Seattle City Council Finance & Housing Committee 6/15/21

We are recording.

Wonderful.

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you so much for joining today.

This is the Finance and Housing Committee meeting.

Today is June 15th, 2021. I'm Teresa Mosqueda, Chair of the Finance and Housing Committee.

The meeting will come to order.

It is 9.31 a.m.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Chair Mosqueda?

Present.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Here.

Council President Gonzalez?

Council Member Lewis.

Present.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Other guest council members.

Council Member Morales attending as alternate.

Council Member Peterson.

Council Member Juarez.

That is five members present and two guests.

Wonderful.

Well, thank you all very much for joining us.

And when other council members join us, I'll make sure to welcome them and announce their presence as well for the Finance and Housing Committee members.

Colleagues, I want to thank Erin House for clerking for us today.

She is stepping in in the shoes for Freddy de Cuevas, who is on vacation right now.

So thank you so much, Erin and team in my office for making today's meeting possible.

Colleagues, as you see today, we have a full agenda.

We will begin with a panel on grocery workers hazard pay ordinance and the general COVID and health presentation for grocery workers in our community at large.

This is a continuation of the conversation that we had about grocery workers and the hazard pay legislation that we passed earlier this year.

We will have a briefing on the housing levy annual report and discussion for proposed changes to the ANF plan and the housing finance policies and take a possible vote on the legislation.

You'll remember that this item was on our calendar two weeks ago and we did postpone so we could have a longer conversation around.

the Seattle Rescue Plan.

So thanks again to the Office of Housing for their flexibility.

And then we will get into the big item on our agenda.

This is our opportunity to look at possible amendments on the Seattle Rescue Plan.

We will have a briefing and discussion on each amendment, and we'll also have the opportunity to vote on each amendment.

Colleagues, I want to note again that if we don't get through the full list of amendments for all of the items that relate to the Seattle Rescue Plan, again, there's a handful of bills, then we will have an opportunity to continue that discussion in our meeting tomorrow.

That's Wednesday, which will begin at 2 p.m.

So again, if we don't get through all of the items on today's Seattle Rescue Plan item, our third item on the agenda, and the package of legislation that accompanies it, we will go ahead and have a committee meeting tomorrow, and I'll make the appropriate comments at the end of today's meeting.

We will get you out of here by 1 p.m., and then we will decide if we need to carry it over for tomorrow.

That's our agenda for today.

Is there any objection?

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

Let's go ahead and begin with public comment.

It is our effort to try to make sure that we get through everybody who is listed for public comment today.

And right now, folks, that is about 20 people signed up for public comment.

We are going to give folks a minute and a half for public comment this morning.

So if the clerks could get prepared for one minute and 30 seconds, that would be appreciated.

As always, the public comment period is a chance for people to sign up and give us their thoughts on all items related to today's agenda or our work plan.

You can still sign up at Seattle.gov backslash council.

And the public comment period does allow for us to hear from everyone today.

I will endeavor to get through everyone's comments.

So I'm going to call three people at a time.

please remember to start by saying your name and the item that you are speaking to.

You are going to hear a prompt that says you have been unmuted but that's your cue to push star six on your phone as well.

Double check to make sure your phone is also not on mute and then begin your public comment.

You're going to hear a 10 second chime at the end of the public comment and we will make sure to give you that 10 second time so that you can wrap up your public comment and that way you don't get cut off.

If you do have more to say, please do email us at council at Seattle dot gov. Again, once you hit the end of your public comment, please do hang up on that number that you have received on the confirmation email, not the listen-in line and not on Seattle Channel.

Make sure that you're calling in on that listen-in phone number, excuse me, that testimony phone number and not the listen-in line.

Hang up on that when you're done speaking and then you can go back to Seattle Channel or the listen-in options posted on today's agenda to finish watching the rest of the committee meeting.

Again, just one more reminder, when you hear you have been unmuted, you also do need to hit star six on your end.

Before we begin, I want to welcome Council President Gonzalez.

Thank you very much for joining us and appreciate you being here this morning.

And also just want to double check to see if I have any other council members who joined us on the line.

Okay, I'm not seeing any, but we'll make sure to announce them.

We do have an elected official here today with us.

I understand that Commissioner Bowman is here to speak with us from the Port of Seattle.

Thank you again, Commissioner, for being with us.

As is customary, we do allow for those who are elected officials to go first in order to address the committee here with us.

So we're going to open up our public testimony, and we will start with Commissioner Bowman.

Commissioner Bowman, welcome to the Finance and Housing Committee meeting.

Just wanting to double check, I see you on my screen here.

If you could just push star six one more time to unmute yourself, and then we will begin with your public testimony.

All right.

Can you hear me?

I can.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining.

Good morning.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, for allowing me to speak today and members of the committee.

Again, for the record, I'm Stephanie Bowman, Commissioner with the Port of Seattle.

I'm here today to testify in support of an amendment offered up by Council Member Morales.

to allocate $1 million to help fund the Opportunity Youth Initiative as part of the Seattle Rescue Plan that you are considering today.

The money for the Opportunity Youth Initiative would help supplement what the Port of Seattle has done for the last two years to help better educate you and the general public about our program.

The Opportunity Youth Initiative is a remarkably successful program that has helped to provide paid internships to the most disadvantaged youth in our communities.

The Port of Seattle has had an incredibly nationally recognized internship program for the last five years.

It's employed more than 600 youth from, again, our most disadvantaged communities, mostly those from South King County, and particularly communities of color.

When COVID hit, we were unable to continue with our robust internship program at the numbers we had before.

And so we created the Youth Opportunity Initiative, where we applied a million dollars to help allocate towards four community groups to help provide employment for youth 16 to 24. Again, those hit hardest.

If you look at the numbers from the employment security department, youth 16 to 24 were hardest hit with unemployment during COVID with numbers as high as 24% unemployment.

As we all know, so many of our community members lost their jobs, but these jobs for these youth were just non-existent.

So the port stepped in and partnering with great community organizations such as the Urban League, Seattle Goodwill, Partners in Employment, and Seattle Parks Foundation, we were able to provide paid employment opportunities for almost 200 youth.

If the city of Seattle and the council were to allocate a million dollars, it would go a long way towards expanding that program in a partnership with the court.

We are moving forward with the program again this year in 2021 and are expected, have not committed yet, but are expected to do it in 2022. So I would just urge your support and happy to provide more information to council members and the general public if you should choose.

Thank you very much for the time today.

Thank you very much, Commissioner Bowman, for joining us this morning.

Appreciate that.

Thanks as well to you and your office and Councilmember Morales for working jointly on the amendment in front of us today.

Appreciate your time.

Okay, let's continue on with public comment.

I do see three of our first speakers present.

We have Dennis Sillis, George Riddle, and Terry Holm.

Dennis, you are up first and you have a minute and a half.

Good morning, Dennis.

Dennis, I'm looking for you on my screen here.

Just star six to unmute.

If you are there, I see you.

Just hit star six one more time, Dennis.

It looks like you're still on mute on my end.

Oh, there we go.

Perfect.

Great.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, for an opportunity to address council members in this committee.

My name is Dennis Sills and I am Director of Strategic Initiatives for Plymouth House.

Plymouth Housing houses 1,100 chronically homeless adults in 15 buildings throughout Seattle.

Plymouth Housing is a permanent housing provider, which means there's no time limit on our housing, and we connect our residents with services that can help them thrive.

We are a housing-first organization and believe every person has the right to a home and every person matters exactly as they are.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, Council President Gonzalez, and Mayor Durkin for introducing the Seattle Rescue Plan.

We applaud the more than $49 million to address housing and homelessness in our city.

Plymouth is especially supportive of $2 million directed to the Office of Housing to support affordable housing providers.

We request that at least 1 million of that new funding be directed to permanent support of housing providers since we serve populations with high disability and behavioral health needs.

This funding can support workforce development to assist our residents Since the beginning of the pandemic, Plymouth has invested in our employee assistance program, hired a behavioral health counselor for staff, revamped our cultural vision, and organized a diversity, equity, and inclusion task force to address our operations.

Thank you for the time to address this important funding opportunity.

Thank you for dialing in today.

The next person is George.

Good morning, George.

Just star six, perfect.

Good morning.

Chair Mosqueda, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak and good morning to the council members.

My name is George Riddell.

I live on 63rd Avenue Southwest in the Alki Point neighborhood of West Seattle.

And I'm speaking today in support of Council Member Herbold's amendment to CB120093 to use future funding to make the Alki Point Keep Moving Street part of the Stay Healthy Street program and to make it permanent.

Since its establishment last year in May of 2020, the changes to the greater Alki Point neighborhood have been very positive.

Where we live, we get to see and visit with the walkers, the cyclists, the skaters, the dog walkers, and the families, many of them with little children, and a lot of other people who enjoy the newly accessible waterfront access on a daily basis with far less traffic than ever before.

This new access and the vast reduction in the loud, disruptive, reckless speeding cars has been a clear and very obvious result of the Keep Moving Street.

It's a much safer place than it was before.

Please support this amendment to make this wonderful community treasure, the walking street, the waterfront, and the park permanently accessible for the community to enjoy it as it is today.

Thanks so much.

Thank you for dialing in this morning.

Terry.

Good morning Terry.

You are up next.

Terry Holm.

Good morning.

Thank you very much.

This is Terry Holm.

I'm active with Seattle Neighborhood Greenways and Rainier Valley Greenways and Safe Streets.

Want to echo the prior speaker's sentiments.

So far as the Seattle rescue plan Please support the proposed funding of the Stay Healthy Streets and Cafe Streets.

Also, please support Council Member Herbold's amendment committing to the future funding of Keep Moving Streets, including Alki Point, Green Lake, and I want to emphasize Lake Washington Boulevard.

Of your many solemn responsibilities, the thoughtful stewardship of city property, especially streets and parks, is paramount.

initiated due to COVID in keeping with national trends, stay healthy and keep moving streets and Cafe Streets has demonstrated successful opportunities for radically improving utilization and safety of these streets and parks.

Your leadership and votes in favor of these measures will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for dialing in today.

The next three speakers are Sarah Wilkie, Esther Batel, and Nate Good morning Sarah.

Hi.

Thank you.

My name is Sarah Wilkie and I'm speaking in support of amendments to in both of the Seattle Rescue Plan Council bills.

Thank you so much for the time today and thank you so much for the recognition of the impacts on the cultural sector in both of these amendments.

Guidelines that have prevented public performance and gathering have essentially closed many parts of our sectors for months on end and that cuts off you know for many 100 percent of the income to them as individuals.

Washington State Employment Security Department's King County summary shows that the arts and entertainment lost the highest percentages of workforce this past year.

And we know by the very structure of our industry, most who lost income are not even included in this number because they're not employees.

Inclusion of creative sector workers in Council Bill 12094 is of particular interest to me.

It will not steer funds away from others who have been equally impacted, which I know is a fear always in identifying populations.

But I believe it really helps ensure the intent of the bill is in place and that eligibility for funding is directed to those who have not yet received and are in very deep need of the recovery support.

Thank you very much for your consideration and for all your work on the Seattle Recovery Plan.

Excellent.

Thanks for calling in.

Good morning Esther.

Good morning.

My name is Esther Bott-El.

I work in Seattle as a domestic violence housing case manager at a member agency for the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence.

I'm here to strongly advocate for preserving the remaining $600,000 of funding for programs aimed at ending gender-based violence.

Survivors come to our programs sometimes with literally nothing in order to save their lives and the lives of their children.

They have so many needs like beds or more often just air mattresses, pillows, blankets, work clothes, birthday presents for their children.

And often they've had to bring their vehicles to be searched for tracking devices placed on them by their abusers.

And rental subsidies cannot pay for that.

I want to make it very clear that domestic violence is a leading cause of homelessness for women and children.

Therefore providing funding to domestic violence services is homelessness prevention.

And not only homelessness prevention but homicide prevention as well.

There has been a dramatic increase in domestic and sexual violence incidents as well as domestic violence homicides since the beginning of the COVID pandemic.

You have the ability to help end the cycle of violence today.

And as a survivor myself, I want to thank every one of you for your support.

Thank you for calling in today.

Very well said.

I appreciate your time.

The next person is Nate.

Good morning, Nate.

Thank you very much.

My name is Nate Omdahl.

I am the Miscellaneous Trades Rep for the Washington State Labor Council.

I'm also a Seattle Music Commissioner, and I'm the lead organizer for the Musicians Association of Seattle Local 76493. I'm here to speak in support of the amendment to Council Bill 120094, which will ensure that artists are identified as a priority population to receive the $25 million in direct cash assistance and directs the city departments to partner with community-based organizations familiar with the sector to administer these funds.

The creative economy, which is normally 8.7 of the state's GDP, has been ravaged by the pandemic.

To make matters worse, the rampant misclassification has largely led to completely inequitable interactions with social safety net services.

The creative economy will be a significant part of our recovery by appropriating $3 million to the Office of Arts and Culture for direct financial assistance to arts and cultural organizations and businesses, including stabilization grants and financial support for affordable commercial space, we will increase access to a workforce that is often told they're a priority and then shown otherwise.

Music industry is one of the main attractions for our city.

I'm reminded of how many narratives I've seen that claim Seattle is a city of music, from the airport to downtown and beyond, and numerous bids for international sporting, entertainment, and cultural events.

And we ask that you support this industry as much as you are able.

Thank you.

Thank you for dialing in today.

The next speaker, the next three speakers are Reese Tandemura, Megan Fisher, and Amarithia Torres.

And Amarithia, you are listed as not present if you'd still like to dial in.

Good morning, Reese.

Thanks for joining us.

Reese, it shows you still as muted on my end.

If you can hit star six one more time.

And as Reese is working on getting unmuted, I am going to ask that we tee up Megan just to keep the flow going.

And Megan, if you're hearing me, you can hit star six and we'll go to you and then we'll come back to Reese when I see them unmuted.

Star six.

Hi, Megan.

Hi can you hear me.

Yes thanks.

Okay.

Hi.

Thank you so much for allowing me to speak today.

My name is Megan Fisher and I'm a mental health therapist in Seattle and I'm commenting on funding for behavioral health in the Seattle Rescue Plan.

In the Public Safety and Human Services Committee roundtable discussion last week it is apparent the city is working hard to address these issues and our crisis response here in Seattle is outstanding.

However there continues to be an enormous gap in providing effective treatment options for long-term care for individuals experiencing behavioral health crisis including mental health support detox services and long-term inpatient and outpatient treatment options for behavioral health.

The Seattle Rescue Plan is implementing $49.2 million for housing and homelessness and only $600,000 for investing in behavioral health services.

In addition to the funding for housing and homelessness we need to robustly fund behavioral health for all of Seattle and the Seattle Rescue Plan must respond to this in a larger way than currently proposed.

The pandemic has accelerated behavioral health concerns into a significant crisis fueled by isolation stress and uncertainty and the current treatment options within Seattle and King County are overworked underfunded and lack adequate resources and support.

Behavioral health clinicians and treatment providers are leaving their jobs at the community mental health level due to significant burnout and to make more money in the private sector further accelerating this gap in treatment.

It is time Seattle takes responsibility for our neighbors and to provide robust funding to support long-term treatment options in our city.

We must take responsibility for this now.

Thank you for your.

Thank you for your time.

And we're going to go back to Reese.

Good morning Reese.

Good morning.

Can you hear me.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Aloha council members.

My name is Reece Tanimura the chair of the Seattle Music Commission and I'm here today to urge you to strongly support and vote in favor of the amendment which includes artists and other cultural workers as a priority population for direct cash assistance.

That's a council bill one two zero zero nine four.

As my colleagues had noted we are well aware that the pandemic has simply magnified existing disparities and gaps in our social safety net.

And yet, even as artists, musicians, and culture workers suddenly lost their livelihoods and have been continually challenged in accessing basic resources, it is many of these same individuals who are participating in frontline organizing for mutual aid, community safety, and social change in the city.

Culture bearers and creatives who entered the pandemic facing steep equity deficits, chronic undercapitalization, racism codified within industries, and anti-Blackness have wielded their expressive resilience and collective brilliance to surpass the narrative of marginalization.

We must ensure that the grounding that they provided in the creatives and their creativity and the cultural labor is compensated so that we can interrupt the rapid displacement and erasure of communities.

While some may argue that this priority pulls funds in too many directions, the designation of professionals actually doubles down on stabilizing diverse cultural communities throughout the neighborhoods of Seattle.

Thank you very much for your support of our sector and our ecosystem.

Thank you very much.

Amarinthia.

Good morning.

Hi there.

Yes.

Good morning council members.

And thanks for the heads up that I wasn't logged in correctly.

Appreciate that.

Hi there.

My name is Amarinthia Torres.

I'm speaking on behalf of the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence.

We work with over 40 community-based and culture-specific orgs towards gender equity and an end to all forms of gender-based violence, such as sexual assault, sex trafficking, and domestic violence.

And I'm here today to just share my appreciation for the Council for the $600,000 in ARPA funds currently allocated to programs that support survivors of gender-based violence.

Investing in survivor-driven advocacy is investing in violence prevention.

It's investing in re-envisioning safety.

And since we know that gender-based violence disproportionately affects BIPOC folks, LGBT people, and women of color, it's also investing in those most on the margins.

So again, I just wanted to say a big thank you for investing in those communities and investing in survivor-driven advocacy through this $600,000 in ARPA funds that's currently allocated.

So thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

and hope to have a good rest of the meeting.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Thank you so much.

The next three speakers are Sarah Potter, Paula Madrigal, and Maichad Savage.

And it looks like, Sarah, you are listed as not present if you still want to dial in.

You're welcome to.

We're going to go on to Paula.

Good morning, Paula.

Okay, I'm just looking for Paula to come up on my screen.

Is Paula with us this morning?

Hi, Paula.

Just hit star six one more time.

It looks like we accidentally have you on mute still.

One more time.

Hey, Paula, I heard you come off mute and then I heard you go back on if you want to hit star six one more time.

Oh, I saw you come off mute and come back on mute.

Okay, Paula, stay with us.

I'm going to watch for your line to come off mute, and I know it's unfortunate.

The systems don't always work in our favor, but if you could hit star six one more time and give it a quick second to, there we go.

I see you.

Hello.

Hello.

Good morning.

Hello.

Good morning.

This is Paula Madrigal.

I am Latina immigrant and musician.

I'm serving the Seattle Music Commission and I called you because I'm very worried about my community.

There is a lot of mariachi players and musicians they are really starving and they don't have money for feed their families.

And I'm here for asking your support.

I have friends they don't have money.

They have one year and a half without work.

And I'm focusing on getting artists named as a priority group for the $25 million of cash assistance to the bill 120094. I'm talking about not the musicians that you see in the TV, unfamous musicians.

I'm talking about the musicians that go and work in parties, in restaurants, in bars.

They don't have work.

There is no party.

If someone make a party, They are not going to invite strange.

Please support us.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Paula.

Muchas gracias por llamar hoy.

The next person is Machad.

Good morning, Machad.

Hello.

Good morning.

Hi.

My name is Machad Savage.

Council members, thank you very much for your time.

I'm a fifth generation Seattleite and a professional musician writing to you today or speaking to you today in regards to CB1200093 and CB1200094.

The data has informed us that this pandemic has been disproportionately impactful on communities of color, immigrants and refugees and other historically marginalized communities.

The arts are seldom appropriately weighted in equity analyses on structural inequity.

And in the Office of Arts and Culture's 2019 Creative Economy Report and subsequent Equity Report, in the very early 2020 Roadmap to Equity in the Creative Sector Report, reflected a dire and growing need for support on behalf of the city to mitigate the enduring economic blight of artists, especially those of color.

Artists were amongst the first to experience the economic impact of the pandemic and will likely be the slowest to recover.

Through the Seattle Independent Artist Sustainability Effort from March 30th, 2020 to April 13th, March 13th, 2020 to April 13th, 2020. So in the first main month of the pandemic, there was an estimated impact of about 1.8 million on performing artists alone and an additional 1.4 million on other members of the arts and community.

And that is again, just during the first month.

At present, most artists have been able to qualify for pandemic unemployment assistance, but are still not eligible for the Paycheck Protection Plan loans or grants to the Small Business Association.

Thank you, Michael.

Mai-Chan?

My chat, if you could send in the rest of your comments, that would be appreciated.

We really appreciate those statistics as well being shared this morning.

And the last three speakers are Angela Dannenbring, Brock Howell, and Julie Brown.

I will note that Quinton Morris and Anders Stokes are also listed on our agenda here to speak, but our list is not present.

Quinton and Anders, if you do pop in, we will get to you before we close public testimony.

Angela, good morning.

Just star six unmute yourself.

Good morning.

Are you able to hear me?

Yes, we can.

Thank you.

Oh, I could hear you.

There we go.

Awesome.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Angela Gatorbring and I am speaking on behalf of the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence in support of the $600,000 in funds allocated to programs that support survivors of gender-based violence.

I'm the Executive Director of the Domestic Abuse Women's Network housed in Kent Washington and just feel very honored to be working within this field for the last 19 years.

Funding for programs even before COVID was not adequate to meet the acute and complex needs of survivors and that need has certainly intensified over the past year especially for BIPOC survivors LGBTQ survivors and survivors experiencing systemic barriers.

Our organizations are seeing greater demand for services and the unique situations faced by each survivor are more complex.

Investing in advocacy is also investing in homelessness prevention.

It's also investing in re-envisioning safety.

And since we know that gender-based violence disappropriately affects BIPOC folks, LGBTQ, and women of color, it's also investing in those most on the margin.

I appreciate and thank you for your support of survivor-driven mobile advocacy in our city through the $600,000 allocation for gender-based funds and the support for community-based advocacy services designed specifically for survivors of gender-based violence.

Thanks for your time this morning.

Brock.

Good morning, Brock.

Brock, I'm just looking for you to come off of mute on my end, star six, one more time, please.

Okay, and as Brock is coming off of mute, if we can also tee up Julie and see if Julie is ready to go.

Julie, good morning, just star six to unmute yourself.

Okay, I see Julie.

Good morning, Julie.

Hi, good morning.

Thank you for taking my comment.

My name is Julie Brown, and I'm a resident of the East Lake neighborhood in Seattle.

I first want to thank the city council members for funding the Stay Healthy Streets and Cafe Streets to help ensure that that funding isn't removed.

And I'm calling to voice my support for the amendment to use future funding to make keep moving streets permanent on Alki Point, Green Lake, and Lake Washington Boulevard.

My family has chosen to live without a car for personal and environmental reasons, and we commute primarily by bicycle and by foot.

And having spaces that prioritize the safety of pedestrians and cyclists is important to us and to many others who choose to commute without a car.

My partner and I are expecting our first child in September and we want them to have opportunities for our family to commute and explore safely in areas where the convenience of cars is not prioritized.

I believe that funding infrastructure that accommodates those of us on foot and bicycle will benefit all.

by encouraging more people to leave their car behind and engage more directly with their environment and community.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration in supporting this funding.

Great, thank you so much.

And Brock, I still see you on the screen, but still muted.

If you can hit star six one more time, we will try to get your public testimony in.

And after Brock, that does conclude who is listed on our agenda today to speak, who is present.

Again, Brock, just star six to unmute yourself.

Don't want to close it out without you hearing from you since I see you on the line here.

We did have Sarah Porter, Quentin Morris, and Anders Stokes listed to speak, but not present in today's meeting.

Okay.

Brock, I really apologize.

I can see you on there, and it looks like you are still muted.

Star six, one more time to unmute yourself.

If we don't hear from you today, you know how to get ahold of us at council at Seattle.gov.

Okay.

With that, we're going to go ahead and close out public testimony.

Apologies for that, Brock, and any technical issues on our end.

Appreciate everybody dialing in today, and we are going to move on to items listed on today's agenda.

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

Mental clerk, you may be on mute yourself.

Agenda item number one, grocery workers hazard pay panel for briefing and discussion.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

And hello panelists.

If you want to raise your hand and the raise your hand function that might keep everybody listed at the top of the screen your tiles so we can all see you listed in one place.

I'm going to go ahead and indicate who is here with us today and then have folks introduce themselves.

We have Tammy Hetrick with the Washington Food Industry Association.

Sam Dancy with the Grocery Workers, who is a grocery worker, United Food and Commercial Workers, UFCW 21. And we have Holly Chisa, who is with the Northwest Grocery Association.

Mark Abrek from UFCW Local 21. And Dennis Worsman, Interim Director of Public Health Seattle.

King County.

Folks, it's wonderful to see all of you along with Karina Bull, our central staff lead on labor policy issues.

I want to thank everybody for joining us today and for working with our office, especially Sejal Parikh, both as we crafted the legislation at the beginning of this year, but as we've also been seeking to get feedback and data from all of you to make sure that we had an informed conversation today.

Everybody knows that we have a packed agenda, but it was really important that we kick off today's presentation with a panel on the Grocery Worker Hazard Pay Ordinance drafted by Karina Bull, who is here with us.

By way of reminder, the Grocery Worker Hazard Pay Ordinance was emergency legislation that went into effect on February 3rd of this year after passing Council 8-0.

I want to thank everybody for your work on this, including Mayor Durkan for her support and signing it as well.

Before we enacted the hazard pay legislation and then shortly after, dozens of other cities and counties across the country, including King County Council, enacted hazard pay as a way to compensate grocery workers for the risk that they are taking during this time working in the grocery industry close to patrons and customers and putting at risk their own health and their families health.

We had public testimony and evidence from customers coming in unmasked folks who had been coughing or you know in some cases unfortunate situations where patrons had been very close to workers and were upset about mask requirements and other stressors associated with last year.

And they also had yelled at some of the workers in close proximity.

All of these situations are really important for us to address.

And what we did, I think, built off of the study that was conducted in Boston, Massachusetts, that found that 20% of the grocery workers in a study conducted there, did test positive for COVID despite 91% of those employees reporting wearing a face mask safely.

And this positive rate of infection among grocery store employees was five times as likely for those who interacted with customers than those who did not.

So we knew the risk was great and the sacrifices that grocery workers were making so that folks could remain fed and our economy could continue to function was really tremendous.

And this was an effort to really try to make sure that we stepped up in this moment to honor that type of hazard that those grocery workers specifically were in.

I appreciate all of you being here today and wanted to make sure that we recognize that the legislation that we passed did say that the emergency legislation ends at the end of COVID-19 civil emergency and contains a recital that notes council's intent to consider modifying or eliminating hazard pay requirements after four months of implementation.

That's why we're here today.

We have an opportunity to review the current health, safety, and economic risks of frontline workers during COVID emergencies.

So today's conversation is really focused on the data and the anecdotes that we are able to compile in front of us so that council can have an informed conversation about the trends, about the data, and about the health standards in grocery stores.

I want to make a quick note that none of the panelists here are expected to answer whether we are ready to amend the legislation to eliminate the pay requirements, but rather to share information about data trends and what they are seeing in terms of COVID-19 exposure in grocery stores.

They are really the experts on the ground level and within the industry, and we greatly appreciate them being here today.

that we have a lot to be proud of as well.

In King County we are continually making national news.

I was just visiting some family in Iowa last week for the funeral of my uncle and I had family members who said congratulations.

I heard Seattle's one of the first cities to actually hit that 70% vaccination rate for both shots, and I think that's in large part due to the individual sacrifices that folks have made and the great work from our folks and partners at Seattle Public Health, Seattle, King County and FAS as well.

I'm going to turn it over first to Dennis, Dennis Forshman, the interim director of public health Seattle King County, to talk about the data that we're seeing.

And if the presentation is not public yet, I apologize for that, but we will be linking it to our republished agenda and the notes that go out afterwards.

It's a very short presentation, but I think it's helpful to have for the public record and for our viewing audience.

You'll be able to see it today on our Seattle channel.

and other viewing options listed on today's agenda.

We'll then go into the four panelists that we have from the grocery industry, and we'll start with Tammy Hetrick, CEO and president of the Washington Food Industry Association, then Sam Darcy, grocery worker who helped us shape the original bill, Holly Chisa from the Northwest Grocery Association, and then Mark Auerbach from the United Food and Commercial Workers, the educational director.

So I'll remind folks of that order after we get there, but I just wanted to preview.

that order for you.

With that, let's turn it over to Dennis.

And congratulations to you as well, Dennis.

I'm looking for your tile to pop up here.

I just want to make sure that we do have this.

Dennis Worsham, Interim Director Worsham, is on his way in 15 minutes.

So if you want to go to the rest of the panel first.

OK, great.

So we will do that.

We are a little bit ahead of schedule, which is great news, folks.

But with that, just note that we have more information coming from Public Health Seattle-King County coming soon.

Then let's go ahead and turn it over to Tammy Hetrick, CEO and President of Washington Food Industry Association.

And as a reminder, folks, we sort of had three questions that we were hoping the panelists could address.

What changes have you seen in health and safety?

conditions in grocery stores since the emergency legislation passed?

How has the vaccination process impacted you and your store?

If there's any sort of anecdotes that you'd like to share about vaccination, public clinics, et cetera, that you'd like to share, that'd be very helpful.

And what circumstances would make grocery workers feel safer to either you or to the individual workers so that we can make sure that we're addressing this COVID-19 crisis that's still lingering given the latest news talking about mutations of the virus.

So with that, welcome, Tammy, and thank you for being here with us today.

Good morning, Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you so much for the time.

I appreciate it.

My name is Tammy Hetrick.

I'm the president and CEO for the Washington Food Industry Association.

We represent the independent grocers, convenience stores, and the suppliers of Washington State.

In response to the questions, I just wanted to go right into those.

The first one was, what changes have you seen in health and safety conditions at grocery stores since the emergency legislation passed?

And really, safety and health has been a top priority since the very first COVID case was identified.

Extra pay mandates really just shifted our focus from what grocers were already doing to add an economic crisis to their list of concerns.

This is a fragile business model.

and extra pay has caused them to try to figure out how they're going to continue this.

As I previously reported, independent grocers average about a 1% profit in a regular year, and it's one of the lowest in business.

We've been engaged in safety since the first outbreak.

We met with the IGA in China within the first month of COVID to find out what best practices they had developed.

they actually shared their hazard plan with us and with all of our members.

And we've been meeting weekly with our members since March of last year just to provide all guidance and updates as they occur.

And that's been critical to our members.

And we've engaged with our our employees and our customers to be sure we're keeping them safe.

And that's why there's been minimal exposure in our independent grocery stores for those facts and what we've been doing.

and how the vaccination processes impacted our stores.

I just have to give so much kudos to King County and what they did to work with us.

They were exceptional.

We were able to get every employee who wanted to be vaccinated, vaccinated.

They helped us develop pop-up clinics.

They helped us just coordinate all of that.

Cause most of my independent grocers don't have pharmacies in their stores.

But I also want to, Commend Safeway, they worked with us as well throughout the state to help us get our employees vaccinated.

So it's just a great coordinated effort.

And what we're seeing for our independent grocers is between 60 to 70 percent vaccination rates in Seattle.

Those aren't as good in other areas, but definitely in Seattle, we're seeing a much higher rate of vaccination.

And again, I would tout some of that to King County and the work that they did to coordinate with us.

So that's been good.

We continue to look for new ways to improve access to vaccines, including partnering with the state on ways to incentivize people to get vaccinated in communities that continue to see low vaccination rates.

In fact, I'm getting ready to travel over to eastern Washington and try to help with that now.

And then what circumstances would make grocery workers feel safer?

I would just say grocery stores are safe and have been safe.

The Washington State Department of Health confirms that.

And extra pay does not make workers safe, vaccines do.

And we've just worked so hard to be sure we're getting everyone vaccinated, their families and those communities.

My members have invested millions of dollars in store ventilation, PPE, increased cleaning and safety protocols.

So I would just say additionally, Seattle Times just posted on this, we're just seeing a real risk and concern over the cost of groceries.

And my members are trying to do everything they can to be sure people can afford and access groceries.

And so we're really watching that closely.

definitely this is a concern of ours.

But as we look back on this pandemic and when it first started, some of the things that I think that we need to work together as a group and develop is to make sure that we have better access to PPE.

My independent grocers really suffered with that when this pandemic first came out.

Of course, we wanted to make sure our healthcare workers and those had priority, but really my independent grocers were kind of on the end of that list.

And thanks to FEMA and to Seattle and King County, they did help us, but it took some time.

So I definitely want to be sure we're more prepared for things like this, and that we constantly weighed the safety of our employees during this entire period.

If my members thought at any time that there was a risk to their employees and they couldn't provide a safe work environment, they've told me they would have closed their doors.

They never wanted to risk or jeopardize their employees at any time.

So I'd like to invite any city council members that like to talk or meet with our employers or visit a store.

I'm more than happy to do that and welcome you all.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you very much for getting us kicked off here today, Tammy.

Let's have colleagues, if you can hold your question until the end of the panel, that would be great.

We have three more folks as part of this panel, and then we'll also have the chance to hopefully hear from the Department of Health, Public Health Seattle King County.

Sam Darcy, I want to welcome you as the next speaker.

Grocery worker who helped us shape the original bill.

If you can take yourself off mute, you do have the floor.

Hi.

Good morning, and thank you very much, chair Mosqueda and members of the committee for having me here today to speak about safety conditions in grocery stores.

My name is Sam Dancy, and I work at the Westwood Village QC in West Seattle.

I have worked there since 1991. I appreciate what the city of Seattle has done to show its appreciation for the hard work and the sacrifice frontline grocery workers during the pandemic between passing a hazardous pay ordinance and the extraordinary efforts get workers vaccinated.

Uh-oh, hold on.

Something happened here.

That's OK.

Take your time.

No problem.

Oh, I just happened.

And you are a worker in my grocery store.

That's where we go to get our groceries.

Yes.

And so anyway, between past and the hazardous pay and ordinance, the extraordinary efforts to get workers vaccinated, Seattle is among national leaders in vaccination rates.

The partnership between the city and my union, UFCW 21, made it possible for me and many coworkers to receive our vaccination.

While the city has gone above and beyond its efforts to keep workers safe, Kroger has fallen short of the same standard.

Initially, our employers took our safety seriously.

They paid us hero pay and implemented strict safety protocols.

More importantly, they scheduled extra hours to give staff time to make sure we had time to follow cleaning guidelines.

Around the same time the employees stopped paying us hero pay, the emphasis on worker safety and sanitation switched back to the emphasis on massive profits.

My co-workers and I have continued to have to do more with less hours.

Dealing with hostile customers refusing to wear masks and frequently not being able to physically distance ourselves from customers because of high store capacity.

Now that the employers have relaxed masking policies, more and more customers are shopping without masks.

And workers have no way to know if they are vaccinated or not.

Ironically, some of the vaccination work that has been done might be making workers less safe as a result of the relaxed policy.

Unlike the city of Seattle, in the work you have all done throughout the pandemic, the employers in this industry have fallen short of our expectation to keep us safe at almost every turn.

Instead of prioritizing the workers who have gone to work day in and day out, these large employees have prioritized their massive profits which are a direct result of this global pandemic.

The companies have an obligation to do better.

And I also want to let you know, I remember in February, when I had the opportunity to speak, that you and the councilmen were unanimously approved hazardous pay, eight to nothing.

I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Me and all of our coworkers really appreciate you passing that and giving us an opportunity to really feel like we were worthy.

So thank you very much.

And thank you again for everything that you've done.

Thank you very much for your testimony today.

And we will take some questions at the end of the panel.

I want to welcome Holly Chiesa back to the committee.

Thanks again for joining us, Holly.

And Holly is with the Northwest Grocery Association.

Thank you, Madam Councilmember and members of the Council for the chance to speak today.

I represent the Northwest Grocery Association.

And for those of you who don't know what that is and the difference between Miss Hedrick and her association, she represents the independent grocery stores like Thriftways and Red Apples.

I represent the larger retailers like Costco, QFC, Fred Meyer and Safeway.

And we want to thank the council for the chance to speak today about hazard pay, kind of where we've been and where we're hoping to head out.

I will also provide my comments in writing to council as well, so that you have those as a reference point.

First, I want to start by saying thank you to our employees.

As Samuel eloquently said, they have been on the front line.

They've done a phenomenal job of making sure that our communities have been fed through this process.

And I want to thank our managerial teams for keeping our stores stocked, for handling everything that has been thrown at them.

And now, as we move out of the pandemic, our pharmacy teams, our pharmacists have partnered with King County Public Health and with the city of Seattle and have administered vaccines both in our grocery stores and also at community vaccination events.

We're proud to be a part of what has gone on in getting Seattle to that 70% mark.

And we will continue to offer vaccines on a walk up basis to anybody who needs them and are happy to provide those both to our employees, but also to our communities as a whole.

A lot has changed since February when council made this decision to put an extra $4 an hour on our union wages within the city of Seattle.

Grocery stores continue to not be the primary source of COVID-19, and that number is borne out by our Washington State Department of Health, which every two weeks issues guidance on where they are seeing COVID-19 rates, not just for the general public, but they also incorporate employee and other reported outbreaks.

And as of June 9th, which is the most recent data we have, we are 8th below traditional retail, below restaurants, below construction, below government in exposure of COVID-19.

Um, and as the state reopens and restaurants and Home Depot and Target and everybody moves to 100% access as well as us, we will be the only industry by the city required to still pay $4 an hour.

Um, but all of the other industries that will be out there operating at the same capacity rates will not be required to do so.

Um, We are trying to determine the financial impact of what COVID, of the $4 an hour requirement on top of the union wage has been for our employers and generally within the retail grocery industry.

Our best guesstimates, because we don't represent everybody within the city, but our best guess is it's around $200 million a week being paid by all retail grocery.

Within the city of Seattle, that's a very loose number.

We're trying to get a better idea of what that number actually is.

And that's number is based on an independent study.

That number is not 1 that we put together, but I'm hoping to have that kind of information for council and other councils as they look to do these kind of mandates on wages in the future.

I do want to take a moment and talk about the masking policies, because I know there's some confusion around that.

There certainly was for us.

We got no warning when the CDC on May 13th announced the changes.

Just so you know, nobody got warning.

The governor's office didn't know.

We didn't know.

I'm pretty darn sure public health didn't know.

So there was quite a bit of shifting that had to go on.

The masking policies and customers, whether they wear masks or not, is based on King County public health guidance that we received almost immediately.

And I want to thank King County for providing us with some help on how to implement the new CDC policies.

We do have signage that asks people still to wear masks in the stores, but without checking cards or enforcing a vaccination protocol, there's no good way to reduce a potentially hostile situation between a customer and our employees.

And so we have asked folks to wear masks within the stores.

But under the CDC guidelines, if they're vaccinated, they have they are not required to wear masks in our stores.

What we have focused on is the labor and industries requirements that we have been given and guidance from labor and industries, which is our state regulator for employer law.

which says that if our employees are 100% vaccinated, they are not required to wear masks.

So if you as a worker are not fully vaccinated, we still require you to wear a mask.

But if you are vaccinated, LNI does say that we can allow them not to.

It then comes down to the employer to choose whether our employees will still be 100% masks or not.

So as you come into the stores and start seeing our employees without masks on, that is based on the new guidance that we are getting.

These are not decisions stores are making.

These are guidance documents that we are getting from public health, both state and county, and also that we are getting from the CDC and labor and industries, because don't forget there are other regulators to the grocery industry than just the public health guidance that we receive.

So where do we go?

I think it's worth noting that most of the other local governments that have chosen to pass hazard pay, most notably in California, which is kind of where a lot of this started, their ordinances had hard deadlines.

Of the 35 that passed in California, 30 of them had a specific duration.

The bulk of those, 25 of them, were only for 120 days.

Six of them were set for 60 days, and two of them were after 90 or 180 days.

So only a couple of them were tied to the rollback of an emergency order.

The overwhelming number of them had some kind of hard deadline, and that provides assurances both for our employees to know when this ends and for employers to know when this ends.

If it's an arbitrary rollback, You know, everybody's kind of on the fly trying to figure out how to adjust wages accordingly.

So I will end by saying, is it time to set hazard pay?

As Councilwoman has said, that's not a position that I'm going to be in.

That's up to Council to make that decision one way or another.

But I will say that our focus needs to be on vaccines.

We are, again, proud to be a part of the effort of King County and of the state to move in vaccines.

We would welcome anyone watching on Seattle One.

who is not vaccinated, please come into our stores and get vaccinated.

Our on-site pharmacists are ready to get you vaccinated, both for your own health and also for public health as a whole in our community.

Our employees are offered financial incentives.

They are offered sick leave if there is a contraindication with a vaccine.

so that if they choose to get vaccinated, because right now it is their choice, we are not mandating those vaccines.

We are readily able to help them get through that process.

And also again, they may not have to wear a mask while they're at work if they're 100% fully vaccinated, depending on the employer.

So with that, I'm happy to end my comments.

Again, I'll submit my comments in writing as well.

But thank you again for the chance to present before council today.

Absolutely.

Thank you for submitting those comments and appreciate you being here today.

The last person on the panel before we turn it over to public health is Mark.

Mark Arbach.

Good to see you again, Mark, and welcome from UFCW Local 21.

Good.

Good morning.

Thank you to Chair Mosqueda and members of the committee for the opportunity to join the conversation.

My name is Mark Auerbach.

I'm the Education Director for UFCW 21. We represent about 10,000 workers in Seattle, most of whom are grocery workers.

And, you know, throughout this pandemic, the vast majority of our members have told us that their employers weren't doing enough to keep them safe.

Our members had to fight for safety every step of the way.

Just one example, you know, some employers initially prohibited workers from wearing masks, even their own masks, because they didn't want to send the wrong message to customers.

We believe that the outcomes in our stores and in the community as a whole would likely have been worse.

not for our region's strong public health authorities, supportive public elected officials, and unionized grocery workers who had the tools and the confidence to speak up for safety in their industry.

Our members understood all along that even in stores with the best safety practices, COVID-19 presented serious risks that couldn't be entirely mitigated.

They lived in constant fear of getting sick, of infecting their loved ones, They cried in their cars after work, some sacrifice paid to reduce their exposure, and the exhaustion and stress from interacting with hundreds or thousands of customers every day, exactly what the rest of us were avoiding, took a toll on their mental and physical health.

Our members knew before the Wall Street analysts that their employers were making record sales and profits because of the way COVID changed food consumption patterns.

So employers' refusal to provide hazard pay and recognition of that added risk stung especially hard.

Our members will never forget those employers that refuse to share their COVID super profits with the workers making them possible.

And our members will also never forget that this community and this city council stood with them by mandating hazard pay in recognition of the risks they were taking for all of us.

So where does that leave us today now that we've hit 70% on vaccinations?

Well, hitting 70% is a great achievement for the city.

It really is.

And no one is more relieved than frontline essential workers.

Our members who initially reported a lot of difficulty accessing vaccine appointments, they are no longer seeking our assistance with that.

So we've got a lot to celebrate.

There is still fear and uncertainty.

Our members are worried about new variants.

They're worried about risks to younger, unvaccinated children in their households.

They're uncertain about the risk to workers in the community from relaxed mask policies.

And while we celebrate overall success with vaccinations, UFC W 21 believes it's essential to overcome the racial inequities that we're seeing at the county level and other levels where less than half of black and Latin X residents are fully vaccinated.

We really can't be content with that.

Um, but back to our stores, you know, as we assess our members needs in these new circumstances, We are going to continue to look at the data, take guidance from public health experts, as we have from the beginning.

And we thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you very much, Mark.

And one of the first vaccination clinics I had the chance to volunteer for was with grocery store workers at 20 at U of C W 21. So thank you for that.

Um, as well, folks really appreciate the presentation from the panelists.

And before we go into questions, I do want to see if we have with us King County Public Health interim director.

I'm just looking at the tiles here on my end.

Do we have Dennis Wash Washman with us?

I just got confirmation he's hopping on now.

So before I see Dennis there, hi Dennis, you are here just in time.

I know that that's probably not a lot of morning to heat up, but congratulations on your interim service here for us in this very trying time within our county and within our country and really had the pleasure to be able to work with you in the past.

through public health and know that we are in good hands, especially with the parting comments that Director Patty Hayes made as she sent us on our way to do more good work with you when she was visiting us with public health.

And I was really pleased to hear her presentation.

during the Board of Health meeting.

So thanks again for all of your service for all of the members of King County and Seattle, especially as we seek to recover from this pandemic and also address the under-resourced public health investments that we need to be shoring up in the future.

So thanks for joining us and I'll turn it over to you.

We did have a great panel from the four panelists here with us, so you're basically wrapping us up and then we're going to get into some questions if you'd like to offer some additional data.

All right, Councilman Mosqueda, thank you so much for the kind words and of course, for the public health support.

I know you've been a champion of public health.

ever since I've met you.

So and here are great things.

So thank you for all that you're doing and your colleagues around this area.

I am for those who don't know me, I am new to the role as the interim director for Public Health Seattle King County.

I've been in the governmental public health system here in the state of Washington for about 28 years.

And most recently, in the position of the division director for Public Health Seattle King County, of our infectious diseases.

And so have been near and dear to my heart COVID since the beginning of this whole pandemic.

And so I'm going to give you I'm sorry I missed the other presentations I had to be with the South Sound cities this morning.

And so I will go over where we're at with our covid.

I think I'll just hit the cliff note first and then get into the details.

We are seeing cases going down and vaccines going up and which is a huge success for us here in in King County.

I want to congratulate the City of Seattle as you know from the announcement last week, the first major city to actually reach our 70% vaccinated, completed their vaccine series of 16 and older.

So huge call out to the City of Seattle and all of the work that all of you are doing in order to do that and the partners that we've been working with.

This slide that's in front of you is just kind of looking at some of our case rates here as we look.

And as you see, again, just improvements across all of our metrics as we as we move in and we look at more closely into the case rates.

Over the last seven days for Public Health Seattle King County, we've been reporting about 82 new cases daily.

which is down about 16% of a decrease even from last week.

So every week, we're just seeing a decline of new cases that are dropping.

And this is really the lowest that we have seen since September of 2020. So just really, really great numbers.

I mean, 82 is still too many, but in comparison to where we were, it's just a huge good point to be in with where we're at right now.

at this part of it.

The other part that is good news in this is, as you know, from having lived this experience of the pandemic, our most vulnerable population really of 65 and older were the ones who would see the most severe illness, would see hospitalization, would be our highest rates of death.

And really, this is the lowest we've seen in this population of 65 and older since the beginning of the pandemic.

So just incredibly great news for our hospitalizations, for our deaths.

and for the populations of 65 and older.

Again, we're seeing this, again, as a general, I always like to start big and then kind of dive in a little bit lower, but our incidents around all of our age groups are also decreasing, and across really all of our ethnic and racial groups are also seeing decreases.

But we do have some pockets of inequities here that I do want to call out that we do need to spend our time as a public health agency and with our partners and really addressing the important thing.

As I go into this about where we're seeing these cases, the first thing I really want to hammer in particular, you hear me say this throughout the presentation.

I just can't say it enough.

Vaccines work and people have got to get vaccinated.

And for us to really see this go away as as in our communities.

So what we're seeing, 97% of all of our cases right now are among unvaccinated people.

97% are really among unvaccinated people.

So seeing our highest rates right now in South and Southeast King County is where most of our new infections are occurring.

But the part that I really wanna call out is where we're seeing our greatest inequity and that we are really trying to hone in and do our Innovation and our strategies to address is in our black and African American residents 27% of our new cases fall within that within that racial and ethnic group.

If you think about King County as a whole in our last census data about 7% of King County is made up by a black or African American folks.

But 27% of our new cases fall within that population.

So it's really the biggest disparity gap we have seen in the pandemic here in King County.

is what we're seeing now is as as populations are getting vaccinated, as populations are getting having less incidences of cases, this is where our disparity gap is continuing to grow.

So we've we've got some work to do there and appreciate anything you can do to partner with us in that particular area.

The one thing I'll just say here that I think it's important to also understand about our cases, and I just want to put a little plug in here because it's been in the media so much, is you hear these things called variants of concern.

And it's really where we're seeing these new variants of covid really starting to emerge a bit in our communities.

And it is not uncommon for a coronavirus, which is as really how it survives in its environment, it continues to evolve and adapt.

And so we're watching that very closely because right now of all the variants that are out there, our vaccines are very, very effective.

It doesn't mean down the road we may not need a booster at some point, but right now we're showing 80% effective across all the variants.

The variant that is getting a lot of attention right now is coming out of India.

It's called the Delta variant.

In the UK, you're seeing them starting to go backwards, starting to close environments down.

Over 60% of their new cases are of this particular variant.

In the United States, only about six percent of our cases are made up of this Delta variant.

Here in King County, it's around five percent.

That's pretty much the same across the state.

But it is something we're really keeping an eye on.

It's highly transmissible, far more than any of the other variants.

And it is a variant of concern and by name.

And we're keeping our eye closely on on that.

The slide before you now is about our vaccine.

Today is the six month anniversary that we had our first vaccines available in in Washington state, and we have had great success and something to really celebrate in six months time, what we've been able to mobilize and able to do in really protecting our communities and people from from this covid virus and shutting down this pandemic.

So, you know, sometimes in percentages, numbers get lost.

I just want to call out just because it's just such a huge number in King County, one point 5 million people have at least started their vaccine series.

1.5 million have at least started.

1.3 million are fully vaccinated.

That's just a huge success in six months that we've been able to accomplish as we look at our populations of 12 and older who are eligible for vaccines.

In the city of Seattle, for 12 and older.

We're seeing about 71 quickly approaching 72% of 12 and older have completed their vaccine series, and almost 80% have now received at least one dose.

So those numbers are increasing.

And again, just to the success and partnership of many folks doing that, and I'll call a few of those out in a moment.

County wide in comparison, we're about 68% of all residents, 12 and older who have completed their vaccine series and about 6076.4% have received at least one dose of their vaccine on the 16 and older.

You know, we have a mask mandate here at King County issued by.

Dr. Jeff Duchin until we fully vaccinated.

Uh, we w for sure.

Uh, we're looki today whether we will rea of 70% in um, in the cou Completed vaccine means that you've finished the Siri fully vaccine vaccine, completed vaccine, fully vaccinated means that it's two weeks post that last vaccine where your antibodies have had time to develop and your immunity is established.

So 70 percent fully vaccinated is when that local man mask mandate will be lifted.

So how have we done this?

I mean, other than just dedication, good work and commitment of folks, And good education and a willingness of the Seattle people and King County folks.

But we have launched in this last 6 months, these high volume vaccine sites in all regions of the county.

And we've worked with closely with the partners unusual partners in the sense of coming together with government.

These public partner.

public private partnerships in order to get this accomplished.

Microsoft, Kaiser Permanente, University of Washington, Seattle Fire has just done a tremendous job in stepping in and helping us out.

Swedish Hospital really have helped step with these high capacity sites in order to get people vaccinated in the masses.

We know that there are barriers for some.

We've tried to remove those barriers and looking at getting transportation provided for folks.

We provided appointments in the evenings, on the weekends, really trying to remove any barrier, walk-up clinics, no appointments, appointments, on-site interpretation, access for people with disabilities, just any barrier that we heard and was identified.

or thought in advance, we remove those barriers in order to get people vaccinated.

Also, we've mobilized the fire departments and mobile teams to go where people gather, parks, beaches, high schools, places of employment, but really to take our vaccines to where people are already at for those people who couldn't get to one of those high vaccine sites.

In some of our innovative approaches, really looking at people who are homebound for one reason or another that couldn't leave their homes or people whose homes are in shelters or in other homeless environments settings, we took mobile vaccine to those sites and individuals and really to reach them to make sure that they too were getting the opportunity to be fully vaccinated and protected from this virus.

So lots, lots of different approaches, lots of modalities.

One size doesn't fit all.

And because of that, I think we're seeing the success leading the country really as the city of Seattle and as the county, King County.

in our ways.

Again, as I did with our case rates, we are still seeing some goals here that we have not reached.

Our goals have been led with equity and looking at 70% against all age groups, against all race and ethnicity groups, because we do not want to create a tale of two cities as you oftentimes hear in the media.

but really to reach each population by that 70% or more.

So in our, where we've seen great success of hitting that 70% or greater is 74% among our American Indian and Alaska Natives have completed the series, 77% of Asian Americans and almost 70%, 69% of our Native Hawaiian Pacific Islanders And again, this is for ages 12 and older, where we're seeing our big gaps are still are only about 48% of our black African American populations have completed their vaccine series in about 50% of our Hispanic and Latin next.

population of 12 and older.

So as we are moving into our next phase of our vaccines, of course, we want to continue to ideally we'd love 100% vaccinated, but our target and efforts and stresses will be really around these two populations of our Black African American populations and our Hispanic and Latinx population, which I think is an important part of the conversation as you guys look at the work you're doing here today.

So I do want to acknowledge that huge achievements work that still needs to be done in this area.

But but I do I don't want to not celebrate where we where we've been and where we're at, but still a call to action for where we need to go.

Under vaccine access, as far as access and availability for grocery employees, grocery workers, and other critical infrastructure workers, vaccine became available in March, just kind of a little timeline as a reminder, became available for vaccines on March 17th.

The next important date was around April 15th, is when all Washington residents, people who live here, reside here, work here in the state of Washington, 16 and older became eligible for vaccines and may 12 are 12 to 15 year old became eligible for the Pfizer vaccine.

So there.

These are important critical dates that where we have opened up to different populations, people who may be working in the environments that you're discussing today.

for consideration about when vaccine has been available and where we've reached it.

You know, just a call out, a shout out to some great partnerships.

UFCW, Local 21, our Washington Food Industry Association really have supported and helped coordinate access for vaccines for grocery workers.

in order to really improve the numbers in this population, getting a completed vaccine series.

Couldn't do it without their help and the help of many others.

So last slide, what's next?

What do we expect next for consideration here?

You know, our continued, as you've heard me say, our continued focus on vaccinating residents who aren't vaccinated.

There'll be a special emphasis and a focus on our BIPOC communities in closing those equity gaps that we see.

It's really important that we do that lift here as government, as partners, as people in our community and partner with any of and all of you who have ways of doing that and reaching our BIPOC population, it's important that we meet our equity goals in this response.

From the governor, As you know, June 30th is what is stated as the reopening date, which means that restrictions, most restrictions will get removed after June 30th.

And what the piece that is the driver behind that June 30th is statewide when when 70 percent of King County or excuse me, statewide residents or people who live within the state have completed their initial vaccine.

70 percent of initial vaccine statewide.

That's what gets us to our reopening.

I was on a call this morning with the State Department of Health reported out that they actually think that they're going to hit that date before June 30th.

And in the governor's language, that if they do, they will be making that announcement and reopening before June 30th.

So I do think that that is a real a real date and a real reopening for for the state of Washington.

Um, uh, the one thing I will just say about that on the June 30th date is, uh, you heard the governor's office, uh, come out and make the announcement, the governor himself, uh, that really, uh, the, the mass requirements will stay in effect, uh, as they are for LNI and, uh, and, uh, the secretary of health's order for mass requirements, which is basically a healthcare environments, uh, congregate settings, uh, those combinations look at both, uh, where people live together and healthcare environments like long-term care facilities.

in such settings and of course, unvaccinated people will still be required to wear a mask.

The other part that will remain as part of the restrictions in the reopening is these are for really like mega large events, 10,000 or more in these events and spaces for indoors will be required to be restricted to 75% capacity unless they do some kind of vaccine verification.

And that way they could go to 100 percent capacity within their area.

The other thing, the next point here is about the King County mass directive that I've already spoken about, issued by our own health officer.

And that's when we reach our 70 percent of completed vaccines and fully vaccinated.

So, again, I think we will get our completed vaccines this week, today or tomorrow, and then it's two weeks following.

before that directive would be lifted, which would be the end of June as well.

So that's a couple important things about where we're at in our next phases.

The last bullet there is really about right now, 12 and under are not eligible for vaccines.

There's a lot of work happening on this right now.

by a number of federal partners and agencies.

And when that does, we're trying to get our systems in place and planning for that.

We know from other childhood vaccines that are best trusted places for people to get that information and to get vaccinated or through their own health care providers.

So we'll be working really closely with pediatricians and other health providers for children to get those messages out through to families of children.

Also to incorporate COVID vaccine in our children's well checks as part of a just a routine way of doing work in reaching this population.

And then of course, continue to use multiple access points for children as they become eligible where kids gather, where families gather, in order to provide vaccines in those areas and remove any barriers that are there for them.

So council member, I will stop there and see if there's anything I can answer or get answers to you and get them back to you around our vaccine status, around where we're at in our reopening, where we're at with cases, but all really pretty much good news coming from your public health department.

That's great.

Thank you so much.

And I think your comment earlier summarized well.

We have reason to be cautiously optimistic, but also know that there's certain threats out there and certain disparities that still need to be addressed.

So before we take questions, I just want to thank everybody who was part of this panel.

Dennis Worsham, Interim Director of King County Public Health Seattle, King County.

Also, thank you very much, Tammy, Samuel, Holly, and Mark.

And we do have some time for questions.

Folks, we did start this panel a little bit early, but we have caught up on a little bit of time.

So we have about, 8 to 10 minutes for questions here and would love to open the floor to see if anybody has any questions.

All right.

Of course I have questions because it's public health, so let me jump in.

Director, I'm wondering on the disparity gap data that you shared, I didn't see a slide that corresponded with that after we saw the spike chart and your noted excitement about us being down to where we were past.

rates last September.

That was exciting.

But then there were some comments that you made in between that slide and the next slide about the disparity data.

Could you share that with us visually if your team has any of that information about how the communities of color specifically are faring relative to vaccination rates compared to their white counterparts?

That'd be helpful to see visually.

Yes, I can definitely get you some slide decks for that.

Just send those directly to you.

Yeah, and we'll share them with the full council here.

I think that would be helpful.

And then the second question I had was related to the variants that we continue to hear about.

And I think your note of caution was we are keeping our eye on this.

And I'm wondering, you know, relative to that second spike that we saw, we knew at the end of um september early october that we were anticipating a rise in rates in mid november and we definitely saw that um is there any projections on when we would see a possible effect of a variant if it if it were localized here in king county or seattle?

Yeah, great.

Great question.

And and I, I could go on a little bit about variance.

I think just a little context setting is about over 80% of our of our cases in King County and in the state of Washington are of.

are of a variant of concern of one kind or another.

Over 80% of what we're seeing already.

Just the natural essence of coronavirus is it continues to evolve because it wants to survive.

So there are way more than we report out on, but there are those that reach a status of called variants of concern.

And there's probably a handful of those that we're keeping our eye on in order to do it.

looking about about the trends of where they're at.

We're seeing where they are, where they're at in our own county and how the vaccines really are effective around them.

Good news is that it is still vaccines are very, very effective around it.

Bad news is they are getting the variants of concern just to get a little bit smarter in how they become transmissible.

They become more, they're more transmissible.

They are getting more efficient in how they do that.

It's really why it's so important for our vaccines to be continued to do it.

Because if we can interrupt that transmission, it stops the evolution of these variants.

And it's part of the message of public health messages of concern is that we we get people to wear a mask if they're not going to be vaccinated or aren't vaccinated yet.

If if we can improve indoor air quality, that's both on ventilation and filtration, and we get people vaccinated that those three things are still good protective factors against these variants.

And we've got to continue to hammer that message out.

Is that that it's not over yet?

We're seeing great success, but there is some caution of where we're at.

If we don't shut this virus down completely, there are some opportunities that probably down the road we'll have to have some kind of booster or something in order to be able to respond with these vaccines.

So in this magic crystal ball that we're trying to, as we've tried to navigate this whole pandemic, it's just a bit of science and a bit of art, is how do you wind down as numbers go down, but keep enough flexibility that you need to increase again that we're ready to do that.

So we do have work.

We are watching this.

We anticipate with outdoor events happening more in the summertime and people have their doors and windows open that we'll continue to see this trend hopefully throughout the summer, but we're watching closely as fall comes around.

and as people move more back into the indoor areas, as if we'll have a spike again in the fall.

Some predict we will, but too early to know, and we're keeping our eyes close on it.

Thank you.

I'm not seeing any additional hands.

I'm just going to ask two more questions, and it sounds like some of the modifications that the industry has made will also be helpful in addressing those variants that you noted early, so appreciate that.

Two questions.

So regarding folks who are not wearing masks inside the stores here in Seattle.

You know, I went for a run the other day, and it was so warm that I stepped inside of a store to kind of do some cooling down to get some AC.

And I was reminded by the clerk that there was a mask requirement, and I just completely forgot because I was outside running.

And I said, oh, thank you so much.

And I put my mouth and my shirt to make sure that I thanked them for the reminder to be wearing a mask and quickly step back outside.

That was in Iowa, where unfortunately they don't have as great of a public health department or a governor who has been leading on this effort, completely the opposite there.

But it was a great reminder from the clerk there at the store that it was important to remind folks that their mask requirement was still in effect.

So if somebody does come in the store, Holly, did I misunderstand you?

If they're not wearing a mask, is that something that a employee is asked to remind them that there's still a requirement?

You mentioned that there's no card check, obviously, but is that something that the employees are asked to do at this point?

So it really depends on the retailer and how they are managing the enforcement of the policy.

We have signed up.

There are some smaller retailers that are actually still blocking folks at the door.

In fact, I saw a retailer the other day that got very creative and they said, you're vaccinated.

Congratulations, you still have to wear a mask at our store.

So it really depends on what retailers are able to do.

But obviously, there are still confrontations that occur.

And so we're trying to be thoughtful about what we can ask our employees to do in enforcing public health.

And then again, what is also reasonable to ask our employees to do in a scenario where there are a lot of people who are vaccinated, thankfully.

Um, who do have under CDC guidance the ability to come in without a mask on.

So I'm actually getting questions now from folks who are, you know, seeing employees without a mask, seeing customers without a mask and under the CDC guidance that's allowed.

Um, and so we are struggling a little bit with finding that balance.

Just as we struggled when we got into this, we're struggling as we come out.

So that's, that's been the challenge.

Um, and I think it's going to continue to be as we work our way through the pandemic.

And I just wanted to ask Mark and also Samuel, are there any other items that you'd like to lift up outside of the hazard pay discussion that you are hoping to put on the radar for Seattle City Council as we continue to work with both the public health data on current disparity issues that we've seen, and also on the ongoing desire to make sure that we're monitoring these variants in the future.

Are there other thoughts that you have or that you'd like to put on our radar to make sure that we're helping to protect your members as well?

Thank you.

No, I mean, I think those are Those are kind of foremost on our members' minds from what we're hearing.

Sam may have something to add.

But I think there's a lot of uncertainty, right?

Like, or not a lot, but there's remaining uncertainty about variants, about mass, about younger people in the household.

And what is really the right thing to do?

I mean, throughout the whole pandemic, I think we've all struggled to catch up, and I think You know, what our members probably want the most is an approach that's very cautious, right?

Better to overcorrect with caution than to undercorrect and find that we created another surge of a new variant, right?

Yeah.

But I think that Dennis's presentation lifted up a lot of the concerns and the conversation has.

And we appreciate it.

OK, great.

Well, I look forward to working with all of you, especially as we look at the disparity gap data that Dennis described.

I know just, oh, Samuel, I'm so sorry.

Please go ahead.

I did not see you come off mute.

Please go ahead.

It's OK.

I just wanted to just quickly add something.

A lot of the things that you have done as far as with this council, a lot of us really appreciate.

I think me as well as most of my associates, we all realize that we're not going to get the hazardous pay forever.

But just the initiation that happened in order for you to go through the process and start the domino effect for not only just us, but a lot of people across the country to actually get a little bit of pay.

I just want to thank you again and let you know how that little gesture right there just helped a lot of us feel like we were worthy.

We don't get this worthy of appreciation from a lot of Kroger executives.

They just brag about how much money that they make and throw it in our face.

And like I said, you know, we just work and we just work and we keep doing what we have to do to service the customer.

On my behalf, I'm not really complaining because we were in a situation where we were considered essential.

So we weren't forced to go out.

I see a lot of people struggling in society right now.

I wish that there was another way to kind of assist and help them.

But as far as I'm concerned, I feel like all the things that you have done thus far has really helped out a lot as far as with the hazardous pay and then implementing ways for a lot of us to get our vaccinations.

I've got mine.

I'm completely vaccinated.

I still choose to wear a mask because until I see this science, this product of science totally eradicated, I'm going to continue to do what I feel is safe for me and my family.

But thank you again for all that you have done and all the data that you've presented upon us thus far.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

And that's that's really appreciated.

And you're absolutely worthy.

And we really appreciate your time and all you do in your presentation today.

And I think that's a good segue.

I don't see any other towels coming up.

So I'm going to note here for my colleagues, I would be very interested in continuing to work with members of USCW 21 and members of the Grocery Association and Food Association for a joint effort to address some of the disparity gap data that we know is currently plaguing King County as well as other areas across our country.

And I think first acknowledging that disparity is important, appreciate the slides that will be forthcoming.

Having worked closely with members of UFCW 21 over the years, I also know they have a very diverse membership and assume that many of the disparity gap data information that we're seeing on the county level could potentially be reflected among the family members, if not the actual associates within the grocery store.

So I think it's important for us to find those ways as Mark and Sam were describing, Holly, that you mentioned some of the strategies that you all are working on to make sure that you're making vaccines really accessible, not just offering them, but really trying to make sure that they're accessible.

And I would love to work with all of you on how we close those disparity gaps, especially for the workers within those grocery stores, and know that that will have a multiplier effect, a positive effect for their family members and community members as well.

At this point, I'm not seeing any additional comments.

Colleagues, I'm going to tee up for our discussion here the possibility of revisiting again the grocery worker hazard pay.

I think that based on the information we received, sort of the cautious optimism that we've received, It would make sense for us to have legislation ready for us to consider at the July 9th meeting to amend, and I want to underscore, amend the grocery worker hazard pay.

This would, I think, be an opportunity for us to strike the hazard pay requirement, but to make sure that we are keeping on the books record keeping and enforcement that was part of the original legislation as well.

I think that will help us sort of with continuing to follow through on the initial intent of making sure that we revisited this legislation within four months.

given the data we've received and I think the good statistics that we've seen on overall vaccinations, it makes sense to tee up that legislation and obviously we will be working closely with Public Health Seattle King County to track some of the additional data if there's emerging trends that are concerning before that date and before any final passage.

That would be my suggestion, again, bringing forward legislation to make that amendment on July 9th.

Any comments or questions?

Okay, I am not seeing any.

We went slightly over our time for today, but I really do appreciate everybody's participation in this discussion, and that would allow for us to revisit this conversation.

Holly, Tammy, Mark, Sam, if there's any additional comments that you'd like to add for our July 9th meeting, we will definitely be reaching back out to you to make sure that we reflect your comments back in that legislation as well, and have an opportunity, of course, to do public testimony.

But I do really appreciate the collaborative way in which folks have come to address this issue.

We know that it's in the public's health best interest to make sure that we're all working.

together to address both the gaps and make sure that folks are getting access to vaccines.

So I'm very impressed by the information shared today.

And I also want to underscore the concern.

I think that interim director has noted as well, the concern that could potentially be out there if we don't continue to redouble our efforts, both within public health and the public sector and the private sector.

So let's do more of these conversations together in the future about how we can continue to work together.

And I think the first step will be revisiting that legislation on July.

Okay, I'm not seeing anything else.

I want to thank you all for joining us today again and for your generous time.

We know we kept you longer than we planned, so thanks for your participation to today's panel, and we will have more discussion on it tonight.

Take care, everyone.

Okay, let's go ahead and move on to item number two.

We have our friends from the Office of Housing with us.

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

Agenda item number two, Council Bill 120101, housing levy administrative and financial plan for briefing and discussion and possible vote.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

And I want to thank Tracy Redskill from central staff for being here with us with Emily Alvarado, the director of office of housing and Kelly Larson, also with office of housing.

Thank you for your flexibility and coming to do the presentation at today's meeting instead of two weeks ago.

And thanks for the presentation that you shared with us.

I'm going to save some of my comments until after we get through the presentation, because there is legislation in front of us today and with the committees.

I would love to have the briefing discussion and possible vote today.

So let's go ahead and get into the presentation.

We are on time.

We're just about five minutes over, but we're going to endeavor to try to get through this in the next 25 minutes.

Thank you so much.

Emily.

Thank you very much, Chair Mosqueda and members of City Council.

Thanks for the opportunity to present today.

I think Kelly, I'm stalling a little as Kelly prepares to screen share.

Yes, can I share my screen here?

Yes.

Okay.

As she's doing that I can start talking, which is to say that today we're doing two main things.

First, As you mentioned, we are heading towards a conversation about legislation.

That legislation is related to our administrative and financial plan and housing funding policies.

And before we jump into a conversation about the every two year review of those policies, we're going to start with a overview of our annual investments that were made in 2020. And the purposes of that recap is one to showcase some of the work that's been done by the city as it relates to affordable housing.

but also because the resources that were invested there and show the way in which our policies get used through our investments.

And mostly what you'll see is that we remain on track or if not exceeding our goals under the Seattle housing levy.

And that helps to frame our approach to the review of our housing funding policies.

So again, this presentation, we're going to start with an overview of our investments that were made in 2020, where those are included as part of the levy annual report, which you can find also on our website.

Other reports that we produce include reports for the multifamily tax exemption program, Mandatory Housing Affordability Program and all of those can also be found on our website.

And then Kelly's going to talk a little bit about the upcoming legislation and the to the levy administrative and financial plan and housing funding policies.

So we're going to jump right in here.

But I do want to say by way of acknowledgment that when I talk about our housing investments, I do speak with some sense of pride because I'm really proud of what we've been able to accomplish.

But I really don't want that pride to be conflated at all with a sense that we've done enough or that we are done in what we are doing.

We know we're still in the midst of a homelessness crisis.

We still have an affordable housing crisis where many families and individuals are struggling to afford housing.

We know that the legacy of racial discrimination and segregation in housing persists.

So our work is nowhere near done.

But I think that through these investments, we show that we know what to do and what we're doing is successful so long as we're able to do more.

So here, starting us off with a nice pie chart, jumping in, you'll see that in 2020, we made roughly $123 million of capital, $125 million of capital investments in affordable housing.

And the vast majority of those resources, 92% went to support rental housing.

And you see that breakdown.

We're going to talk about all of our program investments today with a focus mostly on rental housing because it makes up such a significant part of our investments.

So just giving a sense here, we invested $115.9 million in rental housing.

$56.7 million of that funding came from our Seattle housing levy.

That remains the backbone of our ability to make in housing.

$52.3 million cam housing affordability pro M.

H. A. Payments really investments this year.

2.5 And 4.5 million came from federal resources.

I know you all have been talking a lot about federal resources lately.

We need those to help make sure we're able to make a meaningful impact in our ability to address affordable housing issues.

And in this case, it still represented a very small amount of resources that we invest in.

Another thing to say about our capital investments is usually when we show this slide, we also show you another pie, which is the pie of how our investments and dollars leveraged additional resources.

And this time, I don't have a pie chart for it, but for every dollar we invested, we were able to leverage another $2.5 in other resources, primarily in this case, tax credit equity and debt.

And the thing about 2.5 as a leverage ratio is that that is consistent with the underpinning and modeling of our housing levy.

So we remain on track, but it is less than we've talked to you all about before.

We have in prior years leveraged $5 for every $1.

And I do want to put one point on this, which is this year represented a year in which we accelerated local investment.

And in order to do that and to scale what housing we produce, we have to be comfortable with the idea that we might be a larger percentage of the total development costs in each building.

I think it's still worth it to invest in that fashion.

And I also believe that over time, as we go more all in, we will actually encourage other funders to come and grow resources as well.

and they'll be with us.

So an example there is we went pretty heavily in as part of this PSH pilot, and then you'll see the state legislature just passed a historic unprecedented investment in affordable housing capital and operating and maintenance.

So we'll see the benefits of that.

I'll pause.

I see that Council Member Lewis has a question.

You are better at monitoring the chat hand raised than I am.

Council Member Lewis, did you have a question?

Yes, Madam Chair, I just wanted to ask Director Alvarado is I see that the MHA takes a big part of the pie chart there and I know you mentioned the number earlier.

I just wondered if you could remind remind me the MHA 2020 contribution, the dollar amount.

Yeah, it was 52.3 million dollars came from payments from the MHA program.

Do we anticipate that to be a representative number or high or low?

Yeah, it's a good question.

And I'd probably want to get back to you about our projections around that amount.

It is higher than it has been in the last few years.

We'll see what happens.

A lot is dependent on what's happening in the development cycle over time.

But I can follow up with some information on where that might fall relative to other fund sources and what our projections were.

Like the projects that have the MHA money coming in now, when did those projects vest, for example?

Like would they have been, I imagine they probably would have been pre-COVID construction.

So this is sort of like a hangover from buildings that got their master use permit in like 2017 or something.

Yeah, exactly.

You're explaining that this is the point at which we are accepting payments and then spending the dollars is later in the development cycle.

Our MHA report actually lays out all of this information relative to timing and projections.

And so that might be a topic of conversation for another day when we talk about MHA, or I'd be happy to follow up to make sure I get it correctly.

Yeah, well, appreciate it.

It's good to see that this program is producing some real resource for the Office of Housing.

Thanks.

Council President Gonzales.

Thank you.

Emily, in terms of the MHA dollars represented here, these are all payments, not not on-site development, is that right?

That's correct.

And does the Office of Housing capture the value of on-site development?

And if so, what is the value of that on-site construction of affordable housing?

Yeah, really good question, Council President.

So as you've suggested in your question, a developer has an opportunity to choose one of two ways to participate in contributing to affordable housing under MHA.

They can make an onsite performance where they set aside a percentage, depending on the zone, of the units as affordable for at least 70 years, and that becomes regulated with our office, or they can make a payment based on a percentage and a square foot calculation to our office.

I don't have the numbers offhand, but we have seen both developers choose to pay or perform, and our annual report outlines that balance.

I think anecdotally, it's fair to say that we've seen far more payment choices than we've seen performance.

But there are a few things to note.

One of which is that for the purposes of the modeling underlying MHA, we anticipated that projects downtown and South Lake Union would almost exclusively pay.

And that is, in fact, what is happening.

And a lot of those payments have come first.

We're also seeing some trends like in very small scale buildings, townhome developments, for example, we're seeing more payment almost exclusively rather than performance.

But in the mid-tier, mid-size, or larger apartment buildings, we are seeing the mix have some payment and performance.

I can't conjure up the numbers off the top of my head, but they're included in our annual report.

All right, I'm not seeing any additional questions.

Thank you both for those questions.

Colleagues, I'm going to ask maybe that folks hold their questions till the end of the presentation just so that we can get through the rest of the slides here.

That's a really important topic, though.

I do appreciate those discussion points.

Thank you, council member.

OK, Kelly, we'll keep going.

So this is very brief, but mostly what this slide demonstrates is that We often talk about when we invest, but what happens two, three, sometimes four years later after our investment is that apartment buildings become homes.

The homes actually open and they're ready for people to move in.

And basically what this chart is showing you, on the left you have annual investments and on the right you see a picture of units opening as active rental apartments And essentially, when we invest and when we have spikes of investment, that investment results in production.

So the work that we're doing on the investment side does produce the intended result.

Next slide, please.

So in 2020, I was really proud to say that we did something very different.

In a typical year, we have one funding cycle.

We do a fall NOFA.

Last year, we did three funding cycles, really to reflect different policy priorities of the office and of the city.

So first of all, we added a spring funding round.

And the purpose there was that we have projects that were really ready.

They had even in some cases applied before to our office, or they were ready to get under construction, but for our financing.

So we made funding available in the spring to help facilitate more rapid delivery of affordable homes.

And in some cases in two of the projects, for example, those buildings are under construction now.

So we really see the impact of those more regular investments.

In the summer, we were really in the midst of the pandemic and because of the public health crisis, and because we know that people who are experiencing homelessness are really vulnerable to experiencing the public health crisis, and because we know that permanent supportive housing is the solution to homelessness.

We sought to double a single year's production of permanent supportive housing by accelerating resources from our Seattle housing levy to invest nearly $60 million and produce 600 units of PSH.

So that was our summer permanent supportive housing pilot.

We also sought to do a couple of other things in that pilot, which is to see whether as we scale our investment in supportive housing, we can also find ways to be cost efficient and find ways to reduce the timeline of delivery.

And we're seeing some really good results with that pilot.

In the fall, we went ahead with our typically timed annual funding round.

But in this case, we really sought to emphasize achieving racial equity outcomes even more than in a typical affordable housing development through this funding round.

And we did so in part by partnering with BIPOC-led housing organizations.

We did so by thinking about best practices in supporting folks of color living in affordable housing.

So examples here where we funded Mount Zion to create senior housing in the Central District.

We funded Equity Alliance of Washington fame to fund family affordable housing in Rainier Beach.

And we supported the rehab of YWCA's landmark project on 5th and Seneca to convert single room occupancy units to full functioning studios to help provide more dignity and health and safety for its residents.

Next slide.

So at a glance, that's the summary of the investments that the breakdown of the investments that we've made.

And through that, you see that we supported the creation of 1,286 new rental units.

I'll talk more about those homeownership investments later.

But what you do see here is you're really seeing a mix of project sponsors.

So we're not just working with one or two housing agencies.

We're working with many community-based partners to achieve this affordable housing.

And I'll talk more about the neighborhoods as you see them reflected across the city.

Next slide, please.

So really excited that a key piece of the work that we do in the Office of Housing when we invest our housing capital is to support homeownership.

And I really have to pause here to acknowledge that we hear more and more from community members, particularly from communities of color, that homeownership investments is one of the things that we're able to do to help close the racial wealth gap, close the homeownership gap, and also address displacement by stabilizing people in place.

And that's why we were able to make three new investments in permanently affordable homeownership, homeownership that's affordable now to a first-time homebuyer and in perpetuity to successive homebuyers.

Three investments, one in Capitol Hill, one in Westwood Highland Park, And one in South Park, just to pause briefly on the South Park investment, really proud there that Habitat for Humanity will be connecting and partnering with community-based organizations using affirmative marketing and community preference to make sure that folks from South Park who either at risk of displacement or have been displaced have an opportunity to become home buyers in that neighborhood.

We also we know that there are existing low income homeowners and we want to make sure that those folks have the ability to hold on to their homes.

Don't face displacement because of the cost of a side sewer or roof repair and have the opportunity to pass on their asset to next generation.

And so to support and stabilize those homeowners, we make home repair grants and loans.

We made four loans to stabilize 46 low income homeowners this last year.

And we continued investments in energy efficiency, really knowing that the contributions that buildings have to environmental concerns and also making sure that low-income people who are homeowners are able to benefit from energy efficiencies and a more comfortable, healthy home.

Next slide, please.

So in this map, Council Member Herbold,

Yes.

Thank you so much.

I just wanted to say a word about your work in South Park.

That community is fond of saying that it is such a small community that they can actually do a by name list of folks who are vulnerable to displacement.

And so for the city of Seattle to really focus some of our investment opportunities and our investment resources there creates potential for a really big impact, and I'm really pleased to know that not only are we using our resources in that community to address displacement impacts, but we're also using the neighborhood preference policies to help people who have been or are likely to be displaced really see a lot, again, a lot of big impact potential there.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

We're really proud of the work that we've been able to do, really following the vision and leadership of community in South Park.

In this map, you see our investments from last year overlaid visibly to see them across the city.

And this is important in part because the city has a strong duty, and I feel that strong duty to use our investments in housing to affirmatively further fair housing choice.

And that means that we need to be supporting and stabilizing existing low income and communities of color.

It means that we need to be undoing historic legacies of segregation and discrimination and ensuring that people have an opportunity to live in the community of their choice and you probably see a city's ability to further fair housing over many years.

So this map, what you see here is not only a single year's investment, which I do believe demonstrates that we're investing in multiple locations, but also you see a track record of our previously funded investments to show our commitment to continuing to invest across the city.

Next slide, please.

So in summary, these are the obligations that we set out to the voters.

And when we make our annual funding investments, especially using our Seattle Housing Levy resources, we want to be sure that we are fulfilling those obligations.

Ideally, we will be exceeding what we commit to the voters.

And right now, this is a four-year summary towards meeting our housing levy goals.

you'll see that we have fully met the rental production and preservation program goals.

So any additional production we produce would be above that goal.

We continue to be on track to meet our goal around reinvestment.

That's the important work we do to make sure that we have high quality, sustainable and stable, affordable housing.

On the operating and maintenance program, it looks like we're behind, but that's really just a function of timing.

And that's because when we invest on the capital side on housing, especially for our buildings that are supporting extremely low income individuals and families, we often use and invest our operating and maintenance resources in those buildings.

But the timing of the O&M award comes roughly two years after our capital award.

So what I can tell you is I have made and started to make the O&M awards for this year.

And by this year, we have fully extended and expended our O&M program resources.

So next year when we give this presentation, you'll see what we have met that goal as well.

We're on track to meet our goals around homelessness prevention and housing stability.

And then also our homeownership program, as I reported earlier, we continue to do well.

And so for all of these reasons, because we're on track, that really frames the conversation that Kelly's going to take over now, which is that now is not when we make significant changes to our underlying policy documents.

We'll make some key technical changes or any adjustments to help us continue to meet our goals, but our progress to date is really guiding a more modest review of our underlying policies at this time.

And I'll turn it over to Kelly.

Thank you, Director Alvarado.

So here we are past the halfway mark.

Programs are on track to meet goals.

And this existing framework that we have has set us up well for a time like a pandemic, allowed us to take advantage of existing program platforms to launch new programs for rental assistance and to build off our current acquisitions to take advantage of the real estate market right now.

So this legislation we're putting forward will make targeted updates to existing policy.

So we'll start first with the acquisition and preservation program.

This first proposal will allow us to take advantage of unique market opportunities, allowing the director to exceed the current limit of $30 million for acquisitions of new buildings and sites.

There are two important guardrails in place.

The first, this can only be done when there are new resources available for long term financing.

And it also requires the director to operate within their means closely monitoring their existing cash on hand.

This is an important tool for taking advantage of extraordinary opportunities we're seeing right now.

There are three proposed changes in the rental housing program.

The first would allow the director to cover up to 100% of total development costs, which is an increase from 75% for redevelopment of projects that have existing city dollars in them.

As long as they serve extremely low income households and are at risk of foreclosure or are at risk of foreclosure.

The goal of this is to support smaller organizations that don't necessarily have access to larger resources and leverage and are in need of critical health and safety updates.

The second proposal will add a requirement for new projects to include broadband infrastructure.

We believe this language aligns with current practice and also aligns with other federal requirements in place.

And the third adds language for organizations that utilize mutual terminations of leases.

They must add a written policy to declare that they will use mutual terminations only in circumstances where an eviction would otherwise be filed or when requested in writing or verbally by a tenant.

Onto the homeownership program, we're proposing an increase to the subsidy per unit by $30,000 for development loans.

And we are on track, as you saw in the chart, we're on track to meet the levy home ownership goals.

And at the same time, we're seeing pretty extraordinary cost increases in the market for lumber and other materials.

So projects have been able to pencil this far, but they're getting closer and closer to the margins and some facing delays waiting for all the leveraged resources to come in.

So we view this subsidy increase as important to enable us to continue meaningfully investing in projects and keeping us on track to meet development goals.

Last, we'll end with a couple of minor changes in the home repair program.

First, we're adding language to support the newly funded work of converting homes from oil to electric heating.

This work is going to begin in just a few months now, in the fall.

And last, we are removing barriers in the Home Repair Grant Program to align with statewide program amendments that make all manufactured homeowners eligible.

So this revision removes requirements that the home be affixed to a permanent foundation and that the land be owned by the homeowner.

The last remaining requirement being that the home must be owned by the grant applicant.

Just to cover quickly our stakeholder engagement process, we engaged the Housing Levy Oversight Committee in discussion around several of these proposals.

It's a great group of experts to engage in policy discussions with.

There were no significant concerns raised.

We had some good questions and suggestions from the committee as well as from the other stakeholder groups and other communications with stakeholders.

We communicated with our blog and our newsletter and hosted a public meeting as well.

And we believe in the end, we were able to strike a balance in the language of these proposals to accommodate input from the various community members and continue moving forward with these important policy changes.

And that concludes our presentation.

I think the one last thing.

Oh, sorry.

The one last thing I would say is that while the Office of Housing is the steward of this, these policy documents, we recognize that they get implemented best when they're underpinned by shared values and all of us moving forward in policy direction.

So I do want to acknowledge and thank a lot of council members for your ideas in helping to move this forward.

And also for our community partners who end up implementing this and acting as our sounding board for what needs to change over time.

Thanks to those folks, we really do know that policies won't be useful unless they're implemented well.

And so we thank our stakeholders and our community partners and all of you for getting us to that point.

Okay, wonderful.

Thank you again for your presentation and your flexibility.

Tracy, did you have anything else in closing?

Just to let you know that the provisions that they just talked about, that Kelly just went over, are all included in the ordinance 120101. So they are encapsulated in the two documents to attach that ordinance.

And if folks don't have any questions, that ordinance would be ready for you to discuss and potentially vote on today.

Great, thank you.

Council Member Herbold, Vice Chair, would you like to ask a question?

First, I want to thank you for the work that you've done over the last year or so addressing the issue of mutual termination agreements.

Really appreciate the care and thoughtfulness in addressing some of the concerns that I've had in the past.

Just wondering, as far as next steps on that.

Do we expect for there to be sort of sample policies developed by the Office of Housing as a best practice?

And it's my understanding that these policies moving forward are for new housing that's built, not for existing housing that was previously built with levy funds.

So I'm wondering, Can we do something to encourage housing providers to use the standards for mutual termination agreements in all of their housing, not just the new housing that is built moving forward?

And my other question is a question I think you asked when we met earlier to go over these policies about the home repair technical fix, really support our doing so to remove barriers so that folks who live in manufactured homes can benefit from the Office of Housing's Home Repair Program.

What we're, as I understand what we're doing is we're removing the requirement for the the homeowner to also own the land, which is, of course, the situation that people who live in manufactured homes often find themselves in.

But I'm wondering whether or not this change would also allow homeowners who purchase their homes via community land trusts, who also do not own the land, but the home only, to avail themselves of the home repair program.

Thank you.

Thank you for those questions.

I will try to take them in order.

So first of all, and Kelly could probably talk more about our approach to discussing specific language on mutual terminations for the policy language with our provider community.

I think that you're right that this attaches specifically to new construction.

And that's because our vehicle for monitoring is the application for funds from our office.

And so we want to use that as the entry point to engage and monitor new contracts as it relates to mutual terminations.

What we find, however, is that the list of project sponsors I listed earlier, many of our partners have been our partners for a long time.

adapt their policy and practice in the future.

It tends in most cases to operate organization-wide, so across their own individual portfolios, because it wouldn't make sense for them to have different policies for one building than for another building.

So for all intents and purposes, we expect that this will have a practical impact of updating practices in general.

And we would be happy to continue to have a conversation with you about what training and engagement could look like to ensure that we're moving the entire affordable housing community in that direction.

I think on the second question about land trusts and the new language about home repair, Presently, homes in a land trust property, so where the homeowner owns their home but doesn't own the ground, is already eligible for our programs.

So this would not impact their eligibility.

It would only extend it for other properties in manufactured homes who otherwise weren't eligible.

So they are specifically eligible for home repair loans.

OK, great.

Thank you.

Correct.

Okay, thanks.

I am not seeing any additional hands from colleagues.

I appreciate the earlier questions that people asked.

I do want to thank Office of Housing for your ongoing work on this.

We did have quite a robust discussion about the ANF plan two years ago.

Just by way of reminder in those 2019 ANF updates, we made sure to strengthen the community preference policy guidelines to help make sure that we were addressing displacement by enabling historic members of communities at risk of displacement to be first in line for new affordable housing.

in specifically those neighborhoods that are being potentially gentrified.

And we infused prioritization of projects by historically rooted organizations serving communities at risk of displacement.

I'm going to bring something up related to that in our upcoming topic on the agenda.

We included stronger labor standards, and we also made sure we increased Office of Housing Acquisition Authority to ensure that when opportunities arise to acquire properties, we created more affordable housing.

But what you're seeing in the legislation in front of us today is actually a really great opportunity to take advantage of the change in market that Emily talks about.

Potential new acquisition opportunities on the market and the increase in the cost of building means that we can actually go further by acquiring buildings and converting them like the single room occupancy example that Director Alvarado mentioned, the example that was in the news recently of King County purchasing the hotel to turn it into more hotel space and hopefully more affordable housing later on.

These are things that the Office of Housing has been interested in for a very long time.

We have increased the authority in the past, and now we're saying we don't really need this cap, especially in this time of pressing housing needs, five or six years of a declared state of emergency, and the increase in cost of construction materials.

Let's acquire those buildings.

Let's make sure there's not derelict properties on the market.

And let's go in as a purchaser now so that we are purchasing these buildings and turning them into a public asset.

I'm really excited about that.

I'm also excited about the opportunity to continue to expand upon that in the jumpstart legislation that you all supported last year.

We included funding for acquisition in that bill, as well as in the bill we're about to discuss in our ARPA Seattle Recovery Act bill.

So thanks again for all of the work that we have done in the past on this effort and very supportive of the language that's in front of us.

If we don't have any additional questions, and I'm not seeing any additional hands or squares, I'm going to move the legislation in front of us so that we can actually potentially consider it today.

Okay.

Colleagues, I move the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120101. Is there a second?

Wonderful, thank you guys.

Sure, it's been moved and seconded.

Are there any additional comments on the legislation before we consider passing it?

I will thank again Director Alvarado.

I want to thank Kelly and Tracy for their work on the levy update and the ANF plan.

I also want to thank the housing levy oversight committee for their letter of support on the ANF plan and in particular the noting the support for the increased acquisition authority to seize opportunities to purchase buildings during this unique time in our market.

and the per unit home ownership subsidy that will allow for more affordable home ownership so that we can hopefully address the ability for more people to have home ownership opportunities and address the ongoing issue of folks being priced out of the market for generations.

So this is a really exciting opportunity.

OK.

Seeing no additional comments or questions, will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation to pass Council Bill 120101. Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much, colleagues.

The motion carries, and the recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the June 21st Seattle City Council meeting for final consideration.

Thanks again to Office of Housing, Tracy Resco from Central Staff, and all of the community partners who have weighed in with support.

Okay, thanks all.

We look forward to that final passage.

Madam Clerk, could you please read items three and four into the record today?

Agenda items three and four are Council Bill 120093, and Council Bill 12094 ordinances related to the city's response to the COVID-19 crisis for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Okay, great.

So I want to first thank all of you for your patience and your participation as we drafted the legislation in front of you.

We do have with us Allie Panucci from Central Staff, who has been lead on this crafting of the Seattle Rescue Plan, along with Tracy Ratcliffe, Amy Gore, Brian Goodnight, Jeff Sims from Central Staff.

Just double checking to see if I've missed anybody on this lineup, because the entire Central Staff team has been so tremendous to work with.

Really appreciate that.

At the onset, I want to note that we are about 15 minutes over time, but we had allocated an hour and a half for this discussion with the hope to get folks out of here by 1 o'clock.

I don't believe we're going to be able to get through everything.

Maybe you all will prove me wrong, and we can get through this in an hour and 15 minutes.

Allie's optimistic.

But in the case that we do not get through all of the amendments and discussion, which is very important, we do have time held, I believe, on everybody's calendar tomorrow at 2 p.m.

for a continuation of this meeting so that way we can wrap up our discussion.

I will just note we are going to try to keep to that 1 p.m.

hard stop given that we have extra time held on the calendar for tomorrow.

Okay.

With that, I'm really excited to have the legislation in front of us today.

Folks, as a reminder, this is the Seattle Rescue Plan.

This is our effort to introduce and pass the federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars.

We have before us the allocation of the first tranche.

This is the $116 million out of the total of 232 that is allocated for Seattle.

along with the $116 million from the American Rescue Plan Act dollars, we also have $12.2 million in the Home Investment Partnership dollars.

These bills together are a real one-time opportunity for us to make significant investments in addressing the disparities that we see in terms of what COVID has exposed in our community, in terms of economic stability, and who has been hit hardest by COVID, both in terms of the physical effects, the mental and emotional effects, and the effects on small businesses and workers.

This bill is a result as well of your work on Council Resolution 13999, which passed in March and made sure that we were making sure to coordinate our city's efforts with county, made sure that we took into consideration federal dollars and state dollars and do everything that we could to expedite getting these ARPA dollars out the door.

Two weeks ago we introduced this legislation in partnership with Council President Gonzalez and the Mayor's Office while keeping in mind the resolution that you all passed to make sure that appropriations reflected our values, the diversity of opinions among elected officials, and also incorporated what we heard from the public's comment after multiple hours of public testimony, including one public hearing completely devoted to just public testimony.

We said this a few weeks ago, and I want to reiterate, $116 million isn't enough to solve the important issues facing our city that have been worsened due to COVID, and it is not enough to fully propel us into a more equitable Seattle.

But this infusion of ARPA dollars does provide us with an incredible opportunity to commit resources to communities directly into communities most affected.

These are priorities that we have used in the past to center our work around Jump Start, progressive revenue, as well as the budget process that we used last year.

As you saw in the presentation two weeks ago, this is an investment directly into homelessness response, into housing our community, into creating more economic resilience, and really making sure that we're directing assistance to those most directly impacted.

I'm going to turn it over to Council President Gonzalez as co-sponsor of this legislation for any opening comments as well.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, for an opportunity to make comments.

I'll keep it brief because I know we're running really long today, but I did want to express gratitude to you, your staff, and, of course, the mayor on the opportunity to partner on this baseline introduction of the Seattle Rescue Plan.

I know that there are a lot of competing needs as we think about how to utilize, best utilize, and most strategically utilize these federal dollars that are coming to the city.

But I think that the plan before us, the Seattle Rescue Plan, as we are calling it, meets a lot of varying needs throughout the city.

It would be easy to focus the dollars in just one area of investment, but that That means that we are literally picking winners and losers in terms of who gets to benefit and see investments as a result of these one time federal dollars that are coming to the city of Seattle.

So I appreciate that this is a bit of a balancing act.

You know everything from child care providers who are primarily women immigrant women women of color to individuals who continue to experience homelessness who need our support and everything in between.

And so I think that this is a good opportunity for the city to meet those very needs in combination and conjunction with the significant dollars that King County is expecting and that the state is expecting also from the federal government.

All in all, it is very complimentary.

And I think that we will be able to leverage these limited dollars in a way that truly meets a vast spectrum of needs for people in our city.

So look forward to the conversation.

And I appreciate the opportunity to once again partner with you on this really important body of work.

Thank you, Council President, and same to you.

Thanks so much to Cody Ryder in your office, Sejal Parikh in my office, and Ali for your leadership on this, along with Julie Dingley from CBO.

What we're going to do, colleagues, is we're going to walk through the series of amendments that we have in front of us.

I'm going to ask the sponsor of the amendment to go ahead and move the amendment, and then we will have the sponsor very briefly describe it, and then we're going to have central staff walk us through the technical I'm going to have you speak to the amendment that I have.

brought forward on your behalf so that we can have a full and robust discussion.

But you'll have a chance to speak to all of those for members who are not official members of the Finance and Housing Committee.

Allie, I'm going to turn it over to you to go ahead and walk us through the presentation that you have in front of us.

But before we do that, why don't we go ahead and move the bill so that's officially in front of us as we have this discussion?

Great.

Colleagues, I move the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 12093. As a reminder, We have two bills in front of us, and I just want to double check with the clerk.

Madam Clerk, did you read already both items three and four into the record?

I'm seeing a nod.

That is correct.

Both items are read into the.

Thank you, Amelia.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

I appreciate that.

OK, so just as a reminder, we have two bills in front of us.

The one bill that we're talking about first is the larger bill that has all of the various components related to the Seattle Rescue Plan Act.

The second bill that we'll discuss after we discuss this bill is specific to the cash allocation.

So both go hand in glove.

Both relate to the now $128 million.

But the second bill, just so you know, is our official document that allocates the cash allocation, which is the $25 million allocation that's incorporated in the first bill.

So just want to make note and orient us to that.

Okay, Ali, the bill is in front of us.

Would you like to walk us through any information to get started?

Or would you like me to go ahead and move the First Amendment?

Sara Larkin, COB Secretary, VOLUNTEERS & TRANSFORMATIONS, CLEARING OF CLOSED DOORS And with that, I'm just going to share my screen for people following along at home.

I'm going to use the summary tables that are attached to the agenda, but if council members request it, I'm happy to scroll to the specific amendment language.

But for efficiency, I'm just gonna use the summary tables that describes each amendment that we'll be walking through today.

Great, here's a preview of what's about to pop onto the screen.

Okay, great.

Allie, as you go ahead and share your screen, I'm going to move amendment number one that modifies the intent language to offer clarity about the partnerships with the community-based organizations.

I moved adoption of amendment one as presented on the agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you so very much, Councilmember Strauss.

It's been moved and seconded to adopt Amendment Number 1. Allie, do you want to actually describe the amendment first, and then I'll, as the sponsor, offer any additional comments?

Sure, happy to.

So Amendment 1 to Council Bill 12093 is sponsored by Chair Mosqueda.

This amendment would modify the intent language included in Section 8 of the Council Bill.

So this is the intent language that guides, that is intended to guide all of the investments in the proposed legislation.

And it would clarify the language to make it more clear that the intent is to partner with community based organizations whose staff and board composition reflect the community they serve.

Ali, I appreciate that you are going through the.

The summary slide, I think, for me, it's actually more beneficial to see the effect statement in those boxes.

And I'm just wondering, perhaps it's just me, but if you don't mind having that at your disposal, as you mentioned, just in case folks want to see that that's often

I'm happy to, Chair Mosqueda.

What's in the summary table is the effect statement from the amendment.

And so it's a copy and paste from the amendments themselves.

So if that is okay with you, I'll use the table.

That's perfect.

Thank you for that.

Just used to seeing it in a certain way.

Okay, great.

Colleagues, I am the sponsor of this amendment, so I will recognize myself very briefly to summarize what is here.

I want to offer this amendment to you, brought to our council from folks within the King County Equity Now Coalition.

We convened various stakeholder tables as we discussed the legislation, both before it was crafted and then after it was introduced.

And from the stakeholder conversation that we had with Black leaders, specifically convened by King County Equity Now, they recognized that there's constantly a need to make sure that the dollars that we're allocating do directly reach folks within the BIPOC community.

I noted earlier when we were talking about the ANF changes that were made in 2019, we did something very similar when we looked at the land disposition bill and the ANF legislation in 2019. And in working in partnership then in 2019 with organizations like Puget Sound SAGE, and Africatown, we recognized that not only was it important then to make sure that there was more money for housing, but that there was more money for housing that went to organizations that were led by and staffed by folks historically rooted in communities most disproportionately affected by displacement.

And so we craft a language with community then to make sure the dollars went directly to community most affected.

We wanted to apply a similar concept here and included legislation in our draft proposal as introduced to try to really get at the heart of making sure it's not just about what we're funding, but how we're funding.

You'll remember that from our conversation two weeks ago.

When folks from the roundtable conversations had a chance to look at the language, they offered some minor changes to make sure that we could really to lift up the how we are getting information out, looking at making sure that these are folks that have been historically rooted in community is really important.

So I'm proud to offer this amendment and thank the community members for the suggested language that they brought forward.

And you will also see this reflected in the way in which we are hoping to allocate direct cash assistance as well.

I recognize that there's a lot more to work on with the administration to make sure that we get those dollars out the door in the way that this intent language is described.

and really appreciate the partnership and the message that has come as well from the executive about the importance of these dollars getting allocated in this manner.

So would encourage your support.

Are there any additional questions or comments on this amendment?

Okay, I'm hearing none.

We're off to a fast start here, folks.

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

Madam Clerk, you may be on mute.

Sorry about that.

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you, colleagues.

The motion carries and amendment number one is adopted.

Let's move on to amendment number two.

Council Member Herbold, a sponsor of this amendment, would you like to move it?

I move amendment number 2, modifying the appropriations to the office of economic development for economic recovery and the associated intent language and imposing two provisos, but deferring to Councilmember Morales as the prime author of this amendment to speak to it.

Second.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

It's been moved and seconded.

Ali, why don't we have you walk us through this, and then Councilmember Morales, I'll turn it over to you as a guest of our committee to walk us through the proposed amendment.

Thank you.

So Amendment 2 to Council Bill 12093 would provide more specificity in the allocation to the Office of Economic Development and the Office of Arts and Culture on the proposed funding to support small businesses, arts and cultural organizations.

The legislation as introduced included $22 million to the Office of Economic Development to support a variety of programs that would support small businesses, microbusinesses, nonprofits, and arts and cultural organizations.

This includes direct financial assistance, commercial affordability grants, cultural organization stabilization grants, small business technical assistance, and downtown and neighborhood recovery grants.

But the legislation did not specify exactly how those funds would be allocated.

This amendment would provide more specificity to allocate those funds with $7.5 million for investments in businesses and non-profit grants, so direct financial assistance to businesses.

Investments in commercial affordability would have $2 million for technical assistance, and then $7.5 million to provide neighborhood and downtown recovery grants.

And then the amendment also includes two provisos that would provide more specificity for that $7.5 million proposed for downtown and neighborhood recovery grants.

It would allocate $5.5 million for neighborhood recovery grants and then $2 million for downtown specific recovery grants.

And with that, I'll turn it over to the sponsors and I'm happy to answer questions.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Herbold, if there's nothing else from you, I'll turn it over to Council Member Morales.

Okay, great.

Council Member Morales, thank you for your authorship of this amendment and the details that you have suggested within the $22 million allocation.

Appreciate your work on this.

Please go ahead and help walk us through anything additional.

Sure, well, I just want to take a few minutes to explain why I'm doing this.

This afternoon in my Community Economic Development Committee meeting, we'll be hearing from stakeholders about how, as you were saying, Chair Mosqueda, how to build an equitable recovery.

So I want to share with you a little bit about we're going to hear about then to explain why I'm offering these amendments now.

After listening to small business, arts organizations, nonprofits, and other elected officials to gather input on how we should use this in a lifetime investment to build a more equitable recovery.

We heard some pretty clear things from stakeholders.

We know that COVID really brought into relief the inequities in our economy.

What we learned is two things.

First, there's not enough economic opportunity for folks.

So even before COVID, 46% of the workforce in Greater Seattle was either out of work or in low-wage jobs.

Pre-COVID, the number of young firms grew by only 8% in Greater Seattle, compared to 25% in Denver, 47% in Austin.

So there was already a challenge in our community and the way our economy works.

Second thing is that there's an inequitable access to opportunity, which is something we've been talking about for a long time now.

Seattle ranks in the bottom third of large metro areas for Black and Hispanic representation in jobs and managerial roles, for example.

So as we begin to address this, not just in terms of the need to invest with racial equity as the center of our thinking, we can also be meeting other goals.

For example, we're talking about becoming a 15-minute city.

right?

So we need to create good jobs, develop skills that are relevant to good jobs, support firms with technical assistance.

We've been hearing a lot from small business about how they need kind of business accelerator support and increasing access to wealth building strategies.

We need to make those kinds of investments and we need to do it throughout the city.

A focus on neighborhood oriented businesses and amenities These neighborhoods can also support businesses owned by people of color and help build community assets and wealth.

So this amendment takes into consideration downtown, but also the rest of Seattle's important business neighborhoods.

And I want to say I appreciate that downtown recovery is important, but the truth is that the DSA has a large budget, it is a large BIA, and other areas of our communities They may not have a BIA or really just don't have the ability to assess business owners and property owners to generate revenue for the kinds of things they want to see.

In addition, the downtown core businesses will benefit from and can apply for other strategies proposed by OED.

We've got $3 million for arts and cultural space.

We've got 2 million for technical assistance, 7.5 million for direct capital assistance.

So there are, you know, this is a whole package and there are other ways businesses that are downtown can apply and participate as well.

The last thing I'll say is that this amendment is a really thoughtful collaboration between several of our offices and represents collective outreach and community engagement.

So I do want to thank my council colleagues and Christina Kotsubas, Cody Ryder, Vy Nguyen, Darzell, Touch in my office, and Alexis Turla, and I do want to thank Yolanda and Allie for their support in helping craft what I think is a more equitable way to distribute these funds.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Herbold, did you have anything else you wanted to add?

I want to first off thank Council Member Morales for her leadership in authoring the amendment and for working collaboratively with Christina in my office to shape this important pot of funding for Seattle's economic recovery.

I've been advocating for relief and investment directed at the arts and culture sector in particular.

In resolution 31999, we stated the council's priorities for ARPA relief funds, including artists in the arts and culture sector among priority groups to receive relief and support.

One of the reasons for my focus on this sector is, as Council Member Morales explained, they've been uniquely and deeply hard hit.

King County Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation sector had the highest percentage of unemployment loss of any employment sector, 55% according to Washington State's unemployment security data from December 2019 to December 2020. 2020, a regional crosscut survey of arts organizations found that 72% of arts organizations say they don't have enough cash on hand to cover operating expenses for the next 12 months.

And a quarter say their cash balance would only get them through two to three months.

The Census Bureau's Small Business Pulse Survey reports that arts, entertainment, and recreation businesses are the most likely of any sector to take longer than six months to recover from the pandemic.

Previous rounds of relief from multiple levels of government have not benefited most small and BIPOC-led arts and cultural organizations.

They have been structurally excluded from previous city relief, such as the Small Business Stabilization Fund, because of their lack of a brick-and-mortar location.

Seattle Arts Commissioners have joined us multiple times to express concerns that King County's investment of ARPA funds focuses on event venues and street festivals and will mostly benefit larger and white-led arts organizations.

Federal relief has focused on shuttered venues.

Only 6% of cultural spaces in Seattle are controlled by communities of color.

And out of 60 BIPOC organizations funded by arts, fewer than five are eligible for this federal relief.

Another reason that I focused on this sector is its potential in driving our region's economic recovery, if we help them recover.

In an August 2020 report of the Brookings Institute, they found that the creative economy is one of the sectors most at risk from the COVID-19 crisis, and that this damage will have reverberating effects.

Arts, culture, and creativity are one of the three key factors that drive regional economies.

and the city's 2019 Creative Economy Study found that the creative sector drives a full 18% of Seattle's GDP, which is four times the national average.

So this amendment will ensure that $3 million goes to the Office of Arts and Culture to administer direct financial assistance and stabilization grants to arts and cultural organizations and businesses needing immediate funding to reopen, bring back their staff, and continue their critical contributions to the economic, cultural, and social vibrancy in Seattle.

In addition, it will establish the policy intent that arts and cultural businesses and organizations will be eligible for longer-term subsidized financing through a small business recovery fund proposed by OED.

The intent here is to ensure that they are not structurally excluded from applying as a result of implementation-level decisions.

I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to this amendment.

And again, thank Councilmember Morales for her leadership here.

Thank you both.

I appreciate that.

And I see a hand from Councilmember Lewis.

And if anybody else would like to speak, please do.

Put your hand up in the queue or I'll be looking for your hand physically.

Councilmember Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and I do want to thank the sponsors of this amendment in highlighting an issue that I care really deeply about as the representative of a district that includes tons of artistic institutions and performance venues that have experienced the really hard brunt of the economic fallout from COVID-19.

I do want to say that in the current form of this amendment, I can't support it and I do have some issues with it.

I do think that it's really important that we make sure that some of the programmatic HAB-Danny Teodoru, CoB.: : Things that have been planned through the downtown revitalization work group that that I sit on and that Councilmember Juarez that's on have really been counting on and relying on a HAB-Danny Teodoru, CoB.: : Portion of the ARPA allocation that was identified in the original draft and it could have some potential implications, unfortunately for some of that programming that is planned for the summer.

We do know that while all of our business districts around the city have really suffered and been hit by COVID-19, that downtown in particular, which is uniquely vulnerable as a hub of congregate work in a way that no other neighborhood in the city is, has really fundamentally been deactivated for essentially a year and a half.

and that jump-starting that congregate workspace hub of the region and coming back from an era when, as recently as a couple months ago, all of us suspected that congregate work itself might be fundamentally revised as we come out of this era, we know that it's not going to be easy to really make sure that downtown comes back and is humming in a way that we saw pre-pandemic as the premier commercial and cultural hub of the region.

So I do think it's important to figure out a way that we can accommodate these arts investments Without also potentially hindering some of the things that are being discussed in the revitalization work group.

There's 500 businesses that are participating in the welcome back week project that is going to start kicking off in July.

Some of this has a potential element where I want to see more of the overlap because a big part of that revitalization effort is through hiring artists and performers.

I think the plan right now is to hire over 200 broadly characterized creatives to participate in the programming associated with Welcome Back Week and also the beautification of the interior of the city.

There's concerns that I have around the workforce development bucket that I think, in terms of how the executive has been planning this, is going to fall under this, what was in the initial draft $3 million allocation for downtown, that includes some really critical investments in the hospitality sector.

in terms of retraining, job placement, case management, to place unemployed hospitality workers back into the hospitality economy as the downtown core recovers and worry that this imperils some of those investments.

So, you know, that's all to say that I just want some time to figure out how to accommodate the very real need that also benefits my district, which is why this is a difficult vote, given the arts hub that's in District 7, making sure that there's not one investment to the expense of the other, especially with a lot of these critical programmatic things in the pipeline that a lot of stakeholders have been planning towards and depending or in reliance of this ARPA money.

One thing that I would like to potentially see is if there's ways we could make the proviso on the ceiling of the downtown investment a little bit more flexible.

I'd like to see if potentially a portion of the funds being put aside for arts investment.

Could maybe be crafted in a way to cleave some of it out to support some of these programming efforts in in downtown so it could just be another way of delivering the same investment, rather than putting it under the.

original downtown umbrella, or figuring out a way to move some other investments around in the overall ARPA package to restore some of the money that would be taken away from some of this downtown programming.

So my personal preference would be to table the amendment until Monday to see if something could be worked out to accommodate some of those interests and also just see how some of these investments might align.

Uh, you know, in the alternative, I would, uh, Uh, I will be voting against the amendment today with the intent to maybe bring, um, some additional amendments on Monday to, uh, To act in that same spirit.

Um, but, you know, I do appreciate the underlying, um, urge to get more investment in our arts community.

I just don't want to be in a position of, um, in some cases here robbing Peter to pay Paul, given that there might be some unintended consequence of taking away a resource here and then putting it into a similar project somewhere else.

But I do appreciate the overall intent.

Thank you very much Council Member Lewis.

I'm seeing any additional hands right now.

I'll just offer some comments as well.

I want to thank the author Councilmember Morales for the thought that went into this with the other offices.

I believe you mentioned Councilmember Herbold's office and I know you referenced Councilmember Council President Gonzalez's team as well.

So thanks for your work on this amendment.

I think that there was a lot of desire to see a little bit more delineation within that lump allotment.

And this is feeling like it's really on the right track.

I thank you for your work specifically on identifying additional support for the arts and cultural community, the creative industry, and appreciate the conversations I've had with members of the Arts Commission.

And I know that this is something that they wanted to see not only reflected in the intent in Section 8, but also in how we allocate those dollars.

So I'm very supportive of that.

I also want to draw your attention to the last line in the effects box that Allie has on the screen here, which really notes that the neighborhoods that we're talking about are equity districts.

That's the term that we're using to really drive home that this is an opportunity for us to create a more equitable recovery.

And that is really imperative for us to make sure that there's economic hubs and activity I am supportive of this amendment that you have in front of us.

I also hear there might be additional conversation about flexibility.

I would look forward to hearing what you have to offer in that flexibility.

where there is overlap in terms of the existing investments in the amendment as drafted, and how that overlap correlates with the geographic region of downtown.

I think both are important.

And I would also note that the letters that we've received from folks, especially within the downtown business core, emphasize one thing specifically, and that was addressing homelessness.

And within the ARPA proposal that you have in front of us, the vast majority of dollars is going into addressing homelessness and housing.

I think it is important for us to look at the specific areas that we are looking at as their number one priority.

I know it is a both and approach we are trying to accomplish here as the Council President spoke to.

It is important that we not just look at one specific area for our investments but recognize the corresponding needs here.

I think there will be more conversation to come.

to make sure that we are doing the right thing.

We want to see what we have done together with other Council offices, Councilmember Morales to make sure that funding is going into the equity districts, cultural hubs, cultural and artistic industry and also want to show that we would love to see where there is more of those concentric circles of how some of those investments overlay with our desire to make sure that our Okay.

I am not seeing any additional hands.

Councilmember Herbold, please go ahead.

Sorry about that.

I just wanted to mention that even though we're talking about on paper here $3 million for the arts and cultural sectors, that is an increase.

of only $1 million from what the office of economic development is already intending to spend on this sector.

So this should not be looked at as a $3 million cut from the downtown neighborhood revitalization allocation.

And I'm wondering if Ali, if you could clarify if there was a previous commitment to downtown.

And just wondering how that might play into our discussions here.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

So as I had said at the opening, the bill as introduced didn't provide any specificity on how the funds were allocated.

Following introduction of the bill, the Office of Economic Development and the Mayor's Office did share a draft proposal of how the Office of Economic Development was considering allocating the funds for these categories of spending.

And that did include $10 million for neighborhood and downtown recovery grants.

And as you noted, $2 million for investments in arts and cultural organizations.

And so what I will say is it's unfortunate if commitments were made to stakeholders about specific funding allocations in advance of the mayor's and council's deliberations on how to allocate these funds.

I'll just note that in all cases across all investments areas, the amount that is in the package is not what was requested by the individual council members or the mayor.

I think that is probably true across the board for all of the investments.

So it is a balance.

One thing I could suggest to Council Member Lewis and the committee is One way you could do this without changing the allocation of how the dollars are proposed in the various categories, because some of the other categories will also as Councilmember Lewis noted benefit downtown arts and cultural organizations, businesses and that type of thing would be rather than having to provide those.

on the seven and a half million that specifies exactly how much for downtown and how much for neighborhoods.

It could be one proviso that restricts the seven and a half million for downtown and neighborhood recovery grants with the same language prioritizing equity districts, but isn't predetermining exactly how that seven and a half million is allocated between downtown and downtown and neighborhoods.

I know the Office of Economic Development is proposing both in the downtown and neighborhood space, some potential just direct allocations to neighborhood districts, BIAs, cultural districts, and that sort of thing, prioritizing equity districts.

And then also there were some RFPs in there.

So what that may mean is reducing the size of the competitive grants and still being able to do those direct allocations and supporting some of the investments Councilmember Lewis was discussing that may be part of the downtown I'm not sure what the committee name is, but the downtown group that's been meeting to discuss these investments.

So that would be one solution I would offer the committee that you could consider today that we could do verbally.

Otherwise, I'm happy to work with you, Council Member Lewis, and the amendment sponsors and other council members on an alternative approach for Monday.

Council Member Morales, I saw your hand.

Yeah, thank you, Ali.

I do want to say, you know, I think the, as I said, the amendment we've crafted was intended to continue to follow the strategies that were recommended by OED.

So, you know, we've kept the categories.

I do think it's important to shift the allocation to reflect the conversations we've been having with business community, with our I'm happy to work with councilmember Lewis and other business, neighborhood business organizations.

And, you know, my preference would be for us to go ahead and pass this amendment today.

But I will say that I'm totally happy to work with councilmember Lewis over the next few days before the vote on Monday to see, you know, what we can craft to accommodate his interest as well.

It certainly did.

Okay.

And Council Member Lewis, I see your hand still up.

Is that a carryover?

I think I agree on the pacing with councilmember Morales.

I think I would just as soon have us vote on the merits of this amendment today.

To Ali's point about trying to amend it on the fly, I would rather we be more intentional than that.

So I will certainly take up the opportunity to work on a way where seeing how we can harmonize a lot of these things programmatically and, you know, for today, I'm going to still be voting it against this amendment, since my preference would be to.

to do the whole process once with something we work out by Monday.

But I do think it's best to not just put in a last-minute walk-on amendment, not knowing what all the implications are.

I just wanted to throw that out there.

But we will definitely be talking this week for sure.

I appreciate that, Councilmember Lewis.

And I concur.

I also want to emphasize my interest in following up on the flexibility and still seeing where there's those concentric circles and where there's overlap.

So I'm not seeing any additional hands.

Appreciate the conversation with that.

In closing?

Okay.

Not seeing any.

Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll on the adoption of amendment number two?

Council President Gonzalez.

Aye.

Councilmember Lewis?

No.

Councilmember Strauss?

Abstain.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Three in favor, one abstain, one oppose.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries and amendment number two is adopted.

And thank you all for your work on that and for the work that it sounds like has yet to come over the rest of the week.

Amendment number three, Council Member Herbold, you are the sponsor of this amendment with me as well.

Would you like to go ahead and move this amendment, Council Member Herbold?

Oh, you're on mute, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I move amendment number three, which modifies the intent language regarding future spending on keep moving streets.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Allie, would you like to describe this before we do our own descriptions?

And I should probably mention, I'm sorry, because I just don't know procedure-wise whether or not we should spend time describing this one or whether or not we should get the substitute in front of us, which is, from my perspective, a friendly substitute, and then just jump to discussing that.

Madam Chair, whatever your preference.

Well, that is acceptable to me.

It sounds like that's a friendly amendment being offered by Council Member Strauss.

I see you off mute, Council Member Strauss.

The amendment number three has been moved and seconded.

It is in front of us.

Would you like to motion to amend amendment number three?

Yes, thank you, Chair, and thank you, Council Member Herbold.

I move to substitute version two of amendment three to Council Bill 12093 for amendment 3. Is there a second?

on your screen.

Yeah.

Okay.

We are.

Thank you.

Okay, great.

So for those following along at home, um, the, uh, this amendment would, uh, express council's intent as Council Member Herbold described to it for future appropriations, um, invest in making the state moving streets permanent.

The, um, the proposed legislation includes funding to make the 26 miles of stay healthy streets permanent.

So this would be following up on the next phase.

What the substitute version does that is different than the original version is it just adds some specificity about some specific considerations that the Department of Transportation would be requested to consider around Green Lake Way North.

And it also adds some specificity around the community outreach to just sort of reorganize those sentences and make it clear that prior to making final decisions about if the street should be made permanent, that some outreach is done.

And then if the answer is yes, how and what permanent changes would be implemented.

So the intent is still generally the same, it's just the substitute version by Councilmember Strauss add some specificity.

And then I would also just note that this version assumes Councilmember Strauss is added as a co-sponsor as well.

Okay, so I'm going to ask Councilmember Herbold, since you waived your right to speak to the underlying amendment first, if you'd like to speak first, and then Councilmember Strauss as the author of the substitute, if you'd like to speak.

Thank you so much.

So I'm going to speak specifically to the interest for the Alki neighborhood.

Alki Point has been mobilized for quite some time now about the current keep moving street and their interest in becoming a stay healthy street.

We've received over 75 emails in support of this particular amendment as a way of ensuring that there's funding that will be used in future allocations to address this need.

Regular meetings with community members from Alki point since June of last year that I've hosted in order to lift up this interest, SDOT's own data that Alki Point is the most used keep it moving street or stay healthy street in the city.

Constituents conducted their own survey as well and had over 1,000 signatures on a petition to make the change permanent.

Respondents, only 28.5% lived within a half mile of the Alki Point keep moving street.

What that indicates is that there is broad interest outside of the Alki neighborhoods in maintaining the Alki Point keep moving street and making it a permanent stay healthy street because everybody is using this area in a way that is really consistent with our interest in promoting open spaces that many people can use regardless of The Seattle transportation department director, Sam Zimbabwe, has committed to the community keep it moving street will remain in its current state while SDOT completes their community engagement.

And the community is also seeking the parks department's engagement and looking forward to hearing from Superintendent Aguirre about how this designation is enhancing the use of open space that benefits the park system.

And so this amendment would support funding in future appropriations to conduct community outreach and provide potential capital resources needed to make what is currently a moving street a permanent stay healthy street.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

And Council Member Strauss as the author of the substitute in front of us.

Would you have any additional comments?

Thank you, Chair.

I just am pointing out the conflict at West Green Lake Way North.

It's a it's a conflict that I brought up at Council briefing.

Every briefing for the last month, maybe longer.

This street closure there is overall beneficial to our community, in particular because of the Parks Department's decision and a decision that I support wholeheartedly to move bikes off of the inner loop of the trail.

Now, that means that bicycles need to have another place to move around Green Lake on the outer loop.

Currently, there has been a repaving project around the majority of Green Lake that has provided a two-way protected bike lane on the inside loop, outer loop around Green Lake on the inside of the street, outer loop.

Sorry, Green Lake is always a mouthful.

I bring this up because in my walks with the Parks Department and SDOT, it is clear that there is enough right-of-way within West Green Lake Way North from the Putt-Putt Gulf to the 63rd Street underpass for two-way protected bike lane and two-way car traffic.

This is a different street than many in our area because Woodland Park and Green Lake both create both beneficial park space for everyone.

It also creates a difficulty in getting from the south end of the lake to the north end of the lake for some.

So I bring this forward because also I have noticed that at first I wanted to bring this amendment forward to say to complete a connected bike facility around the lake.

And I noticed that at the Linden Avenue, Winona Avenue crossing of Aurora Avenue, that there is no bike lane there.

And so more than anything else, I want to see us ensure that we have a safe, facility for people of all ages and abilities to ride their bike around Green Lake in a low stress environment.

And I think that this language really specifies what I've been advocating for, that we need to have that connected facility all the way around the lake, and that we need to reinstate the ability for people to pass through West Green Lake Way North while driving their cars.

So I appreciate, Chair, and I appreciate Council Member Herbold's support of this change and this nuanced approach.

I also want to thank Allie Panucci and Noah Ong for quickly drafting this up over the last 24 hours.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Strauss and Councilmember Herbold.

I appreciate that you, Councilmember Herbold, were able to get the amendment in on time and that we were able to accommodate the walk-on today to make these additional clarifications.

I do also support the underlying substitute for amendment number three, and I appreciate both of you for bringing forward this important work so that we can continue to tip the scales towards making sure that there's a solution around these areas.

Okay, I'm seeing no additional comments.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the adoption of substitute amendment three?

Is that correct, Allie?

Chair Mosqueda, I think you still need to vote on the motion to substitute, and then the version two is before you, and then you can vote on the substitute version.

All right, let me give that another try.

Okay.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the adoption of version two of, I'm sorry.

Chair Mosqueda, I think you're calling for the vote on the motion to substitute version two for version one of amendment three.

Okay.

So moved.

That's right.

Thank you, Council President.

It's been moved.

I'll second that.

Madam Clerk, can you please call that roll?

Council President Gonzalez.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Aye.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Vice Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

It's five in favor, not opposed.

Okay, so version two has been moved and adopted.

Do I need to do anything else here, Madam Clerk?

I have a motion to adopt version two of amendment three.

I will go ahead.

Madam clerk, please call the roll on the adoption of amendment three as amended.

Thank you very much.

Amendment three as amended is adopted.

All right, let's do this.

Moving on to amendment number four.

Council Member Herbold, this is an amendment that you brought forward.

Would you like to move it?

Thank you so much.

I move amendment four to council bill 120093, which modifies the intent language regarding RV storage.

Wonderful.

I will second that.

And Ali, would you like to describe the amendment in more detail?

to.

So Amendment 4 to Council Bill 120093 would add intent language that would guide the $500,000 that's in the bill as introduced, but there was no specific language about the expectations around what the intent of those dollars is for.

So this would specify that the dollars are to create an RV safe lot as well as creating a storage area for RVs for households experiencing homelessness who accept offers of shelter or housing.

The idea here is that in order for a person who has a home or they consider a home living in their RV, there may be a greater willingness to accept offers of shelter or housing if they have some assurance that the asset that they have can be securely stored for a period of time until they're certain that their new housing or shelter option is stable and something that will be sustained.

And I'll turn it back to the sponsor to add more there.

Thank you so much and I'll just note for the record that amendment number four was published on the agenda last week.

Appreciate you getting that in on time and that we have in front of us today is version two with those slight modifications that Ali just described.

Thank you Councilmember Herbold for your work on this.

I'll turn it back over to you to describe.

Thank you.

Ali did a great job of describing the intent.

I appreciate the opportunity to bring this amendment.

At the last Finance and Housing Committee meeting, I had suggested that RV storage might be an appropriate use of funds in the next ARPA tranche.

But in working with Council Central staff, it was suggested that instead of waiting for the next tranche, it would be possible to amend the intent language here to allow for spending a portion of these funds on RV storage as part of the proposed RV safe lot pilot.

Again, RV storage is a part of the spectrum of response or could be a part of the spectrum of responses to helping people who are living in RVs who may worry that if they move out of their RV into housing that their RV may be stolen, impounded, or fall into greater disrepair if they accept that referral.

Not providing RV storage could be a deterrent to accepting shelter for folks who, in many cases, have been unstably housed for a long period of time and who understandably may fear losing their biggest asset.

which has, in their experience, doubled as a secure home.

So the amendment does just this.

It allows additional flexibility in the way that the funds can be spent and provides another option for folks who are surviving in RVs who might be interested in a shelter referral if they did not lose their RV as a result.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

I'm not seeing additional hands.

I will just note my support for this amendment as well.

including access to safe lots was really important for me in this ARPA legislation that we have in front of us, especially with the imposition of the 72 hour rule.

And as it relates to RVs, we want there to be a safe place for folks to go with access to hygiene and counseling services.

And as you note, wanting to make sure that they also don't see any impediments to going to not just a safe lot, but even into more secure housing by to make sure that folks are treated holistically and that we address any concerns they may have.

I support it.

Thanks for your work on bringing it forward.

Okay.

No other questions or comments that I am seeing.

Madam clerk, will you please call the roll on the adoption of amendment 4 version 2?

Yes.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries and version two of amendment four is adopted.

We are on to amendment number five.

Council Member Strauss, as a sponsor, would you like to move this amendment?

Thank you, Chair.

I move Amendment 5 to, and I just dropped my script off, Council Bill 120093. That's from memory.

Did I get the right Council Bill?

You did good.

Thank you.

And I will second it.

It's been moved and seconded to adopt Amendment Number 5. Allie, would you like to describe it in technical terms?

And we'll turn back over to Council Member Strauss.

Happy to.

So Amendment 5, would modify some intent language that was in the bill as introduced.

So as introduced, the bill appropriates about over $28 million for investments in housing to acquire or develop new affordable housing.

And it included an intent statement that the mayor and the council intends to invest at least $40 million in total of federal funds or other sources to support acquisition of affordable housing.

This amendment sponsored by Council Member Strauss would increase that commitment from 40 million to $60 million total.

I'll turn it over to the sponsor.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

I'll keep my comments brief to try and keep us moving as fast as possible.

Just to say that I wanted to see us spend more money creating permanent housing than we have in this bill.

In short, I did not want to take from other funding sources because, Chair, you, Council President, and Dr. Ben Noble did such an excellent job bringing together this agreed upon package that the negotiations began in March.

We are now here at the end of June.

I want to set the goalposts and set the stake in the ground for the second tranche of funding to increase it to $60 million total.

Thank you, chair.

Thank you so much.

So just for clarity's sake, in voting for this amendment, we are in essence making a commitment for the next round of ARPA funding to at least $31.5 million for permanent housing capital costs.

Is that correct?

Councilmember, I'm just pulling up the exact language of the intent statement, but it talks about for future appropriation bills.

to provide funding to the Office of Housing, it doesn't necessarily bind you to using the CLFR funds for that purpose.

I think as council members are considering the 2022 proposed budget, there'll be a number of fund sources where you want to consider Investments in certain areas and there may be reasons why one fund source is better prioritized for like direct aid to small businesses because of the flexibility on use of those funds versus housing.

But I think through the fall budget process, what this would be saying is that at least $60 million of additional funding beyond sort of base funding would be appropriated but you would have some flexibility to consider exactly how to allocate those funds in addition to other federal funds targeted aid that may be available versus use of this direct aid.

Thank you.

And Council Central Staff's Tracy Raskliff is with us.

Tracy, did you have anything to add to that?

No, just to clarify that it would be an additional $31.5 million that you might find in the fall budget process.

Not $60 million additional.

Okay.

Great.

I'm seeing nods.

Thank you.

I'm not seeing any additional questions or comments.

Okay, I think we're ready to vote.

Oh, Council Member Herbold, did you have anything else?

Oh, just getting ready to vote.

Do it.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll on the adoption of amendment number five?

Council President Gonzalez.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Aye.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Vice Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries, and amendment number five is adopted.

Folks, we have two more amendments on this bill, and we have about 15 minutes left, so let's see what we can do.

Council Member Morales, you are the author of this next amendment, amendment number six, but I am the sponsor for the purposes of our process here in the Finance and Housing Committee, so I will go ahead and move amendment number six.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded that we adopt amendment number six as presented on the agenda.

Allie, could you please walk us through the amendment?

Yes, I'm happy to.

If I could just clarify something on the previous amendment, all the information was correct.

I just want to note that the $28.5 million that's in the introduced version is both the direct aid, the CLFR funds, and 12.2 million of home fund so it's both targeted aid and direct aid already a mix and so that's sort of what I was trying to get at for the total investment.

We'll be working with you to determine which exact exact fund source is the right one to support housing with a with a goal of at least 60 million dollars.

Understood thank you so much for that.

Thank you so and then moving on to council Sarah Silver, PB – she-her, COB): A council member to amendment number six authored by Council Member Morales sponsored by Congress member mosquito.

Sarah Silver, PB – she-her, COB): This amendment would add $500,000 to the Office of Economic Development for a partnership with the poor of Seattle to provide youth employment and paid internships.

The bill as introduced included $500,000 for this purpose.

So this would increase the funding to a million dollars and that would be achieved by cutting $500,000 proposed for an investment in youth employment and for partnerships with community-based organizations that provide pre-employment programming.

So the funds going to the port would also support similar types of investments.

It would all just be part of the the ports program.

Originally, the discussions around both of these investment areas, the original asks were much larger.

So in the end, both were scaled down significantly in order for us to get to a package that doesn't spend more dollars than we had available.

However, in looking at it more carefully, I think the author was considering what will be most impactful.

So looking at combining those resources and making one investment in programs that support youth employment.

Excellent, thank you.

Council Member Morales, as author of this amendment, would you like to speak to it?

Sure, I'll just say quickly that as we heard from Commissioner Bowman this morning, my office has been working with Port Commissioners Bowman and Calkins to expand the current Opportunity Youth Initiative.

As I mentioned before, an important strategy for an equitable recovery is to increase access to opportunity.

That means increasing skills that lead particularly young people to union jobs with living wages and with career paths.

So last summer, this program was very successful with the ports.

This investment would allow us to expand the program to offer internships for the school year instead of just for the summer.

And Chair Mosqueda, I think we cleared this with you ahead of time, but we do have a short video that was made with the young people from last year that I would like to show if that is possible.

It's fairly brief.

How brief is fairly brief?

Um, we can just show part of it.

I just, I really think it would be valuable to hear directly from the young people themselves.

Um, so Darzell from my office is on, she's going to get us started and, um, we can just watch part of it.

I like that I'm, I'm building something positive for the community.

I'm giving back to the community for those people that need the help right now.

Another thing I like about this program is I'm building up skills that are going to help me for the future career I'm trying to approach, and that's general carpentry.

So this is our construction build site for what we're calling our Sandpoint Cottages Summer Build Camp in partnership with the Port of Seattle, the Urban League of Seattle, and the Low Income Housing Institute.

So what we're doing today is we have students that are invited to participate in a summer program, learning the construction trades from our instructors, learning about affordable housing and construction, and some really cool modular techniques that are quite cutting edge.

This program gives skills from all sorts.

There's not just going to be one skill you'll learn.

You'll learn skills from building to remodel, knowledge of leadership.

I've learned a lot about reading blueprints, framing, a lot of different types like hangers, joist hangers, a hurricane tie and stuff like that.

A lot of different nails and screws I've learned about and how to use tools safely.

It's been a fun experience.

I can do whatever I want.

I can do anything now because I got the mindset and everything, the experience.

the people I can ask for help.

So yeah, amazing.

From the beginning, we saw that there was a huge need to have employment for youth.

The Opportunity Initiative accomplishes two of the port's goals.

One is to help those families and youth adversely affected by COVID-19, and then also to build the pipeline for youth that might be interested in port-related careers.

program is a very excitin

I think what we'll do is we will go ahead and move the presentation along, but we'll come back to the video at the end of the meeting if that's okay, because I think we should be very interested in seeing the rest of it.

We can also send out the link.

The last thing I'll say is that as we talk about building more housing, scaling up our production of housing, one thing we've learned is that we don't have enough workers in the construction trades.

I've tried to call an electrician.

I was on a waiting list for six weeks.

So this is also about increasing the number of people in our community who can actually help us meet our other goals.

And I'm just really excited about the opportunity to provide our young people with some employment opportunity and some skill building through the way.

So thank you.

I'm excited about it too.

Thank you for bringing it forward.

And sorry to cut the surprise short.

I know that our office had had a heads up and we were surprising others here.

So it's a really great surprise and we will come back to it at the end of the meeting to show it on Seattle channel.

And then we'll also share in pushing it out on social media with you.

I'm not seeing any additional comments or questions here.

No.

Okay, Council Member Morales, it sounds like this is an amendment that folks are excited about as well.

Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll on adoption of amendment number six?

Council President Gonzalez.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Aye.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Vice Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Councilman Morales, congratulations.

The motion carries and amendment number six is adopted.

Okay, folks, we're on our last amendment for this bill.

I will go ahead and move this amendment.

This is amendment number seven.

Amendment number seven, I move adoption of amendment number seven as presented on the agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Wonderful, it's been moved and seconded.

Ali, do you mind describing this amendment for us?

So amendment seven would cut $200,000 that was proposed for the Department of Parks and Recreation and keep that $200,000 in the same department, but move it to a different budget summary level and specify that the funds are to be used to support the Rec in the Streets program, which provides recreational activities and mobile playgrounds.

playgrounds at parks and recreation or parks and neighborhoods across the city.

This will ensure that none of the federal funds are used to contract with the Seattle Police Department or outside organizations.

for armed security services to meet the park security needs.

And so the original proposal, $200,000 of the funds for parks would have supported security services for beach closures at Alki and Golden Gardens.

This will ensure that no federal funds are used for that purpose.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

I'll speak very briefly to this amendment.

Colleagues, I know that as we were crafting this bill, one of the things that we really wanted to make sure is that the funding went directly to those communities most impacted by COVID.

And that also includes making sure that there's great arts and cultural activities, as we described earlier, and that there's the opportunity to activate our parks in partnership with Seattle Parks and Recreation.

Originally, when we inquired about the line item related to security, we were sure that the money was not going to SPD.

Later clarification, it turned out that there was a potential interest there.

We really want to make sure that we're putting these dollars directly into parks programs.

And that the funding doesn't go to SPD as Allie noted, which was an important aspect for me and I believe other members as well.

So much of what you see in here is to make sure that we are investing in upstream investments throughout the ARPA proposal.

This is part of our ongoing commitment to create greater stability and health amongst our community.

and I think the reallocation of funding here, and I believe, which is in alignment with what the executive has agreed to as well, is seen as a doable item here related to parks activation, and also make sure that we are not putting funding for additional armed security, which is important.

Any additional comments or questions?

Okay, I'm seeing none.

Thank you.

Oh, Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you so much.

So I have been inquiring with council central staff to understand the impact of this amendment.

And my understanding that the parks department already has funding for this work, which has already been begun and will be able to continue and services provided to the parks department will not be impacted by this change and will be funded using existing funds.

looking to get confirmation of that from that understanding from from Allie, please, or anybody on council, sorry.

No problem.

Council Member Herbold, yes, you are correct that the Parks Department has already provided security services for beach closures, I think starting in April, and those services will continue.

So this change will not result in eliminating security or sort of beach closure support for parks at Alki and Golden Gardens.

I will just note that the Parks Department's budget did there were significant cuts in the 2021 adopted budget.

And so they were looking at different ways to balance their services and continue to provide all of these things.

So this will ensure that no federal funding is used for any security services, but those services will continue and that the federal dollars are really used to support investments in community programming like the Rec in the Streets program that was partially funded in the adopted budget.

Thank you so much.

Okay, great.

I think the overall concern I had when I heard about this is we really don't need armed officers helping to inform youth that it's time to put out their fire.

and we'll look forward to working with you, Council Member Herbold, as Chair of Public Safety on that ongoing issue.

Appreciate that there's funding going into important programs like PARCC.

excuse me, wreck in the streets.

Any additional comments?

Yes, please.

I just want to say I think some of folks in the South Precinct would agree that it would be great if the use of their resources for this function was minimized, but these are This is SPD responding to Parks Department requests for assistance.

So in order to facilitate what I think is a laudable goal, which is a reduced presence of police officers to facilitate parks closures, we need to get the support of parks in using more of their own staff to do this work when it's safe.

Great, good point.

More to come.

Okay, no additional comments on this.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on adoption of amendment number seven?

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Excellent, thank you.

The motion carries and amendment number seven is adopted.

Colleagues, that is the end of our amendments unless there's any walk-on amendments.

I'm not hearing any.

Let's see here.

I do want to just take the temperature real quick.

It is one o'clock exactly on my clock over here.

Council President Gonzalez, you've already been generous with your time.

I know that we were double booked you accidentally.

We do have one more bill in front of us with two small technical amendments.

Do folks have an extra five to ten minutes or would you like to have the meeting tomorrow at 2 p.m.?

I think you all should feel free to move ahead.

I do, unfortunately, have to go.

I'm already about 20 to 25 minutes behind for my next engagement.

I apologize.

I'm happy to stick around for a final vote on this if the vote's going to happen now.

But if there's going to be remarks before considering the bill, then I may not be able to vote on the underlying bill.

Appreciate it.

Given all of the work that you have done on Council 120093 which was in front of us first.

I would like to go ahead and consider that bill right now before we may lose you if that's okay.

Colleagues, are there any additional comments on the bill as amended?

Council President, just want to thank you for all of your work on that.

Colleagues, we do have a chance to have more comments on the underlying bill before we wrap up today, but just wanted to see if there's any additional comments that folks may have about the underlying bill.

Okay, I'm going to save my comments for the end of this meeting.

And just thank you all for your amendments and great work on this.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the adoption of Council Bill 120093 as amended?

The president of all of us.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Strauss yes.

Vice chair for bold.

Yes.

I've been favored not opposed.

Wonderful.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that Council Bill 12093 as amended be adopted and sent to the June 21st Seattle City Council meeting for final consideration.

Thank you very much all and if I can keep you for another 10 minutes for those who can make it I will also then free up your afternoon tomorrow.

Thank you so much Council President Gonzalez.

I appreciate you sticking in there through one o'clock and Colleagues, if you can give me a few more minutes of your time, we'll consider this last bill so that you can free up your afternoon tomorrow.

Okay, I'm seeing some nods, so let's do that.

Allie, we have in front of us a council bill 120094. I understand we have two amendments.

Would you like me to go ahead and move into those or do you have any opening comments on that one?

Okay, I'm seeing a thumb up.

To put this bill in front of us, I move the committee recommends passage of council bill 120094. Is there a second?

Thank you, Vice Chair Herbold.

Thank you very much, Council Member Stroud.

It's been moved and seconded that the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 12094. There are two amendments.

The first amendment, it modifies the intent language to include the prioritizing language with partner community organizations, as I described before.

So I move the adoption of amendment number one as presented on the agenda.

Thank you, Vice Chair Herbold.

It's been moved and seconded.

Ali, is there any additional context you'd like to offer for this?

No term is getting the only thing I would add is, as you noted, this is just ensuring that the same guidance for the overall investments are provided in both bills.

So this adds clarity and provides the same language that was included in the first bill into this intent section as well.

Wonderful, thank you very much.

As I described before, I think this is really important for community partners and organizations that have been working with us and would like to see their language reflected not just in public testimony, but in the language in front of the bill that we consider for final passage to make sure organizations receive funding.

are those who have been directly and most disproportionately impacted by COVID.

This is our intent to make sure that those organizations are comprised and rooted within the communities that they are intended to serve.

Seeing no additional comments or questions, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the adoption of amendment number one?

Madam Clerk, you may be on mute.

Should I call Council President Gonzalez even though she's excused now?

So Council Member Lewis.

Yes.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Vice Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

And if Council Member Morales is still with us, she can vote as an alternate.

Council Member Morales.

She may have had to step out, too.

Okay.

Okay.

Four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries and amendment number one is adopted.

Amendment number two is now in front of us.

This modifies, oh, excuse me, Council Member Herbold, you are the sponsor of this amendment.

Would you like to move it?

I would.

Thank you so much.

I move amendment two to Council Bill 120094, modifying the intent language to include workers in the creative sector.

Second.

move and seconded.

Ali, would you like to describe it in additional detail?

Sure, happy to.

So, amendment 2 to council bill 12094 would, as council member Herbold described, add intent language.

This bill provides $25 million to provide direct cash assistance to people in Seattle who have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, prioritizing investments in black with Latinx, indigenous, and other communities of color.

This adds to that priority investments to support the creative sector in recognition of some of the data that Council Member Herbold shared previously on the impacts to that industry, workers in that industry, excuse me.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you so much.

So yes, this is distinct from the conversation about the other amendment, which really focused on arts and cultural organizations.

And this is focusing on artists themselves.

Council Resolution 31999 regarding priority investments for ARPA included a focus not just on arts organizations, but on artists in particular, naming the need for financial assistance for artists.

And we've all received a communication from the Seattle Arts Commission that requests that a council, quote, ensure that artists and cultural workers be identified as a target population for distribution of the $25 million in direct funds.

This is what this amendment does with a focus on, of course, qualifying households being low income and disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 public health crisis, including BIPOC artists.

Since this fund will be administered by OIRA, it also directs OIRA to work with the CBO to do outreach to creative economy workers to ensure that they are aware of the fund and able to apply.

I had shared data earlier on the unique impact of the pandemic on arts and cultural organizations, but the picture for individual artists and creative workers is similarly troubling.

81% of local BIPOC artists reported a loss of income in a recent arts fund survey.

62% of artists have become fully unemployed according to a national survey.

37% of arts and cultural workers have been unable to access or afford food at some point during the pandemic.

48% have not visited a medical professional due to inability to pay, according to American for the Arts.

According to Seattle Music Commissioner Nate Omdahl, who provided testimony this morning, 80% of income-claiming musicians had to sell an instrument in the last year.

As I mentioned before, that the Census Bureau reports it will take longer than six months for the arts sector recover from the pandemic far longer than most other sectors.

That's at least a half of a year of continued struggling for un and underemployed arts workers, even as other sectors begin the recovery.

We heard from musicians this morning who took time to call in and share how the pandemic has affected them.

And I think it's worth quickly reviewing some of their stories.

Paola, a musician who lost work making it impossible to earn money to support her family.

Nate, who struggles with his work being misclassified, keeping him from accessing relief systems because of the unusual way musicians and artists are sometimes pay.

And Reese, who fears for the possibility of rapid displacement for artists in the diverse cultural communities who have fought hard to remain here and enrich his community.

The amendment retains the intent language for the $25 million pot that it benefit low-income households most impacted by the recession and communities disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.

The intent only is that artists and creative workers who are in those categories would be served.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold, for bringing this forward.

Are there any additional comments and questions?

I want to welcome Councilmember Morales back to the committee as well.

I am not seeing any very supportive of this amendment.

Again, thank you very much, Councilmember Hurdle, for bringing up those statistics.

I think it's really important that we continue to center this legislation on making sure that those who've been directly impacted are receiving the assistance here, especially when it comes to cash assistance, which is a big priority for me in our work to craft this legislation in front of you.

So happy to have this amendment in front of us.

I'm clear could you please call the role on the adoption of amendment number 2.

It's number Lewis.

Yes.

Councilmember stress yes.

I share her fault.

Yes, chairman skater I councilmember around us.

I think they're not opposed.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

The amendment carries and the amendment number two will be included in the underlying bill.

Are there any additional comments or questions on the underlying bill in front of us?

Council Bill 12094. Okay.

I will make a few comments because this is the package.

This is it.

This is the Seattle Rescue Plan.

This bill plus a bill that we just voted on make up $120 million that go directly into folks' hands who've been disproportionately impacted by COVID.

This bill allows for us to make deep investments into housing and homelessness, support for our smallest businesses, folks who've been disproportionately impacted as workers and also members of the creative community, creative arts community.

Really appreciate the collaborative work that went into crafting this legislation in front of us.

And I think the amendments today, which largely speak to the how the dollars get allocated versus what is getting funded speak to the way in which we provided a a collaborative and collective way to make sure that these dollars are getting out the door.

So I want to thank you, colleagues, for your participation over the last two months as we've crafted this bill.

I especially want to thank Sejal Parikh in my office, who spends daily meetings with members from the city budget's office, including Julie Dingley and central staff, excuse me, Julie Dingley and Ben Noble, also working closely with Cody Reiter from Council President Gonzalez's office, along with Ali Vannucci, who led the efforts, along with Tracy Ratzcliff and members of our central staff community, including Tracy, Jeff, Amy, Yolanda, Brian, as well as so many other folks.

I want to thank Council President Gonzalez for her leadership and co-sponsorship of this legislation.

All of you for the amendments that you've offered today that have made this legislation even stronger.

And of course, our friends from the IT Department, Clerk's Office, Council Communications, as well as every one of our staff members within my office who spent a lot of hours working on this bill.

I mentioned Sejal Parikh.

I also want to thank Lori Ranton, Freddy de Cuevas, Aaron House, and Aretha Basu for their work on this.

With that, this legislation, would go with all of the work that we just did to Monday's meeting with your vote here in a second.

Any additional comments?

Okay, I'm seeing none.

Lots of excitement around this bill.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on adoption of Council Bill 120094 as amended?

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Council Member Morales.

Yes.

Type in favor, none opposed.

That's it.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass as amended will be sent to the June 21st, 2021 Seattle City Council meeting for final consideration.

Colleagues, that helps to make sure that this bill passes out a full week earlier than we had given ourselves as a final deadline.

So that's really appreciated and that needs more assistance.

This can get to folks even faster.

That also means that tomorrow afternoon we no longer need a Finance and Housing Committee meeting, so I hope you enjoy your afternoon off, and congratulations to everybody who's been really burning the midnight oil making this package possible.

Really appreciate all of your work.

I do want to note that our next meeting is going to be on July 19th.

We noted earlier that we would bring forward the Grocery Worker Hazard Pay Ordinance, We will have one or more budget related items.

We're going to have a conversation on MFTE COVID response legislation and Councilmember Herbold, South Park property transfer to the Office of Housing.

And that will be a full agenda as well.

So thanks in advance for your time there, especially because I think it's on a Friday again, given the holiday.

I again want to thank central staff and folks who have been working on this legislation in front of us.

a huge opportunity to make some real and lasting impacts on how we create a more equitable economy in the long run by making short-term and longer-term investments.

I'm really proud of the work that we've done today.

I also want to note for our council colleagues, I'm going to be sending around an email.

This is not a council sign on letter.

This is an opportunity to have a letter from elected officials sign on in support of making sure that we're supporting the folks who are standing in solidarity with the folks in Palestine down at the port.

And I know that the port members, members of ILWU have sent a a message saying that, you know, they all want to get back to work, but also recognize the right for folks to express their First Amendment rights.

And there's a number of organizations, including MAPS and others, who have been sending around possible sign-on letters for electives, as well as broader community members.

So again, not something that is officially from City Council or from my office, but I will be circulating that around to folks so that you have an opportunity, if you're interested, to sign on to a much broader letter that includes many other council members from the county and state legislators as well.

And I want to just give you a heads up on that.

Anything else for the good of the order?

A huge note of appreciation for all of you for sticking in here.

And Council Member Morales, you're welcome to make that announcement, would you like to?

I will see some of you in the Community Economic Development Committee in 44 minutes.

44 minutes.

And with that, thank you to central staff and IT and our comms folks who are getting ready for that meeting.

We are done.

That's it.

Today is a wrap.

And that adjourns our meeting for the Finance and Housing Committee meeting.

I see Ali celebrating.

Thank you all very much.

Thank you.

Congratulations.