Finance & Housing Committee Public Hearing 12/7/21

Thank you very much for joining the Finance and Housing Committee meeting.

Today is December 7, 2021. I'm Teresa Mosqueda, Chair of the Finance and Housing Committee.

The committee will come to order.

It is 9.32 a.m.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Vice Chair Herbold?

Here.

Council President Gonzalez?

Here.

Council Member Lewis?

Present.

Council Member Strauss?

Present.

Chair Mosqueda?

present.

Madam Chair, that is a five present.

Thank you.

And I want to welcome Council Member Sawant.

Council Member Sawant, thanks for being here with us today.

We know that there is a bill of yours on the agenda for this morning's discussion.

And do we have any additional Council Members joining us?

I believe Council Member Peterson may be joining us as well.

councilmembers.

We will start with a meeting for 20 minutes of public comment on items 1-8 and Items 9 and 10, which relate to the annual action plan for the 2021 and draft 2022 annual action plan.

The possible appointments as well include a possible appointment of Sally Clark to the Seattle Housing Authority, two appointments to the Domestic Worker Standards Board, one appointment to the Burke-Gilman PDA, three appointments to the Community Roots Housing PDA, a presentation from the Finance and Administrative Services Department on the Race and Social Justice Initiative, which is long anticipated, excited to hear from them, a public hearing and vote to amend the 2021 annual action plan, as well as a public hearing on the 2022 draft annual action plan.

And finally, we'll have a briefing discussion and possible vote on a bill related to parking for construction workers.

Again, thanks so much for being here with us.

Colleagues, I do have an amendment that I'd like to suggest for our agenda here today.

Given that we have public comments, that is our usual public comment period for 20 minutes at the beginning, and we also have a public hearing related to items nine and 10, colleagues I'd like to move the public hearing to be considered immediately after the public comment period so that all of those who are dialing in to provide public comment today have the ability to do so at the top of the agenda that way they may return to They are not on the line with us for these other items if they don't need to be.

They are also welcome to continue listening, but in respect for their time, if there's no objection, I'd like to move the public hearings listed on agenda item 9 and 10 to immediately after the public comment period.

Again, the public hearing is listed as agenda item number 9, and that would be moved right after public comment period for the first 20 minutes.

up to 20 minutes.

Is there any concerns, questions?

If there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the amendment is included and the amended agenda is adopted.

Thanks, colleagues.

At this time, we're going to move into remote public comment period.

I know everybody is excited about many of these items on our agenda.

We are hoping to hear from everybody who was on our list and then move into the public hearing section for agenda item number nine.

If you don't get a chance to provide public comment today, you may email us at council at seattle.gov.

We are going to open up with reading the first three speakers that are listed on today's public comment period.

Once I call a speaker's name, you will hear a prompt that says you have been unmuted.

That is your indication that you need to hit star six on your line.

Please hit star six and then begin speaking by stating your name and the item that you're addressing.

You'll hear a 10 second chime when the time is about to conclude.

And when you hear that chime, that's your indication to wrap up.

Speakers not ending their comment and their appropriate a lot of time will have their microphone cut off.

So please go ahead and wrap up your comments and go ahead and send any additional thoughts to council at seattle.gov.

Once you've completed your public comment, we ask that you disconnect from the line.

And if you plan to continue following today's meeting, please do so via Seattle channel or the other listening options on today's agenda.

The public comment period is now open, and colleagues, I'm going to give two minutes, two minutes to each of the speakers, because we do have only about 10 people signed up for public comment, and then we'll get to the one person who has signed up for the public hearing.

This morning, we will start with, we will, this morning, we will start with Isaiah Corbet, Pastor Willie Seals, and then Taylor Latrice Werner.

Good morning, Isaiah.

Thank you for the opportunity.

I'm calling in support of agenda item number 11. I'm calling in support of this legislation as it will encourage additional growth of direly needed affordable housing in Seattle.

It will also support the Christ Spirit Church in Lehigh, the Low Income Housing Institute, in developing almost double the amount of affordable housing units for homeless youth and young adults in the central area.

Some of these expenses related to the cost of land for street vacations can be an incredibly high barrier for community-based organizations hoping to develop affordable housing.

And this council bill will support those organizations, those community-based organizations in having access to additional land for density to build affordable housing.

So I appreciate everyone this morning supporting this legislation, and thank you very much for the opportunity.

Thank you for dialing in this morning.

Pastor Willie Seals, good morning, followed by Pastor Seals will be Taylor Latrice Warner.

Good morning, Pastor.

Good morning, my name is Pastor Willie C. Seals, the pastor of the Christ Spirit Church as well as the president of T.C.

Spirit Development.

I'm calling in reference to item number 11, also thanking the council for addressing this issue that many non-profits and other agencies are having regarding the added expense of the street vacation.

So I'm asking that the full council will support this effort.

We all are facing this homeless crisis and we are trying to address it in the best way we know how and I think this is a great opportunity for the council the whole council does get on board of a great action.

Our project that we are working with Lehigh on on 22nd and Cherry with the added street location it would add additional 23 affordable apartments moving from four stories to six stories.

So council, I ask that you will pass this bill, that we will address the issues of homelessness in a tangible way.

Thank you so very much.

Thank you very much for calling in.

Taylor Latrice Warner will be followed by Colin Moen.

Good morning, Taylor.

Hi.

Thank you.

My name is Taylor Leah just Warner.

I am an apprentice with local 46 and it is important to all local 46 members that our employers pay for our parking.

And I wanted to comment on the suggestion in the memo that this legislation would incentivize workers to drive who might otherwise use public transportation as workers who have called in before have said including myself for the vast majority of the people who work in this industry.

public transit is not an option.

So to allow contractors to opt out if they incentivize public transit would effectively destroy the intent of the legislation.

I also feel like public transit could also be incentivized.

Some contractors already do both.

And if employers had to cover the cost of parking, they might be more concerned about how inflexible transportation is for so many of the workers.

Urge you to not delay the effective date.

Local 46 members know that when decisive action is made especially over something as simple as a parking reimbursement system which many contractors already have partially in place it takes very little time for administrative systems to assemble themselves.

So all delays read to me as attempts to protect the financial interests of influential people.

Workers really need elected officials to earn our trust in this moment.

So do city council members consider themselves to have been elected by the people who voted for them or by the people who bankrolled their billboards and cable ads?

Local 46 is following this legislation closely.

So thank you for your time.

Thank you very much.

And Colin Mullen is listed as not present.

Colin, if you want to call in, we'll come back to you.

The next person is Arthur Esperanza followed by Nina Wirtz.

Good morning, Arthur.

Looking for Arthur to pop on the screen here, star six to unmute.

Good morning, Arthur.

I see you unmuted.

If you're speaking, we can't hear you.

If you can hit, check your own cell phone or your landline.

Oh, there we go.

Yeah, now we can.

Please go ahead.

Yeah.

So my name is Arthur.

I'm the chair of the Peter G. McGuire Group.

We're the largest workers caucus of Union Carpenters in the Pacific Northwest.

The carpenters have supported many city council members in the past.

And as you know, that we just got through with a pretty dramatic strike, which ended in trusteeship for the EST.

I want to say that I support item number 12 to have contractors provide or pay parking for employees.

I want to say that we don't want this thing watered down.

We don't want any carve outs.

We don't want to be walking a mile, half a mile with no parking reimbursement, like none of that stuff.

Look, we take hundreds of pounds of tools to Seattle to go work on projects to build that city, to build this city, and it's a totally reasonable request to have employers provide us with parking, and the city needs to make it happen in order to grow and make this city successful.

And that's what's going to really build the economy in the long term.

Otherwise, we're not going to want to work in Seattle, OK?

I got a lot of my members.

We no longer want to work in Seattle.

They're looking for jobs elsewhere.

They're basically trying to boycott the city.

We need to have this parking bill passed.

It's going to help Seattle.

It's going to help construction workers.

And we don't want it to be watered down.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Nina.

Nina, words followed by Logan Swan.

Good morning, Nina.

Star six.

Perfect.

There we go.

And Nina, I see you unmuted.

Just double check your own cell.

Hi.

Hi, this is Lose.

I'm a carpenter at a local 30 speaking to.

the 12th item on the agenda.

No more delay.

Today, it is time for the Housing and Finance Committee and the rest of the Council to stand up for the carpenters and all construction workers.

In September, a near-unanimous City Council vote increased renters' rights by requiring six-month notice of any rent increase and payment re-relocation fees when it's 10% or more.

I'm asking you today how supporting us construction workers in our fight is any different than supporting renters.

Most of us can't afford to live where we work.

And on top of skyrocketing rents, we pay upwards of $30 a day before we even start work.

That means if we work a 40-hour week, we're only getting paid for 35 hours.

You showed sympathy towards renters in September.

Time to show solidarity to construction workers now.

Looking at this water bomb draft, it seems like you forgot.

Council member Sawant originally proposed this, consulting with real construction workers.

Here's but one of the issues with the memo.

The environmental impact study.

Now, I'm one of the few lucky carpenters who live in the city, but in South Seattle, which doesn't seem to get the same bike lane coverage as North Seattle gets.

Surely, if I'd be expected to haul my tools onto a bus at 5 a.m., I should be able to do it on a bicycle as well.

Were any actual construction workers consulted when drafting this, or did you just talk with the AGC?

We already have tool storage, but keeping our tools on one job site only helps when we stay on one job site.

What about folks who bounce from job to job?

And if we work more than one job in one day, I guess that means we're paying for parking twice too.

The reality of construction work necessitates cars as our primary transport, whether we pay for parking or not.

You must stop making excuses to backpedal the council's promises of solidary for workers now.

If you really cared about the environment, you'd never support billionaires who dump more carbon emissions in one space flight than one family does in their lifetime.

As a reminder, I want to remind folks that the memo that's been referenced is a nonpartisan central staff memo, and it is a factual document that is not drafted by council members, just as a reminder.

Logan Swan, followed by Thatcher and Bolden, and then Dominique Johanovich, and that will conclude the public hearing, and we'll go back to the, excuse me, the public comment, and then we'll go back to Patrick Burns, who has signed up for the public hearing.

Logan, good morning.

Thanks for dialing in.

Yeah, can you hear me?

Oops, yes we can, thanks.

OK, yeah, my name is Logan.

I'm a union iron worker here in Seattle and yeah, I'm just calling to demand it.

You know that there be no delays, no watering down of council members to want bill for contractors to fully pay for construction workers parking.

I mean, it's really cut and dry.

You know, either somebody is going to pay for this and either it's going to be the workers or it's going to be the employers.

In my contract, my union contract, we have employer-paid parking.

And this should be the standard.

And so if our signatory contractors can afford to pay it, surely the electricians, MECA contractors can pay it.

Surely the general contractors can pay it.

And furthermore, they're paying it on the PLA jobs already.

So that there are slides in the presentation saying that, you know, that like arguing about significant administrative costs to employers, like that's good because otherwise that's significant cost to working families.

And, you know, these overall, I think that these are like paving the way for, uh, for like watering down the bill and it should be passed in full without any amendments that, that weaken it, uh, that give, you know, these contractors a way to, to walk away with more of our money.

And yeah, I mean, Furthermore, referring to PLAs, it already says in the PLAs for the three block radius, and there's an argument being made in this session to expand it to half a mile, and that's a long way when you're carrying 80 pounds of tools, daily carrying in your lunchbox and your tools.

You know, every week that goes by on this, there's a week that construction workers are subsidizing contractors.

You know, this is a big issue on family budgets.

This is over a hundred dollars a week for workers.

Thank you.

And Thatcher and Bolden followed by Dominic Johanovich.

Good morning, Thatcher.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Thatcher and Bolden, and I'm the director of land use planning and development at town transit.

I'm here this morning to express our support for agenda number 11, that's council bill 122027, which would exempt affordable housing projects that receive street or alley vacations from the requirement to pay fair market value for the underlying land.

Sound Transit has had a strong partnership with the City of Seattle and other jurisdictions in using our surplus property for affordable housing, including significantly reducing or transferring at no cost property for affordable housing, which is somewhat similar to what is being considered here for vacated transportation right of way.

We also have property in Seattle that may be used for affordable housing in the future, and those properties often are adjacent alleys that are likely good candidates for an alley vacation that could benefit from this bill.

The city contributing the underlying value of the vacated property towards creating affordable housing would have real impact both reducing the amount of other subsidies needed to construct affordable housing and by making projects more cost effective and thus more competitive for affordable housing funding.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And the last person that I have signed up for the public comment period is Dominique Johanovich, who is listed as not present.

Colin Moen and Dominique Johanovich, if you would like to send in your public comment, that would be welcome.

Okay, colleagues, at this point, I will go ahead and move us into the public hearing for agenda item number nine.

I will close out our public comment period.

Thank you all for dialing in today.

And I will go ahead and open up our public hearing for agenda item number nine.

We have one person signed up to provide public comment on agenda item number nine, which is the Council Bill 120238. This relates to the annual action plan.

There is one person we're going to go ahead and unmute you.

You can hit star six to unmute yourself and we'll go ahead and get started here.

This is Patrick Burns.

Thank you, Patrick, for waiting and glad we could get you in at the top of the meeting here.

Please go ahead.

Hi, this is Patrick Burns.

I appreciate being able to speak to the city council today.

I actually want to speak on item number 12 and I hope that I can do that.

I was supposed to be with the other other speakers supporting paid parking for construction workers.

So basically, the arguments that you've heard from all the other speakers are profound and important.

And it's so important to have a blanket legislation that goes across the city of Seattle so that employers really understand that they are to provide free parking for their employees.

It takes a lot of stress off those workers, It takes a lot of stress off their budgets.

They should not be subsidizing the cost of the employer to do work in Seattle.

So please, please pass this legislation and make sure that it has no loopholes, no carve-outs, so employers can somehow wiggle through this.

So thank you for your consideration, and I will send more comments online.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Sorry about that.

We had you listed as speaking on agenda item number nine.

So we'll go ahead and allow that for general public comment.

I don't see anybody else who signed up for the public hearing related to agenda items number nine and 10. We will keep the public hearing open to those items and then we'll close that out when we get to those pieces.

Other than that, colleagues, thanks for your flexibility, and we're going to go ahead and move on into agenda item number one.

Thanks for waiting.

For all of our audience who's on the line here with us, we have a lot of presenters this morning.

Madam Clerk, could you please read item number one into the record?

Agenda item number one, the appointment for Sally Clark for the Seattle Housing Authority for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you very much.

And we are very excited to have our former colleague with us here today.

Welcome back, Councilmember Clark.

Good to see you.

And it's always wonderful to see Executive Director Rob Brandon from the Seattle Housing Authority as well.

We haven't had the chance to have you in our committee as much as I would have liked to this last year.

with everything budget-related, but again, congratulations to you, Director Brandon.

Council Member Clark, I'm gonna have Director Brandon first open us up with some general comments, and then we'll move to you, as you know this process well, to provide us with a little overview of your interest in serving on the Seattle Housing Authority Board.

Good morning, Director Brandon, please go ahead.

Thank you, can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Great, so thank you for that, and thanks again for the congratulations.

Appreciate that and look forward to continue to a strong relationship with the city of Seattle without housing.

Sally Clark needs no introduction.

So she has just got a long and rich history here in Seattle that just a great life of a public servant from her current job at the University of Washington and community relations to just her long, long life at city council for the city of Seattle and just all the other volunteer work as you see the kind of great stuff she's doing.

excited for her brainpower, for her thinking, for her ability to push our agency to move into areas that we may not have been into, and look forward to having her be considered to join the Seattle Housing Authority board.

We are thrilled as well.

I'm very happy to have you here with us council member and for folks who might not know Sally Clark is currently the director of the University of Washington Regional and Community Relations where she works with governmental officials around the greater Puget Sound area to support and advocate for UW.

And Sally is also a former member of Seattle City Council, as I mentioned, serving as chair of the Housing Affordability, Human Services and Economic Resiliency Committee, also served as co-chair of the Seattle Maritime and Industrial Strategy Advisory Committee, and as a board member of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility and the Seattle Jobs Initiative.

I know many of the folks on the line and watching are familiar with you, but tell us a little bit more about your interest in continuing to serve the city of Seattle through the Seattle Housing Authority and what some of your interests are there.

Welcome, Councilmember Clark.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

And it is a pleasure to see you today, even though it is on the screen and a pleasure to see the other council members, Councilmember Strauss and others.

Good morning.

And you all have kind of done my job.

I'm very appreciative to Director Brandon and to the others for giving this opportunity and thanks to Mayor Durkan for the nomination.

I do work at the University of Washington.

I have since I departed the Seattle City Council in 2015. I joined the Seattle City Council in 2006 and I did have the pleasure of learning a lot as a council member through my work on the housing committee both as a member of that committee and as a chair, and chaired the Land Use Committee, which also intersects, as you all know, greatly with our conversations and our values around housing and who housing is for in the city of Seattle.

I'll note that in a previous career chapter, a brief one, I was also a director for a small organization that was called the Northwest Association for Housing Affordability.

And I learned more than I really, I think, wanted to know and thought I would learn at the time about financing for rural affordable housing, which is a whole nother conundrum for our country as far as people of modest or limited means living outside of urban areas.

With Seattle Housing Authority, I have been, I'll say, a fan of Seattle Housing Authority for a long time through my public work.

And Rod and I realized that we know each other ways back 1997 when I was a legislative aide in Councilmember Podlodowski's office at the time and starting to learn about the various ways that the City of Seattle, Seattle Housing Authority and other agencies try to figure out the conundrum of making sure that homes and communities are safe and sound for people of limited means in our community.

And that continues to be fundamental for me in a lot of the volunteer work that I do, whether it is with organizations trying to figure out the job access, or in this case, how do we continue to have there be a robust, healthy, decent, dignified community that is fundamentally in our public housing through Seattle Housing Authority.

And the work that Seattle Housing Authority has done for generations of people in our city continues to be fundamental to who we are as a city, And I think it's even more critical as we think about in our city is, for lack of a better term, thinking more or newly about some of the ways that long-term patterns of racism and institutional structures have kept some people from prosperity, have kept some people from opportunity.

And Seattle Housing Authority continues to be a place where people can land, where people can continue to grow and develop.

And whether that's an individual, a family, an elder, children, We have incredible stories of people who they raise their kids there or their kids grew up at Seattle Housing Authority.

And I think we want to continue to be that place.

I am particularly interested personally in how we preserve what we have, how we continue to make the places where people are living now safe, decent, dignified, the places that they call home and find community.

And we're in an interesting spot now with the current administration and some opportunities to figure out how we expand our work.

We'll see how long that window lasts and I look forward to trying to figure out how we take best advantage of that and continue to create community and opportunity.

I will stop there and happy to try to answer any questions.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate you being here and your interest.

And you mentioned the importance of preserving the current affordable housing that we have through Seattle Housing Authority.

I think that's a really important point we've seen over the last few decades where public housing has been dismantled.

It hasn't been reconstructed at the same level.

And I think as we think of new and innovative ways to make sure that there's housing density, diversity of housing, across Seattle, preserving existing SHA housing is an important element too.

So thanks for bringing that up.

I saw a few of my colleagues on the line here and I just wanna pause to see if anybody has any questions for Council Member Clark.

I said see.

Please go ahead Council Member Strauss and then we'll go Council Member Herman.

Thank you chair and thank you Council Member Clark for being interested in this position.

Everyone has already said everything about your background so I have no questions here.

I just want to take this moment to raise up in my last two apartments I've lived next to Seattle Housing Authority buildings.

It has been a good experience.

We're amazing neighbors.

And it also provides that ability for people to have affordable housing in neighborhoods that are out of reach for most people, and I just want to raise up the importance of that the quads and the duplexes were incredibly effective at housing multiple people, multiple families.

in downtown Ballard.

And speaking to you today from your former office and Council President's former office, usually we would take this vote at the dais, yet I am excited to be able to vote from your old office in support of your appointment today.

Thank you, Council Member Clark.

The office looks good.

Thanks.

Thanks to her.

We never got to have an accent wall.

That's fancy.

Walls and we only get to enjoy them a little bit, but it's good to see you here.

Council member Clark really appreciate your ongoing willingness to serve in so many different ways.

And by joining 1 of our most important boards and commissions.

with the Seattle Housing Authority, really appreciate your willingness to serve in this capacity and appreciate, I don't have a question, just wanna say that I appreciate hearing in your remarks and understanding that SHA provides really important family stability for a lot of individuals and families throughout our region and has for generations.

The tension is always how to serve more people in need while not destabilizing the folks who benefit so much from living in our SHA communities throughout the city.

It's a fantastic resource to both the individuals who live in SHA housing and the communities where SHA housing is located and really appreciate that SHA is on a sort of a vision quest to grow and acquire more housing and to partner more with the city.

on addressing the speculative market around naturally affordable market rate housing and helping the city work to acquire some of those properties when they're at risk.

Appreciate that SHA has been strategizing about, and has been doing so for the last two years and is continuing to strategize about how to do more.

So thank you, it's super important.

Thank you very much.

Are there any additional questions?

Okay, Council Member Clark, I'm not seeing any additional questions.

Director Brandon, I'm not seeing any additional questions either.

I just wouldn't underscore some of the points that Council Member Clark, you made about this moment in time.

When the headline this morning talks about more growth in Seattle populations relative to our regional cities.

We've already seen a 21% population increase in the last 10 years and the housing just hasn't caught up.

And so I think as you note, We are in a good place for a potential opportunity for federal partnership with the Build Back Better Act, which we all hope will soon pass, and the infrastructure bill that just passed, in addition to having a legislative body that's been very supportive of additional housing density and capital investments.

So are there any other items that you are hoping to partner with the city council on?

in the next year or two that are top priority for you given this moment in time that we find ourselves in?

And Director Brandon, you're welcome to answer that as well as Council Member Clark.

I'll go first and Council Member Clark, you can also follow if you like.

You can't not talk about homelessness.

While we focus on low-income housing and we have done an excellent job of that and we'll continue to focus on that, We need to continue to look for bridges and relationships to address the homeless population.

So we're working with the Regional Homeless Authority now on some emergency vouchers that we are housing folks.

And we'll continue to seek out appropriate partnerships like that.

That makes sense for us to stay in our wheelhouse and also just to move out and address some critical issues that are facing the city right now.

So that's one that I just want to let you know we're spending lots of time thinking about that.

and and seeking our appropriate role in that with all the other good partners here in Seattle.

I'm not sure I can add that's I'm excited to dive into that and figure out how to how to help through the through the Board of Commissioners work to support what what Director Brandon just just described.

The other thing that I have thought about is you know I think through through the pandemic we've all had the stress of the workforce stress.

Who is it who actually does the work for our organizations and how have they coped and how have they struggled.

And clearly there are hiring gaps all over our city.

And I would imagine that I haven't talked about this much with Director Brandon but I've got to imagine that SHA is in the same spot where it has been a stressful couple of years for a variety of reasons.

For staff who are at the ground level and doing the work to keep buildings great, to keep community developing with all of the challenges.

And so I look forward to learning more about how to support that people infrastructure of Seattle Housing Authority as well.

Well, thanks for bringing that up.

I think wellness is crucial.

It's both for our residents and making sure that we continue to pay attention to them as well as our staff so that they can be here to do this in the long haul in a healthy way for them and their families, which reflect the communities that we live in.

So thank you for bringing that up.

Thank you both very much.

And thank you as well, Director Brandon, for bringing up the important nexus with homeless services.

We have to have a place for folks to call home in order to solve the crisis of homelessness.

So very much appreciate your work there.

While it might not have come through in the most recent article in the Seattle Times, the last council budget that we just passed had $156 million towards affordable housing, and every word of the homeless investments was workshopped with the Regional Homelessness Authority.

So we're very excited as well to be good partners with the RHA.

our King County colleagues and look forward to making these investments go further with your support and your work at Seattle Housing Authority and our congressional actions that we anticipate here very soon.

$156 million into homeless services and shelter in addition to $194 million for housing, twice the amount that we've seen in the last four years.

I'm very optimistic and look forward to working with all of you to make sure that we turn those words on the paper into action in community.

With that, I'm not seeing any additional comments or questions.

Okay.

Colleagues, I move the committee recommends passage of the appointment of Sally Clark as member of the Seattle Housing Authority Board.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded.

Are there any additional comments?

Again, thank you for your interest in serving and thanks for all you do at SHA.

Director Brandon, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the appointment?

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is five in favor, none opposed.

Congratulations.

The motion carries.

The committee recommendation that the appointment of Sally Clark will be sent to the December 13th Seattle City Council meeting for a final vote.

You do not have to be there, but if you are, we'll make sure to note it.

I appreciate all of your past service and this ongoing commitment to public service through SHA.

Wonderful to see you and we'll see, we'll hopefully very much see you soon in the next year.

you.

Thanks very much for your all your work here and it's been quite a year for you.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Wonderful.

Thank you both very much.

We'll see you very soon.

Madam Clerk, will you please read item number two into the record?

Excuse me, let's do two and three Madam Clerk.

Agenda item two and three appointments of Estefania Ramirez and Diana Salazar as members of the Domestic Workers Standards Board for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you very much and I want to welcome back to the screen here Jasmine Marwaha from the Office of Labor Standards.

It's wonderful to see you as well as Deanna Salazar.

Thank you for being here with us today.

I understand Estefana will not be present here today but that you have a statement for her Jasmine.

Wonderful.

So at this point, I will go ahead and hand it over to Jasmine from Office of Labor Standards.

Again, I want to thank the members of the Domestic Workers Standards Board for all of the work that they have been doing.

Again, getting national attention for the ways in which the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights continues to have momentum and evolve because of the work the broad coalition represented on the Domestic Workers Standards Board and all of their research and advocacy that has helped to inform items that were just passed two weeks ago in our Seattle City Council budget.

So thanks for being here, Jasmine, and we'll then hear from Deanna as well.

That's right.

Thanks.

My name is Jasmine Marwaha.

I'm a policy analyst with the Office of Labor Standards and the staff liaison to the Domestic Workers Standards Board.

And I'm here to present one new mayoral appointment and one community representative appointment chosen by the DWC itself.

As you may recall, the DWSB is committed to improving the working conditions of domestic workers by providing a place for workers, employers, organizations, and the public to make suggestions to enforce, implement, and expand on the Domestic Workers Ordinance.

You've seen them a lot this year as they've presented their formal recommendations to the committee and interacted with many of you regarding advancing those recommendations, as Chair Mosqueda just mentioned.

The board is deeply appreciative of the $500,000 investment that council approved for the 2022 budget to help advance those recommendations.

And they're now working with us at OLS to provide guidance on how to prioritize those funds.

And they're excited to welcome both Gianna Salazar and Estefania Harry to the board.

Both applicants have been attending meetings and keeping up with the board's developments for the last few months, and we're excited to make it official.

So both applicants are actually also replacing members whose terms actually end in February of next year.

So you may see me again pretty soon to present their reappointments.

And my hope is that after February of next year, as half the terms expire, there'll be a round of new appointments and reappointments, but then things will settle down.

So Estefania, as Tara Mosqueda mentioned, cannot be here today.

She's in school in college and it's finals week and she was quite busy this week.

So I have prepared a brief statement from her, or she has prepared a brief statement that I will read, and then we can turn it over to Deanna, unless there are any questions or comments at this point.

Okay, great.

Let me just pull up her statement.

I am a hard-working college student currently attending Highline College.

During my academic career, I also managed to accrue nearly nine years of work experience.

I have been a home care worker for over 10 years.

I had the privilege of working for Providence Health Services in a certificate nurse assistant role.

I learned valuable professional and interpersonal skills which had allowed me to work under any circumstances and meet and work with people from different backgrounds and nationalities.

My experience has helped me to be a listener and to share my knowledge.

In both my academic and professional life, I have been consistently praised as proactive by my professors and peers.

Whether working on academic, extracurricular, or professional projects, I apply problem-solving communication and leadership skills, which I hope to apply in the Domestic Workers Standards Board.

I have been volunteering with the National Domestic Workers Alliance for almost two years, and I'm active in the Garifuna community.

I would like to be the voice of many workers out there from many backgrounds, positions, and abilities about workers' rights.

So that's her statement.

I will also add that over the last few months, as an unofficial member waiting to be confirmed while the budget process was happening, she's already stepped up in a number of ways and provided really valuable perspective, much needed perspective, particularly as a home care worker.

We currently do not have any home care worker represented on the board.

So she would be a really valuable addition.

And yeah, she's just been a joy to work with.

Thank you very much for sharing those words and thank you as well to Estefana for sending that statement.

Very impressive.

Okay, Deanna, thanks again for being here today.

We'll turn it over to you if you could share a little bit about yourself and your interest in serving on the Domestic Worker Standards Board.

Hi, good morning, everyone.

My name is Diana, Diana Salazar.

I am currently working for SEIU 775 as a social justice campaigns manager.

And I am interested in the workers standards board, domestic workers standards board.

Personally, I used to be my mother's caregiver.

And so we, you know, had to, that was very new to me, because culturally, you know, that's what you do, like, you just take care of your mom, you take care of your sibling, and you don't often think of that as paid labor.

And so that was a very interesting and I learned a lot around navigating different institutions, whether it be the workforce, government agencies, service agencies.

And so I really am committed to bringing that experience, both as professionally, you know, I've been a community organizer since 2012. And I've also been working on different policy issues And then, you know, my experience with supporting my mother and really want to make sure that this workforce is no longer invisible and that they have the best protections and the best services and the best, you know, you mentioned it earlier that Seattle's really leading the way for that.

And I'm really excited and interested in contributing to that as well.

Thank you very much for sharing a little bit about yourself.

I also know that you have really deep relationships from a lot of the work that you've been doing in community over the last few years, and greatly appreciate that you bring both the lived experience, community organizing experience, and deep policy analysis and research as well.

What a wonderful contribution to the board.

Are there any questions or comments from my colleagues here today?

Okay, I think one of the things that I'd love to ask you, Deanna, is...

As you head into your service on the board, are there one or two things that you are thinking, you know, policy-wise, this is something, this is the time to strike, this is the opportunity right now for momentum, given the conversations at the national level around the Build Back Better Act and the importance of caregiving and caring for our kiddos and elders.

Is there any sort of moment right now where you're like, this is it, let's build towards the X goal that really excites you to participate in the Domestic Worker Standards Board?

Yeah, there's, there's a lot of for the last few meetings and you know we've been talking a lot about both implementation of you know this major victory.

I, one thing that really stuck with me was a lot of the workers were saying that you know anecdotally.

A lot of folks that this would impact actually don't know that this is impacting them because they don't live in Seattle.

And so when they hear like this, this is in Seattle, they automatically think, oh, well, I don't live in Seattle.

So therefore that that I work in Seattle.

So therefore, that doesn't impact me.

And so that's something that we really want to address.

I mean, I think a lot of us know that, you know, passing legislation and passing policies, a lot of work.

But the work doesn't end there.

Then we have to implement that work and then make sure that people know about this.

On that level, I'm very excited to work with the different coalition partners to really make sure that we can really let people know that this is actually something that is for them.

And then on the policy level, just robust infrastructure, like what is happening at the national level.

talk to a lot of colleagues about child care costs and a lot around you know family planning and a lot of parents are moving in or my colleagues are moving in with their parents because that's the way that they can afford child care or caregiving as their parents are getting older.

So that's you know that's something that I really want to like think critically about how we can provide really good policy for so Seattle can continue leading the way.

Well, thank you so much.

And I will just note the National Employment Law Project, who has been a strong advocate and supporter of Domestic Workers Standards Board creation and the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

Recently, I was in a meeting with them, and they continue to applaud the work that the board is doing.

And it's a great example for other cities on how to make sure that policy doesn't remain stagnant.

Council President, great to see you.

Just wanted to say hello and see if there's any other questions or comments from our colleagues.

Okay.

Wonderful.

Well, I am not seeing any additional questions or comments.

Diana, I'm very happy to have had you with us today, and please pass on our appreciation, Jasmine.

to Estefana.

At this point, before I call for a vote, I did want to just use this as a moment of personal privilege to thank Lori Mejia from our office.

She is our legislative intern.

Today is her last day in our office.

She too is in the final weeks of finals.

So we send her good luck and congratulations on the conclusion of almost a year and a half.

of serving in our office as a legislative intern.

And I know she's been a really valuable part of the ongoing conversations at the Domestic Workers Standards Board and the Affordable Benefits Coalition.

So I want to thank Lori for all of her work and hope that it continues to live on in 2022 as well.

She's been such a wonderful asset to this conversation, so thanks to Lori as well.

Colleagues, I'm not seeing any additional comments or questions on Diana and Estefana.

Let's go ahead.

I move the committee recommends passage of the appointments of Estefana Ramirez de Harry and Diana Salazar as members of the Domestic Worker Standards Board.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you very much.

It's been moved and seconded.

Madam Clerk, colleagues, I don't see any additional comments or questions.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the passage of the appointments?

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Absolutely, yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is a five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much.

Congratulations.

The motion carries and the committee recommendations that the appointments of Estefana Ramirez Harry and Deanna Salazar will be sent to the December 13th Seattle City Council meeting for final vote.

Deanna, you do not have to be there, but we will make sure to sing your praises in advance as we hand this over to the council president for that final meeting on December 13th and for the final confirmation.

Thank you so much, Jasmine, for all that you and OLS have done throughout the years.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Good to see you.

Appreciate your service.

At this time, Madam Clerk, let's move on to the fourth item of business on today's agenda.

Agenda item number four, appointment of Edna Shim as member of the Burke-Gilman Public Development Authority Government Council for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you very much, and we understand that Edna was not able to join us today, but did send a statement that our friend Hannah Smith from the Office of Intergovernmental Relations will provide for the record.

Thank you very much, Hannah, for being with us today, for all of the work that the Office of Intergovernmental Relations does on behalf of the city.

It's great to see you.

We will turn it over to you for a brief update on the Burke-Gilman PDA and the work that you are excited about that Edna will do.

Thank you, Chairman Skeda.

Good morning, Haas-Smith, Office of Intergovernmental Relations.

As a reminder, the Burke-Gilman PDA was started in 1983 to develop and manage almost 20 acres in Northeast Seattle, right near Seattle Children's Hospital.

They serve low-income households and people with disabilities.

The board has nine members, all of whom are appointed by the mayor.

And there are four designated from user groups or facilities around the property, including Seattle Children's, Ronald McDonald House, ProVail, and the Children's Centers.

So Edna sent me a little bio and work she's interested in doing, so I will share that with you all now.

Edna is seeking her first term.

First appointment on the PDA from the Seattle Children's position.

She's the Senior Director of Regional Government Affairs and Community Relations at Seattle Children's.

She served in that capacity for over 10 years.

Edna has extensive career in public service and has worked for elected officials at the federal, state, and local levels, including several years working for city council members.

She's also the board president of East Trail Partnership, which fosters community and sustainability for the region and working on the East Trail over on the east side.

She's received both undergraduate and master's degrees from the University of Washington.

She's excited for this role, the relationship and proximity of the PDA and Seattle Children's and continuing to work on the community surrounding Seattle Children's for this role.

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, are there any questions about the appointment of Edna Shim to the Burt Gilman PDA?

Or any questions for Hannah here today with us?

Okay, I'm not seeing any additional questions.

Excited about the role that Edna plays currently with Seattle Children's and appreciate the strong commitment to public education and public policy.

So I think it'll be a great fit.

I'm not seeing any additional questions, so let's go ahead and move forward.

Anything else on your?

That's it.

Thank you so much.

OK, wonderful.

I move the committee recommends passage of the appointment of Edna Shim as member of the Burt Gilman PDA.

Is there a second?

OK.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Is there any additional comments or questions, colleagues?

Seeing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the passage of the appointment?

Mr. Herbold?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is five in favor, nine opposed.

Thank you very much.

Please pass our congratulations on.

The motion carries.

The committee recommendation that the appointment of Edna Shim will be sent to the December 13th Seattle City Council meeting for a final vote.

And again, her presence is not required, but if you could pass on our appreciation for her service, that would be wonderful.

Thanks, Hannah.

see you soon.

Okay, Madam Clerk, let's go ahead and move on to items 5, 6, and 7. Could you please read items 5 through 7 into the record for us this morning?

Agenda items 5, 6, and 7 are reappointments of Chase Fulbright, Shannon Mar Gonzalez, and Eric Snow as members of the Community of Woods Housing Public Development Authority Governing Council for briefing discussion on school

Wonderful.

Well, Hannah, I'm glad you stayed with us.

You are also on deck to provide a summary here for Community Roots Housing, a name recently changed.

So excited to have you walk through with us these appointees here today.

Reappointments of Jason Fulbright, Shamir Gonzalez, Eric Snow as members of Community Roots Housing.

And as we know, reappointments do not require a presence in committee.

And so today these are all mayoral reappointments and look forward to having on any additional comments or context to these three reappointments here from your perspective.

All right, thanks again.

So, as you know, Community Roots Housing recently changed from Capitol Hill.

Housing, their reach has grown beyond Capitol Hill, so that's the name change, and now they own and maintain nearly 50 apartments across Seattle and White Center, providing affordable housing for over 2,000 residents.

Some highlights they wanted me to share of recent work.

They broke ground on Seattle's first LGBTQ plus affirming affordable housing project, Pride Place.

And I've also recently broken ground on Yesler Family Housing, the mixed use of formal housing for families in collaboration with Seattle Chinatown International District, PDA.

Some great work coming out of this group and three reappointments for you today, all seeking their second term.

Chasten has been engaged on Capitol Hill for over 20 years.

He's led homelessness ministry and has managed apartment buildings.

He has over 15 years of experience in retail, real estate management, and is a founding principal and creative innovator at Blanton Turner, where he oversees pre-development consulting, marketing, and real estate operations.

Those have been key skills to bring to the PBA board.

Shalimar Gonzalez is the district executive overseeing YMCA operations in South King County, West Seattle, and Newcastle.

She's been with YMCA for 17 years and is deeply engaged in change management, community development, diversity, inclusion, and equity work.

She serves as the chair of the PDA council, so a key leadership role that will be great for her to continue in the second term.

And finally, Eric Snow is the president and COO of Fresh Toast, a new media startup.

He has experience in the regional and national leadership roles for the American Heart Association, and has been a resident of Capitol Hill for over 10 years with strong nonprofit board experience, including serving as the president of the Board of Lifelong.

So these are all very important members to the PVA Council, so hopefully they can all be approved and we appreciate them continuing to serve.

Wilson appreciate their continued interest and their past service.

Are there any additional questions or comments on these reappointments?

Thank you for the overview.

I'm not seeing any additional questions or comments.

This time I'm going to move that the committee recommends passage of the reappointments of Kristen Fulbright, excuse me, Chasten Fulbright, Sean Imad Gonzalez, Eric Snow as members of Community Roots Housing, PDA.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you very much, Vice Chair.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any additional questions or comments?

Seeing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the passage of these reappointments?

Can I start a roll?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is five in favor and none opposed.

Thank you very much.

Congratulations.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the reappointments will be sent, that the reappointments of Justin Fulbright, Shalimar Gonzalez, and Eric Snow will be sent to the December 13th Seattle City Council meeting for a final vote.

Please pass on our appreciation for their continued service.

And it is good to see you, Hannah.

Thanks again for being here for these items.

Okay, Madam Clerk, could you please read an item number eight into the record?

Agenda item number eight, the Permanent Appointments and Administrative Services, Race and Social Justice Initiative for briefing and discussion.

Excellent.

Okay.

Well, we are very excited to have this item on our agenda.

This is a long-anticipated presentation on the RSJI work at FAS, and we want to thank the FAS team, including Director Kevin Goings, Alyssa Young, Daniel Magpali, Liz Alzer, Anita Adams, Darcy, Sigmarz, Philip Saunders, Jennifer Chow, Rick Dimmer, and all of the team at FAS for their ongoing work.

Alyssa Young, I see you up there.

Thanks for being here with us today.

A note of huge appreciation to Director Goings and your team for the work that you all have done this year.

especially in this RSGI critical work that needs to be discussed in committees and make sure that we have full transparency and appropriate airtime on all the hard work that's been done.

We also know that you were slated to be in our committee earlier this year and having to juggle some of these agenda items related to multiple budgets this year, we did have to shift it.

So thank you for your patience.

And we are going to go ahead and turn it over to you and the crew here from FAS to walk us through.

Good morning, Alyssa.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

OK, it looks like we were able to add a couple of people.

I think they were in the waiting room.

Oh, OK.

I will turn it over to Calvin.

Oh, wonderful.

I see you, Director Goings.

And if there's anybody else in the waiting room, we will make sure to admit them.

Director Goings, the last time I saw you, or excuse me, multiple times in the last few years, but one of the times that really sticks out, I was wearing that same jacket thanks to you and all of the work that your team has done, especially on the vaccination sites.

Again, we are on the national screen for all of the work that you've done to stand up the largest vaccination clinic in the entire country.

With that introduction, I'll turn it over to Director Billings.

Thank you.

Can you hear me, Council Member?

Yes, thank you.

Great, well, good morning and thank you for the opportunity to be here and holding space and time for this issue.

And thank you, Madam Chair and Council Members for your leadership these past 22 months as we've navigated the dual crisis of the pandemic and confronting systemic racism.

I'm Calvin Goings, as you mentioned, Director of the City's Finance and Administrative Services Department, FAS, and I'm joined by my incredible colleagues in FAS to report on our department's race and social justice efforts in 2021. This presentation will update you on our RSGI accomplishments and challenges, the progress of our Racial Equity Toolkits, or RETs, and how we're leading with race at FAS.

Before we start, I would like to ask my colleagues to quickly introduce themselves, and Elisa, if you could please kick it off.

Thanks, Calvin.

Elisa Young here, Equity and Policy Director here at FAS.

And I will pass it to Daniel.

Hi there, Danny Magpoli, Asian Pacific Islander, ethnically Filipino.

I go by he, they, pronouns in business systems.

And I'll pass it over to Liz.

Liz, I'm sorry, we are not able to hear you.

It might be my system here, but I see you're unmuted, but it just doesn't look like your microphone's connected perhaps, so.

Looks like it's not just my computer.

Apologies for that.

I can hear you now.

Very good.

Sorry about that.

Technical difficulty.

Liz Allseer with Purchasing and Contracting Division Director.

And I will pass it over to Anita Adams.

Anita Adams, Purchasing and Contracting Equity Associate Manager.

And I will pass it to Darcy Singbars.

Good morning, I'm Darcy Sinkmars.

I'm with FBS Fleet Management, and I apologize my video is not working.

Good morning.

Philip.

Good morning, I'm Philip Saunders, and I'm the Director for Logistics and Emergency Management, and I will pass it over to Rick.

Good morning, Rick Demmer, Labor Equity.

I'm the Field Enforcement Representative for the Community Workforce Agreement.

I will pass it over to, who else is on the team?

I'll shoot to Aliza.

Jennifer, yes, actually, yeah, Jennifer, Jennifer Chow.

Can everyone hear me?

Oh, I guess, okay, one moment.

We can hear you.

You can hear me, okay.

Jennifer Chow, Deputy Director of Strategy and Administration in the Consumer Protection Division.

Thank you for having us, council members.

Thank you.

And Jennifer, just want to flag, we couldn't see you, but I could definitely hear you just in case your video was trying to be on.

Anyone else?

All right, well thank you again.

You know this work couldn't be done without the amazing team and you're going to hear from all of them shortly.

We council member and members we have a lot of information to cover so if possible maybe consider holding your questions to the end because there's a good chance we'll try to answer them proactively during the presentation.

Moving on to slide three of the presentation, as you heard me say at the top, FAS, we lead with race.

Those words aren't a platitude for us, they're a promise, and they're a daily call for us to embed race and equity in everything we do at FAS, from how we recruit and hire to how we deliver services to our residents.

My first step when I joined FAS in 2018 was to work with department leadership to create a solid foundation for this work.

We did through something in FAS we call the five pillars, our guiding principles, if you will.

These pillars serve as a framework for our department and they align our values and our objectives with larger citywide values.

On to slide four.

To frame our conversation about RSJI today, I want to focus on how our efforts align with two of those five pillars, including some of our current efforts to date.

Specifically, pillar number two, a respectful, equitable, collaborative, and safe workplace is really important to me personally and as the director of our department.

And pillar number four, yes.

So sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you, but I did want to just double check to see if we needed to put a presentation on the screen for you.

Yes, I'm hoping that's the case.

We can't share it, so I Okay, as you continue your opening comments, and I don't want to interrupt the pillars, we will make sure that we are pulling up the presentation for you on our end.

Madam Clerk, Farideh, if you could tee that up, that's great, and we will let you continue, Director Goings.

So on slide five, you can't see it right now, but it's a very important slide.

I wanted to talk specifically about a couple of key areas of how we're strengthening these pillars.

Early in my tenure, we kicked off a months-long process to establish performance agreements for all of FAS's leadership team, our managers, and our strategic advisors.

For the first time ever, I'm pleased to say that 100% of these individuals now have a written performance agreement, and every agreement includes an expectation related to furthering RSGI at FAS.

We also elevated the great work that was happening by establishing an equity and policy director in the director's office.

This position, as you heard, is held by Alicia Young.

Additionally, we reorganized the director's office to include HR to further operational our values of equity and inclusion.

Our HR division is evaluating workplace equity impacts on performance management and applying an equity lens and equity toolkit to recruiting and the onboarding of all new staff at FAS.

We also work to ensure that senior leadership reflects the communities we serve.

Today, nearly 55% of senior leadership at FAS identify as female, and approximately 45% of senior leadership identify as BIPOC or LGBTQ.

And we're making sure we have the right people at the table, especially when policy decisions are being made or shared.

That's why we expanded our executive leadership team to include our change team co-leads.

and we're prioritizing our WMBIE small businesses, staying intentionally engaged with community groups and external organizations, and continuing to find innovative ways to challenge the RSGI implications of our work.

We also recently launched the WMBIE Advisory Committee and the City's first-of-its-kind Disparity Study, which will help us identify and remove barriers that may exist in how we award public contracts.

We've also increased our Racial Equity Toolkits, or RETs, from 8 to 10, the most of any department in the City, Our Community Workforce Agreement, RET, led by some of the teams you'll hear from, won last year's Seattle Management Association's Race and Social Justice Award.

Chair Muscat, as you mentioned, you got to see firsthand how we've centered equity in our efforts operating the community vaccination site at Lumen Field, the largest civilian-led mass vaccination site in the country.

And when the dust settled, FAS, along with our city partners and partners at Swedish, provided more than 102,000 potentially life-saving vaccines.

We did this both in how we hired city staff, the volunteers we recruited, and the services we provided, which is evident when you consider 44% of the residents that were served by the site identified as BIPOC.

200 plus languages were available on interpretation devices or through our 35 plus in-person interpreters and all of our materials were translated in eight languages.

And over a third of our purchase orders at the site were with Wimby firms.

I want to especially commend our FAS site equity director Alisa Young for her incredible and tireless work at this site.

You know, council members, we are living in an enormous moment, and we as public servants have the opportunity, the responsibility, really, to combat systemic racism.

I think from the next series of speakers and slides, you'll see that we are trying to do just that at FAS.

So with that foundation, I'll now hand it over to Daniel Magpoli, our FAS change team co-lead.

Thank you so much.

Want to note, for the record, we are on slide six, transitioning to slide seven.

So if you, when you're speaking, can notify the clerk that you'd like to have the next slide, that would be very helpful.

And appreciate the opening, Director Goings.

Please go ahead, Daniel.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Calvin.

My name is Daniel Magpoli.

As I said, I'm one of the three co-leads for the FAS change team.

Currently, I'm the lead for the organizational change management for the HRS replacement project.

Our approach to race and social justice is centered on people and based on anti-racist principles.

People are at the heart of institution.

We build, police, govern, legislate, create policies, educate, and influence.

We are socialized, conditioned, and behave in response to our surroundings.

We recognize that historical injustices have shaped our people, particularly black, indigenous, and people of color.

Knowing all of this, we are on an evolving journey to tap into the power of relationships.

We educate in dialogue about systemic racism.

Over time, we encounter difficult conversations which challenge our ways of thinking.

We strive to prevent good intentions from turning into harmful negative impacts.

The change team's work is rooted in four areas.

Human resources, how policies and practices affect us as employees.

Budget, how financial resources are managed.

Communications, our voice and point of view, and lastly, education and outreach, our commitment to learning and building tools and resources and expanding, sustaining the growth of our team.

This past year, we have continued our partnership with the director's office, director of HR, and budget office to bring RSA Lens to the budget process.

We continue to build relationships and dialogue within 16 divisions to advance racial equity.

The work requires time, persistence, and resilience.

Our change team is part of a network which includes learning cohorts such as core teams, anti-racist educators, racial equity intensives, and citywide co-leads, work groups such as WEPAC and several racial equity toolkit teams.

On behalf of the 15 members of the FAS change team, thank you for taking the time to hear our voice and the role of the work of undoing systemic racism in white supremacy culture.

I'd like to pass the time to Liz Alzear.

Thank you.

Thank you, Daniel.

And I am Liz Alsier, and I start on slide eight, please.

So at FAS, we establish our own department goals for spending with women and or minority-owned businesses, or WEMBIs for short, and we support other departments establishing their goals in our role as the citywide administrator of the WEMBI program.

In 2020, FAS exceeded its overall WMBIE goals, spending over 26% of our purchasing dollars and over 36% of our consulting dollars with WMBIE firms.

And in 2021, I'm pleased to report we are continuing to exceed our WMBIE goals.

Next slide, please.

I realize there are many spend details shown on this slide, FAS tracks spend for both white women-owned business utilization and minority or BIPOC spend.

For purposes of this presentation, I will focus my attention on the BIPOC spend as that area remains our biggest challenge when broken down into the respective race and ethnicity groups that we track.

In 2020, out of our total WMB spend on the purchasing side, we realized a total of 73.2% with BIPOC-owned firms, and on the consulting side, 47.8% with BIPOC-owned firms.

The rest of this data on this slide shows our spend by ethnicity and group as a percentage of our total WMBI spend, so I won't share those details out.

However, instead, I'd like to share out the breakdown of BIPOC spend as a percentage of our total spend.

And since that detail isn't on this slide, if you'd like the information in writing, happy to send that to you after the presentation.

In looking at the utilization from a total spend, it is clear that we have room for improvement with 19.35% representing purchasing spend with BIPOC-owned firms.

Black-owned spend representing only 2.32% of our total purchase spend.

spend with Asian-owned firms is at 8.17 percent, Latino-owned firms at 0.94 percent, and Native American-owned firms spend at 7.35 percent.

On the consultant contracting side, of the 17.42 percent of total spend with BIPOC-owned firms, 0.88 percent is with Black-owned firms, 11.4 percent with Asian-owned firms, 4.15% with Latino-owned firms and 0.65% with Native American-owned firms.

On the next slide, I will share more details as to efforts underway at FAS to improve these numbers.

Next slide, please.

To support our FAS and citywide WMBIE usage, we have a variety of activities that we've launched.

You can read more on the slide, but I'll highlight a few.

We launched a WMBIE advisory committee with 12 community leaders to advise and support our efforts.

And we thank each committee member for making this commitment.

And we are working with a consultant on a large-scale disparity study to give us more information about contracting equity at the city.

To further strengthen our program and utilization of WMBIEs, in particular with BIPOC-owned firms, we've also implemented the following activities.

Forecasting of our procurement so we can develop better outreach and engagement strategies as part of the solicitation and procurement process.

WMBI training within FAS in 2021 and with the goal of launching WMBI training citywide in 2022. The strategies that we're engaged in to focus on minority owned businesses, specifically black businesses, We are conducting a deeper spend analysis of our existing contracts, looking at availability and usage of those existing contracts held by Wimby's.

Providing technical assistance to firms with an emphasis on providing supportive services to Wimby's.

We're currently finalizing an RFP with the emphasis on providing assistance to those Wimby firms.

and language access, looking to support contracting equity within immigrant and refugee communities.

Now I'll move on to priority hire.

Next slide, please.

Priority Hire promotes access to construction careers for women, people of color, and others who are underrepresented in the industry.

The Priority Hire program prioritizes the hiring of residents that live in economically distressed zip codes, particularly in Seattle and in King County.

The program has been impactful, increasing wages and opportunities.

And I want to thank the construction unions, our contractors, apprenticeship programs, and our community partners who are at our side to make this program so successful.

Shown on this slide is a picture of Andrea, one of those community partners.

She graduated from a new pre-apprenticeship program and now serves as the Assistant Political Director at Labors 242. Next slide, please.

The program has also been successful for apprentices of color, particularly African-Americans.

The program also supports worker retention through training programs like the city's acceptable worksite training.

I'll now pass it on to Anita.

Thank you, Liz.

Next slide, please.

Um, purchasing and contracting monitors when the utilization closely and works proactively to support contractors to be successful on projects covered by a community workforce agreement.

We facilitate contractor education at all stages of the project and provide significant technical assistance.

WEMBE utilization over the past few years has slightly increased on projects not covered by a community workforce agreement, yet remains steady on projects covered by a community workforce agreement.

And while this may not be a trend, we are interested in proactively considering ways to further increase WMBIE participation on covered projects and have undertaken this racial equity toolkit to identify particular opportunities to improve MBE participation or as Liz stated, minority business enterprise participation.

We conducted several focus groups in late 2018 and 19 and are continuing to do ongoing engagement in the community.

Next slide, please.

Although engagements are ongoing, we completed steps one through six of this racial equity toolkit with a focus on the most harmed communities.

We have reported back to the National Association of Minority Contractors and TABOR 100, as well as the Priority Hire Advisory Committee.

As part of this report back, we shared several recommendations, and these strategies are currently starting with expanding technical assistance and training for MBE contractors.

partnering across the city to ensure the goals and requirements are met, and developing more practices and policies to support MBE participation.

We also are continuing the strong relationships that we have with the external partners, like I mentioned before.

Pictured here is a photo of Tracy, and Tracy is the type of MBE contractor that participated in some of the focus groups.

Tracy has TNT traffic control.

She is the owner of this company.

We met Tracy when she worked as a laborer on a City Light project.

And since then, Tracy has started her own traffic control company with over 18 projects completed or underway, including work on the Climate Pledge Arena.

Tracy is also a participant in the WMBIE Advisory Committee.

I look forward to any questions you may have at the end of this presentation, and I will now pass it to Darcy.

Thank you, Anita.

Please advance to slide 15. All right, thanks.

So I'm here to present on the shared mobility RET project.

This project aimed to promote economic advancement of people of color through a shared mobility service contract to be used by city employees for city business travel.

This RIT began in 2018 when assigned department vehicles and the centralized motor pool vehicles here in FAS were in high demand.

At the time, FAS had a need to give city employees more travel options.

We hoped to improve travel access for employees who did not work near the current motor pool locations in SMT and Sea Park or those employees who didn't have access to the assigned department vehicles across the city.

Our RET stakeholder outreach and research included engagement with shared mobility providers such as local taxi companies and transportation network companies.

We also engaged motor pool users, department fleet coordinators, consumer protection, and contracting professionals as well.

The strategy we tested was the use of a corporate account with Seattle Orange Cab.

The strategy, unfortunately, did not achieve the goal.

Next slide, please.

When we began the OrangeCab pilot, we immediately saw that technology disparities between the taxi company that we chose and the TNCs were an issue.

People, city employees, want app-based dispatching and the ability to see GPS location, ETA, and the description of their car and driver.

Our OrangeCab account relied on a call center to dispatch vehicles and the payment by paper voucher.

This did not meet the expectations of city employees who were already used to using app-based services in their personal lives.

Voucher-based billing resulted in delays in payments to the drivers themselves, which was actually contrary to the original goal as well.

And finally, the demand for additional transportation options was reduced to basically zero when COVID-19 hit.

Our team continues to share our lessons learned with colleagues.

We urge colleagues to watch for signs that a strategy isn't working so that they may go back and recycle through the RET stages of stakeholder outreach and strategy development to test a new option.

Also, we hope to temper expectations that even after all the hard work that goes into an RET project, it may not achieve the outcome.

At this point, FAS engagement on this topic is currently with King County.

Together, we are working on policy changes that may lessen the regulatory burden on taxi medallion owners.

Structural changes in policy can have lasting impact on the for hire taxi industry.

Next slide, please.

And take it away, Philip.

Thank you, Darcy.

Again, I'm Philip Saunders.

Our rep here is a racially-equity toolkit based on city surplus with a focus on MBEs.

Our rep began during the middle of COVID in response to the Office of Civil Rights' call to action around making more decisions with a focus on how to increase engagement, awareness, and opportunities for minority-owned businesses through nonprofit or for-profit organizations focused on serving BIPOC communities.

Our team is currently focused on increasing awareness to MBEs on surplus items free or at a lower cost.

We want to do this by focusing on targeted outreach and sharing information about surplus and its inventory in advance so folks will understand what we are offering.

We also want to focus on becoming more accessible by making it easier for organizations to see in the BIPOC community what we have to offer.

We plan to do this by conducting invitations for surplus events that focus on aligning our inventory with what minority businesses really need, as well as creating Schedule 4 appointments.

Next slide.

What we've done to date is we've developed a Kanban board by using Lean Six Sigma principles, and this is some of the steps and tools that we use.

So we've developed a Kanban, which is a visual board and that basically tells us the work on the mini-RET at various stages.

We also developed a mini-RET summary, which is a one-page document that captures overview, intellectual merits, and a broader impact of the RET.

We also developed an A3, which is also known as a flowchart, to actively collaborate and problem solve on the purpose, goals, and strategies of the RET.

It also ensures the team accurately meets its goals.

We have a milestone and timeline for the RET as well.

This creates the actual timeline that uses milestones to divide the project into major phases aligned with RET steps.

Then we have scripts.

Scripts is very important.

The scripts is a set of speaking points developed by the team to ensure the team meets people where they are and provides the same equitable messaging on a consistent basis.

This is very important, and this is what the team focuses on as we communicate with the community.

Our next steps are really to meet with the MBA stakeholders as a whole and to build and improve our processes based on the feedback that we get from the community.

And this is very important as we partner with the community.

Thank you for your time, and I'll pass it to Jennifer.

Thank you Philip.

In 2018 FAS began an RET on the cannabis industry.

The RET team includes the Office of Economic Development Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections and the Office for Civil Rights.

Based on community feedback the RET outcomes were revised to building a new systemic structure and centering black communities through access to licenses and capital business education and mentorship affordable housing health care education and reentry support.

business plan support and flexibility in the process, reinvesting proceeds into the black community and rebuilding generational wealth.

I will hand it over to Rick to share about community engagement and next steps.

Thank you, Jennifer.

Jennifer and I represent a very passionate and talented team.

The team has engaged in nearly two dozen stakeholder engagements, over 200 community members and city departments.

After just three years of hard work and collaboration, the following recommendations were made.

Redirecting one million of the state's excise tax over a 10-year period to build the cannabis equity program.

Reducing the city of Seattle's cannabis licensing fee for social equity applicants.

Support service funding for individuals impacted by marijuana convictions.

Economic support for families in the central area impacted by marijuana enforcement and convictions.

Partnership with City of Seattle's Economic Development Office for small business support in black community.

Revisiting the places where cannabis businesses are allowed for social equity applicants with the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection.

And lastly, working with the city's attorney's office, mayor's and mayor's office to expunge felony marijuana convictions and make sure the city cannabis equity program is violent.

We presented these recommendations to the director's office and these recommendations were approved.

So thank you to Calvin and the director's office team.

And we started early work with the office of economic development and other city departments to begin the implementation process.

We look forward to city council's support to continue this work to serve most harm communities.

Thank you for your time and I'll pass it to Ms. Elisa Young.

Thank you, Rick.

Next slide.

We have shared a list of these RETs with you with contact information as well as a description of what our RETs have been all about, including the ones that you heard from today.

And in addition, we are launching a RET in the new year for our HRIS project being led by one of our change team members, Daniel McPauley.

Next slide.

I want to thank all of my colleagues for their dedication to the critical work.

And thank you, council members, for your leadership and for giving us the space today.

You set a great example for our city, and we're honored to be here with you to share and to listen.

This work is going to take us all, so it's especially meaningful and important that you have had, that you have, and continue to prioritize it.

So we thank you for that.

We'll now be glad to answer any questions that you may have.

30 minutes on the dot.

You did so great.

Thank you so much to the entire team for the presentation and all of the presentation and some examples of the racial equity toolkits are listed on today's agenda.

Again, I want to thank you for your flexibility and rescheduling from earlier this fall.

Thank you for all of the work that you've done and really want to open it up to my colleagues who may have some additional questions and thanks for holding those questions to the end here.

I do have a few questions as well, We'll go after Council Member Herbold.

Please go ahead.

Thanks.

I have two categories of questions.

The first relates to slide nine.

The numbers on the slide were all significantly higher than the numbers I heard being read by the person presenting on the slide.

So I don't really understand that.

I was having a really hard time tracking what was being said with what was being presented on the slide, so maybe we could go back and dig in there a little bit more.

And then, as it relates specifically to the Cannabis Racial Equity Toolkit project, I understand that the Cannabis Equity paper that was referenced as part of this presentation, notes that of the 48 cannabis retail stores in Seattle, I'm sorry, 42, yes, 42 of the 48 had majority white ownership as of January of 2020, and that there's been a call for these social equity licenses And I understand that the barrier to doing that relates to the number of retail stores, not that there's a there's a.

a defined limit, but that the issue is that the zoning and land use restrictions make it difficult to site additional stores that might in turn receive these social equity licenses.

wondering, the paper notes that there's an upcoming decision point in fall of 2021. There's a high level set of recommendations for a social equity program coming.

And just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that and whether or not it addresses some of the land limitations associated with land use and zoning.

Thank you.

Yeah, Council Member, that's a great question.

So we have actually met with the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection, and they are actually one of our partners for implementation, and that is one something that we are looking at, is changing some of the dispersion zones, so the buffer zones, for social equity applicants only.

And again, the state is still defining if we can include race in the social equity definition, but that is something that they are advocating for, at least the community is.

But we will be aligned with the state once that is defined for social equity applicants.

And we're asking for either an exemption for folks who are social equity applicants to be able to find locations in the zones that are currently prohibited right now.

Thank you.

Really, really appreciate knowing that.

I also want to point out that Council has provided some input to the draft legislative agenda.

And we, in the version that was proposed last week, we added some new language to support your work at the state legislature regarding the statewide efforts to address issues associated with the efforts on the racist history of the war on drugs.

Could we also go to page nine?

Yeah, I do have a quick comment on page nine.

We'll note that my appreciation for the presenters, Council Member Herbold, you noted some different numbers that were shared there.

Part of the request that we had in advance was to pull out some of the data so that we could focus on just the BIPOC purchasing and consulting numbers.

So the numbers that are presented here include, as you see to the second to the last bullet there, white women, because this is women in minority-owned businesses, the WMBIE usual definition.

And so part of the request that we had was to see how we could look just at BIPOC purchasing and consulting.

So that's part of the reason there's additional information to what the slide noted.

So I want to thank you for pulling that data out so we could just see those BIPOC figures.

But I'll turn it over to Liz, who I see is unmuted, to provide additional context there.

Thanks in advance.

Thank you for providing that framework, yes.

And I do apologize, though, for the confusion, for not explaining the differences and providing that additional detail because, yes, it was my intent to share out not just what is shown on this slide that you can read at your leisure, which reflects the percentage of spend within the different race and ethnicity groups as a percentage of total WMBI spend and the data that I read, the details that I read and can share out, we can send that via email to you in writing, was the percentage of BIPOC spend as a percentage of total spend within the purchasing and consultant contracting bucket.

Thank you.

And so I just trying to tease out intent here in the fact that those were the remarks that were delivered verbally.

And these are the the data points that were provided as part of this presentation.

What is the takeaway?

What should we be measuring?

Should we be measuring the spending in purchasing and consulting related specifically to the Wimby spend?

Or should we be looking at the BIPOC spending department-wide, given that we are being provided information that shows, I think, if you do the math, if 26% is, sorry, 36.2% is the total spend for consulting, and 2.4% of that is black, that translates to about 1% of the total.

Similarly, with purchasing, 26.3% is the total spend.

Hispanic is 3.6%.

That works out to be 80% of the total.

Maybe I can help.

Yeah.

Good questions.

You know, no good deed goes unpunished.

So currently, the city tracks and accounts for spend using the WIMBY category.

that more broad category, if you will.

And just, I think, important to note that last year, or excuse me, in 2020, rather, FAS was one of only three departments in the entire city to exceed its WIMBY spend.

And likely for 2021, the year's not closed yet, FAS will probably be one of only two or three departments, again, to meet its overall WIMBY spend.

Second, hearing the concern from community that the point you're making and many others we at FAS made the decision on our own because it's not required to be done per the WMBIE executive orders or the current statutes regarding WMBIE to further dig down into our numbers so that we could have full transparency about I think what folks intentions are for WMBIE and the practice of what's actually happening in our department and likely the other departments as well.

Which is why, when we saw these numbers, we did a couple things.

We were very...

very supportive of reinstituting the Wimby Advisory Committee, which is happening now.

Very supportive of creating the first of its kind citywide disparity study to really find out what our intent is and what's actually happening.

So thank you for flagging this.

Thank you for bringing it out.

And the third and final point, the reason for the bit of confusion on our part was it was a last minute request, frankly, to have those BIPOC numbers.

And so the PowerPoint had already been submitted And Liz, as our division director, was verbally reporting out.

And as was mentioned, we'll provide that written documentation.

But one of only a couple departments meeting our overall WIMBY spend.

And as far as I know, the only department who has said proactively, we need to go beyond WIMBY and really get to our BIPOC numbers.

We're doing that and hopefully the disparity study and the WIMBY advisory committee will help us materialize that not only for FAS, but citywide and may lead to legislation or executive order next year.

Thank you.

And in no way was my line of questioning intended to be at all critical to the presenter or to FAS.

I had a feeling there was a story behind the story, and I wanted to hear more.

And thank you, FAS, for going further than required to be to go as it relates to the, um, reporting on on when be spend and, um, hopefully leading the way for other city departments.

So I really appreciate that.

Thank you.

And, Rick, thanks for waiting.

I saw that you had answer earlier as well.

Please go ahead.

Thank you.

Uh, Council member, uh, skater on into customer were horrible.

Harold, uh, you had a comment on, um, on the, uh, on the marijuana.

And so what we wanted to share also is that thank you first and foremost for your support in this work to state legislation.

And also in lieu of those numbers, 42 of the 48 are white owned businesses.

That was not always the case.

And with the city being as forward thinking as we are, we wanted to handle and to deal with the concerns of past practice, what is past practice and current practice, but what the intent was, Prior to legislation, there was more black owners.

There was more BIPOC owners.

But once the laws changed, it shifted dramatically.

And so what we wanted to do with this equity program is address those issues for the folks who were put out of business, the communities that were harmed, and the individuals that were harmed, but also to look forward to the state's liquor cannabis board getting ready to potentially put out about 36 licenses, and we're looking about 12 of those licenses, just small number here, looking to be in the city of Seattle, which is why we're working with other city departments to welcome those changes.

And so we just wanted to make clear that we're looking forward to that program supporting the new licenses that will come into Seattle and how we will best serve those folks.

So thank you.

Well, thank you very much for that context as well.

And I'm glad we have a chance to come back to this example of the racial equity toolkit that the RSJA team has done.

We also know that there's a lot of work that community and UFCW 21 are doing around this issue.

So I look forward to hearing more on this topic, I believe in 2022, as I'm sure that there will be more engagement with community partners.

on how we actualize some of these racial equity goals.

Are there any additional comments or questions?

Yes, please go ahead Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, and thank you, Director Goings and your entire team, Elisa, Rick, Jennifer.

Really appreciate the presentation today.

I don't have questions for you.

Rather, just a moment to note that your work as FAS is the backbone of our city, touches so many different areas of work.

And in this presentation, Rick, I heard from you statistics, data, and information that comes up in land use conversations in the industrial zones.

Jay, Jennifer I heard from you, information that that has come up to me and other walks of my role here in the city government, and so I just want to take this moment to acknowledge that your work is not just in one department.

It is across the city and touches so much of what we do here, whether it's just good governance or providing services.

This information was really helpful for me because it put a finer point on a lot of the conversations that we've had from land use to human services to everything else.

Just want to take this moment to thank you for your presentation.

Excellent well said thank you very much and I see a lot of our colleagues nodding along so please note that that note of appreciation is shared and I am not seeing any additional comments or questions.

We look forward to working with you in 2022 and beyond as you take some of these RSGI outcomes into action next year and if there's any way that we can help advance some of these goals or engagement with community at the ready to work with you all.

Thanks for doing this in addition to your other day jobs.

I know that this is critical work and the ways that FAS members have stepped up to provide services to folks who have been affected by COVID in itself is a focus on racial equity given the disproportionate impacts that COVID has had in our community, for our BIPOC community specifically.

and low-wage workers.

So thank you so much for all that you've done.

I don't see any additional hands.

Any final comments?

Okay, I'm not seeing any.

Thanks so much for all of your time, and please do take a look at the links on our agenda today.

And as the panelists have said, thanks for all of the work that you've done that is incredibly impactful.

We look forward to having you back again next year.

Okay, take care.

At this time, Madam Clerk, could you please read item nine into the record?

And item number nine, Council Bill 120238, an ordinance relating to funding for housing for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Okay, colleagues, we had already had the public hearing period open.

At this point, I'm not seeing any additional commenters related to item number nine.

We will conclude the public hearing related to item number nine and move into the presentation from our colleagues who are here with us on the line here today.

This again is Council Bill 1, excuse me, Council Bill 120238 related to the annual action plan.

I want to thank Robin Koski, the interim director, Lori Olson, Kelly Larson, all from the Office of Housing, along with our very own Amy Gore from Central Staff.

Amy, I see you on the line.

Is there anything you'd like to share before I turn it over to Office of Housing?

No, I think this is the annual action plan.

We actually have two annual action plan items on the agenda.

The first is an amendment to the 2021 annual action plan.

And the second is public hearing on the draft of the 2022 annual action plan.

Both of these are required by the U.

S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

But I think that both items have executive staff that are prepared to speak to them.

So I will turn it over, but I'm happy to answer any questions if they arise.

Wonderful, thank you very much.

And Interim Director Koski, wonderful to see you again.

I cannot remember if this is the second or the first time that we've had you with this title back.

So let me just say for the record, thank you for coming back to the Office of Housing and serving as the Interim Director.

It's wonderful to see you at this department again.

We'll turn it back over to you to walk us through the annual action plan.

Thank you very much, Council Member Mosqueda.

And I am delighted to be here in my new capacity as the Interim Director.

And this is in fact my first time before your committee.

So lovely to be here with a different hat on today.

I guess I'll just also pause and let Lori Olson and Kelly Larson introduce themselves for the record.

Hi, I'm Lori Olson.

I'm the Capital Investments Manager for the Office of Housing.

Hello, Kelly Larson, Strategic Initiatives Manager for the Office of Housing.

And I'll be able to provide any technical backup that I might need to answer your questions.

This is a fairly simple technical amendment that will allow us to use federal home funds for capital investment to create permanent affordable homes for people experiencing homelessness, most likely through acquisition.

And, you know, HUD has required that we develop an allocation plan with stakeholders and submit an amendment to the annual 2021 annual action plan, as Amy has already let you all know.

We have done the required stakeholder outreach and we've gotten very positive feedback on how we plan to use the funds.

The next step after this hopeful council approval of this amendment is to submit to HUD.

And then we expect to be able to get the funds out by the end of Q1 of 2022 or possibly the beginning of Q2.

And so relatively simple, but happy to answer any questions if you have them.

And I think we just have a couple more slides that you should have before you too.

I'm not seeing any additional questions.

Did you were also happy to read these additional slides, but did you have anything else that you'd like to conclude with Dr Kosky?

I don't think so.

I mean, I think we're just excited to be able to get this procedural step done so that we can work to get these funds out on the streets.

You know, we are working to identify potential buildings to acquire.

And so this this these additional funds will just help us be able to fund that.

And we're excited about that.

the track record of what we've been able to do so far this year by acquiring buildings and immediately getting those on the street within a few months to house people who are experiencing homelessness has just been a real game changer for us at the Office of Housing, so we're excited to do more of it.

Excellent.

Well said.

Thank you again for bringing up that nexus to how our historic investments in housing are directly related to responding to the homelessness crisis.

So colleagues, I'm not seeing any additional questions or comments.

This legislation, as Director Pesky mentioned, is a small amendment to the 2021 Action Plan, which allows Office of Housing to move forward with $12.2 million investments in affordable housing as appropriated by the Council through Ordinance 126. 3-7-1 in June of this year.

If there's no additional comments or questions, I'll go ahead and move us forward with a vote on item 9 here.

In order to move an item on the same day as the public hearing, the committee will need to vote to suspend the rules.

Therefore, I move to suspend the rules to allow for a vote on Council Bill 120238. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Are there any further comments or questions?

Hearing none, Will the clerk please call the roll on the motion to suspend the rules to allow for a vote on Council Bill 120238.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is five in favor, nine opposed.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries.

I now move that the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 120238. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Are there any further questions or comments?

Hearing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of Council Bill 120238. Vice Chair Hurdle?

Yes.

Council President González?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is five in favor and nine opposed.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation That the council bill 120238 pass will be sent to the December 13th Seattle City Council meeting for a final vote.

Let's move on to the second part of this presentation on the annual action plan.

Madam Clerk, could you please read item number 10 into the record?

agenda item number 10, 2022, a draft annual action plan, public hearing.

Okay, wonderful.

Well, I didn't get the chance to say thank you to Office of Housing folks.

I see you still on the line here.

So thank you very much for all of your presentations today to our team at Office of Housing.

And we're gonna move on to the Human Services Department.

Again, we have Amy Gore here with us from Central Staff and Dan Barton from Human Services Department.

Amy, any additional comments on this item, item number 10?

No, I think I just want to highlight that this is a public hearing that is a requirement from HUD in order to allow the city to do what's called pre award spending federal grants during the first part of 2022. So we can spend the funds before Congress approves final grant entitlements.

As a reminder, the plan doesn't accept the grants or appropriate funds, but should reflect the adopted budget.

With that, I will turn it over to Dan Burton, who's the Federal Grants Manager at HSD, sorry, the Human Services Department, so that he can speak a little bit more about what is in the draft plan.

Okay, wonderful.

You are...

Welcome to do that overview, Dan.

I just wanted to note for the record that we do not have anybody signed up for public comment on item number 10 either.

So just to get the formality out there officially, I want to note there is no one signed up for public comment on item number 10. This is our 2022 draft action plan.

We did also welcome public comment on item 9 and 10 at the beginning of the meeting and left those public hearing opportunity to open for folks to continue to sign up.

At this moment there is nobody listed for item number 10 for public hearing.

So I will go ahead and close the public hearing on this item and turn it back over to Dan Burton from human services department to fill in the rest of the details.

Hi, thanks for the time.

Amy hit all of my major talking points, which is really we're here to hold a public hearing before our program year starts in January.

Because federal appropriations are going to be delayed, we need to have a public hearing and show this is what we're going to do with these funds in 2022. Because it's essential that we don't wait.

The programs we have, the key priorities of this plan are around homelessness, economic development, housing development.

And serving people with low moderate incomes.

Those programs don't stop and start they run all year every year and so.

So by having this public hearing, we're allowed to do pre-award spending, as Amy mentioned.

I would also just mention that this is the fifth year of the five-year 2018 through 2022 consolidated plan.

So we're in the process of developing the next five-year plan and its goals and funding priorities, as well as aligning our responses with new federal requirements.

As Amy mentioned as well, all of the actual funding information is stuff that has been deliberated here and elsewhere through the budget process, so there's no surprises or no changes to any funding or any way money is being spent.

Really this is In a way, the application for these grant funds, we have to say, here's how we're going to do all this, and here's how it aligns with HUD's goals.

And then we receive the funds.

And the grants are Community Development Block Grant, CDBG, Emergency Solutions Grant, ESG, Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS, which is HOPWA, and then the Home Investment Partnerships, which the previous item was Legislating for some ARPA, American Rescue Plan Act funds.

This is just the regular 2022 entitlement for those.

And that's it.

Wonderful.

Thank you very much, Dan.

Seeing as there is no further action needed from the committee and there's still no one signed up for public comment, I want to thank you for being here today to provide this overview and the work that you're doing to submit this draft plan to the Housing and Urban Development federal partners on behalf of Seattle.

I look forward to working with you in 2022 so that we can continue to take action and vote on the final plan.

But is there any additional questions or comments from our colleagues today for Dan or for Amy on agenda item number 10, given that there's no individuals signed up for public hearing today?

Okay, I'm not seeing any.

Dan, thank you very much for that overview.

We wish you all the luck and appreciate all the engagement that you're doing with HUD.

Thank you, Amy, for walking us through this and for all of your staffing on this topic.

Thank you so much.

Okay, colleagues, we do have two more items that are on our agenda for today.

We have held your time until 1230 today.

So my hope is that we can, at the very least, get through each item within a half an hour period on each topic.

Colleagues, I'm really excited about the next item here.

This has been discussed in two different committees so far.

So, excuse me, in our committee and in transportation committee.

So at this time, let's go ahead and read item number 11 into the record.

Item number 11, Council Bill 120227, an ordinance related to street vacations for a briefing discussion and possible vote.

Wonderful.

And I see Lish.

Thank you very much for being here with us today, Lish.

Before I turn it over to you, Lish, I'll just read a few comments into the record.

And I do anticipate that our colleague, Council Member Peterson, will be joining us as well.

There was a joint effort on behalf of both of our committees to make sure that we provide a time in each of our committees to talk about this agenda item in front of us.

I'm really excited about the legislation here in front of us today to reduce the cost of creating affordable housing by making sure that a precious affordable housing dollars are going right to building affordable housing instead of fees that go to the city of Seattle.

This legislation is a follow-up to the amendment that I brought to the Grand Street Commons Affordable Housing Project Street Vacation earlier this November.

This amendment that we worked on in November waived the street vacation fees for the city-funded affordable housing project and we're very excited that this is going to result in additional residential units in the building that will be available to households earning up to 60% of the area median income.

That also helps to make sure that we had provided space at no charge for the use of the programming by the new Cultural Space Authority, waiving the fee that for that project saved at least $400,000 for affordable housing dollars and helped to create 206 residential units.

So building on that amendment and that discussion that we had last month, the legislation in front of us today takes steps to more concretely put into to remove internal barrie housing and allow for us affordable housing dollars into creating more homes.

of us today aligns with w with what the council passed in 2018, which was legislation that I sponsored that prioritized city-owned surplus property for building affordable housing and public assets by removing hefty fees charged for areas that the city owns directly, making sure that in this legislation, right-of-ways are made available to build affordable housing and to create the goal of creating additional opportunities for more folks to live in this city.

I also will note that I think it's an efficient and effective way to remove unnecessary administrative processes associated with transferring city funds right back to the city.

And I think that it's a good example of how the city, state, and federal agencies are working already to exempt from requirements to compensate the city for property values of street vacations and as a council, We have the authority to waive these fees under the current jurisdiction, excuse me, our current authority to waive these fees for appropriate projects.

And I look forward to having a more robust discussion with all of you.

I'll save the rest of my comments for the discussion about the bill and the possible amendments in front of us.

And I will turn it over to Lish to walk us through an overview of the legislation before we consider amendments.

Thank you very much, Lish Whitson, Council Central staff.

This bill amends our street vacation code to exempt affordable housing from the requirement to pay the appraised value of the right of way when a street or alley vacation is approved.

Can I pause you just really quickly, Lish?

Can folks hear Lish okay?

Or maybe just speak up a little bit more, Lish?

Thank you so much.

State law allows but does not require the city to require payment of the appraised value of the right-of-way before street vacations are finalized.

The one exception is shoreline street ends where the city is required under state law to receive the appraised value of the right-of-way.

The city currently exempts city, state, and federal agencies from paying these costs.

The proposed bill in front of you would also exempt affordable housing projects that receive public funding, as long as rent and income levels are consistent with the city's housing funding policies.

Funds from street vacations are required to be allocated towards transportation or open space projects.

So the effect of the bill would be to reduce income to the Department of Transportation, but also save affordable housing funding.

And there's one amendment that's been proposed this morning.

You are muted.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lish.

And I want to thank Council Member Peterson for joining us here today as well.

I want to also thank folks from Lehigh Low Income Housing Institute for calling in in support of this effort.

And I want to thank Pastor Seals for really drawing this item to our attention earlier this year and for also dialing in today and expressing support for the legislation.

Colleagues, I also want to just flesh out a little bit more of what Liz just noted, and then we will consider the possible amendment that I'm aware of in front of us today.

Under our current code, as Lish noted, city funded affordable housing projects are required to pay street fee vacations, excuse me, pay street vacation fees.

So our limited public housing dollars end up going back to the city.

I think that this is a great example of how we can make sure that dollars are being used for those affordable housing efforts and the legislation creates an exemption for publicly funded affordable housing projects as defined by the city's affordable housing funding policies.

This issue was brought to our attention by community.

Again, thank you to Pastor Seals, Lehigh, and the work that the community is doing on T.C.

Spirit, and all of those who are working on building affordable housing on church-owned properties, especially as has been noted throughout this year in the Central District currently.

T.C.

Spirit is an example of a project that requires a street vacation, which would typically cost the appraised value of the site, and without the street vacation, the T.C.

project would create 45 affordable housing units.

With the street vacation, they will be able to build 68 affordable housing units.

Thank you to central staff and the Office of Housing for working with us on this legislation and to make sure that we were creating a definition of affordable housing within this legislation that includes all projects funded by the Office of Housing.

I want to thank Councilmembers Herbold and Councilmembers Peterson who are here today.

Councilmember Herbold, as the sponsor officially of an amendment, I will be asking you and then Councilmember Peterson, as I believe a co-author, given you're not on the current committee, we will also have you speak to that if you'd like to.

Colleagues, with that, I will turn over to Councilmember Herbold to describe the amendment and then Councilmember Peterson will come to speak as well after that.

Councilmember Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you so much.

First, want to again extend my thanks to Peterson for working to author this amendment, and with Lish with an essential staff to help.

This was this amendment was recommendation of the office of housing.

It would require an exchange for the street vacation waiver that at least 40% of the units in a project be affordable in alignment with the city's housing funding policies, which currently requires affordability for households earning up to 60% of the area median income.

So the existing city housing policies cover the expectation of affordability up to 60% of area median income.

We are adding with with the advice of the Office of Housing, the 40% of the units threshold.

The housing also flagged the question of whether or not we should include requirement units in question be affordable for a specific period of time.

Ultimately we decided against including this language in the amendment because the legislation already requires alignment with the housing funding policies which already include a 50-year term of affordability.

We were advised that we should We should work to avoid adding specific terms in the legislation that might create confusion by referring to the existing policies that allows for clarity, but it also allows for some consistency in cases.

where the policies change, we don't need to go back and change the ordinance.

Hearing from the Office of Housing about this amendment, they are not aware of any projects that have ever received OH funding for projects that have fewer than 40% of units affordable.

And they say that projects with fewer than 40% of units affordable would not be competitive for city funding.

under current policies.

And so with that, I again appreciate the efforts of amendment sponsor Peterson and defer any additional comments to him.

Thank you very much and welcome Council Member Peterson as a guest to this committee.

I'm happy to have you speak to this amendment that you are co-authoring with Council Member Herbold.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, and thank you, Council Member Herbold, for explaining the amendment, and to our social staff for Lish Whitson for helping us craft this amendment.

And really, one of the reasons I'm here is Seattle Department of Transportation is the department that receives these street vacation funds, and street vacations go through the Transportation Committee.

So I appreciate Councilor Mosqueda recognizing the cross-cutting nature of this issue, and we had a briefing and discussion in the Transportation Committee last week on this.

I did talk with the Seattle Department of Transportation, SDOT, to make sure they were okay with this legislation, since they would be foregoing revenues.

because of this.

But we're all on this together.

We recognize there's a homelessness crisis and an affordability crisis for housing in the city.

And so I appreciate Chair Mosqueda bringing this legislation forward.

This amendment's very simple.

It just adds at least 40% of the units because the way the legislation's originally drafted, it says any sort of public funding that it gets, not just city funding, public funding from any source, it could get this exemption, and we just want to make sure that we're getting that public benefit in exchange, that at least 40% of the units, that's a good rational basis for that, is it's the same exemption used for the mandatory housing affordability program, it's the same percentage used for the the popular national program, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program, and so it's good to just have that specificity in there, sort of a minimum floor for what we're expecting for that public benefit of affordable housing in exchange for foregoing this revenue.

Thank you very much.

Excellent.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson, and thanks for the discussion that you led in your committee as well last week on this topic.

I really appreciate the joint work between offices and committees here.

Thanks to Central Staff and the Office of Housing for working with my office on the definition of affordable housing in this legislation to make sure we were capturing all city-funded affordable housing projects within this bill in front of us.

I am supporting this friendly amendment.

I think that we've heard from the Office of Housing clearly that the 40% threshold would be inclusive of all city funded affordable housing projects.

And I want to thank your teams, Councilmember Peterson and Councilmember Herbold for your work on this amendment, as well as Erin House from my office with her work.

as the public policy director in our office on the underlying bill and the research that she has done on this amendment as well.

I'll be voting yes.

Colleagues, are there any additional questions or comments on the bill or the amendment?

If not, I will go ahead and move the bill so that it is in front of us and then we can move the amendment.

I move the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 120227. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded that the committee consider the bill.

There is an amendment as has been discussed.

Council Member Herbold, would you like to move that amendment number one?

Thank you.

I move amendment number one to the council bill before us.

Thank you so much.

It's been moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Council President.

It's been moved and seconded to amend Council Bill 120227. Are there any additional comments on the amendment?

And Council Member Peterson, you are welcome to make any additional comments if you have.

We're all getting an alert.

Okay.

If there's seeing no additional questions or comments on the amendment, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on adoption of amendment number one?

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis.

Yes.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is five in favor and none opposed.

Thank you so much.

The motion carries and the amendment is adopted.

The bill as amended is now before the committee.

Are there any additional comments or questions, colleagues?

Okay, very excited about this.

I know a lot of work went into this, so thank you very much.

And Council Member Peterson, again, it's been a pleasure to be able to work with you across our committee.

So thanks again for your joint work on this.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

And just wanna thank you, Madam Chair, for your laser focus on ways to reduce the cost of affordable housing, particularly when those costs are within our control.

Really appreciate that.

Thank you.

Excellent, thank you.

And again, I'll extend my appreciation to Erin House for her ongoing work on this topic as well.

All right, with that, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the adoption of the Council Bill 120227 as amended?

Mr. Herbold?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation that the bill pass as amended will be sent to the December 13th Seattle City Council meeting for a final vote.

Congratulations.

Thank you very much, Council Member Peterson.

I appreciate it.

I saw the applause, so thank you so much.

All right, we have one more item on our agenda here today.

Council Member Swanton, welcome.

I'm glad you are here still.

I was appreciating you being here at the top of the hour and thanks for hanging in till the end here.

Madam Clerk, could you please read item number 12 into the record?

Agenda item number 12, Council Bill 120212, an ordinance relating to employment in Seattle requiring employers to provide parking or compensation for parking expenses to construction employees working in Seattle for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you very much.

I wanna thank Karina Bull for your work on behalf of central staff.

I see you here with us as well.

We know that there is a presentation along with a memo.

So as that presentation gets pulled up, I'll just note the appreciation that has gone into the work on this legislation in front of us.

We all know that we need strong labor standards for our workforce and particularly those who are working on building our city and making sure that there's more affordable housing and economic development opportunities I want to thank you, Karina, for your work on the presentation in front of us.

And as I noted earlier, all of us know that central staff does not work on policy during the budget and that there's a lot of work that has gone into creating this legislation in front of us so that we could quickly have it in our first committee meeting after budget.

and there was a lot of work and hours that went into the presentation here today on this legislation in addition to the work that happened during the budget period as well.

I will turn it over to council, excuse me, council central staff.

And just before we do, I will ask council members to want, if you'd like to have any opening comments, you're welcome to do that.

And then maybe we'll pull up the presentation and we'll just confirm with Karina and Farideh But if you're able to pull that up, or if Karina is, we want to confirm that before Councilmember Sawant concludes.

So Councilmember Sawant, before I turn it over to Central Staff, thanks again for being here with us.

As the author of this legislation in front of us, you are welcome to speak to it.

This bill requires contractor bosses to pay the parking expenses of the construction workers building their projects in Seattle.

This has been a crucial issue in many contract negotiations between building trades union workers and the Association of General Contractors and is an ongoing concern for construction workers in many unions and locals.

For construction workers without the protection of a union, which there are many, it is an even greater burden.

Like prevailing wage laws which require the city to pay union wages regardless of whether or not a contractor is unionized, extending paid parking to all workers, whether or not they're unionized, means that all workers will get the benefit.

and unionized workers and unions are not placed at a competitive disadvantage to get work and don't lose out by implicitly encouraging contractor bosses to hire non-union workers.

In a sense, the legislation is extremely simple and straightforward.

It requires the construction bosses to pay parking costs rather than workers paying the parking costs.

Parking costs were one of the major reasons, one of the major demands from the recent rank-and-file-led strike of 2,000 Pacific Northwest Union carpenters, along with their other demands for family-supporting wages, fully-funded benefits, and improved protections against workplace harassment.

For my office, of course, when the carpenters and other construction workers who were walking the picket line with them requested this legislation during the courageous strike action in the fall, there was no question.

My office strongly supports workers' rights, and we go out and fight for workers' rights.

So we asked for the help of city council central staff to draft the bill as soon as was possible.

And so I really appreciate the help of Karina Bull from the central staff for preparing it rapidly.

In October, at least 381 working people emailed the City Council urging that the City Council support this paid parking legislation.

And as I mentioned before in briefing sessions, the Monday morning briefing sessions, we launched a community petition and that community petition garnered over 1,100 signatures, 366 of whom are at least, the last I checked, which was weeks ago, from construction workers.

Construction workers are often required to drive because they are transporting heavy tools, they commute long distances, and they start work extremely early in the morning, often before transit lines begin operating.

And so this is not a question of whether or not construction workers will drive to work, it is a question of who will pay for it when the job requires them to drive to work.

We knew that construction workers had the most power to win paid parking at the height of their struggle during the Pacific Northwest Carpenter Strike, which is why alongside many construction workers, I moved to introduce the bill on October 18th for a final vote on November 1st.

However, we saw the the delays until the movement waned, and we saw how no other council member would even second the motion to introduce the bill on October 18th.

And as I said on October 18th, what's a given is that the current momentum built by working people will be lost, and that's just not okay.

It would be an example of the famous quote from MLK Jr., justice too long delayed is justice denied.

at least 305 working people including construction workers emailed the city council in their anger that no council member was willing to support even the timely introduction of the legislation onto the council's calendar.

I'm glad we're talking about it today.

I look forward to hearing about the memo but I just wanted to quickly quote some of the just three of the many hundreds of courts we got from our community petition.

One is from Christopher Hutchins quote, as an independent Seattle subcontractor, I constantly have to factor in the cost of transportation and parking.

These costs can significantly eat into individual workers' bottom lines.

In a city that has already extracted so much from us due to relentless rent increases, inflated home prices, taking this step to ensure that the working people who make Seattle run and grow aren't further disadvantaged is critical.

end quote.

Colleen Paul from the Piledrivers Local 2396 says, quote, because contractors are making millions and maybe billions off the backs of construction workers, they can pay the parking while the workers barely make a livable wage and paying parking is a way to alleviate some of the stress on the workers.

Please do the right thing and support the very hardworking people who are building Seattle and our future, end quote.

And finally, but not least, Brian Eccleston from IBEW 46, who says, here's an example of how expensive parking can be downtown.

I'm a second year apprentice.

Parking was so expensive that one full workday's pay went just to pay parking to be at work for the week.

I worked four days a week when I was an apprentice, but only received three days of pay because so much had to go into parking, end quote.

So I think those are very important voices from workers of very few of the many voices that we have heard.

I just finally I wanted to be very clear that the to to all the workers and community members who are who supported this legislation who are listening that the memo was not the memo that we're going to discuss was not commissioned by my office.

And I'll just say, I'll have more comments when the presentation begins.

But I just wanted to say, unfortunately, whether or not it intends to, the memo is quite unbalanced.

My staff have asked who requested the issue identification topics in the memo.

And we have heard that apparently they came from some stakeholders.

But I want to be clear again to the workers who are watching, I do not know who these stakeholders are.

As far as I can tell, none of the hundreds of workers who've been advocating for this legislation were consulted, certainly my staff or I were not.

And the concerns that have been raised in the memo related to environmental impacts and equity, I will have more points about that.

Thank you.

Councilmember Sawant, thanks for being here with us today.

I knew that this was an important policy for you, and we wanted to make sure to include it in our agenda.

As you can tell, we had a packed agenda today, so we made sure to squeeze in time.

We do have about 40 minutes dedicated to this presentation, which is more than we had originally anticipated, but we are extending our committee meeting today to make sure to include it.

I also want to address the central staff memo and just, again, acknowledge that central staff does not work on policy.

They are not expected to work on policy during the budget, but my understanding is that they did work on policy and I want to appreciate the central staff's work not only for the work that they've done on the budget for long hours and irregular.

times that they had to be available to respond to all of us, including me as the budget chair, to make sure that we got through those budget items on time.

In addition to that, I know that they were working on this legislation with you and your office.

I want to make sure that we apply our own values for appreciating the work and labor of our employees as council members we want to apply that to central staff and those who are in our office and I appreciate and acknowledge that there's been additional work that's been provided for this topic specifically.

I as the chair of this committee often request there to be memos so that we can have a deeper understanding of what legislation is in front of us especially when we need to have a quick briefing on the legislation uh, given that we were co of session.

So absolutely to have a central staff m that helps inform our coll the items in front of us.

So there is absolutely a ton of appreciation that I want to express for the central staff who worked on this and the central staff team who had made themselves available during budget and is also quickly turning around to work on policy in front of us so that all of us as council members can have a deeper understanding of the legislation in front of us.

Let's go ahead and go through the presentation here today.

And we also do have a number of questions that I think folks have I will have some questions as well.

Council members want you know to do have questions.

So I'm going to ask this folks.

Let's let Karina go through the entire presentation and then we will go ahead and have each council member have a chance to ask their questions.

I think if we can get through the presentation that will give us a chance to then have a more robust discussion about the bill as a whole.

Okay, council members, thank you so much.

Karina, I'm going to turn it to you.

I understand that you're going to share your screen, is that correct?

Yes, thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I've been waiting to share my screen until I was the one making the presentation, so I will share it now.

Okay, great.

Thank you so much for being here.

You are welcome.

Okay, so here it is, and I will begin with a brief overview of the legislation itself and then dive into some issue identification, and I'll try to keep that Summary quick, as I understand that you do have a lot of questions and perhaps some of the more detail that I would typically share in a presentation can wait until I'm responding to individual council member questions.

Thank you.

So to begin, this legislation would, at its heart, require construction employers to reimburse construction employees for the cost of parking expenses to work in Seattle.

So what that translates into is the out-of-pocket expenses to park at or near construction sites in Seattle.

It would be enforced by the Office of Labor Standards.

including the permanent and the temporary ordinances.

I believe this would make it the 18th labor standard that would be enforced by the Office of Labor Standards.

The definitions for construction work and construction employee and employer are here for you to take a look at.

The definition of construction work is quite broad intentionally.

It was adapted from existing Seattle Municipal Code, and you'll see there that it includes any site preparation, so it is quite broad.

The fact that it aligns with existing code seems like it would help for a consistent application.

Construction employee is any employee performing construction work that is not limited to those covered by minimum wage.

It would be any employee overtime eligible and overtime exempt.

The definition for construction employer uses a term employer primarily engaged in construction that is taken from the NAICS Code 23 primarily is there intentionally.

I imagine that it is something that if this legislation is passed that the Office of Labor Standards would clarify in rulemaking.

In addition to aligning with the NAICS Code 23, this being the standard word used in construction definitions across the industry, the inclusion of primarily would prevent a commercial employer who was hiring, say a restaurant, hiring for construction to repair a water leak from being covered by this legislation.

So that said, if there's an intention for broader application of what constitutes a construction employer, then perhaps that word would be revised and taken away.

So parking reimbursements, the way that the legislation is phrased is that employers would provide full reimbursement for parking expenses, There is a provision that if employers are already providing pay to cover parking expenses, perhaps partially cover those expenses, then employers could use that amount to offset the amount owed.

So for example, if an employee requested reimbursement of $30 for one day and perhaps they were already earning $8 per hour work that day and dollar an hour, then the employer could pay $22 for reimbursement because they had already paid part of that amount.

There is an exception.

Employers may not be subject to the reimbursement requirement if they provide free parking.

This exception was added at Councilmember Sawant's direction, and the source of this idea comes from a community workforce agreement between the City of Seattle and Seattle Building Constructions and Trades.

It's a bit old, but it was from 2015 to 2017 that required employers to provide parking within a three block radius.

And if that was not an option, if that was not available, then the employer would provide transportation from whatever distance the free parking was to the construction job site.

I will add that the legislation requires employers to pay for the employee's time from the free parking to the construction site if the employer is required to provide that transportation.

Other requirements in the legislation are consistent with other labor standards, a notice of rights, record keeping for three years, and retaliation would be prohibited.

Office of Labor Standards would investigate complaints or they could also initiate directed investigations without a complaint based on a tip or based on data that they've evaluated indicating a violation.

Employees could also file a lawsuit and if the employee prevailed, the court could award attorney fees and costs.

remedies, again, consistent with other labor standards.

Employees would have the right to up to three times the amount owed.

Office of Labor Standards could impose penalties and fines per agreed party.

So for the issue identification, these were issues that I identified as a central staff analysis.

They were informed by my own evaluation of the legislation based on research that I conducted and also feedback that I heard from Office of Labor Standards and from some stakeholders, both business and worker representatives as well.

The first one is environmental impact.

Just noting as a think piece that the law that requires payment for parking expenses could increase driving among workers who might otherwise use public transportation or carpool.

The largest source of greenhouse emissions from human activities does include transportation along with other activities and in transportation that does include the burning of fossil fuels to drive cars.

Now, what I am referring to with increased driving is that this legislation absolutely contemplates that there are workers who have no choice but to drive because public transit is not an option or because they are needing to carry heavy tools that do not afford them the ability to walk long distances.

One might imagine, though, that there could be some workers who do take public transportation, who don't carry those heavy tools, or work within public transit hours, who might pay up to $6 an hour for that public transit.

If they are provided an option to drive and have the parking paid for them, they might choose to drive and then not pay for the $6 for public transit.

That is an example of how this law might incentivize more drivers to be on the road.

As far as how many drivers, it's not known.

There are over 130,000 construction workers in the Seattle area.

That's the broad area, including Seattle, Tacoma, and Bellevue.

But there is the possibility of more cars on the road, something to think about.

The next is alternative policies.

What this has meant is another think piece about ways to potentially address unintended consequences that could arise from a requirement and across the board requirement for parking reimbursements.

There could be an option to offer full or partial exceptions for transit subsidies for those who are able to take public transportation, and then therefore, maybe they would continue to take the public transportation rather than drive.

On-site tool storage, that is something that might work for some workplace.

So that the tools could go into the storage locker for Monday through Friday, perhaps driving just two days a week rather than five, or perhaps carpool incentives where perhaps the driver of a carpool could receive additional pay than just the reimbursement for more than one worker in the vehicle.

Next is consideration of the administrative cost to process these reimbursements.

One might imagine that if there are suddenly hundreds of employers at a worksite submitting individual requests for reimbursement, the employer could pay significant amounts of money to process those request that could maybe be spent on other things such as transit subsidies.

So there could be consideration that there could be an establishment of one rate of reimbursement across the city or perhaps specific rates for identified areas that might streamline the reimbursement process.

This is an issue that could be wholly or partially addressed by OLS rules.

Some of these issues that are mentioned in the memo do not need to be addressed in the legislation, but given that right now there is a 30 day effective date, Office of Labor Standards would not have sufficient time to develop the rules before the law went into effect.

And then there'd be a situation where the law could be in effect for six months or nine months or longer without employers or employees having sufficient guidance to know what their obligations are or what their rights are.

So that's why I'm mentioning so many of these things now.

If council has an intent and would like to include it in the legislation, then that's something to consider.

Next is the employee's choice of parking.

The legislation infers but does not explicitly state that employers cannot restrict the employee's choice of parking.

That would be the type.

Is it self-serve?

Is it valet?

Is it location?

Does it have to be a certain distance to or from the site?

The cost of parking?

An unequivocal statement that prohibits or allows restrictions would provide clarity.

Office of Labor Standards could absolutely address this issue in rules.

If council has a opinion or policy direction that they would like to make sure that is followed by employers, then it could be wise to include it in the legislation.

Next is the employer's provision of transportation from pre-parking.

Again, that is related to the exception to the reimbursement requirement.

If the parking is more than three blocks from the construction site, then the employer must also provide free transportation.

To begin, the distance of three blocks.

could be quantified in the legislation to make it easier for employees and employers to know what is intended.

Office of Labor Standards could again clarify that in rules.

My research shows that there are about four different sizes of blocks in the city of Seattle, depending on where the block is.

And so again, to streamline the reimbursement process, identified in a unit of miles here.

I've proposed 0.21 miles, which is the length of any given block in the city.

Also, something to consider is that the distance from the free parking to the construction site could be increased to one half mile to align with the standard walk shed to transit options that is often used by planners.

understand that that might be too long to walk for a worker that is carrying heavy tools, but something to consider because that is the standard amount of distance that planners use when thinking about what is reasonable for a person to walk from transit to their destination.

For employers payment of travel time, the legislation does not specify whether travel time includes the wait time for the free transportation from the free parking.

So that is something that OLS can interpret.

It is something that council may want to designate in the legislation whether or not it includes wait time.

Perhaps one reason to think about including wait time is that if the transportation does not come on a regular basis, employees might be standing waiting for a bus for a significant amount of time that is not paid.

So that is something to consider.

On the flip side, an employer could arrive at the bus stop a half hour earlier and then be paid for time standing there.

So this is a complex issue and something that I'm just reaching for council's consideration.

Next, penalties and fine.

The legislation was written in 2021 and reflects the 2020 One, rates of penalties and fines, it would go into effect in 2022. These penalties and fines have been adjusted to reflect the rate of 2022 inflation.

That's something that OLS does as a standard course of action.

So if that is something that council members would like to incorporate into an amendment or a substitute bill, that would raise the penalties and fines, not by too much, I believe they would A fine of $556 would increase to $575, and then it would also align with many of the other labor standards.

And last, the effective dates.

Right now, the legislation would provide the Office of Labor Standards with 30 days to prepare for implementation.

As you've seen, there are a lot of issues that OLS would need to consider for rulemaking.

There's also the standard parts of implementation, creating and translating model notices, educational materials, materials updating the website, informing the contracted community partners of the legislation, providing direct outreach to employers.

That all could happen after an effective date, 30 days after passage by council.

However, to have consistent application and for employers and employees to have a consistent understanding of what the legislation is requiring and is seeking to achieve, council may want to consider a later effective date, six months, nine months, or a year.

There is no optimal or standard effective date.

Although I guess if I had to pick one, I would guess it would be between nine months and a year.

For next steps, if this is voted out of committee, it could possibly be up for a council vote on December 13th.

And if not, then it could be considered by the next committee with oversight of labor standards in next year.

So that is all for my presentation.

I will leave up my screen in case there are questions that relate to a particular slide.

I also can take it down so that we can fully see everyone's face on the screen.

It's your preference, of course.

Well, thank you very much, Karina.

And I have the opportunity to view everybody's screen by clicking on view and then click on the tiles that shows a little tic-tac-toe so you can see everybody's screen at the same time.

We'll keep your slides up here for the time being in case council members want to toggle back and forth.

Again, I want to thank you for the work that you've done, the drafting that you've done on this legislation with Council Member Swan's office.

I want to thank you for the presentation today and for the memo.

At my request, I think this memo provides a helpful understanding of what's in the current legislation and identifies some issues and areas for possible engagement with council members, especially as we think about how to make this actionable with the Office of Labor Standards.

There's nothing inappropriate.

There's nothing nefarious about asking for a central staff memo, and you've done a really tremendous job here of outlining the various issues included in the legislation in front of us so that we can have a robust discussion today.

As always, appreciate your work.

I did want to just ask a few questions about engagement with the Office of Labor Standards and I see Council Member Herbold's hand as well.

Just very briefly, Office of Labor Standards, you mentioned sort of the implementation timeline and how some of these items could potentially be worked out.

through rulemaking, as we have done before, where more community engagement helps to refine the final policy that the office takes.

Has the Office of Labor Standards been able to engage with the sponsor or with central staff as you all drafted the legislation in front of us?

Is this something that Office of Labor Standards had the chance to opine on or weigh in on as it was being drafted, or are these items

Uh, was this drafted with any input from O.

L. S. O. L. S. Is input happened after the legislation was written.

Okay.

Okay, great.

Um, I will turn it to Councilmember Herbold and I'll pepper in some questions after that.

Councilmember Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you questions also along the on the on the stakeholdering piece.

I'm just interested to know.

what the engagement has been done with employers of construction workers.

I know these types of policy engagements can be very, very challenging.

As I think everybody on the council knows, I have been working on legislation that creates minimum payment standards for app-based food delivery workers and have that that effort has benefited by the participation of council members Strauss and Lewis but my office has led probably nearly 20 stakeholder meetings in the last four or five months so far including conversations that that include both the workers and the at-base employers.

And we've just been, you know, workshopping the ideas around minimum compensation in a way that doesn't always guarantee 100% alignment, but it definitely allows us to say that we are doing that engagement.

So I'm just, I'm interested to know what has happened as far as workshopping some of these ideas with employers, whether or not they've seen the bill.

And then a specific question I have around the expectation that an employer would pay for travel time from the From the parking lot, I understand that this derives from the sort of underlying labor agreements that the city has with contractors on our city projects.

But I don't really understand the policy objective it serves.

Does it relate specifically to why we would compensate folks for that time?

You know, if somebody is, for instance, taking a bus to work, We don't pay them for the time it takes them to get from the bus stop to the place of employment.

I again, I understand the idea of like, we want to we want to compensate somebody for a work expense.

But, you know, getting from their vehicle to the job site or getting from the bus stop to the job site seems to go above and beyond what a work expense should be.

So would really like to understand the thinking behind that.

Council Member Herbold, thank you for your questions.

I think the majority of your questions are probably best directed towards the sponsor, Council Member Solange.

I guess one I'll offer about paying workers for their travel time is that my sense was that the community workforce agreement with that more than three block parking shuttle was that the parking could be quite far away.

And so the idea was that the parking that the employer was providing that would enable the workers to bring their tools if it's so far away, then that the employer would be responsible for paying for the time to travel from that far away parking to their work site.

But Council Member Sawant, I believe that you're best positioned to answer most of these questions.

Council Member Sawant, any additional context for intent behind the shuttle section and the stakeholder engagement questions that Council Member Harpold started with?

Oh, you're on mute.

I do.

Yes, I do want to respond to that.

But I also have my own points and questions.

So I'll put you in the queue then immediately after this, if you'd like to.

I can just wait and if there are more questions come up, I can speak after that.

I'm not seeing any additional hands, Council Member.

If you want to go ahead, we'll turn it to you and then you can continue with your questions as well.

Great, so just first of all, Karina, thank you for working with my office and drafting the legislation.

And since the council members have delayed acting on the bill up till now anyway, I totally agree with you.

One of the points you brought up is updating it to the 2022 penalties and fines.

That obviously makes sense.

I'm not sure whether this bill will get voted on today or not.

So we are generally looking at 2022 anyway.

So I just wanted to get that out of the way.

Yeah, I'm just struck by the time being spent on concerns about what people are calling employers.

I mean, let's be clear, these are not small businesses we're talking about.

We're talking about the Associated General Contractor Corporation, AGC.

The big contractors have a lot of power in Seattle and they make a lot of money.

And as far as work shopping with them, as was suggested, well, we know where they stand.

We know from the collective bargaining results where they stand because they have not agreed to paid parking in Seattle.

many of the contracting negotiations.

Some of the workers have access to it through the project labor agreements, but many don't.

And so it's very clear where they stand.

I mean, they will agree to it only when they're forced to it.

And when they're not forced to agree to it, they will force workers to go on strike to fight for paid parking.

And to be clear, the idea of paid parking for construction workers is not an idea that I made up.

It clearly came from being one of the most prominent demands in the carpenter strike.

And then after having talked to literally, and I'm not exaggerating, hundreds of workers over many days of picketing alongside them, I could tell that it wasn't just a demand from the carpenter strike.

It was clearly a demand that was widespread among construction workers.

And this bill represents the interests of those workers.

And as far as the question about, you know, paying for time.

Again, those also, that also has come from, I mean, it has obviously come from the overwhelming feedback we have got, meaning my office has got from my staff and I, because we spent a lot of hours, many days with the construction workers during the strike, from what they've been saying, from what their years of experience has been, and also from the point that the project labor agreements have high standards.

We want to have high standards in this kind of legislation as well.

I mean, just to give an example, when iron workers, for example, build cell phone towers, they travel often to the central parking lot.

then they get might get into company trucks and then from that point on, they are on the clock.

So, you know, it's related to just a prevailing idea of high standards for in, you know, to the benefit of workers.

So that again, that didn't just come randomly, it came from all of that background.

I'm also a little, I have to say, I'm a little troubled by, not a little, quite troubled by the fact that, I mean, I understand that this memo, that preparing memos, of course, is a normal course of events.

That's not what's at debate here.

It's the fact that the bulk of the memo and also the presentation has been about all the concerns raised.

And of course, we should have a full discussion.

I'm not worried about any concerns because we have responses to them.

And we didn't bring this legislation willy-nilly.

It came up, as I said, from a very thorough ongoing conversation with workers.

So I am 100 percent confident this is the right thing to do.

I'm not worried about responding to concerns.

I am troubled by the fact that almost no time has been spent either in the memo or in the presentation on how this legislation would benefit the workers.

I mean, that was the whole point of why we brought this legislation.

forward is how it would benefit workers.

And Karina, you mentioned research.

So I think one research that we would like to do, which I haven't seen, and if there is that you haven't reported, I would really like to hear is, how much have central staff looked into how much more spending money would actually go into workers' pockets?

Because workers are saying they are getting fleeced.

They're spending so much of their money in paying for parking.

So effectively what they get is less than what they make on paper.

So one question is, did we do any analysis of the benefits to workers and their communities?

What is the impact on undocumented construction workers who already face wage theft and other problems?

What is the impact on workers attempting to pay for housing in Seattle if they were able to pay if they didn't have to pay for parking.

I mean, I'll just tell you, I don't claim to have statistical evidence.

Yes, what I have is anecdotal, but it is overwhelming anecdotal evidence, and workers will tell you that it adds up to anywhere from $4,000 to $7,000 a year.

So that's a lot of money.

So in other words, how many millions of dollars would it save our hard-working construction workers.

So that's one point, you know, about research and it would be useful to have that because that will make an overwhelming case for why this bill is necessary.

And also, I mean, just as far as stakeholders are concerned, I mean, it's unfortunate you didn't talk to my office because we have a lot of stakeholder information, you know, hundreds, literally hundreds of workers.

They will tell you what their problems are.

Two other points, and these are extremely important in my view.

One is the memo makes a point about environmental impact.

But, and you know, specifically on the question of whether this legislation will cause construction workers to, you know, incentivize them to drive even if they don't need to.

And Karina, you said one might imagine that might happen.

Well, but what is the evidence to show that?

I mean, this is supposed to be a technical memo based on data, right?

So where is the evidence to show that?

Again, as I said, I don't have statistical evidence either, but I do have a huge amount of anecdotal evidence.

And it is very clear to me from having talked to hundreds of workers that it is structural issues that require them to drive, including having to transport hundreds of pounds of tools and equipment, as the workers today reminded us in public comment.

And all the available data indicate that what's at stake is not whether construction workers are forced to drive to work, because they are.

The question is, who will pay for it?

I mean, in the memo, it says, quote, establishing a right to pay parking could incentivize more construction workers to drive to work, including those who don't need to carry heavy tools or travel long distances, and who might otherwise carpool or use public transportation, end quote.

But as I said, there are structural reasons why construction workers end up having to drive.

And those structural reasons go beyond whether or not they carry heavy equipment.

Although I will also say, in my conversations, I have not met one construction worker who said they do not have to carry their tools.

I'm sure there are.

I'm not a construction worker myself.

I don't claim to be an expert.

But my point is that the need to carry tools is so overwhelmingly true that I would say that we shouldn't be looking at outliers.

We should be looking at what the norm is.

And in addition to that, though, there are other structural reasons.

The reality is many construction workers face very long commutes from neighboring cities because they cannot afford to live in Seattle.

I mean, they will tell you, especially when they have families with children, it is almost a non-option.

And most of them, as I said, have to get to work early.

Before most of us are awake, they are at their job sites, and they cannot find available transportation routes at that time.

But in addition to all of this structural information, I will also add another point, which goes to the heart of what has been raised in the memo.

Maybe construction workers will be incentivized to drive.

Well, all the overall data in King County from the last decade overwhelmingly shows that working people are highly informed about climate change and have been proactive in choosing public transportation options when they can, even when it inconveniences them.

ridership has gone up, not down, during the same time that funding for public transportation has totally failed to keep up with population increases and with the scale of the climate crisis.

So I just don't, I mean, I'm not attributing any intent here in any way whatsoever.

I'm just saying that I don't think that just from a data standpoint, it is responsible to raise questions like this when there's no indication in the data to suggest that this happens.

Or at the very least, those clarifications need to be made.

Just the other point I have which is also extremely important is There are also supposed equity issues raised in the memo, and these I find also problematic extremely, perhaps even more than the whole parking stuff, I mean, the environmental stuff.

The memo says, quote, the positive outcome for some construction workers is juxtaposed with equity concerns.

The proposed legislation would provide a significant financial benefit to a category of workers that comprises 7% of the Seattle area's workforce and earns an average of $27.11 per hour.

six with certain specialties earning more than $50 an hour, low-wage workers in other industries who earn close to the minimum wage of $16.69 per hour, and who are disproportionately workers of color may also need to drive long distances to work due to a lack of affordable housing in Seattle or work shifts that begin and end.

Yeah, that's true, end quote.

Yes, that's true that there are other workers who won't immediately get it if this legislation passes.

But one thing, just for starters, if this bill became law, it would help both unionized and non-represented construction workers.

And we know non-union construction workers are disproportionately from communities of color, from marginalized immigrant communities, and from very low-income backgrounds.

Many of the non-union workers, immigrant workers, and workers of color also experience widespread wage theft.

So first of all, let's be clear that it would benefit construction workers across the board and it would disproportionately benefit workers who are facing other barriers.

The biggest problem though with including this in a technical memo is that essentially it's a race to the bottom argument.

And it's not a technical point, it's a political position.

And it's a race to the bottom type of argument because essentially it says that the reason potentially, I know that the memo is not taking a position specifically and the position has to be taken by elected officials.

I'm clear about that.

I'm just saying that by raising that point, essentially it's saying that the reason potentially to not give paid parking to construction workers is that other workers make lower wages than them.

So the solution is not to drag everyone down.

The solution is for some workers to win, and on the back of that, for other workers to win.

I'll tell you, similar race-to-the-bottom arguments have been made against every single movement to make an improvement in the living standards of any section of the working class, implying that the gains to some workers will come at the expense of other workers.

This is classic divide-and-rule language.

In fact,

Council Member Sawant, you mentioned that you are not trying to assign motives, so please refrain.

I am not assigning motives, but I have to call out what the reality is.

Please continue.

All the history of the labor movement shows that the gains won by any section of the working class results in beneficial effects for the working class as a whole.

And it is why this legislation has the support of workers broadly.

It's not just construction workers.

It is many workers who are saying, first of all, it's out of solidarity.

They say, whether I get it or not, I want construction workers to have it.

And on top of that, workers understand that if construction workers get it, it will help workers as a whole.

Not to get paid parking specifically, But the improvement in living standards is going to be good for everybody, no matter which section of workers get it.

And we should also keep in mind the parking will be paid by contractor bosses who make massive profits.

So I would really urge everyone here who's going to vote today or later.

I'm not a member of the committee.

I just want to clarify to workers who are watching this, I wouldn't be able to vote on this, but members of the committee will be at some point.

And so I just, I would urge council members to look at this, not from a divide and rule standpoint, but from the, what the history shows is that actually helping any section of workers helps all workers.

And furthermore, the only way to improve the, situation with the carbon emissions through vehicular emission, which Karina is absolutely right.

Vehicular emissions and building emissions are the two main culprits right now that we have to address.

But the only way to address it is not to not provide paid parking to these workers because they're going to drive whether you like it or not.

They are driving.

The question is because they need to drive.

The question is who pays for it.

So the only way to address the vehicular emission question is to fight to expand funding for public transit and expand the routes and the density and the frequency of routes.

That's what we need to do.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you so much.

I'm gonna make some comments and then Council Member Herbold, if you have any last questions.

And then I think Council Member Swann, you just provided a good summary of your concerns, but if there's anything else.

want to make sure that we get it out there.

So for me, number one, again, I appreciate the work that's gone into this central staff presentation.

It is absolutely appropriate to identify various issues that intersect with legislation, no matter what the legislation is in front of us.

Council Member Swan, I hear that you'd like to add additional information about how the additional dollars in workers' pockets that is not going to parking will have an impact on perhaps those workers or the local economy.

I think that that's a fair thing to ask for, but it's also up to council members to flag the things that they see as the benefit to the legislation in front of us.

So appreciate that you've done that.

And it is fair to ask about including additional items in central staff memos, but that's what issue ID is for.

It's to identify issues that are possibly going to have questions when it relates to implementation and the entire purpose of passing legislation is to ensure that there is an impact.

And if there's issues that are standing in the way of that, we want those flagged early.

For me, I think that there's a number of questions that I'd like the sponsor to be able to work on with the council and have some possible amendments for consideration when this legislation is voted on.

I think that you have raised a number of items here today, council colleagues, and one of those council members want you have agreed with the need to update the 2022 adjustments.

Thank you for noting the importance of including that as well in the memo and from the sponsor.

That's something that I think would be important to reflect as well.

I also want to note my interest in looking at additional support for on-site storage.

I too was at the um, strike line and have talked to construction workers about how a number of folks do have to carry their tools with them day in and day out.

There's a lot of concern about theft for on site storage and how we can make sure that on site storage is a something that employers are offering and that it's secure, recognizing that the workers themselves are often responsible for the cost of those tools.

And so we want to make sure that there's more on site storage if there is the chance to leave tools on site.

On administrative costs, I'm interested in identifying if there's additional strategies there to offer a win-win.

Again, getting to the point of when this is easier to apply and implement, then we know that the workers themselves benefit.

So on some of the preferences around administrative costs, I think that it'd be interesting to see how we can make sure that we're streaming, streamlining the implementation efforts here.

When I look at rulemaking, the short timeline that has been identified for implementation is defaulting to us needing to put more information into the statute.

Perhaps there is a benefit of having not being too prescriptive and having some of that be left to OLS for implementation if that September deadline helps to allow for some rulemaking on some of these items where maybe we want to be a little bit more flexible based on what the rulemaking comes up with.

I'd be interested in hearing more from stakeholders and from OLS about on what items would be most appropriate for rulemaking.

And if that means a September deadline, then I'd be interested in hearing more about that.

If that means keeping the current deadline and being more prescriptive in statute, I'd be interested in both options.

Regarding the difference in the mileage walked, appreciate the detailed work that went into that explanation for 0.21, or whether it was 0.5, a distance that we're talking about in terms of walkability to construction site.

One of the areas that we've looked at in the past has been the 10-minute walk shed that the Federal Transit Administration Department recommends.

We think that there's some work potentially there that we could pull on from some of the best practices for accessing transit services.

We talk about a 10-minute walk shed often.

I'm wondering if there is interest in using this radius, a 10-minute walk shed versus specific blocks, and if there's additional work that the sponsor would be interested in, in sort of defining accessibility by how far an individual has to walk versus the length of the block, and perhaps as part of the analysis that's already been done.

But if the 10-minute walk shed is something that is of interest, I'd be interested in working with the sponsor on that as well.

since that's a reliable alternative that we have been looking at when it relates to transit services.

And maybe if that scene is not accessible enough, we can further refine that.

And lastly, I...

I am interested in this question of the equity analysis.

I think that the point that we need to continue to be working on making sure that transit is more accessible, transit options are more accessible to all workers, especially lowest wage workers, and that we're looking at the equity impacts is important.

You know, we talked about how we can increase access to transit for workers in various industries who have the need to get in and out of their workplace at alternative times, you know, working night shifts or late in the shifts, early morning shifts, that applies to many different sectors, including childcare and retail, domestic workers and restaurant industry.

And so I think that the point is well taken about how do we make sure that we're increasing access to transit all times for all different sectors.

But I get that there is a specific nexus here with the weight that construction workers are carrying when it relates to their tools and the importance of them being able to be there on time and with their tools in hand gives me a lot of indication that we have some work to do for not just parking on site, but also that storage on site.

And then lastly, I didn't know where this might fit in, but when I was talking to some workers about the parking desired in this legislation, some of the unions and members that I spoke to were talking about how we can work with developers who first often create the parking and then they build the building around it.

So if there's parking that's being developed, is there a safe way to ensure access to parking on site for buildings that are being created and or adjacent buildings that have just recently been built so that more workers can access those buildings that have been constructed by similar developers and thus make sure that that parking that is being developed on site or near the site is accessed first.

So those are some of the issues I'd be interested in working with the sponsor on.

It does sound like we're gonna need another meeting on this to address some of those amendments, unless I hear otherwise from folks today.

Okay, not hearing otherwise.

Council Member Sawant, I'd be happy to work with you on some of those items that you addressed and some of the questions that I brought up as well.

And Council Member Herbold, did you have anything else?

I see you off mute there.

I was just looking to find out your process plans.

Well, thank you for asking.

Yeah, I, given the short, um, month that we have for council recess, I'm looking at the calendar here.

Council member Swan.

I'm thinking if amendments are due to central staff Monday, close of business next week, Monday, the 13th, that might give us one full week before, uh, the holiday recess.

And then we'd be able to have, um, those amendments in central staff's hand and begin to be thinking through those that week before recess and then obviously the week that we come back as well.

So I would suggest amendments due end of day on Monday, December 13th.

Okay, I'm not hearing any concerns.

So we will do Monday, December 13th.

Karina, I hope if you have any concerns about that timeline as well, please do chime in because this all revolves around your ability as well to work with council members on possible ideas.

Mine works, thank you.

Okay, excellent.

Well, with that, colleagues, thank you so much for the robust discussion today.

Is there any additional comments or questions on this item?

Okay, December 13th.

Please go ahead, Council Member Sawant.

Thank you, I just wanted to respond to some of the points and just make some, it sounds like we're closing the discussion, so I just wanted to make some closing statements as well on the bill.

On the issue identification, I didn't know this memo was being prepared, so I didn't have a chance to provide any feedback before yesterday, and I only had the ability to look at it last night.

I couldn't have brought it earlier.

I know my staff member discussed with Kareena the soonest he was able to this morning.

So we will continue that conversation, absolutely.

And specifically, Kareena, we would want to follow up with you on the research questions that I raised about how in the different ways that the spectrum of benefits that ways in which this bill would benefit workers and if we can glean some data on that at the very least I would urge that workers who have told us and as I said literally hundreds but at least dozens of those should be contacted so that they will tell you their real life experience and if we're going to include some information on this then I think that that should that should be a very important part of the equation.

On the on the point about leaving things to rulemaking and not being too prescriptive.

I completely agree.

And as a matter of fact, my understanding of the bill we have drafted is that, I mean, we are happy to continue conversations, but that is how we drafted the bill.

And that is my understanding of how the whole approach that we have used has been is to make sure that we don't deal with too many unnecessary details and we leave it to rulemaking.

And so it's not that we're not willing to be flexible.

I also think that that is the approach we've used, but we are happy to discuss with central staff, also with your office council member Mosqueda to see what we can streamline over there.

And, you know, for example, the on-site parking options, those things are built into the bill.

So I'm glad to hear some of the things that have been mentioned, but as far as I can remember, those things are already included in the bill.

But we can go back and check if there's anything that's not included.

We'll make sure we identify that as well in the bill.

On, just lastly, on the on the distance with, you know, the walking distance, 10 minute walking time.

We'll probably need to go back on that.

We'll need to talk to workers as well.

We just thought it was way easier to count the blocks rather than count absolute distance in feet.

But again, happy to discuss that further.

And my preference obviously would be that we vote this bill as soon as possible without any sort of watering down our loopholes.

But I am also okay if council members are inclined to support this.

And we have a date of Monday for amendments.

I'm fine with that.

I, of course, won't be supporting watering down amendments.

Just lastly, the points that the memo raises about and what council members have raised about, you know, what are the alternatives we can do to provide the same kind of support to the workers without actually providing paid parking?

I am completely open to discussing all kinds of things including on-site storage.

I think it would be good if workers were provided on-site storage.

What I'm not going to be supporting is having these discussions in the hypothetical and then not putting this bill forward.

I mean this is a concrete step forward for workers if council members have an alternative to mandate not just say that it would be a nice thing to have on-site storage but mandate something alternatively to alleviate the stress on workers then that we should look at that.

I also would say though that on-site storage will not be entirely in any way a substitute for paid parking because we know that workers are driving not only because they carry tools but also because they commute long distances.

Let me go to Council Member Strauss.

You've already spoken twice.

Council Member Strauss.

And I'm sorry, I did not mean to interrupt you, Council Member Sawant.

I am 12 minutes overdue for my meeting, and if I had just left, we would have not had quorum, and that would have just ended the conversation.

So I just wanted to raise my hand and say I have to leave.

I'm sorry.

OK, understood.

Karina, I saw your hand up.

Are we OK with that?

Go ahead, Karina.

OK, I just wanted to quickly say that when myself and other central staffers draft memos, that we are not seeking to undermine legislation.

And so I just want to make it clear that the memo is not implying that the parking reimbursement should not be required for workers, but rather to consider ways to prevent or address consequences of providing the paid parking.

So for example, transit subsidies could possibly be provided in addition to parking reimbursements.

The memo did not seek to undermine or say that the parking reimbursements shouldn't happen or were a bad idea.

I feel that's important to mention as it applies to any central staff analysis.

And then last is that I was not able to check with OLS about their staffing needs, but it seems like they're policy staff is at a tipping point and so that makes rulemaking more difficult too.

So thank you.

I'm sorry too.

I just felt that was important to raise.

I think it's important to raise as well.

Thank you very much.

I think it should go without saying unfortunately.

I'm glad that you did say it again today and I want to make sure to reiterate that but we all received the memo at the same time, and it was appreciated.

A lot of work went into it.

Sponsors don't often get to review central staff memos.

These are generated for factual purposes, and so there's nothing out of the ordinary with this memo in front of us.

I appreciate all of the conversation that has happened today.

Council Member Stallone, I think the ball is in your court for responding to some of the concerns here today, and we look forward to hearing more about the amendments that you may be bringing forward on Monday.

for central staff, given that this is your piece of legislation.

You, I think I've heard some of the items from today's discussion, but we will be looking to see what your office puts forward in terms of amendments.

With that, we are at the end of today's meeting.

I want to thank everybody for joining us today.

That does conclude our meetings for the Finance and Housing Committee.

And Karina, you have been at many of these meetings throughout the year.

as it relates to labor standards issues.

So let me just thank you for all of your work and for everybody from central staff who has been providing us with updates throughout the year, not only on finance and housing, but also budget, budget, budget.

It's been my honor to be able to serve as your finance and housing chair and vice chair Herbold.

Thanks for all of your work.

Committee colleagues, thanks for the long meetings we've had this the last two years.

And with that, it will conclude my tenure currently.

in this term, and I do hope to continue to work with all of you in 2022 on these issues as it relates to housing needs and a more sound and robust budget and revenue forecast.

Looking forward to our conversations in 2022. Thank you for all the work you've done, and we will adjourn officially for 2022 to be taken up by the next committee that has these items in front of it.

Thank you all.

Thank you, Karina.

Thank you.

Bye.