Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee Session I - 10/12/22

Thank you so much.

Good morning, everyone.

Welcome to the second day of week three of the Select Budget Committee meeting for Seattle City Council.

Today is October 12, 2022, and the time is 9.35 a.m.

I'm Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the Select Budget Committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Peterson?

Present.

Councilmember Sawant?

Present.

Councilmember Strauss?

Present.

Councilmember Herbold?

Here.

Council Member Juarez?

Here.

Council Member Lewis?

Present.

Thank you.

Council Member Morales?

Here.

Council Member Nelson?

Present.

Chair Mosqueda?

Present.

Nye, present.

Thank you so much, Madam Clerk.

Thank you colleagues again for your participation in our deliberations this week.

This is week three and it's day two where we begin to get into the details of the proposed budget with each of the departments.

I want to thank Director Julie Dingley from the City Budgets Office for being with us here again.

It's been about two weeks since we saw you at our first meeting on September 28th.

On September 28th, the council received a high-level overview of the proposed budget from the mayor's office for the biannual budget that includes the years 2023 and 2024. Yesterday, we had a deep dive into the revenue streams and assumptions made with existing revenue, not just for general fund, but for the general fund revenue adjacent streams as well, and some of the proposed uses of those streams.

That was intended to give us a baseline understanding, a complementary discussion to the general overview that we received on September 28th.

And led by central staff, we began to do some analysis of what assumptions were included in the proposed budget that Council has received.

Colleagues, throughout today, tomorrow, and Friday, we will have the chance to get into detailed discussions about the departments that have some specific changes, maybe their enhancements, maybe their reductions, maybe their tweaks, and we get the chance to hear the presentation from the departments.

We will welcome the department directors along with Director Dingley to do that overview, and then we'll have a panel that is from central staff.

This is our issue identification that we've received from central staff that will give us an opportunity to hear central staff's independent analysis, nonpartisan analysis of what they see in the budget, any questions, concerns, and issues that they would like to identify for council as we begin our deliberations and consideration for possible amendments.

Again, a reminder that amendments are due on Monday, that's October 17th, and we've asked that you have early conversations with central staff if you're considering any amendments.

I assume that as you hear some of the questions, some of the answers, there may be ideas that each council office is considering.

So please do start to float some of those initial questions to central staff that may help inform future amendments so that we all can.

ensure that the Monday, October 17 deadline for any amendments is really adhered to.

Thanks again in advance to central staff for their work on those amendments.

And as always, thanks for the work that CDO and the team has done within the departments to provide us with this proposed budget.

Council will have the chance to identify specific questions throughout the presentation today.

And again, I'm going to ask for folks to allow for the departments to do their presentations.

We'll have a series of questions after that, and then we'll go into the issue identification memos from central staff, and we'll have an opportunity for council members to have questions from that as well.

Today's deep dive on the budget include the following departments, Office of Planning and Community Development, Department of Neighborhoods, Office of Economic Development, and Office of Housing.

We will have a break, as usual, between 1 and 2 p.m., and we plan to adjourn by 5 p.m., and we will include any miscellaneous departments and issue identification before we adjourn.

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

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

Thank you again to our central staff for walking us through the presentation yesterday.

We want to especially thank council members, community members, and the supportive team from I.T.

comms and the clerk's office who got us through not one but two opportunities to hear from the public yesterday.

So thanks to everyone who dialed in at nine thirty for our committee meeting public comment section and again at 5pm for the public hearing last night.

Really appreciate that many people continue to participate online given the ongoing COVID pandemic.

We had about 75 people sign up online.

We had about 45 people in person as well.

So almost 120 people signed up for public comment yesterday.

We got through all of those who are present, and I want to thank everyone for the stories that they shared, the issues that they raised, some concerns and some questions that they put forward in front of council, and especially I want to thank the families, the individuals, and workers who testify, who live within tiny house villages and their compelling stories.

I just wanted to thank them for the opportunity to hear from them because I know it's hard to tell those stories over and over again.

And we do appreciate hearing from everyone who called in.

So thank you so much.

I think we will go ahead and have the clerk read into the record item number one and get this started.

agenda item one, the office of planning and community development for briefing and discussion.

Thank you so much.

And with that, we are jumping right in today, Wednesday, excuse me, today is Wednesday, we're jumping in right today, Thursday and Friday, we will be going directly into presentations given the extended public comments and the long public hearing that we had on Tuesday, that was the plan to make sure that we could jump right into these presentations.

I want to thank Director Dingley again for being here with us.

Good morning, Director Julie Dingley from the City Budgets Office.

And we also will have with us Rico Kidignongo, Acting Director, and Melissa Wake at OPCD, Office of Planning and Community Development, along with central staff panel presenters, Lish Whitson, Allie Panucci, and thank you all for being here.

With that, again, colleagues, we're going to jump into OPCD.

We'll have the department overview questions and opportunities for council members to ask department questions, and then we will absolutely jump right into the central staff briefing on issue identification.

Good morning, Director Dingley.

Good morning.

Good morning, council members.

I'm really excited to be with you this morning.

I'm here as an accessory to the incredible department directors and their staff.

They're going to walk you through their budgets for the mayor's 2023-2024 proposed budget.

They are going to walk you through the materials and talk to you about all the great work that is going to go on in their departments.

I'm here if you have questions about how these decisions in the budget relate to the sort of overall macro picture.

and also just to listen in and to understand where you are in your deliberations and to provide any other context that you might be curious about as the budget was being built.

So I won't take up airtime here.

I'm gonna turn it over to Rico Quirindongo, the acting director of OPCD and Melissa Wilkie, who's his finance and administration manager and just a wonderful human overall.

So take it away team OPCD.

Thank you, Julie.

Good morning, everyone.

Again, this is Rico Kidding-Nago, Acting Director for Office of Planning and Community Development.

Thank you for having us before you today.

So we have a number of slides that we can go through to talk about some of the items in our budget for 2023. It's been, 2022 has been a very exciting year for us and 2023 Uh, is shaping up the same.

I would say when I look at, uh, the big things that we have on our plate amongst them, obviously our continued work on our, uh, comprehensive plan, major updates, um, and including a very heavy lift, uh, in community engagement, um, uh, including the work that's being led by our, um, community engagement specialists that we now have on staff.

Um, and then 1 of the new things that is obviously in the 2023 budget is, um.

a pretty intensive work program related to sub-area planning, which is a subset of that comp plan work, and we'll talk about that later in the presentation, as well as our continued work in equitable development initiative, which has such a awesome impact for our BIPOC communities and organizations that are leading community-led development projects across our city.

With that, I'm going to hand over to Melissa to take us through the slides.

Thanks Rico.

Good morning council members, my name is Melissa Wilkie I'm the finance manager at OPCD.

Could we move to the next slide please Patty.

So we'll start with this is our templates from Council we'll start with our budget summary for OPCD this shows our numbers from the 2022 adopted budget through the 2024 proposed.

I'd like to highlight two trends on this slide that probably pop out at you right away.

The first is, you'll see the significant increase between the 2022 adopted budget numbers and the 2022 revised numbers.

That is primarily due to carry forward budget from 2021, and that is Primarily from the equitable development initiative program and our office, which has will be speaking more about it later, which has significant granting dollars.

They go through an RFP process every year they do award the funds, but they're not spent down every year.

They're not fully spent.

So these funds are carried forward until they are fully spent, but they have been allocated.

The other trend you'll notice on this slide is as we move into the 2023-2024 proposed budget that there's actually a slight decrease in our general fund appropriation while there's an increase in our other appropriation, and that's primarily due to several new initiatives that are being funded by payroll expense tax, which we will also discuss in the coming slides.

And before we move on at the last item here to note is that the 2023 budget adds two FTEs to we're going to have a 4% increase for our departments and I'll point those out as well when we get to them next side, please chair before we move on.

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to share some opening remarks about OPCD's work, very similar to what Director Crandongo mentioned.

I'll start by thanking the department for prioritizing.

So sorry, Mr. Chair.

You are welcome to finish your sentence, but actually I should have said this to the council members.

We would have council members say, comments or summary of each of the departments after each department does their overview, if that sounds good.

So you can do some initial reactions as well on your first in the queue after each department.

Does that work, Mr. Chair?

Oh, sure.

Yep.

I mean, Mr. Chair of land use.

I'll save my comments.

Thank you.

Okay, I know it's going to be very complimentary and we're all very excited about the work to come.

So I just wanted to apologize to Councilmember Strauss and all other Councilmembers.

We'll have the departments do their presentation and the first person to speak after that would be the chair of the department to offer some reflections and comments.

Okay.

Great.

If we could move to the next slide, please.

Thank you.

So this first slide highlights one of the most significant parts of OPCD's budget, dollars-wise, as well as policy-wise, which is our equitable development initiative.

And on this slide, you'll notice, so EDI is primarily funded by jumpstart payroll expense tax and short-term rental tax.

And what you'll notice here is that while short-term rental tax has gone down due to declining revenues, the payroll expense tax has gone up for the same reason, increasing revenues.

You will, I believe there's accompanying budget legislation on this from CBO that talks a little bit more about each of these funding sources.

And because I know there's a great deal of interest about the Equitable Development Initiative and how it's funded, if you'll move to the next slide, we did include a graph to kind of show overall funding and funding sources.

This is pretty high level, but to give you a sense, the EDI program started out with some one-time funding sources, most notably in the 2020 adopted budget with Immersive Mega Block funding.

um which was uh a significant chunk of money, but at one time.

You'll see the payroll expense tax in 2019 with some general fund in 2021 when revenues really dropped.

Sorry, that short-term rental tax in yellow.

The short-term rental tax was backfilled by general fund.

And now you can see the primary funding sources in 2022 and looking forward to 2023 and the 2024 proposed in the bright pink there is the is that's our payroll expense tax, the biggest piece.

The yellow piece right on top of that being the short-term rental tax with a little bit of the general fund is actually CDBG funding dollars.

That's a funding source within the general fund, a federal block grant.

So that's what the EDI funding sources look like currently.

And we're happy to speak to that in more detail if anybody has specific questions.

In the meantime, let's move on to the next slide, please.

So this is another significant body of work in OPCD is our regional growth center sub area plans.

This goes hand in hand with our comprehensive plan major updates.

It's not the same thing.

It's a requirement from the PSRC.

Lost my notes here.

Melissa, I can add a little bit of information there.

Yes, thanks.

So, as you all know, for Growth Management Act, we have a requirement to show how our city is gonna continue to grow over the next 20 years.

So we're looking at that growth between 2024 and 2044, focused on housing, jobs, transportation, and the comprehensive plan is really a look at a 50,000 foot level that would inform the work programs for all of our offices, or all of our offices and departments internal to the city, plus our collaborations with community.

Looking at the, what the heavy lifting that the sub area plans do.

So those, we have six sub area plans that we will need to invest in over the course of the next three years.

Those plans will take that 50,000 foot view and look more towards implementation, like on the ground.

Uh, this is a new requirement for the Pewterstown Regional Council that was, um, adopted in 2018. And so this will be the first, um, our, the City of Seattle's first step toward compliance with this new requirement from, uh, the PSRC, uh, beginning in 2025. our compliance with this requirement, this planning requirement, will be part of the criteria that PSRC will use in evaluation of around $16 million a year that they provide to the city and transportation dollars.

Great.

I'll add two things, Rico.

One is that OPCD has prepared a detailed four-year work plan and cost estimates for this work for the six sub-area regional growth centers.

which we recently sent to council.

So that provides some additional context for that.

And the other is that this item in the 2023 proposed budgets, as well as the 24 endorsed budget is funded by payroll expense tax, and specifically from the economic revitalization and workforce development piece of that legislation.

And that's primarily because, you know, As we look at the sub area plans and how they impact the city and workers, Rico could probably speak to this a little bit better than I can, but as we say on the slide there, the cornerstone of the city's revitalization are these kind of growth areas, the sub area growth centers and the planning for those areas.

Okay, I know that there's going to be a lot of questions, I'm assuming on some of these items, including this item number three.

So again, for my colleagues, I will make sure that we get the chance to get all of your questions.

We're going to ask the department to go through their full presentation, hear from the chair of land use, and then we will go ahead and have questions for the department.

So I just wanted to flag I know that there's some questions here, and we'll come back and get all those questions in on this and any other item.

Thank you.

So item number four on this slide is a new position for OPCD.

It's a three-year sunset position to staff Sound Transit 3 planning.

This position is funded by payroll expense tax.

Also, it comes from the Green New Deal section of the ordinance.

And that is specifically because public transit is a very significant investment in reducing emissions in the transportation sector and also addresses the city's overall emissions goals.

I expect we'll come back and discuss this one a little more as well.

In the meantime, next slide please.

So now we're sort of moving into the next few slides cover where OPCD was able to offset or reduce general fund labor budgets in the 2023 proposed budget.

So this slide here shows how we've offset general funds with jumpstart payroll expense tax.

We moved some of the EDI team labor costs out of the general funds and onto jumpstart.

And this is because there's an increase it's an increased program there's increased number of staff on that team and it helps kind of show the increased share of time that they are spending on.

On on that granting program with that funding source.

Next slide please.

There's two more like this.

So this one item number six shows another general fund labor savings offset where we're removing general fund labor costs and supplanting them with a federal grant we have also for station area planning.

This is a one time change, so this is the staff person that was working on this work anyway will be able to charge their time to the grants and that provides some relief to the general fund for 2023. Next slide, please.

This is our last one.

So the final slide is just a reduction to the general fund.

This is a reduction of $128,000 again to general fund's labor account, which is an increased labor savings assumption due to vacancies.

There's no offset for this one.

So this is just to provide relief to the general fund from OPCB's budget.

And that concludes our slides.

So we are now available for questions.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you.

And I'll ask you just to go back to your opening slides so that we can have Councilmember Strauss make some comments with slide number one showing, please.

Councilmember Strauss, thank you so much for your patience as Chair of Land Use.

We're going to turn it over to you first for some overview or introductory comments and any takeaways or questions that you may have.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Really great to see you, Melissa, Rico, Director Curandongo, Julie, wonderful to see you all this morning.

I just wanna start by thanking OPCD for prioritizing accessibility and equity in this proposed budget.

This next year, OPCD will be engaging the community as part of the major update to the comprehensive plan, which only happens about every eight years.

This year in our comprehensive plan docketing, We held many items for next year because of this major update.

I can't stress how large of a body of work this is and OPCD has so much work to do next year on top of the work that they already do, whether it's through the equitable development plans, maritime industrial work, community action plans, and so much more.

And so, you know, I'm overall pleased with this budget.

And I want to thank Julie and Director Karendongo and Melissa for really doing great work here.

I do have a number of questions.

Maybe if we can slide to or go to slide two.

You know, I understand the short-term rental tax is down.

When we're looking at this reduction in the short-term rental tax, it is based on declining revenues from the previous year.

I just want to get a sense either from Director Kern, any of the presenters, do you think this is, the declining revenues could have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic?

It's my understanding And can you remind me when the first year we collected this tax, what the uptake was and if you think COVID had any impact on the downturn of these revenues?

I can take a first pass.

Thank you Councilmember Strauss for the question.

I don't have the initial revenues at my fingertips for the first year of collection, but I can say without a doubt that the pandemic absolutely impacted those revenues.

Tourism was down precipitously throughout COVID and not just in Seattle, but really around the country as the lockdown happened.

And folks were very slow to return to travel.

And so it's based on short-term rentals and the use.

So Airbnb is the alternatives to hotels.

And so the less people were traveling, the less revenue we would have taken in as a city.

I will note that it is true that it has gone down through COVID, but it's also true that we have never, and this is something you heard from central staff yesterday, we have never hit the envisioned level of revenue that was initially thought about when this was passed and these allocations were made for the uses of STRT overall.

But let me get back to you.

And I don't know if, Melissa, you happen to have at your fingertips the revenue from short-term rental in the first year, but I can certainly get that.

I don't, I'm afraid, but I can follow up with you.

Yeah, let me maybe clarify that question.

It's my understanding that we only started collecting revenue one or two years ago.

Can you remind me what the first year that we started collecting revenue on this tax was?

It was passed in 2017, so it would have taken a while to implement.

It's going to be 2018 or 2019. But let me, we can double check.

It was before my time.

Totally.

And I appreciate that.

And I guess the point that I'm leading us towards is that as the tax was new, as it never fully had the opportunity to scale before the pandemic occurred, and then we had the pandemic.

I'm just adding a little bit of context to these numbers so that colleagues were not too worried here.

But Julie, could you help me understand if we have increased revenues here?

What would change?

So the way that the proposed budget has allocated or proposes to change it, the amount going to EDI would go up.

So every new dollar that comes in above the current forecast would go directly to EDI.

Wonderful.

And is that kind of the methodology that we will be using in future years as well?

That's if the proposed legislation is adopted.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Also, I mean, and this is a major win for the investment into the equitable equitable development initiative, as we look to the future years.

Do you think we're going to have, what's the right funding level.

in future years.

I know that there's a fair amount of displacement occurring throughout the city, especially as we continue to grow.

I know in my community in District 6 in Ballard, the displacement occurred many years ago.

People that I grew up with are not able to afford to live there anymore.

Many seniors have already moved out of the area.

How are we able to protect the folks that haven't yet been displaced or help people who are moving, who want to move back?

So I can start.

So thank you, Council Member Strauss, for the question.

You know, I would say, you know, you're hitting on why the EDI program was created, which was as an anti-displacement strategy.

I think looking to the question of what is the right amount to fund the program It's a really hard question right so we we just using the rough numbers we put out to RFPs, a year, and those tend to average around $9 million RFP, and each of those.

And I say this anecdotally, but it really is the case.

We see anywhere from 60 to 80 applicants for a $9 million fund for any single RFP.

And the collective ask for those 60 to 80 applicants often exceeds over $500 million.

What that is to say is that we know that there are a huge number of amazing projects that are being championed by community, led by community organizations, and that we are doing great work in helping to fund a gap but the need is far greater than our capacity to fund it.

So I think that we are doing everything that we can within the constraints that we have currently.

And I'm very encouraged by the continuation of the program and by the support that we get from our EDI partners.

Thank you, Director.

I really well said that our asks are far outreaching what we have available, and Director Dingley, your comment about any new revenues coming in from the tax will be able to go into this program really well.

This is why, in my opening remarks, I was pleased.

If we could move on to page four.

And Councilmember Strauss, just one note, for central staff as well, since we haven't gotten to the issue identification presentation or the memo that you have, if you have anything that you want to flag to let us know, we're going to cover some of that from our perspective in our presentation.

You want to flag it as part of the answer.

You are welcome to do so because I want to make sure that that central staff, you know, get to get to note for us that there will be more to come on that specific answer.

So I'm going to go to Allie real quick.

I also have Councilmember Morales after Councilmember Strauss and Councilmember Council President Juarez up next.

And I know Councilmember Strauss you had some additional comments or questions as well.

So Allie, anything specific that you'd like to add to the responses so far?

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, council members, Alex Nugent, and central staff for the record.

I was just going to note that Lish did cover the discussion around the short-term rental funding.

in the memo prepared and published to the agenda.

I will just note that we discussed it as issue ID yesterday, and so we weren't going to go into those details during the issue identification discussion today, but Lish can answer questions about the memo he prepared, and I'll be available as well during central staff's panel if people have questions about information we provided in the memo that is not presented as an issue for discussion in our presentation.

And Chair, I'm happy to hold my questions until after central staff presentations, if that's easier.

You know, I think that we're all learning in this new process.

We used to have a week of department presentations and then a week of central staff presentations.

And we realized that that was kind of creating a delay and actually just diving into the material for central staff.

There was a lot of time in prep and preparing for the, Department presentation, so we wanted to get straight into issue identification.

So that's why you see a hybrid this year of emerged meeting.

And so thank you for your flexibility as we figure out the best format here, because you are up 1st, but.

I'm kind of wondering if maybe we should do that.

I'm looking at Ali.

To see if there's questions that are specific for.

The, the department and central staff to weigh in on you're welcome to do that.

So.

mid-shift here.

We'll have departments present, we'll have the chair do some opening comments and initial takeaways, and then we're going to have issue identification presentations from central staff.

And that way as council members ask questions, the central staff don't feel like you have to wait to respond as well for your material to be out there.

How does that sound, everyone?

That sounds great.

I see a thumbs up.

I'll hold my questions.

All right, great.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

And I know you still have some questions, so you are still up in the queue.

Then we'll have Council Member Morales, and then we have Council Member Juarez.

So at this point, Council Member Strauss, as Chair of Land Use, has made some opening comments and then some initial questions.

We're gonna let central staff walk through the remainder of the presentations as panel two, and then we're happy to go back and take questions for both.

Please go ahead, Allie, and thank you all for your flexibility as we do this joint walkthrough together.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I am similar to Director Dingley.

I'm mostly here as an accessory to the presentations and the work that the team of analysts did.

I'll turn it over to Lish, and we will try to adjust the format as we're going to what works best for the committee.

So I will turn it over.

Thanks so much.

And I will say thanks again to Patty for managing the slides.

We're going to go to the Central Staff Office of Planning and Community Development.

I do want to ask if this is all one slideshow presentation so that it's easy to toggle between, because I just realized that that might be a challenge as well for going back and forth between slides.

It isn't, but it is easy for me.

So don't worry about it.

You're amazing.

Thanks, Patty.

Okay, that was the voice of the main operation here, making sure we get all the right information on the slide.

So we're going to go to the first slide for a central staff presentation.

Thanks again, Patty.

And thanks, Lish, for being here.

Thank you, Lish Whitson, Council Central staff.

And Let's move to the next slide.

There are two issues that we've identified.

They're both very similar, and they both ask Council whether you're comfortable with the proposed use of Jump Start funding.

The first is related to the Regional Growth Center's planning.

This is work that the city needs to do if it's going to continue receiving transportation funding through the Puget Sound Regional Council.

The plans for our regional growth centers, which are designated in our conference plan as urban centers, so they're downtown, First Hill, Capitol Hill, Northgate, South Lake Union, University District, and Uptown, need to be updated.

They don't include some of the required components in the Puget Sound Regional Council's planning documents.

For example, the plans are required under PSRC's list of criteria for a complete plan.

They're required to reduce the risk of commercial displacement through a variety of anti-displacement strategies and avoid or mitigate environmental impacts for vulnerable populations.

Many of these plans were adopted by the council in around 2000 and so those issues were not contemplated at that time.

OPCD is estimating over four years that $2 million will be required.

And the source of funding for this work is the Jumpstart economic revitalization funding.

The question for you is, is the use of Jumpstart funding appropriate for this work, which will support economic revitalization over the longterm, but won't have necessarily near-term impacts.

If you don't have any concerns with that use of the funding, then no change is needed.

If you do have concerns, then either this work shouldn't be funded or an alternative source of funding will be required.

Let's move to the second issue.

OPCD has been working with Sound Transit and Seattle Department of Transportation and other city departments on planning for the West Seattle-Bauer Link Light Rail Extension Project, or WSBLEE.

Funds for the first round of planning through the draft environmental impact statement had been provided.

We are now at the next phase of planning.

The 2023 budget proposes to use $162,000 and add one FTE to OPCD using Jumpstart Green New Deal funds for a planning position to work on particularly stationary planning and urban design issues around the Whistler East stations.

An additional 12 positions are being added to Seattle Department of Transportation will be discussed in the context of that department's presentation tomorrow morning.

Transit planning was not identified as a priority by the Green New Deal Oversight Board.

And so the question for you is, is this an appropriate use of Jumpstart Green New Deal funding?

If not, then you should either identify an alternative source of funding for this work or reject the proposed use of the Jumpstart funding.

If you're comfortable with transit improvements and planning for transit improvements being a use of the Jumpstart Green New Deal funding, then no changes required.

That's it for our central staff identified issues with the OPCD budget.

Okay, thanks again.

So my hope here, colleagues, is that if you have questions specific for the department, that we can ask technical questions, impact questions.

I also want people to be encouraged to opine on the proposed strategies for, or the options, the proposed options that central staff has outlined.

I don't expect the departments to react necessarily to those thoughts.

And this is really just about a transparent conversation of any questions that we have, preferences that we have.

And that's why I wanted to list it as panel one, panel two, so that folks can direct their questions to either panel one or panel two.

But wanted to make sure that folks know this is where the debates should happen.

This is a healthy conversation to figure out what the impact of the proposed budget is on existing department operations.

And it's also totally appropriate for us as Council to weigh in with any concerns or questions that you have, especially in reaction to the Council Central Staff's memo.

So feel free to use this new format to both ask questions, technical in nature or impact.

questions to the department and also direct your questions to central staff if you want to know more or understand better their position.

We have been very clear at the beginning of our deliberations on September 28th that our questions, concerns, issues that we're identifying are about the policy.

and about program impact.

It's not about the people.

It's not about the individuals who are here.

So I know we all care very much about our relationships with the folks that we work with on the seventh floor and throughout our city family.

But this is really an opportunity to better understand impacts.

And I want people to feel encouraged to have those questions, the debate and discussion today.

So with that, Councilmember Strauss, please go ahead and conclude any questions that you may have.

Thank you, Chair.

Excuse me.

I had a question on page four of OPCD's presentation.

Lish, great work with your presentation and options there.

I don't have a...

I guess we can cycle through those in just a minute.

Sorry, Chair, I didn't realize you wanted me to opine on those options.

And you don't have to either.

I mean, I just want to make sure that folks feel that they can if they want to.

And you don't feel obligated to weigh in.

This is not a vote day, right?

Just like yesterday, issues are being flagged for us just for our consideration throughout the upcoming weeks.

But please don't feel required to weigh in one way or the other.

I just didn't want people to hold back if they had specific thoughts.

Thank you, Chair.

I'm honored to get to go first and get to iron out all of these wrinkles of a virtual and slightly new system.

What I can say generally about the information that Lish presented and the information that Director Dingley and Director Kirandongo have presented is that we've got tough decisions to make this year because of the shortfall that the director's office has closed.

And if we were in a perfect world, I would be maybe more strident in saying which funding source needs to go where and used how, and we're at an important moment of working together to close this gap to get through these few years, and then we can re-expand to having maybe more dedicated lines of funding going for dedicated issues.

So generally, I think we're doing pretty well.

If we could slide to page four, I know that that conversation is going to come up enhancements that the jurisdiction itself would be required to pay the delta, the difference between what Sound Transit believes is the cost and what that jurisdiction wants for the 100 year infrastructure.

And I say that because in a perfect world, this work that we are engaging OPCD to do would be completed by Sound Transit and typically in many other smaller jurisdictions would.

and it's evident that we need this level of staffing to get the 100-year infrastructure correct in the densest part of the state, Seattle.

As Sound Transit is a regional entity, I understand their constraints to assist specific cities, and frankly, I think that their resources are probably better suited to the jurisdictions that are not able to provide this level of staffing.

I just want to And this, what you're seeing before us, is part of our joint commitment with Sound Transit to get rail service to our city and our neighborhoods and to get it right.

I just want to ask the presenters here, and if you weren't expecting this question, you can come back to me later, but would this funding be able to count towards third-party funding?

Well, looks like I stumped our team.

did not expect that one coming, did you?

That's certainly something that Council Member Strauss, that we can do the research into and get back to you.

I don't know the answer to that question.

Great.

And then I'm seeing this for page four regarding the Growth Management Act requirements.

Can you explain how the Growth Management Act requirements are related to the sub plan area work?

I know you touched on this briefly, Director Kirendongo.

I just wanna make sure that we are able to meet or exceed, and maybe that's the question I'm looking for.

Are we meeting the requirements set for the sub area plannings or are we exceeding it?

And what, I know you mentioned that this is gonna be a six year effort.

What do we need to be thinking about in future years?

So, The funding that you see in the 2023 proposed budget would help us to meet the minimum requirement.

And so I want to go back to a couple of things if I could.

So the regional growth centers, which are designated by the PSRC, are a cornerstone for how we manage growth under the Growth Management Act.

PSRC requires updates to the sub area plans for the centers as a condition of our, you know, ongoing regional recognition of investments with federal funds managed by the PSRC.

The sub area plans will guide policies.

land use regulations, programs, and investments to ensure that those centers thrive economically, sustainability, and equitably as they accommodate a significant share of new housing and jobs over the next 20 years.

PSRC does specifically require that our sub-area plans include strategies to meet affordable housing needs and prevent displacement, and so that's a center place of the work.

We have started kind of the foundation for the first of those six sub area plans in the second half of this year, but we'll really be hitting the ground running in January.

that we're going to meet it, but we might not exceed expectations.

Also understanding this is a tough budget year, looking forward to working with you in future years to make sure that we're able to expand our ability to study and get affordable housing in and throughout our city.

Chair, those are all of my questions from these presentations, and I have shared my remarks about central staff presentation as well.

I've got a few closing remarks, and I'll hold those to the end.

Thank you very much, and I see Council Member Herbold in the queue as well.

The next person up is Council Member Morales, followed by Juarez, and then Herbold.

Council Member Morales, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I wanted to make a few comments about EDI, and then I wanted to talk about the sub-area plans too.

So thank you for these presentations.

We did have a little bit of issue area identification yesterday, and Liz presented on Some of that, I will say that while it is true that EDI is an anti-displacement strategy, I think it's important not to forget that it's also an anti-racist strategy.

The point of this program as envisioned by the folks who created it and advocated for its creation was that it is an anti-racist strategy that focuses on communities that have been targeted by systemic racism and making sure that those folks can stay.

So this isn't just about housing for seniors or low-income folks, although it is definitely about that too.

It's really about building space for neighborhoods to have access to essential services.

And so LISH went through several things yesterday that have been funded by this program.

It's also supported the acquisition for a permanent home for the African Women Business Alliance.

It supported acquisition of a permanent birth center for Rainier Valley midwives, will be creating childcare and community space in the Ethiopian village.

Created Innovation Center at the Filipino Community Center that teaches young people about robotics and other stem related programs.

So this is all about providing access to capital to stem displacement and support communities in anchoring, particularly for folks who have been pushed out of the city for too long.

I will say that I worked hard to ensure that EDI was included in the spend plan for Jump Start.

I am grateful to the chair who agreed that this is really a priority.

I wanted 10%.

We landed on 9%.

I'll take it.

But this is a really important way to help close the racial wealth gap in the city, to create neighborhoods that have culturally appropriate essential services, and to increase ownership for black and brown neighbors.

And I say all that because this question of shifting funds from the short-term rental tax is a concern for me.

The intent of the payroll expense tax was to be additive to the revenue from the short-term rental tax, because we know, as we learned yesterday, it's not nearly enough.

to support the community needs for access to capital.

The memo Lish wrote indicated, you know, and Director Kidendongo just stated, there was over $100 million in requests.

So we are adding 19, 20 million now.

We know that there's a lot more work to do.

So I'll stop there.

I do want to have a A little bit of time on the sub area plans.

I understand you know the memo that that director can don't go sent last week I believe outlined the process for how these plans are getting developed kind of what the work plan will be.

you know, what these growth centers are.

So these are designated by PSRC based on our own urban center designations.

But these determine capital investments for utilities, for infrastructure.

This is where we will invest for employment, education, cultural amenities.

These growth centers receive special attention.

and are prioritized for certain kinds of economic development investments, we have the list of communities that are there.

I think it's really important that we note that West Seattle and South Seattle are left out of the economic development opportunities by these designated priorities.

And so while I understand that, you know, there is a purpose here, we have to proceed with these plans to compete for the PSRC transportation dollars.

I don't think it is correct for us to claim that sub area planning as it currently is structured will center racial equity because it is intrinsically flawed.

And this framing means that significant investment in economic opportunity will be channeled into neighborhoods that already benefit from capitalization and investment.

And so I am deeply concerned, frankly, that using any public resource that will perpetuate these structural inequities is problematic.

I realize this is a bigger issue.

You know, we can have this conversation with PSRC.

This is perhaps something we can address through the comp plan conversations we'll be having in the next couple of years.

But I do want to note that we need to address this.

We need to mitigate for, you know, disproportionate investment in areas that already get that.

And I want to say that using Jumpstart funds to support this work is divesting from the equitable community commitments to fund strategies that, in my mind, perpetuate inequities in Seattle.

So with all that said, I do want to continue this conversation.

I want to strongly make clear my concern about this switch and about the underlying issue of how these investment decisions are being made.

And I want to clarify, if I could, it was my understanding that funding from the Mercer MegaBlock funded the strategic investment fund.

We were doing a lot of different things in 2020. So if I could just get some clarity on where that funding went, that would be helpful.

Yeah, that funding went to property acquisition through the EDI program for community based organizations.

Okay.

We had an application for the strategic investment fund, which was $30 million, which was put out through an RFP, and we had 13 sites that we were able to award dollars for.

And I'll mention that some of those sites are still under negotiation for property acquisition.

And so information about particular projects isn't available at this time until those deals have been finalized.

Okay.

I have a few questions about the second issue that Liz raised, but I'm happy to pass the mic and I can come back.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

I'll put you back in the queue.

Councilmember, excuse me, Council President Juarez.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have a question.

I just got to add a few facts before we get it together here.

I'm looking at page four of your memo Um, when you put down the West Seattle boundary planning support, what our options are, and then, of course, page number 4 on the PowerPoint.

Um, regard page number 4 number 4 regarding sound transit 3. so.

The ask is for an for 1. F.

T. E.

for a three-year position, which would sunset in 2025. So I'll just be straightforward.

I'm kind of wondering if this is a good use of JumpStart funds because, and let me just get this out from being on the Sound Transit Board.

We passed Sound Transit 3 in 2016, and I believe we've done a couple light rail stations and another one coming online with 130th.

And thank you, OPCD, for helping us with that one.

But we do have staff that we work with in the mayor's office, central staff, of course, people at SDOT.

And we also have a ton of staff at Sound Transit to look at the proposed timeline for the light rail.

Chinatown ID, it's supposed to come online in 2037, but there's a lot more work we got to do there with community, obviously, where OPCD would come in and all the other groups.

West Seattle is 2032. So I'm kind of wondering what is the practicality, or is it necessary to have an FTE that sunsets in 2025 when we have light rail way planned out there to 2037 and 2032?

And again, that's still tentative based on some more engineering and community decisions.

I'm not saying that work, and I'm glad what you said, Madam Chair, earlier about just being frank doesn't mean it's not personal.

But from sitting on the Sound Transit Board, I'm wondering about, again, the practicality and if it's necessary.

We have so many staff, elected leaders, engineers, a whole agency, Sound Transit, dedicated to light rail.

I don't know about whether or not that's a good use of funds.

And I'm just wondering if perhaps OPCD can give me a little bit more information.

I know that we work with you and thank you very much on 130th and OPCD and the work that you did in the charrettes that we did for transit-oriented housing and planning and all those issues that were important.

But I think we got that down.

Five years ago, it was still a concept or even seven years ago that we were trying to implement that we're now seeing It's embraced, it's modified, it's codified.

We got it down to how we get this done.

Case in point, how we're going to work more closely with the Chinatown ID and looking at their light rail needs if indeed they want light rail.

I'm wondering if OPCD can help me out here.

I would also just invite Lish.

I saw Lish, you had your hand up as well.

If central staff or OPCD have thoughts, that's welcome.

Thank you.

Lish, did you want to chime in?

Ian Swallow, Boulder Housing Partners, Applicant OLIVE-MILLER I think Director Crandongo can probably talk more about the work that they're doing, but I will just note that OPCD's role is different than any other agency in this work in terms of the relationship between the transit project and land use.

So they are looking at how the transit station will interact with the community around it.

and making sure that our land use regulations are well matched to the transportation system that's being built.

Sound Transit can't do that work and SDOT can't do that work.

Okay, I understand the work, but what I'm getting at is, is this a good use for the use of Jump Start funds in relationship to, we've been talking about what the intent was of Jump Start.

So I understand the work.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, okay.

I apologize.

I should have been a little bit more sophisticated in my question.

I'll leave it at that.

Council President Juarez, thank you for the question.

I don't know that I'm going to do a great job of answering your question directly, but maybe I can provide a little bit more information, at least as it relates to how we are trying to serve our BIPOC communities and address anti-displacement issues.

So if you look at the work of OPCD staff in this regard related to the Sound Transit Program, I would say that there's a large amount of our focus which is around placemaking and how particularly related to access to transit and station locations and then station area planning around those locations.

What our staff and this is what this new position would be focusing on.

what we're trying to do is understand, particularly for our underserved communities, particularly for BIPOC communities, how are we hitting community?

How are we serving community with both the planned transportation access, but then also the station itself, mitigation of issues around that station implementation and what happens around the neighborhood when the station goes in.

But then also equitable transit-oriented development.

And the reason equitable is an important qualifier to what we traditionally understand as TOD, We're having conversations with community leaders, with small businesses, family businesses, with community-based organizations and partners, including in some cases, existing EDI partners regarding once stations are put in and once the conversation then moves to what is other development that happens around those stations, Where are opportunities for BIPOC organizations and businesses to be involved in future development opportunities?

Those are long conversations, right?

And so we are with, in the partnership with Sound Transit in working with SDOT and what is this heavy lift regarding the West Seattle to Ballard program, we're trying to look at land use implications, development opportunities, and how we actually make certain that once stations come online, first, that they're appropriately located, but second, that the placemaking and built environment that's supporting our communities, once those stations are completed, that they're actually contributing to the whole health of our communities.

I'm going to just chime in, and I think that the Council President's question is more about the use of the funds, because I want to make sure folks know that nobody's questioning the value or the purpose of the program or the importance of trying to make these investments, and especially historically marginalized communities that haven't seen a few investments.

So very much in line with the Council President's comment, I just want to note We really appreciate the work of the department.

The question that the council president is raising, the question and the issue identification, colleagues speaking directly to you, I think that we have a unpacking to do here along the lines of what the council president just outlined.

I do as well have several questions with the proposed use of JumpStart.

I'm going to just put these out there right now directly in response to the conversation that the council president just started, and then I'm going to turn it to I do think that there's more unpacking to do here because it does not comport with the existing spend plan as codified in statute.

We've heard from advocates, Green New Deal investments are intended to be focused on creating a just transition with investments that are focused in communities most impacted by climate change and most at risk of displacement.

There is absolutely a nexus to the value and the importance of the programs just described.

It is being used to justify the removal of similar positions at department and neighborhoods that was funded by general fund to conduct outreach and engagement in support of the sound transit three project as noted in the Department of neighborhoods issue identification paper on page four.

So in a sense, it is appearing that it is shifting work across departments and replacing general fund with jumpstart progressive payroll tax.

I think the city's obligation to work with and work on Sound Transit 3 light rail expansion is clear.

It's been ongoing and it's been understood that when the expansion measure was passed, we would need to do this work in partnership.

So although this is a new position, it is not a new initiative.

It is not a new initiative, program, or investment that advances the Green New Deal goals.

It is not additive to what we had already planned for.

And so thus, I'm going to have some questions similar to what the Council President has outlined, not about the value, but just about the fund source.

Madam Chair, may I just say one thing, and I'll be quiet, just real quickly for what you said, and I'll stop.

You just did it much better than I did.

What I was trying to just get at and what the filter and lens I use is, is this within the spirit and the intent of the jumpstart tax?

That's it.

Thank you.

Perfect.

Thank you.

I am going to go call on Council Member Herbold and then before we move on, to summary questions and additional questions.

Director Dingley, I'll come back to you as well for some additional context.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you so much.

Completely different subject here, but still on OPCD.

The council on two separate occasions has uplifted the need to do some neighborhood planning work in the Highland Park Westwood neighborhoods.

In the 2018 budget, The council, as a sort of a companion to providing funding for planning work, the council passed a statement of legislative intent asking how planning work for Westwood and Highland Park would be integrated into OPCD's work plan.

And then when we passed MHA, we made a similar request Basically, in the 2019 legislation, we basically just restated or asked OPCD to do what they told us that we're going to do in response to the 2018 slide, which was to begin the preliminary work around planning in 2019 and finish it in 2020, 2021. I know we've received several briefings over the last couple of years about how the timeline for that work has definitely shifted, and I totally understand that.

No complaints here about the shifting of the timeline.

I just want to know that the funding for the staff work necessary is included in the 2023 budget and whether or not you have any new information about plan delivery.

Council Member Herbold, thank you for the question.

I would say to you that as a part of this briefing, I'm not prepared to give you an update regarding the timeline for that project, but I certainly can follow up with you on it.

And I appreciate your patience with us in terms of the adjustments that have been made to the timeline to date.

This is work that's an important part of our 2023 work program.

So follow up on the actual timeline for the completion of the work, but you can confirm that it is funded work in the 2023 budget for OPCD.

Fantastic.

Thank you very much.

Really appreciate it.

Thanks, Council Member Herbold.

Okay, colleagues, I'm going to go back to Council Member Morales and then Council Member Strauss.

I think Council Member Strauss, you said you had some closing comments, not necessarily additional questions.

That's correct.

I have one additional question, but I can save it for the last.

Oh, OK.

Thanks, council member council member Morales.

Additional questions from you?

No, I had I had questions about, you know, OPCD and D.O.N.' 's role in the outreach, but I think I think we've answered that.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

And Director Dingley, I saw your hand up a few minutes ago.

Would you like to add anything else?

I think we covered it.

We have, there was a question that came through around why use the Jump Start as a funding source to pay for this work.

And so just very briefly that, you know, as for Wisley, This is the largest transit investment that will ever take place in a city that we've ever seen.

And it's an important investment in reducing emissions, obviously, in the transportation sector.

And that's a critical component to the overall emission goals for the city.

And.

We know, you know, sort of in addition to what Rico has mentioned, that the Green New Deal resolution that you all passed commits the city departments to facilitate more transit oriented development.

COB, Lauren Kilcoyne she-her, she-hers, she-hers, she-hers.

In his memo, you are free to disagree with us.

He has provided other options that are available to you if you decide that you want to find another funding source to fund this work.

But that was a little bit more context behind why that funding source, in case that's helpful.

Thanks so much.

Deputy Director Panucci.

Thank you.

Chair Mosqueda, I just wanted to add to what Director Dingley was saying, because I think this is going to be a theme throughout the discussions on department's budgets over the course of this week, is that some of the interpretation of the Jumpstart Fund policies is somewhat subjective.

And we are looking to you for clarification and guidance.

I will just offer a couple of other points.

I think that In terms of whether or not this complies with the Green New Deal investments, I think it's important that we consider the input from the Oversight Board and where their recommendations were.

I also think it's important to consider what has been the city's strategy for making investments in long-term planning, and it's generally been a general fund function.

And so the question around whether or not JumpStart can supplant other funds, is difficult in this context because while this is a new investment in OPCD, it is part of their work to do long range planning in the community.

And that has typically been a general fund function.

And is this going to open up an ongoing sort of reliance on the jumpstart funds and either economic revitalization or the green new deal for long range planning?

Because I want to make sure that It's an important function of the city.

And we're thinking about those decisions in that context, because I think it's precedent setting.

And then really being careful about the specific pieces of the Green New Deal resolution, and then what was codified in the Jumpstart Fund policies about the types of investments.

Because I would second all of the points made today that this is important work.

It's just whether or not using Jumpstart based on existing policies is appropriate.

Thank you, Deputy Director.

And yes, I think it definitely will come up in a number of places throughout this week.

So thank you for reminding us about the questions that Council has and to CBO for underscoring.

There are other options.

I think that that is exactly what we are charged with figuring out over the next few weeks.

to make sure that we have a clear understanding of what the general fund appropriations are and whether or not those funding sources and investments align in addition to all of the other work that we do on just general fund appropriations and how those align with priorities of the council.

I do have a few specific questions councilmember Strauss and I'm a turn it back to you.

As I have been there about you know I believe that the jump payroll regarding the Sound Transit 3 staffing.

Are these ongoing positions or do they sunset?

And what type of activities specifically are we talking about here?

Is this community outreach?

So Council Member Esqueda, thank you for the question.

So I will We have a little bit of a harder time with the question about the sun setting part.

The work is, as I was describing it before, which is a combination of things.

It's land use planning and analysis.

It's collection of data.

It is some engagement with community.

It's coordination with Seattle Department of Transportation and Down Transit and our designated rep. So I think that the body of work that will be juggled by that FTE is multi-layered.

I hope that answers that part of the question.

I think what was pointed out is that the program extends well beyond what's been identified as a three-year time horizon.

And so I acknowledge the truth in that statement.

And Council Budget Chair, I wanted to just clarify that the budget does include it's a three year position that sunsets in 2025 to answer that portion of your question.

Thank you so much.

Regarding the growth center sub area on slide four.

If this is an existing requirement by the Puget Sound Regional Council under the Growth Management Act for the city to complete these sub-area plans, are we thinking that this is new to the city or how are we defining if this is a continuation or if it's a new program?

And Lish, I see you off mute.

Yeah, I think Director Carandago is about to answer this, but it is a new requirement under the Puget Sound Regional Council's most recent regional plan.

So it's not work that we have done in the past.

And so I would put it this way.

We identified the six, those six urban centers We are already identified in our current comprehensive plan that's on the books, but we didn't have a requirement to lay out a sub area plan that dived into the detail of how those growth projections would be met and how support of those growth projections was supported in our city planning efforts in any detail.

And so the sub area plan work that we're now and I mean, this is me making assumptions from the cheap seats that the legislation that was adopted in 2018 by Puget Sound Regional Council that made this sub area plan work a requirement for us moving forward beginning in 2025. I think was to acknowledge the fact that there's a bunch of moving parts to get from the identification of the areas to what is the work that ensures that growth happens in those areas in great ways.

Does that does that help?

Yeah, it does.

Thanks so much.

Okay.

And of course, central staff, feel free to jump in if you have anything to add.

Okay.

Oh, no, okay.

All right, Mr. Chair, I think we actually are perfectly timed.

We thought this would end at 10.50, so I think I'm going to hand it back over to you.

My summary comment would just be, you know, how much we do appreciate the work of OPCD.

Obviously, we know that this is a tough budget, but I'm going to continue to work with our colleagues here and members of the community.

We know that there's I want to echo what Councilmember Morales started with in terms of the root of why EDI is invested in.

The chair made some comments about this as well.

And I think that while there's funding that we had initially seen from short-term rental We have such high need in the community versus the amount that we're able to fund so it, it is really important I think for us to look at the proposal for the short term rental tax spending outlined on pages are on slides two and three, the use of the funding from jumpstart being used as a rationale to deprioritize and EDI investments from short-term rental is going to continue to be an area of concern of mine.

And really wanting to make sure that we're doing this through that racial justice lens for us to be additive means that we can invest in more community-rooted projects, invest in anti-displacement efforts, and really have an emphasis on serving BIPOC communities.

that have seen previous divestments in their neighborhoods.

So I look forward to continuing to work with all of you to both address the, you know, worsening inequities that have been created because of COVID, but also stay the path, stay the course on many of these investment strategies.

that were put into place prior to COVID that were already recognizing hardship and disproportionate impacts on community by not having equitable investments, not equal, but equitable as the mayor spoke to in his comments about investments throughout the budget.

So that's the lens I'll be bringing as well to these issues.

And I'll turn it back over to the chair for closing comments on this.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

You actually asked my remaining questions in your comments, and I'll start with, or I'll end with where I started, which is to say we have tough decisions in this budget year.

If all things were perfect, I think we would have funding, revenues dedicated to the services that we wanted them to fund, and we have to also understand this is a unique situation that we are in.

I just, I do believe that The jumpstart tax has been able to buoy our city during what could have been a very difficult time with a recession, with the pandemic.

And what we're seeing right now is even if it's not being used for what we hoped it would be used for, in this very moment, we are able to ensure the good work of basic governance is occurring without reducing the workload that we are engaging in, without reducing the services we're providing for our citizens, without reducing the number of people who are employed in our city, which trickles and ripples throughout our entire community.

So with that, I'll step off the bully pulpit and just thank OPCD again for the leadership.

I look forward to working with all of you.

As you've seen in this presentation, OPCD It covers so much of our city from equitable development initiatives sub area planning regional growth plans maritime industrial work community action plan sound transit, and so much more on top of the major update to the comprehensive plan, the work that OPCD engages in is incredibly important often the headline of the budget because it could be characterized as unattractive or not attractive.

I find it to be attractive, but that's me.

And it's incredibly important work of government because our built environment determines how we exist in our city.

And without OPCD's work, we would have a built environment that might not be designed for the very people who are living here.

So thank you, Director Kirendongo.

Thank you, Melissa.

Thank you, Director Dingley.

Look forward to continuing working with all of you.

Excellent.

Thank you all.

We're going to turn it to item number two.

Madam Clerk, can you please read item number two and to the record?

Agenda item two, Department of Neighborhoods for Briefing and Discussion.

Okay, well, let me just thank the team here, central staff, the city budget's office, the departments, and the chairs for each of the committees that have oversight over these departments.

I'm going to make an announcement here.

We are going to try a format that I think will allow for more discussion and questions on each slide.

So thank you, Mr. Chair, for helping to be the first one out of the gate on this process.

But going forward, Ali Panucci, our deputy director, is sending out an email just so that you have this all in writing.

But apologies for us having a new format here that we're figuring out the flow in real time.

Thank you very much to Director Julie Dingley for giving the thumbs up on this process going forward so that it can allow for council members to have a robust discussion and debate on specific questions.

So what we're going to do going forward for the next three days, when we get to each department, we're going to actually do what Councilmember Strauss has suggested.

The chair of that committee that has oversight over the department will have the chance to say some opening remarks and welcome the department.

Then the departments will go through their presentations.

If during these department presentations, any central staff have clarifying comments, additions that they'd like to add, they'll raise their hand, we'll call on them so that they can feel free to chime in as well.

If any council members have questions throughout the process, we're gonna pause on each of the slides to see if you have questions specific to the department's presentations.

That will get us through the department presentations and allow for questions directly from council members and If a central staff member has something that they want to flag or an issue that might come up in their presentation, they can let us know.

After the department receives all their questions, we will then go to Panel 2, as originally planned, and that will allow for the central staff to walk through their issue identification.

It will allow for us to pause on each of those issues to allow council members to ask any questions as well.

And you can raise your hand and ask questions as well as chime in with any comments that you might have.

the issue identification section, we'll pause on each one of those issues.

The departments are welcome to stay and listen in.

You are also welcome to go off camera or leave if you want.

We won't take any offense.

And feel free as well, council members, to make sure that if you have a question as we go through, you're raising your hand.

I think that will be helpful, especially as we get into some of these departments that have multiple changes that the departments are presenting and multiple issue identification that central staff is presenting.

At the end, again, we'll make sure that the chair of the committee is invited to provide any closing comments as well as anybody perhaps from CBO or central staff.

Okay.

And Julie, I think you're going to be with us for the long haul here, right?

So we'll continue to see you on the screen.

But I hope that that's a welcome change to make sure that we have the questions being asked in real time.

and that if a department panel would like to leave during the issue identification, they are more than welcome to.

That way folks can go on with their day if they need to.

All right, so we are on Department of Neighborhoods.

I want to welcome again, for the record, Director Julie Dingley, who will be with us from the City Budgets Office throughout the day, and we'll have Deputy Mayor Greg Wong from the Mayor's Office, Sarah Morningstar, Acting Director from Department of Neighborhoods, and Grace I want to first turn the microphone over to Well, it's a long title, Council Member Morales, I'm sorry.

But I know that it has Department of Neighborhoods in it.

So please take it away.

And apologies to Council Member Strauss who had suggested this format earlier.

And we are learning in real time.

So Council Member Morales, as chair, who has purview over Department of Neighborhoods, please welcome our panel if you'd like to.

Thank you.

Neighborhoods, education, culture and civil rights.

That is my department, my committee.

Good morning.

I do want to welcome Deputy Mayor Wong, who was the interim director for the Department of Neighborhoods.

before getting called up to the mayor's office.

So welcome, Deputy Mayor and I want to thank Sarah Morningstar for being here as well and the rest of the Department of Neighborhood staff.

There's a lot of important work that happens in the Department of Neighborhood, the staff there serve as as liaisons to many of our other city departments, particularly when they are doing community engagement work.

And so it's an important role and an important way for us as a city to hear directly from neighbors about what they want to see or what issues that they're having, particularly with planning processes.

So I want to thank Department of Neighborhood staff for that work.

There are a couple of issues identified in the memo that we have.

There was some really important sort of groundbreaking work done at the department over the last year and a half or so that we heard in my last committee around the generational wealth building initiative.

We probably won't hear a whole lot about that today, but I do think it's important to know that that work is groundbreaking and it is leading us to understand better what we are doing as a city to support community wealth building, generational wealth building.

And I look forward to having a little bit more of a discussion about that.

So I will leave it there and look forward to hearing from our department and look forward to the central staff discussion.

Thank you.

Good morning, and thank you for having me this morning.

My name is Sarah Morningstar, and I am the acting director for the Department of Neighborhoods.

Before that, I have been the deputy director for about four years.

So the first thing I would like to say to kick us off is I am very, very proud of this department.

As Councilmember Morales stated, we are the eyes and ears of many things in community.

And because of that, we also are given the opportunity through many programs and projects to be in all corners of the city.

We're truly grassroots and have a multi-pronged approach to learning.

from our neighbors what they need, whether it's our community engagement coordinators, our strategic advisors working on MOUs with capital departments, or our longstanding community assets programs like P-PATCH and historic preservation and community grants, and to our newest work in recovery and reimagination and generational wealth.

I fundamentally believe, and we fundamentally believe, that the city learns by listening, and then we can act.

We have aspirational goals around centering race in all of our decision-making and supporting communities to forge their own solutions.

We've done this work at bringing people to the table, creating more tables and helping the city try to undo the years of historic harm and institutionalized racism that our communities face.

I'm proud of what we do and I'm here to talk to you about it today.

Grace, you have slide one.

Thank you, Patty, for moving the slides.

Thanks, Sarah.

Thanks, Sarah.

And I'm going to talk about the budget summary.

By the way, I'm Grace Daichiko.

I'm the Finance and Budget Manager in TUM.

And so let's talk about the budget summary.

As you can see, Don has general fund and other appropriations.

Other appropriations include the Sweden Beverage Tax Fund and the Payroll Expense Tax Fund.

But before we further delve into that, let's talk about the changes in the general fund.

And the 2023 proposed budget of the general fund is a reduction of 18%, as you can see, compared to the 2022 adopted.

It's a 39.9% reduction compared to the 2022 revised.

The 2024 proposed is just not much difference in terms of of the level of change.

At this point, I'd like to mention that the reduction in general fund is largely due to the expiration of one-time funding.

And the expiration of one-time funding, as you know, Dawn's budget came with a significant amount of one-time funding in the 2022 adopted budget.

And now let's move on to the other appropriation.

And as I said, this includes the student beverage tax fund and the payroll expense tax fund.

Overall, The budget of Don is a reduction of 15%, and the full-time equivalent, as you can see, is a reduction of 6%, which translates to 4.5 FTEs, and that is also attributable largely to the one-time funding that I mentioned.

And with that, without further ado, I will turn you over to Sarah to discuss more about the details of this budget.

Thank you, Grace.

I wouldn't be really anywhere without Grace.

I also wanted to note that, you know, I, in my intro named a number of programs, but really in regards to whether it's ongoing sun setting or temporary funding which we seem to have a plethora of it do and you know whether it's been the census or other capital work or, you know, the PACE program, there really isn't much of anything going on in the city that the DON doesn't know about, inform or actually participate in as a thought partner.

So I think you'll see that thread and I know I really appreciate Rico going first so that I could understand the process and think about some of the questions that would come up because I do think that there are threads as mentioned prior.

in these departments.

Back to the slides.

The first one is transferring the Duwamish River Opportunity Fund to the Office of Sustainability and the Environment.

We believe strongly that DROF aligns with the Green New Deal investments and the Jumpstart Payroll Expense Tax Fund.

We believe it will be able to be implemented more robustly and holistically alongside all the other investments.

and it will create a clearer path with fewer barriers, right?

Less confusion, more of a centralized approach.

So that's the first one that is just simply moving those granting dollars to OSC with the jumpstart tax.

The second item, I'm sorry, Councilor Osanic.

council chair Muscata.

Did you want me to wait now with the new process?

Is it slide by slide questions, number of questions?

Let's do, let's cover the full slide and then we'll pause before we go to the next slide.

All right.

Thanks for asking.

No problem.

Re-imagination and recovery.

We want to align the funding of two re-imagined and recovery staff positions with again, the jumpstart payroll expense tax and moving this funding to the payroll expense jumpstart tax is budget neutral for us.

So again, if we're talking about generational wealth and we're talking about re-imagination and recovering, and we're talking about undoing harm and creating sustainable investments in community and learning from community and overseeing the payroll expense tax board, makes sense to us that that's an appropriate use that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's number one.

So that's in the work of WSBLE, which was touched upon already slightly in the previous presentation.

This is part of our MOU with SDOT.

And we were told that we will no longer be leading that engagement.

And thus, we would be losing the dollar amount you see there, and that the MOA would be amended to reflect remaining positions, but not these two.

So these two strategic partnership positions would be reduced from our budget through the WSBLE process and the S.MOU.

Okay.

Are you done with this slide?

Yeah, I can be.

Okay.

Are there questions from folks?

Okay, I have a few questions actually.

And for central staff, if you're planning to chime in on these, please let us know if this is part of your issue identification discussion as well.

For the property lease funding, item number three, can you talk a little bit more about the proposed use of the funding?

Are there any unspent dollars since the program funding was never utilized?

And if so, where are these dollars going?

they were given to us as a pass-through, if you will, and it never materialized.

And so the monies had expired the previous two years, and now we're just officially in the third year of what would have been a three-year lease reducing these funds as well.

Okay, great.

And Council Member Hurdle?

Thank you.

I'm having a hard time understanding.

I just feel like there's maybe some context that I'm missing as it relates to the WSBLE session.

Just not understanding what is meant by the MOA has been terminated.

Who did that?

Sure.

Why?

It just really seems like there's been, for instance, in Delridge, a lot of really important partnerships developed.

I'm just concerned about shifting the positions to SDOT and maybe having that be a step backwards and really having to rebuild trust with the community that's already begun some of this work.

Um.

Former boss.

Current boss.

Deputy Mayor Wong.

Do you want you have your hand up?

Is that to take the answer or to ask a follow up question?

Sure, I can respond.

Thank you.

You know, you'd like to first, um, so the strategic partnerships as a program is a series of, um, always deal and has with various departments for various work to do community outreach components.

SDOT is the lead agency on all work related to Wisley and Sound Transit 3 for the city.

They made the decision that they wanted to keep some of the MOA intact for some of the work that they contract with Don for, but for the Wisbly portion, they are going to be not eliminating those positions, but my understanding is taking those positions and centralizing them in SDOT.

And so the work should still continue is my understanding.

It just wouldn't be contracted out through Don anymore.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I guess my question is really about the individuals doing the work.

Are they, are those people, you know, a lot of this planning work is about developing relationships with community, and so are the people who are currently doing this work moving from D.O.N. to SDOT as well?

I think that's still to be determined.

I don't think SDOT has articulated that plan yet.

I see deputy, thank you, Deputy Mayor Wong.

I didn't get the chance to welcome you as well.

Thanks for being here.

I see Deputy Director Panucci might have a comment on this.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I was just going to flag for the committee that there is an issue discussion that in Lish's memo, and so when we get to central staff's issue ID, Lish will provide a little bit more context on this discussion as well as the generational wealth item.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, what you see in front of you is just what we know right now today, which is that we got word from SDOT that they would be reducing our MOU.

The MOU in its entirety is not canceled, if you will, it's just reduced specific to this project.

I have a few questions as well related to this topic, and perhaps central staff, you plan to address this later, but apologies if you have already answered this in response to the question that was asked.

I just want to make sure I understand.

Sure.

Will this result in a layoff at Department of Neighborhoods?

Possibly, yes.

I mean, technically on paper, yes.

Okay, and what what type of work did these positions contribute to the wisely project and are are the proposed positions at S dot and OPCD using the jumpstart Green New Deal component of the funding.

I can answer the 1st part of that and I will defer to someone else.

For the second part, I'll let you know that the staff members at D.O.N. working on this project are, as Council Member Herbold said, extremely embedded in community.

They are working very much in concert with partners in all of those departments, right, OPCD and SDOT and so on.

And that's how we like to do business, right, as partners.

But we are informing quite a bit of the of the community engagement, the process, the outcomes, the, I mean, it's, without launching into a multi, you know, bulleted issue paper, when it's coming to WSBLE and especially in the CID and in, the south end of the city, our two staff members are the go to for community.

They are linking all the different pieces together.

They are centering race and flagging that every time we turn around.

And that's, that's what I know.

Okay, I see Lish and then Deputy Mayor Wong.

To answer the second part of your question, yes, all of the funding for the positions in SDOT would be through the Jump Start Green New Deal funding.

So they are adding 12 positions using the same funding as OPCD.

Deputy Mayor?

Yeah, and I think acting director Morningstar described it well, but one of the things she did mention that I wanted to reemphasize is that the community engagement work also has not been done alone.

She mentioned that they are coordinating really well, that that team, that Sound Transit team, outreach is one component of it, but they are all working well together.

So that's, I just want to emphasize that's not a stand alone work.

Correct.

Okay.

And Lish, did you have another follow up?

No, that was an old hand.

Okay.

And Deputy, excuse me.

Director Dingley, lots of Ds.

Lots of titles.

Director Dingley.

You were great.

I just wanted to provide a little bit more context around the MOA between SDOT and DON around the use of how they determine which projects to go towards.

So, and I think that this would be a great conversation with the SDOT team when they present later this week as well in terms of how do they choose the suite of projects that they contract with DON to do, and it's, you know, they would be the best suited to speak to how they do that overall prioritization, but they really, because the way the S.budgets is very project specific, they have to be very specific about the projects that they're sort of buying services from D.O.N. to do that outreach.

And so there are a myriad of projects that they consider in that process.

So I really do think that they'd be best suited to speak to the reasons behind the transition here.

And I think a large part of it is to probably keep the team all in one place so that there's not a disconnect.

But again, I do think that this would be a great thing to talk to as thought about later this week.

All right.

Thanks so much for flagging that.

Any additional comments on this slide?

Okay, let's move on.

Thanks so much.

The Food Equity Fund, which is funded by the Sweetened Beverage Tax, we are eliminating a grants and contracts position that we never funded, and that is to help balance the reductions in that separate pot of money.

And it's become clear that we can do the work without that existing stuff.

So it is an empty pocket that we are eliminating.

And lastly, we are wanting to add program expenses for the Indigenous Advisory Council, and the funding will cover administrative costs and Advisory Council member compensation to reduce barriers for participation.

I don't see any hands.

We can keep going.

Lastly, this is the removal of the one-time funding from the Equitable Communities Initiative.

These are multiple positions within DON that we knew from the onset or sunsetting at the end of the year, and we are removing them from our budget.

There is the ECI funding for generational wealth and 2.5 FTEs.

In early 2023 the team in partnership with our consultants and representatives will deliver preliminary recommendations for how this city can systematically or systemically address the racial wealth divide.

and has been in great partnership with the BIPOC community to do that work.

It will also remove from the base the one-time funding of the Food Equity Fund project manager that came with the additional grant dollars.

And with the loss of that fund from the ECI funding, we will lose a staff member and approximately 12 fewer grants.

Thank you colleagues.

I will call on Councilmember Morales and then Councilmember Nelson.

Please go ahead Councilmember Morales.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sarah, for laying that out.

This is part of the challenge with one-time funding and hiring folks and creating an unsustainable situation.

I do want to say that for those who aren't on my committee, we heard a really important presentation from the generational wealth building team.

You know this year, the team inventoried city programs and surveyed city workers to ask them what they were doing around generational wealth building, many folks didn't realize that what they were doing contributed to that goal, but we're excited when they realized the connections there, the team researched what other cities have been doing to close the racial wealth gap.

They built an IDT to assess citywide activity that's contributing to wealth building.

These are all preliminary research steps to determine what the right path is for the city going forward, there is no work program yet.

And so we can't see the results of that work if we don't have work going on to get implemented yet.

So I'm a little bit concerned that the proposed budget is holding funding in finance general that could significantly reduce the work that's going on and that could be continuing.

I think the department's been really clear about the potential impacts of this work.

And like I said earlier, you know, as a city, we're already doing a lot of this work, but we need to focus our efforts.

We need to get clear on what our goals are for increasing economic mobility for folks who have historically been left behind and set a plan for how we translate all the research that has been done over the last 18 months or so.

how we translate that into action to really benefit our neighbors.

So I think we have a real opportunity here for making some structural change that could really build community wealth and STEM displacement.

And I am hopeful that through this process, we can figure out how to make sure that that work continues.

And I'm concerned that we are laying off folks.

I'd be interested to hear if there was an understanding with those, staff members that this was, you know, a temporary position, but I think that it's important that we continue this work and that we support the ultimate goal, which is to close the racial wealth gap in the city by making these structural changes.

It looks like Council Member Morales, that Director Dingley may have a response to that.

I also, of course, encourage central staff to opine if you have any thoughts about that.

Director Dingley, please go ahead.

Thank you, I'll have to defer to acting director Morningstar on the personnel side of that question and that we may actually decide we want to follow up with offline.

So but I'll defer to her on that question.

I did want to just highlight that there are on the recovery, the reimagination recovery item that was, I think, item two that acting director Morningstar raised.

That staff would be working toward this goal that you're identifying Council Member Morales, and, and then the funding and finance general, they're available to implement some of that work so Deputy Mayor Wong is also on the line who is very familiar with this work and maybe could speak a little bit more to that Deputy Mayor.

Sure, that's actually why I had my hand up, so I'll take that down too.

And I'm sorry, I didn't even say good morning to all the council members.

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you for having us here.

In terms of, I think it was Council Member Morales, you hit it up actually really well, which is that this work is really important, and this work is vital to our communities.

and recognizing what do we do as a city in order to address past economic harms and how do we fix that.

The work that's going on right now is diving right into that question.

It's assessing resources, it's figuring out what's out there, what are some best practices.

I think there is a substantial question though on what the recommendation will be that comes out of that work.

And that's why the one, I believe it's a little bit short of $2 million, $1.85 million is reserved in finance general, because it's not clear what form that work should take.

The mayor strongly believes that there should be kind of an economic justice programming the city does.

but where that lives and what it looks like is still to be determined based on the outcome of this work.

So I just wanted to flag that in response as well.

Follow up on that anyone?

Okay, great.

Council Member Nelson, please go ahead.

Well, where that work lives and what it looks like, Deputy Mayor, might be in the Office of Economic Development.

This is sort of, I see that this is a perfect opportunity for interdepartmental collaboration around mission.

We'll be discussing the three FTEs that support economic revitalization and workforce development strategies in OED, and to me, That is where actual getting money out the door into the hands of people who have been underrepresented or who have lacked access to precisely these funds for building generational wealth could happen.

I think that it's good that these are both side-by-side in today's presentations because I think that there's a lot of complementary work that's being done here.

Thank you, councilmember.

Okay, I'm not seeing any additional hands or comments on that.

Okay, let's keep going.

Thank you.

This is just the continued one time funding removal.

It's one time based funding for the CID community planning.

It was community funding to implement strategies.

of the CID neighborhood plan, which will be contracted this year, but administered by the community.

It just says remove from base one-time funding the GBI $200,000.

In January of 23, DON will provide the council with a preliminary report on the GBI strategies to support the community members impacted by the city's affordability crisis.

Lastly, we remove the base one-time funding for redistricting, which is $275K.

The Redistricting Commission will be approving the final plan on November the 15th, and the commissioner's terms will conclude.

So it's pretty straightforward.

Again, we've been doing census and redistricting work at DON, and those commissioners will end their terms at the end of the year.

Okay, thanks.

I'm not seeing any questions on this one.

All right, we got question time now.

Council Member Nelson, please go ahead.

Back on the slide about the CID outreach work, I'd be interested in knowing some of the input that you've received.

I have been, I asked our central staff person in charge of transportation, Calvin Chow, about just basic infrastructure needs there.

So, Will that live anywhere with this reduction in this particular position?

Just a quick reminder as well for council members, if you want any specific slide up, if you don't mind just saying the slide number, that'd be super helpful.

And sorry to interrupt you, Deputy Acting Director Morningstar.

I'm also the deputy director, so it's fine.

Everybody gets deputy today, really.

I have both jobs right now, so you're good.

You're good with either one.

So thank you, Council Member Nelson.

This, Patty, if you want to, I think it was actually the last slide.

It is specific to that outreach work, and no, not to my knowledge.

This is just about the elimination from our budget, specific to DON's role in that work.

And I want to make sure Deputy Mayor and then we'll go to Lish.

Sorry to jump in there I just said, we are padding one more slide I think next, next slide.

The one thing to clarify on this.

Sorry, I keep going on the slides.

This is pass-through funding to the community that is, I believe for, this is the third phase of a strategic planning process and the city has funded the prior phases.

So this is an outreach in the traditional sense where we're going and gathering information.

This is helping the community set their own strategic vision and they produce a report that is available at the end of each of these phases.

That money has not all been used this year.

So the money that is set and I think it's $800,000.

Item seven is actually going to be contracted and that work will continue next year so that the work is continuing in the community, but it hasn't been where they're at phase wise doesn't sync up with the funding right.

Okay, and please go ahead.

Yeah, I just wanted to add that this money was added by the Council and last year's budget and is intended to be contracted with community based organizations to do the work.

So it's not work that the city is leading.

It's work that the community is leading.

An important reminder.

Thank you so much.

I follow up on that.

Okay, Council Member Nelson.

Oh, yes, please go ahead.

Sorry, I was trying to get to my hand in time, but I had pop ups in the way.

I just want to clarify or be additive to what Deputy Mayor Wong said.

So these these funds will carry over into 2023 for that work to be completed.

I just want to make sure that that was really clear for everybody listening.

Thank you.

Council Member Strauss.

That might be an old hand.

Council member.

Oh, there we go.

Hi there.

Strangely, your audio is not working.

I see you off mute.

I love technology.

Thank you, Chair.

I was just noticing that Seattle Channel still has the camera focused on my chair, even though I have returned to the office.

I was wondering if we could pan out to the full council chambers.

Sorry, Chair.

That's okay.

The good news for our viewing public is that they focus on just the person speaking, so no worries about an empty chair out there.

We know you're here and have been represented.

Awesome.

There, now we can see the clerks.

I appreciate you.

Having previously had Department of Neighborhoods in my committee, I miss you all and it seems like you're still doing really great work.

Thank you for everything you're doing.

Great to see you, Sarah.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Anything else, colleagues, any additional questions?

OK, folks felt like their questions were answered.

All right.

So we want to thank the department for their presentation.

I'll echo all of the council members compliments.

We thank you for being directly in community and as Lish noted, really being the steward of community led initiatives and and vision.

So, of course, you're welcome to stay, you're welcome to go off camera, and you're welcome to also go on with your day if you like.

We're going to welcome to the stage, if you will, our central staff to walk us through their presentation.

And again, colleagues, if you have questions that you'd like to ask during the presentation, you're welcome to.

If you would like to comment on any of the issues that are identified, you're welcome to.

and want to just thank again the folks from Department of Neighborhoods for all of your work, especially in these really tough times right now.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, everybody.

Appreciate it, everyone.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Welcome to the stage, central staff.

Thank you.

So we've identified three issues for the department with the Department of Neighborhoods budget.

We've talked a lot already about this first one, the generational wealth work.

There will be two FTE continuing to do the work in the department funded through the jumpstart economic revitalization funding.

But two and a half FTE will be removed from the department budget at the end of the year.

And there are $1.85 million, as was mentioned, placed in finance general to continue similar work somewhere in the city.

And I guess the question for you is whether you want to move some or all of those funds to DLN so that the team that is currently doing the work can continue to do it.

Thanks so much, Lish.

Thanks for identifying this issue.

Colleagues, I will note that This is an area that I continue to want to look into.

We are having some good conversations with central staff.

This is definitely important work that we should move forward, and I want to flag my interest in directly working to appropriate dollars in I know councilmember Herbold began to talk about some of those relationships and I want to underscore the importance of that work as well.

specific priorities within Jump Start and other city funds is that we need to spend dollars to move programs forward and not sit on funding, having it sit in coffers when there's so much need out in community right now.

And at the same time, we know that this work will take time and continuous work with community to develop solutions in partnership with community-based organizations takes time and resources, takes time to secure funding to support the work and staying the path working in partnership will allow for us to create a more comprehensive approach, and I really think that that will help us close the racial wealth gap in our city.

I look forward to having conversations with central staff and with all of you about moving these dollars to DON and helping to enable the generational wealth work to continue.

I don't believe that there's any reason that we should not directly appropriate these funds directly to DON, but of course, I look forward to hearing more from my colleagues and central staff on that approach.

Councilmember Herbold, I believe I saw your hand earlier, and I know you were commenting on this as well.

Any additional comments from you, Councilmember Herbold?

I don't see any additional hands.

the funding?

Not any additional thoughts.

I mean, this funding is unprogrammed as it currently stands.

Okay, great.

And Director Panucci, Deputy Director Panucci, everybody gets the deputy in their title except for the actual deputy, apologies for that.

No problem, Chair Muscata.

You're welcome to just call me Allie if that helps avoid all the use of deputies.

I just wanted to offer that, well, as noted in Lish's memo, the executive has indicated that they want to see the results of the work before determining how the city should best address equitable economic opportunity.

I might suggest that by reducing the number of FTEs and parking some funds in finance general, there has been some decisions already that the Department of Neighborhoods is not the location.

And if council has an interest in waiting for those resolutions, I guess the question, one question is, do you want the work to continue in the meantime until that decision is before you and more, you know, a specific recommendation?

And that would suggest that moving the funds from Finance General into the Department of Neighborhoods.

for the ongoing work now and maybe revisiting the question later when more information is available would be one option.

If you agree that Department of Neighborhoods may not be the appropriate home ongoing, it may make sense to start to decrease their funding for this work now.

So I would just, I guess, offer that in the spirit of they have made some decisions already as indicated by the change in FTEs and moving some funds to financial.

Thank you for that.

Council Member Nelson, please go ahead.

Well, I don't know what those decisions have made necessarily, but when we're talking about closing the racial wealth gap, that means making direct investments into the people that have suffered from inequities.

And so we will be hearing about some of those programs that are in OED and This funding looks like on page three of the central staff memo, does a lot of capacity building.

For example, F says developed an RFP process due to be released in the fall of 2022 to support community based organizations in the development of their own approaches to financial literacy.

And although CBO capacity building is important, again, What is the end goal?

And if it's really to reduce inequities, maybe it's working together with the department that is getting money out directly into community where that work could be done perhaps most efficiently or directly.

And Lish, I see your hand up.

Yeah.

So the work DLN is doing is work that's in collaboration with multiple city departments.

HSD, for example, does a lot of this work, as well as OED.

And so just want to point out that this is really a cross-departmental effort with multiple agencies.

And what they're finding is Departments like SPU and City Light also have a role in this effort and in closing the racial wealth gap.

And then I'd also, you know, it wasn't a focus of this year's budget, but Department of Neighborhoods has a long and deep history of funding community-based organizations and community-based projects, particularly through the Neighborhood Matching Fund, but they really A core function of the department is grant making and supporting community-based efforts and community-initiated efforts.

Just to follow up, if I may.

Yeah, that sounds fine.

Yeah, you raise a good point, Lish, and that is that we need to take a holistic look at all the programs that are doing this work.

And we saw yesterday that HSD does have the greatest increase in its funding this year.

I would opine that at least for me, I need to look at what else is going on in different departments before saying that keeping it in DON is necessarily the best way to reach our policy goals.

Thank you.

I did see Director Dingley come on screen.

Director Dingley, did you have something to contribute before we move to Council Member Morales?

Just one quick clarification, thank you, Budget Chair.

It was in line with Deputy Director Panucci's comments around decisions that have been made.

And just wanna note from the executive's perspective, we recognize sort of all of the complexity that's been raised in this conversation.

And so it wasn't necessarily that the decision was not DON, it was that we're not sure that it's only DON, right?

We're not sure what the sort of suite of things might look like.

And so we didn't want to prematurely put funds in one place before we had time to assess what that overall plan would look like and then have the conversation.

You know, form really does follow function.

And so figuring out what those functions are and then who are the best suited in the city to take them on.

It is not meant, I don't want this to be read as a signal that we would preclude Dawn from doing the work.

They certainly could be the right home, but I just wanted to clarify that one piece.

Okay, thanks.

Councilmember Morales.

Thank you.

Thanks for this discussion I think it's important that there's clearly support for implementing something.

And I will just say that, you know, through my committee will be having regular updates on the work that's happening.

getting a better understanding of what is shaping up to be, you know, the right next step.

But I do think it's important that we we make the commitment to allow the staff that is left to continue doing the work.

And, you know, as this slide is showing, you know, There is a goal, I think, or at least a vision of creating this sort of one-stop shop for wealth building programs.

We don't know quite what that looks like yet, but making it easy for community members to understand what the suite of services are that the city offers and what the impact of that work could be is gonna be important.

So these discussions will continue in my committee and we will keep folks updated.

Okay, thank you so much.

I think we're ready to move on.

So the second issue is also something we've discussed a lot this morning.

And so I don't need to add a lot more to that what's been said.

there is a funding cut to D.O.N. related to the West Bleak Project.

And the question for you is whether or not you want to retain some D.O.N. presence on the team that is doing outreach and engagement for the West Bleak Project.

Okay, any thoughts about that?

Council Member Hermel, I know you had your hand up earlier.

Please go ahead.

Thank you.

I was just wondering whether or not Vish had any additional insight as to whether or not the individuals who are currently doing that work, working for D.O.N., whether or not they, the people themselves, if we approve this proposal, will move over to SDOT, or whether or not the people doing the work will change.

What I have heard is what you heard this morning, which is that that decision hasn't been made.

It would be made by SDOT because the positions are in SDOT and they would be the hiring authority.

So whether or not they chose to hire the existing staff that are doing this outreach work would be up to SDOT.

that would be have to be like a whole.

You're saying there'd be a new hiring process to fill those?

Yes, they would be adding 12 new positions, three of them for outreach engagement.

Thank you.

Yeah, I just want to express that I do have concerns about making that change midstream and potentially disrupting the deep relationships that current planning staff have been doing to support this work.

Thanks.

Yeah, I agree with that.

I'll save my comments on that one for just a second.

I want to hear from Council President Gonzalez.

I'm really moving it forward.

Nobody's getting tired.

It's okay.

Just call me Deborah.

It's okay, girl.

It's okay.

I got you.

Don't even worry about it.

Okay, so, Blish, again, if I am not sophisticated in my question, please feel free to correct me.

So, just so we're tracking here, to follow up with what Councilmember Herbold was saying, D.O.N. wants to not have this position for the outreach for the West Seattle-Badler Link Extension.

OPCD wants another FTE for outreach and engagement.

SDOT wants 12 positions, nine which will go to engineering and permitting, three which will go to outreach and engagement.

So some of this is duplicate and some of it I think, and I'm just gonna throw this out there, you guys all know me, I think a lot of this is because of what there's been a lack of, this is how it's been characterized, some of the lack of engagement in community outreach in the China International District in regards to light rail.

So I guess my concern is as is looking at the budget and following the lead of the chair and how we do this is that I don't I don't want to find ourselves just throwing positions at a problem that we should have handled at the at the front end, which was outreach and engagement.

which is fine.

I mean, you never come out of the gate perfect.

This is our process is to fix it.

So even though you provided these options, you know, continuing the funding or no change, I want to kind of follow up with what Council Member Herbold was saying.

And that if DLN is not in the game anymore for West Seattle Ballard light rail extension, and we're focusing on the international district and light rail and community outreach, that And I think somebody else said this too.

It could have been Director Dingley.

I don't know where all this outreach and engagement is going to all land.

I think it should all be together.

But my concern is, does it all belong in SDOT and then one person hanging out in OPCD?

Are there any other options that we can look at?

where we're not duplicating, where we have the same skills or expertise to do the outreach and engagement, because that seems to be what they're getting at here.

And maybe Director Dingley can add a little bit more here about what's going on in these positions.

And as you all know, all this money, all this funding would come out of the jumpstart.

And again, as I said before, I keep asking myself, is this Does this fit the intent and the spirit of the codification of the jumpstart tax?

And I appreciate that you keep asking that Council President.

Lish, please go ahead.

So those are great questions as were your previous questions.

I would say that the proposal in the mayor's proposed budget is to centralize this work.

12 out of the 13 positions we're talking about would be within SDOT, including three outreach and engagement positions.

The one position in OPCD is really focused on land use and urban design, which is not SDOT's area of expertise.

So if you do want a centralized approach, then the mayor's proposed budget does that.

What you lose by doing that is some of the institutional knowledge, some of the relationships, and some of the outside knowledge that DON has as a department that touches multiple projects and multiple agencies.

and provides sort of links between different projects and different agencies.

For example, SDOT would be helping CLSA Light with routing of wires through the Chinatown International District at the same time that they're talking with Sound Transit and SDOT on the light rail station planning efforts.

So they tend to have a broader view and are as, let's say, wedded to the sort of position of a particular project or a particular issue area, but can provide a broader sense and context within the city family.

Okay, thanks so much, Lish.

I'm just going to add to I think the council president's question or comment as well about the appropriate use of jumpstart, recognizing that there's some subjectivity in some of the categories.

But I think my concern continues to remain about something that's very concrete, at least in the current statute, and that's regarding supplementation.

I think that in this case again we're seeing supplementation of general fund with jumpstart.

I think the question is really about.

we're going to continue to raise that issue and want to make sure that folks.

Get a chance to weigh in with us about across departments or within one department.

Director, do you have something to clarify?

Yeah, thank you.

I just hearing the conversation, I think what I'm hearing is I think it would be helpful if we could provide for you sort of a look at the transition plan for this work.

between what's currently happening at DON and the sort of planned work ahead in SDOT.

And so I'd be happy to take that back if folks think that that would be helpful to inform your deliberations.

So I can work with SDOT and DON teams to get that detail.

Thanks so much.

Yes, any additional materials are always helpful.

Okay.

With that, I am very pleased to announce we are still on time, and I will move it on over to Councilmember Morales if you have any closing comments for the section related to Department of Neighborhoods.

Of course, you're welcome to echo those, but I'll just express my appreciation for the team from Department of Neighborhoods for this walkthrough today and to central staff as well.

Councilmember Morales, anything else from you?

I just want to thank Lish.

We've been having a lot of conversations about some of these issues.

Appreciate Dr. Dingley offering some context to these decisions as well, and look forward to the continued conversations that we'll be having.

I just realized.

Thank you, Council Member.

Yes, I just realized.

Well, I had comments on number one and two and not number three.

I shortchanged us on item number three, so I apologize for that.

preemptive closing comments.

Thank you and uh Lish, thanks for keeping us on track.

Let's do item number three here and then we'll move on.

Alright.

So, um this is a program that um has been staffed by the Department of Neighborhoods and um primarily.

Um your voice, your choice has used a participatory budgeting approach to and parks improvements.

And just wanted to highlight because it's been a program that council members in the past have been very interested in, that the proposed budget will sunset this program.

There are about nine Your Voice, Your Choice projects that were identified and chosen by the community in 2019 that still need to be completed and will be completed over the next two years.

But after that, there will no longer be funding for Your Voice, Your Choice.

My memo talks about the alternatives that Parks and SDOT have identified to the Your Voice, Your Choice program, but felt like it has been a subject of conversation for a number of years.

And I just wanted to identify that as something that will be going away.

Thank you.

Sorry about that, Lish.

Very important and full summary on page 5 of the memo.

Any additional comments?

Okay.

Well, we look forward to digging into that issue with you on central staff, and thank you again, Council Member Morales, for your summary comments.

Thanks again to the Department of Neighborhoods for the walkthrough today with central staff.

All right, let's go ahead Council, excuse me, Madam Clerk, if you could read item number three into the record.

Agenda item three, Office of Economic Development for briefing and discussion.

Well, welcome to our Office of Economic Development, folks.

We are going to hear from Councilmember Nelson momentarily, who has the committee that has purview over Office of Economic Development.

I want to welcome Marca McIntyre, the Director of Office of Economic Development, along with Joe Riggs.

from OED.

And then for the staff, central staff presenters, we'll have Jasmine Maraja, Yolanda Ho, and Ali Panucci from central staff.

Council Member Nelson, would you like to welcome the panel and the OED topic?

Yes.

I'm sort of not prepared for this introductory statement, but I will just note that that OED has gone through a tremendous period of change and challenge.

They were already extremely understaffed before the well before and leading into the pandemic.

And then they became staff members became grant application processors and got a lot of the COVID relief dollars out into community.

So now it's time that they can now focus on their core mission, which is, I will read from, well, their basic website.

Mission is to build an inclusive economy where everyone in Seattle can fully participate.

And the role is to drive economic growth through strategies and investments that open doors and remove barriers to wealth building opportunities, especially for communities that have system that have systemically been excluded from such opportunities.

So we've spent this morning talking about anti displacement strategies in OPCD we just heard a lot about building generational wealth work that has been done in dawn and this is where an economic in the Office of Economic Development where the rubber really meets the road.

I keep talking about direct investments and this year.

The department has launched the capital access program, which gets actual loans into the hands of people who would normally, because of discriminatory practices, be unable to access those business loans.

We've talked about storefront restoration, which not only helps very small businesses, but it also helps the neighborhood and the owners of those empty spaces around our city.

storefront restoration, and there will be other programs that are being launched this year to actually help small business owners own their commercial places.

And that will keep workers in jobs, and it'll keep those businesses in communities.

So basically, in my mind, I've said this before, OED is where we realize our equity goals and also our economic revitalization policy goals.

So that's all to say that I hope that we, I am appreciative of all the work that OED has done in the past and just in the past few months since Director McIntyre assumed his position on February 28th.

I'll have more comments to make as we go forward and have my own questions about some of these programs and issue options, but I just wanted to set the stage and say that this is really important work and OED is unique as a department in being the place where money actually goes out into communities and into the hands of people that need it.

Thanks.

Very well said.

Thank you, Councilmember Nelson.

And I hope that folks liked the format from the previous section.

If you feel like you have questions throughout, of course, continue to raise your hand.

We'll make sure to recognize folks and that is true for central staff as well.

If you have anything that you'd like to add for clarification or context.

Welcome, Director McIntyre.

Excited to walk through this presentation with you.

Thanks, Councilmember Mosqueda and Almost good afternoon, I guess good afternoon right now to Council and everyone watching.

I'm very excited to be here.

My name is Mark McIntyre.

I'm the Director of the Office of Economic Development, presenting our 2023-2024 proposed budget.

As Council Member Nelson just said, you know, OED has been going through a lot of change.

We've mentioned this to Council before.

There's been five directors in five years.

We've had significant staff turnover.

And yet through it all, I think the team has been putting together some really good work.

And that is true of this budget as well.

We've had changes in finance managers, we've had changes with our central staff.

So I first want to start by just saying thank you to the OED team for helping construct this budget as we've been kind of getting to know each other and trying to figure out how best to serve the community and drive inclusive growth.

I want to thank, in particular, Miguel over at CBO for helping me get onboarded with the budget process and then helping be a partner in thinking through this proposal.

And then finally, thanking Jasmine and Yolanda over at central staff for their partnership and kind of figuring out how we're going to do this presentation.

So appreciate all that.

Next slide please.

As Councilmember Nelson mentioned, we're really trying to focus on how OED can open doors and break down barriers to economic growth opportunities.

And similar to what we heard from OPCD and Department of Neighborhoods earlier, really thinking about those wealth generation opportunities.

I'm thinking about how we can do that for individuals, for businesses and for communities.

As I've gotten on board here, we've been thinking a lot about the payroll expense tax revenue and council has asked us to design a plan and a strategy for that money.

And so what we've done is we've set up a future of Seattle's economy projects.

We're first in the first phase, we went out and talked to a lot of different organizations that are either directly involved in economic development or have it as like a core part of their mission or function, and tried to Venn diagram all of their priorities to really figure out where OED should be focusing our efforts.

And that's where we came up with these five pillars.

So we've got workforce and talent, supporting small businesses, particularly women and minority owned small businesses, unlocking wealth creation opportunities through asset ownership, neighborhood and place-based investments, and then growing businesses and key industries.

So these five pillars really do anchor what OED is going to be talking about with our budget this year, but also as we're organizing ourselves for future years.

And then what we've kind of found from our partners are going to be these common priorities across a whole variety of different organizations, from kind of micro-neighborhood organizations all the way up to regional organizations.

Next slide, please.

So you'll see that our budget is organized in a way that mirrors that.

These are the kind of five areas that we've outlined for our budget.

Again, we think that this is really going to drive not only kind of how we get out of the pandemic and some of the pain that we're currently feeling, but also trying to set us on a trajectory for long-term economic revitalization with an acknowledgement that we've got to do that with an eye towards communities that have not had the same level of investment year over year.

And so as we think about any of these five different kind of pillar areas, making sure that we're having equity being a core component of it, and thinking about how we're creating strategies that are really addressing some of those disparities that have existed for a long time and are gonna continue to exist if we don't make smart investments right now.

I'll mention a couple things right now.

As we're proposing this budget, and as I sit here in this director's chair, I wanna make sure that the city isn't the only money on the table.

So as we're thinking about investments, we're also looking at leveraging partnerships with other potential funding sources, whether that be public, private, or philanthropic.

I think that there, and this has been talked about a couple of times in regards to the payroll expense tax dollars of the need far outstripping the dollars available.

And that's true with OED's proposal as well.

And so what we need to be thoughtful about is as we're proposing strategies or programs, not just having it be the city money going in, but how is that then going to create a multiplier effect with money from the state or from the county or from the feds or from other public or other philanthropic or private investors.

I think that's going to be core to us actually being able to serve the populations that we want to serve, as well as giving us some more flexibility in how we're serving those, depending on the color of money coming from those different funding sources.

We'll talk about that a little bit later with some of the specific programs.

But as I've said before, you know, I think we make progress through partnership.

And that's true with our kind of budget suggestions here as well.

So with that, let's get into our proposal and go to the next slide.

I'll mention here that a couple things.

One, we were instructed to add all of our new ads on here.

So there's a lot to go through versus the previous two programs or two departments.

We've got 18 different things.

I'm going to hit the highlights just in respect of time.

but happy to answer questions along the way.

If I'm missing something or skip over something on a slide, it's not because it's not important.

I just need to kind of get through here.

And second, because we've had such an influx in both federal funding and one-time dollars over the past couple of years, it's kind of hard to draw apples to apples comparisons with our current budget proposal, which is adding in the payroll expense tax dollars versus some of those other budgets.

So as you look at like the chain, the percentage changes, we did our best to try to make those make sense, but please do let us know if you have questions, because it's, again, it's really hard to kind of draw a complete through line, even though programmatically there's a clear through line, the budget, where the budget is coming from sometimes gets a little messy, but we'd be happy to walk you through that.

The biggest thing I'd like to note here on this slide is the change in FTEs.

You'll notice on that third bucket there from 40 full-time FTEs to 55 full-time FTEs, which is a pretty large jump.

Part of that is due to the fact that over the years, as we've been dealing with those federal dollars and one time funds, we've had a lot of temporary staff helping us with some of the grant administration and kind of back end infrastructure to make sure we're getting those dollars out onto the street.

So, a lot of this is an acknowledgement of needing to build out that back end infrastructure in a more permanent fashion so that we really have a team behind the subject matter experts.

who are making sure that we're getting that money processed as quickly as possible and into the hands of those businesses, workers, and others to actually do the work that we're looking to do.

I'll get into that a little bit later, but did want to call out here.

Next slide, please.

Our biggest play with this budget proposal is around commercial affordability.

And this is an acknowledgement both of how expensive it's gotten to run a business in Seattle but also to the fact that we've got to have a great business districts all across the city to have the vibrancy that we want and the kind of neighborhood, neighborhood self-economic self-determination that we'd like to see happen.

And so really we're trying to think of commercial affordability as a continuum.

So how are we getting businesses, how are we getting them in the door?

How are we getting them to upgrade the door?

And how are we getting them hopefully to own the door?

of their business now and in the future.

And so we have a suite of programs that are kind of all housed in this commercial affordability bucket to do that.

The nice thing here is that as we're making these investments, we can move a lot of projects through here.

So this includes our Seattle Restored Program, which is helping get businesses into vacant storefronts, our Tenant Improvement Fund, which just again, to kind of highlight the need, recently closed our latest round of applications.

We're going to be able to do somewhere between 20 and 30 projects, and we got over 500 applications.

So clearly huge demand for that program, and we're just trying to calibrate how much we can actually process on our end versus the amount of dollars that we can move through there.

And then the final program that's in here is our not yet released but soon to be released Community Business Ownership Fund, which is a really cool model.

that again, uses one-to-one matching with an outside funder in a clever way that allows us to have the outside funder take on some of the risk and some of the debt while the city provides grants to make the actual project go.

Next slide, please.

You've heard me say it before, and I'll say it a lot because it's so true.

If you surveyed businesses before the pandemic, during the pandemic, after the pandemic, number one, cause of concern is access to capital.

And Council Member Nelson said this earlier, but there's also just been a historic legacy of locking certain populations out of access to capital.

And so this capital access program that we launched earlier this year is a really cool way of leveraging the state's flex fund, making that capital actually cheaper, and making sure that we're targeting populations that have been historically locked out of those opportunities.

So this is us, again, trying to continue what started out as a successful program.

Again, you'll notice here that it looks like a significant decline in the actual number of budgeted number for this program.

But our expectation is that we're not going to spend all the money that we've currently allocated for this year.

And some of that will be spent in the next year.

And so it will turn out to be about $5 million for this year and $5 million for next year for this particular program.

Next slide, please.

In workforce development, we have so much going on and a lot of this is happening at a high level.

I wanna thank Council Member Morales for putting that proviso into our exploration of how to spend the payroll expense tax dollars to really look at workforce development and think about a citywide strategic plan.

We have a lot of different departments spending money on workforce related issues.

We do not have a citywide strategy for those investments.

And we need to really have a thought towards what are the outcomes we're trying to drive Who's really responsible for kind of making sure that we're making smart, smart investments and how are we kind of monitoring and measuring the progress along the way, as we do that so we're in the middle of developing that workforce strategic plan.

And from that is going to flow future investments, not just from our department but ideally from a variety of different departments about how we do workforce at the city.

This workforce development realignment is recognizing that that there are things that we're we're spending general fund dollars on that as we reconsider how we're going to be spending them with payroll expense tax dollars.

We want to make sure that we're thoughtful about how we do that within the context of the strategic plan.

Similarly, as I've said before, workforce development is a team sport and we need to be a better regional partner.

And so we want to make an investment.

in the Workforce Development Council.

You see that in line item number four.

That's the first time in a long time that the city is gonna be making a flexible investment in the WDC.

Part of the reason we have such a fragmented regional workforce system is because the city over the years divested from the WDC.

We need to make sure that that is the backbone organization for the entire region.

And so one, we need to show up with our investments.

Two, we need to show up with leadership and really kind of working with them as a true partner.

And then line item number five is Seattle Job Center, which is a mayor's priority.

And again, making sure that Seattle Job Center is adding value in the context of the regional workforce system and the citywide workforce development strategic plan.

So all of these are of a piece, but they're all waiting for kind of some more input from the strategic plan about where do we really wanna go as a city and how do we make those investments?

Next slide, please.

Let's, let's pause here for a second.

I just want to make sure that if folks have questions as we go that they're getting the chance to raise their hand.

Okay, I do have a few questions about some of these investments.

Obviously, the jumpstart payroll expense tax was intended on the economic resilience section, really focused heavily on workforce development, just transition work, our partnership training opportunities and supporting our smallest businesses.

So I think there's a lot of synergy with some of the priorities from The department and just wanted to ask a few questions here.

For example, on this slide were some of these areas previously invested in with general fund and now it's being funded with jumpstart.

Yes, that's that's what's kind of rolled up in light item number three were some things that were previously general funded.

And now we're moving them over to payroll expense tax, though they're going to be.

Changing slightly because of again, following the strategic plan.

OK.

And I think that for the economic resilience section, as folks will remember, last year, the charge to the previous mayor was to come up with an economic resilience blueprint, if you will.

Much of that work has been fallen to this administration.

And I want to thank Director McIntyre for their work, the department's work in trying to make up for some lost time in finalizing that blueprint for the economic resilience section of Jumpstart.

That is to be informed by community partners, including labor and business folks, as well as community.

So there's still some work to come.

And I just want to remind us last year, we we offered a lot of flexibility in the use of Jumpstart for one time use because that blueprint had not yet been fully formalized.

I think here again, because the the blueprint for application of the jumpstart economic resilience section specifically is still in development.

There's a great work in progress that the department is currently working on.

There is still, I think, a question for the council about whether or not this aligns with the jumpstart spend plan as codified in statute and also given where we're at with the implementation of the economic resilience plan, if it's something that sounds like it's good and could possibly align, but we need further details for the plan yet to come, there is perhaps a question about short-term application or one-time spending on some of these areas where we might see a lot of overlap.

I'm seeing the director nod, just want to flag there might be a hybrid of options here, but that like other sections of Jumpstart, economic resilience funding is as well intended to be additive.

and to the degree that we see anything that could have resulted in a cut in existing work, that would be problematic.

We would want to make sure that the higher than anticipated revenue was going in to prevent any cuts.

So we'll be going through and looking at some of these areas to see how they align with the existing directive in the spend plan and also the use of jumpstart supplanting for general fund if if that is appropriate under the guidance of let's not have any cuts or austerity this year.

Specific to item number five here, I just wanted to ask a question about The MLK Labor's job portal, I don't think I'm using the right term, but the Martin Luther King County Labor Council, our central labor council of the AFL-CIO in King County, has a job training site, an online job hall, if you will, that they've funded in part with city funds in the past.

Do you know if any work has been done with MLK Labor on this concept of the Seattle Job Center as outlined in number five?

Yeah, so as you mentioned, city funds have been have been working with MLK Labor on that online job job hall, and we still will have some funds that will carry over into next year to continue that work.

And then as we're exploring again what the what the value add is going to be for the Seattle Job Center, we're talking to lots of stakeholders and actually Council Member Esqueda, I appreciate this, because I skipped over a whole chunk of my notes to explain that as we have those five pillars from the Future of Seattle's Economy project, right now we have work groups in each of those five areas helping design community-informed investment agendas for future OED budget proposals.

So one of which is that Workforce Development and Talents work group.

And they have two deliverables.

One is the strategic plan that I mentioned, and the other is recommendations on spending payroll expense tax dollars.

And MLK Labor and a couple other labor organizations are sitting in as work group participants.

So they're helping inform kind of those overarching pieces of which the Seattle Job Center will be an underlying component.

So to Council Member Mosqueda's point, there's a lot kind of cooking right now.

There's a lot on the stove, many different pots.

that we're trying to manage.

But overall, we need to flow from kind of our strategic goals and the outcomes we're trying to drive and then the programs that hang under and making sure that those actually add to those outcomes and they're not kind of frivolous or rogue or on the side of them.

Yeah, thanks.

Thanks for that additional context.

I'm glad you were able to get that in.

I think that the question that I still have about the job center is how is this different?

Are we replacing what the city had funded with MLK labor?

Are we creating a parallel structure here?

Because the city funding, I'm assuming, will not be able to, you know, scarce resources.

So are we doing this instead of MLK labor hall?

No, it's not a direct one for one replacement for anything really we need to better understand the landscape and where the city can actually provide some value so it could be.

An online resource, it could be a physical resource like we're still exploring what exactly that looks like that's going to add the most value to the overall system.

we're going to continue to do that.

Thank you very much director I know this is something that's sort of been promised for a while I think that will continue to.

Ask some more questions of the department though about.

You know.

Why we might want to be creating this new hall when we already have invested in a K labor Hall.

Because I'm I see Councilmember Morales has her hand up.

Councilmember Nelson, I believe you have a follow-up on that too, but if you don't mind, I'll go to Councilmember Morales and then I'll come back to you.

Okay.

Councilmember Morales, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Thank you, Director McIntyre.

I am very excited about the work that you're doing to try to align and understand all the workforce development work that the city does.

I look forward to seeing the end product there.

Um, particularly as it relates to understanding better what employer needs are so that then we can match.

I'm particularly interested in making sure we can match our young people to potential opportunities.

So thank you for for taking that on and your first day on the job I know we've had a lot of conversations about what that what that could look like.

I have a little bit different question about Seattle Job Center.

And I'm just trying to understand what the job center does that work source doesn't do.

I know that that's a statewide partnership that, you know, provides employment and training here in Washington State.

three or four centers, including a couple in South Seattle.

So I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about what the difference is or if there is a difference in the kinds of services that they provide.

Yeah, and I think this will also help inform Council Member Esqueda's line of questioning.

I'll just give you some of the guts of what we've been going through as we've been trying to do that alignment work, really understand the full kind of landscape and where the city can provide the most value.

Because frankly, the city's tried to go it alone on workforce stuff in the past, and it hasn't worked.

In fact, as I mentioned, doing some of that has weakened our regional system and been kind of created some problematic structures.

So initially, we did look at how can we basically revamp or improve the online work source portal, since that is kind of our premier labor exchange, online labor exchange portal.

Um, and that was, we had come up with a proposal, uh, Chopped it around and quickly found a couple of things.

One, it was going to be a lot harder to do that work because, uh, the state's ESD employment securities, uh, uh, department.

Controls that.

And so to do any sort of website upgrades, we'd have to like engage with the state and it was going to be a whole rabbit hole to kind of go down that we weren't quite prepared to yet.

And then second in talking with the WDC and other partners, they weren't sure that that was going to be the right resource.

for this type of an investment, which is why we restructured this budget ask to be a little bit more exploratory about what are the different assets that are out there, like WorkSource, like the MLK online labor hall, and where can the job center provide value?

Because we don't want to duplicate things.

That's really not helpful.

But we also don't want to assume that the assets that we have in play are doing what we need them to do.

And so how could we either improve them, upgrade them, combine them?

We really need to take a look at, and this kind of came up with somebody's question earlier about outreach.

Like we can't have it be so fragmented.

We've got to have a unified perspective on how we're doing workforce and make sure that we're actually connecting people to the jobs that they want to have or that they could have and putting them on career ladders that are gonna actually give them upward economic mobility and not just doing kind of the rote, put up a job board and hope that somebody finds it.

We've got to have a little more intention, a little bit more structure to how we're doing that work.

And that's where I think the Seattle Job Center can help us come up with a more elegant solution than anything we kind of currently have.

That's helpful.

If I might share, I have a question about the previous slide that I forgot to ask.

Yeah, we have the mic, please go ahead.

So, sorry, it was actually the one before that about commercial affordability.

Can you so I've been to one of the couple of the Seattle restored storefronts and it's very exciting.

The work that's happening there.

I would love to see it implemented in other neighborhoods as well, but I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about How this money is actually spent, given some of the constraints that we have, like, can you just kind of walk us through, are there grants to these businesses?

Like, how is this commercial affordability program working?

Specifically about the Seattle Restored Program?

Or just the program in general?

I guess, so there are three programs encapsulated in the commercial affordability line item.

There's Seattle Restore, the Tenant Improvement Fund, and the to be released Community Business.

Are you asking how each of those work or?

Yeah, well, I'm just if you I'm trying to understand, you know, we can't give to public funds issues.

Yes.

So this is where our office is trying to be creative and figure out like we're making sure that we're finding for some of the programs, making sure that we find where there's public benefits.

And so matching the projects that have public benefit with city dollars.

Some of the creativity is again, how we work with outside partners so that the city can provide grants to cover certain costs, whereas outside partners can cover other costs.

And then on the to be released community business ownership fund, being thoughtful about who's absorbing debt and risk.

but then also trying to think about wealth creation, not just as real estate appreciation, which is oftentimes how it's looked at when you're owning a space, but trying to allow the business to be the wealth generation engine.

And so flipping that model on its head changes some of the parameters around gift to public funds and how we consider that.

So we can certainly talk to you more about that.

And I know that you and I have had conversations about this, but there's a lot of room for creativity.

the OED staff is trying to do as we kind of take on this new model.

We're really trying to unlock those opportunities.

Great, yeah.

Would love to follow up with you on that.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Nelson, please go ahead.

You were mentioning the partnership with MLKC Labor.

How much was that and when did we invest that?

I might turn that over to central staff

I'm sorry, can you repeat the question?

I apologize.

Well, this was this is in reference to to misguided comment that we that the city had made past investments in a I think it was a was it a portal?

You said job Paul, I can't remember what it was that during the pandemic, what does a virtual job hall look like for safety and connecting folks?

So the city.

I know that MLK labor has been on the partnership community side with the city on that and Jasmine, I know you might not have been on central staff at the time.

But this was an investment last year.

I'm trying to remember if it was the year before as well.

If central staff doesn't have the answer to the total amount right now, we can always get back to you.

OED fulfills a dot connecting function.

And I think that some of the comments and questions are around, you know, other entities that are doing certain things.

And so that is clearly some stabilization or just a better foundation for understanding what other entities are doing and how we're not reinventing the wheel, I think, is something that this this work that we're looking at does get at.

And some of these, the following pages do mention some of the specific programs.

So I look forward to hearing that as Director McIntyre continues.

Well, that sounds great.

Let's continue then, Director McIntyre.

Sure.

I think we're on slide seven.

This is actually one that I'm going to skip.

We can certainly talk about it, but these are.

Yeah, let's go to the next slide.

We're going to skip this one as well.

This rolls up into trying to right side some of our contracts around workforce development as we're doing that workforce strategic plan.

So that's why we made this reduction to the Seattle Jobs Initiative while we go through that work.

Next slide, please.

As I mentioned, one of our pillars is trying to support businesses, particularly BIPOC and women owned.

One of the things that we learned through the pandemic was how important language access is for businesses.

So as we're doing program design, as we're doing program launches, as we're doing applications, we need to do a better job of having a real language access program.

Previously, we had kind of taken slices from the tops of programs to do some of that communication, but to really do that, the justice that it deserves, we wanted to have a call out as a line item for language access.

That'll not only allow us to get further ahead of those programs and make sure that we're doing the outreach and the translation interpretation that we need to, to make sure we've got broader access.

It'll also allow us to be a little more creative and flexible with working with different media outlets and different communication channels to make sure that we're reaching folks really where they are and not assuming that they're going to get kind of the email announcement or read the newsletter or what have you.

So, we've got to have some kind of creative approaches to how we're doing language access and this line item will help us do that.

Item number 10 is another example of us trying to leverage outside funds.

We're already in conversations with the Small Business Administration, the Port of Seattle, uh, State Department of Commerce and Greater Seattle Partners about this export accelerator initiative.

It's really trying to look at, um, export markets as a way of growing small businesses.

Um, particularly throughout the pandemic, there's a lot of businesses that pivoted online and became what's termed accidental exports.

And we're trying to think about how can we really help them, uh, access resources to grow that area of their business.

Next slide, please.

We've talked about this before.

It certainly came up in OPCD's presentation in Department of Neighborhoods, but we've got to have a thoughtful approach to how we're doing downtown and neighborhood economic recovery.

There's a lot that we can do right now.

As Council Member Mosqueda referenced, we can't be sitting on dollars that could be deployed and making a difference right now.

Our NERF program that we set up during the pandemic is a great way of doing that where we're We're really trying to lift up community-based projects that are going to drive economic development, support our business districts, and make sure that we're recognizing how much of an engine those neighborhood business districts, in particular the downtown neighborhood, is to our economic future, and not just ours, but really the regions and the states.

They drive a lot of economic activity, especially ahead of what we've seen is a really big rebound in tourism and tourists coming to Seattle.

We want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to make sure that there's activity in life and things of interest as well as healthy businesses in each of those business neighborhoods.

Next slide, please.

The Seattle Sports Commission, this is a slightly unusual one, but ahead of both the All-Star game coming next July and then the FIFA World Cup coming in 2026, We wanted to make sure that we're helping support our Seattle Sports Commission.

Think about a couple things.

One is what's the narrative that we're telling out there to the global audience about Seattle?

Certainly a lot of things have been said about Seattle during the pandemic, many of them not true, and many of them certainly kind of on a downbeat.

We need to have a much more positive narrative about who we are and who we want to become.

And these global events are a great chance to do it.

Second thing we really want them to focus on is, as we have all those eyes and people showing up for those global events, how are we making sure that the economic benefit that comes from that isn't just centered around the stadia, but is actually spread throughout the city and really throughout the region.

We're going to focus on the city, but those are regional events.

And so we need to make sure that we're having an ongoing conversation with the Seattle Sports Commission about what are the ways that we're getting people who might be staying outside of the area, traveling to Ballard, traveling to South Seattle, traveling to Lake City, and checking out what we have to offer there, because those are big one-time events that could generate some serious economic benefit.

We just want to make sure that it's shared throughout the city and not centered only in the stadia.

I see Council Member Nelson has her hand up.

Do you want me to pause?

We can pause here.

Yeah, we usually do the full slide.

But if your question is on number 14, Council Member Nelson.

Oh, I'm sorry that we were asking them as line items came up.

That was that happened before.

But wasn't there something about youth and in this bucket that that worked with youth in sports in the past?

From the Office of Economic Development, you mean like a previous this through the Sports Commission?

Well, I think that's one of the benefits that we're going to we're going to want to see as these large scale sporting events come is how are they engaging youth, youth organizations and making sure that that's kind of a big promotional part of of them coming to town.

Thanks.

And then 15 was actually one that I was going to skip, so if we can go to the next slide, please.

Actually, do you mind covering it, Mark?

No, no.

Sure.

Sure.

So we have these relationships with the different sports teams and the stadia.

And what this is, is this is a new position that would be housed in OED that is paid for.

So this is actually not a payroll expense tax.

Funds, this would be, I think, a general fund expense where in the negotiated contracts with the different sports teams, part of that would pay for this position existing.

And their role is to make sure that we're, the city's really thinking about collectively, not just in the individual contracts that are negotiated with the teams, but collectively, what's the benefit to the city, and how are we doing those in a smart, thoughtful, and strategic way.

Okay, thanks.

Can we get some clarification here on the fund source that says payroll expense tax from Jump Start, Director Dingley?

Yes, Director McIntyre is correct.

This is a typo on the slide.

This is just providing the authority for OED.

The funds will be, the position will be paid for via the contracts as the director described.

So you're just looking for spend authority once you've received the funding?

And does anybody at the city currently do this work?

We have a contracted person who's been doing that work to date.

And our hope is that there will be some overlap there so that she could share some of the knowledge that she's built with this new permanent person for the go ahead.

Thanks so much.

So, the contracted person may be providing like a baton handoff to this new person that's coming in funded by the facilities or venues.

Is there a new body of work that this entity, that this person would be doing then?

What are they doing in terms of enhancements?

Yeah.

First of all, great sports metaphor.

Appreciate that.

Second, that's a little bit TBD.

So we've had this contractor position who's been in negotiation with a couple of the teams, because you can imagine, we try to space them out so not all the contracts hit at exactly the same time to give this person kind of an ongoing piece of work.

And then with a fully funded full-time position, and I guess I'll also note that the contracted position has been living at the mayor's office, not at OED up to this point.

And so as we bring on a full-time person, figuring out what in addition to that contract negotiation work they could do to support our special events or other kind of work that's related to the stadia, including the all-star game and FIFA stuff.

So we're still describing it, but it would at least cover those contract negotiations.

Thank you.

Let's keep going.

Next slide, please.

Sorry, just before we move on, Council Member Herbold, is that a hand for the previous slide?

Actually, a hand for a couple of slides back that I missed, but I'm happy to wait, just not to disrupt the flow.

If you just put me in the queue, maybe.

Put you in the queue.

Yeah, sounds good.

This is my last slide, so we can go back right after this.

And this is what I talked about at the head, which is we need to have a more built-out back-end infrastructure at OED.

And so that's what a lot of this is describing in terms of new FTEs is administering those new dollars where previously we've had temporary folks for just about the same size or same amount of dollars.

And so we feel like this is probably the right size.

We've also checked with some other smaller departments and kind of looked at their contracting teams.

So we've gathered a couple of pieces of data to make the proposal for this number.

And I'll just also mention that Because we've had so many contracts throughout the pandemic and so many new programs and so many one-time and federal dollars, we've had a lot of our subject matter experts running a high number of contracts, which is really not the highest and best use of their time and talents.

So part of this is freeing up their ability to go do the subject matter expert work that we really need them to do.

And part of it is just making sure that we have a real crackerjack team behind us, making sure that we're processing those, those contracts as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

And with that, I think that's my last slide and happy to stand for questions.

All right, thanks so much.

Let's go back to Council Member Herbold.

I really appreciate it.

Sorry, I'm a little slow on the draw today with my timing.

I have two questions about specific slides and then I have a sort of a more third general question that's not covered by any of the slides.

Going back to slide seven, The, the description of affordable Seattle describes the portal that works to connect people who are struggling financially with all different sorts of programs and services, the city makes available to them.

I understand it to emphasize things like food support, child care, help for accessing reduced or free public transportation subsidies, and utility discount programs.

What's the connection to job seeking here?

I'm just trying to understand.

being hosted in OED rather than, for instance, the human services departments, given that some of these programs, not all of them, are human services related.

Just wanting to understand that a little bit.

And my second question on a specific slide is the downtown mobility study, and I'm wanting to understand, you know, obviously this is a mobility study focused on transportation modes, not quite understanding why this is proposed to be housed in OED rather than SDOT.

Sure.

So Affordable Seattle, just to clarify first, it's actually not sitting in OED.

It's coming from OED's budget, but it's the positions.

The program currently sits in the Office of Innovation and Performance, and this expansion, those additional FTEs would also sit over the innovation performance.

And the reason it relates to workforce is, overall, it's a poverty alleviation play.

And the thinking is that as we free up some of those, the time and the money that's going into some of the many programs that you referenced that the city can offer relief on, that's going to free them up to spend more time on workforce, potentially finding a new job, potentially getting on a career path, getting new training, getting some sort of new skill.

And so it's going to actually allow them to participate more fully in the economy as workers.

And then on the downtown Did you want me to pause there, did you have?

Yeah, I'm still, this is part of the OED's budget, so you're saying the positions related to this aren't in OED's budget, the funding's not in OED's budget, it's over in the budget office.

Is that, am I restating what you said correctly?

It's in the Office of Innovation and Performance.

I'm sorry, is that not a budget office

It is, yes.

Okay, let's go to Julie.

Yeah, and then I see Deputy Director Panucci as well.

Go ahead, Deputy.

Oh my gosh.

Go ahead, Director Dingley.

You're doing so great.

You can also just call me Julie if that makes your life easier.

So, One of the things that the staff within OED, they're going to be working directly with the community-based organizations to increase adoption of CIVIFORM and its multiple programs through increased awareness, through marketing, and also training of CBOs to use CIVIFORM.

We have a direct login for community-based organizations to enter in data with the permission of their clients.

That's often how our residents access our affordability programs.

and then they can provide direct feedback and improve the product in the program.

The connection with OED is as Markham described, they would have the wealth of knowledge within the department to tap as well.

I don't think it would break anything necessarily if this were to change departments.

It would have a different set of expertise as the cohort that that group would sit within and we would have to talk about what those impacts would be.

So I don't know off the top of my head what that change would be, Council Member Herbold, to your question in particular about if it were to live in HSD as opposed to there.

But yeah, the positions are part of the overall team that's reporting to innovation and performance team that sits within CBO.

I hope that helps.

Okay, let's hear from Central Staff Deputy Director

I just wanted to flag that I think we there are some additional one this is an issue that is raised and will be discussed later from the presentation that Jasmine will lead on and then I also think we need to get some clarity because there's also funding and positions added in CBO's budget.

And so I think we need to get our heads around like how much how many positions are being added to CBO for this work, because this is a bit of a different framing than what I understood from the previous conversation we've had on affordable housing.

Excuse me, affordable Seattle.

And we'd be happy to provide a more holistic look, kind of similar to what we were discussing around the WSBLE conversation.

It's helpful to have sort of an overall like one pager, if you will, of all the different component parts.

We're happy to provide that.

One piece I forgot was also that language access is such a huge piece of work here in OED that they'd be able to access that as well.

So, but yeah, we can certainly follow up with more clarity.

And then on the downtown mobility piece, OED's been coordinating the downtown revitalization work between a variety of different offices and the mayor's office.

And as we're thinking about how to revitalize downtown mobility is one of the key levers.

And so thinking about the challenges that are there, the opportunities that are there and how they mix with the work that we're going to be doing, say, with Seattle Restored makes a lot of sense to have those fit together.

Now, that said, like, is going to be working very closely with and other departments as we conduct that mobility study and really, we're not trying to have it be just an thing.

We're just kind of quarterbacking and leading it because it's so closely tied to economic revitalization in downtown Seattle.

I know director Markham you're.

I'm sorry, Director McIntyre, you are working on developing a creative communities framework.

We've talked about it in the past.

I totally understand that it has not been implemented.

submitted yet, but I am interested in knowing how this budget supports the creative economy.

It may be a little bit of a chicken or an egg question, given that I, you know, in a best case scenario, the framework for a creative economy would inform the budget for next year, but we are in a position where we're getting next year and 2024's proposed budget first.

I'm just wondering what we're thinking has gone into the budget specifically to support the creative economy?

Sure.

It's a good question.

A lot of the programs that you saw earlier on, whether it's around commercial affordability or supporting small businesses, do extend into creative economy businesses, as well as some of the workforce plays that we've made extended into the creative economy.

But as you said, we're still organizing ourselves over at OED and still developing our framework.

That doesn't mean that the work to support those industries or those workers slows down.

And I hope you can see the work that we've done in cooperation with Council Member Nelson around the film commission as an example of work that we're doing right now to help support creative industries.

So we still have staff that are dedicated to it.

And we're still figuring out the framework.

But as you said, our strategy or our investments have to flow from our strategy.

And we're still working on that.

However, I do feel like there's a bunch of buckets in here that are going to directly address some of the common problems that have shown up both for businesses and workers in the creative economy.

The difference here in what I envision is when you have a sector-focused strategy, it's less about like, oh, well, these programs will also serve people who work in creative industries.

But no, we have specific efforts around our top that are specifically focused to address the needs of workers and employers in that sector.

So just looking forward to more conversations with you about that.

Great.

Thanks, Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Nelson, please go ahead.

Didn't you send over a A description of your creative economy planner, is that forthcoming?

Because there's a position that's provisional on that.

Can you just, while we're on the topic, tell us a little bit about the update on that?

Sure.

It's still in development.

As I mentioned, we're going through some pretty significant organizational changes, and those are going to drive a lot of our decisions around the creative economy framework.

We're also still in talks with the mayor's office around the approach.

So it's in development, but I don't think it changes from what I've said to both you Council Member Nelson and Council Member Herbold in committee, where we've got to have a both and strategy where we're supporting the businesses within the creative industries, but then also supporting the workers in the creative economy, which bleeds far beyond just kind of the special events, film, music, nightlife businesses.

And so that's That's how we're approaching this work is that both and strategy, but we're still fine tuning some of the details.

Thanks.

Any additional questions.

All right.

I know, Director McIntyre, you skipped over some of the slides, and I appreciate that in the interest of time.

I know we've asked the departments to stick to about 20 minutes, so we went a little bit long on this one, but thank you for trying to go through some of those.

If folks had questions about any of the items that were skipped over, you can let us know right now.

There's also a summary document in our summary under each one of these slides and we can ask the central staff as well for additional information.

Okay, I'm seeing central staff nodding.

I do think that we are at a good point to break before going into central staff issue identification.

And that means that we would carry this item over until after our recess and we would jump back in.

with the central staff's presentation on issue ID.

So I want to make sure that before we go into recess today, everybody had the chance to get their questions out for the department who may or may not be with us when we come back, but I think would probably be Director Dingley adding technical answers or clarification in that component.

So please, if you have any additional questions, you can ask those now, and then I'll turn it back over to Council Member Nelson, in case you had any other thoughts as we close out the department component on this one.

All right, I'm not seeing any additional questions.

I would like to say thank you again to the department.

It is great to see you, Director McIntyre, in this role.

And as Chair Nelson noted, having purview over this department, it is helpful to be reminded of the changes that have gone on in this department and you all being on the front line, especially as we think about investments in a more equitable economy and in our efforts to come out of COVID on the other side and a more just place.

So thank you for the work that OED does.

Thank you as well for the work that you've done with our team on the jumpstart economic resilience planning and blueprints that are still being finalized.

I know that we will have a number of questions specifically about the alignment with the proposed investments and how they do or do not align with some of the legislative intent outlined in the statute regarding the spend plan.

I'm a broken record at this point, but I wanted to just flag that we'll have some more questions about those going forward.

And that is not to question the value of some of these investments, but really just to make sure that we're in alignment and it's additive.

I will turn it back over to Council Member Nelson.

Anything else you'd like to add before we say goodbye to our department friends?

Nope.

Thank you all.

Great job.

Thank you.

Okay, with that, thanks again to everybody for being here.

Central staff, apologies for the interruption, but we will come back with issue identification.

I know we'll see more of Director Dingley at that point, and all of you as well.

So if there's no objection, the Select Budget Committee will recess until 2 p.m.

Hearing no objection, the meeting is now in recess until 2 p.m.

Have a great lunch, everyone.

Thanks so much.

you