those potential considerations that we've heard today and from stakeholders prior to today.

I want to thank the folks who came to testify earlier.

And just to reiterate, I think our support for making sure that the dollars that we're putting into incentivizing the creation of affordable units truly do result in more folks being able to afford to live in the city and that the folks who are building those units are also getting a living wage, prevailing wage ideally, that they have the ability to live in the same units that they're building.

We've spent a lot of time talking about the equity aspects of using the public dollar for public good, and I think this is a good example for where we can potentially do a truth test on how well we're doing here, some of these elements.

We also want to make sure that there's the right balance.

Folks have testified today and provided us with previous feedback that there is the right balance in terms of making sure that it is truly an incentive and that the product is able to be created and that's affordable housing units.

I don't have any further questions for us today except for to say thank you for walking us through this again.

Could you remind us a little bit about when you think that those amendments should be in hand and if we have a timeline that we'd like to offer to our council colleagues?

so that you on central staff don't have the rush of amendments that come at you.

So if we did a deadline by the end of this, today's Thursday, I'm sorry.

If the goal is to have this in committee again for possible vote next Thursday, what would be the ideal timeline for you all?

Well, the ideal in terms of us being able to create the amendments and then also get a memo out, which I think we may do a shorter version of the memo, probably by the end of day tomorrow, latest Monday morning.

We've been trying to talk to your council colleagues to kind of elicit any suggested changes.

We have not to this point heard any additional changes, but that could change as well as we get closer to adoption as is so often the case.

Great.

Well, we are going to underscore your first desire, which is by end of the day tomorrow, that's Friday, September 13th, please provide central staff with any additional feedback.

That's true for our office as well, so we will work to get you any additional feedback.

Did you have anything that you'd like to share on this?

I don't at this time.

Okay, we want to thank the executive for sending down the initial legislation and for working with us as well and Office of Housing as we've been considering.

Thank you.

And Erin, why don't you just go ahead and sit on down because Erin House here from our team in my office has been working diligently with central staff, with the executive, Office of Housing and stakeholders to try to incorporate some of the amendments that you've already heard central staff walk through and then any potential amendments we're asking for folks to turn into central staff by the end of tomorrow.

I don't anticipate a ton of amendments which is great because it sounds like we've done a good job of trying to incorporate feedback early but having the request out there is really good so that way on Monday we can follow up with you to make sure that that timeline's been adhered to.

Erin, anything else that you wanted to share on MFT?

Don't feel obligated.

I just wanted to make sure to acknowledge the work that you've done on this.

Okay.

And so with that, we will prepare to look at an updated central staff memo on potential additions to the underlying bill early next week with the anticipation of having a discussion and vote next Thursday.

Before I get into sort of what else is on the agenda, I want to take a second to thank Farideh Cuevas.

You have been at this table chairing our discussions and moving us along and staffing the committee throughout this entire process.

So we had a really big day today on hotel worker legislation.

Thank you for your flexibility as we've gotten through those giant pieces of legislation so that we can now consider things related to Office of Housing and Seattle City Light, which will be coming up over our next two committee meetings.

And your work is really appreciated.

So thank you for your stewardship as we got through these last few meetings.

Seeing no other questions or comments from our colleagues, we are going to reconvene on September 19th at 9 a.m.

Again, 9 a.m.

is a half hour earlier than usual.

We will start with a potential repeal of the initiative 124 which was the actual initiative side assuming that we do get the four pieces of legislation passed on Monday.

That'll just be a small item so that we can move on to MFTE renewal, possible vote, office of housing, director confirmation, again congratulations to Emily Alvarado for her nomination from the executive and we look forward to interviewing her and hearing more feedback from the council colleagues.

We have sent out questions for council committee, council colleagues to add to, and we will be sharing those tomorrow at noon with Ms. Alvarado.

So if you do have additional questions that you'd like the Office of Housing nominee to consider, please get those back to Erin House before then.

The other three items on the agenda for next Thursday include the Seattle Rental Housing Assistance Pilot, the five Seattle Housing Authority appointments, and the Office of Housing, Race, and Social Justice Initiative Report.

The final meeting of the Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee will be on a Tuesday, and that is Tuesday the 24th at 2 p.m., where we will focus on Seattle City Light, and we will wrap up our year.

With that, thank you all for your work on MFT.

We did not mean to delay the discussion, but I think that the timing of this vote on next Thursday potentially on MFT gave us a little bit more opportunity to hear from the community, some items that they'd like to see included.

So I'm glad that that worked out well and appreciate you all.

With that, today's meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.