Governance, Accountability & Economic Development Committee 2/14/2024

Well, good afternoon, everyone.

It is March 14th, 2023, and the Governance, Accountability, and Economic Development Committee will now come to order.

It is 2-0-1.

I'm Sarah Nelson, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Oh, one more thing.

Councilmember Kettle has been excused from this meeting.

Councilmember Hollingsworth?

Present.

Councilmember Rivera?

Present.

Councilmember Saka?

Here.

Council President Nelson.

Present.

Four present, none excused.

Or sorry, four present, one excused.

Okay.

Well, welcome back colleagues and members of the public to the Gade Committee, just to make it short.

So to refresh, last time we had a presentation from the Office of Economic Development.

They presented their 2024 work plan and their future of Seattle economy investments for the year.

And then after that presentation, we had a presentation from the Office of Ethics and Elections, and Director Wayne Barnett presented the office's work plan.

And one thing that struck me during discussion was that violations of the city's lobby law are not really being enforced.

There was mention that people that failed to submit Reports on time or incomplete reports are spoken with or cajoled, but there is a fee structure that the law provides for.

And I think this is important because in order...

First of all, we should be enforcing the laws that we have, but the lobby law is really important because it provides for greater transparency into how...

Well, into how we make the laws and policy by providing a window into who is having influence over our deliberations.

And so I'm just going to be looking into this a bit more.

My office has done so a little bit, and I'm working with central staff, and we'll be asking Wayne some more questions later, not in committee, but I do want to know if there's anything that can be done to remedy this, and it could very well be a staffing issue.

I just don't know, but I wanted to note that.

On today's agenda, we have three items, a presentation and possible vote on an ordinance accepting $50,000 in funds from the State Department of Commerce that would go to reimburse the Wing Luke Museum for repairs needed after a man smashed windows at the museum last September.

And the next item is a departmental briefing from the Department of Human Services.

And to wrap up, the committee will have a departmental briefing from the Director of the City Auditor's Office.

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

Seeing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We'll now move on to public comment on the items listed on the agenda.

And following that, I will issue a couple more remarks in my president's report.

So, Council Rule 11C3 provides that public comment must be directed to matters within the purview of the committee or items listed on the agenda.

The latter, items listed on the agenda, is the protocol that this committee follows.

I'll call on speakers in the order they're signed up to speak, starting with in-person commenters, and speakers will have two minutes.

When you hear the chime, you'll have 10 seconds left, and if you exceed the time, your microphone may be cut off so that we can move on to the next speaker.

If you're offering remote comment, please make sure to press star six to unmute yourself.

So how many people do we have signed up in person?

We have zero in-person speakers, Council President.

Okay, no in-person speakers.

I will go to the public sign-up sheet for remote speakers.

The first speaker is David Hines.

David, just a second.

We're setting the timer.

Okay, we're ready to go.

You may speak when you're ready.

All right.

Thank you, Council.

My name's David Haynes.

I'm not sure if this is the proper committee to bring it up, but it seems that since you're going through the Department of Human Services, perhaps you could ask them why didn't they bring an emergency shelter on last Saturday when they had that 30 mile an hour wind and rainstorm and ask them why they don't really bring service providers and expedite people's needs for shower and laundry when they come into these like emergency shelters, to really offer the services that they're being paid for.

And I think there's a little bit of a tainted racism within the human services priorities, where if you take a look at the spending priorities of the previous two councils, They redirected a lot of money that was earmarked for helping innocent homeless people, but yet they seem to spend a lot of money running interference for repeat offending criminals to appease the business community, yet in the response of running interference for the criminals, there's no effort to find out where the drug suppliers are they keep those people messed up and self-destructive that because it's a more profitable wraparound services people are just kind of acting like well there's really no accountability because these people have problems and we're just here to provide for them because housing comes first but sometimes you know jailing the drug pusher and sending somebody to a proper treatment is the beginning and quite frankly a lot of the money needs to be going towards innocent homeless people who are purposely still being racially discriminated against.

So if you take a look at some of the racist woke policies of the human services department, they are purposely discriminating against innocent white citizens because they deem them unentitled because they have white privilege.

But yet if you're a self-destructive drug pusher, they say, oh, they don't know any better.

Let's help them first.

Human services needs to be investigated.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Joe Kunzler.

Joe press star 6 please.

Thank you Madam President.

I just pressed star 6. My comments may not you know are about what's before the purview of this committee but not on the agenda.

And that is I want to thank you for your administration of public comment policies.

It is very much appreciated how you've dealt with Alex Zimmerman.

And I wish other governmental bodies would have the same policy.

It's extremely stressful and hurtful that we are still dealing with his issues in 2024. But thanks to your leadership, we're honest to God getting something done about this creep to protect our common, to protect our communities.

And I really also appreciate your testimony because to come down would be a few hours of my time.

BUT I JUST WANTED TO CALL IN AND SAY THANK YOU FOR ALL YOU'RE DOING AND ALSO BECAUSE I THINK CONSULTANT MEMBER DAN STROSS EARLIER THIS WEEK.

FINALLY TOMORROW, AS YOU KNOW, IS HEIDI WILLIS DAY.

MR. KUNZLER, I DO HAVE TO ENFORCE MY OWN RULE AND PUBLIC COMMENT IS ON OUR AGENDA.

I welcome your comments to begin with, but I am going to stop you if the continuation of your comments is about something that is not on our agenda.

Okay.

Well, I'm done, and I thank you for your leadership on public comment issues.

Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you very much for understanding.

Still nobody signed up in person?

No, Council President.

Okay, then there's nobody else signed up, and so I will now close the public comment period, and we'll move on.

I just had a couple comments to make about an event that I went to earlier today.

I spent the lunch hour at the Fifth Avenue Theater because they launched a fundraising campaign for this historic regional theater.

arts and cultural venue, which is struggling to stay afloat since the pandemic.

Just one factoid that I learned, the theater had, pre-pandemic, 20,000 subscribers.

These are folks that come every year.

They have a subscription.

They get a package of plays.

Now they have 7,000 subscribers.

So that's quite a decline.

And you might be thinking, why am I mentioning this?

What does this have to do with our committee?

Well, because arts and culture drive economic activity all across the city and create jobs.

And this is especially important downtown because our downtown arts and cultural venues provide customers for the businesses that have been lacking business and revenues with the decrease in office workers.

And so this is a plug for paying attention to our arts and cultures, supporting our very precious institutions.

And I do have to say that I realize full well that to get more people into those theater seats, people have to feel safe coming into town on public transit or walking around on our streets at night and so that's a whole other topic but of course there's always a nexus to public safety because really you can't um well because everything does and especially public safety is a foundation of our recovery so i'm sorry to miss the mayor's event tonight at the library where he will be having a public safety uh discussion with constituents that was scheduled last week and i've had a long-standing commit uh commitment on my calendar but I just wanted to note that Fifth Avenue Theater is open for business, and also I hope that I hear more from my colleagues about the event tonight at the library, because I will not be able to be there.

All right, with that, will the clerk please read the first item into the record?

Agenda item number one, an ordinance relating to grant funds from non-city sources authorizing the director of the Office of Economic Development to accept specific grants and execute related agreements for and on behalf of the city amending ordinance 126955, which adopted the 2024 budget changing appropriations to various departments and budget control levels, and from various funds in the budget, and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts, briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

All right, thank you very much.

While folks are coming to the table, I'll simply note that this legislation authorizes the Office of Economic Development and the City of Seattle to accept a grant from the Washington State Department of Commerce, and it also amends OED's budget in the amount of the grant, which is $50,000.

So on September 14th, 2023, the Wing Luke Museum on South King Street in Seattle was targeted in an apparent hate crime that resulted in, and we say that because that was verbalized, right?

in an apparent hate crime that resulted in significant property damage.

And the city and state of Washington have jointly committed $100,000 to assist in the repairs.

So I will go ahead and leave it now to our presenters to take it away.

And please introduce yourselves first.

Thank you so much, Council President.

My name's Alicia Thiel.

I'm the Deputy Director of the Office of Economic Development.

And I'm Teresa Barreras, the Director of Business Districts at the Office of Economic Development.

And then we have a guest on the line as well.

Mr. Aeneas.

Hi, I'm Joel Butta-Caltan, Executive Director of the Wing Luke Museum.

Welcome.

Thank you so much.

So at the Office of Economic Development, our team is working every day toward our core purpose, which is to shape an economically diverse, just, and resilient city.

That includes work supporting our local economy, as well as keeping Seattle competitive on the global stage.

As you might recall, when we were here last month, we talked about how this work is guided by the five pillars of...

for the future of Seattle economy framework adopted a city policy and resolution 32099. Those pillars are what we've identified for closing the racial wealth gap and promoting inclusive economic growth, especially for communities systematically excluded from such opportunities.

The legislation before you today aligns with our pillar of investing in neighborhood business districts, and we appreciate the opportunity to provide some additional context around it.

As the council president noted, last fall, the Wing Luke Museum in the Chinatown International District sustained significant structural damage after an individual smashed several of its windows.

This individual has since been charged with a hate crime.

Immediately after the incident, the city and state announced $100,000 in funding to assist with the repairs.

This combined support will help address damages to the iconic educational and cultural hub of the community.

It's also the nation's only Pan-Asian Pacific American community-based museum.

The Office of Economic Development is providing the $50,000 for the city's share of this contribution out of our existing budget.

Today's legislation, as the Council President noted, authorizes the city to accept the $50,000 from Commerce and adjusts OED's budget to reflect this contribution.

I'd now like to turn it over to Joel Barak Yeltan to share more about both the impact of the contribution as well as the public benefit that the museum provides in our community.

Thank you so much.

Good afternoon.

My name is Joel Barakiel-Tan, and I'm the executive director of the Wing Luke Museum since April of 2022. I'm truly honored and appreciative to share a bit about the museum and our community impact, as well as speaking to the impact of the contribution to care and repair.

Regarding public benefit, The museum, we're turning 56 this year, and is, as many of you know, the Chinatown International District's second largest economic driver.

and most of the way we show up in the world and do our missions work shows up most recently in strengthening the health and well-being of our community with our latest initiative arts and culture as apothecary drawing on the ability of arts to create joy and well-being for individuals and community through public programs of an public events.

Moreover, our framework really looks at the ways referencing council members earlier comments.

We see that the good work of culture and arts continually drives better health, better economy, better policy.

So with that, we also empower local artists and community voices through our nationally recognized community advisory committee method.

whereby everyday community members are the ones that create the vibrant exhibitions and programs.

We also partner with over 50 small businesses on food and heritage tours, events, marketing initiatives, especially important James J Mullooly, Ph.D.: : While the neighborhood is still making its long, slow recovery from Kobe.

I will say our amazing former executive director who regards and we still do the Chinatown insurance and international district is our best and largest exhibition James J Mullooly, Ph.D.: : And then we continue to serve as a cultural anchor and economic driver for neighborhood revitalization, not only for the ID, but across the areas around it connecting local residents and tourists to this store and culturally rich international district Chinatown neighborhood.

The impact of the contribution is significant.

This special and generous consideration allows us to implement a comprehensive care and repair plan that consists of facade repair to our historic building, updated and enhanced physical security systems, as well as trauma-informed emotional support and training.

As you can probably imagine, the impact of hate crime like this has a long range, and much of the terror also happens internally, particularly for our public-facing staff.

Generous support also encourages other giving, and we've certainly been fortunate in getting other forms of support, not just in terms of money, but in terms of moral support that's needed to kind of deal with the new normal.

And the joint expression, I just got to say from city and state, really uplifts and assures and affirms our mission's work and Honestly, I kind of feel like there's so much, it's so common to talk about all the ways that government fails us.

I think it's really important to talk about moments where there's actually a big win, a big heart-centered kind of win.

And lastly, the continued support and the ability to repair and heal will only allow us to continue to provide more social impact and social benefit.

So I'm energized by this great new council.

Thank you for your kind consideration.

Great, thank you so much, Joelle.

And zooming out a little bit more for some additional context about how OED is engaged in the Chinatown International District, I'm excited to have my colleague Teresa Barreras here to share the breadth of how we engage in this business district more generally.

Thank you.

Chinatown International District is a gem where many communities have come together to preserve and grow this historic neighborhood.

It's a national historic district and a race and social equity priority area for the city, but has also been named one of the 11 most endangered historic districts by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2023. which is why I'm glad that we were able to find funds to support Wing Luke's emergency need.

OED's Only in Seattle program has provided sustained funding to organizations in Chinatown International District so they can focus on maintaining and building this vibrant and thriving business district.

The Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority, or SCIPTA, the Chinatown International District Business Improvement Area, and Friends of Little Saigon, which are core partners of our program, were there and ready when the pandemic hit, and they helped local businesses survive and begin recovering from it.

They helped businesses across access 55 storefront repair fund grants from our program, And combined with our Neighborhood Economic Recovery Fund, they installed security film in 85 businesses to deter future damage and crime.

Years ago, we worked with our partners to pilot a tenant improvement grant idea in the neighborhood, and now we have a program that has provided a total of $700,000 to seven businesses in the neighborhood.

We also supplement cleaning services provided by the Business Improvement Area and supported a total of seven organizations, including the Wing Luke Museum, to provide events and activations with our Neighborhood Economic Recovery Fund program.

I'm honored to be one of many at OED who support the Chinatown International District on behalf of OED, and I'm proud that we continue to have a strong partnership with the community.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you, Teresa.

And so to wrap it up here, as you've heard, it's one more step in our ongoing support of this really vital dynamic neighborhood.

And we really appreciate your consideration of this legislation.

Thank you very much.

I do have some questions and remarks.

I wanted to note that you'll note that it's up for a possible vote today.

And usually we don't do that with legislation.

We present it first and then we vote on it the next week.

However, the city's portion, the $50,000 of the city's contribution was approved in the budget last year.

And so it's important now that we have the other half to get it out the door.

And so that is why I am in what's controversial about accepting money from the state.

So in any case, I'm explaining that's why it's up for a vote.

I really do appreciate Director Barakil.

Did I know Barakil Tan?

Can you please pronounce your middle name, please?

Barakil.

Thank you.

Usually when I see you, I just give you a hug.

So anyway, I really do appreciate that you said, you know, there's a lot going on and some of it is very challenging, but when good things happen, when the city's doing something right, it's good to recognize that and celebrate it.

And so this is what...

This is one example I have to thank you, State, but also the storefront repair fund is an example of the kind of assistance that I prefer, which is direct assistance.

It's a check that goes to businesses to help defray the costs of repairing a storefront, and this damage went above and beyond.

But I just have to say that that came about as a consequence of businesses coming to this committee or the committee last year and basically talking about the impacts of crime on their businesses.

And so the city stepped in and thank you very much for running this program.

I'm sure you've had many more applications for that money than you can possibly fill.

Did $100,000 cover the cost of those windows or was there still a remainder that had to be paid for?

Yeah, it's the thing about repairs to a historic building is that it's considerably more expensive because of the kind of protocol involved in historic preservation and what's needed.

The wood framing itself is a factor.

It wasn't just the windows.

So currently we're working with an architectural firm given all the requirements and it's going to be significantly more than $100,000.

In addition, I think the two other components of it, which is upgrading our security systems, right, because it wouldn't make sense to have this very expensive historical building facade repair if there weren't other security systems that supported it because we are living in an entirely different time post-COVID.

And moreover, the third really important component of this is that the terror of this kind of hate crime, both the symbolic and the material damage that happens really wreaks terror on one's internal life.

And we've got a lot of incredible people who are public facing who find themselves alone at night or in the middle of their sleep.

This thing has reverberates, right?

Because this really is for us, not just damage to us, but as we've seen in the beginning of the pandemic, where the acts of terror were random acts on the street, usually to our elders.

This represents to us, along with the recent rash of break-ins to Asian homes, and now crossing it into an institution, a kind of emboldening of that kind of hate into homes and institutions.

So this really helps mitigate and counterbalance this.

But yeah, the damage is significant.

We're still doing a little more fundraising.

Thank you for that additional information.

And in case you're not connecting the dots, folks, because of the origins of the pandemic, that is particularly why you are saying that the sharp increase in hate crimes in the neighborhood.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

OK, and thank you very much.

So also, you manage all of the city's business improvement areas.

And so again, that is a large body of work that allows for property owners to pay into a pot to improve the neighborhood business district, which improves the whole city, actually, and helps individual businesses.

And I'll just note that that is a lot of staff work.

So thank you very much.

At some point, I do want to find out.

Skipta came and gave a presentation to our office on what they're doing, and they did say that the screen stuff, the Vellum, I think you called it.

The Windows security phone program.

I hear that that is quite effective, and so at a certain point, I'd like to know the costs for that and future plans for perhaps expanding that support.

Do my colleagues have any questions for our presenters?

Yes.

No?

Are there any further comments from you all who came here?

Oh, go ahead.

Madam Council President, if I may, thank you for this overview and the Wing Luke Museum as well.

Yeah, I'm seeing a need firsthand for the storefront repair fund.

Hard at work across the city, but I'm seeing that need in my own district.

Yesterday I had a listening tour with a number of small businesses in West Seattle.

And I've heard it before from many of my constituents, but it was this specific program was specifically called out as appreciated, and, you know, so I'm looking for opportunities to make sure we continue with investments like that as much as possible.

But, and also, while I got you here, I learned a lot yesterday during that, and I would not ordinarily, during a committee meeting, bring up a constituent-specific issue, but the broader challenges are something that your office is empowered to deal with related to small businesses, and so I heard, for example, from the owner of Snippets in the Junction in West Seattle, and calling out their, their frustration and their inability to attract new customers, in large part because of some of the construction in the nearby area.

And I know there are a number of programs that your office helps to administer and deliver and connect folks with resources.

So stay tuned.

We're working with the owner to...

But I appreciate your partnership, and that is another example of how you all help small businesses every day and really appreciate it.

So just want to applaud the use of that storefront repair fund in action across the city and, you know, some selfish constituent services-related stuff, but all good.

Well, that's what we're here for is we're all we're here to make connections and we bring our learnings from our constituents to the dais.

It helps inform us.

Appreciate it.

And I'll also just mention that the storefront repair fund is there is still money in the fund.

It is still accepting applications.

And so if any of you are being contacted by constituents who who need to use that fund, please feel free to connect with us.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Council President, and thank you, OED.

I will say on that storefront repair fund, I appreciate that it exists, and I know that like Council Member Saka, we have a number of businesses in the D4 that also are suffering from the same break-ins, and so windows broken into, doors broken into.

I know that there are requirements to that fund, and so I hope that OED will re-look at those requirements because there are some businesses that are not going to be able to participate based on when they first opened or not.

And I think that is problematic because whether you open pre, during, or post-pandemic, you're still suffering the same, the impact is the same if you're getting broken into.

And so I hope that you will revisit those requirements if possible.

so that all small businesses who are experiencing this can partake of this fund, which I know the funds expire by the end of the year because it came from federal funds.

I'm sure that Director McIntyre is probably looking at what will happen post that expiration of those funds.

But between now and then, I hope that you will look at that and make sure we can cover as many businesses that are getting broken into regardless of when they established.

Thank you.

Yeah, Council President, may I just add a little context to that?

Which, yes, completely understand the need.

And I know that that has been one of the frustrations.

I think one of the constraints that we have is that that is coronavirus funding.

And so that is why that when the business opened is of importance.

And I know it would be great to find a solution where businesses that have opened since then or within the last year, for example, are able to tap into the fund, as noted.

So thank you for clarifying.

What I hear you saying is it's a federal requirement that

that when they opened, that date is...

I think it's to be in compliance because these were allocated through the coronavirus local recovery funds.

It might not be a federal requirement for...

I mean, the feds aren't bird-dogging this program.

However, we do have a constitution that says that there can't be a...

the gift of public funding, no private.

You can't give businesses funding without a really clear nexus for why and the fund source.

So I think that that's what you're getting at.

It's a little bit of both.

I think it is both like the federal funding is the funding source and that is what has allowed us to have a color of money that is different than the state funds and local funds, which are subject to the gift of public funds.

And I think that's also what's made the challenge that you've raised council member Rivera, just a little more challenging to address is what is then the new source that is not tied to the coronavirus that also allows us to provide this direct assistance.

I understand.

I also will say in terms of nexus, I mean, our inability to be able to staff SPD properly to address these issues, there is a clear nexus.

I know this is something for the city attorney's office, not me, to determine.

But I did want to call out that this is an issue and our low staffing numbers are of concern and are partially creating the inability to respond.

So There is, in my mind, a nexus.

I'll just leave it at that.

I know it's a legal issue, so I'm not trying to suggest that we should be going around the legal issues.

I have a law degree myself, so I know the importance of sticking to the law and I very much want to stick to the law.

And also, I'm asking the question for you all to then ask the city attorney's office to see how much or, you know, whether the nexus is close enough, whether it makes a difference.

But thank you.

Yep.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Okay, if there are no further questions, let's go ahead.

I will move this legislation.

I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120747. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend the passage of the bill.

Seeing no further comments, I don't think, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of Council Bill 120747?

Council Member Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Council Member Rivera.

Aye.

Council Member Saka.

Aye.

Council President Nelson.

Aye.

Four in favor, none opposed.

All right, the motion carries and the recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the April 2nd City Council meeting.

And thank you very much for the presentation.

Thank you.

Appreciate your work.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for joining us.

While we're waiting to shut off that presentation, you can come on up to the table, please.

We're just waiting for you to read agenda item two.

Thank you for your patience.

Agenda item number two, Seattle Department of Human Resources Overview, Briefing and Discussion.

Well, hello, everybody.

This department, human...

Well...

I am going to be having a lot of departments in here because I have a lot to learn, but specifically the Department of Human Resources reports to the Governance Committee, so it wasn't until I really started looking at your whole body of work that I realized that we're going to need to have you probably back for a second committee meeting to discuss how positions are changed and salary bands are changed and how positions get returned to civil service, et cetera.

So there's a whole body of work that I'm very interested in that we'll not be covering in detail at all if we even touch on it.

But you do so much and you touch every single department and employee in the city.

And so I'm looking forward to hearing your presentation.

Go ahead, introduce yourselves and you may start.

Thank you, Council President.

I'm Kimberly Loving and I'm the department director.

Good afternoon.

My name is Amanda Grumbach, and I'm the Director of Shared Administrative Services within the Department of Human Resources.

Thank you.

Okay.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Councilmembers.

It's a pleasure to meet you all.

So, first of all, thank you so much for that introduction.

It was great to see our colleagues from the Office of Economic Development, and we'll talk a little bit about our federated HR model and how they fit into that role.

I just want to say from the start that we are here to provide a super high level.

We've got a pretty decent sized department with a lot of functions as you mentioned.

But certainly if there are some follow up questions or details needed, we're happy to follow up with that later.

But we are prepared today to respect your time and provide what we hope will be a high level overview to get the conversation started, if you will.

So this is what we intend to go over, just sort of who we are and why we're here and what's on track for later this year.

And I think that what we like to say is, or what we like to think of ourselves, similar to our central shared services partners across the city, such as IT and Finance and Administration, FAS, Finance and Administration Services, we like to think of ourselves as the back of the house.

So we are here to support our 13,000 employees across the city to provide services so that they can perform their jobs with the resources and execute on all the different, all the business of the city, I suppose I say, but that's what we're here for.

That's our driving force of why we're here today.

So we have a federated human resources model at the city as you may have heard by now.

We are a centralized agency within the 44 departments across the city.

And SDHR, Seattle Department of Human Resources, manages some centralized functions, and we'll get into that a little bit later here in our presentation.

That irrespective, if you are a police officer, if you work in the Parks Department, you utilize the benefits that come through our department, for example, that are administered through our department, or the workers' compensation function.

However, there are some of our larger departments across the city who perform some HR functions within their own and we'll talk a little bit more about that.

So what do we do?

Whole lot, but we have a few bullets here.

We provide the full scope of HR services for 20 supported departments across the city.

We establish citywide personnel rules.

We also offer some select consultation services as well.

This is just a quick list of the 20 departments that SDHR provides those full scope of HR services to.

This is just an overview very quickly of the executive team, but again, we'll keep going because we're gonna break down each one of these divisions.

We thought we'd share our values and the things that we work towards in our department, our core service values.

And also just a really brief breakdown of our budget and how it divides out amongst our department within the divisions.

And finally, we wanted to share just a high level graph of years of service and our demographic breakdown within our department.

So moving on to the divisions within our department.

First one we have is our business operations and it's led by our chief of staff.

That function manages communications which also manages our public disclosure request function, emergency management function.

We certainly have our own internal finance and business operations and manage our citywide policy and legislation function as well within this unit.

Labor relations, I know you, council president, have met our labor relations director, Sean Van Eyck.

We have responsibility for citywide bargaining and managing all of the relationships with all of our labor partners across the city.

We also have a talent acquisition and workforce development division.

So again, in alignment with our federated model, there are some functions that we provide soup to nuts from a recruitment function for the 20 departments that we support.

But there's also some work we do across the city with our talent acquisition community, just trying to do the best we can across the HR community to ensure that there is alignment in how we process and how we manage our talent acquisition function.

We also have a centralized function within our department that we refer to as HRIU.

You might hear that acronym sometimes.

It's the HR Investigations Unit, and that's led by our division director, Ray Sugarman, where across the city we manage the investigations for alleged violations of Personnel Rule 1.1.

So that is all managed centrally within our department.

And then we also have a learning and development function as well.

And that too is a centralized function across the city.

And I am going to allow or let Amanda Grumbach talk about her division, Shared Administrative Services, the largest.

Thank you, Kimberly.

So my division is the Division of Shared Administrative Services.

As Kimberly said, it is the largest division within our department, and it represents, really, when you talk about the back of the house, true HR operations, and also probably the largest representation in our department of centralized or pseudo-centralized or partially partially centralized services for employees across the city, such as benefits administration.

We manage the benefits program and provide benefits administration to the 20 supported departments.

So we own the program.

for all city employees.

We manage the program as plan providers, and then we also provide day-to-day support for those 20 supported departments.

As Kimberly mentioned, the classification compensation unit that would come to this committee when there are quarterly employment ordinances, and we will talk more at length in a separate presentation about how that work intersects with the council at another time.

and other centralized functions like workers' compensation that is self-administered and self-insured and helps all injured workers across the city.

And I'll also speak about our service delivery division, which is led by our director of human resources, Nana Mendez.

As Kimberly referred to earlier and throughout the presentation so far, we provide comprehensive human resources support and services to 20 smaller departments.

In fact, Office of Equinal Development is one of our 20 supported departments, so it's nice to see them here today, as well as the administration of our performance management system, our performance management program, E3, again, internal to many departments across the city.

And then finally, we have the Workforce Equity Division.

And that is led by the Workforce Equity Director, Christopher Artes.

And that is work we do in partnership with our colleagues in the Office of Civil Rights.

And we have a Workforce Equity Strategic Plan.

That's something that I'm sure that you all will become familiar with.

in the days to come, but that's some excellent work there that's really focused on our employees.

And then what's ahead?

So I imagine that you are all very familiar with the Coalition of City Unions Agreement.

That's something that's been in the works for quite some time that again, Director Sean Van Eyck has been working in conjunction with the executive, with the mayor, with our labor partners.

on that, and that is something that is coming to resolution here sooner rather than later.

Workday, Amanda, would you like to say something about that?

Sure.

This is a bit of a shameless plug for a project that has been in the works for the last four years.

It's what is referred to as the Wevolve project, which is the system replacement for our human capital management system.

And so Workday is the platform that the city will be going live with soon.

And so we are absolutely moving towards that go-live date this year.

And it will touch every employee across the city.

In addition, in this year's budget, we received funding to perform a study, a comprehensive study of our classification program, which is...

30 years old and very much no longer serving the employees and the operational needs of the city.

So that is something that will be happening this year as well.

And that's our overview.

Thank you very much.

Could you go into a little bit more, before I open it up for other questions, while we're on topic and that breath is still in the air, can you give more detail on that classification program, it being 30 years old, and can you just tell us more about that project?

Sure.

So, as I said, our classification program, which is...

Every employee within the city holds a title, and that title is within a classification of a job classification.

And that is a formal program, a formal system, an infrastructure for the city that clearly defines, formally defines body of work that that employee performs.

And so, our classification program has not been reviewed comprehensively or at all in the last 30 years.

And so, as you can imagine, jobs have changed.

New jobs have been created, the new bodies of work.

And over time, the city has struggled to keep up with ensuring that people are classified the classifications are truly reflective of modern work.

And so we have had many, many struggles with department heads who would like to ensure that for IT, for example, is a great, a really great example of how the work has changed over 30 years, over the course of 30 years, as you can imagine.

And so in order to attract and retain talent, we need to be able to ensure that we're classifying the work appropriately, which means then paying the work because wages are associated with classification.

So you can't do a wage study or look at comparable wages unless you're looking at truly comparable classifications.

And so ensuring that those two things are modern so that when you go out to market and you truly look at current marketable wages, that those things are aligned.

And we have struggled with that for a long time.

And I would just add similarly, Council President, Workday, same thing, right?

It's infrastructure.

And so it's infrastructure that we're really grateful and that the city has, as Amanda said, we've been working on this for four years, but we are grateful and we all believe it's the right investment, but it's infrastructure.

And I think we all know, whether it's the public or the private sector, that sometimes the infrastructure can, be something that we have to sort of make sure that we keep ourselves modernized because of all of the downstream impacts, consequences, unintended or not, who we can recruit, who we can retain.

All of those things are related to having a modern human capital management system, having a current classification system.

So that's why we've been pushing and so happy to finally be here.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rivera, you look like you had a question.

I do.

You look like you had a question.

You go start, because I'm trying to formulate.

Oh, I formulate?

I will formulate on the fly, but...

Yeah, so...

Okay, so thank you for this overview.

Very, very high, high level.

And, you know, really, really appreciate this.

I have a...

I would love to better understand the specific structure model that we have in place here in the city of Seattle.

It's a federated HR model.

Certain functions are performed centrally and others are performed at the department level if they're big enough.

What are those, I heard at the beginning that we'll discuss what those specific functions are that are performed at the, at those other agencies?

I don't know if that was really clear to me.

So what are those specific functions that are HR functions that are performed at, and how many city agencies are we talking about there?

But yeah, what are those specific functions that are performed, HR functions that are performed by those agencies?

We'll start there.

Are you talking about the departments who have their own HR, independent HR services?

Yes, yes, yes.

So HR is, when we say human resources, it really is a basket of different types of support to an organization.

Tracking.

So when I reference some of that back of the house operational things like benefits, workers' compensation, classification and compensation, those are really infrastructure centralized things.

Those are representative centralized services that our department performs.

But there's a myriad of things that a human resources professional does to support an organization.

So there is employee relations, there is organizational development services, there is investigations, recruitment, lots of different things.

And those are all things that those, how many, 20?

There's 20 departments that SDHR supports.

There's a total of 44, so 24 departments.

Have their own?

Have their own, yes.

Have their own teams.

How many have their own teams?

24.

24, okay, so of that 24, yeah, that's what I was trying to understand, like which specific HR functions, and started ticking off the list of all the items, and I'm tracking there, I get that.

I heard employee relations, investigations,

organizational development, everything from hire to retire, right?

So the whole life cycle of the employee experience is supported by the human resources function within an organization.

And help me understand the rationale for doing that as opposed to having a singular central HR function potentially with embedded HR reps at the agencies.

Well, that's an excellent question.

I will tell you that is the system that we walked in on.

Systems are great and they're always meant to evolve.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And there are certainly benefits and challenges to either having a centralized function or having a federated model.

How does our model that we have in place today here in Seattle, how does that compare to other sort of peer larger cities?

Well, go ahead.

I don't know the answer to that.

I mean, I believe that there's a mix.

There are certainly cities and private organizations that have centralized services from an HR perspective.

And then there are hybrid models.

There's a whole mix of matrixed models and different things in other cities and private organizations.

Yeah.

It just strikes me as, yeah, there's a lot of differentiation and specialization in every last one of these various agencies and departments and roles and responsibilities.

But that doesn't automatically mean that, and just because they have budget to do it, they should stand up their own HR functions.

I don't love that answer.

Well, that's the way it's always been.

That's an opportunity to start, like for me, I'm thinking that might be an opportunity to start pulling on some strings and figuring out how we can better support and have a function that is more streamlined.

And yeah, I don't know if this current model that exists today does that.

Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, I don't know.

I don't, I don't love that rationale.

Oh, that's just how we always done it.

We inherited it.

I get it, but.

Council member, I appreciate that.

I think that the question was more around what's the rationale.

And, you know, my response to that is it's, I don't know what the rationale is.

I know that this is what I inherited and, you know, certainly there's always opportunity to, you question and challenge and innovate and iterate on anything, but I'm not going to be able to answer that question specifically.

No, I understand.

And, you know, I view my role like an oversight role just to work collaboratively with you in the mayor's office to find answers and solutions to these questions too.

So, you know, that's my commitment to you and any department head, but...

Councilmember, I totally see where you're going.

It seems like it's disjointed, perhaps.

And so where does it overlap and where does it isn't?

And I can see where investigations might be a sticky place because if an employee has a problem with their manager, already has an internal HR, then there could be, it could be messy for some reasons in that way, but then if they are a department that doesn't have HR, then perhaps getting the attention, or where does it fall in your workflow when it lands on your lap?

Central HR, I can see the benefits on both, on either side.

I personally am, I feel fortunate that Ledge Department does have our own HR because we can ask them questions and get responses soon and they actually know people, but I completely understand where you're coming from and when it comes to the enforcement of federal law and other things that supersede anything having to do with Seattle and your labor functions, I think, working with bargaining units across departments, that might be beneficial.

But anyway, point taken, totally point taken though.

Yeah, Madam President, if I may, like I do see, it is important to, I mean, there's a strong rationale to make sure that the HR investigation function is centralized because the risk there when that function is farmed out to individual is that there might be a potential or a perception of those results of those findings being tainted and potentially unduly influenced.

And so having a centralized HR investigation function, from my perspective, makes sense.

Rationale for everything is a good thing.

Respectfully, with regard to investigations, there's a whole spectrum.

When we say HR investigations, there's a whole spectrum of what that may be.

I think Council President, somebody made a comment about my manager.

I don't get along with my manager.

That isn't something that the HRIU necessarily would get involved in unless there was some allegation that was a direct violation of Personnel Rule 1.1.

So there are a lot of benefits, and I do know that the departments find a lot of value, as do the employees of those departments.

For the HR divisions or departments, however they refer to them within their department, that function being on-site, as the council president said.

The other thing I would say is that the centralization or the federated model, rather, is tied to more than just the human resources function.

the appointing authorities have, this is really an appointing authority concern in a lot of ways.

And so it is with regard to the human resources function, but it is also something that I think the appointing authorities would have an opinion about and not just our department.

Department heads, yes.

And on to Council President's valid point there, it makes a lot of sense, Madam President, in our case, that we have our own HR functions because we are a separate, standalone, independent branch of government.

And that's why that makes perfect sense.

But I don't know if that same principle holds true with respect to you know, all other executive departments.

So I throw that out there as an area for further exploration, and it makes sense until it doesn't.

And everything is open to evolution and streamlining.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Council Member, or Council President Nelson.

And thank you for your comments, Council Member Saka.

There is so much at SDHR, and this was such a...

High, high, super high level.

I'd like to have HR come back.

And there's a lot that we need to unpack more deeply.

I will ask, you know, what are the number, what's the number of classifications that you have?

If you know now, if not, you can get back to us.

And then on the market wages, I always hear that at SDHR, but do you mean, when you say market wages, do you mean in the private sector or do you mean other governments?

Because we are public entities, not private entities, and I've never quite understood when you're talking market wages what you mean by that.

Sure, I can answer that.

So market wages is an industry term.

It is used broadly, so you've described both potential.

And so when a market study is done to look at comparable wages, we're looking at wages in comparable sizes of organizations, similarly situated positions doing similarly situated work.

And so I can tell you, council member, that when we have done wage studies in the past, we are looking at public sector organizations that are of similar size and bodies of work doing similarly situated bodies of work within those organizations.

Thank you.

And I will say that I know that city employees don't understand that.

That's my experience, having worked at the city for the many years I have.

When you say market wages, often city employees conflate that with private wages and then it causes...

you know, it causes some concern.

If I could add to this a little bit, there are situations when, and I apologize if I interrupted you, but I did want to clarify one thing.

There are times when there are maybe jobs that are not found in other organizations, right?

So we do need to look at private sector in similarly situated cities of our size for specific work.

And IT is an example of those types of jobs.

And so when you're looking at recruitment and retention, those types of jobs that I'm referring to really are you're competing from the same pool.

And so it is complex.

It's not very easy to explain in a sound bite.

But I did want to clarify that there are times when we're not only solely looking at public sector, but public sector is definitely in the go-to when we are doing market analysis.

I just find that to be really problematic because, again, if employees are not clear where you're going to when you're looking at when you're setting wages, it causes this, you know, an unintended consequences case.

Council Member Sacco was saying.

And so that is something that I think that the city really needs to look at, this messaging and clear messaging to employees so that they understand.

Because I will tell you, having worked at the city for many years, including at a department, there is confusion around this and it causes a lot of angst, particularly when you're talking about the similarly situated work is open to interpretation and it makes it really difficult for employees and managers alike.

So that is something that I think really needs to be looked at at the city.

I also share the concerns about You know, the lack of...

For the 20 departments that are supported by SDHR versus the 24 that are not, there isn't that...

comparable continuity of service, and that also creates some concerns amongst the employees because they feel like they may be similarly situated, but they're working for a department that's not supported by SDHR.

versus ones that are.

And so then it becomes, it starts to feel like employees similarly situated are being treated differently.

And that causes unintended consequences as well.

Are you talking about an SA1 in a supported, in HR situation?

If I may clarify something, we have not done a wage study.

This is part of why we're doing our classification study project this year.

We have not done a comprehensive wage study for all positions across the city in 30 years.

So when I say that we have looked at when we have done a wage study, those are tied to bargaining.

Those are the only studies that we have done that have had any implementation are positions that are bargained positions.

And I can tell you those are...

Typically, those are public sector positions, I would say.

So I don't want to misrepresent that our current program and the employees at large, that our wages have had this comprehensive wage study.

That's part of our problem.

That's part of the problem that we're trying to solve through studying the concerns To your point, that's exactly what this study aims to solve for, is what are the current strains and the current limitations of our current program being 30 years old?

And that is one of them.

So that is one of the things that we aim to look at.

And I appreciate that.

I will say also, Councilmember Nelson, it's not just the employees that are supported by DSHR versus the ones that are supported by the departments that have their own HR departments.

It's also employees within the SDHR system who are in different departments, and each department is doing things a bit differently.

So there is that that happens as well.

And so I think what you were talking about in terms of this classification and also wage study, will be helpful.

Um, but I do know that there's theory and then there's practice.

And I will tell you that in practice, um, there is a lot of, um, misalignment between departments and similarly like quote unquote similarly situated employees, um, uh, within this classification system.

Can you tell the audience how many different departments you've worked at?

You're sounding very knowledgeable.

So it's been the mayor's office?

I was in the mayor's office.

I helped support about 13 to 14 city departments.

And then I worked at the Office of Arts and Culture as deputy director, where I helped the director oversee the department.

And we were supported by SDHR, as was the number of those departments that I helped support while I was in the mayor's office.

Got it.

Yeah.

Okay, we're almost at the end.

Would you have a question or a comment?

I do not.

Thank you.

Small business owners just trying to do things like, eh.

So when you said that wage studies usually come up during bargaining, how many, please give us a sense of how many city employees belong to, are represented in, and how many are not.

I'm sorry, I don't have that information off the top of my head.

I'd have to get back to you.

Rough percentage.

Okay.

I wouldn't want to put down a number that was inaccurate.

I think it's, for some reason, 12,000 stands out in my mind, but I do not know if that was, and I do not rely on my own misthinking.

So, what did you say?

Oh, yeah.

Thank you, Madam President.

So, First off, I agree with the, and I echo the sentiment expressed by my colleague here, Councilmember Rivera.

And I wanna just restate, reframe my ultimate sort of concern that underlies my earlier line of questioning.

And that is, it might have made sense at the time implementing a specific process or program or feature or model, and then doing the same thing a few months later and in the next year and chaining on one well-intended idea onto another well-intended idea onto another well, and it's individually in isolation, that might make perfect sense.

It might even be able to justify it.

but taken together at the end could potentially end up with this Frankensteinist monstrous thing.

And that might not make sense today.

And we have a brand new council, it's a brand new fresh perspectives and we're learning about what exists today.

And I'm committed again to making sure we build it better and more efficiently and do better for our workers as well as part of that.

But whatever we do as a city, it just has to be justifiable.

We have to have a rationale.

Every single thing we do, because why are we doing it?

So that's my only comments and other comments.

Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you both.

Thank you.

I look forward to hearing about how the...

You'll be coming back.

I believe it's our next committee because we're going to talk about classification processes, et cetera.

My clerk is shaking his head.

We can get back to you on that, but...

Clearly, there's interest here.

And for the one last question, for the classification program, the project this year, are you going to be using a consultant?

Because that sounds like a really big job.

And who is that consultant?

Yes, we are.

Who is that consultant?

We have not identified a consultant yet.

We have not launched the RFP yet.

Okay.

We just received the funding, so it's a process.

Okay.

Got it.

All right.

If there are no other questions, thank you very, very much for coming.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Okay, we're moving on to our last agenda item, which is the Office of City Auditor overview.

And I will say that a lot of small departments report to me, and so I am really looking forward to transitioning from overviews of departments to getting into really...

making legislation if necessary, improving processes at the city, and just delivering results.

And so thank you very much for coming to this.

You will likely be at one of our last sort of introductory departments, but very important that you are here because last time we had Wayne Barnett of the Office of Ethics and Elections, and I called that office an accountability partner.

And of course, the auditor, so besides the CPC and the OIG and the OPA.

That's different kind of accountability partners, but really appreciate the work that you do and looking forward to hearing how you do it.

Thank you very much.

Please introduce yourselves and bring in your presentation.

My name is David Jones.

I'm the city auditor.

My name is Miroslava Mesa.

I am the deputy city auditor.

I want to start by thanking you, Council President Nelson, for inviting us here today to make a presentation about the Office of City Auditor.

During this presentation, just to let the viewing public know and the council members who are here, we're going to be at structure.

We're going to be answering questions that council President Nelson had about our office that she thought would be instructive, both to, there's so many new council members, and I haven't had the pleasure of meeting in-person council members.

Hollyworth, a council member, Saka, I have had the pleasure of meeting with Council Member Rivera.

and Councilmember Nelson, of course.

So hopefully this will be helpful to everyone who isn't that familiar with our office.

So that's the intent.

So could you go to the next slide, please?

I'm just, start off this slide just, and what I'm gonna talk about, just some basic background information about our office.

Our office was created in 1991 by Seattle's voters who amended the city charter to create our office.

The city auditor, the position I'm holding, that person holds a four-year term and can only be removed from the end of their term by a majority vote of the city council.

The Seattle Municipal Code states that we have access, our office, to all city records and employees in order to do our work.

We're a small office, relatively small.

We're authorized to have 10 people.

And I should note, one of our positions is dedicated, can only, we have a utilities auditor who can only audit Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle City Light.

Our budget is very lean.

90% of it is dedicated to personnel costs, and of the remaining 10%, 9% is for fixed costs, like, you know, our space over in the Seattle Municipal Tower, our IT costs.

So we're, you know, we're lean.

We're lean.

Can you go to the next slide, please?

So what do we do?

Just stated most simply, what our office does is examine things the city spends time and money on, and we make any needed recommendations for improving what that particular city program or department is doing.

Essentially, we're an advocate for good government.

We do in-depth, and I want to emphasize that in-depth, examinations of topics concerning Seattle city government.

We really carefully gather and document a lot of evidence, and we engage with the audit department as part of our process to ensure that there are no surprises in what our report says, and that we've gotten their feedback and incorporated their feedback as makes sense.

And we do do this.

We have this engagement.

One of the big reasons is because we want to develop recommendations that make sense and are doable and that the department can ultimately embrace.

So, and we try, part of our thing is we want to be as objective as possible.

Our processes are set up to do that.

And we want, we're driven to our conclusions and our recommendations by the evidence we collect and analyze.

One way to describe our role, one of our very important roles, is we're a resource or a tool that you, the city council, can use to perform your oversight function.

Our job, really, is after you all pass a budget or a law, what the heck's going to happen?

You know, what's really happening out there in department land?

And that's where we, you know, our function, where we can really be of assistance to you.

Next slide, please.

So one of the questions that's come up, how do we maintain our independence?

How do we, you know, maintain a position where we're objective and independent?

I've got a prop here.

This is what we call affectionately in the auditing community the yellow book.

It's the government auditing standards.

And what we do, we maintain our independence by following the standards in this book, which are promulgated by the U.S.

Comptroller General.

who's head of the Government Accountability Office, which is the largest governmental auditing organization in the United States.

It's the congressional auditing function.

You know, we're equivalent to it in how we're structured.

And this is good.

The standards say that our office is independent.

We're structurally independent because we're housed in the legislative branch of government, along with the city council.

We're a separate department, but we're housed in the legislative branch of government.

But what we do is we examine, audit the activities of the executive branch.

So we're outside of our branch.

And then we also look at some of the activities of the judicial branch, the Seattle Municipal Court.

So that's what keeps us independent.

And we don't audit the legislative branch.

That's left up to the state auditor's office to do any of that.

So again, our position ensures that we're independent.

Next slide, please.

So what do we do?

Well, most of what we do are performance audits.

And performance audits are...

That's a fancy way of saying they're independent, in-depth assessments using some kind of credible criteria or standards.

And we use them to evaluate things like...

you know, a department's compliance with whatever policies or procedures or laws there are, the effectiveness of a city program, the effects on equity.

Is it helping address equity of a particular city program?

So, because we do things that I've, I'm going to use this word a lot, in depth, our work takes some time.

You know, typically it takes, if we're doing a performance audit, about eight to 12 months, because we have this really rigorous process we go through.

Just to make it real to you in the VOD audience, what do we mean when we say performance audits?

Let me just describe a few that were done.

And this was at a city council request.

We audited the city's compliance with the requirements of its incentive zoning program for affordable housing.

And in the course of that work, we found that the city had lost track of $4 million in developer fees that it was owed.

And as a result of the audit, the city got the money that it was able to use for affordable housing.

Another one we did, this just looked at effectiveness, was a performance audit we did in 2020, and we looked at how well the city was maintaining its bridges.

You know, the city has a lot of bridges, and we, the report came up with a number of recommendations, you know, like what the city could do to improve its maintenance of its bridges, which is a real challenge from a funding point of view.

I know all of you are grappling with this as we try and keep up our infrastructure.

And then an example...

What was the upshot of that?

Yes, ma'am.

What was the finding of that last audit that you were just talking about, the bridge one?

Yeah.

I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?

I didn't hear that.

Did you just say that...

What was the 2020 audit that you were just describing?

I didn't quite catch what you were saying about it.

The 2020 audit...

Bridges audit.

Bridges, yeah.

What was the findings?

Yeah, the bridges audit.

Bridge maintenance, Councilmember Peterson requested that, and we went in and looked at just how...

let me say this most simply, how well are we keeping up with the maintenance needs of our bridges?

Because, you know, around that period, the University Bridge shut down for a long time and caused a lot of problems.

And then the West Seattle Bridge, of course, you know, that happening.

And essentially what the report found was like, We need better information on how to keep up our bridges, and it's apparent that we're not spending enough on it, you know, for what our engineers and our people who know about this stuff say.

So that was kind of what the bridge maintenance audit came up with.

Did I answer your question, Council President?

Yes.

Okay.

Just getting back on example of a performance audit, this one touched on equity.

We looked at the city's...

promotion practices to see how they were doing in terms of equity.

And as a result of that report, we came up with some recommendations and some findings, some of which informed the city's, one of the results was that it informed the city's workforce equity plan for 2024 and provided some, I think, useful information on how we were doing.

I do want to emphasize one thing, a performance audit.

I know this is getting nerdy, audit stuff, but it's different from a financial audit.

We do performance audits.

A financial audit, that's when you're looking at a financial statement, you know, accounting records, debits and credits, and to ensure that they're fair and accurate, and that's an important thing.

Performance audit looks at an entity's operations.

So that's what we do.

The state auditor office for the city of Seattle, they're responsible for auditing our financial statements.

So they do that just to enlighten you on, you know, roles.

Various auditors are floating around the city.

Can you go to the next thing?

So I talked about performance audits.

The other thing we do sometimes, we call them non-audit projects because they're not done in strict accordance with the government auditing standards.

We have done some work in this area.

They generally fall into one of two categories.

The first category of non-audit projects are done to respond to city council requests that really just don't make sense to do as a performance audit, as a full-fledged performance audit.

That doesn't mean these projects aren't subject to our, you know, any quality assurance process.

It just means it's a more streamlined process so we can get those things done more quickly.

Just to give you a few examples, this is back in 2013. We produced a memo at council request on other jurisdictions' experience with centralized grant management systems.

In 2024, we did one on how other cities operate their district election systems.

So we have done these quicker, you know, more tightly scoped.

Just this year, you did that one?

I didn't know about that.

Is it posted on your website?

Okay, thank you.

The city election one that you did a comparison study.

Yeah, this was before the city adopted the district election system.

Oh, I thought you said you did it in 2024. Yeah, I'm sorry, this was in 2014. If I misspoke, I apologize.

But it was done in lieu of that.

And just so the council could and the public could benefit from learning about how the system was set up.

So I apologize if I misspoke.

Got it.

I'm going to talk about that second category of non-audit projects a little bit later because it fits in nicely.

One of the questions that are going to come is, when do you contract out work?

So, we'll talk about the second category.

But the first one is just these quick ones we can do that we don't do, you know, as a full-fledged performance audit.

One of the questions that come up, if you go to the next slide, please, how do we decide what we're going to do?

How do we develop our work program?

And the way our system has set up our process, it's up to the city auditor to decide what the program should be.

And this program traditionally has been able to be updated at any point during the year.

So it's not fixed in stone.

It can be changed.

It's a living document.

As new issues come up, particularly that the council wants to address, we can rejuggle that program, revise that program.

One important thing for you all to know, the Seattle Municipal Code basically says that we have to give our highest priority to work requested by the city council.

So we do that.

And the way we do that is, well, we have a priority.

We always, if it's a council request, we...

give it serious thought, and we kind of have a priority system for how we decide what to do.

You know, highest at the top of the heap that the council is behind is an ordinance, you know, that tells us a law that's been passed by council because, you know, you have to have majority vote of the council to do that.

So that's what we'll...

And the lowest would be just a request in terms of the council hierarchy, council request.

You know, a single council member is asked to do it.

So what you should get out of this, the point I'm trying to make is, the more council requests, more council members who request an audit or a project by our office, the greater the odds are that we're gonna take that on.

I didn't know that.

I didn't know that getting...

A whole bunch of people to sign on would help, because I know that oftentimes I've seen two council members ask you, but they were chair and vice chair of a particular committee, and the request was to look at an issue like retail theft, not look at the effectiveness of this one law.

So I didn't realize that it mattered, that a lot of people, a lot of council members were also interested.

Yeah, and if a council, and again, this, it's going to depend on the situation, the context, but, you know, if a committee chair has asked for something that he or she or they oversee, you know, that gets some points, you know, on that because that's an issue that that committee has to, you know, they're responsible as council members for oversight of that particular issue in the city.

Thank you.

Sorry, David, is it okay if I ask, since we're at this juncture, so how would a council member go about asking for an audit?

It's very simple.

You just call or send an email or request a meeting.

Okay.

That is the way it's done.

It's, you know, I'm at your disposal.

No, there's a really, really, really long application.

It takes a long time.

Just kidding.

Maybe we should, but we don't have a form or anything for it.

It's just, you know, reach out to me, and I'll answer.

We just need to know how it's done.

Okay.

Thank you.

And I know that's a very practical, great question.

So thank you for asking it.

Thank you, David.

And whenever we start a project, we'll notify council members and the mayor.

You know, we'll let you know that we're started on something.

So we want you to know what we're up to when we're doing that.

And I should say, as resources allow, you know, although the council is our highest priority, because we're housing a legislative branch with you and we're helping you or trying to help you perform your oversight function.

We will request, we will accept or consider requests from other sources, you know, and if we have the resources available, the staff available, we'll take them on, you know, the mayor or city departments or the public.

But as a practical matter, and I tell folks from the public who come and ask us about this, you know, why don't you audit this or can I ask you to do this, you know, really go to your council members.

They're the ones that, you know, we, under the Seattle Municipal Code, we have to give highest priority to the council request.

Okay, can you, so this next slide, it's kind of busy, but it's our work program, and we put our work program, which is a living document, is subject to change in our annual report every year.

You know, we're required by the city charter, all city departments to issue an annual report by April 1st.

Ours is going to be coming out pretty soon, so, but here's a preview.

If you look at the, what I want you to take away from this and the public to take away from this is most of our work, on our program right now is requested or mandated by the city council.

So the first row lists the projects there that were currently on our program, and the second row shows why we're doing it, who asked us to do it or why we're doing it.

And again, as you can see, most of them, it's an ordinance or request by a council member.

You can see, in fact, three of them, number one, substance use disorder, the crime prevention review, number five, and number six, crime technologies requested by the city council president and the mayor so in our that goes up when the executive branch and the legislative branch are both saying we'd like you to look at that that that goes to the you know pretty top of the pile for us Can you go to the next slide, please?

Just the question came up, well, how do you decide which staff to decide to a particular project or not?

And also following up on that, when do you contract out?

When do you go outside your office?

So there's no magic to deciding who in our office works at it.

I mean, the biggest thing is, you know, who's available?

Who has time to do it?

And secondly, you know, if they have some subject matter expertise in a particular area, And then, you know, would this project meet their developmental needs?

Would it be good for them to develop into a better auditor?

So that will be a consideration.

Just want to make clear in terms of staff assignment, we have stopped work on projects and reassigned staff to higher priority projects.

You know, again, this is kind of the living nature of our work program.

If something comes up and the players that be, the elected say, boy, we'd like you to look at this sooner rather than later.

We can reconfigure our work.

We did this years ago and a new police chief came in and the police chief said, could you help me because I really want to get a handle on how we're managing overtime expenditures.

And then the council was very supportive of that.

So we went in and did that job, put aside some other stuff, and did that.

Just one point I want to make.

We're no longer the lead performance auditor of the Seattle Police Department.

That responsibility now rests with the Office of Inspector General, headed by Lisa Judge, who came in and made a presentation I know not too long ago to the Public Safety Committee, I believe.

They were assigned this duty in the wake of the U.S.

Department of Justice consent decree involving the Seattle Police Department.

So they're the ones who take the lead on performance audits, which is a good thing, quite honestly, because we could have used up our entire FTE, 10 of them, just doing police department stuff because there's just so much that comes out of that area.

So I want to tell you about contracting.

We've done it primarily for two reasons.

First, we've contracted out work for non-audit evaluations that have been done by outside parties when we've been directed by the council to do that.

And the council has provided us funding for that.

And they've done it mainly in recent years to examine the effects of certain ordinances.

What are the effects?

For example, the minimum wage ordinance, the secure scheduling ordinance, the sweetened beverage tax ordinance.

So we've taken that money, selected outside experts, usually academic experts, to examine the topic.

We finished up a lot of that work in our annual report.

You'll see there'll be a big list of reports, of these non-audit reports done by outside entities.

So we finished up a lot of that work.

So we're kind of hoping to, you know, spend more time on performance audits.

But we have taken on that duty when council's asked us to do.

And part of it was because they wanted somebody who was perceived as independent selecting the persons who would be doing these evaluations of the effects of council ordinances.

That, by the way, that's the second category that I was talking about of non-audit projects.

You know, we had the short, quick ones.

Then we've had this one where we've been directed by counsel to use outside experts.

When we contract out, there's one other time when we contract out our work.

It's to give us specialized expertise to help with an audit.

And that's mainly come up.

with information technology and cybersecurity audits.

Those things can get pretty technical, and the expertise, quite honestly, we can't afford to keep somebody on our staff who really has expertise on that, so it's just much more cost efficient for us to contract out for that.

So we have done that.

If you could go on.

So we're asking, how do you, what's your quality assurance program?

How do you make sure that your products are high quality?

And again, I'm going to get my prop here again, you know, the yellow book.

We follow the requirements, the rigorous requirements of the government auditing standards.

So what this means, we have a highly structured process with defined stages and steps that we go through when we do an audit.

So, a lot of documentation, a lot of requirements, a lot of steps that are, you know, written down.

We have checklists and templates to make sure, and a lot of layers of review.

I'll show you, there's a graphic, hopefully, that I'm going to show you in a minute.

Um, one question that comes up about this is, um, related to this is, well, who audits you guys?

You know, the Office of City Auditor, how-how do we know that you're, you know, having-turning out quality, objective products?

So every three years, and we have to do this to say we comply with the government auditing standards, there's an independent team that'll come appointed by the association of local government auditors, and they'll assess our quality assurance process and see, is it aligned with the government auditing standards?

Since I became city auditor, we've passed four of those reviews, and if you want to see them, you can go onto our website, and we put them on there.

So I'm really proud of how our office has been able to, you know, to maintain that, meet that standard.

Okay, if you go to the next slide.

This is just a document, and it's kind of busy, this slide right here, this chart.

But the point is, there are a bunch of steps we go through, and they're documented, they're formalized to make sure that we, you know, are turning out a high-quality product.

And this includes in step seven there, you know, we'll show it to the audited department or departments, and we'll say, did we get anything wrong?

Did we miss something?

And that's not to say that we're going to, just because they don't like something we may have said in a report, we're going to take it out.

But if they have evidence and they can convince us, you know, we want to hear that because when we publish a report and release it to the public, provide it to the council, we want to make sure that it's, you know, as accurate as possible.

Okay.

We're getting close to the end here, I know.

You're learning everything you wanted to know about auditing, performance auditing.

But this slide is important, you know, like how do we account for racial equity when we're doing our audits?

And we take this very seriously.

For every audit that we start up, we have a form that we complete that basically forces us to think through the race and social justice implications of the work.

And so what this does is this allows us to plan our work, a particular audit, so that we can make sure we touch on any relevant race and social justice issues and questions.

We based the form on the city's racial equity toolkit that I know you have all heard about, but we modified the form to make sense for us as a performance audit office.

I'm really proud of the work that our staff did to come up with it, and we revised it recently.

You know, we always want to continually improve it.

And I'm really proud.

Other government audit offices have come to us and said, hey, can we see your form?

Because we want to develop one on that.

And several have done that.

So I'm really proud of that.

Next slide, please.

The question came up, well, what do you do, how do you develop staff who have little or no background in auditing?

One of the issues, there's a small pool of people who are experienced in this, and there's kind of a competitive market for it.

So, and so, our preference is to hire people who have some experience before they come to us with auditing.

But when we can't, we do the following three things that are listed on this chart.

You know, provide on-the-job training by pairing them with an experienced auditor.

Second, have them, we have an internal course we call the new auditor orientation.

And then third, you know, as much as we have the funds to do so, provide them with outside training, you know, like at our national conference, which will be here in Seattle in May.

So we're going to take advantage of that because it's really cost effective.

I should note one thing on here.

Again, I keep bringing up the government auditing standards, but in order to say we comply with them, our staff have to get 80 continuing professional education credits every two years.

It's kind of like lawyers with CLEs or CPAs have to get a certain number of continuing professional education requirements.

So we do that, which is a good thing.

It's not just our new staff who are getting training, but our older, more experienced staff who have the chance to continually sharpen their skills and stay up on top of the latest techniques.

This isn't mentioned on the slide, but I just want you all to know, in terms of developing people and training.

One of the things we have done and I feel very good about is we've promoted people internally who've come into our office and not in auditor positions, but have worked like an administrative position or kind of an intern position.

promoted them into auditor positions.

And I really think, you know, I'm really proud of how we've done that and the people we have have turned out to be really, really good auditors.

So, you know, we're always looking to try and do that, take advantage of that because, you know, they get a chance to observe us doing the audit work and we get a chance to get to know them.

And as often, you know, that leads to a successful relationship.

Next slide, please.

So what happens after we publish a report?

What is the council supposed to do?

What is the executive branch supposed to do?

What's the Auditor Department supposed to do?

Well, we can only make recommendations.

We don't have the authority to enforce them.

It's up to the executive branch to implement the recommendations.

The City Council, the way you can play a role, and I know most of you know this already, but I'll just say it for the public, You can do things like exercise your oversight role, have departments come up here and make presentations.

How are you doing on implementing recommendations the city auditor's office made?

You can ask them in written questions.

You can send questions to them.

How are you doing?

Can you talk closer into your mic?

Pull your microphone up closer a little bit, please.

Thank you.

So I'll repeat what I just said.

this council can play its oversight role and help us encourage departments to implement recommendations by doing things like having them come up and make a presentation to you at a council committee meeting or ask them to give you written response to questions.

Just an example of this, Councilmember Peterson, former Councilmember Peterson had the Seattle Department of Transportation come up to his committee and provide progress updates on how they were doing in implementing recommendations made in our bridge maintenance report.

And I know Council Member Saka, you had them come up to your committee.

So that from our point of view is a really good thing, really good thing.

Okay, and on our recommendations, we spend so much time and effort.

How do we know that our recommendations are having any impact or any effect?

And I just want to say we spend a lot of time thinking about these recommendations and formulating them and getting feedback, because we want it to be sensible and doable, and that's why we work with the Auditor Department to try and come up with the ones that we, you know, there's a good chance that they're gonna be implemented.

But annually, auditors from our office will go to the departments and will follow up on the implementation status of all recommendations we make and just see how are you guys doing, you know?

Are you going to be able to do this?

Do you need more time?

Or are you just not going to do it either because you don't want to or because the resources aren't available or circumstances have changed?

And we gather this information every year, and then we produce a report that's made available to the council and the public.

And I think it's a really good thing because departments know we're going to come back every year and ask them, how are you doing on the implementation of this?

And then we're going to report on that.

It's kind of like a dog with a bone.

When did you send out the last one?

So when...

We'll go out, gather the information, put it in a report, and I think that's really good, an annual report, because the departments know that we're just not gonna forget about the recommendation, that we're gonna come, while it's still open, if it hasn't been dealt with, we're gonna come back, and we're gonna ask them, what are you doing with this?

And they have to tell us, and then we put that in a report that we make available to you, elected officials, and the executive branch, and the mayor, and the public.

My question was, when did you send out that last report?

Here's my request.

Could you please, I don't know if all of my colleagues had already been in office when you sent out your last report, so could you please forward it to us if you haven't?

Yes, yeah.

We're hoping the latest iteration of the report is going to come out hopefully fairly soon.

So we definitely make sure all members of the council get that.

In the interim, one thing I can say is we do have an interactive dashboard on our website where you can go look, and anybody can go look, and check up on any of the recommendations.

So that's .

I have done that, and that is very interesting.

Thank you.

The second to last chart I'm going to show you here is, If you can go ahead.

Yeah, it's just a pie chart.

And what this shows, I think, is the value of going through this whole, making recommendations and then following up on them.

We've been tracking this since 2007. And you can see that 71% of them have been implemented.

And then 12% are pending.

You know, their departments are still working on them.

They haven't gotten back to us with a final answer.

I think, you know, this is good metric.

I think this shows that the value of what we're doing, that most of what we say ultimately get implemented.

But, you know, it takes a dogged approach, keeping at it, and, you know, doing the work to craft a recommendation that has a good chance of being implemented, that makes sense, that will do good for the departments in the city, and then, you know, following up on that, reporting that.

That is all I have to say.

I'm very happy to entertain any questions you may have.

Just one news flash I just want to share with you.

Our National Association, every year they give out awards for the quality of audit reports.

And we just learned that our report that we did last year for Councilmember Strauss on permitting got an award for being good, you know, a good audit report.

I'm really proud of the folks in our office who worked on that.

Just wanted to let you know about that, be able to brag about them, the work they did on that.

Melissa Alderson and Andrew Scoggin.

So, Melissa and Andrew, thank you for your work on that.

At this point, Council President Nelson, happy to try and answer any questions you may have for us.

Sure, thank you.

Well, I will...

My favorite audit that you put out last year was the one on organized retail theft.

I thought that there were some...

It was very detailed and...

I gave a lot of recommendations for different bodies, SPD, council, et cetera, and I'll go check how we are with implementing some of those recommendations.

But yes, thank you very much for your work.

I was just at the point of casting my vote for a budget action, which would have taken a whole bunch of money from one place and put it into the auditor's office, and then finding out what the potential consequences of that could have been.

backed away, but you do have a lot of work to do.

You are very, very busy and I really appreciate the work that your office does.

When getting back to, it's interesting when you're talking about the, when I asked that question, what are departments supposed to do?

And even some of your recommendations, even though you're not auditing the legislative department, you have recommendations that we need to implement.

what happens if they just ignore your report?

And so you are dogged, but at some point I'd like to know more about, can departments appeal the recommendations?

Because you just mentioned yourself that you sometimes don't have subject matter experts and you're auditing things that, that your staff don't have a lot of deep knowledge of?

Maybe you don't have the money for a consultant, and so there is grounds perhaps.

I'm just suggesting that maybe if a department says, no, you kind of misinterpreted that, is there a feedback loop that they can say,

It's actually during the process.

You know, we want to get that feedback before we finish the report and release it.

And we have ample opportunities and at least three opportunities, if not for the department, you know, to provide feedback on what we are going to say in our report.

And we welcome that because we want to get it right, you know, and we want to do what makes sense.

And that's the only way we can do that by, you know, engaging.

We're not always going to agree, but it's good to have that dialogue so that we're transparent.

I will say, Council President Elson, on organized retail crime, that's one that we're really hoping that the council can help us engage with the executive on doing that, because a lot of those recommendations, they're still open.

and they involve multiple stakeholders.

A number of them we...

I know it drives the executive crazy sometimes, and when we say the city should do something, we say that, and that kind of implies the council, the mayor, maybe some departments, and...

But a number of those recommendations and organized retail crime really do involve a number of city stakeholders if we're going to do what we suggest should be done.

So any help you can give us on that, on, you know, getting straight answers from the involved stakeholders would really be appreciated.

I was just going to make a joke.

Does increasing the number of police make a difference?

Was that one of the recommendations?

Just kidding.

We'll work on your request.

So I see hands up, and I do have another one, but I will cede the mic, if you don't mind, to Councilmember Hollingsworth.

She hasn't had a chance to ask a question yet.

Go ahead.

My apologies.

It was a comment.

I'm going to read that audit on the retail crime because we've been meeting with a ton of retailers in our city, particularly a lot of grocery stores.

Safeway spends $2.7 million on just public safety efforts in their stores.

They only have 17 of those.

And they spend most of their public safety budget on the 17 stores is greater than the regional stores, all combined.

And so a lot of retail stores in our city are really suffering right now because of the activity that's going on.

And I think grocery stores particularly need to be elevated in a different category because they are a lifeline.

A lot of the, unfortunately, pharmacies are Closing down.

And so these grocery stores are the only place people can get medicine.

They can get food, you know, and so protecting those as well.

And then a lot of small business owners that are unfortunately, you know, the smash and grabs, the car going through the front door.

I can't begin to tell you how many businesses meetings I've had with, uh, small businesses, um, that are just really suffering right now because of that.

And, you know, they can't take that, you know, $5,000 hit, um, or the $500 as simple, you know, as a window.

That's, that's a lot.

So I'm going to read that.

Um, that was the only comment I had.

I didn't have any questions.

This was a overall, it was a phenomenal presentation, but I'm going to read, I'm so glad council president brought that up.

Cause that's definitely, um, something that I think we need to take into account as a council and figure out some of those recommendations for the city to be able to encourage more small businesses and businesses to be able to operate.

It's a whole ecosystem.

So thank you.

Council Member Saka.

Thank you, Madam Council President, and thank you, City Auditor Jones.

Love this presentation.

I appreciate you and the work that you all do every day.

I love this auditing function.

It is a good thing.

No, it is an exceptional thing.

It promotes good government.

It promotes transparency, promotes trust, and confidence from the public's perspective in government and helps us get better.

We all have blind spots, every last one of us.

And by having someone else take a look, in some cases a hard look at what we're doing, in some cases what we're not doing, That is sometimes the best way to help bring to life and daylight those opportunities that we all have to get better.

So it's a good, effective government tool, device and strategy that we can employ and I'm glad we have it.

So thank you, thank you, thank you.

And you mentioned at the outside of this briefing that we haven't had a chance to connect, I would say yet, Yet, as chair of the Transportation Committee, and someone who lives in West Seattle, and someone who also represents a community that, in many material respects, is still somewhat traumatized by having a two and a half year bridge closure, myself included, by the way.

Irrespective of where you live in the city, and we welcome residents to District 1 from all parts of the region and state and country.

Yeah, it's an issue that is really important to me and my constituents and I think a lot of people in this city.

And so, yes, trust.

There will be ample opportunities to partner together on a going forward basis.

That audit from 2020 was now four years old.

So I think regular, periodic, anticipated, in some cases unanticipated audits are a good thing.

And you noted that that pending report iterative report for this year is going to be released soon.

So I am going to be, well, I am keenly interested in learning more about some of the SDOT issues and challenges and findings and be paying very close attention to that and also be working with SDOT and monitoring and tracking the bridge asset management plan and making sure a lot of important, complex transportation items in the hopper this year, but...

Frankly, they're all urgent and important.

But in any event, your office, again, want to applaud, celebrate, acknowledge, and share my appreciation and gratitude for the work you all do to help bring about those things that I mentioned earlier.

Good governance, effective governance, transparency, and helping us improve and recognize and improve upon our blind spots.

Policy benchmarking.

You mentioned that that is a capability that exists.

Did it in 2014 for the elections.

I ask that question every single briefing that I'm in, whether it's behind the scenes or here at the dais, to all department heads.

If you're not on notice by now, please be on notice that it is something that I care deeply about, understanding what policies...

exists at a high level at other jurisdictions and how our policies and processes map against those and compare and contrast.

At least at a high level, I think everyone should have a point of view on exactly that.

Not necessarily like weighing the quality of, in assessing, doing some deep, insightful compare and contrast, but everyone should have a point of view on understanding the broader landscape, because it shows collaboration and it shows a little bit of humility as well.

Because I think in many significant respects, Seattle needs to be the leader, the policy leader in many areas.

And locally, at the state level, nationally, internationally even.

But that's not always the case either.

And certain challenges, you know, I think we also just need to humble ourselves and recognize that there are best practices in other jurisdictions.

Ideally, we'll try and find that one for one comparison, never find it.

There's always gonna be so much nuance, but at least at a high level in terms of population equivalency, but yeah, like Albuquerque, let's look to what's going on there.

But let us find these best practices and figure out what's workable and implementable here in Seattle.

And so not necessarily, not necessarily a question, but a comment, show of gratitude and appreciation, emphasizing a few priorities there.

And yeah, we will have, I think, ample opportunities to partner together and alongside all these, all of the 40 something departments.

And so, in any event, thank you.

Councilmember Rivera, your hand is not up, but did you have something to say?

No, thank you, Council President, for checking in.

I asked my questions earlier, so I will echo the appreciation for the work that you do.

It's really important to city governments to make sure that we're auditing ourselves to ensure that we're delivering the service to the residents and the taxpayers in a manner that is really holding ourselves accountable.

So you are one of the key pieces to that, and I appreciate your work.

I have a question about the, let's see, it is the audit that came out in December, understanding Seattle's housing market shift from small to large rental properties, a rental registration and inspection ordinance program audit.

You were looking at, so one of the concerns I think was looking at Why are properties not...

What's happening with properties that are no longer on the Rio, as we call it?

And that is of great concern for me because I am all about trying to maintain our housing stock, and especially housing stock owned by smaller housing providers.

And if they're selling their properties or demolishing them or...

whatever, why is that happening?

And you do have really good data in here of, I think it was 635 respondents or so 67% of your respondents said that it was difficult to comply with the City of Seattle's rental rules and regulations.

And 42% said inadequate support and resources for landlords from the City of Seattle.

So that did get to my attention.

And indeed, your first recommendation is If the city of Seattle wants to preserve single-family and small multi-family rental property housing, it should consider enacting policies that support the continued presence of this type of property in Seattle's rental market.

When considering such policies, the city should involve stakeholders most impacted by rental housing policies, assuming you're meaning housing providers as well as renters.

And so I will follow up with you to see if you can be a little bit more specific in your In that recommendation, I know that Councilmember Moore is really interested in this topic as well, because if there are changes that need to be made to existing laws, we should know about that, because housing affordability is a crisis in town.

Could you please go back to page eight, your current 2024 work program?

Yes.

So number five, you'll notice that, yes, I and Mayor Harrell did request this one, and it's the Crime Prevention Review.

I'd like to know more specifically when in Q3 you might have that.

Colleagues, this is an audit of crime prevention programs that don't live in SPD, that live in the Department of Human Services in the Community Safety Initiative bucket.

And that is things like working with...

Reintegrating people who have been involved in gun violence, those sorts of programs, want to know if they're effective.

And I'm thinking about that today because of what happened yesterday right in front of Garfield.

And so that is heartbreaking.

I want to say on the record, I...

My heart goes out to those families and that community, and we have to do better.

And hopefully the results of your audit will point us in the direction of whether or not these programs are effective, if there are changes that need to be made to them so that we have all the tools in our toolbox to decrease the number of fatal shootings that we have in our city.

own up to why that is on your work plan.

And I guess because it's with me and the mayor, then it got high priority.

So thank you very much for that.

Looking forward to seeing those results.

Are there any other comments?

Council member, I want to thank you and the mayor for bringing this audit forward because this is something that I really care about as well.

As you know, there have been a lot of shootings while there was at least one shooting in a school and then multiple shootings outside of schools and outside of community centers.

And so this is something that is really near and dear to my heart and all of us, you know, across the city.

So thank you for doing that.

We need to be doing better in this space, and we don't know what we should be doing if the programs that we've put in place, we don't know if they're working or not.

So this audit will help us determine whether the investments we're currently making are the right ones.

And if not, then we need to right-size and do more homework on our end on what then will help.

in this space.

So I just want to thank you and the mayor for your leadership on that.

And then in terms of the small landlord issue, I too care about this issue because we have a number of small landlords in the D4 who also have concerns about the city's regulations and how hard they're saying the city is making it them to continue to be small landlords across this or in the district.

So thank you.

Great.

All right.

You're out of the hot seat.

Thank you very much for your work.

I really appreciate you coming and talking with us today.

Thank you.

Thank you for having us.

We really appreciate it.

Thanks for all the work you're doing.

I mean, being an elected official is taking up that responsibility is I don't think most people in the street understand the amount of work and what you guys go through.

So thank you for, you know, doing what you do.

Appreciate it.

Well, thank you.

Thank you.

It's our job to be up here and thank you for all you do.

So, thank you.

Okay, folks, don't get up.

So, goodbye.

And I just wanted to say our next meeting is scheduled for March 28th.

I see that Michael Wolff has been sitting here in the audience all day, did not make public comment, but he is the director of Drive Forward.

It seems like every for the past several council meetings, we have had comment from drivers who are pleading with us to do something.

Most of them are saying just repeal the legislation that that that changed the the way that network companies compensate drivers.

And we're also getting the same...

Our inboxes are full of emails from customers who can no longer have their groceries brought to...

delivered to their homes, their medications.

Restaurants all over the city, especially in areas where there is a high concentration of restaurants, are also...

and are wondering how they're gonna stay in business with an existing 30% decline in revenue.

I just want people to know that I'm on it, and I mean I'm not on it, but this is of great, it's urgent for me.

And if everybody out there in TV land is wondering why we're not doing something 60 days after the implementation of this law and we're hearing from our constituents asking for something to be done, You know that you've been speaking with network companies with Drive Forward.

You've also been meeting with, I think, members of Working Washington.

And so for those out there, I had hoped to have something before us on the 28th.

That's already way too late.

But that work is proceeding behind the scenes, and I really do appreciate your input there.

Whenever you want, if you want to just let me know what you're thinking as well, I welcome your comments.

So I'm hearing the folks at public comment, and we're not doing nothing, and I'm just trying to find out what is the best path forward.

All right.

If there are no further comments, this meeting of March 14th is adjourned.

It is 4.04.

Thank you very much, everybody.