Public Safety & Human Services Committee 12/12/23

Good morning.

The December 12th, 2023 meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee will come to order.

It is 9.31 a.m.

I'm Lisa Herbold, Chair of the Committee with Clerk.

Please call the roll.

Councilmember Mosqueda.

Present.

Councilmember Nelson.

Present.

Vice Chair Lewis.

Present.

Chair Herbold.

Here.

Councilmember Peterson is excused for present.

Thank you so much.

On today's agenda, we will hear two items, a third quarter update from the LEAD program, and secondly, we're going to get a presentation from the Office of the Inspector General on implementation of their obligations under the surveillance ordinance and potential updates to their annual review.

At the end of today's meeting, this is the last Public Safety and Human Services Committee meeting of the year, as well as of my time here on the council.

And we'll have a few words at the end of today's meeting on this to mark the occasion.

With that, we'll now approve our agenda.

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

Seeing and hearing.

No objections.

Today's agenda is adopted.

Next, we're going to transition into public comment.

I will moderate the public comment in the following way.

Each speaker has two minutes to speak.

I will alternate between virtual and in-person commenters.

I'll call on each speaker by name and in the order which they registered on the council's website.

and also on the sign-in form.

If you've not yet registered to speak, but you'd like to do so, you can sign up before the end of the public comment session.

When I call a speaker's name, if you're using the virtual option, we ask that you, when you hear the prompt, hit star six to unmute yourself.

We also ask that you begin speaking by first stating your name and the item which you are addressing.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

And once the speaker hears the chime, we ask that you begin to wrap up your public comments.

If speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's mic will be muted after 10 seconds to allow us to hear from the next speaker.

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

And if you plan to continue following the meeting, we ask that you do so via the Seattle channel or the listening options that are listed on today's agenda.

So far, we've got two people signed up for public comment, two virtual and none yet in person.

So I'm going to start with the public comment list.

And if we have people sign up in person, we'll move over to them.

So first, starting with Howard Gale, Howard, followed by David Haynes.

Dr. Gayle, if you're with us, hit star six, please.

I also remember her.

Well, I think we have a problem with the public comments.

I think so, too.

On the comment form, we may have put the wrong digits out.

So you can hold on for a sec.

Okay.

Yes.

Both of our speakers are showing as not present.

Thank you for taking the time to work this out.

Yeah, we're updating that information right now.

Thank you so much.

How's it looking?

We are updating the forms now and hopefully they'll be receiving them and we'll be responding shortly.

Excellent.

Callers are on.

Stand by, please, while I update the name.

Callers are on.

Perfect.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Let's get to it.

Our public speakers that we have with us today are Dr. Howard Gale and David Haynes.

Dr. Gale, you're first.

Good morning.

Howard Gale, seattlestop.org.

As 2023 comes to an end, we can look back and see the continuing pattern of the entrenched failures of our police accountability system.

Despite the massive public and media attention focused on the SBD killing of Jahabni Kandula, There's been no accountability, not for the officer who ran her over, nor for the officer and union vice president who made remarks demeaning and devaluing her life.

With the King County prosecutor now further delaying a charging decision into 2024. But at least we do know her name and her circumstance.

Whereas in the case of last year's SBD murder of a man in severe mental health distress, running naked and chased by a police dog sent to attack the man's crotch, We still do not know his name, and this gross abuse has been ignored.

Similarly, we discover much media and public attention given to the inappropriate items displayed in a police station back in 2021, but ignore the horrifying false report of gunfire in February on Capitol Hill, resulting in the SPD pointing assault rifles at and terrorizing and distraught an innocent African-American teen who is only saved by the intervention of bystanders.

These two examples suffice to indicate that our politicians and accountability system only respond, albeit with questionable consequence, only when caught ignoring egregious police abuse when it goes unnoticed.

2023 has also seen our accountability system close out a seventh year without fulfilling council legislation requiring an appeals process for when our accountability system fails victims of police abuse.

This continuing failure has permanently stripped hundreds of victims of police abuse from from 2020 of any possibility of seeing justice or accountability.

As this denial of rights stretches into an eighth year, false claims have been made as to how this failure to uphold council resolutions is progressing when it has simply been farmed out to the federal court monitor, once more denying a voice to the community and to those harmed by police.

Denying the voices of those harmed by police has been further entrenched this year by systems undermining the effective persons program and by the denial of public comment by the CPC.

It has not been a good year.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is David Haynes.

And David, are you with us?

Hit star six, please.

It appears we have lost the caller.

Okay.

Well, unfortunately, that means I believe that that is the end of public comment.

I don't see any other folks having signed up.

So we will move into the bulk of our agenda.

Mr. Clerk, can you please read in the first item?

Agenda item one, lead program third quarter update.

Thank you so much.

So this first item relates to the LEAD program.

And first, we're going to start with the presenters doing a quick round of introduction, your name and title, and we'll come back to you.

But I have just a couple words of introduction.

So just start with that quick round of introductions and pause.

I'll say a few words and hand it back to you.

Good morning.

My name is Lisa Dugard.

I'm co-executive director of Purpose Dignity Action, the project management organization for Seattle LEAD.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Michelle McClendon, and I am the project manager for the TAP Third Avenue project, as well as East Precinct.

Hi, everyone.

I'm Sam Wolf.

I'm a senior project manager for LEAD.

I focus in the West and North Precincts.

Good morning.

My name is Brenton Zachary.

I'm the director of data and quality at PDA.

And I should say we are not joined by our colleague Ramon Hernandez, who's the project manager for the South Precinct because he is ill.

So we will, between us, cover what Ramon would have addressed.

Perfect.

Thank you so much.

So again, this is a briefing on the LEAD program.

It's a third quarter update.

Obviously, this is super timely as an update, given the fact that the council recently passed a public use possession bill related to the public use and possession of drugs, and that it's not just a bill allowing the city attorney to prosecute those cases, the cases that state law permits police to do arrests for, but the significance of the legislation is that it is a legislative pathway enshrined in our Seattle Municipal Code to diversion, including each pre-arrest diversion, pre-booking diversion, and pre-filing diversion.

These are all different...

stages in the prosecution and arrest process where diversion services can and are being applied.

This is a great resource to the people with whom LEAD comes into contact with, with whom the police come into contact with, available for the city attorney to use.

And I think it's really incredibly important for policymakers to understand the trends for diversion, especially for the council with our authority over the budgeting process, given the fact that LEAD is experiencing and is likely to continue to experience increase referrals to their diversionary services because of the passage of the pre-mentioned, aforementioned ordinance.

So really appreciate you being with us here today at the end of the year before a new council takes office.

And with that, I hand it over to you to begin your presentation.

Thank you so much, Chair Herbold.

We will have some remarks about your tenure before we finish as well.

So I'm gonna start just with a quick overview for those who are not super familiar with the LEAD model.

It is a public safety strategy that uses human services tools.

It is not a human services intervention in a standalone sense.

It is designed to reduce crime.

That is the single agreed goal.

by all lead stakeholders, and it uses evidence-based strategies to improve individual situations so that they are not behaving in ways that are problematic for themselves and others and culminating in the reduction of crime by individuals.

At scale, that model holds promise to reduce incidents of crime community-wide, but without being scaled.

we are limited in our ability to accomplish overall crime reduction.

There are three ways into LEAD services, three front doors, if you will.

One is the classic initial, this is sort of what LEAD was originally known for, and that is when a police officer has probable cause to make an arrest for a diversion eligible crime, and those crimes are specified in an agreed protocol.

They can call a phone number and get an immediate warm handoff response from a case manager or other staff member.

And they choose to release the individual.

Technically, in law enforcement terms, the person is investigated and released.

And in a warm handoff, the responding case manager does some sort of crisis situational assessment of immediate needs, but also makes a plan to follow up with the person within 30 days to do a more in-depth, usually takes about two hours, psychosocial assessment.

um intake screening and the individual either then or at the point of the intake screening signs a release of information that allows the case manager to share information with partners who would not normally have access to case management insights about somebody's recovery process including law enforcement and prosecutors but also So that is an arrest diversion.

That's how LEAD started back in 2011, 2012. At the beginning of the program in Seattle, LEAD was dominated by arrest referrals, but fairly quickly, police officers decided to be more proactive and instead of waiting to the point that they had probable cause or encountered somebody, in the midst of committing a crime, they knew who many of those folks were who would ultimately be in that situation, and police could go upstream, they proposed, and make what they call social contact referrals.

So this is a non-detention-based referral where they know that the individual chronically engages in illegal behavior related to behavioral health or poverty, and they want to reduce that, so they connect the person to services outside of the context of an enforcement action.

And over time, over the first 10 years or so of LEAD's operation, the ratio of LEAD referrals switched so that instead of being led by arrest referrals, police referrals were dominated by social contact proactive referrals.

And then the third way in, starting in 2020, when there were severe police capacity challenges, initially because of COVID, and for police health and just overall system stresses, officers were directed not to spend time taking enforcement action around low-level offenses.

It became clear a lot of people were committing low-level offenses related to drug use, behavioral health issues, mental illness and poverty, extreme economic instability of the time.

If lead resources were going to address that very real public safety, public order issue, the lead team was gonna need to go get people directly without the necessity of having police interaction.

It was never a closed door to those police channels, but the third door of community referrals, direct community identification of an issue and calling for a response.

was created, and that was by proviso of this council as well as the King County Council that recognized that otherwise we would have resources that were appropriate to the situation kind of locked up and unable to respond.

And so you and the King County Council opened that channel.

What we have never done is widely advertise that community referral opportunity because whenever we have come close to doing that, the program has been overwhelmed by totally appropriate requests for response.

It doesn't build credibility or create a system for the long term to pretend to people that there's an option that once they use it, it doesn't come.

So we are still hovering several years later in this space where we do have a community referral channel, but most members of the community who might want to use it don't know about it and don't know how to access it.

So it may be in the future that we can step past that barrier.

If we did, we would.

we imagine that we would be in sort of an upward spiral of community members can make appropriate referrals.

They recognize chronic law violations are an issue, but they also know the response, the appropriate response is a community-based care one.

They can go ahead and make those.

And that could lessen the burden on our emergency response system and calls for service to police that they struggle to respond to now.

We're not yet in that sort of like beneficial upward spiral where community referrals are, able to reduce the burden on law enforcement in a systematic way.

Once people come in any of those three doors, the process is exactly the same.

Everybody signs that release of information to allow information sharing, and we embark on long-term care coordination and sustained case management.

And I should pause and say, everybody at this table is part of the project management team.

We don't provide direct care.

PDA, our organization, subcontracts with two case management providers in King County.

For Seattle, that is and has always been the REACH program at Evergreen Treatment Services.

I'll pause and say one of our updates is that the policy coordinating group, which is the governing body that this council is represented on and other Seattle and King County officials sit on, They directed last year, and we have moved forward this year with a procurement process to identify additional providers, additional case management providers, because even though REACH did an absolutely heroic job of establishing this model of case management that's now been replicated across the country, they're not the only organization that can do this work.

And at some point as we scale, it's not a good system design to depend entirely on the capacity of one nonprofit organization.

And so the idea of multiplying providers is just good practice.

It's good sustainability planning.

And so we've closed a procurement and a panel of, proposal evaluators representing the governing body just finished a process of screening and interviewing two applicants and found both of them qualified and were about to issue notice of intent to contract with both.

One of them is the oldest, BIPOC-led harm reduction organization on the West Coast, and one of them is a medication-assisted treatment provider that works very closely with Marion County's LEAD program in Oregon.

does outreach and case management independent of their provision of MAT.

So these are very different.

These are organizations that come from very different sort of tradition of care services and treatment for people with substance use issues, but have very deep experience.

And it's exciting if you put those organizations together with REACH to see the sort of unity of the agreement around what people really need and organizations stepping forward to contribute their expertise to provide that.

We'll be trying to, the next couple months, figure out the right division of labor so that those three entities are matched with the right volume of participants to case manage, as well as taking advantage of their special expertise and background.

The LEAD intervention model is a sort of aggregation of different evidence-based strategies to accomplish behavior change for people who have complex behavioral health needs, very often deep trauma experience, and have broken relationships with people standardized systems of care.

I'll just say that the King County familiar faces project, which unfolded from 2015 to 2017, roughly did a very deep dive in data on the experience of people who are frequently being booked into the King County jail.

identified that the overwhelming majority had both behavioral health, sorry, both substance use disorder related issues and other mental health issues.

And that found that that population was chronically unserved by pretty much all standardized care systems.

And so commenced the process of trying to figure out what would be the best way to connect that population to care.

to improve health outcomes, but also to reduce crime.

And that lean, I don't know if people are fans of lean, but it was a lean process.

It was very extensive, examining all kinds of existing interventions and familiar faces settled on LEAD as the existing model that best matched what would work best for this population.

And we have held true to those best practices before and since.

The key point is that most people who use drugs problematically and in a way that impacts others, for most of those people, the issue is not only drug use.

Drug use is a response to, and sometimes floating on top of, deeper, more longstanding, maladaptive, coping strategies and very problematic sort of separation from relationship, from care networks.

And in order to address drug issues, you also have to address the underlying dynamics that are driving that and other problematic coping mechanisms and really help the person make a plan to live a meaningful life that allows them to feel hope, to feel that there is a path for strengthening, and they can imagine a story in which they rely less and ultimately not on problematic drug use.

So that's the model.

Other current updates before we get to the data slides, and we actually focused on the period, this was originally going to be a Q3 report, but we knew that the council was probably most interested in Q4, which is the period of the implementation of the new ordinance.

So that is where our data focus.

But some other qualitative updates before we get there.

We have just concluded some really promising conversations with, so SPD is obviously a primary partner in LEAD, the Seattle Police Department, but King County Metro is also a longstanding operational partner.

And we've just finished some for transit zones in the city of Seattle.

obviously, Metro Police extend outside of the city, but have a number of transit zones that are...

where dynamics of concern are taking place involving people using drugs.

And so we've just finished a really promising sort of planning session with Metro Police about launching focused efforts in the Third Avenue transit zone, the Little Saigon transit zone, and the transit area at 105th and Aurora.

So they plan to have focused, to do some focused attention in those areas and make a concerted effort to make appropriate referrals to lead.

So we're looking forward to an even greater impact in those areas than we've had with our partnership with SPD and with community referrals.

The other important qualitative update is that one of our focus impact areas in 2023, because we don't have the resources to cover the city border to border and our slides will illuminate that, with sort of a saturation level of service.

In 2023, we identified nine focus impact areas around the city where we would concentrate community referrals.

So we basically turned down community referrals from any other location.

And one of those is the upper Third Avenue area, where the Third Avenue project that Michelle is the project manager for, and she'll talk more about, is set up and organized.

The Third Avenue project has encountered a very high volume, kind of no surprise, but has encountered a very high volume of people who use drugs and commit related crimes, crimes related to meeting their basic needs and acquisition of drugs.

We have found through creation of a by name list with partners, including We Deliver Care, who are providing outreach in that area, that an overwhelming number of those individuals are currently unsheltered.

And so we have come to understand a housing plan to be really fundamental to a recovery strategy that is gonna work for that group of people.

And I am really happy to say that the King County Regional Homelessness Authority partnered with the Third Avenue Project originally as part of their Partnership for Zero umbrella project focused on downtown and now as a standalone.

So that there is a realistic possibility that cohorts of very high impact people can be matched with appropriate, usually permanent supportive housing.

And we are starting to make those matches in fairly significant numbers.

So we're not working with a group of 500 or more people who WDC has identified all at once, we're identifying highest impact cohorts and making those placements.

So I really wanna call out KCRHA for creative impact oriented structuring of access to some really critical housing resources there.

Okay, we can go into our data slides and Brenton is gonna steer us through this.

There are only a few, so this won't take very long.

These are your presenters.

Thank you, Brenton.

We can move to the first slide.

So we're gonna show three green pies, green-blue pies, covering each of the...

three channels for referral.

That is arrest referrals, police social contact referrals, and community referrals.

And this is designed to show the percentage of acceptance that is flowing from each of those three categories.

And this is since the beginning of October.

So we're covering that...

implementation period of the possession and public use ordinance.

So there have been 45 arrest referrals since the beginning of October, we have accepted all of them.

Now, as I mentioned, what that means is that people will start the process of, they'll sign a release of information and the case management team will work to complete an intake process.

If people do not complete that intake within 30 days, unless SPD requests an extension and the city attorney's office agrees to the extension, the city attorney's office will presumptively file those charges.

But we will accept any of these and have accepted any of these who actually complete the process.

OK, we can go to the next slide.

So this is police-led social contact referrals.

Again, this is people who are not under arrest, are just being identified as being in need of services by police officers.

And the number here is virtually identical.

It's 44 during this two-month period of time.

The pie is divided between the green slice, which is officers made the referral and a sergeant, this is SPD's protocol in most of the precincts, the sergeant has to approve.

The sergeant did approve in 50% of these cases.

In 18%, the sergeant denied the referral for various reasons, and then in 32% of the cases, they are still pending sergeant review, and that is really backed up more than it might otherwise be because of just sergeant capacity.

Okay, we can move to the next slide.

Real quick question before we move on.

And council members, if you have questions, feel free to...

As Lisa explained, there aren't a lot of slides, so if you have questions as we go through the slides, happy to hear them.

So the first slide was lead arrest referrals.

And the second slide is social contact referrals.

And the first slide showed the number of...

arrest referrals that you accepted, correct?

Not whether or not the individual subject to arrest accepted, is that correct?

Well, everyone accepted the initial...

Everyone shown in that pie chart accepted the initial referral.

There were a couple of referrals where people declined, and so they were processed into the legal system in the normal course of business.

This reflects...

the point of this chart is to show that we accept 100% of arrest referrals.

There's no screening that we do.

If an officer chooses to make that referral and the person accepts, then they are automatically accepted into the program.

So we don't have, or maybe you have, but these particular slides don't show, because there's a lot of interest, obviously, in what are the conditions that make somebody more likely to agree to participate in diversion.

And are we gonna be able to track that across contact referrals, community referrals, and arrest referrals?

Yes, I think we can shed some light on it, but I will say the ordinance that you all passed required SPD to report on this, and SPD is holding regular check-in sessions that involve other parties, including us and the city attorney's office, where we are tracking the sort of trend on acceptance.

We have not seen anyone else decline a referral after that first report.

really, day or weekend of implementation.

I think that speaks to, in that first wave, there were some officers who had never made a referral before and had not had the experience of presenting the option to the individual.

Officers have gotten more skillful and more comfortable doing that.

It's also the case that in that very first wave of referrals, the REACH case management team that responded noted that there was a very high incidence of high acuity mental illness in that initial cohort.

And that may have to do with the fact that SPD did a good job of warning people in the that there was going to be enforcement.

So some of the people who were ultimately arrested were pretty, um, not functioning in a sort of, um, in the same reality as the case managers or the police officers who were having conversations with them.

And, um, so it may be that folks were declining just because they were really not understanding the situation.

And, um...

But we have not seen that continue.

So if somebody comes in and accepts, we're going to take those and that we are tracking 45 pending referrals.

Many of these have completed intake at this point and others are, the case management team is tracking down other folks to do that.

So skipping through to the third slide, community referrals, interestingly, almost, again, an identical number.

So we're almost a perfectly balanced tripod right now.

We've seen 44 referrals during this period.

We have approved.

So for community referrals, the project management team decides whether to accept those.

And we are presently only accepting referrals from three of the nine focus impact areas around the city.

Rainier Beach, because it is independently funded by Recovery Navigator Program funds via King County that were specially designated to bring LEAD to Southeast Seattle.

So because those funds are, are not depleted, we're continuing to accept referrals that those funds support.

Chinatown International District has a small number of referrals that we are accepting because that neighborhood is very, you know, obviously very vulnerable and is in the midst of a project management team facilitated sort of lead redesign.

So when a few individuals come in, we are accepting them, but we expect the sort of shape of lead in 2024 in the CID to look quite different.

I think Sam can speak to that.

And then upper Third Avenue, the Third Avenue project is the other area where we are taking referrals because those case managers are doing housing navigation for that process where RHA is allowing us to make matches with permanent housing resources.

And in order to take advantage of those, someone has to immediately go out and do very intensive work, clearing obstacles and getting people through the hoops in order to be able to accept and take those placements.

Sorry.

Thank you.

I just want to make sure I understand the pie chart.

So what is the difference between the first one, which I understand?

Those are arrests for public use that get referred by a sergeant to leave.

But the social contract, the second slide on page, I don't know.

Also, you know, sergeant-approved pending referral with sergeant.

So those, how are those different?

Those are different crimes or different things that bring the case to the attention of SPD?

The latter, pretty much.

So these are people who are not in custody at the point of referral.

Okay.

So officers are identifying someone...

because of their knowledge of chronic dynamics, chronic instances.

And these are thought to be generally the same people, the same situation, but it's just a different point of intercept.

So it's taking advantage of the fact that police are aware of chronic conduct, and they don't want to have to wait to respond to it until they happen to intersect with that person under circumstances that would give probable cause to make an arrest.

So it's more proactive.

but it's generally understood to be the same client pool or participant pool.

Why is one of these categories sergeant denied?

Because what you just said made it seem as though it's initiated by the police.

It's initiated by line officers.

SPD long ago created a business flow, process flow where sergeants approved these.

Whether that makes sense is something that people in SPD have various opinions about and the East Precinct.

Michelle's folks has always handled it differently.

They just allow officers to make point of identification referrals and a sergeant doesn't ever veto those.

So this is an internal just oversight decision really by SPD.

The value of sergeant referral is to make sure that the volume doesn't overwhelm, and so you can titrate to the highest priority referrals in the precinct, and that's, Sam's gonna talk about the South Precinct strategy there.

That isn't always how it has worked, so a sergeant might deny because this is just not somebody they've seen before, it's not a chronic, not somebody posing a chronic issue in their precinct, so it's not a high priority use of resources.

They also could deny it because the person in their screen of history presents some specific indicators of potential danger to staff, to program staff.

That's probably the second most frequent reason for a sergeant denial is concern about case management safety.

And there are some idiosyncratic reasons.

All right.

And then before you go on, just flagging that I am interested in knowing what happens now that the drug use bill is passed.

I don't know if you're going to cover it later on, but what ends up happening once they're passed?

in your program, so, okay.

I should say we are, and I'll do a little bit more, but before turning it to my colleagues who are gonna talk more about the neighborhood impact, but I should say in the first, you don't have to flip back to it, Brenton, but the first slide about the arrest referrals that showed 100% acceptance, Those are not exclusively for possession and public use.

I know that in that pool, there are a couple of referrals, for example, for criminal trespass, because LEAD, there are other crimes that police are authorized to make arrest referrals for under the LEAD protocol, and we've seen a couple of those in the last couple months.

And SPD is really, like, rebooting this whole process.

So a lot of officers have never done this before, and there have been some growing pains around process.

And I'm kind of spoiler alert, but the department has been remarkable in its dedication to getting this right, making process improvements, doing an after-action check-in, identifying glitches that needed to get worked out on their end and in training and is really clearly committed to reacquainting officers throughout the department about the availability of this channel.

So we, you know, I can just report really, really strong partnership at the command level and at the precinct level in this reboot.

Okay, so moving away from the pie charts, these are, these yellow blotches represent how we've retracted the ability of community members to make direct referrals.

In 2022, community referrals could come from anywhere in the city.

And as a result, we were turning down many of them, most of them, and there was not sort of any real coherent impact of taking these referrals because it's just a vast There's a vast need and a vast landscape, and our resources or capacity didn't allow us to have a very discernible impact.

So in 2023, in partnership with the Human Services Department, which has also been a tremendous partner in thinking through how to use the LEAD tool, this past year.

We settled on a strategy of focus impact areas and they are laid out here on the map.

You can see there is perhaps not completely coincidentally one per, at least one per council district.

And then where we are today as of October, or actually a little earlier, having to dial back acceptance of community referrals to limit them only to these three highest priority areas and Rainier Valley not only being a high priority but also having an independent funding source.

So what this means effectively is that if you are a community partner in Ballard, the U District, Aurora, Soto, the East Precinct, or Southwest, West Seattle, you cannot, and you're identifying a totally appropriate lead candidate who we, that we could probably help with, we're saying no.

And we're routinely blanket denying those.

And of course, that's having a depressing effect on people's interest in making referrals because it's pointless in those areas.

So whether we can restore that ability to take referrals is an open question for 2024, as you'll see, I think, on the next slide.

Oh, not quite the next slide.

So this is showing you what happened in the period right before and right after the implementation of the Possession and Public Use Ordinance.

The red line is arrest referrals, and you can see that they very, as anticipated, really spiked right after the ordinance went into effect on October 20th.

And we've continued to receive referrals, it's episodic, and it really, we're gonna hit a number like that, 15, if that's what that says.

Again, when and if there is another emphasis, but we still have received more kind of individual referrals trickling in because of greater awareness around the department.

The gray line is social contact referrals from police officers when the individual's not in custody.

You'll see that's pretty active.

And then the community referral line, as noted, is being depressed by people just basically not meeting with any success when they attempt to make referrals.

So we are seeing that number dwindle and that over the years is what we always see when we turn down most of the referrals that come in.

Okay, the next slide.

Just for the, if you could go back for a second.

The chart types correspond to the graph and just You did say this, Lisa, but I just want to say it again for the viewing public.

AD is arrest diversion, CR is community referral, and SC is social contact.

And just to emphasize the point you just made, as you're taking more arrest...

referrals associated with the public use and possession drug law, the community referrals are reducing.

And what that means is you are less of a resource for members of the public, business associations, community organizations, who previously you were very active in taking referrals from.

Yes, and the door is still open in those three areas, but for the rest of the city, it is a sort of hypothetical channel for response that's not really open at this time.

Okay, so we, as during the debate over the possession and public use ordinance, there, you know, many people observed that, it was likely that there would be an increase in arrest diversions and police referrals overall and that the funding for LEAD that was in the proposed budget and the adopted budget did not increase.

In fact, it very slightly decreased.

And so what, you know, were we on a collision course with a capacity problem?

And so we've, and I really wanna call out our data team and his colleague, Jeremy Russell, for doing some predictive work.

We show that if the various referral categories and acceptance continues on sort of current in current ratios and at current rates, we will hit an absolute capacity ceiling somewhere between April and May.

And not only, you know, right now we're controlling our capacity issue by denying community referrals, but we will not even be able to continue to accept police referrals, even arrest diversions that are called for by the ordinance and called for by the SPD policy.

by late spring.

So this is just a, you know, the mayor's office and HSD are well acquainted with this likelihood, and we've all been talking about it for some time now.

So this is our best guess about where it's really gonna become unmanageable if nothing changes.

And I think the red bar is arrest referrals.

So small and I'm so old, but...

Breton, can you read that?

What color is what?

Blue is community referral.

Red is rest of urgent SPD.

The lighter red would be rest of urgent Metro.

Dark gray is social contact SPD and light gray is social contact Metro.

And so the green line is the referral trajectory, and the red line is our maximum capacity.

And that's using an average caseload per case per funded case manager of 20. And that is very high for intensive case management.

So that's already stretching the model.

So this is just another way of portraying the same situation in kind of Smokey the Bear graphics.

Yeah.

And again, hitting capacity in April of next year.

Sometime April, late April, early May.

So just to say the obvious, if the next year's city council is interested in you expanding your capacity, there will need to be additional funding for LEAD in April.

in time for the end of the first quarter of next year.

There are other potential sources of support and one of, oops, okay.

One of them, yes and, I mean, there are a variety of potential strategies for augmenting capacity and remembering that this would be, this would allow not only REACH, but these other newly identified case management partners to build out their, cadre of case managers.

This is not directed at a single provider.

Setting aside city general fund or other funding strategies, there is also, and both of the council members that I'm looking at now have helped to identify this possibility.

There is a state-lead grant program that has never funded Seattle, even though Seattle by funding the model itself, gave rise to that model for the whole state.

That grant program so far has funded Snohomish County, Whatcom County, Thurston and Mason counties, but it has never funded Seattle.

So it seems fair that it might be a source of support for the jurisdiction that generated the model that has been helpful for the whole state.

And it is a short legislative session.

So the answer to that could be known by the time we hit the smoking the bear red zone.

And just the state legislative agenda that we'll be voting on today has funding for Seattle in this grant as an objective.

I think both of our offices may have made that request.

So, yeah.

There's also some possibility, some hope of the Washington State Congressional Delegation being interested in organizing federal grant funds for LEAD programs and obviously being especially interested in our Washington State programs.

could benefit the rest of the country, but it could be a potential source of support for Seattle as well.

So just because the Seattle strategy may need to grow doesn't necessarily mean that the sole source of support for that needs to be the Seattle General Fund.

Right, and I just want to clarify also or expand that the problems that we're dealing with here are not confined to the city limits.

And so it's incumbent upon the region and the state to step up as well.

Absolutely.

We do have some fairly small fraction of the current Seattle LEED budget comes from King County, and that will continue in 2024. And for the first time, the county is gonna transfer those funds to- Is that from KCRHA or King County?

From King County itself, from the Department of Community and Human Services.

And those funds will be run through HSD and a unified contract.

So to your point, yeah, that is an additional, though not majority, source of funding.

So in conclusion for my part, and I know I've gone on for quite a while, we are...

and I think to Council Member Nelson's point about, well, what do we do?

The fact is that the individuals that are being referred to lead now, and certainly after the public use and possession ordinance was adopted, but even before that, the people coming in are at the highest level of clinical need that we've ever seen.

So I cannot say clearly enough that case management is like the backbone, if you think of someone's need, like a human skeleton or human body.

Case management is the backbone that kind of holds it all together.

But that doesn't, in and of itself, you know, accomplish everything that people need.

And being able to broker, case managers are brokers.

They're going out and finding what people need, advocating, being guerrilla fighters for what people need, and figuring out what's really going on with someone over time.

We do not perceive that case managers can get, can access the care that would really work for most of their participants rapidly or at all or at scale.

And so naming those missing pieces in our, you know, of the care package is something that the the experts in that work, the case managers, are bringing forward in the mayor's task force on, you know, the sort of care system and the diversion system.

And those meetings have started and are ongoing.

The next meeting, which I think is going to be in January, is really focused on gaps in the care system.

And this is not interior to LEAD, right?

LEAD is a case manager who's navigating the landscape, but the landscape itself needs to have better and different options.

Some council members, including Council Member Nelson, have helped to name some of those options that may need to be built out, may be effective.

and drug use patterns are continuing to change.

So I just wanna say this is, like the case management piece, this is what familiar faces identified eight years ago.

It's necessary, but it is not sufficient to ensure that someone's recovery journey goes as well and as fast as it could.

And the rest of the piece is not, it's not like funding Interior to lead, it's background systems that need to have better and more tools for case managers to be able to tap.

The possession and public use ordinance put in place a behavioral health committee that I don't think is in formation yet, but that task force, however good its work is, should continue on with that behavioral health committee.

And we really see that in 2024 as being the major area that needs work is understanding where people are faltering.

And I just will give like a really concrete example.

The folks that we are encountering on Third Avenue, some people are experiencing limb loss.

I think we may have talked about this at a Third Avenue project presentation.

And the only resources that exist to respond to that need outside of like an emergency room are not mobile.

You can go to stationary clinics that are outside of that area, but people won't.

People not go far to get those needs met.

And so we really see, this is just one of, you know, innumerable examples, but really see the importance of mobile medical resources that through due to capacity and workforce challenges have really dwindled and disappeared over the last year.

So they need to be restored.

That's not interior to lead.

That's something that lead case managers can plug into.

KCRHA is doing a good job of being one of those resources that case managers can plug into, but that's really the zone of urgent problem solving that we see.

In conclusion, this is the longest I feel like I've ever talked.

May I?

On the wound care issue?

I also just want to recognize that the Seattle Fire Department has also identified wound care as a need for their teams and have begun the process of sort of identifying what the current capacity is, which is small versus where they need to extend.

And I can assure you that that is a very active conversation in the behavioral health section of the fire department.

And I want to acknowledge that HealthONE is an incredibly strong partner for LEAD.

We do a lot of co-strategizing about this landscape analysis.

So yeah, very much share their perception.

In coming years, as you know, the crisis care centers levy is going to build up stationary locations where a lot of resources are available.

I think many of us are identifying it would be good if those resources could be mobile and could come out and not just wait for people to go in those locations.

People may not go in and maybe shouldn't have to go in in order to get that suite of care.

Anyway, so in conclusion for me, before I turn to colleagues talking about accomplishments and challenges in the specific areas of the city, LEAD is a collective impact model, and it would have been dead in the water long ago without leadership from a number of other public officials, but especially I want to call out this council.

none of this would be going on.

We wouldn't be learning the lessons.

We wouldn't be updating the model, but for longstanding support from this council and that, so just our appreciation to those of you who are departing, everybody on the screen who I'm looking at, who are, and to those of you who are remaining, this council, sometimes this field of work has been almost the only thing that the entire council seemed to agree on.

And we do not take that for granted and appreciate all of your commitment to innovation and partnership.

It has been a model and we are very grateful.

Can I turn to Michelle?

Oh, Michelle says Sam.

Can Michelle turn to Sam?

Hi, I'm Sam.

I am, again, the senior project manager for the LEAD program.

I focus on the West and North precincts.

The Third Ave project is probably our most robust and busiest focus impact area.

It is in the West precinct, but Michelle project manages that.

By way of West, I do want to say, you know, it's kind of the context in which all of our other focus impact areas are now within, because I think it was at the 45-day mark post the October 20th ordinance, we had gotten up to, I think, like 92 law enforcement referrals, which is a lot.

And the lion's share of those are coming from emphasis areas in the West Precinct.

So, you know, a lot of our focus here has really just been trying to iron out these processes.

We've got, you know, a lot of officers making referrals for the first times.

We've got a lot of case managers taking those referrals, and we want to make sure that our immediate response capacity is going well, that officers are feeling the response, that we're able to make contact with the clients that are being referred to us.

You know, we've had very close coordination with both, you know, our case management partners, SPD, SCAO, to make sure that the paperwork processes associated with those are going smoothly.

So it has been a ton of work and, you know, really appreciate all of our partners, you know, leaning in on this to make this so far a big success.

You know, in the same way, speaking for Ramon Hernandez, our South Precinct project manager who could not be here today, So we're also doing, we're taking a very intentional approach to our South Precinct coming referrals.

Just last week, we met with Captain Brown and Sergeant Toman.

So working closely with South Precinct leadership, knowing that if we're receiving 100 referrals every month from South Precinct, that April, May estimate of when we're going to hit capacity is going to come sooner than later.

So really making sure that we're working within the realm of what's feasible for both our program and for SPD.

You know, obviously, making a green light call to our case management, we show up and take the client.

That also takes capacity from officers who are waiting with the client to do that warm handoff for us.

So really just wanting to be prudent for both sides.

Right now, we're planning on SPD leadership circling up and figuring out top priorities for their officers.

We're going to, you know, come together on that list do some training on how to make the green light calls, hopefully take those warm handoff referrals, and then meet regularly thereafter.

Currently, we're thinking every five or six weeks just to check in both on individual client progress to make sure that what our case managers are seeing is lining up with what officers are seeing.

And, you know, obviously taking any input we have about ongoing behavior so that we can respond on the case management side and get those folks the best support and resources we can get them.

Can you clarify what a FIAT is?

Oh, apologies.

Yeah, it's our funny acronym for Focus Impact Areas.

Those are the nine areas that Lisa mentioned where in 2023 geographically defined areas where we are still taking community referrals.

which is a good transition.

Every FIA focus impact area is very different.

Obviously, you know, we are taking community referrals from them, but each of them was made with sort of a different design and intent in mind.

So I also project manage up in the north precinct where we have three FIAs.

One of them is North Aurora.

We made this into a focus impact area in part because of the a lot of sex trade happens on North Aurora.

And part of LEAD has always been to work with folks who are engaged in the sex trade.

We also know on North Aurora there's a relative lack of resources compared to other areas in the city.

Our North LEAD office is alongside the Aurora Commons, really functionally the only drop-in center in that region.

So a lot of folks, if we were not able to take referrals from that area, a lot of folks would otherwise, you know, go without the support that they could otherwise have.

So we, as part of our field work in North Aurora, we've worked pretty closely with Aurora Commons, kind of combining our knowledge of who's out there, also combining our collective case management capacity.

So we have taken a number of referrals from Aurora Commons folks that they're seeing that we might not necessarily be seeing, meeting regularly to conference about them, just so that Aurora Commons folks and our LeadReach folks can share information and get a full picture of what is going on in people's lives.

Our Lead Reach team up in North Precinct did a lot of evening time outreach over the summer, specifically to, you know, find and wrap around and meet folks who might be eligible.

And, you know, again, the relatively sparse resources in the area, with the relatively sparse resources in that area, we've also kind of done a concerted effort Part of our co-lead program, this is the continuation of our Just Care program, which is essentially lead but with hoteling resources, of which we have very limited capacity.

But we've been taking some current lead clients who each lead is seeing as, you know, could particularly benefit from having lodging to progress their case management plan.

A lot of those folks that we've taken have been from the North Aurora area.

REALLY JUST, YOU KNOW, TRYING TO GET RESOURCES WHERE THERE ARE NO RESOURCES.

THE OTHER TWO FIAS IN THE NORTH PRECINCT ARE THE U DISTRICT AND BALLARD NEIGHBORHOODS.

THE FORMAT OF THESE FOCUSED IMPACT AREAS HAS BEEN A CASE CONFERENCE, WHICH IS BASICALLY AN ONGOING FRAMEWORK WHERE WE MEET WITH OTHER SERVICE PROVIDERS, SO DESC IS PRESENT.

The UCT is present.

And also we're meeting with community partners.

So the UDP, the U District Partnership, and the Ballard Alliance.

Really working closely to, you know, similar to what our intent is in Aurora is to, A, find the clients that we're not already working with that we want to be working with, and then, you know, again, that ongoing coordination like we're doing with Aurora Commons.

So we work very closely, for example, with the U District Partnerships Ambassador Team.

This is an on-the-ground team that they employ that basically, like, they go around the neighborhood, you know, they assist with cleanups.

They have a very in-depth knowledge of who's on the ground there.

You know, as a result of their knowledge on the ground, we've been able to closely coordinate about our clients when our case managers get information from their team.

you know, it's someone they're seeing every day and our case manager might be seeing like once, maybe a couple times a week.

And so we're able to really incorporate that knowledge.

There's been, you know, multiple incidents where we've had some very vulnerable clients who are living unhoused with, you know, high-acuity mental health needs.

And because of the ambassador team being able to observe decompensation, we've been able to take that information and coordinate with them to do, you know, in some cases, DCR referrals, but really doing what we can to preempt, you know, more significant crises and get the care to people before worst-case scenarios happen.

You know, for all three of these focus impact areas in the north precinct, they are among the many that are no longer able to receive community referrals.

So, you know, since the public use ordinance went into effect, we've received, you know, referrals from all three areas, high priority referrals that we've not been able to work with.

We are still continuing to coordinate around all of our people up there, you know, so there's still a lot of benefit to the work we're doing.

But in terms of taking on new clients that are being identified by the community, that is something that, you know, we would love to figure out to continue to do this work up there.

In terms of some more specific stories, we were just circling up with our North team last week and learned that we recently housed seven participants, which is a big deal.

You know, four of these clients I think were on the True Blood class members, which basically means somebody has had competency raised in court due to mental health.

so particularly vulnerable people.

Four of them have also come from high-priority areas, such as U District and Ballard.

But I jotted down some notes from one particular story.

One of them, we first engaged with them in 2020, so this is right as the pandemic was starting, right around the time we were directed to open up to community referrals.

I have here that it took about four months to build trust and do intake.

When we're working with folks, we're working with folks who, by virtue of cycling in and out of the criminal legal system, have often been left out of other support systems.

So a lot of our clients are people who haven't had a case manager or a system of support, whether family or otherwise, in years.

So really building that trust with clients you know, not only our case managers, but case management in general, can be a big task.

But, you know, once in the program, this client had a lot of obstacles as well.

You know, this is somebody who is a True Blood class member.

They would not, you know, they would often lose their phone, so staying in contact was difficult while this person was unhoused.

This person had a lot of experiences cycling in and out of the criminal legal system, including our mental health competency system.

So, you know, going from unsheltered in an encampment, being displaced from the encampment, going to jail, being at the state hospital, being released.

And our case management, although we don't want any of those things to happen, our case management was able to be there through that process and kind of be that golden thread that at every step along the way, trying to put in place the resources, you know, if they were going to be released, we try to line up shelter for them.

If they're being released from the state hospital, we try to continue their mental health plan.

But this person, so again, 2020 is when we met them.

It took until November 2023, we finally lined up housing applications for some of the new Catholic Community Services housing that recently opened up at the North End.

And this person is now housed for the first time since 2016. So, you know, seven or eight years being unhoused, four years in the program.

But I do think that this is a good illustration of how important that coordination is that we're able to do with community partners in the U District and Aurora and throughout all of our operating areas, really.

But we're working with folks, like Lisa said, who are suffering from a severe lack of robust resources.

And being able to do what's best in each situation with the enhanced information that we get from community partners or SPD is hugely helpful for actually getting progress in these situations.

And I'll hand it over to Michelle with the hat.

Thanks, Sam.

Again, my name is Michelle McClendon, and I am the lead project manager for the East Precinct as well as TAP, also known as the Third Avenue Project.

But I just wanted to highlight real quick that I was the project manager in the Southwest Precinct, coming from Southwest Precinct, which was Delridge, which was previously one of our focus impact areas.

Since we were in that area, I want to highlight one of the successes of that is right now we're currently looking to expand that FIA, that focus impact area.

And the reason being is that there was some problematic activity once upon a time that lived heavily in that area, which was known as the Rosella Building.

Partnering with...

REACHED AND WITH COLEAD, SPD, WE WERE ABLE TO COME IN AND RELOCATE THOSE INDIVIDUALS AND CLEAR UP THAT AREA, RIGHT?

AND JUST ADDRESS ALL THE BARRIERS.

NOT ONLY THAT, BUT ALL OF THE BUSINESSES THAT WERE IMPACTED BY THE ROSELLA BUILDING AND THE ACTIVITY AND THE BEHAVIOR THAT WAS GOING ON IN THAT AREA.

Since then, there has been no reports that will say that this needs to be a focused impact area at this time.

Because of the barriers that were happening, because of the activity that was taking place, now we want to look at other areas.

And why we want to look at that is because this is what the community is asking for, right?

when we talk about HPAC, Highland Park Action Committee, right?

And other organizations in that area that I have built relationships with and said, hey, This is something that we want as a community, and it's because it's the communities that they live in, the communities that they represent, the communities that they work, learn, and play in.

So that feedback, I think, is very important because they're stakeholders in those communities.

So that's one of the things I wanted to highlight when we talk about why we can no longer support this work in a fear or why we want to relocate this fear.

So moving on, I want to talk about the importance of the intensive case management that our team, that they do.

I like to look at it as, you know, going back to the RAP plan, which is Wellness Recovery Action Plan.

So having that conversation, case managers having that conversation with their folks and, hey, guess what?

What is wellness going to look like for you?

What will recovery, if that's your choice, going to look like for you?

What is the action steps to, you know, getting to this plan that you desire?

So having those intensive case motivational interviewing conversations with their clients says, this is what we need and how are we going to get it?

Even though today this is a barrier, but what do we need to do to focus on removing these barriers?

This is a companionship.

as well as a partnership with these individuals.

And that's so important.

And that's the relationship building, the trust building.

As Lisa mentioned earlier, when the officer may call that green light phone, there is an immediate response.

It's not, okay, give us a call back during business hours, which is 8 to 5, right?

That's 24-7 that there is a response there.

Once that individual connects with that case manager, again, we're going to spend time with that rapport building.

We're going to spend time with the relationship building and with the trust building, right?

These are also where I see where with our case, intensive case management, for those who are legally involved, I've seen that in cases FTAs are being reduced.

Why?

Because the intensive case manager- What's an FTA?

Pardon me.

Failure to appears is an FTA.

Those are being reduced.

Why?

Because the intensive case management.

There's reminders that says, hey, guess what?

We have court.

There's visual reminders where we can buy a calendar.

We can buy phones and program those court dates in those phones.

Speaking of the TAP, Third Avenue Project, right?

we have the WDC partners, we deliver care.

It's amazing, that goes hand in hand with the work of the intensive case managers, because if someone is not seen or whatever, they can connect with WDC, they can connect with FCD, Seattle Fire Department, because those individuals have a lot of contact with these individuals already who are downtown in the Third Avenue upper downtown area.

So with that being said, we're able to connect to some of the health care needs that we do have and what limited access we do have, despite what it may be.

Yes, Council Member Nelson.

Thank you.

So who does the intensive case management?

Is it the subcontractors that you're talking about?

It's We Deliver Care and it's REACH, and then it's going to be these two other ones, and I'm interested in knowing who they are.

And I ask because it really does matter what their philosophy is, what their mandate is, what their subcontract with PDA is.

And when you were talking, Mr. Wolf, I was wondering, are you the one that's going to all those meetings with UDP and Ballot Alliance?

I like to just understand the division of labor better because then you're better able to replicate what's working.

Absolutely.

So REACH is our service provider.

They provide the intensive case management.

And then with WDC Deliver Care, they're the ones who are downtown our safety ambassadors, right?

So they encounter individuals that are unhoused, unsheltered, substance use disorder, mental health.

They also do overdose reversals.

They are partnered.

And so they interact with the care team.

But yes, I am also in those spaces.

But I would say, speaking to the project management piece, my relationship is building community, right, and maintaining with businesses while the intensive case management is done by the REACH service providers.

And so do you work with them on...

Here's a new treatment resource, for example.

If there are any job preparation or any other services that are necessary to keep people maybe from not progressing in the plan that they make for themselves, I understand upon...

There's a really clear division of labor between the project management team, which may identify system resources, absolutely.

For example, we were very involved in working on that KCRHA housing resource identification, housing match for the Third Avenue project.

But we're not participant facing.

So participant facing staff are the case management agencies.

And the model isn't, it's not like free to choose, if you will.

The lead case management model is an evidence-based defined model for people who are interested in more detail on that.

You can look at the toolkit at leadbureau, L-E-A-D-B-U-R-E-A-U.org.

There's a lead toolkit that describes the case management model in detail.

And so any applicant has to demonstrate that they will faithfully and with fidelity implement that model.

And we were satisfied we didn't...

PDA just facilitated and didn't vote, but the governing body representatives who selected who found these two new case management applicants to be qualified and directed that we offer them a chance to contract, found that they have experience and demonstrated commitment to that model, or if they have to make adaptations to what they've done, that they clearly understand it and are committed to doing that.

Thank you.

Sorry for the interruption.

That's a good question.

Thank you, Lisa.

So, thank you again.

The other piece that I wanted to speak to is one of the success stories from that intensive case management.

There was a couple that had been in-house for four years.

And...

Definitely, you know, due to substance use disorder, lack of education, lack of employment.

This couple had, you know, once they were able to say, okay, this is something that we are committed to doing, which they were held accountable to that, right?

They were able, one, the individual, the male was able to enter into a dojo.

It's like a quick...

It's actually a program that's ran through the Prison Scholars Fund, and it's a community, excuse me, a computer-based quick dojo program.

He was able to complete that and graduate, not only that, but once, as we mentioned earlier, is that partnership with KCRHA, right?

So not only that, they were able to get their names on that list, and we were able to have that conversation.

The case manager was able to say, I think these individuals have grown and, you know, and were able to prove that this is something that they wanted to change their life.

With that being said, they are currently housed, have been housed for the last five months.

The male is currently employed, and...

The female individual is currently working at a laundry cleaner's part-time in the area that they're in up in the Sandpoint area.

So again, not only that, but just highlighting the fact that that case management doesn't end there.

There is continuous follow-up, checking in, making sure everything is OK.

Are you able to pay your utility bills?

Is there anything that you need?

Do you have enough pet food?

So just keeping that relationship open and following up with that aftercare is very, very important to their stability and helping them to figure out what success is going to look like for them to stay stable.

So that's one of the things I wanted to definitely highlight.

Just because you're in the program and then you get housed doesn't mean that the follow-up drops off.

That is continuous.

Also, going back to want to speak to the other side of the East Precinct and what I'm seeing over there is, as we mentioned, we don't have the capacity to take community referrals at this time, right?

But what I wanted to highlight is what's important is that we are partnered with a lot of the communities in that area and have great partnerships and great allies.

And so I hear from the community members that said, you know, there's a little, a woman that has a business in the Capitol Hill area who's an older woman.

And She, you know, she tries to be nice and say, you know, you guys, can you not hang over here?

Can you not do this?

And of course there's some problematic behavior, right?

When she asked him to leave.

But what do you expect for a little old woman who's been in her shop and she's 76 years old, trying to navigate a conversation with somebody who's not really trying to move along.

And so she reached out to another organization, said, hey, I heard about that LEAD program.

Well, how do you make a referral?

I don't want to see them in jail, but how do I make a referral?

And so they explained to them, yes, you know what?

I'm very familiar with the LEAD program.

However, they're not doing this thing at this time, right?

So then I was able to make that connection.

And I say, do this thing at that time.

That means accepting the community referrals from business owners, right?

And so what I'm able to do with that partnership is I can get that information from that individual, take it to SPD, again, no community referrals, and let's have a conversation.

So I meet with...

Captain Trinh and Sergeant Frame and Lieutenant Sathers once a month.

And in that meeting, we discuss individuals that they may be coming across that they say, hey, this is somebody who's impacting this area in a detrimental way.

So how can we get them connected?

This is also a space where the community members that if they get any feedback, like I get feedback from businesses that are being impacted, hey, Michelle, can you just put this on your radar?

The Salvation Army is connecting, doing this and doing that.

So we're able to have those conversations to discuss what is happening in the community without having a community referral resource in that community.

We also talk about, you know, public safety in the area.

What does that look like?

Again, without having lead kind of, you know, to lean on.

But we're also able to...

Those individuals that...

When we're in those meetings, the individuals that we are discussing are high-impacted.

And then there's sometimes another piece that goes with that, right?

Is this an individual that would be good for the LEAD program?

Because like I said, these are names that not just law enforcement is coming across, but names that community members are bringing to law enforcement.

So sometimes we're not able to take that referral, and sometimes we are, right?

Just want to highlight that this is, you know, how the community referrals, that the arrest diversions and the social contacts are superseding what we're able to do as far as the community referrals go within the East Precinct.

Thank you.

Thank you for all of this time.

I know it's been a lot.

Unless there are any questions.

Let me just take a pause to see if there are.

Really appreciate the timeliness of this presentation.

Appreciate all the work that you're doing in collaboration with your contract providers who are giving life-saving care to people as well as your relationships that you've developed in community.

I can say that I have witnessed those relationships being built in District 1 and really appreciate the care to both those relationships that you're developing with community members, but also the people who have great needs and really hope that we can get back to a more spread throughout the city geographically based program that does accept community referrals.

The ability to do so creates advocates, community advocates, members of the public all over the city and that is I think a great strength of the program and I would hate to see that be diminished in any way.

We good?

All right.

Council Member Herbold, you've been here from before the beginning and your personal leadership has been almost unique in the country in imagining that this model could happen and seeing that it did.

And as the council representative on the governing board, as your service comes to a close, We'll see you on Thursday for that governing board meeting and just thanks from all of us.

Thank you for saying so.

I actually need to track down what year it was, but I do remember I was...

how we began, so the precursor to LEAD was a program called Clean Dreams, and it was one of three different programs that was seeking to use an alternative to enforcement.

And we conceived of this effort when council member Nick Licata was a council member and I was working for him, but it was after a citywide public safety summit where we brought together a lot of the traditional voices that you hear supporting more investments in police, the precinct advisory councils, the demographic advisory councils, folks from all over the city.

And what came out of that was a sort of a marriage of, additional traditional public safety investments in the agreement to try this new approach by providing funding to the Human Services Department to pilot these three different projects.

A lot of similarities within the projects focused in different areas.

Again, there's Clean Dreams focused in Southeast.

There was GOTS that was focused in Central, and I'm not remembering what the third was.

Co-stars.

Co-stars.

Working with the Neighborhood Corrections Initiative.

Fantastic.

So, I mean, I just I think it's worth taking note and remembering sort of the the origins of this project is really not that different than what this council and the most recent prior council has been working on, which is trying to focus investments to address public safety issues upstream to meet people's needs as a way of mitigating community impacts.

I'm just really glad to sort of have maybe not a period on that work, but to know that all of our collective efforts and shepherding of that work has brought us to this great point.

Thank you.

Council member Mosqueda.

There you are.

Oh.

Thank you very much and appreciate the notes of appreciation for Council member Herbold as the chair of this body and really leading on these efforts and to everybody at PDA, the entire team for your collaboration and your leadership.

It is.

Um, worth noting again, this is a nationally recognized program and the leadership, uh, award winning leadership of this body, I think gives, um.

Other jurisdictions, something to look towards as we try to solve these crises.

There's no doubt.

And I just want to thank folks as I've been out in community as well on various tours.

Um, and, um, you know, walkthroughs with members of reach and the, uh, it is, it is, um.

heroic work that you all do on a regular basis, and it saves lives and it saves money for our systems.

And importantly, it reunites families and it provides hope.

So thank you for all that you do.

I guess I wanted to just ask, though, as it relates to some of the questions that we saw on the graph, What is what is the takeaway here?

Because we knew that this would happen prior to the passage of the drug enforcement ordinance.

We knew that there was not capacity to absorb both police referrals as well as maintain community and business referrals.

You know, you warned that that would happen.

If the budget did not include additional funding.

That was known before the budget was finalized and sent to council.

And then when we received the budget, I confirmed multiple ways that the funding was not increasing, but at least it sounded like it was being maintained and adjusted for inflation.

So, I guess I'd like to have a better understanding of.

What a decrease was mentioned in the budget, if any, and.

Just ask again, what, you know, what is the ask of this council?

The only person on this body that will be here next year is council member Nelson and there will not be the crisis care center stood up as you noted.

And we will not have the mobile units expanded or built out as a result of that crisis care levy by May.

And if we were talking about having a crisis.

Within PDA emerged for the very people who've been asked to do more with less every year.

What is the advocacy ask here of county member Nelson specifically and the future council, because we knew that this would happen and yet the council still was asked to pass this legislation and there is no business or community referrals in place when we have police referrals taking over.

So, can you please remind me.

What the dollar amount reduction was, and this is not a question for you council member Nelson.

This is a question for the community advocates who are here.

Who are telling us that there's crisis on the horizon.

Can you tell us what the ask is preemptively.

For the spring, when you noted that there's going to be a cliff in funding.

If this implementation of the drug ordinance is going to remain in place.

And the resources will be stretched thin by May.

What is the ask of the future council?

Thank you again for all of your leadership.

I'm not trying to take away from that.

I just need to know the hard ask given.

That there is a crisis on the horizon that you have been warning us about.

The legislation was still passed.

You supported it.

But what is the ask now of the council?

Excuse me, I just want to note that I think just to reassure you.

That was not a question for you, Council Member Nelson.

I would like to ask the panel something.

Thank you.

We're in a good place.

To the chair, Madam Chair, I'd like to ask the panel.

Let me go back to trying to moderate this conversation.

I thought we were going to end on a high note for this presentation.

I understand Council Member Mosqueda's question was directed to our guests.

I will give you the floor, Council Member Nelson, after we get an answer.

Okay.

Thank you.

First, thank you, Council Member Mosqueda, for being another of those key leaders who have very, you know, used a lot of persistence and creativity to try to find a way to keep this work alive, including by bringing it to the attention of congressional officials who have engineered some one-time gap-filling funds.

So you've done more than just help from your city council seat.

You're right.

If nothing changes, we will have a system impasse or collapse.

Either we will have to turn down referrals from SPD, which poses problems because the ability to accept those referrals is the premise of the department's own policy now, implementing the ordinance, or some additional capacity will have to be built.

As I noted earlier, we are very open to doing some extra labor, trying to develop additional funding sources besides just the Seattle General Fund.

And I do...

through outreach to both council member Herbold and council member Nelson, we identified in advance of the legislative session, the possibility of Seattle advocating for an expansion of the state lead grant fund.

So hopefully that will happen.

That would be probably, you know, our number one recommendation is that the city unite in advocacy in Olympia to make that grant fund work for the city that created this model.

The possibility of congressionally identified funding channels for LEAD also exists, but then also we've been really frank with the mayor's office that they called for this model to play a certain role and it has, and it will not be, we have not pulled any, about when, you know, how far that can go.

And we do expect, you know, that partnership has been very strong and very reality-based.

So...

if supplemental funding is needed in 2024, the mayor's office is able to propose that.

And I think we just have to be frank with both the council and the mayor about when the pinch will come.

And it is not today, but it is imminent.

So, yeah.

Thank you, Lisa.

Council Member Nelson.

Yeah, thank you.

We're still ending on a high note.

I just wanted to speak because it seemed by being named by Councilmember Mosqueda that there might be some reason to be concerned, and I just wanted to reassure not just her but also the folks at our table and the public and the committee that we're in a good place, Lisa and I, and I am I want to say that in the process of me learning what does LEAD do once they have referrals, to me it's all about, okay, LEAD is a means to an end, and so how do we work in the end?

And Lisa was a strong supporter of my budget item, too.

to allow their case managers to send people directly to inpatient or intensive outpatient treatment and brokered support among my council colleagues.

She was also a person who came out strong in support of the public use bill and then the public use and possession bill that ended up finally getting passed.

So I think that the table is set for continued collaboration.

Thank you so much, Council Member Nelson.

Appreciate your pledge and the work that you've done to learn more about this program.

Thanks for joining us today.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Talk to you soon.

Noel, can you please read in item number two on the agenda?

Agenda item two is updates to the annual usage reviews of city surveillance technologies.

Thank you so much for your patience and appreciate your joining us today.

As we are joined at the table here, the committee table, we've got presenters from the Office of the Inspector General.

If you could just do some quick introductions, and I just have a couple sentences to get us kicked off.

Okay.

Just a quick introduction.

Name and title.

Yeah.

My name is Dan Pitts.

I'm the audit supervisor at OIG.

I'm Emily Morley.

I'm the surveillance technology analyst at Office of Inspector General.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

So, as we know, the city's surveillance ordinance has taken a lot of time before committee in recent years to basically, on a routine basis, review existing surveillance technologies as well as reviewing and auditing new ones.

Council members Nelson and Peterson have chaired committees that some of this work has appeared in.

And on our request, the Office of the Inspector General has begun working on some potential innovations that could improve the process that is required both under the surveillance ordinance as well as the 2017 Police Accountability Ordinance.

So really appreciate your reaching out to me and offering to share this proposal with the committee.

Thank you.

Hand it over to you now.

All right.

Thank you.

And thank you, Council Chair Herbold, for inviting us to be here.

So our workload for, just to recap kind of where we've been with surveillance, OIG published 10 reports on surveillance technologies last year for 10 different technologies.

There were six technologies approved in the last year and those will be added to our plate in the coming year.

So raising it to 16 technologies we'll need to review in 2024 and in the potential that more technologies will be potentially approved in 2024, more will be added in 2025, and you can see how the work is rapidly stacking on top of itself.

That's required us to look for how to adapt to that within how the language of the ordinance currently requires us to conduct the reviews.

Want to note that City Auditor has been a great partner in this.

They really got the ball rolling.

While they don't have nearly as many technologies to review as us, they also have a similar challenge to face in how to manage resources in conducting this work.

And we're both seeking an opportunity a way to manage resources while still conducting meaningful oversight and honoring the requirements of the ordinance as it's currently written.

What that means is, At a practical level, we've agreed on a framework for conducting a review of all technologies every year as required, but applying a risk assessment to those technologies to really figure out where we're doing deep dives and full compliance reviews and doing testing and issuing recommendations.

because not all of the technologies necessarily carry the same risk in any given year and have the same level of community concern.

And Emily's here is leading our efforts to kind of figure out what this looks like, and I'll turn it over to her for kind of the nuts and bolts of it, but I want to emphasize off the start that this is an iterative process that we see kind of revisiting and tweaking year over year, and that any kind of numbers or figures that we have in here are still kind of subject to change as we're going through this process, but we wanted to provide insight into the approach that we're taking and let you know generally what you can expect from us.

So I'll turn it over to Emily.

Thanks, Dan.

As Dan introduced, my presentation will describe the features of that process for conducting the annual usage reviews and also explain what those more comprehensive compliance reviews will look like as well.

Again, this is a joint effort between the Office of Inspector General and the Office of City Auditor.

So we envision this process as being multi-step for all the technologies.

All technologies will be subject to the first three steps and then a select number will be part of the compliance review, the step four.

The first being annual surveys.

Annual surveys will consist of approximately 27 questions that may be different for the Office of City Auditor, but these questions are based around the surveillance ordinance, sections A through F.

So some components of the ordinance require more detail, have more requirements, and so we have questions for answering each of those, and those are gonna help us to assess the level of risk for each technology.

Some technologies are unique from others, and so there may be differences between those surveys.

Broadly, they will always consist of about 30 questions in common, and then some additional ones that may be idiosyncratic to those.

Between the Office of Inspector General and Office of City Auditor, we will issue these surveys to our auditees, that would be Seattle Police Department and all other city departments that have or use surveillance technologies, which the Office of City Auditor reviews.

So some of the survey questions, just to give you an idea of what those would look like, might include if the technology is used to record audio, Under what circumstances is it likely that risks to violating civil liberties exist in the use of the technology?

And approximately how many individuals are subject to the surveillance annually?

Now these answers, these are proposed and maybe changed, but as you can see, the metric here will allow us to be consistent across technologies and assess a risk using a standard tool.

So in summary, annual surveys are tailored for each technology.

Our risk scoring will be comprised of many different sources, including those annual surveys.

There are other documents, however, that are useful in assessing the level of risk, including the surveillance impact report.

As defined by the ordinance, Seattle Police Department issues a surveillance impact report for every new technology and any substantive changes to existing technologies.

So a review of the SIR will be integral to assessing the level of risk since those are comprehensive documents issued by our auditees.

Now returning to those example survey questions, is the technology used to record audio, et cetera, you can see some of these can be answered using those documents without having to issue those necessarily as questions to our auditees.

So the first few questions might be answered by reviewing the surveillance impact report or prior compliance reviews, whereas the last one might be better answered using the survey or prior compliance review.

Additional considerations for the scoring of risk will include not just the survey answers, but also public concern.

Our office is responsive to the needs of the community, especially those enumerated in the SIRs.

We also wanna be considerate and thoughtful of government resources and the amount of time and resources dedicated to completing these reviews.

The number of new technologies, we see that at the start of 2024, there was six new technologies that we will be adding to our workload and at least several more that will likely be completed in their SIR process in 2024. We also want to be considerate of the years since a compliance review.

Since not all technologies will be subject to a compliance review, though they will still be reviewed annually per the ordinance, we want to make sure that all technologies on a rotating basis still are subject to that in-depth analysis to make sure that any changes, any differences between years are responsively found.

Here's an example of our proposed risk assessment.

This is an internal document.

It will likely be different for the Office of City Auditor.

But the most important feature here is that it is mapped onto the ordinance.

The sections of the surveillance ordinance are specific requirements.

And these are the example questions.

You can see that many of them are set up for certain categories, like Section A, which deals with the frequency of use, the purpose of use, whereas Section D is about the risks of civil liberties, disproportionate impacts.

And so some sections have more questions than others based on just the wording of the ordinance.

So on the screen is an example of two technologies and what their scores might look like.

We've not completed our internal assessment of this, so these are draft numbers.

But just as an example, we have the 911 logging recorder technology, which we reviewed this past year, as well as the automatic license plate reader, which is used by PATROL.

In this example, you can see that the total risk score between these technologies is pretty different.

The 911 logging recorder happens to be, in this exercise, one of the least risky technologies, though it still has a number of risks identified, whereas ALPR patrol surveillance technology has more risks identified.

The benefit of having this kind of risk assessment is not only that it thoughtfully and considerately directs government resources, but also it is a document that guides our efforts.

As you can see on the screen as well, these technologies maybe have similar scores in some categories, but different scores in others.

So this will help us internally as well.

In summary, the risk scoring compiles survey responses, SIR information, and other considerations and allows us to prioritize all of those considerations and make a determination about the technologies that are subject to the annual review versus those that will be selected for compliance review.

The annual review will have each technology's risk score ranked will integrate those important considerations previously named.

And altogether, those will be published in a consolidated risk memo or some other titled document that will describe what are the internal controls or those strategies used by Seattle Police Department or other auditing and oddities to mitigate those risks.

So the most important thing about this is that it response to the ordinance, but also identifies those strategies for future considerations.

Lastly, there is the compliance review.

As I said, some select technologies, which will be based on a number of factors, will be subject to the compliance review.

So we'll select these internally.

These will be based on risk scores, opportunities for analysis.

For example, there are some proposed expansions of present technologies, which is a consideration for us to, in the coming year, evaluate those technologies.

So just to reiterate, the current design of our survey makes it impossible that technologies not be reviewed on a rotating basis.

So just the way it's structured will require us to have that on a semi-frequent basis, that more in-depth analysis.

The difference between the compliance review and the annual usage review then will be that the compliance reviews will test those strategies, SPD and other departments that use surveillance technologies have in place that are designed to reduce risks and the extent to which, if at all, they do reduce risks.

In summary, our process, at least for this upcoming year, as Dan said, it would be an iterative process.

We expect that there will likely be changes in future years, but as far as 2024, we expect to share our annual surveys with SPD and other departments that use surveillance technologies, conduct some internal discussions, evaluating their responses to our surveys, as well as departmental documents, the SIR, policies and procedures, and then move forward on publishing our reviews once they've been conducted, either the annual review as the consolidated risk memo or the compliance review.

And that is what I have for you.

Thank you so much.

This is really helpful.

I think it's a great innovation that can definitely focus your work on the risks and help focus the city stakeholder discussion on those risks.

I really think that this has the potential of making the process more accessible to the public.

And, you know, we know these analyses are pretty technical, detailed, as we've just heard.

And there's definitely a place for that, but the concept that you're presenting today I think can make it both more clear for council members and the public as well.

Checking to see if there are any questions or comments.

Nope.

Nope, okay.

The only thing I would ask is that you work with the external to the city privacy stakeholders that are very interested in this work, sharing the concept with both the ACLU, if you haven't already, as well as the city's, I forget what the advisory group is called.

We call it the working group.

Yeah, there's a surveillance technologies working group who has an official role in commenting during the process where the council is approving those technologies.

So I know they're keenly interested in this topic.

Yeah, absolutely.

The working group is not something that we've engaged with beyond their comments provided in the SR, but we are in regular...

We have been in for the last year doing our work and going forward in communication with ACLU and partnership with them.

Really appreciate that.

I just have one more thing.

Sure.

I've mentioned several times on the record that I recognize that this is a large body of work for OIG, and I have expressed support for not doing these things every single year, spacing them out perhaps five years.

I understand that this is an attempt to address the workload issue and see how it goes, but do it in a smart way so that technologies are identified that perhaps need more or less review than the strict annual review.

So just wanted to let you know that this is in line with what I have said before and hope to see how it plays out.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks again.

Really appreciate your work.

I've enjoyed working with you both.

It's been a pleasure.

Thank you very much.

Yes, thanks for your time.

So this marks the final meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee.

This committee was established by council resolution for 2020 and 2021, and then again for 2022 and 2023. The next council will establish by resolution committee chairs and structures.

I just want to recognize the collaborative efforts and collective effort of this committee.

And just want to take a minute to thank some folks.

First, want to thank my co-committee members, Council Members Lewis as co-chair, Council Member Mosqueda, I'm sorry, Vice Chair, Council Member Mosqueda, Councilmember Peterson and Councilmember Nelson.

I also want to be sure to recognize the critical work of our committee clerks past Team Herbold, Committee Clerk Eric Clardy, and current Committee Clerk Newell Aldrich.

I want to name and recognize the central staff assigned to this committee's work, Greg Doss, Ann Gorman, Jen Lebrecht, Asha Venkataraman, Lisa Kay, Yolanda Ho, as well as the legislative IT staff, especially Eric Depuisoy, Sanji, Ian Smith, and our friends at the Seattle Channel.

This committee covers several different areas.

Seattle Police Department, our accountability structure, Human Services Department, Office of Emergency Management, the Community Safety and Communications Center, now CARE, the Fire Department, and the Health Department, Seattle King County Health Department.

Just real quickly, some high points.

For SPD, we passed legislation supporting hiring and recruitment incentives, and I thank Councilmember Nelson for working with me on that.

We shepherded the confirmation of Chief Diaz, and we passed less lethal weapons regulations.

For OPA, OIG, and the CPC, we did director confirmations for both the CPC and the OPA.

Director Betz and Director Ellis.

We passed legislation to establish a new process for the use of subpoena authority for the OPA and the OIG.

We've passed accountability legislation to strengthen the operations of the CPC.

And we've also passed legislation to update the 2017 accountability legislation to include a new process for investigation of OPA complaints against the chief of police.

With the Human Services Department, I've had the pleasure of working with Councilmember Mosqueda in her capacity as budget chair to develop support for development and implementation of the Seattle Community Safety Initiative, these geographically-based, non-police-oriented uh public safety service supports all throughout three different geographic hubs in the city we confirmed director tanya kim we passed resolutions to pay close the pay penalty gap for human services providers and also a resolution defining the council's intention to bring lead funding to scale For the Office of Emergency Management, we've passed legislation supporting vulnerable communities by expanding the work of the Hazard Risk Mitigation Plan to include extreme weather events.

We passed a resolution and did monitoring efforts in this committee to support the unreinforced masonry work being led by the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection and the Office of Emergency Management.

And we also shepherded Director Curry Mayer's confirmation.

The previous CSC, now CARE, working with Councilmember Lewis, we stood up an alternative response program.

In the Seattle Fire Department, also working with Councilmember Lewis, we worked on legislation to give firefighters another tool to promote crisis scene safety, to render life-saving services to people in crisis.

And with Councilmember Mosqueda's help, we worked to make sure that there aren't unintended consequences in the form of arrests.

or criminal legal system involvement of vulnerable people associated with the implementation of this ordinance.

As it relates to the Seattle King County Public Health Department, we passed a resolution calling on King County and Washington state government to fully fund healthcare and behavioral healthcare needs.

We also supported King County investments made with funds allocated by the city council to King County in life-saving services for drug users.

And we also shepherded the confirmation of King County Public Health Director Dr. Kahn.

Other pieces of legislation that we've done in this committee include, as we've talked about today, a pathway in creating in the Seattle Municipal Code lead diversion for misdemeanor public use and possession legislation in partnership with council members Lewis and Nelson.

I think those are—I'm calling those two folks out because I think Councilmember Lewis and I started off sponsoring the bill that we eventually voted on.

Councilmembers Nelson and Peterson sponsored prior versions, but I believe Councilmember Nelson joined as a sponsor in the one that finally passed.

We also passed a resolution identifying ethnogens as a low law enforcement priority, again, with Councilmember Lewis.

And of course, can't forget the three separate labor rights ordinances for people not considered under law to be employees, but instead considered contractors.

These three ordinances, one focused on transparency in contracts, the other minimum payment for work done, and the last, deactivation protection so people aren't unfairly denied ability to do their work.

In closing, I also want to thank Chief Diaz, Heather Marks, Brian Maxey.

Fire Department Chief Scoggins and Helen Kirkpatrick, Office of Emergency Management Director Curry Mayer, Care Department Chief Smith, prior acting and interim directors Lombard and Gonzales.

Also prior Director Kim at HSD, Kevin Munt, Dr. Khan and Susie Levy at Public Health.

Wanna go back also and recognize prior CSCC Interim Directors Lombard and Gonzales.

Don't wanna miss their good help.

Prior OPA Director Meyerberg, Interim Director Perkins, and now Permanent Director Betz, former CPC Directors Scott and Grant, current CPC Director Ellis, and co-chairs Hunter, Walden, and Merkel, Public Safety Commission Director Scheele, and the city attorney's office, especially Karela Cowart, Ghazal Shafari, for their legal service and advice on public safety issues, and folks in the mayor's office, especially Dan Nolte and Andrew Meyerberg, former senior deputy mayor Monisha Harrell, and now Deputy Mayor Burgess.

Really, and also can't forget the Office of the Inspector General, Lisa Judge, and interim, or sorry, Deputy Director, Bessie Scott at that department.

Thank you, Noel, for sending me a quick note not to forget OIG.

For these executive departments, I'm only naming primarily leadership and council liaisons, but there are scores of staff in each of these departments that made this work possible.

Too many to name and thank.

Thanks as well to community partners who have testified and collaborated in our efforts to pass good policy that supports our city.

And again, just want to thank my colleagues on the council, council members, Mosqueda, Lewis, Peterson, and Nelson.

I really appreciated working with you over the time that I've chaired this committee.

Before we adjourn, are there any other comments?

Council Member Ruscata.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I want to say thank you for your decades of service to the City of Seattle.

Every time I have a question about what has been done or what we're supposed to be tracking, I often rely on you and your memory, having served both as staff and then as a council member.

This city has benefited from your incredible knowledge and your advocacy and your tenacity with ensuring that our most vulnerable are invested in and lifted up, and that we create systems that allow for greater self-determination, that we get at the roots of the problem.

And I think as the public knows well, we agree the vast majority of times and it's been really a pleasure of mine to be able to work with you and learn from you and your team.

I know my team has appreciated working with you and your team directly as well.

And it's a huge loss for the city to not have you in this position.

And I wish you the best of luck, but I know that as this is your final council committee meeting, You can leave knowing that the city is healthier and more likely to be housed and more likely to have access to human services and get stable access to health care because of the long work that you've done.

And that is all on the health and human services side, not to mention your leadership over the decades on worker rights and worker protections and helping to make sure that more families can have a living wage and that those who've been left out by our federal and state standards are folded in at this city as a founding member and leader within local progress we know that the nation looks to seattle and many times over history you have been actually at the helm despite who might be taking credit or people pounding their fists and wanting to grandstand you have been doing the work and i want to make sure that you also get the recognition for all of the incredible leadership you've done on labor protections and that supports our local economy puts more money in people's pocket and they spend it in small businesses so thanks for your incredible steadfast leadership not only on this committee but as vice chair of the budget committee and not just for being a good friend and reliable source of knowledge of all things city council related i wish you the best of luck and look forward to continuing to work with you and learn from you in future years thank you so much councilman mosqueda i really

I'm trying to make sure that there are a minimum number of tiers in the next few days, but really appreciate it.

All right.

Oh, Council Member Nelson.

Thank you.

I just don't want to ruin the moment, but just wanted to thank you very much.

You've been here the longest, you know the most about the process and the inner workings of the city.

Well, I think as some members of the public know, we both work together in a different capacity and as aides to former council members.

And it's fun to see you here in this role as well now.

All right.

The time is 1140 a.m.

and we are adjourned.

Thank you, everybody.