Public Assets and Native Communities Committee Special Meeting 7/16/21

I am Council Member Juarez, Chair of the Committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson?

Here.

Council Member Herbold?

Here.

Council Member Mosqueda is excused.

Council Member Sawant?

Present.

Chair Juarez?

Here.

And we have Quorum.

Thank you.

Let's move forward to approval of the agenda.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Let's move on to the chair's report.

Today we have four presentations for the committee.

There's no vote today on any of these things.

We have Seattle Public Library team with us, Seattle Center team with us, and Seattle Parks and Rec.

my three of my favorite teams.

So Seattle Public Library will go first, Seattle Center team second, followed by Seattle Parks and Recreation.

All of them doing their, or not all of them, doing their RSJI reports.

And Seattle Public Library, in addition, has a report from their levy.

So this is exciting.

At this time, let's see.

At this time, we will open the remote public comment period.

It remains the strong intent of the Seattle City Council to have public comment regularly included on meeting agendas.

However, we reserve the right to end or eliminate this public comment period at any point if we deem that this system is being abused or is unsuitable for allowing our meetings to be conducted efficiently and in a manner in which we're able to conduct our necessary business.

public comment period is open for those wishing to speak to items on the agenda.

I will moderate the general public comment period in the following manner.

The public comment period for this meeting is up to eight minutes.

Each speaker will be given two minutes.

Actually, we can go further.

I just need to know how many people are signed up.

Council member, no one is signed up for public comment.

OK, but we still need to go through the instructions just in case somebody correct.

Again, where are you?

Correct.

I don't, Linda, can you weigh in on this?

Do we need to?

Yeah, we should.

Okay, so at this time, Negin, can you give the public comment instructions?

And then after that, I'll close public comment.

Even though we have no, we still have to do it.

Okay, here we go.

So I will call one speaker at a time and in the order in which registered on the online signup list.

If you have not yet registered to speak but would like to, you can sign up before the end of this public comment period by going to the council's website at seattle.gov backslash council.

The public comment link is also listed on today's committee agenda.

Once the speaker's name is called, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt of you have been unmuted will be a speaker's cue that it is their turn.

The speaker must also press star six on their phone to unmute themselves after the name is called.

Then you may begin speaking by stating your name and the item that you are addressing on today's agenda.

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

Once you hear the chime, please wrap up your public comment.

If speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's microphone will be muted to allow us to call on the next speaker.

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

And if you plan to continue following this meeting, please do so via Seattle Channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

Council Member, there are no public commenters signed up today.

Good.

And nobody signed up while you were speaking as well.

Sometimes we have people call in later or call in as we're doing the instructions.

OK, good.

So we open the public comment.

There are no speakers signed up.

So the public comment period is officially now closed.

Moving on to items of business.

The dean, can you please read item number one into the record?

Agenda item one, Seattle Public Library 2020 levy report.

Great, so we have our friends from the Seattle Public Library.

Let's have you guys do your introductions for the record, and I know you have a presentation for us, and I'll just let you take it away.

Thank you very much, Chair Juarez and committee members.

I'm Tom Fay, the interim chief librarian.

Jay Rich, president of the library board.

Carmen Bendixson, vice chair of the library board.

and Oshewitz Library Levy Administrator.

Great.

If we could, both Jay and Carmen have a few introductory remarks.

Thank you, Tom, and thank you, committee members, for the opportunity to offer some introductory remarks today.

As you know, the Library Board of Trustees provides oversight to the Seattle Public Library, ensuring that it effectively serves our city and appropriately uses its funding resources.

Last year, all Seattleites witnessed a global pandemic, an economic crisis, widespread social and political unrest, and the closure of all Seattle Public Library buildings starting in March.

Thanks in part to the one-time use of some levy resources, The library responded to the pandemic by offering a wide range of virtual services, events, and programs, circulating a record number of electronic materials, and providing curbside access to our physical collection.

Although unable to expand open hours within its branches closed, the library successfully focused on meeting the levy's goals, improving access, enhancing collections, investing in technology, providing children's programming, and maintaining facilities.

I want to stop just to thank the council for approving the $1.1 million in Seattle Rescue Funds dedicated to hiring staff back.

This will allow us to reach our goal of returning to pre-pandemic hours of operation.

The presentation you will see shortly will provide insight into the important work performed across these categories of levy purposes in 2020. I'd also like to express my personal appreciation to the library staff who work diligently under trying circumstances to deliver these services and also offer my thanks to the voters for providing the critical levy resources that supported our pandemic response.

Let me now turn it over to Carmen.

Thanks, Jay.

As the vice president of the Library Board of Trustees, I'd like to echo Jay's remarks about the critical nature of levy funding and the impact it made last year for Seattle residents.

So in approving the library levy, voters in 2019 placed their trust in Seattle's library system, the staff, and the board, and we want to ensure that we deliver on the levy's promises.

So as the city council reviews the city's 2022 budget, please know that restoring the $5.8 million cut from the library's budget is the most pressing priority for the board of trustees, as it is critical in meeting our levy commitments.

And as you're aware, a key component of the levy package was the addition of 10,000 hours of library service.

The equity focus of this means more open hours in the neighborhoods that need the library the most.

So as you consider today's presentation and the impact of levy funds, please know that city council support is critical for meeting our shared levy commitment to voters.

And with that, I'll turn the mic back over to Tom for the presentation.

Thank you so much.

Thank you both.

Nageen, next please.

As you all might recall, in August 2019, Seattle voters overwhelmingly approved a seven-year, $219 million property tax levy.

Beyond renewing the 2012 commitments, the 2019 levy provides additional library hours, as Carmen mentioned, elimination of overdue fines, improved collections and technology, safer, cleaner buildings, specialized programming and services for children, and development of a plan for the future of library service.

In 2020, we spent nearly $20 million of the library levy proceeds.

At the start of 2020, we made good progress on accomplishing levy priorities By March, however, in response to COVID-19, library services were drastically altered.

I'll briefly review a few of the items during the course of this year as I get to some of the other levy commitments made.

On January 2nd, we stopped charging fines and waived all fine balances, restoring borrowing privileges to thousands of library users, one of the key equity components of this levy.

January 5th, We opened an additional hour at noon on Sundays.

This was the first of our phases of the additional 10,000 hours we hope to bring to Seattle residents.

And as you all know, March 13th, that special Friday the 13th, was the last day that we were open to the public in 2020. That was a record setting day for Seattle Public Library.

We saw 11,822 patrons.

and nearly 104,000 items checked out in a single eight-hour period.

And interestingly, more than 500 patrons went to multiple branches to stock up during that time.

Next, please.

In July, public services staff began to reenter buildings and to work on the backlog, shelving and processing materials.

But first, we needed to also develop guidelines around health screenings, PPE and physical distancing, as well as developing new scheduling models to have our staff work in buildings in a healthy and safe way.

Curbside launched on August 24th, but then sadly three weeks later, curbside and outdoor service was interrupted for nearly a full week due to wildfires.

Next, please.

In October, we added more curbside libraries and online tutoring programs, tutor.com, to again assist with those at home, families, parents needing to assist their children with the schoolwork with an all virtual study session.

In November, we reinstated due dates and we expanded our curbside services to more locations.

And in December, we began offering up to 10 pages a day of free printing at select library locations.

So far in 2021, We are happy to say that we have reopened 22 of 27 libraries.

The remaining locations will be reopening as we move through the next few months.

Next, please.

Like every city department, we experienced budget cuts in 2020 with a total reduction of $2.8 million from the general fund.

The library rebalanced its budget by not filling vacancies, cutting discretionary purchases, and redirecting some funds from the Seattle Public Library Foundation.

Due to the pandemic and library closures in 2020, the board redirected $1.58 million in levy proceeds planned for expanded hours and in-person programming and redirected them to offset general fund support.

Due to a more significant general fund budget reduction in 2021, Levy funds for expanded hours were once again temporarily redirected by the library board.

The library cannot continue redirecting these levy funds and we will be unable to achieve our levy promises of expanded hours unless general fund resources are restored in 2022. Next please.

Despite the extended closure and the many challenges mentioned, we were able to deliver on several levy promises within the levy categories, as highlighted in the next five slides.

In hours and access, we promised to reduce the barriers to library services.

Overdue fines were eliminated and outstanding fines cleared.

Sunday hours were expanded.

And during the year of COVID, we were able to still have curbside services We were able to relaunch our mobile services and meet the community where they were at and to better help our community partners and community-based organizations.

And we were able to initiate a new instant library card system that saw 25,000 new users during the COVID period.

Next, please.

In collections, we promised to purchase more e-books and popular materials.

And we added 34,000 titles and 108,000 copies to digital collections.

We added 100,000 physical items, including 13,000 copies of Peek Pick titles, those most popular titles.

Next, please.

Technology and online services.

We had promised to upgrade technology and support digital access.

We leveraged levery resources to expand our hotspot program by using some of the Seattle Public Library Foundation funds, and we loaned 1,135 hotspots in the community.

We expanded video conferencing capabilities and improved Wi-Fi connectivity at the Central Library and all branches.

Next, please.

In children's programming, we promised to provide additional support for library early learning programs for children's ages 0 through 5. We offered 43 videos on the SPL Kids YouTube channel, including virtual story times, early learning, play and learn.

With financial support from the foundation, we distributed 6,800 books to eight community partners so that they in turn could distribute them to families that they were supporting.

Next, please.

And in maintenance, we promised to maintain library buildings and preserve them for the future.

Our design work for the Green Lake branch for the earthquake retrofit was completed in 2020, and we're moving towards construction documents now.

We adapted facilities to support curbside services and other pandemic-related changes, which took an enormous toll on our facilities teams and our facilities budgets, as well as our facilities in general.

Next, please.

In 2020, 29% of our checkouts were physical and 71% were digital.

This is in comparison to 2019, in which 62% of our checkouts were physical and 38% were digital.

In 2020, we saw a 26% increase in digital circulation overall.

So we will be looking to see how this may change or affect the library in 2021 and 2022 as we reopen our buildings.

And with that, I will stop and pause for any questions you might have.

I just want to say thank you that you did that in record time.

Very succinct, very clear.

I particularly like the back page.

Thank you for putting that in there.

The levy proceeds, how they were spent, I think it's self-explanatory.

So thank you.

Are there any questions?

Great work of Jan Osiewicz who crafted much of this.

Thank you, Jan.

Are there any questions from my colleagues?

Okay.

Seeing no questions.

Is there anything else that we need to hear from your team?

And I think we're going to go right into your next report, correct?

We are.

I'm pulling it up right now.

I'm going to let you do introductions if it's the same, if it's different folks, or if you just want to do it again for the record.

So it is different.

Yes, it is different folks, but I will, for the record, I am Tom Fay, Interim Chief Librarian for the Seattle Public Library.

And I'm Helen Tapping.

I'm the Head of Marketing and Online Services at Seattle Public Library.

I'm Alex Yoon, Director of Administrative Services at the library.

Hey, Negin, can you read?

Oh, I jumped the gun on that.

Can you read this item of business into the record?

Agenda item two, Seattle Public Library 2020 RSJ.

I report briefing and discussion.

Great.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Tom.

All right.

Great.

Thank you again.

Today we're going to focus on just highlights, and just one racial equity toolkit because we are time limited here to 10 minutes.

We've included a lot of information that in this particular deck that hopefully council can review at their leisure later and most certainly ask any questions of us at any time here or afterwards.

It's 30 pages long and it's already it's on our website.

So the viewing public wants to go through.

So there's a lot there.

It's really good stuff.

So thank you.

Is it Alex that's up or Ellen?

It is it is me first.

Sorry.

And we will actually move through some slides and not see every slide in this particular presentation just to meet the 10 minute rule.

Thank you for getting it to us so soon.

Thank you for everything.

It's a great it's a great PowerPoint.

Thank you.

And first I'd like to acknowledge that the Seattle Public Library is on indigenous land.

These are the traditional unceded territories of the Coast Salish people, specifically the Duwamish people.

Next, please.

And next again, please.

So, as we approach our equity work, these are the steps or the focus of our work.

Lead with race.

Focus on continuous learning and listening at all levels.

Strive for equity and access services and programming.

represent and invest in people of color and other prioritized audiences and communities, and close the opportunity gap for children of color.

Next, please.

As we're all aware and just illustrated in the last presentation, 2020 was an extremely challenging year.

The library responded well during the pandemic and was creative in its approaches to serving patrons.

However, we also know that there were many who were not served due to the limitations presented by the pandemic.

There is much work to do as we reengage with our patrons and our communities here in 2021 and 2022. Next, please.

Our 2020 National Library of the Year application focused on the work of centering equity and community.

Next, please.

So I wanted just to cover off some of the RSGI highlights and some of these actually Tom has covered in the last presentation a little bit, but we really did a proactive shift to create new virtual programming, services, collections for lots of different audiences and really trying to center those most impacted by the pandemic.

So we talked about virtual library cards and increased digital collections already.

We also created a digital resources aggregator webpage so that it was very easy for patrons to find digital resources for adults, and digital resources for kids.

We created and updated throughout the pandemic a COVID resources page that included vaccination information as it became available.

We created a Your Next Job program, which we will go through in a moment, and it's supported in 11 languages.

We created a lot of social justice programming, including Loving the Time of COVID Reflections and Bloom, so it's arts and social justice programming.

We also created a range of virtual programming for youth, including multilingual early learning, virtual tutoring.

expanded library link, which is our library card program for students, online and homework help and virtual youth technology programs.

But we do recognize that this approach of virtual doesn't always reach our intended audiences and with the issue of digital equity.

So we also implemented some other approaches.

If you go to the next slide, please.

We also employed these strategies to reach our prioritized audiences.

And specifically, we worked with many of our partner organizations to really support those communities and get to them.

We also re-implemented our mobile services services to actually move to where our audiences were during the pandemic.

So a couple of things I wanted to call out here, obviously with the virtual program, we also had to create and significantly expand our captioning and ASL services for patrons.

Every program we did was captioned and put on our YouTube channel.

We retooled our Summer of Learning program over 100 years old and we really worked with getting book distribution into communities in response for print reading materials during the pandemic.

We continued with our Wi-Fi hotspot programme and delivered to support community organisations, school pods and shelter locations.

What we call our road to reopening work, now we've got 22 locations open but we had restroom services right from the very start to try and support our insecurely housed populations, curbside services, and as I said, we re-implemented mobile services.

And we also created a full-time equity-focused position on our leadership team.

Next slide.

So with that, definitely there has been some challenges within our 2020. Can you move to next slide?

Definitely just like rest of the city, we were faced with operating during this global pandemic closure as well as a huge nationwide civil rights movement.

A couple of things that we wanted to highlight here is that our staff of colors who are bearing a lot of burden on leading the equity work also have to deal with the pandemic closure as well as civil rights throughout these times.

And our staff had been really learning a lot of different roles, as mentioned that we also have to provide and deliver services differently like curbside and also restroom services so our folks really have to learn different tools and different tasks that they have to learn to deliver these work.

One of the key challenge, particularly around technology, is that a lot many of our folks are not really equipped with laptops for them to work from home.

So especially at the beginning of the pandemic when we were closed down, many of our folks really did not have that kind of venue as well as their roles.

Most of their jobs were really performed in buildings rather than at home.

So we did a lot of accommodating and being creative in terms of allowing our staff to work from home.

So many challenges and you know, one of the key thing that we have done also is really to repurpose our laptops that are being used by patrons so that our staff can use them temporarily.

So many challenges and just as the rest of the city.

Yes, and I wanted to point out again that we have several other toolkits mentioned, racial equity toolkits that are in this deck, but we will just be going through one today for expediency.

And we use these to inform our process, our programming, our services that we're considering.

And this year, obviously, there were some new requirements of documenting the racial equity toolkits.

Unfortunately, we did not hear about some of those until the report format was announced.

So that made it a little bit challenging, and most certainly next year we'll do better on that and be able to work through all of that format and all of those reporting requirements.

Next, please.

So I'm just going to walk through your next job, which in a nutshell is like a virtual job assistance program.

And we do it in 11 languages, which currently are Amharic, Arabic, Chinese, English, Korean, Oromo, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Tigrinya, and Vietnamese.

We managed to do all those languages because we have partnerships with regional library systems and community organizations to increase our reach.

And so we are working with Snow Isle and KCLS and partnering with them, as well as some other community organizations like Seattle Jobs Initiative.

Puget Sound Welcome Back Centre, Building Average and the Korean Community Service Centre.

And we really launched this, obviously, in response to the pandemic-related job losses and are really trying to reach those, again, most impacted.

And we did a lot of advertising of this service, again, working with all our partners.

So we kind of all combined forces to increase our reach and did advertising and service in print, online and radio.

And I'm happy to report that over 300 patrons contacted us to use this service.

And it's a very high touch service.

They make an appointment, they have a one-on-one interview, and they do follow-up appointments.

So that was through the end of last year, so late June through December, over 300 patrons contacted.

And about 70% of patrons received job search assistance.

And of all the patrons that contacted, about 50% of those patrons also received assistance with developing job skills.

So it wasn't just finding a job, it was also like assistance with unemployment and also digital literacy skills, easy for me to say.

Next slide, please.

So the equity goal and outcome, again, we really wanted to provide much needed assistance, really navigating the workforce development landscape, and again, centering those most negatively impacted by the economic impacts of the pandemic.

And so we really did center residents from marginalized communities, offering assistance in relief services, referrals, improved digital literacy, and really looked at the Seattle's top tier languages so we could map back to communities and languages they spoke.

So that program is still continuing now, and we're continuing to add languages and support to it.

Next slide, although I think it might actually be that we need to jump ahead now, Tom, is that correct?

Correct.

Slide 28, please, Nageen.

So as you have seen it in earlier slides, thrive together.

This became our rallying point for our staff during this pandemic.

And one of the couple things that we wanted to highlight here is that our RSGI change team really continue to meet virtually on a regular basis and bring really our meetings to focus on self-care for not only the change team itself, but also throughout the library.

We also created this cross-functional reopening committees with a representation across our organization and be able to really provide a lot of venue to solicit input, particularly from staff in terms of our path to reopening the committee.

Also, our employee engagement committee work with our leadership to recognize our staff.

We had quite a bit of staff that were working in person in building throughout the pandemic, and we really wanted to recognize them.

they've done a great job of coming up with staff recognition, as well as we had a virtual staff week, really providing and center around that thrive together.

Thank you.

Next, please.

So looking ahead to 2021, we know we have some things that we're going to be continuing and some additional work that we want to focus on.

So our RSJ change team is really looking at new programming for staff, including different ways to engage.

Right now we're looking at caucusing and how we may be able to introduce that into the library system.

Equity training, equity programming training is occurring for a large number of our staff.

And we're also going to be doing racial equity training for the leadership team and the senior management team, but also all of our managers and supervisors through the system to better align all of our work, both internally and externally, as we look to improve our equity portfolio.

Reviewing positions to determine if they can be repurposed to focus on programming that is rooted in equity and working within the community.

And we are increasing our language access.

We are working on our language access plan now and really have a great outlook on how we can do better in all that we do and produce with various languages.

And a continued focus on our road to reopening, which will increase access to all those in the Seattle area.

And with that, I'll end here and ask if there are any questions.

Just briefly, Jay, how many, or I'm sorry, Tom, how many employees are at the libraries now?

There's approximately, when we're fully staffed, approximately 700.

And so I know this, but I think the public doesn't know this.

How many libraries we have and how many are open right now?

We have 27 locations right now, 22 are open, and we will have our 23rd opening on August 4th.

What library is that on August 4th?

That'll be Fremont.

We want good.

Okay, great.

Thank you so much.

I know you've been giving me updates online or your staff has about when I do my Monday morning reporting with parks and and sales center, etc.

So good.

So of our 2722 are open.

The 23rd will be open Fremont next week.

So I think we're on track.

Correct.

We are and we're in the middle of hiring between 40 and 50 staff back and that will get us here over the summer.

We'll be able to bring those on and get the rest of those buildings up.

Tom, thank you so much.

Thank you, Alex.

Thank you, Helen, Jay, and Carmen.

I'm sorry that we kind of pushed us a little quicker than we normally do.

But you did provide us the PowerPoint, which is 30 pages long, which is online.

People can look at it.

And if we need to do a follow-up, we can do that.

So I want to thank you guys very much.

Thank you so much.

So turning to our agenda item number three from the CL Center, they have their 2020 RSJI report.

Negin, can you read that into the record?

Agenda item three, Seattle Center 2020 RSJI report briefing and discussion.

Mr. Nellems, you want to introduce yourself and your team?

Yes, thank you, Councilmember.

I'm the director of Seattle Center, and I have Natonia and Vivian from our team who are our change team co-leads.

We'll be presenting to you today, and I'm going to jump right in.

As Naheem loads up our presentation, I'll start off.

Great.

Let me start by stating the obvious.

COVID-19 profoundly affected operations at Seattle Center.

It was like the ground was suddenly pulled from under our feet.

The department pivoted from its primary function as a community events producer and promoter and partner to our long-term lease tenants to its primary city emergency function to shelter people in need.

Most Seattle Center staff went to work at home, except for those needed to carry out on-site departmental operations.

Seattle Center has long seen the department's contribution to the city's rape and social justice initiative and what we can offer the community through our events and activities, and so our RSJI program needed to shift with the pandemic as well.

No more in-person cultural events, no more lunch and learns, no more staff gatherings, and no opportunities to include resident organizations in the broader community in important in-person discussions around diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice.

At the same time, our staff was deeply affected by events in the world and the murder of George Floyd and others.

These events brought racism to the forefront of everyone's consciousness, prompting people to organize and speak out against racial injustice in our country.

Concurrently, the Race and Social Justice Change Team faced major changes as longtime leadership and membership retired or stepped aside in 2020. I want to commend our current change team co-leads, Natonia and Vivian, who are here with me today for stepping up to fill those roles on the change team.

They have spent much of their time building the capacity for the change team to act in meaningful, productive, and important ways, as you will hear later in the presentation.

Now, as you know, I will not read the slides to you, but I will comment on them as we go through.

So, Naheem, let's move on.

The team provided an invaluable outlet for Seattle Center staff, especially those working remotely and feeling isolated during an emotional, intense period.

Early on, the team embraced remote meetings to hold space for staff to support each other through the isolation the pandemic caused.

They also provided opportunities to engage with staff on the subject of race and social justice, which you will hear more about a little later.

Our premier public program, Seattle Center Festal, also embraced remote technology to quickly pivot to online digital festivals with production assistance from the newly created Seattle Center Studios.

Next slide, please.

Because of the nature of our work to produce and present events, our ability to undertake social equity toolkits was severely impacted by COVID public gathering bans.

Next slide, please.

A result of no events or visitors led to the reduced need for supplies and other purchases.

And early construction and program bans, in addition to city mandates, curtailed our use of consultants.

And so you will see these reductions in our purchasing and consulting numbers for 2020. If there's any good news in the numbers, is that although we spent less money, we were able to just about maintain our Wembley levels from 2019. So in short, 2019 and 2020 results are both atypical, both by design, 2019 regarding the arena construction, and by chance because of the pandemic.

We look forward with great anticipation to 2022 when we can get back to being Seattle Center.

And with that, I'd like to hand off to Natonia and Vivi.

Next slide, please.

Before we do that, Mr. Nellis, real quickly, you anticipate the Climate Pledge Arena opening in October, correct, 2021?

Yes, we do.

Good.

Yep.

You can go ahead.

Next slide, please.

Thanks, Robert.

Thank you to the city council for this opportunity to share our RxJI work with the broader public and to our director, Robert, for the introduction and including us in this presentation.

Natonia and I are honored to be here.

And for the record, I am Vivian Hong, one of the change team co-leads.

Next slide.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Seattle Center quickly pivoted to virtual programming.

Our sound stage and production crew created virtual studios at Marion Oliver McCall Hall with the intention to support our public programs and resident organizations.

We were happy to partner with SOCR to produce the 2020 and 2021 RSJI Summits and the Martin Luther King Jr.

Unity Day, which usually take place in person.

The images you see on the slide are from Seattle Center's virtual studios.

Next slide, please.

Hi, everyone.

For the record, I am Natonia Tyag, one of the co-leads at Seattle Center Change Team.

And as Robert mentioned, our change team focused on capacity building, which resulted in a more directed and highly functioning team overall.

We focused on capacity building to better align ourselves with the city's race and social justice initiative and to step into our purpose of supporting Seattle Center's RSGI activities and build the department's capacity to achieve our RSGI goals.

Some of the tasks and initiatives we worked on are listed on the slide before us.

And we also wanted to share with the Council our four values and guiding principles which we developed for our team this last year.

And they are leading with a racial equity lens, open and accountable communication, authentic trust-based relationships, and self-work.

Next slide.

We also wanted to share with you some of the citywide RSGI and community work our change team members are actively participating in.

We are able to bring some of this work and knowledge we gained from these spaces to the department's team and vice versa.

As you can see on the slide, here are some examples.

We wanted to highlight some of the work that our team is doing outside of the department.

We are a small but mighty change team.

Next slide, please.

So projects throughout the pandemic, the sales interchange team acted quickly to respond to projects and initiatives impacting race, equity and social justices within the department and on the grounds.

The listed programs provide examples of our efforts and achievements in 2020. They're there for you on the slides as well.

We were engaged to provide a filter and lens on key department initiatives, such as our return to work and RRT planning to make certain our actions did not have unintended equity outcomes for our staff.

Concurrently, we work to respond to and engage with staff on important RSA-related topics via Lunch and Learns and listening sessions.

Next slide.

The program that you see on the slide is the Culture Change Program, and the program introduced the concept of white supremacy culture and challenged staff to learn about and acknowledge the ways in which we uphold white supremacy culture at Seattle Center.

Each month highlighted a characteristic of white supremacy culture and offered an antidote through reading materials, videos, and concluding lunch and learns.

We started the culture change program in 2020 and was met with some success, but have paused programming to assess and evaluate our progress as well as the needs of the department in order to determine our next steps and the future of this program.

Next slide, please.

In response to the major events of 2020, we wanted to offer opportunities for staff to engage in discussions of race, equity, and social justice and to be in community with one another.

On the slide before you, you can see the flyers that we put out for the different sessions that we put out.

All of the items on the slide were designed with our staff in mind and to create space for them to share their reflections anger, fear, and joy.

Some of the topics included COVID-19, George Floyd, as well as Stop AAPI Hate.

With that, I will actually turn it back over to Robert, who we also want to thank for his support of the Seattle Center Change Team.

Thank you.

Next slide.

And so I will conclude by thanking the Seattle Center RSGI Change Team for their enthusiastic, focused, and impactful work in 2020. At Seattle Center, we say our purpose is to delight and inspire the human spirit.

In 2020, the Change Team offered much needed spirit for our employees to help us through this challenging period, and they provided lots of food for thought to challenge our thinking in the true spirit of RSGI.

Thank you.

Mr. Nillums, thank you so much.

Thank you, Natonia and Vivian.

And I should add that since I've been chairing this committee since 2016, Robert, you've always delivered a really legacy of excellence with RSJI.

I know that 2020 really hampered us.

It hampered everybody and all of our, but despite, I mean, despite everything that's been going on, you've been able to move forward with the climate change.

You've been hitting your targets on your WMBE and in your contracts.

and you've been sharing the numbers with us and I appreciate that.

I hope the viewing public takes the opportunity to go look at your, the PowerPoint that you provided and the numbers that you provided.

And I'm not, not to say that parks and other folks don't, don't come through in libraries on their RSJI, but there's a, there's a particular sensibility that you bring to that and you always have done that.

And I appreciate that.

So, You and your staff did a good job as usual.

And I often use your presentation as a template in delivering what the RSGI is and hitting those timelines and, you know, those, those hallmarks.

So again, thank you for your, your legacy of doing a great job.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

That's very kind.

Well, I'm a kind person.

So with that, I think we are, we didn't hear, Oh, Ms. Beagles for the parks.

So with that, are we going to wrap up then and we'll move on to the next item?

Negin?

Yep.

Agenda item four, Seattle Parks and Recreation 2020 RSJI report briefing and discussion.

So today, let's see.

Now we've got Seattle Parks folks here.

We've got B.

Hill.

I'll let the team go ahead and introduce themselves.

Jesus, you're here.

Nice of you to show up, Jesus, superintendent.

I've been here the entire time.

No, thank you.

I'm glad to be here.

Jesus Aguirre, I'm Superintendent of Seattle Parks and Recreation.

Bea Hill, Equity Engagement Strategic Advisor with Seattle Parks and Recreation.

Angela Smith, Seattle Parks Change Team Co-Lead and Lifelong Recreation Specialist that programs for people age 50 and better.

Hi, Belinda Chin, race and social justice change team co-lead with parks.

And when I'm not doing that, I am doing a safety team in the recreation division.

Thank you.

You want to go ahead?

I know you got a PowerPoint for us, Jesus.

I think what?

Wow, only 10 pages.

Well, I'll kick us off and then I want my colleagues, Bea, Angela, and Belinda to really do the bulk of the talking here.

But first of all, I want to congratulate our colleagues at libraries and Seattle Center.

Thank you for the great presentations.

And we continue to learn from you all every time we watch your presentations.

So thank you for that.

And not to be repetitive, but obviously 2020 was a challenging year for all of us.

And the year and a half or so have been tremendously challenging for our communities, the people we serve, but also challenging for our own team members and for our organization.

At Seattle Parks and Recreation, prior to the crises of 2020 and into 2021, we'd already been on a journey like everyone else to understand our role in both creating as well as undoing the institutional harm of racist practices, policies, procedures, structures.

These congruent crisis of COVID, the racial reckoning, the resulting economic implosion, and the increasing impacts of climate change obviously have highlighted for us the great disparities in our communities and really deepened our commitment at SPR across the board in emerging in anti-racism and being equity centered.

It's really important to highlight the fact that in addition to our work in serving community, just like the libraries and Seattle Center and other agencies, we responded and pivoted to a whole new line of businesses.

It was also important to recognize that our robust and committed team of over 900 people, as they were helping community respond, were also dealing with the pandemic and the racial reckoning and the climate crisis, et cetera.

That added a whole nother layer of challenge for us as a team.

And really just want to extend my deepest appreciation to all of the members of the Parks and Recreation team for all that they've done and continue to do to work together to support community and to support each other.

So with that, our hope today is to give you council members an update on sort of an overview on some of the challenges, some of the accomplishments in this work of RSGI, and then an overview of some of our racial equity toolkit work But there's a lot of information on the slide.

We'll go very, very quickly.

And of course, we're happy to answer any questions at the end.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Bea Hill, who serves as our equity advisor for the department.

Thank you, Jesus.

As mentioned, and as expressed, you know, in 2020, we experienced parallel and intersecting crisis, which presented a shift in context and how we offer parks and recreation services in these times of crisis.

ever-present and urgent need for equity and solidarity, the impacts of climate change, experiencing a public health crisis and economic crisis.

So the shifting context elevated the immediate needs of SPR in our COVID-19 response to provide mission essential services with community showers and shelters, child care for those furthest from educational justice, and teen hub support, enhanced cleaning of facilities and restrooms, having a focus on keeping parks open while supporting public health and safety, our virtual programming aimed at the most isolated and outdoor programming and activation.

And I feel it's also important to note that in 2020 operating from a state of emergency and crisis mode to planning and recovery and being transparent.

We know that meant there were times of decision making that had to be made quickly.

And with those overarching equity analysis questions, we consciously considered who will be impacted, benefit burden, mitigation strategies for unintentional harm, and also taking into consideration public health guidelines, our engagement with those who would be most impacted by our decision-making and service offerings.

Next slide, please.

So we felt it also important to just provide some context on SPR's pathway to equity.

Although pathway to equity was adopted as a framework in 2019, this framework is one guiding approach to lend to supporting SPR's commitment to the advancement of the race and social justice initiative.

Our North Star is to build SBR as a transformational anti-racist and equity-centered department, utilizing the anti-racist organizing approach.

At this stage of Pathway to Equity and the framework that it provides, it utilizes the following pillars of organizing and advocacy, building relationships and infrastructure, training and applied learning, accountability and embedded practice, and that embedded practice being normalizing and operationalizing anti-racism in equity-centered operations in our culture, in our daily practice.

And we can think of Pathway to Equity as providing those foundational elements to support our anti-racist and equity-centered infrastructure.

Next slide, please.

I'm not sure if my colleagues are muted.

I can start.

Oh, sorry about that.

All right, thank you.

So the 2020 RCA accomplishments, Bea already covered Pathway to Equity.

So I will defer to Angela to cover the Equity Innovation Labs.

Yeah, the Equity Innovation Labs, if you haven't heard of it, it's a new innovation tool that was actually developed by B.

Hill and Shannonica McElroy, who are our colleagues.

And it is an engagement tool that assists our staff with participatory decision-making processes.

And we use that tool to engage the staff to help us determine what our internal engagement policies should look like, which includes strategies, actions, goals, engagement, principles, and how to share power and planning, including decision-making processes.

And so we're using that to, you know, focus with the different divisions and teams to abstract those direct ideas and their thought processes.

The Anti-Racist Actions Commitment is a multi-pronged approach informed by staff engagement, a research study done by University of Washington Evans School in 2018, the Office of Civil Rights Strategic Planning and Guidance.

The document identifies dedicating more resources and positions, removing barriers to communications, developing anti-racist workplace expectations, continuous learning and accountability measures to increase capacity for systems and cultural change.

This also includes several tools.

an analysis tool, assessment management, equity criteria, and equity zone mapping?

The foundation of change and LEAP.

Foundations of change began in 2018, centered with SBR as an anti-racist principles.

In 2019, we introduced the city LEAP project was developed by HR, and Seattle Parks' early adopters of that program and the pathways to equity.

The team, we're also incorporating the foundations of anti-racist principles within our E3 performance expectations.

And in 2020, we took the opportunity to intentionally plan to develop our RSJ applied learning and growth opportunities for 2021 and beyond.

Our current training and development model has shift to weekly RSJ trainings and knowledge building with monthly facilitation designed by staff to lead for the foundation of change and lead.

The development of equity engagement and equity analysis tools will be covered by Bea in the near future.

So I'll defer back to Angela to continue.

Yeah, and to give you more about the change team co-leads, the department approved more dedicated time for co-leads to help with internal work with the department.

And we're grateful for that.

You know, with the rise of the racial unrest with the nation and the city, there was a lot of work that we could see that was gonna be needed to be done.

And so with those hours, we have it formalized and have been able to assist our growing affinity groups with specific training that we adopted right from the Office of Civil Rights.

We've given them a number of trainings, which have led to a number of Q&A sessions, and We have a number of leaders that have just stepped up.

And the growth of our infinity group from 2007 was two.

And now we're at, I believe, 10.

Thank you, Angela and Belinda.

As you see also in an image, it highlights the WEMBI utilization for 2020. Our stated goal in 2020 for purchasing was 21%.

Our actual was 24%.

With consulting, our stated goal was 26%, and our actual was 52%.

And it also highlights our prompt pay of 93%, in which we are increasing that goal to 95%, as well as our consulting goal for 2021. And I know in the interest of time, we have to keep moving.

However, we just want to say that, you know, we are more than willing to provide additional documentation and information as we continue to go.

And with that next slide, I will turn it over to Jesus with the service and program equity.

And obviously, there's a ton of information on here.

But I guess I will say just at a high level, like everyone else, in an era when we had to respond with mission central functions to really support community with reduced resources and with increased restrictions on because of the COVID pandemic, we really had to focus our service delivery.

And that focus was really driven by an equity lens.

And a couple of examples I'll highlight here, for example, our continuation of providing childcare programming first focused on our first responders, but then really focusing on ensuring that we were serving the needs of the children who were furthest from educational justice.

And as an example, 60% of the children who participated in childcare in 2020 were from families that identified as BIPOC.

So again, we continued, like some of the other organizations, in addition to our BIPOC communities, we also saw a great need within our senior population, our special needs population, and folks like Angela and others continue to work on virtual programming to ensure that we would be able to continue those offerings.

And, you know, we'll continue to focus.

Another key highlight of the equity focus on our limited programming during 2020 was as we moved away from buildings and outside and trying to bring our recreational activities through mobile rec and our program called Rec in the Streets going into parks, we really focused on communities, again, that were primarily BIPOC and really we could identify as in greater need.

So that really, The pandemic and all the crises really forced us to make these decisions, and I think really allowed us to focus greatly with an equity lens.

I'll turn it back over to Bea.

And next slide, please.

In highlighting some of the RSJF challenges in 2020, one of the most important equity challenges presented was the fact that any community engagement for most of 2020 had to be conducted virtually.

And given the digital gap among Seattle communities and many communities, this meant we undoubtedly missed a portion of the population who were unable to participate in virtual meetings.

So we must continuously be intentional, continuously build on robust ways and providing a variety of ways to engage with community and our position is seeking to hear from communities most impacted.

by the crises that we have faced and how their needs have shifted.

As well as our internal staff infrastructure and the impact, we must equally build upon our resources and investments to build an internal infrastructure that supports employee health, safety, and well-being in times of hardship as our employees And particularly frontline employees provide essential services, while also personally experiencing the impacts of intersexual and parallel crises.

And just as we just continue to move forward, the dedicated time for frontline staff for RSJ training, Angela and Linda mentioned in the previous slides about our Foundations of Change training.

And we took 2020 to be intentional in our planning to develop out our applied learning and growth opportunities centered in RSJI during 2020 so that we have now moved into consistent weekly training with our Foundations of Change.

Next slide, please.

And so 2020 equity analysis tool utilization.

I have highlighted here to racial equity toolkits that were utilized.

However, I also wanted to Mention that we focused on further development and refinement departments equity analysis tools and those tools being the equity impact filter recreation programming tool.

budget analysis tool, our GIS AMWO Equity Mapping Tool, and equity consideration planning in our Planning, Development, and Maintenance Division.

The GIS AMWO Equity Mapping Tool, for example, utilizes the Race and Social Equity Index to inform, guide, and direct equitable service delivery.

And this allows, for example, our maintenance teams in Parks and Environment to have the ability to be proactive versus reactive and prioritizing service delivery daily in identified equity zones.

Next slide, please.

I hate to, I'm going to have to have you wrap it up pretty soon because we have a hard stop at three or we'll lose quorum.

It's true.

So our equity impact filter was applied to Red Barn Branch.

And this was our North Star and still is our North Star to help build wealth and institutional power in BIPOC communities.

Next slide, please.

And the racial equity toolkit was also applied with our Cal Anderson Visioning Project.

And this was an outreach process to receive input and address potential design and programming interventions at Cal Anderson.

Next slide.

I guess we'll just wrap up here.

Here's the list of all of our, the spirit of SBR.

Jesus has been having monthly meetings.

We have a bunch of divisional meetings.

Our HR team is doing outreach using the resources that they have.

You've heard more about our affinity and change team groups and the innovation challenge that was implemented by Shannon and Roy has helped propel some of the items that are going to be moving forward for 2021.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Is that we're wrapping this up then, Jesus?

We're good?

Thank you for your time.

Yep.

Great.

Thank you, Jesus and Belinda and B and Angela so much.

Again, your PowerPoint is on the website and we'll have if we need to do some more follow up, we can.

And very briefly, thank you so much for your staff, Jesus.

Every Monday morning, as you know, we share on Seattle City Council staff with our colleagues, the child care, the community centers, The Park Shower Program, the Summer Lunch Program, the Clean City Initiative.

Thank you for your hard work.

CL Parks, I know I'm going to be meeting with your group next week, correct?

Meeting with everybody next week.

I have to say you guys really came through in this pandemic, especially with the community centers and all your staff doing things that you normally wouldn't do.

Plus, you were doing the race and social justice issue, and we were dealing with all the other issues.

I just want to thank you.

You guys have gone above and beyond.

I see your trucks and your crews all over North Seattle and downtown.

up at the parks, so thank you so much.

With that, is there anything else from my colleagues before I lose Council Member Herbold?

Okay, so with that, before we move to adjournment, let me just add that the next Public Assets and Native Communities meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, August 3rd at two o'clock, and we are adjourned.

Have a great afternoon, everyone.

Thank you, thank you, parks.

You're my favorite.

Now that Mr. Dellums is gone.

Thank you.

Recording stopped.