Seattle Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development & Arts Committee 4/23/19

Good morning and welcome to the April 23rd meeting of the Civil Rights Utilities Economic Development Arts Committee.

It is 9.35 a.m.

I'm Lisa Herbold, chair of the committee, as well as Councilmember representing District 1 West Seattle and South Park.

Joined by Councilmember O'Brien.

Good morning, Councilmember.

And for today's agenda, we have a start of our morning with a presentation from Cultural Spotlight.

And followed up with the items of business as follows.

We'll have our second appointment meeting of proposed Mariko Drucker Lockhart as Director for the Office of Civil Rights.

And expect a vote today after a second discussion.

And then we will have a discussion only of an ordinance related to the Cedar River Municipal Watershed, specifically related to the application of a herbicide called Imazapyr to treat invasive knotweed species.

And then finally, we're going to wrap up with presentations from each of our civil rights commissions on their 2019 work plans.

So with that, I'll hand it over to Jenny, who can tell us about our cultural spotlight presentation today.

Good morning.

Thank you so much for having us.

My name is Jenny.

I'm from the Office of Arts and Culture, and I am joined this morning by Raven Two Feathers.

Hello.

My name is Raven Two Feathers.

I am Cherokee, Seneca, Cayuga, Comanche.

I'm originally from Albuquerque, and I am here because of Tracy Rector.

She is one of the three people who leads Yahao, and I would like to tell you about how she convinced me to go to an indigenous artist residency.

So, as bubbly as ever, and as enthusiastic as ever, she tells me, hey, you probably should go to this thing.

So knowing that it's mainly going to be feminine classical artists, I hesitantly accept, I'm mainly in film.

And I'd only just started passing as male.

And when I got into groups of feminine people, I usually got grouped in with them as female.

But I get there, I pick up one of the other artists, Lehua, and Turns out when we go through our whole introduction and figuring out who's staying in what part of the cabin, we go through pronouns and everything is good.

We're all not on the binary spectrum, so it's brilliant.

And we all seem super excited to go and get started with this residency because we stay up talking till 5 a.m.

And then eventually when I wake up the next morning, We, or I, do not feel the creative endeavor whatsoever.

Things aren't clicking for me, and I decide, okay, we'll just take this a little slower than I expected, and I go out with Lehua, and we just explore Port Townsend, which was amazing.

residency was in Port Townsend?

Yes, it was part of Centrum.

And about how many people, how many artists were participating at that point?

It was five of us.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah.

So we go out and then we come back and we all make our one of many family dinners that week.

And then we get to go and work on our own pieces together for the exhibition.

So I'm working on a roadmap that it's the most I can manage to work up to, which sort of starts to get me going in that creative process.

And then I wake up the next morning and an abusive ex texts me.

And all of those terrible memories come flooding back.

So I decide, okay, I'll try and take a walk.

Unfortunately, that makes things worse.

I go back.

I make a breakfast burrito.

I try and calm down.

It manages to keep it from getting worse.

And then I, and then Lehua comes back from their walk on the beach, and they notice that something's off with me.

They ask me, what is it?

Do you want to talk about this?

I say no, and then immediately start talking about it.

about all the things that are messing with my creative process and that I'm not doing as much work on the product that I will be submitting.

But then they come back saying that there is no one piece that you could ever strain yourself over that would make it worth you losing yourself.

So doing as much work as you can on yourself is doing more for your artwork and your art and yourself than anything else ever could be.

So...

Supportive environment, sounds like.

Super supportive environment.

And as she's saying that all of this doesn't happen in one day, I blocked my ex, finally.

And then, of course, during those other dinners, we are able to really talk about what has been bothering us and really all of us built up this safe environment for indigenous queer artists.

And finally, on the last day, I'm able to get the only recording I really needed from my newfound friends, and that is them saying the word, yahoo.

So really, Tracy, Asia, and Sapri have been doing so much incredible work for Seattle and the arts community here, and the indigenous community here.

Thank you for sharing that with us.

Sounds like it was a fantastic experience for you and the other artists.

Yeah, very much so.

Do you want to share with us anything in particular about what happened post-creative process?

As I mentioned before, I did have the privilege and pleasure of attending the opening.

As I also said, I'm going to need to get back there because there was a lot going on that day.

But maybe just a quick thumbnail sketch of what folks will experience.

if they are able to make time to go down?

Yeah, definitely.

Because I believe there are multiple curators.

It's not just a single curator, right?

Correct.

Yeah.

Well, we have over 200 indigenous artists and I believe over 280 pieces there at King Street Station.

Well, we also have a Latinx show at the Vermilion Art Gallery.

And we have multiple different curators from all over, and we have guest curators as well from throughout indigenous Americas and Latinx places.

And...

You can keep going.

And the show runs through August 3rd?

Yes, it runs through August 3rd, and the Vermilion runs to May 4th, I believe.

Okay.

Well, great.

Thank you so much for coming and sharing your experience with us.

Thank you.

I'm really glad that Tracy Rector was able to have that sort of mentoring and supportive role in your process.

And I'm happy that you were able to participate in this really groundbreaking exhibit.

So thanks for sharing that with us.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Council Member O'Brien.

Thank you for sharing your personal experience there too.

That's really powerful.

Thank you.

Moving on to public comment.

We have two people signed up for public comment.

The first is Stephen Burke, followed by Tor Bell.

Hi, my name's Stephen Burke.

I'm the manager of the King County Noxious Weed Control Program.

I'm here to speak in support of Ordinance 119502, regarding herbicide use in the Cedar River municipal watershed.

This is about authorising legislation that will control the serious noxious weed, Japanese knotweed, which has devastated large areas of the watershed downstream of municipal watershed.

And through a community-based long-term effort, we've now managed to control most of that knotweed and minimise the water quality and habitat problems that it has created.

However, the watershed is very important because it's the source upstream of many of the initial infestations, so it's very important from a watershed scale perspective to control the knotweed in the watershed.

The work that's been done to this date has got the knotweed down to very low levels.

From our point of view, it's very important to maintain that level of control.

Minimal amounts of herbicide used by trained, licensed operators in largely upland areas in the watershed to maintain the levels of control being achieved.

And we've reached the milestone of this project of getting control right down to Lake Washington with our partners for Terra and SPU.

So it's been a collaborative community wide effort that's been very successful.

So we support the ordinance, the herbicide to be used as safe and an EPA registered product applied by trained licensed applicators and is the best tool for the job.

So I just urge you to give the tools that the staff of SPU need to be effective and safe in the implementation of this work.

So thank you very much.

Hi, my name is Tor Bell.

I'm the Field Programs Director for the non-profit Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust.

And I too am here in support of Ordinance 119502 for the use of amazapyr to control Japanese knotweed in the Cedar River Watershed.

The Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust has been partnering with the Cedar River Watershed for 15 years or more on recreation and conservation projects.

And we've worked outside of the watershed on control of Japanese knotweed and have a great deal of experience with it.

The limited use of imazapyr and the long-term need to control it is important in the watershed.

And as Steve mentioned, it very much is this long-term iterative process working down the entire length throughout the watershed.

And this is a tool that has proven effective and that is one that needs to be continued there in the watershed.

So thank you for the support of that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Great.

With that, we're going to move into the business for today.

We're going to start with item number one.

Please, Noel.

Item one is appointment 01274, appointment of Mariko Lockhart as director, Seattle Office for Civil Rights, for a term to December 31, 2021. Thank you, Noel.

Good morning.

Start off with introductions, please.

Mariko Lockhart, Interim Director at the Seattle Office for Civil Rights.

Good morning.

Shefali Ranganathan with the Mayor's Office.

Thank you so much.

Who would like to start?

I'm happy to, once again, good morning Council Member Herbold and Brian.

It's a great pleasure to be here to reintroduce Mariko Lockhart as the Mayor's nominee to permanently head up the Office of Civil Rights.

As we spoke about last meeting, Mariko has a long history in empowering communities and lifting up voices of those who need and whose voices are not traditionally heard in community.

In her tenure as the Director of the Office of Civil Rights, she has played a vital role in helping to stabilize the office, and most importantly, to help continue to implement its mission of ensuring that civil rights are protected and that we continue to advance equity in the city of Seattle.

So with that, I will hand it over to Mariko.

Thank you.

Well, I don't have a new statement.

I just want to reiterate that the work of our office is incredibly important to especially communities most impacted by racism, both inside our city government and throughout the Seattle community.

Our office plays a very important role and has the potential to do even more.

And it would be a great privilege to help guide this office through its next phase of transition, wherever that may take us.

Thank you.

Just a little bit of background for the viewing public.

This is a follow-up to the committee meeting on April 9th, where we heard some initial answers to questions.

that council members as well as community members, specifically folks from representing the Civil Rights Commissions prepared questions and on April 9th we discussed many, but not all, of the answers to those questions.

The council back in 2018 passed legislation that defined some of our expectations for what the process would look like of this confirmation and specifically called out the interest of the council to involve the commissions more than typically spelled out in the confirmation process.

So that's why we've worked with them to collect answers.

Should this move forward, the council typically prepares an expectations letter I'll be working with the commissions as well as putting together that expectations letter.

And because the mayor appointed Director Lockhart as interim back in 2018, that is what led to the council's decision to pass this amendment.

this ordinance about the process because the Office of Civil Rights is currently engaged in an exercise to make a determination about recommendations for potential changes to the structure.

And so because of the desire of the council to sort of protect that work and honor that work, We had some hopes and expectations that we would not be acting on this particular nomination until we had gotten through the bulk of that work, and I think we have.

So that's good, and I really appreciate Director Lockhart and the executive for working with me on the timing and working with the rest of the staff.

I appreciate your diligence and attention to the process generally and to commitment to the people of Seattle as well as the staff in your organization.

Council Member O'Brien, do you have any thoughts?

I don't have anything additional.

I really appreciated the conversation a couple weeks ago, Marco, and I'm excited about the opportunity coming forward and the challenges, frankly, that are in front of us.

I think the, I'm really interested to hear kind of the report back in a month or so.

And I doubt that there'll be a, Here's the thing you just do tomorrow, and it's all good.

It's going to be a long process, but I really feel confident in having you at the helm to kind of shepherd and steward that process as we move forward.

So thanks for your commitment.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I do have just a couple follow-up questions from our last discussion.

One of the things that you highlighted that I thought was really helpful is that There are challenges at SOCR for how to advance equity while constrained by laws that are aimed at ensuring equality.

And that you spoke to the fact that there are some limitations to the complaint-based model and that you are interested in exploring other tools to get at that equity goal.

Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Sure.

And those conversations are ongoing.

Our enforcement team is in strategic planning mode and has had several meetings to look at that issue.

Right now, the way our system works, anyone can come to our office with a complaint either in person, by phone, or online.

And there's a screening process to determine, one, if it's jurisdictional, if it falls within the jurisdiction of Seattle.

And then, really, there's a set of criteria to see if it meets the threshold of an investigation.

And that's really the one tool that we have right now.

What we're looking at, and there are other cities around the country that are starting to use other types of remedies as well, is at which stage might we offer and support and facilitate other types of resolutions.

There's always the option of conciliation that exists in our process, but that comes at a later stage.

What we're looking at is possibly as someone comes to us with their initial complaint, that they might be more interested in a restorative practice.

early on and not go through an entire investigation.

Those are generally quite lengthy because they're very thorough.

They involve potentially looking at comparators, several interviews, researching documentation, looking at every aspect of the complaint and the respondent's information and response.

I think it's an exciting possibility.

I was recently at the Government Alliance on Race and Equity membership meeting in Albuquerque and had the opportunity to talk with the folks from the New York City Human Rights Commission, and they are using restorative practices at different stages, and they're also interested in exploring.

I think this is a new field for the country, really, for people engaged in enforcement.

We're looking at how we do that and tap into both existing resources like our alternative dispute resolution team at the city and also how we might tap into community resources as well.

That's really exciting.

The reason I asked this follow-up question is because that aligns with some of the work I'm trying to do with bias crimes.

And because of the recommendations coming both from the staff of the Office of Civil Rights as well as commissions, we're looking at whether or not We could work to design a restorative justice approach to those instances when the city attorney adds a charge of bias on top of the underlying crime that they're already pursuing.

So I've been reaching out to a number of folks who do this kind of work around other types of crimes.

and trying to see whether or not a curriculum could be developed for bias crime.

So I'm really excited to work more with you on that.

That's great.

I think it is a really exciting field and an opportunity.

Also, I just wanted to mention that as we're rolling out the implementation of the mayor's executive order on anti-harassment and anti-discrimination, we've now stood up a new centralized investigations unit and the Office of the Employee Ombud.

And so together with the Office for Civil Rights, We're looking at, one, that there's no wrong door.

Any complaint can come to any of our offices, and that together we'll be coordinating and ensuring that the response is appropriate and supportive to whatever kind of complaint and what the complainant is hoping to achieve.

Not only no wrong door, but hopefully also some consistent practices for handling those complaints.

Exactly.

Regardless of which door they come through.

Yes.

Well, good.

Thank you so much.

That was the main question that I had as follow-up.

If there are no further questions.

Great.

I'd like to move appointment 01274. Second.

All those in favor, vote aye.

None opposed, none abstaining.

This will move on to full council on Monday.

I really look forward to continuing to work with you.

Thank you so much.

Agenda Item 2 is Council Bill 119502, an ordinance relating to the Cedar River Municipal Watershed, amending the secondary use policies adopted by Ordinance 114632 to provide for the limited application of the herbicide imazapyr to treat invasive knotweed species.

Thank you, Newell.

Hi.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Hello.

Let's start with a quick round of introductions down the line.

I'm Julia Munger.

I'm the Invasive Species Program Manager at the Cedar River Watershed.

Thank you.

I'm Amy Labarge.

I'm the Interim Watershed Management Division Director.

Brian, good night.

Council Central staff.

Great.

Who'd like to kick us off?

I will kick us off and pass it to Julia.

So thank you for having us today.

I just want to provide a little context to this ordinance request and go back in time a little bit to the secondary use policies for the Cedar River Municipal Watershed.

that were passed by council in 1989 under ordinance 114632. 1989. 1989, yes.

So this ordinance way back when clarified the mission for the Seattle Municipal Watershed, Cedar River Municipal Watershed and designated the primary mission as high quality drinking water supply watershed.

It also articulated secondary missions of protecting fish and wildlife habitat and managing forests sustainably and also at that time to acquire additional forest lands in the watershed and protect them for habitat and water supply.

This ordinance also clarified policies.

The first of which was to maintain closed watershed access and protect against trespass for the purpose of protecting the water supply.

The second was to continue fire prevention and suppression efforts.

The third was to advance an education program to inform users of the water about where their water comes from and the unique asset of the municipal watershed and to conduct research that was relevant to watershed management in the long term.

There are also policies to protect cultural resources.

And the last policy I'll mention, which is relevant to this ordinance, is to continue a moratorium on herbicide application in the Cedar River municipal watershed.

So we are here for the fourth time to request exemption to that portion of the secondary use policies and to request exception to the herbicide moratorium for the strict purpose of applying the herbicide Imazapyr on the invasive plant species knotweed, which we've heard a little bit about for a period of three years.

So that's the context.

I'll pass it to Julia.

Thanks.

So as Amy mentioned, we're here to request the continuing treatment of knotweed with the herbicide Imazapyr in the watershed.

We worked for nearly two decades to control knotweed in the watershed.

We started with manual control and moved on to chemical control nine years ago.

And it's been really integral to the health of the watershed to continue this knotweed program.

So I'm going to cover some of our history of controlling knotweed in the watershed and why we control it, some of the concerns that some of our stakeholders have had in the past or that they may have currently, and also what we've done to address those concerns.

So as Amy mentioned, we do have a general prohibition of herbicide in the watershed.

After we discovered the knotweed in 2002, we worked for eight years to control it.

We controlled four acres by digging and covering it with fabric, and that was less than a quarter of the known infestation at the time.

And even though some of the patches shrunk during those eight years, most of them remained really vigorous.

And we realized that it wasn't possible to fully treat the infestation using the methods that we'd been using.

So in 2009, we came to council and asked for the use of the herbicide Imazapyr to treat knotweed.

And we've received authority from city council three times to do that.

So we're back asking for a fourth time.

We began treating knotweed, since we began treating knotweed with imazapyr, we've had a really drastic decrease in the coverage.

We estimate there's been a 95% decrease in the knotweed area or the coverage of leaves in that time since 2011. And we've also decreased our use of herbicide annually with that decrease in knotweed.

In the early years, we used hundreds of ounces per year.

And in 2018, we used a total of 10 ounces of imazapyr across the 28 acres that the knotweed is present.

So drastic reduction in the application.

Yeah.

And is that only because the knot rate coverage has declined, or are there other reasons such as the method that you're using for application?

We've been using the same method since we started, which is a targeted foliar spray.

It's just a decline in the coverage that allows us to use so much less.

So we are anticipating a need for maintenance level control.

We still have about 5% coverage of knotweed and we think we're going to average about 16 ounces a year.

We think it'll be more than our 10 ounces this last year because we found some really large flowering plants late in the season that we decided to flag and come back to treat later because we wanted to avoid pollinators.

So we'll treat those earlier in the season this year before they begin flowering.

So we've got some large areas or some large plants that we weren't able to treat this year.

So the amount that we'll use will probably increase.

Is it 5% coverage?

Yeah.

5% of the entire watershed or 5% of the area?

5% of our original 20 acres of coverage, yes.

So we've decreased by 95%.

So we have multiple reasons why we've been controlling knotweed in the watershed, and some of those are ecological.

There's some major water quality impacts that knotweed can have on streams.

It causes erosion, it reduces riparian vegetation, and it limits habitat.

And all of these issues can end up being really negatively impactful to SPU's drinking water supply, and also the habitat that we have, especially for our listed salmon species that are in the Cedar River.

And we've also got civic reasons why we're controlling knotweed.

It's legally required to control along the Cedar River, and we also have partnerships with our downstream groups, including Forterra and King County, who came to speak earlier.

And these groups have also been controlling knotweed along the Cedar River for over a decade, and we've worked closely with them to coordinate our treatment down the Cedar River, and we're all using very similar approaches to our methods.

And a critical piece of this coordination is maintaining our upstream work.

As Steve Burke mentioned, even a small fragment of knotweed floating downstream can reroute and cause a new population of knotweed.

So controlling this upstream work now that we've cleared all the way down to Lake Washington on the Cedar River is a really critical piece to this success of our downstream partners.

Can I ask a question of the work below SPU's control area, below Landsberg?

Is it had similar success where there's just a fraction of what's left?

I mean, it's been a few years since I've been out there, but I remember seeing large patches in various places along.

Right.

I actually had been in contact earlier with King County and Forterra, and unprompted, you know, not telling them our experience, they shot back almost the exact same numbers of about, you know, a 90 to 95% reduction, limited recurrences, but still having to treat year after year.

These plants have a really large root mass, and so you might treat one little plant on the root mass, but under the ground, you know, there might be another one that pops up the following year.

So they've been experiencing almost eerily similar results to us.

So it's very consistent all the way down the cedar.

And is that on both private land and public land?

Yeah, so I know Forterra in particular has been working a lot with private landowners along the Cedar River, and it's required by King County for control, so they are required to comply.

Got it, so it's not an option that a property owner can decide they want to harvest, not weed as a crop or something like that.

Right.

And do we have any more, my recollection at least, when we did the first of these ordinances, that the infestation of knotweed wasn't necessarily adjacent to the river.

A lot of it was upland.

Do we have a sense of how it gets there?

Do birds drop pieces, or how did it happen?

Well, there's certainly areas of the Cedar River watershed that used to be occupied by people.

There were towns and that sort of thing there, and those towns have since ceased to exist, but some of those ornamental plants remain.

Also back 20 years ago, before it was really recognized as a problem, it would get mowed frequently.

And so those small fragments would get distributed all over the place.

And so some of that is a little bit by our own doing before anyone knew any better.

So there's certainly patches that are roadside or in more wetland areas than directly along the Cedar River, I would say.

The majority, or a good portion of our knotweed infestation is beyond just stream banks.

So I'll continue on.

We understand also that the public might have concerns about herbicide application within the watershed.

So we've really been wanting to address the community concern about imazapyr and how it impacts human health.

So imazapyr inhibits an enzyme that's only found in plants.

So the impacts to animal health, and that includes humans, fish, and pollinators, is really minimal.

SPU worked with a toxicologist at Washington State University, and his analysis showed that even a fairly large amount of herbicide that accidentally entered streams would result in negligible amounts if it ever reached consumers' taps.

In his analysis, it was six cups of herbicide, which is far more than we use in a given year.

at this stage, and that amount was 60 million times lower than the no observable adverse effect level for a child, so it was very low.

And so that six cups level, that is beyond what you use, and what you use doesn't make its way into the water.

Correct, yeah.

So we recognize that impacts to pollinators are also a concern and we've made a point to prioritize the health of pollinators within the watershed.

Even though Imazapyr targets enzymes only found in plants, we avoid spraying if pollinators are on a plant and we flag large flowering plants to come back to to spray later rather than treating them while they're flowering.

Both of those methods are consistent with King County noxious weed guidelines.

And we're also helped by the fact that the majority of the plants that we're treating are very small regrowth and most of those don't produce flowers.

And you'd mentioned earlier our downstream partners.

Yes.

Do they also follow this practice of not spraying when flowers are present?

That's correct.

That's my understanding.

I know King County has really worked to adjust their guidelines in the last few years, and the policy is to avoid while pollinators are present.

Sometimes they're spraying outside of the pollinator patterns, so in the morning or in the evenings when pollinators aren't active is another method that they might use.

We have so few plants at this point that we have the flexibility to just completely avoid plants while they're flowering at all.

So it sounds to me like you're saying some of The other people who are doing this work don't consistently do a plant by plant observation and avoid spraying when there are flowers.

Some of them just do it at a different time of day.

Yeah, I think for the most part they've tried to adjust for the larger plants to a time of the season when they're not flowering.

But there's also evidence that shows, you know, this herbicide dries within a matter of minutes.

And so being able to avoid the time of day where pollinators are active has been helpful to them.

But I'm not entirely sure of all of their practices.

And their practices are governed by county policies?

Yeah, they have a guideline that they've produced.

Okay, thank you.

You're welcome.

And finally, we recognize that there might be concerns about imazapyr getting compared to glyphosate, which is getting elevated to a tier one pesticide by the city.

And it's also recently been in the news as a subject of lawsuits.

All restricted-use pesticides are classified as Tier 1 pesticides in the city, and that includes imazapyr.

However, glyphosate in the past has been less restricted because it's been readily available to consumers in products like Roundup.

And so the elevation of glyphosate to a Tier 1 herbicide is essentially the recognition by the city that that herbicide is not as safe as they once thought.

And so we're beginning to use higher precautions for that herbicide in the city.

And those are precautions that are already in place for for imazapyr, and we've been using those precautions to limit exposure to the environment and to our applicators.

There's also differences between imazapyr and glyphosate, even though they're both used to treat knotweed.

We originally chose to use imazapyr over glyphosate in the watershed because it's less harmful to animals than glyphosate, and it's also more potent.

We end up having to use a lot less of it than the glyphosate.

And as it relates to elevating glyphosate to Tier 1, is that something that is contained in the ordinance or is that done outside of the legislative realm and done via internal policy?

This is a citywide policy that's outside of our current ordinance.

Yeah.

So, but I'm assuming that there is some sort of a guiding document that defines what tier one products are and what the restrictions are for those products that

Yeah, the city has an interdepartmental integrated pest management team that's currently working to revamp this and I think the glyphosate issue really caused that, was sort of the impetus for this.

And I think that's a really important part of the re-doing of our tiered system.

And so the team that I'm also a member of is really taking a close look at all of these herbicides that the city is using and coming up with new requirements for why each herbicide is in a different tier.

It would be great to get some background on sort of the scope of that effort.

How many different products are you looking at?

How many are currently tiered?

And sort of what the approach is of the team and the timeline for its work.

It's very interesting.

We're dedicated to making sure that we're protecting the environment and our citizens when we apply herbicide in the watershed.

We've been doing this by ensuring water quality is monitored, that we're avoiding pollinators, and also that our applicators are staying safe.

We've tested water quality during our knotweed treatment since 2010, and we found very limited detections in our samples.

We've detailed all of those previous detections in our 2018 knotweed report.

Last year we developed a new water quality sampling protocol and had zero detections in 2018. To protect pollinators, as I mentioned before, we're taking care to avoid spraying knotweed when it's flowering, even if it means skipping a patch for a year.

We've also replanted areas previously infested with knotweed with native plants to attract our native pollinators.

And we're also making sure that our applicators are protecting themselves and the environment by wearing protective equipment and also applying herbicide in a very targeted manner using handheld sprayers.

So during our nine years under these ordinances, we've had drastic decreases in knotweed.

But we really feel like we have to keep going on this path to maintain the success.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, we've had an estimated 95% decrease in our knotweed coverage.

since we started herbicide treatment, but we do still have some left.

And it has been known to grow back to pretreatment levels if it goes untreated.

So we're anticipating the need for maintenance level control, and we're thinking that that's going to be about 16 ounces a year.

And ultimately, our goal is to eradicate this weed from the watershed.

So maintenance level control, is that a different, is that something different than what you have been doing?

I'd say at this point, we've kind of reached I think it's, we've been decreasing ever since we started and now we're at this level where we think we might start, keep seeing these sort of pop-up populations for, you know, potentially multiple years as these large root systems just kind of fizzle out.

And the research is really unknown at this time.

The treatment of knotweed is a relatively new science, and we're constantly using the best available science, but that's evolving.

And we've found, as our partners have also found, that we're kind of at this stage where We just have to kind of keep going back and, you know, it's kind of like putting out little pop-up fires.

So you refer to the goal being to eradicate knotweed.

Can we do that in three years?

And is that the eradication of knotweed, is that different?

Is that measurably different than your identification of an ongoing need to sort of watch out for the pop-ups until the root systems atrophy?

Right.

Our goal of eradication is not necessarily in the three-year timeline for this ordinance.

We honestly I don't know how long that might be.

We've talked to multiple other people that are experiencing the same thing.

But it is, you know, an eradication from a noxious weed standpoint is considered five years with no detections.

And we'd really like to get to that point.

I really appreciate the ongoing work and how the whole team at SPU is approaching this.

So it's obviously frustrating to see invasive and persistent species like knotweed in our pristine watershed.

And I know when I was part of conversations with both the environmental community and SPU, you know, seven, eight years ago, nine years ago, There was a lot of sensitivity to, you know, are there better ways to do it?

You know, can we bring in goats?

Can we cover?

Can we dig it up?

And the consensus at the time, it wasn't unanimous, but I think was that this is a serious threat and the risk of not getting it right and allowing it to continue to expand was greater than the potential risk from using an herbicide in there.

And it was with some kind of trepidation that I moved that direction.

But I've been really impressed with the seriousness with which SPU has taken on this work.

And it's great to see that we're continuing to see a smaller population.

It's rough that it's been nine years and we're still, you know, we're going for another three years and it may be a few more cycles, you know, hopefully not indefinitely.

But we're clearly trending in the right direction.

the dedication and kind of focus on minimizing the amount and the impacts on both animal and human health and our water quality.

It's clear that everyone is taking this really seriously as opposed to just, hey, they gave us permission, let's go out and spray like crazy.

So I'm really grateful for that.

And I'm definitely supportive of this and look forward to the day when You're here saying, we haven't seen knotweed anywhere in the watershed for five years, and nor has it been up and down the Cedar River.

That would be an amazing day.

I look forward to that too.

Good work on the 95% reduction.

Thank you as well for the work in the 2018 report.

I know many of the items that were identified by a previous council to be addressed in that report, you've covered well related to some of the concerns identified, particularly around pollinators and literature review.

and just again echoing Council Member O'Brien's words that we're really glad that you're taking this seriously and be doing this work with great care to all of the different ecosystem components.

So thank you.

So I'm open to voting on this today if you are.

Yeah.

All right, great.

Let's do it.

Let's not give two more weeks.

No.

All right, so I'll move Council Bill 119502.

Second.

All those in favor vote aye.

Aye.

None opposed, none abstaining.

This will move on to full Council on Monday.

Thank you.

Thank you for your support, really appreciate it.

Agenda item 3 is Seattle Office for Civil Rights Commission's 2019 Work Plans.

Yeah, thanks.

Thanks for counting.

Speak into your mics.

Member O'Brien is helpfully getting an additional chair.

There's one I think is available.

No, I think we're good.

We're good.

Yeah.

Well, welcome, everybody.

Really appreciate the annual visit on the work plan.

If we could maybe just start off with a quick round of introductions so the viewing public can hear everybody who's represented here.

And then we'll hear from each of the commissions individually.

I want to also thank you for sort of compressing what I know is a lot of planned work for 2019 into a digestible presentation for us.

So thanks.

Sochi Makevich, Co-Chair of the Seattle Women's Commission.

Marta Itawu, Seattle Office for Civil Rights.

Manuel Venegas, he, him, his pronouns, LGBTQ Commission.

Jason Morris, Commission for People with Disabilities Commissioner.

Christiana Ubi-Semner, Co-Chair, Commission of People with Disabilities.

Katrina Sanford, Co-Chair for LGBTQ Commission.

Kari Lehram, Commissioner for the LGBTQ Commission.

Eric Gray, Commissioner for the Human Rights Commission.

Liz Pashad, Secretary of the Human Rights Commission.

Derek Lum, Commissioner for the Human Rights Commission.

Skelter and Calamandi, co-chair of the Human Rights Commission.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Who would like to kick us off?

I would.

All right.

So I'll just go through really quickly.

We have four different committees.

So the Community Health and Wellness Committee.

This is for the Seattle Women's Commission.

For the Seattle Women's Commission, yes.

I'm sorry.

Equitable Development, Economic Educational Opportunities, and Violence Prevention and Justice.

So I'm just going to look at some notes from my phone.

So overall, like our multi-year policy focus is going to be promoting stable housing for women and families.

A little bit of what that specifically is going to look like is kind of dependent on what the state legislature is doing.

The eviction reform bill, which we pushed through our eviction report that we released last year, is really close to being done.

It just needs to be concurred in the Senate.

I'm not saying it's all the way done yet, just because that needs to happen.

And then if that does happen, then I think whatever other policy recommendations we didn't get in that bill will probably come to y'all about.

And then as far as for the other pieces, we are, and I was planning, I was not planning on doing this, so if it's a little rough, sorry.

So then moving on, and that's in the Equitable Development Committee's focus.

Then also for violence prevention and justice, we're going to be doing a lot of work around domestic violence in particular and looking at how to advocate for continued funding.

And we're also looking at doing a report with the King County Bar Association on protection orders.

That's still in development.

Then for community health and wellness, we are going to be focusing on maternal health issues, in particular the maternal death rate for Black and Native women.

And then for economic and educational opportunity, the big focus I think will be childcare and supporting efforts around making childcare more accessible.

It's good to hear that you will be partnering up with the King County Bar as it relates to the Violence Prevention and Justice Project.

I think the commission joining forces with an entity that can help identify the problem, produce data about the problem, and use those reports as a jumping off policy for policy change is a really, really good model.

And it's certainly proved to be successful as it relates to your eviction reform work this year.

Council Member O'Brien.

I'm excited to get through session and get to work.

We are too.

All right.

Yeah, so that, I mean, when we do get through session, I think it will be important to have a conversation about the remaining policy recommendations and how to move those forward.

I think the last time we had a discussion about the eviction reform work, we did a fairly transparent job with the assistance of central staff of identifying the items that we thought were going forward and the ones that didn't look like were contained in any of the pieces of legislation before the state legislature.

So I think we've indicated a likely path for folks who are watching that progress.

And I look forward to having more conversations here in this committee.

Yeah, and then just really quick, we also really like doing events and we're doing an event with both your office and Councilmember Gonzalez's office on the 24th, which is Thursday, I think, yes, at 530 around sexual assault awareness here in

And it's Denim Day, so wear your denim.

Yes, tomorrow.

See, I'm all over the place.

You're in the middle of session, so.

That's the way it goes.

All right, thank you, Xochitl.

I appreciate it.

So, since our work plan is up there, I think maybe we can go next on the LGBTQ Commission.

We had some changes occur this year where we decreased many of our committees, which has been super helpful.

It's been able to help us condense our work and be able to really focus a little bit more on the priorities.

And with that, we've also changed to a two-year work plan instead of a one-year work plan.

Our goal on the commission is to make sure that we are ensuring that trans justice and racial equity is a lens that we're consistently looking at the work that we're doing through.

We definitely want to prioritize those marginalized communities because I think we're all aware of many of the difficulties that come with being a person of color or someone who's trans in our community.

That's first and foremost.

But I'm going to chat a little bit about the committees that we have now, and then I'll move it over to my other commissioners to chat as well.

We now have our Commissions Operations Committee, which is still what we had before.

And this committee is the heart of our committee.

It helps us stay organized, and that's very good.

I'm sure we're all aware.

We have a people of color stakeholders committee, so that is very much focused on making sure that the voices of people of color are heard, but also we're reviewing current policies and practices of creating and affirming equitable spaces for people of color.

So that's a priority for us, and we're very excited about that.

We have our Social Media Committee and Communications, and they're really gonna leverage our social media to make sure that the work that we're doing and that the people that we're doing the work for are being amplified through our social media.

In addition, we're gonna start spotlighting LGBTQ leaders on it as well, so we can kinda get the word out about what people are doing around the community.

And then we have our Community Outreach and Engagement Committee.

And this committee is gonna advocate for our population, the LGBTQ population, by serving as a hub or a conduit of information and resources, which we find is important.

As we've been doing our work, it appears that either the information is not in one place, which is difficult, and so we wanna be able to do that for the community so people can just come to our website, oh, I need LGBTQ restaurant, boom, there they are, that sort of thing.

So, and then I'm gonna pass it on to Manuel to chat a little bit more about what we're doing.

Thank you.

Hello, good morning, everyone.

So I'm going to be reviewing the second section here on advocating for queer and trans people of color housing and inclusive LGBTQ homelessness services.

probably this was 2016 where the Rainbow Alliance was created in partnership with the LGBTQ Commission at the time, led through the co-chair of the time, Lulu Carpenter.

And this alliance is an organization of two-spirit, black, brown, disabled, femme, gender non-conforming, indigenous, Pacifica, queer, trans people of color.

And we are honoring the experience experience and importance of storytelling and collecting stories of resilience from these groups.

And so this effort was sort of a response to the 2010 LGBTQ Commission survey of the community.

What was found in the 2010 snapshot survey was that the majority of the respondents were white, the majority of the respondents were cisgender male, and the majority of the response respondents were identifying as gay.

And as we know now that the community is more diverse than that.

And some questions that the group is proposing and trying to figure out some answers to would be how do we decolonize research?

I know that in some committees last year, some city council committees were still referring to the 2010 snapshot survey of the LGBTQ community.

And how do we focus on strength-based approaches versus deficit?

The second bullet point here is a continuing relationship with the Human Services Department.

One example of a current relationship is the Statement of Legislative Intent Workgroup to review the e-contract of shelter services.

And I would hope that at the end of our commission's presentations, we would revisit the cross commission homelessness task force.

I remember council member O'Brien referring it as the super commission.

I know that from Q3 and Q4 of last year, there was a lot of transition in the commissions.

And so representatives at that time are no longer with the commissions, but we have at least one representative from each commission here at the table.

So maybe if we can revisit that, I can spend a few minutes kind of reviewing 2018 highlights and we can start the visioning process here today for 2019 and 2020.

Before you move on to the next bullet, I do want to just check in with you a little bit, take this opportunity on the participation on the work group reviewing the shelter and human services contracts.

I was recently informed by HSD that they were not going to make the deadline that the council had identified for a report.

But I was very encouraged that the reason why is because they're entering into a contract with Ingersoll to sort of guide the discussions as well as developing the report.

And just I think this is a good opportunity to touch base with you and find out whether or not you're feeling that we're moving towards a a productive discussion and set of recommendations that will improve people who rely on our human services department?

Yeah, just a quick response to that.

We are on track.

The extension granted us, or granted the work group, the ability to further engage the commissions since the LGBTQ commission was sort of presented with this with the pretext of the initial deadline, which was the end of this month, I believe.

I granted the extension earlier this month.

Thank you.

It seemed like the reasonable thing to do.

Yes, and with the extension, the goal is, and as it was outlined in the statement of legislative intent, these documents will be needing to be shared throughout the Civil Rights Commissions for their input as well.

So this would be kind of like the first project of the Cross Commission Homelessness Task Force is to identify some areas of concern and some gaps in these documents for shelter services for the community.

And then lastly, again, is to build relationships within the alliance and other queer and trans people of color-led coalitions to further strengthen our race and trans equity lens.

And now off to Kari.

Great.

It's my pleasure to present the third bullet point area of the LGBTQ Commission work plan, and that is to increase accessibility, access, and better community relationships in general.

We have several strategies for doing this, and one is to hold general quarterly meetings in the community outside of City Hall, more in the places where our community lives and works.

Secondly, Katrina already mentioned this, is to produce and post videos of people of interest to our community, and to have a very diverse array of individuals who can talk to issues that are of importance to the LGBTQ community.

Along those lines, we are advocating very strongly for better technology for our commission meetings, again, to make sure that people can come virtually if they cannot come individually due to accessibility issues.

And then finally, we were quite delighted to see the Seattle Reentry Workgroup final report, which was commissioned by this Office for Civil Rights and the final report came out in 2018. Delighted to see the move towards more social justice and away from criminal justice solutions to social problems.

And in particular, we are interested in amplifying the recommendation to repeal the prostitution loitering ordinance.

This is an issue of prostitution and sex work is an issue of great importance to the LGBT community for all kinds of historical reasons.

We are disproportionately located in the sex industry, and so we are working quite closely with the Sex Worker Outreach Project.

There's also a coalition for the rights and safety for people in the sex trade, who is a great coalition of anti-violence workers, human rights lawyers, and so on, and we think that we're in a position right now to create a greater coalition across race, trans, and folks of color kind of communities around these issues.

Great, thank you.

Looks like you have something to add, Manuel?

Yeah, and while not explicitly under the purview of the Queer and Trans People of Color Stakeholder Committee, along the lines of the Seattle Reentry Work Group recommendations, there has been a partnership made with the Human Rights Commission, the Human Trafficking Task Force, and we are trying to collaborate on the decriminalization piece.

But additionally, I have, the Seattle LGBTQ Commission has been attending the Seattle Youth Commission meetings, and I know that I have highlighted from the reentry work group recommendation strategy five, which was reimagining the city's use of jails.

And so this could be a potential collaboration with the Seattle Youth Commission, particularly if the city and county's goal is to reach a zero use of youth detention, and particularly highlighting the reentry work group recommendation of creating an advisory board, highlighting the two to three internship positions from the Youth Employment Program, and perhaps an additional recommendation would be to increase that seat to one to include a Seattle Youth Commissioner to participate in this advisory board.

Thank you.

As it relates specifically to the reentry task force recommendations, you mentioned some legislative priorities that came forth in the recommendations.

As I've mentioned before, I think before we can have a conversation about those legislative priorities, we really have to have a very, very broad citywide education conversation.

I just remember the response I got from people who received my newsletter when I pushed out the recommendations, and people don't have a really good understanding of what the loitering laws are.

And so I think it's really important to be able to clarify particularly in the climate that we're in right now around public safety issues, to really have a broad-based discussion and seek agreement that the loitering laws are not very much used and removing them from the municipal code will not prohibit the police department from enforcing, using other methods to enforce laws related to those issues of illegal substances and sexual exploitation.

So I think there's a lot of groundwork that needs to be done around that.

But I'm wondering if you would consider a request from me as it relates to the budget process, which we're coming up on soon, to highlight which of those recommendations might have budget implications that we can work on championing in the upcoming budget process.

Yeah, you must have been telepathically communicating with me because in the cross-commission kind of review and projection for 2019-2020 would be a partnership in the budget cycle process.

And also I appreciate that request very much.

I'm happy to come advocate or talk to whatever committees that you would want me to on behalf of the commission.

There's also a survey that I've been analyzing that comes from the Coalition for People for the Sex Trade.

So we are collecting empirical data, which I think would be of great interest to the community that I would be happy to help present.

Great.

I look forward to learning more.

Good afternoon and thank the council for their time and letting us speak We also going to a biannual work plan.

I think that will help the Commission Stabilize our direction and work together and be a team as a whole It's our job to establish full membership while promoting a culture of of intentionality, respect, collaboration, engagement, and cohesiveness.

And I think everybody's on that same page.

One of our bullet points up here is inclusion, development, and outreach.

This emphasize recruitment, attracting diverse candidates, support individuals through nominations, and onboarding process to the commission, bridging gaps between the disability community and institutions and community organizations of all type.

One of the things I want to mention is that we support OCR.

We're going to be working together with them, with the nominating and orientation committee, and the membership elected me as chair of that.

And we're also impressed by Director Lockhart's leadership, and that's been really instrumental with our work.

Some of the committee is going to be doing is sending out applications to candidates, answering candidate questions as a commissioner.

I'm doing 101 with future candidates.

We will provide information, we'll provide informational interviews alone and in groups.

We're also going to be supporting holding hands and walking applicants through the inner interview process.

This includes checking in every two weeks after the primary interview, directing candidates to correct information and officials to make sure all deadlines are completed and essential paperwork and dates are included and done.

We're also going to welcome and do an onboarding process to the new appointed commissioners.

We are building an onboarding process for future nominees and leadership succession planning for the commission.

We assist and understand the criteria for official information and guidelines of the commission and our duties with OCR as well as the council and the mayor's office.

We're also going to be assisting in understanding the current work plan, onboarding new nomination, and the areas and the roles that utilize their individual strengths and collaboration in the commission.

And then assisting guidelines, newly appointed commissioners with questions throughout the first year of the commissioner's work and help assist any reasonable accommodation that they may have in the commission.

So it's a pretty good package and I don't know if Christiana has anything to add and it's been a pleasure working with you.

Before we move on, I just want to say I really appreciate the fact that there's a lot of internal focus that you're devoting time and energy to with this commission.

I think it's really, really important that people feel supported through the nomination and onboarding process and really appreciate the extra care that you're taking with that.

Sure.

Thank you so much.

So the two last things of the work plan, and to that point, what I will say is that, you know, over this last year, we had a lot of folks, a large exodus.

We've had some issues within the commission.

I'm open, I'm okay with admitting that.

Your office has known that we've spoken, I've been working with the Office of Civil Rights as well as some of the other commissioners.

I think that coming to this work plan was, while it was a difficult process, I think it was a really generative process, it was a transformative process.

And I'm hoping that throughout the operation of this work plan, through nominating an orientation committee and through some of the other supports that we've received from the Office of Civil Rights as well as City Council, that we will be able to be a stronger, more collectivistic commission, and that's been my charge since being elected co-chair.

The accessibility, and you know, each of these, the commission as a whole with the nominating orientation committee, we are kind of under these like four buckets with leads of committees, but we're also trying to have it be more of a fluid process where we're working together.

So accessibility is going to be chaired by my co-chair, Eric.

Includes in the development and outreach, Ankita, who's a commissioner who's here in attendance with us today.

Accessibility is going to see how we can enhance the full participation through increased access and promote universal use of communication and information.

We put it down to the areas of housing, education, transportation, but of course there's a lot of different areas where accessibility and universal design can be implemented, not just within the commission itself, but also within the municipal government, how legislation is passed, and also how our community operates with us, which leads to the intersectionality piece, which I will be leading that charge.

It has been a passion of mine since I've been on the KISS mission in general.

Intersectional disability and intersectional disability justice seeks to hold the entire person.

And so intersectional erasure is this idea that when you have an intersectionality of multiple oppressed or privileged identities, that the ones that you wear the most out loud are the ones that show up.

And then the ones that you don't wear as much out loud kind of fall by the wayside or erased.

My experience of this specifically is along the intersections of gender, race, and disability, and especially having multiple disability.

So people might see the neurodivergence, but they may not see the chronic illness, for example.

And I, you know, working as the rulemaking for I-940, for example, at the state level is coming out, there's more of this conversation around, you know, for a good example, race rule, you know, training around issues leading with race, training around issues leading with disability, and then training around issues at the intersection of race and disability.

Because Charlene Elias, Freddie Gray, and John T. Williams, in their memory, should have that analysis of training.

So with intersectionality, the main thing that I've talked about that I think would be really important is to work with the Office of Civil Rights as well as yourself and other members of the council around looking at the race and social justice initiative to see not only if it could be perhaps transformed into an ordinance for greater accountability structure, but if this racial equity toolkit could perhaps become a social equity toolkit that leads with race but also holds the entire person so that legislation and decision making could be as equitable as possible without it being siloed or homogenized only to this one construct of race.

Well, I can't imagine another person better than you to lead this work, so thank you for the aspirational goal that you're working on driving us towards.

And I'm really optimistic that we'll be getting some recommendations from the RET team that will produce a blueprint for how to implement some of those aspirational goals.

All right, turning over to the Human Rights Commission.

So I wanted to just set the stage a little bit about our commission.

This time last year, currently we have 16 members.

This time last year, only two of us were on the commission.

So we've added 14 new individuals to the commission.

And I think that was a welcome change, the energy, the new vision that my colleagues have brought in has really transformed our commission.

And we've decided to, with all these new ideas, take a more holistic approach to our work.

So that starts with, one, taking a two-year plan, which other commissions have done as well, because it allows us to take a longer-term look at some of the issues that we're approaching.

The other piece is really trying to center our work on accessibility and accountability.

And that started by us having our first commission meeting out in the community.

We had a meeting in April at Yeser Terrace.

And there's challenges that come with that that we're working through, but that's the first step that we're taking.

So I'm going to turn it over to my fellow commission members to talk about the three task forces that we have, specifically focused on homelessness, immigrant and refugee challenges, and also on trafficking, human trafficking.

All right, so first up, I'm the chair of the Homelessness Subcommittee.

And so we, in general, have four areas that we're kind of working in for goals.

One is kind of the area of sweeps and decreasing them.

We have heard from, this is probably the most important thing that we've heard in community, is that these sweeps are very opposed by folks experiencing homelessness.

Mmm.

Number two is increased access to enhanced shelter.

It's another thing that we've heard in the community based and also based on our previous experiences.

It's another thing that's highly important.

Number three is increase in early intervention outreach to unsheltered individuals.

And then number four is increased coordination with organizations to help disseminate best practices.

And so those are what we're starting out with.

Those are what we're working on.

through ways such as a budget process, but also we are being very intentional in how we are developing community relationships and being in community.

We have met and talked with folks from Real Change and other organizations as well, and we're planning more community outreach of that sort to make sure that we have what people are interested in as the center of our agenda.

Thank you.

As it relates specifically to the issue of encampment removals, as you all know, my focus has been on watchdogging and reforming the process that the city uses currently to ensure that the city is following the protocols that place an emphasis on encampment removals in locations that meet particular criteria, and they're largely criteria around health and safety.

And as part of that watchdogging of the process, we've invited the city auditor to do a series of reports on particular benchmarks that the city auditor has identified that if The recommendations around the benchmarks by the city auditor are addressed that we might see better outcomes both for people who are living unsheltered as well as the people who are living sheltered in homes surrounding those areas.

If you haven't received a briefing from the City Auditor on the recommendations that they've made thus far, I'd be happy to facilitate that.

I think that audit is one of the most powerful tools that we have for reform, and to the extent that folks on the Super Commission can work on some of those recommendations, it would be really helpful.

Yeah, we've been in talks with HSD about a briefing, kind of like what you're talking about, the city auditor.

The city auditor sounds great.

And actually, just to follow up on that, we do appreciate the support that your office has shown in particular for keeping visibility on the issue, particularly as it relates to the sweeps, which has been kind of an intense issue.

Yeah, it is indeed.

So thank you.

Yeah, thanks for saying so.

Liz Pashad, I'm a member of the Immigrant and Refugee Task Force.

Largely our work focuses around keeping Seattle's accountability as a sanctuary city for immigrants and refugees.

We have a lot of work to do in that area, and thankfully a lot of work is being done by other coalitions and community organizations, so our work has largely focused around not reinventing that work, but creating across community coalition.

We've been inviting several members of other organizations and community groups to our meetings.

So almost every month we have a visitor.

This month it was One America.

There are several people on the roster that sort of come through, tell us about their work and how we can sort of holistically support them through the lens of the city's, I guess using the city as a lever to help them and support them in their work.

Another component of our work plan that came up throughout the commission was the aspect of storytelling in how we can best support communities without doing sort of top-down reorganizing on their behalf.

So storytelling was a way that we identified to uplift voices that need amplification without planting our own lens on top of them.

So for our task force in particular, what that means is the launching of a forthcoming podcast, which is like a StoryCorps style podcast, which includes community members from the immigrant and refugee communities to, I mean, literally unadulterated just tell stories that we'll be releasing in the coming months.

So we'll keep everybody updated on that.

Another theme for our overall commission that we've transferred to our task force is the theme of corporate accountability.

So we are, that's sort of a longer-term approach for us is to identify ways in which we can collaborate with corporations to enhance protections for undocumented workers, create more citizen-led pathways to sponsorship of individuals, and decrease barriers for employment.

I'd love to learn more about that.

We'll let you know.

Hi, my name is Eric Gray, Chair of the Human Trafficking Task Force with the City of Seattle Human Rights Commission.

I prepared a letter alongside with people who have been and currently engage in the sex trade and commercial sex exploitation.

It's been vetted through a variety of communities from indigenous nations to healthcare and transgender communities by those who identify as survivor leaders in those communities.

City Central Human Rights Commission has heard and reviewed testimony on an array of issues from survivors of human trafficking and the non-profits that support them.

After some deliberation and information of a human trafficking task force, we proposed the creation of a protected class under the Office of Civil Rights.

Additionally, we recommend the creation of a full-time Office of Civil Rights staff position with $600,000 of funding to support the needs of human trafficking survivors and coordinate efforts locally, federally, and with indigenous nations.

Seattle leads the nation in the number of murdered and missing indigenous women and girls with 45 reported cases, and this issue remains unaddressed.

A 2016 report by the Urban Indian Health Institute claims that out of 5,712 missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, only 116 of those 5,712 were logged in the Department of Justice database.

Out of a study of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls across 71 cities involving 506 reports, 39% of the victims concurrently involved in the sex trade were assaulted at the time of their death.

Creation of a protected class with supports for housing and legal services similar to domestic violence would start the process towards addressing dire needs in the Indigenous community.

Human trafficking affects all genders, classes, and cultures of people in our community.

Boyer's 2008 study asserts an estimated 300 to 500 children are being sexually exploited in King County every night.

The 2014 Arizona State University report finding 6,800 buyers soliciting sex online in Seattle within one 24-hour period.

While this is an issue that impacts all of us, youth, LGBTQ, people of color, and those experiencing poverty are most vulnerable.

Trans identities experiencing discrimination and marginalization in employment, education, housing, and accessing emergency services.

The US Trans Survey for Trans Equality found in 2016 that 81% of transgender children have also experienced exploitation.

Janet Mock's book, Redefining Realness, describes sex work as a rite of passage in the trans community.

Currently, there is one bed in Seattle that supports non-binary intersex transgender identities.

While some shelters do support transgender female identities, clients often request transgender-centered programming in a safe place that doesn't currently exist very much outside of the limited space at Gender Justice League.

Creation of a protected class would serve to allocate more resources to combat issues the transgender community faces.

This is a bottom line issue, and racial power divides within human trafficking are extensive.

Val Ritchie's Online University Reducing Demand for the Commercial Exploitation of Minors in Your Community May 2017 report asserts on one hand, in King County, 52% of all child sex trafficking victims are black, though black people only comprise 7% of the general population.

On the other hand, buyers are 80% white males.

They tend to have higher socioeconomic status, higher saturations of education, and are oftentimes employed at major companies in the area.

While we allocate millions of dollars for the creation of youth detention facilities, there are zero beds available in the city of Seattle for children experiencing human trafficking.

Creating a protected class serves to narrow the racial equity divide and break the school-to-prison pipeline.

City of Seattle Human Rights Commission demands the needs of human trafficking survivors be met.

We propose the creation of a protected class for human trafficking survivors under the Office for Civil Rights with one full-time position to support this and $600,000 in funding.

We call for this to be applied to the city's next budget cycle.

We call for the creation of safe and tangible housing options for transgender, people of color, men, immigrant refugees, and child human trafficking survivors.

Thank you for that.

I look forward to working with you on those recommendations.

And I think, you know, as a first step, if you have not yet met with folks from the executive to make that proposal, that'd be something I'd be interested in facilitating.

The mayor's proposed budget is always the first cut.

Council Member O'Brien.

On the slide, you mentioned proximity to rural areas.

What's the connection with rural areas for human trafficking?

So rural areas will affect labor trafficking.

Oftentimes we have a high agricultural industry in this area.

Labor trafficking is oftentimes overlooked.

If you look at the intersection of transient populations and engagement in trafficking, we have I-5 right here, and then it goes all the way up hundreds of miles of international border, and then coast border with major ports in Tacoma and Seattle, and then a small port in Olympia.

If I'm a trafficker, I can deploy a victim or survivor of the sex trade or human trafficking within hours across many, many cities from Las Vegas, all the way to Spokane, to Seattle, to Portland, LA, all with under, if you look at flights right now, I mean, you could probably get one for under a couple hundred bucks.

And if you could just help me understand a little bit more about the concept of creating a new protected class under our civil rights ordinances for survivors of human trafficking.

I'm just, I'm trying to understand, I mean, people who are survivors of crimes aren't typically considered protected classes, and it's not a necessary component for pursuing justice for individuals who are members of those who may not be members of a protected class but are survivors of a crime.

So if you could help me understand a little bit about what creating a new protected class would accomplish.

I think I look at domestic violence as a very parallel issue.

You know, similar to the early stages of the domestic violence movement, we lack the language to conceptualize and appropriately represent ourselves.

And if we look at what creation of protected class under domestic violence survivors, homelessness, veterans has done for those communities, I anticipate we would experience some parallel effects in our community.

without knowing definitively for sure, without pursuing the support of the executive and council members such as yourself to explore what the real impact in our community can be.

But from discussing this issue with the communities we have discussed it with, housing first and employment gives us increased agency and stability.

I know for myself, without having certain housing protections, for instance, under the VAWA, I would not be here today.

So death doesn't always account for all that we can do to support a survivor.

And just to follow up on that, I think that the protected class enhances a network of services already available but that don't have specific affordances for people who may be survivors who require a certain lens of care.

One example I can think of off the top of my head is in the criminal justice system, oftentimes if you're For example, if you're eligible to be let into a drug diversion program instead of being charged with a crime.

you're actually not eligible for drug diversion if your crime involves sex.

So if you're a survivor of a trafficking incident, you actually may need that diversion program more than anything, and incarceration will, in fact, harm you quite a bit further.

And with a protected class, we may be able to close that loophole, or at least look at it in a more holistic way.

That's a great example.

There are no further questions or contributions from the commissioners.

I just want to really thank you for the eye that you bring to the work that you do.

And I want to restate what we often do say to you all at this table, which is we really count on you to bring forward your policy ideas.

This committee takes your recommendations really seriously.

specifically as it relates to our handling of the Seattle Women's Commission recommendations around eviction reform and more recently the people with disabilities recommendations around closed captioning.

I think those efforts at policy changes, I would hope speak for themselves as it relates to our strong commitment to you and to elevating your voices and using our policymaking role to do so.

I'll just second that.

Council Member Herbold, your leadership on this committee has been great for me to see too, just that the channel from the great advocacy and community work that these commissions all do, and providing a place for that to be turned into tangible change of the city.

It's been great to be part of and watch.

And looking at this set of ambitious undertakings that the commissions are all looking at.

I can't wait to see what comes out of this in the next few years.

So thank you all.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right.

Thanks again.

And with that, we are adjourned.