Select Budget Committee Session I - 10/14/22

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you for joining the Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee meeting.

Today is Friday, October 14, 2024. The time is 9.32am.

I'm Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson.

Council Member Sawant.

Present.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Herbal.

Council Member Juarez.

Council Member Lewis.

Present.

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Chair Mosqueda.

Present.

And Council Member Herbold is, I believe, in the waiting room, if we could admit her real quick.

Wonderful.

Hello, Council Member Herbold.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Seven present.

Okay, thank you so much.

I want to thank you all again for joining us.

Council Member Peterson has asked to be excused for the proceedings for today.

If there's no objection, Council Member Peterson is excused.

Hearing no objection, Council Member Peterson is excused.

Colleagues, thanks again for joining us.

This is day four of week three, the fourth and final day of our deep dives into the department discussions.

We have in front of us the opportunity to hear from the Human Services Department, which will also include some programs that invest in homelessness as well.

We will then transition to item number two, which is a conversation around encampments and cleanup under the proposed unified care team and clean Seattle proposals.

And then we'll have the parks department and the remaining miscellaneous items.

Again, the miscellaneous items that are carried over from two, excuse me, carried over from Wednesday's discussion include law department, office of emergency management, office of inspector general, office of sustainability and the environment, the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection, and Seattle Fire Department.

Those miscellaneous items are pretty short.

We will not actually have the department representatives with us.

We just have the central staff memo highlighting a few issues within those categories.

So really just four categories for us today, human services, encampment and cleanup, parks, and miscellaneous.

If there's no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

Well, let me just pause for a second to have the entire team breathe a collective sigh of relief.

Our central staff team has indicated that they can extend the deadline for amendments within each of the city council offices until noon on Tuesday.

So we have another another 22 hours to consider possible amendments.

So I saw cheers and a hooray.

Thank you very much to central staff for that flexibility.

And I don't know about you, but I am taking notes about ways that we can always be improving our process.

And we've done some improvements and strategy changes, discussion changes this time around.

But we will be looking for ways, or I will be looking for ways to try to give us a little bit more reading time between these meetings, because it is really important materials that central staff is providing for us.

And I want to make sure that folks have the chance to read through it, as well as be present for your family, friends, and community during these tough weeks.

So we will take the opportunity to hear from all of the departments today, if it helps you to sort of sit on the information.

and think about it a little bit more over the weekend.

Then you'll have Monday to work with your teams to get the final amendments prepared.

And again, that is noon on Tuesday, October 18th.

Thank you so very much.

Deputy Director Panucci, did you want to add anything to that?

No, OK.

Um, thank you all for the work that you've done.

Uh, and I want to, uh, just get us right into our deliberations today.

I see members from the human services department on the line here.

Um, so madam clerk, could you go ahead and read into the record item number one.

Agenda item one human services department and homelessness for briefing and discussion.

Thank you very much, madam clerk.

Okay colleagues, I'll have a little bit more orientation and some updates for us about amendments.

Before we go to break and again before the end of the day just as reminders, but I think we should jump right into our department deliberations we are right on time at 935. I want to welcome to our panel here the first panel of course will be the department.

In front of us includes human services department and that is acting director Tanya Kim, welcome, as well as Michael Bailey, deputy director from HSD and D.

And Amy Holland from HSD, we are again joined today by our.

and the city budget's office.

That's Director Julie Dingley from the city budget's office who's here with us to answer any specific questions as well.

Colleagues, again, you get the chance to ask questions throughout the presentation, so please do raise your hand and let us know if you have questions as we go through this.

And as a reminder, central staff are also encouraged if you have something that you'd like to add for context or you want to flag something that might be coming later and issue identification, it's a good time to jump in and let council members know.

We will then, after we have the department presentation, flow into the central staff's presentation.

That will include Amy Gore and Gorman and Ali Panucci, our Deputy Director of Central Staff.

Welcome back, Ali.

And colleagues, you'll be encouraged as well to ask questions throughout the issue identification.

If you'd like to make some comments about some of the thoughts that you have after the presentation and hearing from central staff on each of those issues.

We'll pause at each of the slides so that folks can let us know if they would like to share items that they might be considering you're welcome to.

Of course, you do not have to.

And as always, our department folks are welcome to jump off the Zoom here.

I know everybody is very busy.

And if you would like to stay on, we, of course, welcome that as well.

And thanks for being there, Director Dingley, for any of those technical questions or for any clarification that might be needed during central staff presentation.

Excellent.

Okay.

Well, I see we have our whole crew with us.

Before I turn it over to Director Dingley, maybe for some opening comments today, I would like to turn it over to Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Herbold, I know we had a number of your you do share public safety and human services, and that includes the Human Service Department directly.

So I'll turn it to you for some opening comments.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

Really, um.

I look forward to digging into this budget proposal for the department, because, as you mentioned, my committee has oversight of HSD outside of homelessness.

I'll focus my opening remarks on that work.

I want to appreciate some of the really critical efforts that HSD has been doing under the leadership of Interim Director Kim.

And that work often is sort of under the radar, specifically wanna call out the financial strengthening measures.

This is very much internal work.

It's essential to ensure that the council is able to provide appropriate oversight and that the city is a good partner.

Many provider organizations that we contract with do this incredibly essential work.

HSD began the financial strengthening work years ago, and is reported on it several times during my, my committee, the proposed budget maintains the positions added, increase the capacity of government to provide effective financial management of its growing budget.

HSD has also moved rapidly over the last two years to stand up a new, safe, and thriving communities division, now under the leadership of Rex Brown.

It's been a partner and a home for many of City Council's priorities to build safety in communities from the ground up.

I really appreciate HSD's ability to adapt very swiftly.

changing context, and the urgent need by providing a center for community safety and an alternative to the criminal legal system, whereas we see critical essential work is being done every single day.

HSD has also been charged with supporting frontline essential relief for so many residents whose lives were turned upside down during the pandemic and the resulting economic downturn as federal relief dollars for this purpose have not been replenished.

There are difficult choices here around which needs are the most urgent to continue and whether we should prioritize continued funding.

And finally, we have an incredibly essential question before this morning, how we should value and compensate the work of HSD is contracted providers and the workers that they employ.

HSD largely accomplishes its mission of connecting people with resources and solutions during times of need.

That's a quote from HSD's mission statement.

They accomplish this not by directly providing these services, but by investing city dollars in those who do provide those services.

In order for HSD to meet that mission, it requires incredibly strong partnerships with those who are ready, able to tackle the city's most challenging problems, supporting people in behavioral health crisis, and helping people find living, living on shelter, find homes.

Just a couple examples of Absolutely middle mission critical jobs, and I can point to as I've mentioned in the past multiple instances just in the past year or two, where the Council has I did funding for this work.

And this funding went on spent because providers were unable to hire enough people.

on the difficult work, wages that they are able to offer under the city's contracts.

So in 2019, under fantastic leadership of Budget Chair, Council Member Mosqueda, the Council approved legislation that required HSD to increase provider contracts annually at a rate to inflation.

This law was intended to help ensure that non-profit providers and their employees don't fall further behind when inflation soars as it's doing right now.

Council also invested last year in additional measures.

We provided one-time appreciation pay of $5.3 million for providers to acknowledge their extraordinary working conditions during the pandemic Again, this was sponsored by Budget Chair Mosqueda.

And I sponsored a funding for a wage equity study now underway by researchers at University of Washington to determine the true value of providers work and recommend appropriate wage levels.

The recommendations are expected in spring of 2023. We've been very, very clear in our intent on the council to invest in our provider workforce, yet the budget as proposed fails to follow the law and only provides a 4% inflationary increase, far from 7.6 required by law.

Worse, it sets 4% as the future obligation ceiling moving forward.

This leaves Council saddled with a huge gap and an extremely difficult situation given our revenue shortfall.

The budget is short more than $12 million over the biennium, and the difference is taken out of the pockets of frontline workers who are least able to afford it.

Closing this gap is my highest priority, and it's also the highest priority of the Seattle Human Services Coalition and its members.

Many already shown up and asked council to fix this during public testimony.

I thank them for their strong, consistent, and persistent advocacy right from the start.

I know fixing this is a priority for many of you on the council as well.

That's it for my opening remarks.

I'll turn it back to you, Madam Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Herbold and rightly so getting choked up on this topic.

Many people have spent a lot of time testifying on this issue and explaining that they themselves are qualifying for the services that they're trying to get their clients to qualify for sleeping in their cars and unable to stay stably housed because of wage which is not keeping up with the cost of living in the city.

So appreciate the overview that you provided appreciate underscoring the importance of that item, as well as many other items that HSD currently has oversight on.

And I'll just live from the vice chairs comments from the pan early in the pandemic, we know that HSD is really providing care and services to those who are experiencing the effects of the shadow pandemic.

So thank you for all that you've done during this time.

Thank you for the collaboration between the executive and the legislative branch to make sure that more people had access to care and that folks like child care providers got additional support to keep their doors open and to pay their employees.

excited to hear about some of the things that you'd like to lift up in the budget.

And again, we do see HSD as on the front line of being responding to the shadow pandemic that is creating so much stress and trauma in our community.

Good morning, Director Dingley, our final day, and you have been with us every day.

So we really appreciate it.

Please go ahead and welcome the panel.

Great, thank you so much budget chair and good morning everyone.

My name is Julie Dingley, the city budget director as you heard from Chair Mosqueda.

I want to take a moment to just really appreciate the comments from Human Services Chair Herbold around the human service provider work and And also acknowledge that this is an incredibly difficult budget environment that we in the city continue to face.

You know, this particular combination of inflation and COVID-19 and a looming potential national or global recession and the cessation of federal pandemic relief funds has left us in this incredible bind.

And as I mentioned in the budget overview a couple of weeks back, we started to close this budget, or we started to build this budget facing $140 million deficit.

And so this budget is the very definition of difficult choices.

And those choices, in making those choices, we aim to maximize the resources that we had available to us within the bounds of what was allowed.

And in some places had to change that in order to make our choices more sustainable.

And we'll get into all those details and can take many more questions throughout the day.

But what I am comforted in knowing is that even in the midst of all those incredibly challenging circumstances, we have the absolute right leader leading the Human Services Department who are ready for that challenge.

I'm honored to be joined here today by Acting Director Tanya Kim, who in addition to being an incredible human, is incredibly brilliant and thoughtful and is, as I mentioned, the absolute right leader to be in this space.

So again, I'm here for technical details and potentially if you want to talk about macro context, I'm a great resource for that the department's going to take your specific questions about policies and programs within the department and specific things about their budget.

So I look forward to our conversation today.

Thank you for having me this week.

Also just wanted to give a quick shout out to the city budget office team, who has been absolutely incredible, listening throughout the week, taking copious notes, making sure that we could get you all the information that you need, and also particularly safe to the human services team.

They are incredible public servants for which this work would not be possible without.

So I want to thank everybody again, and I'll turn it over to Acting Director Kim to get into the details.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next slide, please.

Thank you, Director Dingley and good morning.

Special thank you to our Budget Chair Mosqueda and our Committee Chair Council Member Herbold and the Committee Council Members as a whole for the opportunity to present on the Human Services Department's 2023 and 2024 proposed budget.

Here you can see Councilmember Herbold just gave such a lovely, passionate opening.

And so for brevity's sake, I just wanted to give you a quick overview of what's to come.

So here is, again, a visual of our mission and our impact areas that we invest in.

Next, we'll have Dee, our interim CFO, summarize our proposed budget and give overall changes.

Michael and I will highlight some of the individual changes, and then we'll get into question and answers, but I did hear that we may entertain questions throughout the presentation as well, and so we are flexible and here for you.

Next slide, please.

It's a challenging time, and no matter what the revenue forecast is, we do our work through the lens of racial equity, as mentioned.

And so it is really important for you to know that we lead with race, we use data to inform our results-based investments, and our proposed budget prioritizes services where disparities exist.

you know, we work with over 170 community-based organizations and have contracts, as well as provide direct services.

And so this is fundamental to our approach and our commitment to achieving racial equity.

With that, we're going to jump into it.

And so I'm going to introduce Dee, HSD's interim chief financial officer, who's been here for a month.

So please welcome Ms. Dee.

Thank you, Director Kim, for the introduction.

I'm going to jump right in.

The 23-24 proposed budget for the Human Services Department is $305.5 million and $307.5 million, respectively.

Excluding the end of one-time funding for COVID response, HSD's 23 proposed budget actually is increased by 10% over the 2022 adopted budget.

This increase is really driven by increased staffing capacity for community safety and homelessness response, which you'll hear more about later in this presentation.

It also includes 20 positions for aging disability case management services, that are funded by a $10 million increase in state and federal grants acquired this year.

Before we discuss reductions, it's important to note, I think, that the proposed budget reflects changes in appropriation due to end of one-time funding for the COVID response, not only for COVID response, which is significant, but also carry forward for community safety capacity building and projects launched by the Equitable Communities Initiative, as well as grants that were appropriated in prior years but will continue to have future spending.

There is approximately $6.6 million of general fund reductions that were identified to mitigate for the 23-24 revenue shortfalls.

no reduction is easy.

And the items that were selected were selected with the intent to mitigate disruption to direct services.

And also, they also eliminate a small number of contracts and delay spending on some ongoing projects.

Next slide, please.

HSD's 2022 adopted budget included nearly $50 million in one-time funding.

The 23-24 proposed budget continues funding for a significant portion of these programs, including again, community safety and homelessness.

Just want to note that 31 million of the one-time funding is for COVID response and off that 31 million, 10.4 million was contracted to the King County Regional Homeless Authority in 2022 for shelter programs and will be spent in 2023 and 2024. Due to the general fund revenue constraints, the proposed budget does not include continued funding for all programs funded through one-time funds in the 2022 adopted budget.

Next slide, please.

So this graph provides the visualization of the different colors of money, no pun intended, that fund some of our city's most essential services.

On the left, the pie represents a breakdown for our full department budget of the 305 million in 2023. The smaller graph on the right provides a breakdown of our human services fund that's made up of federal and state grants and other local funding.

As touched on earlier, over 40% of our general fund dollars are being transferred to KCRHA to support their homeless programming.

Now I'll turn it back to Director Kim.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next slide, please.

Thank you, Dee.

Not bad for one month on the job.

In the next set of slides, Michael and I will highlight ads and reductions as part of HSD's proposed budget.

We're going to begin, and you spoke a little bit about this already, the provider contract inflation.

This 4% inflationary increase to HSD's service provider contracts will add 7 million in 2023 and over 14 million in 2024. The proposed budget anticipates the passage of a companion council bill that limits inflation increases to 4% or CPIW, whichever is lower.

And just technically speaking, it's important to note that this 4% level is a limit to the amount the city is legally required to pay.

It is not a limit to what could be paid if additional resources were available.

Now, Council Member Herbold and other, you know, Council Members and folks in the community have already expressed their sentiment around this.

I will just add that I think we all agree, we all agree, we all agree that providers do essential work day in and day out.

And as Director Dingley stated earlier, this initial budget presentation or from her initial budget presentation that this was a particularly difficult decision due to the challenging financial environment.

I guess I just don't want to pass this up to, you know, we were all in this together.

So thank you for expressing additional feedback.

And then with that, we're going to go to Michael.

We should stop on the slide for a second.

Absolutely.

So I want to add some things to what the vice chair has noted here today.

And again, I want to reiterate some of the points that we've been making throughout the entire week.

The council is going to express frustration about policy and proposals.

We're not expressing frustration to any one person.

And definitely I'm not trying to make this into the personal discussion.

This is all about policies and priorities.

So it is important, though, that when we talk about a budget being a moral document, we remind ourselves about how to use those scarce resources.

And that's what I think this council is really lifting up throughout the last week or so.

It has been a very challenging time for these folks on the front line, as you all know very well.

And I think that the crisis that people see on a daily basis, in terms of helping to make sure that people can stay stably housed, get into housing, get off the street, get necessary food, the crisis that they're seeing is something that they're experiencing.

They're experiencing it because we have historically underinvested in our contractors who do this work.

And we've known this for decades.

I want to add to what Councilmember Morales said, or Councilmember Herbold said, and I also want to thank Councilmember Morales and Devin on her team.

I want to thank Councilmember Herbold and Christina on her team.

Councilmember O'Brien and Jesse Rollins for their work in the past years.

The council president has expressed concern about this this year around as well.

And I'm not trying to sound like a broken record, but I do want to make sure that we are underscoring the importance of this issue, not out of context with the tough budget decisions that we have to make.

But again, for context, right, in 2018, alone, just in the time I've been on council, not even to mention the work that hadn't happened before I was there.

In 2018, I sponsored the one-time budget amendment to increase the HSD provider contracts to meet the current inflation at that time, which was 5.8 million.

In 2019, sponsored legislation and broad support from the council that many of the members currently here to provide those provider contracts and keep up with the CPIW, which is the cost of living inflation.

And we still have scars from that battle within Mayor Jenny Durkan.

I want to thank the then Council President Harrell for his support on that initiative as well.

And in 2021, in preparation for the calendar year for 2022, the Council, as you heard from Council Member Herbold, not only worked to address the underlying base wage issues by supporting a cost of living adjustment study to look at the base wages, we included $5.3 million to the Human Services Department funding for the one-time increase for human service provider contracts.

And we've described a methodology specifically in statute in Ordinance 125-865 that would allow for times just like this, when times are tough, for the inflationary wage to be caught up with.

And the methodology prescribed in that ordinance is based on averaging the CPIW change over two years to expressly address sharp increases And to to address the sharp increases it's smooth and actually has a lag and increase for provider services so it's really important that we recognize that this is in.

that we are in a place to protect what is in statute and I don't think this is a surprise to anyone but I want to take the opportunity to say protect what is in statute, do more as we look at the report that to help our human service providers from falling further behind.

For those to care for others, they need to be cared for.

And that's what I think we're going to try to write in our amendments as we move forward.

I don't think it's a surprise that, as you've heard, I am definitely interested in putting forward an amendment.

I know Council Member Herbal is interested in that too, has expressed that.

And I think together, our council is going to help try to close this gap.

And I do want to also underscore as well, though, You know, offering some flexibility for the higher than anticipated funding that was coming in from Jumpstart, again, was intended to close budget gaps and prevent austerity and prevent cuts.

And as I said on Tuesday, this is a cut.

This is a cut to human service provider wages that they were anticipating.

we do have limited resources.

We have offered some flexibility and I think some good faith conversations that we've had with between both branches of government.

We recognize that we're co-equal branches of government and now is our chance to have the pen and do some writing on this.

But I think that with the limited resources and the higher than anticipated revenue from Jumpstart, we want to stick true to what the coalition has said, prevent austerity and if we can look at using some of those higher than anticipated revenues for protecting against this cut instead of, for example, completely new programs, then I think that that's an area that I will continue to look into.

Council Member Herbold, would you like to add anything?

I have a question, but before I ask it, I just want to thank you again publicly Councilmember Mosqueda.

I have thanked you privately for your connecting the dots between the flexibility that we discussed in August as it relates to Jump Start and our intentions about how that flexibility was supposed to serve the goals of jumpstart as it relates specifically to this particular body of work and ensuring that we don't have cuts, not only to our own to workers who work for the city of Seattle, but also so that we don't have cuts to workers who are contracted to do the work of the city of Seattle.

So really appreciate you linking revenue issue with this funding need.

A question I have was just a clarifying question.

The percent inflationary increase to each of these service provider contracts, does that include the contracts that we are funding King County RHA to to execute?

It does.

Thank you, and thank you again, Director Kim and of course, Director Dingley, want to make sure that we underscore our appreciation for your work.

I think it's really important for us to work collectively, the work of the city, the work of the budget office to try to address these issues.

But I think for the record, really wanted to make sure we also explain where I think some of the council members comments are coming from and given the history on this.

I just wanted to draw that out a little bit more.

Again, not intended to be a debate with the folks that are here.

We know that it's a broader Okay, anything else?

All right, let's keep going.

Okay, great.

Thank you for that.

And HSD is standing by.

Okay, so now we're with Michael Bailey to walk us through another set of slides.

All right, so thank you, Director Kim and members of the Select Budget Committee.

Thank you for the opportunity to join you today.

Likewise, thank you for your continued support towards advancing the Department's mission, which we've noted a few times today.

So just want to acknowledge that and also happy Friday.

All right, so the City recognizes the growing need to support individuals living in RVs and vehicles.

As such, the proposed budget offers funding to support safe lots, which can also be referred to as safe parking programs.

I recognize that we have the general public listening, so for clarity, safe lots are intended to provide individuals living in RVs and vehicles with a private and welcoming place to receive meaningful supportive services.

Those supportive services may include case management or perhaps housing assistance aimed at helping those individuals successfully transition into permanent housing.

These investments are also intended to help reduce the number of vehicles and RVs currently residing on the streets of Seattle and in other public spaces.

So the first item listed here adds $3.4 million to support programming and operations for a safe lot contract that was awarded early this year by the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, hereafter referred to as the Regional Homelessness Authority.

Those funds would also work to fund operations for additional safe lot spaces in the future.

The second item that you see here, the $2.6 million investment, would support the startup and development of several new safe lot sites.

It's important to note that both of these investments will be transitioned from HSD to the Regional Homelessness Authority.

Once in possession of the funds, the Regional Homelessness Authority will be responsible for identifying land to house the safe parking lots, contracting out services, and also selecting a site operator.

The Regional Home Assist Authority estimates that these spaces will serve approximately 195 vehicles per year.

Next slide, please.

Let's pause there for just a quick second.

Obviously, we're I will speak for myself.

I know there's a few council members that are here that have been very supportive of safe lots in the past.

We were frustrated.

I was frustrated by the delay in getting the funding that we had allocated for safe lots out the door initially.

But just to understand this a little bit more, are we, the stand-up funding for new safe lots is only for 2023?

Is this because it's just for stand-up funding and not needed for operations?

It's one time in nature and we're not going to be like closing down any safe lots after 2023 in this proposal, right?

Correct.

So the first item is to sustain funding for the current contract that was awarded.

There's also funds for continuation.

The second item that you referenced is for stand-up.

So that's gonna be for additional safe lot spaces in the future.

Okay, and I have a follow-up question, but it might be what Councilmember Herbold may be asking.

Councilmember Herbold?

I have a question about the item funding to sustain the 35 spaces.

I just have a question about what your understanding is of that initial project.

I was under the impression that The RFP was developed to to support.

both a safe lot for people who are living in their RVs, but also a place for people who might be ready to take a chance on housing, but don't wanna give up their RV.

So a place to store unoccupied RVs.

What I'm pretty sure I've received as an update from King County RHA is the safe lot program that they actually ended up funding with the dollars provided by the city doesn't do either one of those things and is more of a place, it supports more of a place to allow people to bring their vehicles that may not be operable for repair.

So I'm just concerned that the original intent of the source of the money that the city provided that did end up going to King County RHA and that they did end up doing an RFP for isn't actually being used for the purposes intended.

Certainly.

Outstanding question.

I'd be happy to work with the RHA to provide additional details.

My understanding is that the RFP is intended to meet both of the parameters that you outlined, both the storage and the supportive services on the Agile safe lot.

However, those funds have been transferred to RHA, as you mentioned, so they would be the best individuals to speak on that.

However, we are committed to providing you with that information.

Thank you, Michael.

Certainly.

Thanks so much.

Yeah, that was part of the question that I had to as as to whether or not we.

We're advancing funding for the storage concept that Councilmember Herbold supported in the last two years and also the concept of the RV nest model, right?

Allowing for folks who live in RVs to be able to have a safer place to park while they secure either a place to live indoors or a safe lot spot.

Is the RV nest model anything that we're contemplating in this proposal?

Hi, Amy.

Oh, sorry.

Sorry, Michael.

I saw Amy pop in, but if you have an answer, we'll take yours and then we'll go to Amy's as well.

Certainly.

So this proposal, the funding that you have here is specifically for the safe lots.

Amy, happy to hear your response as well.

Sorry about that.

I haven't presented in a while.

I've lost it.

So I was just going to say that I do know that the cost per unit came in higher than anticipated as a result of that RFP.

And that might have impacted the amount of funding for these other components, including, like you say, the storage and the nest model.

So I will reach out with Michael to KCRHA to understand exactly how that funding is divided up at this point.

Excellent.

Thanks.

All right.

And next slide, please.

All right, so this slide highlights the city's investments in tiny home villages, which also serves as a resource for supporting individuals living unhoused.

The first item adds one-time funding for startup and development of 50 new units and adds ongoing funding to support operations and services for the new units.

These funds will be transferred to the Regional Homelessness Authority to administer and contract As such, the Regional Homelessness Authority will determine how many villages will be needed to house the 50 units and also the locations for the village or villages.

To clarify, this investment is separate from the co-lead tiny home village investment that we'll discuss in one of the upcoming slides, but just wanted to call that out.

The 2nd item that you see here replaces 1 time federal funding with ongoing funds for the South and tiny home village for clarity.

The South end is currently being supported by 1 time federal cobit relief funding.

The proposed investment would allow the city to maintain the 40 units currently located at the tiny home village by ensuring ongoing funding for the proposed 2023 budget.

That investment comes out at 750,000 dollars.

The third item adds ongoing funds to operate the 68 units at the Camp Second Chance Tiny Home Village.

These units were in part funded with one-time funding and the 2022 adopted budget.

We'd like to point out that the Regional Homelessness Authority estimated the total costs to sustain the village to be approximately 1.2 million and also believes they have approximately 702,000 in ongoing funds to support Camp Second Chance.

The remaining amount needed based on the Regional Homelessness Authority's estimate is 498,000.

As a result, our proposed investment for this item comes out to 498,000.

Thank you so much.

And I want to also welcome Councilmember Lewis, who chairs Homelessness Services and Public Assets.

I know that we're going to hear from you in the opening comments for the next section.

I didn't get a chance to flag the crossover with Homeless Services here.

So Councilmember Lewis, thanks so much for raising your hand.

Of course, feel free to ask your question, but if there's anything else you'd like to share, feel free to do that too.

Thank you so much.

And Michael, it's good to see you and hear you here in this presentation.

Appreciate all of your work this year on standing up a lot of these initiatives, including the initial effort to get the new South End Village stood up.

So I have a couple of questions related to the South End Village ad.

It's being funded here for $750,000.

I just want to clarify because the $750,000 for 2022 for South End Village was based on operating that village for about half of the year.

So an annualized operating number, I imagine, would have to be higher.

And it seems like that's not being factored in here.

So can you explain a little bit of the department's thinking how this will be a sustainable amount of money to operate those units?

Certainly, and I'd like to collaborate with the Regional Homelessness Authority just to confirm additional funding sources.

I'd also like to confirm with Lehigh, I recognize that they often get philanthropic dollars, so that may have been a factor.

I want to provide you with accurate information so I will be timely in my response.

Is there a reason that KCRHA isn't here to talk about some of this?

I haven't really thought about that till now, but they seem conspicuously absent from the panel.

And it seems like a lot of your questions are pivoting to a lack of information from KCRHA on implementation.

I mean, that's less of a question for you, Michael, than just generally.

I don't, like, was that an oversight on our part?

Did we not invite KCRHA to be on the panel?

I'll take that as rhetorical, but we'll go ahead and say that HSD leadership is just presenting on our overall budget.

And although RHA is a very important partner of ours with this topic, we did not include them in the presentation.

However, it's a great question for the future.

Well, this is now I think the third question about how the circle gets squared on some of these homelessness investments and everything seems to be a pivot to KCRHA holding the answer to that.

So I wasn't asking it rhetorically, I was asking that question very literally.

I'll just say that and I do hope for turnaround on those answers so that we can craft a budget that is responsive to the situation we're facing.

Take that for what it is but but I guess just flagging is one of the issues now, it does not seem like the south end figures annualized to operate that village from just my first glance it seems like it's a transposition of the 2022 amount of funding.

which was on a unique timeline, because that village didn't open till May or June.

So that's something we need to figure out.

I do also just want to ask some general, I don't know if this would be the time, Madam Chair, to ask some general tiny house questions.

This looks like the tiny house slide.

I think that that is fine, Council Member Lewis, and we did have a conversation with KCRHA just letting them know that We would just be keeping this to the Human Services Department because of the breadth of everything to cover today.

I want to make sure that folks know that we did that in partnership.

I let them know that I was going to be doing that and that we'll be keeping it to department specific items here today.

I think they are at the ready to help answer any specific questions, but I wanted to keep it to just the city family for today.

go ahead.

It might be.

Thank you, Councilmember Skate.

I mean, just as an aside on that, it might be useful for us to have, are we intending to have a case your AHA presentation as as one of these issue identification panels?

No, there is.

I think there is a crossover with this panel and the next panel for the proposed unified care team.

But really, because of the structure, and I think our reliance on and Council Member Herbold as members of the governing board.

I think we are just keeping to the lane of city departments here.

But I see Amy Gore has her hand raised as well.

I just wanted to make sure if she had something to add before we get to your questions.

Oh, Amy, sorry, you're on mute still.

Every time I try and take my hand down I forget to unmute so I just wanted to, you know, add that, as you probably know Councilmember Lewis but I want to make sure everyone knows that Lehigh has identified a gap of 280,000, roughly, for particularly for the South End Village, again, because of this annualized issue.

And we will continue to work with KCRHA to make sure we are not missing any potential funding that they have to support that for the ongoing funding.

All right, well, I hope KCRHA is listening and at the ready to provide clarifications because our amendment deadline is Tuesday.

And it sounds like there's massive knowledge gaps about how we might square some of these things.

It doesn't sound like KCRHA has adequately informed the department of what the potential gaps are.

And we are certainly hearing from providers, not just on this slide, but in other slides about concerns about whether these investments from the city are fully packaged to solve the issue that they're solving.

So I just want to figure out how that stream of information is going to be squared, given that this is by far the most important issue we hear from from constituents.

So let me just, I'll move on to a few additional questions, but I guess the answer will probably be the same that we have to wait to get answers from KCRHA.

But we we've heard, uh, that there's been about $270,000 identified in one-time costs for maintenance and replacements of infrastructure in the overall tiny house system.

Is that ad reflected in what looks mostly like expansion and a focus on the south end village on this slide, but is sort of, General maintenance and and taking care of some of these exigent issues and some of our existing villages covered here or would that be scope for amendment.

I appreciate that.

Oh, go ahead.

Yeah, sorry about that, Michael.

Of course, go ahead.

Yeah, certainly.

And I appreciate the question.

The funding you see here is to sustain.

I recognize that Lehigh has been in conversation with the Regional Homelessness Authority and advocating for additional dollars.

To answer your question, that may be scope for an amendment.

However, this funding is intended to sustain the villages.

OK.

And sort of related to that, one of the really important ads the council put forward in 2021 was $600,000 for one time, 450,000 of which was one time and 150,000 in ongoing funds to expand behavioral mental health services.

And a lot of our tiny house villages are very critical asset given the population that we seek to serve with the tiny house villages.

Is that money reflected as an ongoing commitment in this budget?

And if so, for how many sites?

That money, as I understand it, currently supports about 6.5 FTEs for behavioral mental health specialists.

Are we cutting that service in this budget or are we continuing it?

and councilmember, I may need to follow up with you on that.

I recognize that behavioral health individuals are currently supporting tiny home villages.

I am not prepared to speak to a ad here, but can be timely in my response.

Okay.

My understanding is- Councilmember Lewis, let me just ask Amy if she had something to add to that.

I saw her hand.

I was just going to say that I don't believe that there is ongoing funding for behavioral health as a separate line item in the proposed budget.

So the proposed budget seeks to cut the 2021 behavioral mental health ads the council made to support people with mental health conditions in tiny houses.

That's being cut this year in the current proposal.

Director Dingley, did you have a response?

The funding that the council member is referring to is in the baseline for HSD.

So there is neither a cut nor an ad.

So it is just in the baseline.

So it's not being cut.

So so it is.

So, Director Dingley, you're saying it is included in the baseline that ad from twenty twenty one.

That's my understanding.

Okay, great, excellent, thank you.

We will seek to confirm that very important investment from 2021. So those are my tiny house questions for now.

Sounds like a lot of these we need to wait for clarification from KCRHA.

And I don't have any other questions on the slide at this time.

Okay, thanks so much, council member.

And I am not seeing any additional hands at this point.

Let's go ahead and go on.

All right.

So as we transition into the Unified Care Team budget items, I'd like to highlight for the viewing public that the Human Services Department is a member of the Unified Care Team, or UCT for short, along with several other city departments.

HSD is not responsible for convening or directing the UCT, although we do have a specific role in supporting the team's work.

The first item on this slide adds an additional six FTEs to expand outreach efforts to unsheltered people living in public spaces.

This work is intended to support the city's unified care team.

Yesterday morning, the mayor's office held a UCT press conference and spoke to a few guiding principles The mayor's office also spoke to our collective desire and need to incorporate a set of solutions that go beyond removals.

The proposed FTEs would work to support just that.

More specifically, the city will be supported through these FTEs by coordination and conductions of needs assessments for sites within an assigned geographical area, regardless of scheduled removal, supporting the collection of data for the individuals in need of shelter.

This also includes capturing any unique needs related to express medical conditions or other information that would essentially support the individuals being successful once connected to shelter.

In partnership with the RHA, the FTEs will help connect sites with providers, support the development of relationships, and ultimately help the individuals with transitioning inside, regardless of a scheduled removal.

The FTEs will continue to make referrals as they support the facilitation of geographical huddles.

In addition to making referrals, the FTEs will also collect and monitor shelter availability for set-aside beds so that we can continue to make meaningful and authentic offers of shelter.

It's a lot of work, but it's meaningful work, and as these activities take place, the FTEs will continue to share information and updates with stakeholders, service providers, and, of course, the Regional Homelessness Authority as well.

Additionally, the proposed budget adds funding for two FTEs to support the administration and data coordination within the Unified Care Team.

More details about these positions and how they fit into the larger Unified Care Team ecosystem will be provided during the Unified Care Team presentation later today.

Thank you.

Oh, so sorry.

Let's just pause there for a second before we go on to item number five, if that's okay.

I just want to let folks know, as Michael expressed and you see on the agenda, we will make sure to entertain a series of questions or comments related to the unified care team in the next.

the next presentation here, but wanted to make sure folks get the chance to ask HSD's team on the broad scale here.

If you have any questions specific to these positions and investments, I believe Councilmember Lewis, that's an old hand.

So I'll just double check.

Okay, thanks so much.

Councilmember Morales and then Councilmember Herbold.

My comments are actually about item number five, so I'll wait.

Sorry about that.

Okay.

Councilmember Herbold?

Thank you.

I just want to take this opportunity because I'm unlikely to be present for the next presentation.

I have a long scheduled tooth extraction this morning, but I so I just want to get.

on the table my concern about the unified care team expansion.

I and other members of this council have been asking this administration since April for the matrix that they are using to prioritize locations once assessed.

Both locations for that are 10 campments in public spaces, as well as our bees.

I know there was a draft prioritization matrix that a member of the press shared and it's.

It's useful, but I understand from Deputy Mayor Washington that it is not the matrix that is being used to prioritize locations.

And again, it is so important to us as people who have daily communications with members of the public to be able to explain to members of the public how the city is using an objective assessment of a number of of conditions associated with these locations, everything from the number of tents or RVs to the number of people to the crime statistics.

And what I had seen as a draft was a scoring matrix.

locations that scored highly were likely to be prioritized.

That is very, very useful information to share with the public, particularly if the public is contacting us about a location that has not been prioritized so that people understand why.

We have been, again, we have been asking for this information since April.

We have not received it.

And I just think that if we're talking about adding resources for this function, this council needs to understand how those resources are being prioritized and I very much would like to see that prioritization matrix before we begin voting on these budget items.

Thank you.

Happy to take a response to that if anybody from the department has an initial response or if you prefer to wait for the team who has the presentation next, you're welcome to do that too.

Director Dingley, I see you nodding.

Oh yeah, go ahead, Michael.

Oh, yeah, just acknowledging the opportunity to perhaps take that information back, but I suspect you'll likely get additional information later today.

OK, thank you.

And Council Member Nelson, I believe you're up next.

Thank you, so the six FTEs, are those city employees?

Yeah, and if they are, how do they work with are providers that are doing outreach as well, I guess, reach, co-lead, et cetera.

And what is the base number?

If you add six, what is the base now?

Certainly.

So currently we are funding three permanent system navigators.

We're going to be adding six additional.

Collaboration is truly hand in hand.

So these individuals are participating in regional huddles in partnership with the RHA that takes place throughout the week.

There's also a general outreach call every week, every Wednesday morning, and there's routine check-in.

So as sites are identified, these individuals are essentially helping to project manage the sites to ensure that everybody gets a legitimate offer of shelter.

So it's truly in support, it's truly collaborative, and in partnership with the other folks doing this work.

Thanks.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

Yeah, Council Member Morales, please go ahead.

Sorry, now I do have questions about this item.

So I think maybe Council Member Nelson and I are trying to get to the same question, but can you tell us how many FTEs are part of the overall team across the 13 city departments?

That would be a wonderful question for the upcoming presentation.

Prepare to speak to the HSD ads, but the UCT as far as the larger ecosystem, the following presentation would likely answer those questions.

Can you tell me if there is a goal beyond a referral or what happens after referral?

So once an individual is referred to shelter, we're looking to RHA to help move that individual through.

That's a great question for the RHA and I think dovetails with a lot of the work that they're doing right now in the downtown core.

Our relationship is with supporting individuals, getting to them sooner and ensuring that they have what's necessary to transition into shelter.

Being that that is our isolated role, we will look to RHA to support the individuals once into shelter since they have those contracts currently.

So does this team ensure that people receive shelter and services?

Yes.

So the team is responsible for ensuring individuals located at priority sites are connected with a service provider.

So you mentioned several organizations earlier.

Their goal is to work hand in hand with those organizations so that the individuals offered shelter and essentially referred into the shelter system.

So I guess I'm not asking if they are offered shelter I'm asking if this team ensures that people receive shelter and services.

I believe.

To clarify, so this team would engage a priority site or site within the geographical region, they would.

essentially conduct a needs assessment, figure out what shelter is best suited for that individual, work with the service provider, and then through that collaboration, it's both offering shelter and then once the shelter is accepted, ensuring that that person has the opportunity either through transportation or other means to move into shelter.

So it's not just the offer.

If there is a need for transportation, we're assisting on that piece as well.

Am I answering your question?

I think so.

So then is this team ensuring that once people receive those services, whose responsibility is it to make sure that the individuals who are receiving services also receive ongoing care?

Any activity once an individual is transitioned into shelter would be on behalf of the shelter with RHA currently holding the contracts for the shelter, I would look to RHA to provide a response there.

Thank you.

I see Council Member Strauss.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you chairman skater.

I'm going to speak just a little bit about the g graphically based teams even though I know that that's coming up in the next, next presentation, and I can really only speak to my experience working at the unified care team during the women park encampment drawdown because this team was not set up while we were doing the drawdown at the Ballard Commons Park.

It can also speak to my experience with UTC through requesting services through Clean Cities for trash mitigation, for hand washing stations, and outreach.

During the Woodland Park encampment drawdown, I worked directly with Evergreen Treatment Services reach outreach workers to determine the by name list, the needs assessment, and placement.

This resulted in 89 people entering shelter during the period 49 people in one week and this was coordinated by the unified care team.

Since then I've been working with Ballard stakeholders reach and vehicle residency outreach teams to address homelessness in the industrial district and the industrial district has candidly taken more time to set up than expected because of the larger geographic area and having more partners.

I share this background with you only as a reference point for these comments regarding geographically based teams to say And overall, Unified Care Team's done the best with my requests, done the best that they can with the requests.

The issue at hand centers on the fact that we only have one team for the whole city.

When we were working in Woodland Park, I was monopolizing citywide resources and attention.

And the city was still addressing other places, but Woodland Park was still monopolizing time, focus, and resources citywide.

If we had geographically based teams, we could have only monopolized Northwest Seattle time and resources.

allowing time and focus throughout the city to continue.

Since Woodland Park and even during that time, there have been great needs in my district for trash mitigation and hygiene stations.

Again, UCT is doing their best to address the clean cities routes I've requested.

Because the team is citywide, it is hard at times to get attention because we also have different people running The clean cities routes each time dividing connectivity of our city family to the work we are doing.

The way this formally works is I drive, walk, bike my routes around my district to see the current status of encampments where needs are greatest.

And I see firsthand when the city's clean city teams are completed and when they're overlooked.

This is because we have a team designed for a citywide response rather than geographic response.

And additionally, when I have requests, I have to take them essentially to the executive team because we don't have geographic teams.

If we have geographic teams we would have the same people doing the clean cities routes and able to see how folks experiencing homelessness are doing week after week, having the same people interact with folks experiencing homelessness homelessness every week.

builds trust, it builds knowing of people, it allows the ability to see if someone on the streets is declining or improving.

Geographic teams would mean that I would have a principal I can work with who is not on the executive team in the mayor's office.

And I guess I'll ask this question, which is, should the mayor's E-team be administering clean cities routes?

Or should we build systems where the E-team can provide direction and managers manage the programs?

My answer to that question is yes, the E-team needed to administer this work over the course of this year because the systems needed to be changed, policies that center people needed to be created, and the program needed to be built.

Mayor Harrow and his inauguration speech stated that he inherited a mess.

This was one of those.

And if it were not for the attention of the E-team, it would still be a mess.

And we are now in a place where we need to delegate from the E-team and geographically based teams is how we do this.

The geographically-based teams model is literally in line with my request in my first year in office when I added outreach workers specifically to District 6. I know colleagues, others have added specifically to your districts because the geographically-based outreach workers through the Ballard Alliance and the ones that I brought through my amendment is how I'm able to effectuate change in my district, leading with human-centered approaches.

Because I work with the same outreach workers every week, The outreach workers work with the same people experiencing homelessness every week.

This model builds trust and understanding in work that is challenging and complicated.

The challenge I'm experiencing today is needing more attention from Unified Care Team for trash mitigation and shelter placement.

This is a challenge because anytime I make a request, I'm pulling attention from another part of the city.

And to be effective at addressing homelessness at the scale of this crisis with that human centered response, we need these geographically based teams.

And Council Member Morales, the question that you asked about how do we ensure that there is a warm handoff from outreach workers and getting those those folks into shelter.

This is the work that I witnessed and that I was a part of in coordinating the Woodland Park drawdown, where we, through the unified care team, we were ensuring that there were vans there to drive people from the park to their shelter, that there were city workers there watching over the belongings of an individual who was going to go check in at shelter, had to come back and get their stuff and then go back.

The issue at hand is that we need more attention.

And rather than a citywide response, we do need a district response.

Chair, that was a very long way of saying I support the geographically based teams.

Thank you for giving me that moment to speak just now.

And colleagues, happy to answer any questions about my experiences on or off the record.

Okay, we're gonna take a pause here, folks, because it is clear that the Unified Care Team proposal is gonna have a lot of conversation and questions coming up.

And I wanna make sure that folks get the chance to express their concerns or questions or comments like you just heard from Council Member Herbold and then Council Member Strauss, some good questions from our colleagues, Council Member Nelson and Council Member Morales.

But as it relates to Unified Care Team's specific actions within HSD.

Are there any additional questions for HSD?

Okay, Council Member Morales, I think your hand is still for item number five.

So I am happy to call on you next.

Thank you for helping to tee up that conversation colleagues and getting your thoughts and ideas and questions out there right now.

My last question for the team here from HSD specific is, is whether or not this team is a substitute for when the KCRHA team doesn't get a 60-day advance notice.

So the KCRHA team, the folks that they work with, including REACH, are really focused on having adequate time to make sure that people have a referral, and not just a referral, that they get into housing or shelter.

If they don't have that sufficient time, I understand that there is not an interest in like a rush process and that they really want to have sufficient time to get people in.

So is this team kind of the backup team when a encampment removal wants to be advanced and there's not enough time given to KCRHA?

Is that what this team is doing?

Is moving folks if the KCRHA and REACH team don't feel that they have sufficient opportunity to get people in?

It's a great question.

I would argue that this team is intended to help ensure that we have that advanced touch point.

So, recognizing that the request for lead time is really a request to develop relationships.

Things are changing.

Sites are dynamic.

There are times where we need to address sites sooner than originally expected.

we're still committed to working with outreach providers to provide that information, recognizing that a lot of those individuals have already established relationships.

And just because we move up the timeline doesn't mean that they don't want to be involved.

So there's no cookie cutter answer to that.

I would say that the system navigators are there to help project manage the sites.

The Additional FTEs here would ensure that we continue to have that advance notice.

And in fact, we're hoping that these individuals can help collect information to bring back to the providers so that we can further improve that relationship development.

All right.

Thank you, Michael, for fielding those questions and recognize that they do go into our next presentation.

But thanks for helping us get centered on what the HSD team would be doing here.

Let's move on.

Item number five.

All right, so the last I'd add on this slide outlines an investment to sustain funding for the Lighthouse Soto Shelter in 2024. Since the pandemic, the City and King County together have made an investment to fund 240 beds at the Lighthouse Soto Shelter.

Oversight of this contract lies with the Regional Homelessness Authority.

The City has one-time coronavirus local recovery funds dedicated for the shelter in 2023. Therefore, the proposed investment that you see here provides $4.7 million of ongoing funding starting in 2024 to continue the City's portion of funding for operations and services at the shelter.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Michael.

So we have a central staff memo that reminds us the 2022 adopted budget included $12.1 million for funding the shelter for this year.

Excuse me.

I don't know about y'all, but the smoke is really getting to me today.

So this money was appropriated in the last budget to continue funding this congregate shelter through 2024. Colleagues may remember that last year I suggested a portion of that funding be diverted to fund the acquisition and construction of non-congregate transitional housing in partnership.

The intent was to partner with Chief Seattle Club for indigenous people who are facing homelessness.

Similar to last year, I am questioning the use of city funds for this particular shelter for several reasons.

First is that the outreach around this project has not met expectations in the community.

And we have all heard directly the frustration from many in the CID community who are continuing to ask for transparency from the county on this project and their potential mitigation strategies.

Second, if we've learned anything from the pandemic, it's that congregate shelter alone is not satisfactory.

While congregate shelter can offer more support for high needs clients, we hear from outreach workers all the time, folks who are on the ground, that the most desired form of shelter is non-congregate shelter.

That being said, we also know that we're in a state of emergency still, and that there isn't enough shelter to house everyone who's living on the streets.

So over the course of the last year, our office has been working with Friends of Little Saigon, with residents and businesses in the Chinatown International District to hear more about what the neighborhood needs to address root causes and impacts of displacement, homelessness, mental health crises, sanitation.

This all resulted in the development of a neighborhood safety model for the CID that copies a successful outreach model from REACH.

And like last year, I believe that part of this money could be spent on options such as more dedicated street outreach, mental health services, harm reduction services, all of which also need to be paid a living wage.

And that's the kind of support that communities have been asking for.

So I think we can spend on solutions to homelessness that have proven to work.

and follow kind of a housing first approach that's permanent supportive housing, nonprofit affordable housing, publicly owned municipal housing.

There are ways we could be doing this that serve our community members better.

And I look forward to discussing some of those options with colleagues over the next few weeks.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Thank you.

Just a point of clarification.

Does the sustained funding for the lighthouse shelter, does this include in the 240 beds, the pallet shelter concept that's being considered at that location?

Because that would be a non-congregate form of shelter.

I just want to clarify.

Thank you for the question.

So this funding would sustain the current operations.

It does not include any future or anticipated expansion efforts.

Okay.

Appreciate that.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

I think we can move on.

All right.

Next slide, please.

Okay.

This slide that you see here speaks to our commitment to maintain lead slash code lead programming and open new tiny home villages for current clients to transition into.

During the pandemic, LEAD, which is operated by the Public Defenders Association, developed a new service model to emphasize lodging and wraparound services for clients who are experiencing homelessness.

This model became known as CoLEAD.

The proposed budget sustains $10.3 million in base funding and includes that amount, or increases that amount, excuse me, to $10.7 to reflect contract inflation.

The proposed budget also offers a one-time investment of $1.3 million for the PDA to establish and operate tiny home villages for their 72 co-lead clients.

It also provides ongoing funding of $1.3 million to maintain current hotel lodging for clients served by the combined co-lead slash lead model until tiny home spaces are operational in 2023. This allotment is also intended to pay for the ongoing cost of providing wraparound services and maintaining the tiny home village spaces moving forward.

And I see that we have a question.

Yes.

Thank you so much.

We had Council Member Lewis first up in the queue, but he accidentally just got kicked out of the meeting.

So I want to make sure that he gets admitted when you see him pop in.

Also wanted to acknowledge for the record that Council President Juarez has been with us this whole time.

She just didn't get her I don't think we heard her, so I wanted to make sure.

Hi there, Councilmember.

Good to see you, Council President.

So just for the record, the Council President has been here.

And then after Councilmember Lewis, if he's not back yet, it would be Councilmember Morales, and I don't see him yet.

So Councilmember Morales, why don't you go ahead and ask your question first?

Thank you.

So I am looking for a little bit of clarification certainty, hopefully.

Can you tell us if this proposed budget funds co-lead and lead services separately?

My understanding is these are two separate programs that require separate funding.

And I am a little concerned that they somehow got conflated and are therefore not fully funded.

Certainly.

So the proposed budget that you see here, which includes the ad and the sustained funding that continues the funding for this year, would provide funding for both LEED and CoLEED.

Can you break that down a little bit?

Because my understanding is that there's a $7 million gap or somewhere close to that for CoLEED.

Certainly.

And I'll invite my colleagues from the financial world to assist me with that.

But if I could address the shortfall, Earlier this year, and I indicated this in my remarks here, there was a desire to model a new project, which is essentially the co lead product.

And in doing so, there was a restructuring of the current funding the budget that you see here would continue that funding.

I do recognize and acknowledge that the service provider may intend to restore original funding levels to sustain the LEAD program as originally intended.

However, the funding offered here, both in the base package and in the ad, represents what we currently have as of 2022. So, I will invite anyone from CBO or from finance to provide additional information and or clarity.

I can speak to that, Michael.

So based on the current funding that we have for the LEED and the CoLEED programs and the current arrangement we have with them in operating those programs, the 2023 budget includes 5.3 million of ongoing funding for CoLEED and about 6.7 million of ongoing funding for LEED.

And what was the original request?

Is that the same as what was being provided before?

That includes the additional $1.25 million that is added in the proposed budget of ongoing dollars.

OK, thank you.

I don't see any additional hands.

Oh, there we go.

Hello, hands.

Let's have Deputy Director Panucci add additional contacts and then we'll go to Council Member Herbold.

Thank you, Chair.

Good morning, Council Members.

I think we are still trying to get some clarity about what exactly is in the proposed budget, but my understanding was that the city was moving, rather than distinguishing between the, the funding for lead and funding for Cody that it was a funding.

It was funding to contract for services with the PDA in a sort of lead-co-lead combined model.

And so that it isn't funded separately, but HSD and CBO can reconfirm that, that there is about $12 million of ongoing funding in the proposed budget for the lead-co-lead combined model, and then the additional one-time funding of 1.25 million for that just to stand up the tiny home village with some funds in at least in 23 going to be used to transition from the current code lead model that is using hotels into the tiny home villages, I think it is.

The question, I think, or one of the questions before the council is, this will mean that overall the program will be able to serve fewer people.

COLEAD provides more services than the, let's just call it the traditional LEAD.

And so there is a question of if the intent was to continue to fund the general fund issue.

The general fund issue was included in the adopted budget last year.

This is not fully funding that and would require a lot more.

Given the general fund issue everyone was facing in the discussions in June, my understanding was that was the intent of the executive to move to this combined model using that base

I do.

Thanks.

And some of this is going to be a little bit repetitive of what you just heard from Deputy Director Panucci, but I want to make sure I'm just crystal clear on the details here.

So the 23-24 proposed budget includes $12 million to support programs that come from the Public Defenders Association, or the PDA.

The PDA developed and continues to manage the Let Everyone Advance with Dignity, or LEAD, program, which is a program that allows law enforcement and community organizations to refer individuals to community-based services instead of jail and prosecution.

LEAD clients are engaged in low-level offenses or are the subject of public safety concerns related to behavioral health challenges or income instability.

Now during the pandemic, LEAD developed a new service model to emphasize lodging and wraparound services for clients who are experiencing homelessness.

This model became known as CoLEAD, and CoLEAD is now a part of LEAD.

The Council added $3.9 million in ongoing general fund in the 22 adopted budget for HSD to maintain a pre-arrest diversion program and use these funds and the use of these funds is later expanded in scope to support the combined efforts of LEAD and CoLEAD.

Including that increment, in total, the 22 budget provided 10.3 million in ongoing funding for the PDA's programs.

So the 23-24 proposed budget includes 10.3 million in base funding, which is increased to 10.7 million per the 4% inflationary adjustment.

One time 2023 funding of about 1.3 million for the PDA to establish and operate tiny home villages spaces for 72 co-lead clients.

and ongoing funding of 1.3 million to maintain the current hotel lodging for clients served by the combined co-lead and lead model until the tiny home village spaces are operational in 2023 and in 2024 to pay the costs of providing those clients with wraparound services and maintaining the tiny home village spaces.

So I know that that was long and detailed, but again, I just wanted to be crystal clear about the executive's perspective on this.

Thank you very much.

Okay, I see Council Member Morales off mute.

Follow up, Council Member?

Yeah, I just want to be clear that that the way COLEAD operates is different.

And with this, you know, I don't know what the intent was trying to combine services, but this budget will not allow COLEAD to serve clients unless the plan is not to serve clients through the LEAD program.

I think we probably have a little bit more unpacking to do here to fully understand what the mayor's budget is proposing compared to what the actual providers believe they need in order to serve our community members.

We can certainly follow up with all of that, but I want to just express deep concern about this budget item.

Thank you, Councilmember.

And it looks like there's some additional thoughts on this, Councilmember Herbold, and then Councilmember...

I'm sorry, Councilmember Herbold.

I did have Councilmember Lewis in the queue first, and then he got dropped.

Councilmember Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you, Councilmember Vizquez.

I guess I would just reiterate that moving forward, what I would like to see is a meeting of minds between the executive and the leadership of the PDA just to make sure that everyone is on the same page.

The information we've received from the Public Defender Association indicates that the assumptions being made by the executive are not going to Translate materially into the impact the executive is trying to produce through this budget.

And that's just, I mean, that's just the reality.

So I don't know if.

Uh, if there needs to be some more explanation to the provider about how this budget gets to.

Where the executive programmatically intends this to go, or if we need to come in and do some tweaking, or if there's circumstances.

That the executive is not completely aware of that have led to a miscommunication, but I would just say that if if the hope is to have the transition to tiny homes and.

And other programmatic changes that is envisioned in this that we've been informed by the relevant providers that that is not the case and that this does not do it and there needs to be.

some additional resource included in order to reach what this item is trying to do.

The number that's been quoted to me by the provider is $7 million, is the delta between what this is purporting to do and what it actually does.

I just think that I would like to convene a meeting to make sure we're all on the same page with this and that we can move forward accordingly either by unfortunately scaling down our ambition on this or making the investment to realize it.

So just wanted to flag that.

Sorry if some of my remarks are redundant based on the conversation I missed, but I'll turn it back over to you, Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you very much.

And I think that both you and Council Member Morales are citing the same number and concern about the same potential gap.

Council Member Herbold,

And I just, I think I'm just wanting to provide a little context.

I think there's consistency between the budget as proposed and an agreement that was reached this summer as it relates to the concepts, not as it relates to the dollar amount.

So I agree with everything that's been said by the executive team that there, The city of King County RHA agreed to fund just care using state dollars to address the encampments in the right-of-way, and the city agreed to fund a combined model focused on community safety while retaining the ability for folks where there's low-level criminal behaviors or by the lack of housing that's a reference to the combined model.

lead, co-lead model.

Where it seems to be at odds, though, is the expectations that were driven by the meeting that happened this summer.

As to me, I was not present.

I know some of my colleagues were.

But as I understand the description, we're committed as it related to the funding.

Are not reflected in this in this budget so I'm really hoping.

Here the executive scribe.

Their understanding of the out of these conversations as it relates to the amounts you've you've described what's in the budget, but I would say if you could not not right now, but if you could go back and.

Review the.

the records created after this summer time meeting and let us know, according to how that meeting, that agreement was documented, what the funding commitments were as relates to these merged programs and the ongoing needs.

And I just want to also flag the obligation that the council embraced under Resolution 31916 in 2019 where we declared our commitment to ensuring that law enforcement, fair arrest and diversion programs like LEAD receive public funding sufficient to accept all priority qualifying referrals citywide.

Thanks.

PB, Lisa Smith-Miyazaki, she-her, she-hers, she-hers.

to make sure that there was not a delay or gap in care and efforts to meet people's that we could get through the end of the year.

But I do want to emphasize my recollection of that conversation was not that that would be the pathway going forward.

It was really for a temporary effort to try to get through the end of the year.

So I just don't want that offer of flexibility from earlier this year for the remainder of 2022 to be then used as I think it's important for us to look at this as a reference or maybe justification for a blended funding model going forward when it does seem that this would result in a decrease in services.

We're hearing you can either have co-lead or you can have lead, but you can't have both with this proposed budget.

So I think my colleagues have expressed well the interest in learning more about the assumptions I think it's important to bring folks together to make sure we have the clear meaning of the minds.

This is an area where we definitely get lost in alphabet soup sometimes.

I look forward to getting additional clarity on this as well.

Director Dingley and Michael as well.

I will defer to seniority so director Julie feel free and then I'll try to close this out.

Oh great.

Thank you.

I think council members, I want to just let you know that that from speaking for myself, I learned that the provider had concerns about this funding level just two days ago.

Very new information and the numbers even that I've heard in this conversation are much different than what I've heard from them.

Indeed, I do think that this is right for us to take this offline and have some additional conversations and appreciate everyone's time on this.

That's a great offer.

Thanks so much.

We look forward to that discussion.

Michael, anything else you'd like to add?

No, I'd actually like to echo Director Dingley's comments and also thank all the members here for their attention to the issue.

We're committed to ensuring that we are providing quality service and would love to take that conversation offline.

Wonderful.

Okay, we will look forward to that discussion on a relatively quick timeframe.

Let's keep going.

Okay, so I will now hand it over.

Oh, I think if we can go back to the previous slide here.

I will actually hand it over to Director Kim to address this last item and then we'll transition to the next slide.

That's right.

On number six, we've got bundled together a second item.

For the second item on this slide, we're proposing to add a strategic advisor to project manage neighborhood public safety case conferencing currently happening between the mayor's office, Seattle Police, Lead Reach, and community stakeholders.

So this approach is currently being piloted in two neighborhoods, that's University District and Ballard, and this position supports the expansion across other Seattle neighborhoods.

I do want to note that in the published proposed budget, the description refers to three neighborhoods, and I apologize, that's an error.

So it's currently being piloted in the two that I named.

The strategic advisor will create and manage a by name list of high impact individuals by neighborhood and develop responsive care plans that connect people to appropriate services.

The goal here is to divert harm or criminal activity.

Next slide please.

Thank you, Director Kim.

And just for our colleagues, I think what I'm going to ask people to do, since we've had a lot of comments so far, is if you do have specific questions about the slides, of course, feel free to raise your hand.

Let's save some of our comments and thoughts about the proposal until we get into issue identification so we can get through this and get to the central staff presentation as well.

All right, Director Kim, thank you.

Thank you.

Next slide, please.

The Seattle Community Safety Initiative, led by Community Passageways, and the King County Regional Peacekeepers Collective, led by Public Health, were both launched with one-time funds in response to increased gun violence disproportionately harming our black and brown youth and young adults.

The proposed budget includes ongoing investments for both.

These investments allow community-led organizations to develop and lead on violence prevention initiatives.

Number eight is for ongoing funds for reentry programs that started with one-time funds, and this is specifically with the 2021 Equitable Communities Initiative.

The proposed funds is jumpstart payroll tax and will allow nine community-based organizations to continue their reentry programming for black indigenous people of color communities who are disproportionately impacted by the criminal legal system.

Next slide.

And what portion of Jump Start does that come from?

Oh, good question.

And I see Julie leaning in.

Economic revitalization.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, the first part of number nine is for new victim advocacy staff.

This is an ad of an administrative specialist and two crime victim advocates to increase our intake and case management services for survivors of sexual assault.

There are currently only 2.5 FTE dedicated specifically for sexual assault advocates with caseloads.

sad to report, is averaging above 200 per one FTE at this time.

And for best practices, caseload should be about 80. The second item in number nine adds a position dedicated to identifying and filling gaps in our services for survivors and their families of multiple crime types.

The staff will be responsible for data analysis, continuous process improvement, quality assurance, identifying gaps in resources, and other projects associated with improving service delivery access.

Number 10. This is the equity action plan.

This funds externally focused racial equity initiatives to improve outcomes in safety, health, economic justice, and education for Seattle's historically underserved communities and community members.

Programs will emphasize tangible direct service activities, things like mentoring and job training initiatives with immediate impacts and demonstrable long-term benefits.

Next slide.

The first item is for ongoing funds for meal delivery programs that serve seniors who may not be served by in-person community dining programs.

The current funding is sunsetting in 2022. And just a side note that this item is supported by the Seattle Human Services Coalition.

Number 12 adds one-time funding for 2023 and 24 for the Healthy Seattle Initiative Pilot Program to improve access to quality care for uninsured and underinsured, especially in BIPOC, immigrant, refugee, and historically marginalized communities.

A really important note is it's anticipated that this pilot will serve 1,000 uninsured and underinsured residents per year.

Next slide.

Can I ask a question on this?

Sorry, I probably should know this, but is this a brand new initiative or is this a continuing pilot?

Oh, good question.

Amy Holland, do you have that information?

Was your question Council Member Mosqueda on the Healthy Seattle Initiative?

If it's new or it's ongoing of the pilot?

It is a brand new pilot.

I do know, too, that I think it's anticipated we're just doing the one-time ad because we anticipate future resources coming online.

Thanks, Julie.

Okay, next slide, please.

Okay, we've got several here.

Uh, the 1st item is for 1 time investment of the Seattle Indian health board to establish a detox facility.

This will expand and improve their Lake City facility and support a new detox center expected to open in 2024. The next item adds to Northwest abortion access fund in partnership with public health.

The third item is for one time funding for rise above the rise above organization for their youth development work with indigenous youth.

And then the last item on the slide adds 5 million and one time funding backed by the payroll tax to support the development of the University of Washington's Rainier Valley Early Learning Campus.

This project is a joint investment with the state of Washington, King County, which we learned that they did include a $5 million match to the city's investments.

So that's good news.

The federal government and philanthropy I know that there's a lot of excitement in this particular project, and once completed, the anticipated programs at the campus will include childcare for infants and toddlers, Seattle Preschool Program classrooms, family support services, UW undergrad and master degree programs in early learning with full scholarships, full scholarships, and professional development and mentorship programs.

Next slide.

Okay, if you miss Michael Bailey, he's back.

Thank you director Kim on this side, we plan to highlight a few of the reductions as part of the proposed budget.

As many of, you know, the city has been working diligently to combat the economic impacts of the covet 19 pandemic.

But budget chair, Ms. Gaeta actually spoke to this earlier, just referencing the need to strategically use scarce resource and rightfully so.

As such, the department may be difficult decision of identifying initiatives that the city could reduce funding for without creating disproportionate impacts on the populations and communities that we serve.

Because the mobile crisis team is currently in operation, the department identified the $2.5 million expansion effort as an initiative that could be phased in.

Taking this approach would aid the city in its financial recovery and ultimately allow us to be better positioned in the future to fund similar initiatives.

This item phases in funding for the mobile team crisis teams, or mobile crisis teams, MCTs, my apologies, with full funding levels returning in 2025. And again, I recognize that we have the general public listening, so for clarity, the Mobile Crisis Team, or MCT, is a collective of mental health and substance abuse clinicians and professionals.

The team takes referrals from first responders, crisis connections, and also designated crisis responders.

The teams are currently in an operation and also in the process of expanding due to an influx of non-city funds that they received earlier this year.

The department still plans to honor the intent of this ad by investing the remaining funds in 2022. Director Kim, I'll hand it over to you for the last item.

Do you mind, Director Kim, just one second.

I see a hand from Council Member Nelson.

I heard chemical dependency or something in there.

So I can save my question until the end of the presentation.

Okay, thanks on that particular slide.

Thanks.

All right, great.

Please continue.

Director Kim.

Thank you.

And the last item on this slide is the reduction of funding for the preparing youth for young adults for success RFP.

So it sounds very jargony, so I'm going to explain very briefly that in 2021, the Human Services Department administered a request for proposal to support youth and young adults.

So think about youth development, pre-employment services in this funding opportunity.

The total award amount was about 3.7 million.

In 2022, HSD received an ad of 750,000 to award more applicants.

And so, you know, when we have an RFP, you can award only up to 3.7 million.

And then regardless of the scores, the rest of the proposals, we are unable to fund due to the lack of more available dollars.

And so that ad was to include more of the applicants.

Of this ad, we are proposing to reduce $177,000 because at this time, that's currently not encumbered or being contracted.

And so it's not a direct impact to a specific provider.

And so under the budget constraints, it was just another area that we were able to support the overall general fund effort.

And that concludes the highlights of our budget ads reductions and savings.

Okay, thank you very much.

Councilmember Nelson.

Thank you very much.

Um, so I have a question about it's the, it's the budget item, which is a bo hs.

H 700. And I asked, it's a promoting public health.

And it says the purpose of promoting public health is to provide programs that give access to chemical dependency services and reduce the disparities in health among Seattle populations.

And I think it's about it's 15 million.

But the program expenditures only have HIV management and physical health care.

So I'm wondering where where can I find information about the about the chemical dependency slash substance use disorder services that are provided in our contracts or so in what are the referral agencies that do provide that care?

I see Michael Bailey is off mute.

Do you want to take this one or do you want me to?

If you'd like to start, I was going to offer to collect additional information, but if you have additional contacts at the moment,

I recall seeing this question in our council questions.

Yes, it's number 89. Oh, good.

You have it up.

Amy Holland, do you want to chime in and give an overview of our response?

Sure, so I can give kind of a summary of some of the programs that include substance use services, and then, of course, you'll get the formal answer in writing.

So we have a portion of our public health budgets that's actually in the addressing homelessness budget summary level area for the health care for the homeless program.

And that does include a component for addressing substance use issues.

Additionally, there's quite a number of components of our public health contract that is in the public health budget summary level category that provide related services for substance use disorders.

And then in addition, we we have a couple of contracts that are focused on substance use disorders for youth.

And I think that that's that's it at a high level, and we'll follow up with those details and more information about the amounts.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

I am not seeing any additional hands right now.

I do want to say thank you on the community safety peacekeepers reentry item.

We are pleased to see the reentry funding.

We've heard from several organizations, including Chief Seattle Club, that this funding has been really core for the organizational work to try to create alternative methods for public safety.

And I'm encouraged to see these investments for gun violence reduction programs, intervention and response strategies.

And I think that this is a great example of the type of investments that we continue to hope to see scaled up in lieu of just just relying on traditional policing.

So thank you for the overview here.

And I know that HSD only has a portion of some of the alternative response systems that we've invested in in the past, and you've been great with working as quickly as you can.

We know that you had a number of individual team members who turned over, and so we had added staffing to HSC in the past to help process grants to get those grants out the door faster so that funding could go directly to communities, especially in the last two and a half years.

especially for organizations who've been led by BIPOC individuals and directly rooted in BIPOC communities.

Thank you for that work and I think we'll continue to try to identify ways to scale up strategies like this and have that as a cornerstone to how we also address the shadow pandemic and the stress and trauma in communities.

Any additional comments here?

Yeah.

Sorry, I have an overarching question because I'm just understanding that there's the human services fund and then all the rest.

But I'm are there performance standards that that are applied across the board, I imagine that the ones that are the.

know, the work that's funded by the Human Services Fund have to comply with HUD or whatever, because they have state and federal dollars.

But in general, in terms of for the for the other agencies or initiatives that are funded in HSD's budget,

Yeah, we have different types of contracts at HSD, a good portion of them are outcomes based contracts and so you're right that the general fund contracts I think that you're alluding to where there's not prescribed kind of outcomes.

or indicators, we do oftentimes work with community providers to identify the performance metrics.

And so, without going into too much detail, it typically has the quantity, quality, and impact type of outcomes.

And there's a percentage that's tied to the impact, you know, so our folks better off.

And so, that is one way in which we do our contracting in this space.

Got it.

Thank you.

Well, thanks to the whole team here.

Director Kim, Amy D., nice to meet you.

Michael, thank you for walking us through most of the slides today.

Really appreciate the overview.

We also know that in some cases HSD is the the contractor.

So it's hard to answer all these specific questions.

And obviously there's a lot of nexus with the partnership with King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

So we don't We don't have all the answers that we have today.

I would expect, though, for some of these questions that were asked, especially with King County Regional Homelessness Authority as a contractor, that we could get the answer since there's that contractual relationship.

So we'll look forward to getting additional information from you.

And we appreciate all that you do.

And please express our appreciation to the entire team at HSD.

All right, let's continue on.

We are now on the we're going to move on to the central staff portion of the presentation here.

Again, central staff is going to walk through the issue identification and for any questions as we go, please feel free to raise your hands, councilmembers, and this is an opportunity for you to ask questions of central staff and if needed, we'll, of course, have technical central staff analysis here.

Welcome back to the stage here, Amy Gore and Anne Gorman.

Appreciate you being with us and we look forward to this walkthrough.

Oh, I should note, right, there's two sections of the central staff presentation here.

One will focus on the traditional budget issue identification, the budget legislation that's been passed that corresponds with the budget will then be described later.

Any policy change that has to accompany the budget as proposed is also going to be discussed after we walk through the budget details.

We'll then talk about the text of legislation that would accompany it if the mayor's proposal was to be accepted as transmitted.

I just want to remind folks, two sections of this upcoming presentation.

Great.

Thank you, Council Member.

I just have, again, my name is Amy Gore with Council Central Staff, and I have a few items for your consideration today.

You can go to the next slide, please.

I will not go into the full detail of the budget.

I think we've talked a lot about the changes that are embedded in that, and we'll get into more detail about some of these specifics as we continue on.

So next slide, please.

So the first issue that I wanted to raise is the racial equity impacts of funding reductions in the HSD budget.

As Council has discussed many times this week, and in fact was highlighted by Director Dingley just this morning, this is a budget that includes many difficult choices.

The HSD budget was the recipient of significant amounts of one-time funding throughout the pandemic.

In 2022, there was almost $50 million of one-time funding in the HSD budget.

Much of this funding has gone to contracted partners to support the council's highest priorities, including homelessness services, public health investments, and supports for food and nutrition programs, and the one-time appreciation paid for workers.

These funds are not available in the 2023 proposed budget.

As you know, in the proposed budget, HSD has received one of the largest increases in ongoing general fund dollars of any department in the city, indicating that this is a priority of the executive.

However, the net change still results in an overall reduction in the HSD budget and will be particularly impactful in those areas that received the most one-time funding in 2022. This will result in a reduction of funding for some of our partners and will result in service reductions in the city.

I'm going to go into more detail about some of those reductions in our next issues, but I just wanted to raise overall the concern about racial equity impacts of reductions in funding in these areas.

As you know, systemic racism results in unequal distribution of poverty by race.

For example, in Seattle, Black people are over three times more likely to live below the poverty line than white people, and Alaska Native and American Indians and Hispanic and Latino people are almost two times more likely to be living below the poverty line.

When we cut programs that are intended to support low-income individuals, the impacts are disproportionately felt by these groups.

I know that one of the ways that we can address the disparate impacts is by really focusing on equity in the program development and in the distribution of funding.

And I know that HSD absolutely prioritizes that in the work that they do.

The council could also increase funding for these areas to ameliorate the impact of reductions or could make no change.

Next slide, please, Patty.

So the next item to discuss is the HSD contract inflation.

You discussed this quite a bit with the executive previously.

As you know, council passed legislation in 2019 requiring that HSD contracts be inflated annually based on the change to the consumer price index for urban wage earners, which is CPI-W.

This year, that inflationary rate is 7.6%.

The Office of Economic and Revenue Forecast estimates that it will be 6.7% in 2024. This would result in a total contract inflation of $15.1 million in 2023 and $13.1 million in 2024. The 4% increase provided in the budget is $7.9 million in 2023 and $7.6 million in 2024. To fully fund the contract inflation based on CPIW, Council would need to add $7.1 million in 2023 and additional $5.6 million in 2024. And that adds up to to increase appropriations to fund the SMC required, excuse me, the Seattle municipal code required contract inflation or no change.

The next item is homelessness services funding.

Before we jump in, I just want to clarify one thing.

As I was reviewing the HSD paper, I realized I used three different ways of speaking about King County Regional Homelessness Authority and their funding.

First is what's called the budget program.

This is the city's bucket of funding for KCRHA.

It includes the contract, but also includes things like the staff that are administering the contract.

Second is the KCRHA contract itself, That's the actual money that the city is paying to the authority for our contracted services and their operations.

These numbers are similar, but not exactly the same.

And finally, there's the KCRHA budget, which includes Seattle funding, as well as county and other sources.

So I'm going to try and be intentional about using those terms specifically so we don't get off track.

First, I want to just talk about the budget program.

Again, this is what is in the city's budget and includes what is spent on KCRHA as well as city administration and support.

The budget program was 109.4 million in 2022 and is proposed to be 87.7 million in 2023. That is an overall decrease of 21.7 million.

However, 7.8 million of that is funding for programs that were not actually transfer to the authority in 2022. So that funding is being transferred back to the city-run budget program but doesn't represent a real reduction to authority funding compared to last year.

Now I want to talk a little bit about the city's contract with the authority.

The city's funding of KCRHA in 2023 was actually higher than 109 million that was in the budget program due to carry forward from 2021. And so the total amount was $118.3 million.

And that includes $45 million in one-time funding and carry forward from 2021, and $73.3 million in ongoing funding.

In the proposed 2023 budget, there is $14.4 million of new funding.

And that includes $4.1 million of one-time funding, which we talked about earlier to stand up safe lots and tiny home villages, and it also includes a little bit of one-time contract inflation.

It also includes ongoing funding of 10.3 million for the operations for safe lots and tiny home villages, ongoing contract inflation, again, at a 4 percent rate.

Excluding one-time and carried forward funding in 2022, this represents an 11.2 million increase in the city's ongoing funding for KCRHA.

However, there is still the remaining reductions due to the expiration of one-time funding.

The authority has identified $9.4 million in reductions due to the expiration of one-time funding that will be the most impactful.

It includes one-time funding for diversion, outreach, rapid rehousing, an emergency shelter and COVID mitigation and shelter.

These are the budget areas that are not seeing increases in ongoing funding in the proposed budget.

The council's options are to increase funding to avoid reductions in homelessness programs and service delivery or no change.

Amy, on this one, I think we were trying to do an apples to apples comparison to understand more of the base funding from the city.

city's general fund versus the city's general fund in combination with the one-time American Rescue Plan Act dollars, the Coronavirus Local Relief Fund.

So we knew that we were passing on, you know, over $40 million to KCRHA in the last year or two to try to get those dollars out the door as soon as possible to address in part the the impacts of COVID and to make sure that folks had a stable place to stay housed and also to avoid congregate shelter.

So I know that you've done the analysis, you've shared it in your memo, but just can we repeat one more time, the general fund amount in last year's budget from the city, was that closer to 66 million?

I will need to go back and double check the, I will say the, When you talk about the general fund, there's also some human services fund dollars that are going towards King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

And so I'll need to double check that breakdown for you.

But yes, the base funding for KCRHA in in 2022. Let me 69 million.

I just checked my notes.

Is that correct?

Yeah, I think that is correct.

Like say the ongoing funding, which again, I think is mostly general fund, but also includes some of the human services funds, which again are these federal and state dollars.

Okay.

Sorry, can you just to clarify all that?

I'm sorry, chair 69 total.

We don't quite know what what the split was.

I will get that split for you and it looks like Michael might be able to jump in as well.

Michael or Director Dingley, I think one of the important points that I'm trying to understand is, it was around $115 to $119 million that we as a city had passed through to King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

Of that, it sounds like 69 million was the non one time federal funds so I was gonna say coronavirus ARPA funds that we passed through was over $40 million so it was about $69 million for I'm going to go to the next slide, please.

so this is ongoing base funding that included mostly general fund and then a portion of the federal dollars from the human service portion that Amy just mentioned.

Is 69 the rough figure that we're talking and then Councilmember Morales is

I need like a mute swear jar.

I'm sorry.

I'm hoping to provide a little bit of information here.

So, of the citywide total, the 108Million that's allocated to the human services department in 2023 for homelessness shelter services administration 87.7Million or approximately 81% of that.

is proposed for HSD to transfer to the RHA.

So excluding the one-time federal funding received in 2022, this represents a $10.3 million increase in the city's contribution to RHA over the 2022 revised amount of $77.5 million.

But Director Tooley, I'll invite you to provide additional context if there's anything missing there.

You did great.

And I think that that's the revised number that 2020. There, there are general fund ongoing dollars that go to KCRH and non general funds dollars that go to KCRH.

So it's not exactly a one for one of general fund.

to contracted because there's other colors of money that are also contracted with them that are also ongoing.

What we can do is just provide you a breakdown between the two years.

I think that would be the easiest rather than the number soup to try to walk through all the different things at this moment.

But yeah, a simple chart that we actually probably have and can send around, not a problem.

Thank you.

I was doing the math over here and realized that we're going to be looking at is the math.

87.7 minus 10.3.

Is the math that we're being asked to do to look at the funding going in 2022. But you're also suggesting that there's a breakdown that's different between ongoing funding for programming versus funding for the operations of King County

Yeah, we'll get you the colors of money that were contributed and what's one time and what's ongoing.

Okay, great.

And Amy, sorry about that.

I know you've been digging into that question too.

And if I made that issue more convoluted, I apologize.

I'm just trying to do an apples to apples comparison where possible.

No, I absolutely appreciate that.

There's so many ways to slice this data.

And so we will definitely want to provide you with the sliced up data that helps you answer the questions that you need answered.

So we will work on getting that to you.

Okay, I think we can keep going.

Okay, so the next issue for issue identification is food and nutrition funding.

Similar to homelessness, these programs have been one of Council's highest priorities, and therefore Council has funded significant increases to these programs when one-time funding was available.

Much of this one-time funding was intended to bridge a gap between the increased COVID resources in 2020 and 2021, and potential new funding at the state and federal level.

but significant new resources have not become available yet.

In combination with the reduction from the expiration of the one-time appreciation pay, this will result in a reduction in funding for most contracted service providers in this program area.

Overall, there's an 8.8 million reduction in funding for the Food and Nutrition Budget Program between 2022 and 2023. Again, that includes 7.5 million in overall support for food programs, 350,000 of one-time funding for specific programs, such as farm-to-table and clean greens.

And it also includes a $450,000 reduction in sweetened beverage tax funding that was going towards public awareness campaigns, program evaluations, but were not actually direct services to the general public necessarily.

There is, as mentioned earlier today, a $100,000 addition for hybrid meal delivery for seniors, which represents ongoing funding for, or at least a portion of what was included in 2022. I will note that it is difficult to quantify the impacts of this reduction.

It really depends on how a partner organization used one-time funding.

So for example, if you imagine like a food bank, if they spent one-time funding on a new refrigerator, then not having that funding going forward probably will not result in a significant service delivery reduction.

However, if a food bank, for example, was using that money to purchase additional food, that would be a result in services.

But again, it's difficult to quantify that.

But the council's options are to increase funding for food and nutrition programs, to try and close the gap between 2022 and 2023 or no change.

Next slide, Patty.

On that, Amy, is there any additional information that we could get about when some of these state and federal funds might be anticipated?

I thought that part of the rationale with the increase in funding in 2021 and 2022 was because we saw historic investments from the state legislature specifically in food programs.

It sounds like there may be a delay with getting some of those dollars directly to the operators of the food assistance program.

Is there any additional information that either you have now or you can follow up with them when those dollars may flow to community partners and or if it is the level of historic investments that we had heard about?

And Director Kim, I see you online too.

I will defer to Director Kim on that question.

Okay, thanks.

We can send follow-up information to Amy directly, but my staff have been monitoring this, and we do understand that there was significant funding statewide, but the portion of funds awarded to agencies serving King County and Seattle residents were often for purposes other than the City of Seattle COVID relief, and so For example, with Washington State Agriculture's investments in food boxes and special projects, they were differing from the city investments on discretionary food purchases or operating expenses.

So there was an infusion, but it didn't necessarily add to what the providers were asking for or seeking in order to meet the community needs.

There was a small percentage of awarded funds that support staff and food purchases from those state dollars, and I think that's what we're hearing providers really concerned about.

And so, we've got some detailed information.

There were some more awards, and Amy, we're happy to get you that information.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Next slide, please, Patty.

Thank you.

The final issue I wanted to discuss is establishing new programs and expansion of programs.

As noted by the department, the proposed budget includes a few new programs, including the equity action plan, which would make investments that are yet to be determined in externally focused equity initiatives.

The Healthy Seattle pilot, which would fund two years of community health workers to help individuals find affordable quality care.

and the expansion of a case conferencing pilot program to expand that geographically.

All of these programs would certainly be beneficial programs, but may not be as high of a priority for Council as addressing funding reductions that we've been speaking about this morning.

Council options are to reduce appropriations for new programs in 2023 and use funding on existing services or no change.

And if there are no questions about that, I will turn it over to Brian Goodnight, who will be discussing the next several slides.

Sorry, I do have a question.

I spent a lot of time talking about, you know, how do we provide health insurance to folks who are not qualifying for federal programs and or our state's Apple Health program.

And I know that that was something that the mayor had interest in as well.

Is the proposal here on the Healthy Seattle Initiative more of like a navigator, a connector, a promotora concept versus coverage, right?

We're not gonna be able to do coverage with 350K.

Yes, that is my understanding is that it really is about helping people who do not have insurance or other health coverage find quality, affordable healthcare.

which again is a very admirable intention.

Yeah, absolutely.

Is the concept though here to mirror existing promotora programs or?

I'm sorry, what do you mean by near?

Mirror.

Mirror.

Sorry, I mumble sometimes.

No, no, no.

I have limited understanding about that program, but I think so, yes.

Okay, got it.

All right, thanks for flagging these.

And as you noted, And as we've talked about with other programs too, very important policies.

And I think that the revenue choices are important to underscore.

Director Dingley.

I just have a little bit more clarification, if helpful.

Otherwise, we can just provide it via email.

But if you'd like to hear it, I can provide it.

I think let's do it by email, if you don't mind, Director.

No problem.

OK, thanks.

Okay, good morning Council Members.

For the record, Brian Goodnight, Council Central staff.

Apologies for the interruption to your regularly scheduled HSD programming, but we were trying to figure out a logical place for this issue that revolves around hygiene services to be included.

So there are just two slides related to Seattle Public Utilities or SPU and the issue that's been identified.

So this first slide is intended to provide you with a quick orientation to an area of SPU that is almost exclusively funded by the General Fund, and that has generally been known historically as Clean City Programs.

You might notice on the slide that I forgot to remove an asterisk next to the RB wastewater line item, and that indicates that that's the only program on this list that is partially funded by a non-General Fund source, the Drainage and Wastewater Fund.

But the roads that I'd like to draw your attention to are those that are highlighted in green and the rusty orange color.

The items highlighted in green are graffiti control and litter pickup, and those are two programs that are significantly increased in the proposed budget.

The increases for these items are part of the mayor's unified care team proposal that you'll be hearing about next.

So I won't spend much time on them other than to say that the graffiti control program is proposed to increase by approximately 1.2 million dollars and three FTE and the litter pickup program is proposed to increase by 1.7 million dollars.

The issue that I'd like to highlight for you this morning however relates to the two rows that are highlighted in the orange color.

The proposed budget would decrease the public hygiene program by approximately $1.2 million in 2023 and would eliminate the public sinks pilot program, which had a budget of $100,000 in 2022. Patty, next slide, please.

So in terms of specific reductions to these programs, they can be thought of in three parts.

First, the proposed budget would reduce the number of funded hygiene stations from 21 down to 15. As a reminder, hygiene stations are typically composed of two portable restrooms, one of which is ADA accessible, and a handwashing station.

The 2022 adopted budget included funding sufficient to deploy 21 stations, 18 of which were part of the base program, and the budget also funded three additional hygiene stations with the intention of providing service near RV encampments.

In practice, SPU is only deployed between 12 and 14 hygiene stations at any one time due to siting challenges, and the department has reported that there are only 10 that are currently deployed.

Second, the proposed budget would remove the mobile provision of hygiene trailer service in favor of providing stationary service.

The hygiene trailers provide a combination of standard and ADA accessible showers along with bathroom facilities.

The City currently owns two hygiene trailers and rents a third, and the 2022 adopted budget provided funding sufficient to allow two of the trailers to be mobile and provide services to multiple locations.

In practice, SPU has reported that siting and moving the trailers has been challenging, and so only one of the trailers has been moved amongst three locations.

The proposed budget would convert this one mobile trailer into a stationary trailer likely to be located at the University Heights Plaza, The other two stationary trailers would be located at Camp Second Chance in West Seattle and at 157 Roy Street near Seattle Center.

The locations that would no longer receive hygiene trailer services would be Equinox in Georgetown and the Rainier Valley Food Bank.

And according to SPU data, as of September 18th, the two sites have combined to provide approximately 933 showers during 2022. And then the third item, the proposed budget would eliminate the public sinks pilot program.

The 2021 adopted budget included $100,000 for SPU to develop and implement a publicly accessible SINK program.

In May of that year, SPU awarded grant funding to two local organizations to create and deploy SINKs into the community.

The 2022 adopted budget contained the same level of funding, but none of that has been spent to date because of the funds from 2021 were carried over and are still being spent.

As of June of this year, SPU reports that three sinks had been deployed by one of the organizations, and the other organization was still in the process of obtaining site permits and deployment agreements.

And then last fall, during the discussion of the 2022 budget, SPU indicated that they were intending to perform an internal evaluation of the sink pilot in 2022, and that evaluation has been completed.

And it found that although SYNC hosts and users found value in the SYNCs, there was significant regulatory and logistical barriers meant that the program didn't meet its original objective of quickly deploying SYNCs, or sorry, quickly deploying the accessible handwashing stations during the height of the pandemic.

Additionally, according to SPU, neither of the two community organizations has expressed an interest in continuing work on this program.

So as you can see on the slide, the options that have been identified are fairly straightforward.

The council could choose to restore some or all of the funding for hygiene services, possibly by scaling back other general fund investments, or it could accept the budget proposal without changes.

And I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you very much, Brian.

Council Member Morales and then Council Member Lewis.

Thank you.

Thanks for that summary, Brian.

It's been interesting this week, we've learned about different ways that the previous administration either slow walked or failed altogether to implement council priorities in the last couple of years.

This hand washing sink pilot is another example of this.

This pilot was a rapid response to keep our unhoused neighbors safe during COVID.

And at the time during a hepatitis A outbreak that was occurring simultaneously.

So the idea here was a low cost, easily constructed way to provide sinks, easily connected to a nearby water source, so that we could provide hand washing and, you know, access to water, potable water, to folks who needed it during the crisis, during the initial stages of the pandemic especially.

Rather than build the sinks and get them out on the streets quickly, the department created an RFP process.

held this emergency response to very high regulatory standards that made it virtually impossible for folks to comply with.

So it's ironic now to hear that because of these regulatory barriers, the project is a failure.

We deferred to what was intended to be a city service to contracted organizations who stood up and operated the sinks in areas around the city, but who did not feel adequately supported by the city.

So this should have been critical infrastructure provided as an emergency response to people who really needed it.

And instead, the Seattle process got in the way.

So I just, you know, as I hear more and more throughout this week have heard throughout this week ways in which our priorities were.

really sort of dismissed.

My hope is that as we move forward with the new administration, the things that we identify and fund and make decisions to serve our community in order to serve our charter obligations around health and general welfare will be implemented the way we intend.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member.

Agreed.

Council Member Lewis.

Just to add my frustration to Council Member Morales' comments, if we can't figure out how to install a couple of sinks around the city, I just cannot fathom how the city is gonna tackle restoring Sockeye Salmon Run, solving homelessness, standing up alternatives to 911 response.

It is just a stunning failure of being impractical.

that this very simple program was not able to be implemented.

So actually my question, Brian, is did the report that was promulgated from the executive on the regulatory barriers, the hurdles to implementation, did it include recommendations on how to remove those hurdles in the future so that when we do have public health outbreaks, we don't have to not stand up sinks because of some regulation?

Did they indicate a way to fix those problems?

Or was it just, oh, there's these regulations, so we're not going to do anything?

Because it would be nice to see a policy path forward to fix those issues so we don't face this problem in the future.

And if not, and I know it's not necessarily a budget question, but maybe it's something for central staff to focus on queuing up some options next year for us to close some of those loopholes that tie our hands when we're trying to have an emergency response.

And we get really, really pedantic about things while we have outbreaks of hepatitis A or other exigent public health emergencies we need to respond to.

but we insist on being really pedantic about the fine letters of the law instead.

So is there anything in the report that has an approach like that?

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

Not to my recollection, I think that it does identify kind of the specific hurdles, but it doesn't go, it's not lengthy enough, it doesn't explore the kind of how those hurdles would be resolved.

It looks like Director Dingley might have a response as well.

Thank you.

I don't have a direct response to the council members line of inquiry on this.

I would just want to note that we have the HSD team on the line, and this is an SPU issue and I appreciate that that was highlighted at the beginning, but given the tone of the conversation just wanted to reiterate that we would love the opportunity to come back with the SPU team to talk about this program, and the work that was done and.

They did work really hard to try to make this work, and so I do want to respect the work of that incredible organization, the people there, and also offer that there are always opportunities to provide additional flexibility in how we do our work.

And so we look forward to working with you to loosen up some of those laws and regulations.

As you know, flexibility is definitely something that helps us be able to implement what you are looking to do as a policy matter.

Again, we're absolutely willing to come back with the SPU team to talk more about this, but I want to make clear to everybody listening that we have the HSD team here, and that's why you're not going to hear from the executive side a significant policy response on this.

But we do have as a city, a responsibility to follow through on the laws that are passed.

And the budget is a law.

It's signed into statute.

This is, again, not a question about impugning any one individual public servant's efforts.

It's about the responsibility falling upwards to the then mayor.

And I think in previous conversations that both we've received at the budget committee and in the last two years in committee meetings, It was clear that this was being deprioritized by that administration.

I think the council members have clearly articulated concerns with not being able to find creative pathways forward for simply being able to wash one's hands and be able to go to the bathroom.

So I do think that this is.

Not about any one specific department or one individual who works within our city or a team, there's no impugning of those individuals, but really the failure of the administration, the previous administration.

to implement simple things like hand-washing.

And I think it's fair to bring this up now, it's fair to bring this up in the upcoming conversation about clean cities.

Happy to have had such strong support from the committee and the president of the board, sorry, the parks board, who also, along with the executive, prioritized opening more bathrooms across the city.

But we know, according to the World Health Organization, Even if every single one of those bathrooms were open, we still wouldn't have enough restrooms to meet our current populations need, let alone those who are coming here as tourists and those who are living unsheltered without a place to wash their hands, go to the bathroom or take a shower at their own home.

So it is, I think, important for me to say that the tone of concern here is warranted and the tone that the council is raising about how we add this back into our deliberations for the upcoming budget.

is, I think, shared, appreciated concern so that we can really underscore, like the HSD provider, which is the long history that this has had with the council really trying to prioritize this and it not coming to fruition.

But I appreciate that the hard work of everyone in our city family, the workers on the front line during the pandemic has been challenging, but it does fall upwards to the failure of the previous administration to really prioritize this.

I'm gonna take Council Member Lewis as a follow-up and then Council Member Sawant.

Yeah, thank you.

I did just want to flag, I appreciate director dingley's response and I don't want to impugn how going forward is going to be relative to what the last two years were like, like I just want to be really clear on that.

But, you know, Like when I have constituent office hours just about things that are happening in the city and have to explain the stuff we funded, and then it never happens.

It's incredibly frustrating, because I mean I don't I can't speak for the experience of other offices but on this particular item.

My office sent lots of requests to collaborate with the executive on like, OK, well, what are the hurdles?

What can we do?

Are there things the council can do to remove some of these hurdles?

Is there an emergency order that we can pass to temporarily do this?

Can we use the COVID emergency orders?

And we were just frankly blown off for the most part.

I mean, I'm just going to say that.

And like that has not been how the Harrell administration has acted.

I wanna be clear, like it's been much more collaborative.

But going forward, and this is just a broader point, it's not just the sinks.

I'm focusing on the sinks because when you talk to an average person in the city, this is ridiculous, right?

And I think that there's a test we should apply more in how we do things as a government, where when it takes like 12 months to stand up, for example, like 40 tiny houses, the average person looks at that and says, that's ridiculous.

The average contractor in the private sector says, that's insane.

How can it possibly take that long to do something like that?

And we should take that feedback to heart in figuring out how we can do things that reflect the emergency that we're facing.

Because a lot of these like shelter assets, hygiene assets, it takes us forever to set up something very simple.

Sometimes there's real issues like labor availability that hold it up.

But when it's things like permitting or certain kind of review processes that we have the ability to waive or to work with our state or federal partners to waive, we need to be focusing a lot more on those kinds of things.

I've often reflected, like, maybe to put a focus on this, I should bring forward some kind of law to repeal the homelessness state of emergency.

What's the good of the homelessness state of emergency if it doesn't help us waive things like this?

Why do we have a homelessness state of emergency?

So, you know, I'm just venting some of my frustration on this and, you know, how can we really come together and focus because I know that this new administration has the same urgency that we have as a council.

How can we be really, really nimble and aggressive in the face of the challenges we face, instead of kind of sitting back and being like, Oh, yeah, well that's just the process that's just how long it takes.

Because then we're doing things for the process, for the bureaucracy, instead of trying to respond to our constituents and deal with the problem in front of us.

It's not always a problem of money.

Sometimes it's a problem of our collective resolve to get the things done.

And that's just epitomized by this entire sync discussion.

I mean, I'm just going to say, I mean, it is.

And if we can't do the small stuff like this, the bigger stuff like standing up shelter, standing up tiny homes while we basically have a system of shelter via tent, which is not good for anybody and which creates massive public frustration, just continues to get ingrained.

And then we get into a game of parsing blame for not solving the problem fast enough instead of how can we come together and fix the problem together.

So off my soapbox on this, but, um, I do hope that we can craft a budget that's not just looking at what the funding priorities are, but hooking up ways to speed up realizing these assets so that we can ameliorate the pressure the community is facing.

I'll turn it back over to Council Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Sawant, please go ahead.

Thank you Jim is good.

You know some of what I will say is obviously along the lines of what council members have already said in terms of how.

mind boggling it is that simple things cannot be done, but I also, I don't, it's hard for me to accept that, that, I mean, you know, the response that is being given, again, it's not, I want to echo what council members have said, it's not about individuals here, but about the overall approach that is being taken by the city, city government, that these simple things are somehow, really hard to carry out and that there are logistical hurdles in the way.

It's just hard to accept that.

It's a question of priorities, ultimately, and then that does make it a political question, which are the things that are being prioritized and which are not.

And I know there's a lot that's been said about the previous administration, which obviously is all true, unfortunately, the administration definitely had a very pro-corporate, pro-chamber of commerce, anti-homeless, anti-worker approach.

But this proposed budget is from the current administration.

It's from Mayor Harrell.

So I just don't understand.

I mean, I don't agree, actually, with the statements that have been made that, oh, we agree that Mayor Harrell shows the same sense of urgency.

Why it doesn't actually show a same sense of urgency when your proposed budget I mean, it's your proposed budget.

You have proposed this.

The mayor's office has proposed reducing money for hygiene and all these dollars for something like graffiti removal.

Well, that shows where the priorities are.

And the Chamber of Commerce does have a priority.

to homeless people and low income people to just disappear.

And not they have they have been opposed to the very policies that science has shown that will actually address homelessness.

And and but they but then they talk about graffiti removal.

That's one of their favorite topics.

So I think those priorities are showing up here.

It's not a coincidence.

I don't believe it's logistical hurdles.

It is it is they're intending to do.

So I would ask the Mayor Harold administration to take that into account.

And I also have a question about graffiti removal itself.

What graffiti is proposed to be removed?

I mean, obviously, I can believe that there are genuine cases where that needs to be done.

But I also see just walking around the neighborhoods, a lot of graffiti that might just I mean, it's clear that young people have expressed themselves, and maybe they didn't take city permission, and that was not, you know, legally, that was not supposed to be there.

But I also don't see that it is causing any harm whatsoever.

In fact, it is something that is actually part of what came out of many social movements.

So some clarity on that will be useful as well.

Although I just, you know, bottom line is when the city administration and city establishment is saying we don't have enough money for a lot of things, we're heading into a recession very, very likely, then the prioritizing of the dollars does matter and housing homeless neighbors and making sure bathrooms and sinks are available is the most important thing.

This is not the priority.

And just one last thing is, I mean, I'm sure the individuals here, you know, obviously you will clarify that this is what I'm about to say belongs in the purview of the Parks Department.

I just want to say it in the context of the whole topic about sinks and that we do have in the parks, they often remain closed.

My staff and I have personally observed this over the last month in the summer.

I've had constituents just stop me when I'm walking outside and say, hey, why aren't these bathrooms open?

And so I don't know if that is related to the severe understaffing and underpaying of our workers that's caused by the pandemic.

to be so limited.

If not here, maybe central staff can get the clarification about that.

That is just a question.

Thank you.

One is, I know that the parks levy that we just passed put funding forward.

We added funding as a council to try to open up all of the 120-some bathrooms.

Currently, half of the bathrooms are closed as reported by Erica Barnett at any one point in time.

Would like to know, is there anything that's additional here?

Maybe, Brian, that's a question for you to augment some of the funding that's coming from the parks levy.

that we just passed.

Second, to the Councilmembers line of questioning about graffiti removal.

Last year we put in the budget funding that would instead of going to put millions towards gray paint only, we redirected some of that to free wall space and trying to incorporate more youth and artists into I'm happy to take those questions.

I'm happy to let Brian respond.

I have another comment that I wanted to make, but if he has those answers handy, that's fine.

Thank you.

Yeah, we'll have to get back to you.

Sorry, I don't have those information.

We do have a question out right now with SPU about the, I believe what you referred to, the kind of space for local artists to paint walls and things like that.

But as far as I know, I don't think we've gotten the response back yet this morning, but I believe that is still included as part of their plan.

Yeah.

Great, great.

And Director Dingley, anything else?

Yes, I just want to say thank you to council members for clarifying for me I had heard I heard the comments in one way, and I appreciate very much that differentiation between frustration with the previous administration and inaction there, and with the workers themselves.

and the work that they do day in and day out.

And so I really, I sincerely appreciate that.

And that's what my comments were aiming to clarify as well.

So thank you.

And we look forward to the opportunity to rethink how we do so much, not just limited to this issue, right, with this new administration and our ongoing partnership on so many issues.

So appreciate it.

Thank you for those comments.

Let's go ahead and move on in then to the budget legislation, issue identification.

We're on page slide 19. Excuse me, slide 9. Council Member Lewis, just want to confirm, is that an old hand?

I believe so.

Old hand.

Alrighty.

Sounds good.

Here we go, talking about legislation that has been transmitted.

to accompany the budget to change statute, to change legislation that's been codified into law, to then make sure that this would ensure that the budget conforms with law, which, as you've heard from some council members and previous central staff presentations, there are certain aspects of the proposed budget that does not conform with existing statute.

So this is corresponding legislation that would change statute to make the proposal legal.

Is that correct, Amy?

Yes.

So this first piece of budget legislation that I wanted to discuss is the HSD contract inflation cap.

We've already discussed this issue in detail.

The legislation would cap the legally required contract inflation at 4.0%, which is what is included in the 2023 and 2024 budgets.

It would allow council to fund additional contract inflation if they so chose during the budget process.

Council could pass this legislation.

They could amend the legislation in a few different ways, such as capping the required inflationary rate at a higher or lower rate, or cap the inflationary rate commensurate with growth in general fund or some other measure of economic change, or it could amend the code to provide more flexibility in the rates so that council can choose their inflationary rate each year during budget.

Finally, the council could choose not to pass the legislation.

Amy, I think folks have already chimed in on this one.

I think we can go ahead and continue.

If you would like, I can skip over the next three if you would prefer to save more time for the the Unified Care Team proposal.

The next three slides go over the year in grant acceptance, the year in supplemental, and the grant acceptance for 2023. There are not options for the council members related to these three pieces of legislation.

They just have HSD has kind of a disproportionate amount of funding that is included in these particular pieces of legislation, and I just wanted to highlight that for folks.

you're welcome to look at that in the HST paper as well.

It's up to you.

Let me pause to see if anybody has a specific question on any of these slides.

All right.

We will defer to the analysis in the memos and come back to you if we have any questions.

That is all that I had for today.

We have a list of questions that we will continue to follow up on and get that out to the council members as quickly as we can.

Okay, sounds good.

Well, Council Member Morales, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Just as we kind of wrap up here, I do want to appreciate that.

I think the first slide we saw from HSD was their priority to lead their programming decisions with the racial equity lens.

And I feel that the cuts in this budget don't reflect a process that led with racial justice.

Amy, I think, laid out very well in her memo The impact of these significant reductions will have on our black and brown neighbors on providers of social services who are very often people of color.

I recognize that a lot of the reduction is due to a loss of one-time funding.

I understand that.

And we also have options for how to address at least some of the need that we know exists.

I just want to say as we are making decisions about how to allocate our scarce public dollars, I want to echo Councilmember Herbold's priority and sense of urgency for As I was saying yesterday, our city charter required obligation to protect the health and general welfare of our neighbors.

So I know we're going to have a lot of work to do over the next several weeks, but this is a priority.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Um, I want to thank everybody.

This has been a long morning.

We are now into the afternoon.

And I think that this is a conversation in week three that will continue to evolve over the next five weeks as we deliberate our budgets.

Much of the city's most vulnerable rely on HSD and HSD contractors.

So I want to thank you for that work.

And I think that if we have, and I see Director Kim still on the line and Michael D.

and the crew here.

We want to thank you for the work that you do, because this is a critical time to make sure that we not only support the folks who rely on the programs, but also support the workers within the department that helps provide those services.

So we really thank you for walking us through this.

And I want to thank Brian and Amy, Ali and the team who's done this deep dive analysis.

It sounds like there's a lot of work to be done still.

Council members have a number of questions.

So we appreciate the follow-up information that will come as well.

Thank you all.

I think we're going to go ahead and move on into item number two.

Madam Clerk, could you please read item number two into the record?

Agenda item two, encampments and cleanup proposed unified camp care team and clean Seattle for briefing and discussion.

Well, this is this is a topic that has already begun to be discussed in our morning session.

I want to thank the participants who are joining us here today to talk about the proposal.

Under the banner of Unified Care Team and Clean Seattle Initiative, the contents of those two proposals are around addressing encampments and cleanup around the city.

So we have the opportunity to hear about various departments that intersect with these two proposals.

I'll note you heard some of the components from HSD earlier, you, as you probably have seen in the materials, obviously, there's a component that relate to parks and we are excited that we have with us.

Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington from the mayor's office, along with Lindsay Garrity from the mayor's office, and Sarah Jo Ready from CBO as well as our fearless leader, Director Dingley from CBO, who has just another few hours to be with us.

So thanks again for your all week commitment to this discussion.

I also want to note for the record when we have the central staff panel presentation, we will have Calvin Chow, Brian Goodnight, Amy Gore, Lisa Cage, Tracy Radscliff, Allie Panucci, all from our central staff.

As you can tell, multiple departments having multiple touchpoints on the proposal that's included in the budget.

I want to make a suggestion, and I also want to make sure that I hear from Councilmember Lewis as chair of parks.

My suggestion, colleagues, would be that instead of having a separate presentation on parks, you have the central staff summary and the department summary as well.

There are no issues that have been identified for issue identification purposes.

Again, independent analysis from nonpartisan staff trying to identify possible areas of We are going to have Tracy Ratzliff with us to talk about the committee that has oversight over parks, please let me know if this is acceptable, would be that we start our conversation about the Unified Care Team right now and that we free up more of the afternoon time to talk about the Unified Care Team because I assume we will need some more time after the lunch break.

So, I would be suggesting that we go ahead and dive on into the unified care team and probably skip item number three on our agenda, which would allow for us to round out the day after the unified care team with a summary on miscellaneous departments.

Is that acceptable to folks?

I'll take no comment.

All right, hearing no objection, I think we will continue with that sequencing.

And of course, if you do have questions specific to parks or the memo and presentation that's been prepared, those materials are in your packets are published online.

And do let me know before the end of the day, if you want to squeeze in a few questions, we can, of course, do that.

You can also reach out to central staff as well.

Hey, Patty.

Hi.

Can we let the road in, please?

Can I please let Saroja in?

Thank you.

Thank you.

And as we do that, I want to, again, thank everybody for your robust discussion.

As Deputy Mayor, as you may have been listening in, it's been a lively conversation today and throughout the last few days.

We have a new hybrid model here where we've invited the departments to provide an overview from the department's presentation, and then we transition over to the central staff memo.

So having everybody in the room has led to a little bit more back and forth and dialogue, which we are I'm going to turn it over to councilmember Lewis.

I'm going to ask councilmember Lewis as chair of public

Thank you so much Councilmember Esqueda and you know I have been saving my remarks I know that we touched on this earlier this morning, but it's good to be here to talk about the unified care team, and really queue up a lot of the questions that I know we're daylighted particularly by Councilmember for bold.

and Councilmember Strauss, based on the experiences we've had interacting with this team.

I think all of us acknowledge that it's really, really critical that we have an ability to interface and resolve situations that emerge from unsanctioned encampment locations.

We know that the best way to remediate those kinds of situations is through the approach modeled by Just Care and exemplified in several different encampment remediations over the last year, ranging from Woodland Park, which Council Member Strauss spoke to, the recent outreach at the Dearborn location that was jointly done by the city and KCRHA, And really acknowledging that especially we as district council members receive a significant volume of concerns related to on sanction encampments and the desire for some level of outreach and some level of remediation.

or at least mitigation of the situation posed by those encampment locations.

So I'm really looking forward to having a conversation here about the organization, doctrine, and mission of the Unified Care Team.

I'm going to really be interested in hearing how this service is going to be integrated with the efforts of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to make sure there's not redundancies in the system.

I really want to hear more along the line of questioning Councilmember Herbold put forward around more public guidance and oversight about the prioritization of outreach to locations and transparency around how that's conducted.

And we really want to have a focus on looking at outcomes.

And we have to really acknowledge at the front of this that in some of these cases where there's outreach and remediation of encampment sites, there is displacement and people do get displaced from some of these sites and figuring out a better way to track and respond to that displacement, just practically at the front end to make sure that we are getting people inside and not just relocating encampments from one part of the city to another, but actually resolving the situation.

And when we fall short of that, collecting the necessary data to track and understand whether this is leading to getting people inside or whether it is just moving people a couple blocks over.

So those are some of the questions I'm going to have.

I appreciate the leadership of the team here and being collaborative this year in working on trying to reconcile outreach policy that is spread across lots of different departments.

and lots of different regional government entities, it is not an easy task.

I appreciate the responsiveness of Deputy Mayor Washington and Michael Bailey and others in really being good partners and trying to figure out how to get this work done and get it done the right way.

and look forward to building a budget that can move toward the change all of us want to see, which is people living in housing and, if that can't be attained, shelter instead of living in encampments.

So with that, I don't have any additional remarks at this time and look forward to the presentation.

Thank you so much.

I think we are going to welcome Deputy Mayor Washington, perhaps to open up this portion of the presentation.

Good to see you, Deputy Mayor.

Thanks for being here today.

We'll hand it on over to you.

Thank you for having me.

And just a heads up, I, I and filling the impacts of the air, as Council Member Morales said.

And so I may be coughing, but I'm here and ready to answer all your questions.

So thank you for the opportunity to speak today about the Unified Care Team and the proposed 2023 funding and structure outlined in Mayor Harreld's proposed budget.

At the beginning of the year, the mayor asked me to lead the work on homelessness and housing on behalf of the city.

We set out to improve the way the city responds to the homelessness crisis.

And what we've learned is that people experiencing homelessness need increased connections to services and housing opportunities.

We also know that the community has a desire to help with this process and to ensure that their streets, neighborhoods and parks are open and accessible.

And this is why we firmly believe the geographic model is the right next step, because it gives us the opportunity to do just that, implement what works.

Through this approach, we will have the opportunity to strengthen our partnership with business, community, providers, and others to address the unique circumstances and needs faced within each neighborhood.

Next slide.

So over time, we learned some things and three main things became apparent to us.

First, the work to address homelessness is everyone's job.

As the crisis of homelessness affects all aspects of our city from transportation to economic development, permitting parks and human services.

We saw an opportunity to develop an operational structure that coordinates the efforts of all departments so they no longer work in silos.

Secondly, we had to realize that our role in addressing homelessness changed with the opening of the new Regional Homelessness Authority.

The responsibility to shelter and house people, which used to be owned by the city is now owned by KCRHA.

So the opportunity we had is to focus our team and our city on the delivery of core municipal functions, public safety, hygiene, trash removal, and partner with KCRHA to help bring people inside.

Third, what we learned is there really isn't a line between what is homelessness and a non-homelessness related challenge.

The opportunity was to be innovative and build a system that's responsive to the reality of what's happening on the ground.

These three realizations are the foundation for the approach and what we built isn't perfect and there are still many questions left to answer.

Just want you all to know throughout this presentation that the team is actively engaged in a planning process even now.

Next slide.

Through the leadership of Mayor Harrell, we set out to accomplish three things this year.

One, develop a structure so the city can respond to the community as One Seattle.

improve our customer service portal, and create a One Seattle information system.

We're still building on these areas using ongoing learning and how the city responds to the top concerns of our community.

Next slide.

So I want to stop here.

Because this quote that I received from a community member early this year represents the reason why we built the unified care team.

And it says, it seems everyone I have communicated with in city leadership this past week just passes the buck to others.

It's not my responsibility.

It's not our department.

Some of you must know who can best deal with this situation.

I'd really like to stop sending these emails and getting upset every time I drive to and from my home.

This problem will not go away on its own.

It will just get worse.

In January, one of the things we found were that constituents were getting bounced around between teams and departments and even council members to get their needs met.

And often the loudest person was assisted first.

This approach was not equitable.

The UCT was designed to lean into the One Seattle approach, building a system where city teams coordinate behind the scenes to address challenges that require a multi-departmental response, rather than putting the onus on the constituent to figure it out.

Next slide.

So the vision you see on this slide describes a team designed to work on behalf of all people in Seattle to ensure that our parks, sidewalks, and other public spaces are clean, safe, and able to be used by all for their intended purpose.

Through this approach, we have been able to better understand what's happening on the ground, intentionally respond, and deploy our limited resources in the most effective way.

We have already heard from many residents in the city how the work of the unified care team has improved their communities.

Next slide.

The second thing was to improve the customer service portal.

Remember, when we first started, Seattle residents were not receiving a response when they submitted a concern or request.

Through the UCT, we've been able to set and meet a goal of responding to a customer within three working days and ensuring a crew member inspects that location within 10 working days.

This ensures we have an accurate understanding about what's happening on the ground.

Next.

And I think this goes to what Councilmember Herbold was trying to get at.

The third thing we did was we had to create a one Seattle information system.

And the slide outlines the data points that we take into consideration when prioritizing a site for response.

Similarly to the lack of consistent customer service response, when I began overseeing the city's response to addressing homelessness, we didn't have an equitable system for determining which encampment to address.

So too often decisions were driven by those with the loudest voice or those in positions of power.

This was not equitable and it was a bad way to prioritize our limited city resources.

And we continue to refine this process.

And so what you see on this site is are the things that are taken into consideration.

There will not be shared any kind of score, because this is just one piece of what we take into consideration.

We also take into consideration what we hear from outreach workers, we take into consideration what we hear from communities on the ground, but there isn't any additional information to give than what's on this form.

And so we look at site and environmental conditions, neighborhood attributes, public and encampment safety history, and then recent public and engagement safety.

And so, for example, neighborhood attributes, we prioritized school zones over the last, since September started, because we were getting emails from parents, the school board, teachers telling us that the kids could not walk safely to the destination, from home to school or off the bus to school.

And so we had to pivot and escalate that up because we knew that there were hundreds and thousands of children trying to get to school.

So I wish I could give everybody this magic bullet of what's number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. It doesn't work that way.

And again, when I finish, happy to take questions.

I think this will be a very lively slide, Council Member Mosqueda.

Next slide.

So building from what we learned, the 2023 proposed model is truly based on the things that we've learned since January.

And it builds on four, five key observations.

Next slide.

These aren't a surprise to anyone, but we did take the time to talk about this, write them down, and use them to build on the 2023 proposed model.

The first is there's not enough places for people to go.

This is not only shelter, but appropriate affordable housing.

Secondly, there are a unique set of circumstances for those living in RVs and vehicles.

And we need a coordinated effort that is responsive to those needs.

And I will add to that one, we have more people living in RVs and vehicles than in any recent Seattle history.

And so it is a specialized issue that has to have a specialized response.

We've also learned, and Council Member Strauss talked about this, that our house neighbors wanna understand what's happening.

They wanna help with the solution.

We know that when we bring in partners and work through the process together, everyone better understands the complexities, the challenges, and the success.

A One Seattle approach is more than just city government.

It's everyone across Seattle coming together towards a solution.

And when we do this, we find that the community, the house neighbors have the patience to wait while we help our unhoused neighbors transition inside.

We learned that KCRHA needs time to develop a system that works, building on the incredible work occurring out of the Housing Command Center in partnership with the city, county, and the federal government that was covered in the press conference earlier this week at the ELC.

So when we sometimes sound vague when we get questions like, what's the difference between this and KCRHA and this and HSD?

I think it's important to remember that we just started in January.

Many of the people sitting in the seats in HSD were not here for the building of KCRHA, the implementing of KCRHA, and so Director Bailey and Director Kim have just started working on this with CEO Dones.

this year.

And so some of these kind of detailed questions, I just want us, and I've had to tell myself this as well, they need time to develop a system that works.

They started in January, they're a startup organization.

And then in the interim, because we don't have enough places for people to go, and because we have more people living in vehicles than recent history, we need to incorporate a set of solutions that go beyond the removals of sites.

One that recognizes that we need multiple pathways to resolution and reducing harm.

Because if the solution to make people happy is the resolution of sites, given the number of sites we have, no one would be happy for a really, really long time.

So the unified care team has incorporated a set of strategies to work on harm mitigation, self-resolution of sites, all sorts of things that go beyond just closing down a site.

Next slide.

Building on those five observations, the guiding principles we approached with are, when a community is informed, involved, and updated, They will be patient to engage in a person-centered process over time.

It's blocking me, hold on.

Sorry, I'm blocking myself.

Focused on identifying appropriate resources, deploying strategies that reduce harm, bringing people indoors to spaces that meet their needs.

This equals an approach that takes time and leads to meaningful impact.

We've seen this work at sites like Woodland Park and Ballard Commons, where people were really, really frustrated And we spent months meeting twice a week with our house neighbors, outreach workers, BIAs, community members, small business owners.

And once they got on the phone and they realized the complexity, they really gained a sense of compassion.

the rush to get things resolved kind of went away.

And at the end, they felt really, really proud at how the site was resolved and how they were able to help people transition from living outdoors to indoors.

Next slide.

So the 2023 proposed budget will shift the way the unified care team approaches the work from one team looking citywide to four to six geographic teams focused on a specific area of the city.

This will allow the teams to track their progress, build relationships with the community and neighbors, both housed and unhoused outreach teams and businesses within their region.

the final number of teams will be determined based on staffing levels and analysis of the needs in each of the regions.

Again, teams will build relationships with community, neighbors, outreach teams, and businesses within their region, and coordinate deployment of city and partner services such as outreach, trash mitigation, RV remediation, geocleaning, and site resolutions.

This will make sure people know who to call.

Like Council Member Strauss said, people will have someone that they can go to and talk to and engage in the process with.

Next.

This is just an example of what I was just describing.

One more thing to add, we're gonna need to finalize the boundaries of the geographic zones.

And we'll consider information about what is occurring on the ground.

The final thing I want to say before I switch this over to Saroja who will talk through some of the budget numbers, which also had some questions.

Before we launch work in a region.

we're gonna plan that work.

And the planning will happen in the region with the community, with the council member, with the BIAs, with the school teachers, whoever wants to come.

So let's say we launch, which again, this is just an example.

I repeat, just an example.

Let's say we launch Southwest Georgetown in quarter one of next year.

The first two months, we will have community meetings there where folks will come together and help inform how that launch looks and what activities occur in that neighborhood.

And it won't just be the city coming up with ideas and dropping into a community.

And so I just want to be clear to council members that if you want to be involved in the launch of a region that's within your district, you will be invited and welcomed to that table.

Next slide.

So Saroja, were you able to get on or are you in?

I'm here, yes.

Can you hear me?

Yep.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Thank you, council members.

This slide, and I'm going to be talking about this slide and the next slide.

This slide is about added capacity to the regions.

And I just want to again reiterate what Deputy Mayor Washington went through in the context of this presentation, which is our goal is to ensure that public spaces are clean, safe and accessible.

And that we've developed a model and an approach that would be implemented under an operational structure that's designed to coordinate cross-departmental work within a geographic-based model.

And the resources needed to support this approach are significant.

And I'll briefly describe these to you.

This slide shows the total new UCT staffing.

And it does so by type of activity.

And there are a total of 61 FTE that are being added in the proposed budget, but this is only a 20.5 FTE increase over the 22 base plus surge numbers.

Of these, net new three are UCT operations.

Two, I'm going to highlight them and then I'll quickly go through this slide.

Two are UCT operations, three are new UCT operations, six new system navigators, which you heard about earlier, nine and a half new staff for clean teams, and two new for enhanced cleaning and graffiti on top of the base.

The two customer service reps are in FAS, and what they will do is to provide continued support and improvement of the new unauthorized encampment service request process that will be happening in 2023. There are 50 FTE clean team resources, and they're spread among multiple departments, including parks, SDOT, SPU, and SPD, and that's 15.4 million.

And what these teams do will be expand their efforts to reach to, in each region, clean up trash, litter, and debris from parks, sidewalks, and other spaces.

In addition, we're adding one program coordinator in HSD to manage the day-to-day operations to track team performance, triage emergent operational issues, and lead continuous improvement efforts.

We're adding one more FBE data analyst in HSD for purposes of improving and refining the information system.

And that information system allows us to keep and get information to help us make informed decisions for resource deployment and coordination with key partners.

And lastly, we already mentioned the six new system navigators.

And you can see the dollar amounts there.

Can we go to the next slide?

This slide is, sorry that there's so many numbers.

This, what we tried to do here is show by department, the activities, show the 2022 funding, the one-time and the base and the one-time surge at funding and staffing and the 2023 ads and additions for total 2023 budget, ongoing and new and 2023 proposed staffing.

So you can see that we started with 2022 funding of $23.5 million, and we had one-time surge funding of $9.6.

And we had a base level staffing of $61.5.

We had surge $40.5.

Our ads in the proposed 2023 budget are $14.7 million, and you can see how they are distributed among these activities and departments.

So the total funding for 2023, including the base, is 38.17.

And what we are doing is backfilling the surge amount and adding an additional 5 million to cover the Delta.

Where did we come up with this number?

We asked departments, we worked with departments over many months and we asked departments, if you continue to do the current level of service, however you might organize slightly differently, what resources would you need to do that in this geographic model?

And that's what underlies these numbers.

So we worked very closely with the departments.

We've learned from what we're doing this year in the surge.

And then we applied that information and knowledge to what we developed in this proposal.

In the 23 staffing, we are adding a net new 20.5.

You can see that there in the last column to the right.

And the total staffing is 61.

We have one more slide and then we're done.

Council Member Mosqueda, do you want me to just finish and then we can go to questions?

That sounds good.

Okay.

So next steps.

We are actively engaged in an implementation planning process, which will be collaborative across city departments and partners.

We can't do this all at once.

We will need to sequence and do this through a learning-based approach.

and we will continue to deliver citywide services as we design and implement the geographic focus.

And that concludes my presentation.

Happy to take questions.

Okay, thank you very much.

Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

And I also just want to start by acknowledging that the collaboration this year between The Council and the Unified Care Team has, I think, been really productive in terms of being able to have a responsive partner in the executive to problem solve on big problems like Woodland Park.

You know, other examples, the recent Dearborn joint outreach with KCRHA.

figuring out ways to formalize that partnership and work on some of the ongoing challenges and I appreciate that this presentation admits to this being an iterative process.

I do think part of what distinguishes this process we're being presented with from the former navigation team is acknowledging that this is iterative and there's more openness to feedback that I think has previously been presented in this work.

So a huge appreciation for that and it's being recognized in the community.

I do wanna go back to one of the things that was acknowledged on a previous slide that there aren't enough places for people to go.

And in other parts of this budget, we are standing up or reinforcing resources that can offer people a place to go and making a record investment in housing that will ultimately have an impact on that.

But I do want to, open up a conversation here.

Because there was some discussion about mitigation or problem solving short of remediating encampment sites.

And if we can have a little bit of a conversation about that, because I do think that is is important.

And figuring out some way that we can reduce some of the problems associated with certain non-sanctioned encampments that that in some cases might be short of removal and then triage removal for encampments that are presenting with extremely problematic impacts.

I think this kind of goes to what Council Member Herbold was talking about this morning.

And if we can talk about a little bit of the transparency and how you envision Deputy Mayor Washington that work going, because I do think that's the core of it.

And figuring out ways we can minimize when there are encampment resolutions, displacement that create additional encampments in other places.

I'm getting all my questions out early.

I'm writing them down, Council Member Lewis.

I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you.

Great question.

I'm actually going to call on my right-hand gal, Lindsay Garrity, in a minute to answer some of the questions.

But the first one in terms of mitigation efforts, I will give you an example from Woodland Park.

I'll hit the displacement, but then I really want Lindsay to get into your core question around what are some things that we can do other than a removal?

Because you are absolutely right.

We have limited resources until the system catches up.

with the need, which means until our safe lots are opened up and new tiny home villages are opening up.

And so we have to reserve the beds we do have for sites that are causing great safety concern for either the people who live in the sites or the surrounding community and environment.

And so an example would be at Woodland Park when we met with the community, And they would come to the meetings twice a week and one time they came and the fence had been driven through.

there were some fires that had occurred.

The water in one of the shelter areas had been turned off.

And so in that one meeting, and KCRHA was there, the ask was, can parks turn the water back on so that people, we talked about this earlier, can wash their hands and drink, the folks that are living at the park?

The other one was, can outreach can reach go talk to folks and say, we're trying to slow walk this process to give enough time for folks to get into housing.

Whoever is driving vehicles through the fence.

Help us help you please stop, and they did.

And then the fires, I don't remember what the resolution was about one of the fires but like one of the areas had completely burned down.

But these were things brought by the community.

And what made them have patience and Councilmember Lewis you know this is because they brought them and they were fixed, and they have to send an email.

They didn't have to send 50 emails.

They didn't have to fill out a form.

The form's been very helpful, but I'm sure at some point it gets really frustrating to have to fill out a form for every single incident.

They just brought them to the meeting.

And then they were resolved.

And parks could say, oh, we could do that.

Oh, I think one of the resolutions for the water was one of the outreach teams at REACH got a key to unlock the place where the water was when the residents needed it.

It worked beautifully.

And so that's an example of harm reduction or mitigation strategies that can happen that will give our housed neighbors the patience to wait until there are enough beds to bring people inside.

Let me have Lindsay jump in now, because the displacement conversation is going to take a minute.

So Lindsay, do you want to add anything around harm mitigation strategies or self-resolution or anything?

Yeah, I think the strategies Deputy Mayor Washington talked about are great ones because they're not things we would know from where we sit and so by engaging in conversation with community and saying what's going on and what can we do to solve it.

Many of those challenges, we can say oh that's easy we'll just get them a key.

Some other things are around trash mitigation.

So if there's debris developing being able to say what could we do to clean up around the site or clean up even within the site and partnership with the folks who are who are staying there and saying what can we move out of their removing hazardous materials another one if there's.

a collection of propane tanks, being able to have not only just get the hazardous material out, but have a conversation about fire safety and some of the risks around it or engaging with other partners to be able to bring in support around behavioral health or others.

The other exciting thing that's happening right now that hopefully everybody watched the press conference earlier this week is partnering with the Partnership for Zero pilot in downtown.

The Housing Command Center right now is standing up a system that can house people directly from the streets, so really leaning into that housing first.

I think this stand up and this focus on neighborhoods is an opportunity to partner the city side with the services side and the Regional Homelessness Authority, and be able to move people directly inside into housing who can, and then have shelter for those who may need additional time.

And I'll get to the displacement, Council Member Lewis.

Maybe we can ride this one out and I'll move over to displacement when there's no questions.

Council Member Lewis, did you have a follow up?

Yeah, go ahead.

Why wouldn't we just talk about the displacement now?

Happy to.

I just thought, so I saw Council Member Morales' hand up and I wanted to give her, is it about this?

I think Deputy Mayor, just because we are going to try and take a break at one, I think it's good to get the answer out to Councilmember Lewis and then we'll see if we can get Councilmember Morales in as well.

Great.

So displacement has been a question asked in the whole 10 years, like all of my time in the city of Seattle.

What I need to remind people of is It won't be fixed, or we won't be able to understand the data around displacement until one of two things happen.

CEO Dones is working on a system to better track where people are going.

And so when they came to the Mayor Z team to give an update on Partnership for Zero, one of the very, very exciting things that CEO Dones said was, their system advocates, I think that's what they're called, they are walking with someone for no shorter than a year.

And they say that on purpose because it could be longer than a year, but no less than a year.

And what that offers is what happens now, as you very well know, because you guys have been frustrated, outreach worker refers case manager takes the baton.

If you were to go to the outreach worker and say, did that person actually like go into the shelter?

They'll say, I don't know.

You have to ask the case manager, right?

Now here's where the system breakdown happens.

We're in an opt-in state, meaning, and I agree with this, no one has to give their identity in order to get service.

That's a good thing.

Meaning, I don't have to give you my full first and last name, my birth date, my social security number to get inside the shelter.

I think we all share that value that no one should have to do that.

For that purpose, trying to connect who was at a site that got an offer of shelter and whether that person went into shelter, first step, and stayed in that shelter, second step, and move to permanent supportive housing third step is only possible if there's a connecting link and the same stated identification.

Tiffany Washington accepted shelter.

I handed Tiffany Washington to the case manager.

The case manager accepted Tiffany Washington and put her, but if it's not that clean, it's impossible.

So CEO Stone's idea of getting rid of the pass off will help us get closer than ever before.

Meaning the system advocate refers the person to the shelter, takes them to the shelter and checks in with them.

Shelter or permanent housing.

I wanna say that because CL Jones is also reminding us everyone doesn't need to go into shelter to go to permanent housing.

Some people can go straight from being unsheltered to permanent housing.

But having one person serve that individual for no less than a year, may get us closer to understanding what happens from unhoused to housed.

Does that make sense?

Council Member Lewis, do you have any clarifying questions?

That sounds like some great progress on closing the loop for the people who do get shelter referrals so we can confirm and verify that that offer translated into someone getting into a place.

I think the other component of displacement is people who never receive an offer in the first place and get displaced from an encampment location.

Um, some of that is going to be unavoidable, but I think it's a metric we need to track because we obviously, I mean, we want to work toward obviously getting that number as small as possible.

And I know we can do that unless we're tracking it.

And I don't know that we currently do.

And I would hope part of this work, because if, if that number is really high, we need to reevaluate what we're doing.

And we need to have a different approach.

If that number is getting low over time, then what we're doing is working and we can continue.

I think it's an important auditable metric.

It really is.

And you just are a commercial for the geographic teams in that statement right there.

And so that's one of the things that we're hoping to fix.

If you have the same staff in the same geographic area, then if Bob, again, we got to be careful with identifying people naming them and care like it has to be relationship driven like I know you Councilmember Lewis and we've known each other over time.

Then if I resolve the site Bob's living at and Bob moves down the street, Bob's going to see me on Thursday.

Because now I can say, Bob, I thought you said you were going to go into the shelter.

Come on, let's talk.

Versus now, so many different people go to so many different places on the unified care team to resolve issues.

They don't get the chance to know the people in a way that would help answer that question.

And then lastly, I wouldn't be the Deputy Mayor of Homelessness and Housing if I did not say I actually don't believe that people are not receiving offers of shelter.

Because my staff are required by the MDARs before resolving a site to provide adequate shelter, counsel's ad, thank you very much, an adequate shelter offer to everyone at a site.

And so, again, I think we had a celebration for the Unified Care Team in Bertha Knight a few months ago.

They are mostly people of color.

hard working people, lots of them with lived experience.

I believe them when they tell me because I see them and I see them work hard on behalf of people living unsheltered.

If they said they offered somebody shelter, I believe they offered someone shelter.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

And I have to do my job here to try to keep us to an hour break so that everybody Councilmember Lewis, I assume you still have some additional questions.

We will just push pause in this discussion, and we will continue on with the conversation this afternoon.

Again, thanks to you all, thanks to the Chair of Parks and Public Assets.

We're going to hold off on public assets and parks this afternoon and keep the conversation going on Unified Care Team so we fully understand the proposal in front of us.

I think, Deputy Mayor, just to circle back, the questions, I think, are going to continue to revolve around I'm going to be following up and perhaps in the interim you can send me more information about if there's more information that we can see in a slide form on 2024 because all the slides I'm seeing so far are 2023 so we'll get to central staff issue identification this afternoon as well.

I'm seeing thumbs up from everyone.

Let's say 205. Just to make sure everybody gets their full hour.

So 205, we will reconvene if there's no objection.

The Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee meeting is now in recess until 205 p.m.

on October 14th.

No objection.

Thanks for hanging out with us again this afternoon.

We'll see you in an hour and two minutes.