Seattle City Council Community Economic Development Committee 5/18/21

I am muted.

Very good.

Good afternoon, everyone.

The May 18th, 2021 meeting of the Community Economic Development Committee will come to order.

It is 2.01 p.m.

I'm Tammy Morales, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Member Lewis.

Present.

Council Member Juarez.

Council Member Peterson.

Here.

Council Member Sawant.

Present.

Council Member Herbold.

Here.

Chair Morales.

Here.

Looks like we have six present.

Very good.

Thank you.

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

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

So, good afternoon, everyone.

On today's agenda, we have two presentations and two pieces of legislation that we will be considering.

The first presentation will be regarding the fossil fuel study that was conducted by the Office of Economic Development.

The second will be on the participatory budgeting.

And then the two pieces of legislation that we have, one is Council Bill 120000 regarding the Office of Civil Rights.

It changes the end of the director's term by one year and also removes an outdated subsection regarding a racial equity toolkit.

And then we will discuss, sorry, I just lost my notes.

We will discuss another council bill, 120071. That is an ordinance related to commercial tenancies.

And council member Herbold will be addressing that item for us.

So that's just a little preview of what we will be doing this afternoon.

I want to go ahead and begin the public comment period and then we will get into it.

So at this time, we will open the remote general public comment.

I ask that everyone please be patient as we operate this online system.

We're always looking for ways to improve the system and make sure that we can engage and encourage public participation in our council meetings.

It does remain the strong intent of council to have public comment, but council reserves the right to modify these periods if at any point we deem the system as 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.

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

The comment period for this meeting is up to 20 minutes and each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

I'll call on two speakers at a time.

If you have not yet registered to speak but would like to, you can still sign up before the period ends by going to the council's website at Seattle.gov slash council.

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

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

Speakers, you must press star six in order to begin speaking.

Well, at least in order for us to hear you if you're speaking.

Please begin by stating your name and the item you're addressing.

As a reminder, public comment should relate to an item on today's agenda.

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

And if you plan to continue to follow the meeting, that you do so at Seattle Channel or by the listening options listed on the agenda.

Okay, so we will begin.

Please remember to press star six before speaking.

And I have first on my list, Shamir Tana, who will be followed by Peter Condon.

Shamir, please go ahead.

Hi, my name is Shamir Tana.

I'm a District 7 resident and just an ordinary community member.

I'm calling out today to ask council members to list the provisional and the 28 million for budget.

PB must be equitable and must center black lives and must be designed and held by the community, not by the city.

Steering community members should be selected from the communities that are most likely to be harmed and killed by systemic racism and violence.

Examples, black women, trans or gender non-binary people with disabilities.

Furthermore, they need full-time compensation.

It is vital for participatory budgeting success that its implementation be led by members of community closest to the harmful effects of policing and incarceration.

We can't afford the status quo, top-down programs where black and brown communities suffer because those not on the ground and not with experience think they know what's best.

Systemic racism is the result and the reality.

Through participatory budgeting, we are building a new paradigm for public safety that centers communities most harmed by violent policing.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Shamir.

Next, we have Peter Condit, who will be followed by Kirsten Smith.

Good afternoon.

My name is Peter Condit.

I'm a DE4 resident and abolitionist.

I'm calling to ask city council members to lift the proviso on $28 million for participatory budgeting.

PB and Seattle must be equitable, center Black lives, and be designed and held by community, not by the city.

Steering committee members accountable for the program's success need full-time compensation.

As outlined in the Black Brilliance Research Report, these individuals should be selected from communities that are most likely to be harmed or killed by systemic racism and violence.

This includes, for example, Black women, people who are trans or gender non-binary, people with lived experience of homelessness, Indigenous women, and people with disabilities.

By providing living wage salaries to these employees, PB can be anti-racist and accountable to our most vulnerable residents.

If you say that PB is too expensive with this sort of setup, you are saying that you would rather not support black and indigenous people who have historically and presently been omitted from such positions of power and decision-making.

Through participatory budgeting, we can build a new paradigm for public safety that centers the communities most harmed by violent policing.

Thank you.

Thank you, Peter.

Next, we have Kirsten Smith, who will be followed by Heather Kelly.

Good afternoon.

My name is Kirsten Smith.

I live in District 1, and I work on public policy for the Seattle chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

I'm commenting on agenda item number 1, the fossil fuel transition study.

AIA supports the city's work to facilitate building electrification as part of Seattle's efforts to combat climate change.

The work to transition Seattle away from fossil fuels is happening now and will keep moving forward, and we need to prepare our workforce rather than being reactionary.

Training and equitably transitioning the labor force is a key component to building electrification being successful.

Other jurisdictions are coming up with practical solutions to address labor issues, including San Francisco, where pipefitters are being retrained for graywater systems work.

We urge you to act on the city's recommendations quickly, as addressing these workforce issues will only get more expensive the longer we wait.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kirsten.

Next, we have Heather Kelly followed by Tana Yasu.

My name is Heather Kelly.

I live in District 6 and I'm here today on behalf of the League of Women Voters of Seattle King County to speak in support of participatory budgeting.

The League is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to defending democracy and empowering voters.

With those goals in mind we urge the council forward in implementing a fully funded participatory budgeting process.

The League supports a budgeting process that builds on the incredible groundwork laid by the Black Brilliance Project where participatory means not only inclusive but also fully transparent.

The League's committed to supporting transparency throughout this process through its volunteer corps public education events and by urging city officials to make themselves available to converge media.

Thank you Council Member Morales for this warning.

The South Seattle Emerald and other outlets calling for investment in the Black community.

The League is also calling on other historically white led organizations who've not come forward to support this process to do so now.

When we hear calls to action from the Black community, we must amplify them within our own communities, demand equity and justice for those directly impacted by police violence, and uplift this process however we can.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment today.

Thank you, Heather.

Next, we have Tana Yasu, who will be followed by Latanya Sevier.

Greetings and good day.

Can you all hear me.

We can.

Thank you.

Yes yes good.

Good day one and all.

I'm Tawni Yasu.

I reside in District 1. I'm also on the Seattle Women's Commission and which I am a co-chair.

The Black Brilliance Research Report called out Black women as a key demographic to include as salaried members of the PB steering committee.

A delay in getting P.B.

funds out equals a delay in getting Seattle area median paying jobs to Black women.

From some fast research conducted by me a.k.a. a Google search I have found as late as 2017 the median annual earnings for full time year round Black women workers was just over thirty six thousand an amount 21 percent lower than that of white women.

Black families are more reliant on women's incomes than other families since 80 percent of Black Mothers are the breadwinners in their family.

Seattle is clearly up to its old shenanigans of talking the talk but not walking the walk.

This PB money is not a handout.

It's an investment into a community of people who have been harmed by systemic racism in Seattle.

The research has been done.

The plan has been laid out.

This is black brilliance at its finest.

In the next year more black families suffer for waiting on empty promises.

Release the funds and trust that the community, given the resources needed, will be able to accomplish the goals, the chief aim goals of the research results.

Thank you for hearing me and have a wonderful day.

Thank you so much, Tawna.

Next, we have Latanya Sevier followed by Kira McCoy.

Hi, good afternoon.

My name is Latanya Sevier.

I'm a 38-year-old Black queer non-binary person renting in D2.

I'm also the co-lead of the Black Branch Research Project, which works with over 100 community researchers who are primarily black and brown folks.

This research included the voices of thousands of community members to design a black and community-led participatory budgeting process.

I'm calling to ask city council members to lift the proviso on the 28 million for participatory budgeting.

PB is a democratic budgeting process that allows all citizens to take part in their future, including our young people as young as 10, folks who are currently and formerly incarcerated, folks who have undocumented status and others who have been excluded from the electoral process.

TV in Seattle must be equitable center Black lives and be designed and held by community not by the city.

Steering Committee members accountable for the program's success need full compensation.

As outlined in the Black Brands Research Report these individuals should be selected from communities that are most likely to be harmed or killed by systemic racism and violence.

This includes black women, people who are transgender, gender non-conforming, non-binary, people with lived experience of homelessness, indigenous women, people with disabilities, among others.

Community-led participatory budgeting would take the first step in righting the wrongs of white supremacist city-led processes that made decisions for our community members without giving agency to those most impacted.

By stepping aside and letting black, indigenous, trans, and other impacted communities lead We are ensuring that the solutions actually match the needs.

The time to act is now.

Some communities have been waiting for generations for government to recognize their brilliance.

Community knows what they need.

It's time for the city to lift the proviso and allow communities to lead the PV process and direct funds into areas that will have equitable outcomes for those who have been historically excluded from opportunity.

Thank you.

Thank you, LaTanya.

Next, we have Kira McCoy followed by Penny O'Grady.

Hello, members of the committee.

My name is Kira McCoy.

I'm addressing the participatory budgeting item.

I'm a District 4 resident.

I'm a clinical instructor at UW.

And I'm also a co-chair of the racial justice team at the University Unitarian Church, which is a congregation in Ravenna.

We have over 200 members.

I'm requesting that you lift the proviso on the $28 million for participatory budgeting.

Through my work at church, we've examined how our own congregation and leadership are overwhelmingly white, and some members of color have struggled to feel welcome, have felt hurt by microaggressions or have felt left out of program budget decisions.

Even though we are well-meaning liberals we have institutional racism just like universities just like cities.

As a White person I felt the desire to fix these issues quickly and to take the reins.

However I've learned to pause to honor the wisdom of people of color in my institution and to follow their guidance to come together to address problems.

And we really will have a stronger community if black LGBTQ disabled members can decide how money is spent in our church, not just a few select leaders at the top.

And that's why I support participatory budgeting because at the city level, I believe the most impacted people should have decision-making power.

And this is just a small slice, a very small slice of the big pot of city funding.

The Black Brilliance Research Project is absolutely amazing and gives me goose bumps and let's listen.

And I'd ask council members to really listen.

Through participatory budgeting, we're building a new paradigm for public safety.

And I'll end with a quote by Aurora Levins Morales, a Puerto Rican Jewish

Oh, dear.

Kara, we did not hear your quote.

Please make sure to send that to us so that we can hear the poet that you wanted us to hear.

Thank you.

OK, it's just one line.

In order to build the movements capable of transforming our world, we have to do our best to live with one foot in the world we have not yet created.

Thank you.

Thank you.

important words to keep in mind for sure.

Okay, next we have Penny O'Grady who will be followed by Maya McCoy.

Hello, council members and everyone.

My name is Penny O'Grady.

I live in District 6 and we are a proud union family and I want to state my continued support for participatory budgeting.

Specifically done according to the roadmap laid out by the Black Brilliance researchers which centers Black lives will be designed and held by community not by the city.

I'm asking you to release the twenty eight million dollars in funding already budgeted for it.

Do whatever you can to speed up the process.

The funds are much needed now to build a more responsive and caring city.

Meaning people's needs and building community while breathing new life into the democratic process are all effective solutions for true public safety.

Policing is not.

Policing does not make me feel safe.

PBE is a powerful tool that works on all these levels.

Oh and what LaTanya said and also Goosebumps for sure.

Thank you.

I yelled my time.

Thank you, Penny.

Next, we have Maya McCoy, followed by Nick Manning.

Penny, Maya, please go ahead.

Maya, you'll need to press star six for us to hear you.

Oh, can you?

OK, perfect.

Thank you all for your patience.

So my name's Maya, and I live in Wallingford District 4. I'm a community member and organizer with CardW.

I've been really excited.

I'm speaking on participatory budgeting and yeah I'm I'm urging the council to move this forward.

I've been organizing around this and spreading the word and feeling really excited about the research that the Buckland Research Project's done and really wanting to follow this roadmap.

Community led participatory budgeting would take the first steps in righting the wrongs of white supremacy city-led processes that made decisions for our community members without giving agency to those most impacted.

And by stepping aside and letting Black, Indigenous, trans, and other impacted communities lead, we're ensuring that the solutions actually match the needs.

And I'm feeling frustrated that the funds have been held for so long.

I feel like safety is the most important thing, my top priority, and I feel, yeah, kind of angry that it's that we're not prioritizing it for my black neighbors in the way that me as a white body is.

And I think that those most impacted should be on the committee, just making the decisions and that they should be paid for their time.

Thanks, that's all I have.

Thank you, Maya.

Next, we have Nick Manning, who will be followed by Trevona Thompson-Wiley.

Hey, good afternoon, everybody.

I hope you can hear me.

My name is Nick Manning.

I'm a Seattle resident.

I live in District 3, and I'm here representing the Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, which is a statewide organization of health professionals working on some of the biggest challenges to our health, namely climate change.

And so I'm testifying today regarding the fossil fuel transition study to urge the rapid transition of fossil fuels in all buildings in Seattle.

as the fastest growing source of carbon emissions and as providing an enormous foothold for the fossil gas industry in our state, decarbonizing the building sector is imperative to meet our climate goals and keep gas out so that we can focus on a just transition to renewable sources of energy.

Although beyond that, while I am a climate activist, what compels me to believe in this the most, that this is the most important climate campaign in our state at this moment in time It's not necessarily the implications for climate change, but rather the implications for health.

And as an organization representing health professionals, I've been really at the forefront of some of the really damning information that's been coming out in studies recently.

I mean, we're talking about a 42 percent increased chance of asthma symptoms in children growing up in a home with a gas stove.

We're talking about levels of indoor air pollution from just one hour of cooking with the gas stove that would be illegal by EPA standards if found outdoors.

I mean, we have these heating appliances, ovens, and all the ways that gas seeps into our indoor environment and lingers are causing irreversible harm to our health, especially those most vulnerable and the immunocompromised younger and older populations as well.

Seattle already passed a strong commercial energy code to eliminate fossil fuels in most commercial and with the family buildings.

And now it's time we bring the rest of our buildings up to the same standard.

especially for homes relying on gas stoves and ovens, our health really can't wait.

And I urge the immediate transition from this body.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, Nick.

Next we have Trevona Thompson-Wiley followed by Amy Willis.

Trevona, please go ahead.

Hi, I'm Trey from Black Action Coalition.

I'm a District 2 resident.

I'm also a community resident.

I'm calling to ask City Council Members to lift the proviso on $28 million for PB.

PB and Seattle must be equitable.

Central Black Lives and be designed and held by community not by the city.

Steering committee members accountable for the program success need to need full-time compensation and they should definitely be back.

Black.

As outlined in the Black Brilliance Research Project These individuals should be selected from communities that are most likely to be harmed or killed by systemic racism and violence.

This includes for example Black women people who are trans or gender non-binary people who live experiencing homelessness and women and people with disabilities.

Seattle PB steering committee needs to be needs needs consistent needs to be consistent with the community members who are most likely to be harmed by racist policing and incarceration which is why They should be Black, Indigenous, and trans folks, and folks who are disabled.

By providing living wage salaries for Black, Indigenous, disabled, and trans people, PB can be anti-racist and accountable to our most vulnerable residents.

Through PB, we are building a new paradigm of public safety that centers community members most harmed by violent policing.

And I would last like to say, if Black Lives Matter, I would like to see the Seattle City Council approve it by making sure that we invest in the black community and that when we say that we're going to do something, we actually do it.

And I yield the rest of my time.

Thank you.

Thank you, Trevona.

Next, we have Amy Wheelis.

And colleagues, we are, I think, at 20 minutes, but we only have five more people left after Amy.

And so with your permission, I'll extend public comment for an extra 10 minutes.

Any objections?

Seeing none, we'll extend for 10 more minutes.

Amy, please go ahead and Amy will be followed by Katie Gentry.

All right.

Thank you, Chair Morales and committee members.

My name is Amy Wheelis and I'm a District 6 resident and also a policy analyst at the Northwest Energy Coalition.

I'd like to speak to the fossil fuel transition study that you'll be hearing about in a few minutes.

I'd like to thank council for funding this study a couple cycles ago and for having today's presentation.

to meet our climate protection goals and for the health of our residents, we need to begin moving away from fossil fuels, especially in our buildings.

But we need to do it in a way that centers the communities who could be most affected, including workers.

So I'm really thankful that this study is before you and lays out a clear and thoughtful framework and next steps for how we work together on a just transition.

But now we need action from council.

We hope the council is able to move forward with stakeholders and communities quickly on things that we can do now and tomorrow to address the fossil fuel use in our buildings and the climate crisis.

We know our buildings are where we spend 99% of our time, where we live, work, and play.

And we want them to be healthy and resilient.

So thank you for your time and attention to the issue today.

Thank you, Amy.

Next, we have Katie Gendry, who will be followed by Johnny Coker.

Katie, please go ahead.

Hello, my name is Katie gender.

Yeah, my district six residents.

Well, renter.

I'm calling and emailing to ask for the council members to lift the producer on $20 million for participatory budgeting.

PB in Seattle must be equitable center black lives and be designed to be held by community, not by the city.

Steering committee members accountable for the program's success need full-time compensation.

As outlined in the Black Fairlands Research Report, these individuals should be selected from communities that are most likely to be harmed or killed by systemic racism and violence.

This includes, for example, Black women, people who are trans or gender non-binary, people with lived experience of homelessness, Indigenous women, and people with disabilities.

Through participatory budgeting, we are building a new paradigm for public safety that centers communities most harmed by violent policing.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you, Katie.

And I do want to remind everybody that whether you rent, own, or are experiencing homelessness, you're still a neighbor and a resident in this city.

So thank you for calling in.

Johnny Coker will be followed by Lynn Hirely.

Johnny, please go ahead.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

I'm speaking about agenda item number one, the fossil fuel transition study update.

My name is Johnny Kocher, and I work for RMI, an independent nonprofit working to shift towards a low-carbon future.

All electric homes are an affordable solution and necessary for reducing emissions from our built environment.

RMI has conducted extensive analysis of the economics of electrifying single-family homes in a variety of different cities across the United States.

RMI's 2020 report, The New Economics of Electrifying Buildings, including then all-electric home in Seattle, is $4,500 less in upfront costs and $4,300 less in lifetime costs than a mixed-fuel home.

In 2019, Frontier Energy found similar results in their report submitted to the California Energy Commission, in which an all-electric home in San Francisco saved $5,700 upfront and over $4,000 over its lifetime.

The reason for these cost savings is simple.

An all-electric building does not need to install natural gas infrastructure inside of it, while a mixed fuel home does.

Electrifying existing buildings can also be done affordably.

In 2020, NRDC submitted comments to the California Energy Commission that found that code-compliant gas furnace plus AC system costs 14% more than a baseline heat pump, a code-compliant heat pump.

Additionally, recent RMI analysis of a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health study found that burning natural gas in buildings cost the state of Washington $543 million in health costs annually.

Seattle has already taken the first step on eliminating most fossil fuels in commercial enlargement multifamily buildings.

Now we need to bring all other buildings up to parity.

Thank you.

Thank you, Johnny.

Next, we have Lynn Hirely, forgive me if I'm pronouncing that wrong, followed by Matthew Offenbacher.

Lynn, if you're with us, you'll need to press star six so we can hear you.

Okay.

Okay, thought I did.

Hi, I'm Lynn Hirely.

I'm a 59-year-old white woman.

I live in Ballard.

I work as a mental health counselor.

And I organize with Coalition of Anti-Racist Whites.

And I'm calling in to ask the city council member to lift the proviso on the $28 million for participatory budgeting.

Seattle's PB steering committee really needs to consist of community members who are most likely to be harmed by racist policing and incarceration.

And by providing these living wage salaries Black Indigenous disabled and trans people among others PB can be anti-racist and accountable to our most vulnerable residents.

And I think it's way past time that we acknowledge that these communities are the real experts when it comes to public safety.

If we're going to stay true to the heart and the spirit of participatory budgeting, then it's essential that we follow the lead of these communities from the beginning.

So it may seem easier for some to follow a business and budgeting as usual process, but I'm really asking you to commit to doing your part to making this process itself anti-racist from the beginning and throughout.

We were off to a good start with the Black Brilliance Research Project showing us the roadmap.

Let's stay on the road.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lynn.

The next speaker is Matthew Offenbacher.

And I do show Darnell Hibbler as the last speaker, but I also show him as not present.

So Darnell, if you are listening, you'll need to call back in so that you can be listed as present and get your opportunity.

But for now, Matthew Offenbacher is our last speaker.

Matthew, please go ahead.

Matthew, you'll need to press star 6 so that we can hear you.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, I can.

Please go ahead.

Oh, OK, great.

Sorry about that.

So yes, my name is Matthew Offenbacher, and I'm an artist and resident of Capitol Hill.

This is my first time making public comments for a city council meeting, so I'm a little nervous.

So bear with me.

The reason I'm calling in today is to ask you to lift the proviso for the $28 million for participatory budgeting and move the process forward as outlined by the amazing Black Brilliance Research Report.

Please make sure participatory budgeting will be organized by a non-governmental nonprofit and that it's led by a full-time steering committee that's selected from communities that are most likely to be harmed or killed by systemic racism and violence.

We have in the past and continue to spend obscene amounts on policing and incarceration.

It's abundantly clear that this approach does not work to create public safety.

The new ideas we need will emerge from the grassroots of the communities that have the most information and experience of being harmed by the way things currently are arranged.

Participatory budgeting will direct city funds to these grassroots while also getting everyone who has a stake in Seattle's future involved and invested in this process of change.

Participatory budgeting is a crucial part of what we need to try to create the future Seattle that I want to live in where everyone can be safe and flourishing and surrounded by beauty and abundance.

Please lead us towards this future.

Lift that proviso.

Let participatory budgeting proceed and make sure that it is led by those communities that have been and continue to be most harmed by policing.

Thank you.

Thank you, Matthew.

So I do show Darnell Hibbler as the final speaker, but he is still not here.

And so I think I'm going to go ahead and close out public comment.

Thank you, everyone who called in.

And Darnell, if you are listening, please go ahead and email your comments to us.

We'd be happy to receive your comment that way.

So let's go ahead and move on then to our first agenda item.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Item one, fossil fuel transition study update briefing and discussion.

Thank you, Lakeisha.

So just to set this up quickly, in 2019, Council asked OED to provide an analysis of the jobs and wages of those who are directly employed by the fossil fuel industry and to provide a little bit of a forecast of what our regional job growth could be in the clean energy sector.

So this is really important as we look to reduce or eliminate our reliance on fossil fuels.

We also need to be prepared to get ready for a just transition for workers in these industries.

As we are building a green economy, we need to make sure that folks don't get left behind.

So, we've asked OBD to come and present the findings of the study.

I am going to ask them to focus on the findings and recommendations.

I do want to hear about the methodology as well, but really want to get to those findings, in part because we also have a community panel to share in the discussion with us here, and I want to make sure we have time for them.

That panel.

So we will be hearing from the Office of Economic Development and from Community Attributes, the group that did the research.

We will also be hearing from Brittany Bush-Bollet from Sierra Club, Deepa Sivarajan from Climate Solutions, Jess Wallach from 350 Seattle, as well as from our labor partners, Katie Garrow from the MLK Labor Council, Monty Anderson from Seattle Building Trades and Keith Ware from IBEW 46. We thought it was really important to also hear from workers who were impacted by these changes, as well as from our environmental justice advocates, all of whom have the same goal in mind, which is that this transition happens in a way that everybody gets to thrive and be healthy.

So, I will hand it over to OED to begin, and I will start by introducing Interim Director Pamela Banks, and I'll leave it to you to start your team.

Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and thank you Councilmember Morales and other Councilmembers for the opportunity to share our results on the fossil fuel transition study with you today.

We're really excited.

This comes at a great time as we are looking at how we can use this study and this job growth industry to help recover from COVID.

Our research group community attributes are going to provide a detailed overview of the job forecast, and they're going to do it very expeditiously.

And again, we are just really, it's really important to consider the impacts that these jobs have on not only the BIPOC community, but those who have been disproportionately displaced from their jobs after the pandemic.

And as part of our recovery efforts, we're working to connect more of our black and brown residents to careers in the economy so that we can build back better.

Similarly, we're needing to ensure that there's access and worker transitions from fossil fuels to clean technology jobs that offer healthy family wage sustaining jobs for all of our residents.

And we're gonna wrap up the presentation with recommendations for next steps, and then we'll open up the conversations for our guests.

I'd like to introduce Nancy Iwamoto, who is the Director of our Workforce and Key Industries Team.

Nancy, take it away.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Council Members, and I know that we have a lot to cover, so I'll move through these slides fairly quickly.

So, I lead the Key Industries and Workforce Development Team, and our team came together after the pandemic to support the development of an inclusive recovery strategy that focuses on our key sectors to create more family wage-sustaining job opportunities and connect them with our residents and youth who need good jobs.

So the sectors we focus on include green business, maritime and manufacturing, and technology.

And then our workforce team also has initiatives to connect job seekers to career paths in healthcare.

And these sectors are important because they are growing or have growth potential, provide access to family wage sustaining jobs and need supports to diversify its workforce.

So, in terms of our approach, we start by assessing the needs of businesses.

And we ask questions like, what are the occupations that are growing?

What are the critical skills and training that's needed?

And how are they doing in terms of workforce diversification?

And we also look at some of the external factors that are changing the nature of their work, including automation of certain tasks and increasing reliance on digital competency.

And with these insights, we can begin to build training and advancement strategies to connect more of our workforce to these careers.

So we want to thank Council for supporting the study of the workforce impacts in the transition to clean energy.

As the presenters will discuss, the study has enabled us to understand more fully the projections for job growth and clean energy and the decline in fossil fuel-related occupations, the fossil fuel workers who would be most impacted by this transition, and the current demographic makeup of these occupations.

And so with that, I want to turn the presentation over to Stephanie Gowing, who's our Green Business Advocate, and the consulting team from Community Attributes to go over the results of the study.

Thank you, Nancy.

My job as the Green Business Advocate is to help grow businesses focusing on reducing, reversing, or preparing for climate impacts and ensuring that there is equitable access to good-paying jobs and ownership of those businesses.

I do this through hearing from businesses to support their unique growth challenges and through programs such as the EnviroStar Green Business Program, which recognizes businesses' sustainability efforts and links them to local rebates and incentives.

sharing partner resources on our clean energy resource map, or connecting business owners such as Edwin Waji, owner of Sphere Solar, to opportunities like our Career Connected Learning Grant.

In 2019, Council requested thank you for an analysis of jobs wages on those employed in the fossil fuel industry.

I'll be brief.

The request included a forecast of clean energy jobs, stakeholder input, and recommendations to implement.

In early 2020, we conducted an RFP, a request for proposal, excuse me, for an analysis.

And a study committee with diverse backgrounds was pulled together and selected community attributes as the lead researcher.

The study committee agreed to stay engaged to help provide insights from their experiences and bring voices from their stakeholders and customers.

And once we received approval to move forward with the study, we finalized the scope of work with community attributes.

And I'm going to hand it over to Chris Medford, president and CEO of Community Attributes to go over the studies, definitions, methodologies, and findings.

Thank you, Stephanie, and thank you, OED, and good afternoon, council members.

My name is Chris Mefford, and I am president and CEO of Community Attributes.

I have Madalina Kalin from my team as well, who will walk through some of the findings as she did a lot of the heavy lifting on the analysis.

As an economist, a study like this comes with challenges.

We've done many, many studies like this over the years, and the challenge is agreeing to what is a definition of what we're talking about.

And the data that economists are able to work with sometimes don't get the complexities of the needs.

To that end, the project leadership, we had a lot of input on how to define the industry moving forward using the economic codes with the data that are available.

There are a lot of industries that rely on fossil fuels and are ripe for conversion to clean energy, such as the construction industry that some of the public comments spoke to, that are a big part of this transition over to the green economy.

This study focused in part on those industries wholly tied to fossil fuels to find those occupations that we knew for sure would need to transfer over to clean tech type work moving forward.

I'm going to let the slide move forward there.

I'm not sure if it's driving, but next slide, please.

As I mentioned, the definitions are important, so we did some secondary research and learned what other institutions did and how they agreed on what the definition of clean technology and clean energy industries were.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology has done a lot of leading research on this, and that was helpful.

All of this is necessary for a study of this limited scale to be able to use existing data to get into how many jobs and occupations are tied to each of those industries.

I'm going to leave it there for methods and turn it over to Madalena for findings and recommendations.

Hi, everyone.

Good afternoon, council members.

I'm Madalena Killen, senior economist with Community Attributes.

Thank you for the opportunity to present today.

Jumping on to the key findings of the study.

So as part of this study, we looked at The outlook for the clean energy industry, we talked to stakeholders, and the Seattle clean energy industry leaders see a strong outlook for job growth, even with continued COVID-19 impacts.

There's potential for new clean energy-friendly recovery programs and policies at federal, state, and local levels in the coming years, and that could further strengthen and stabilize the industry.

Our data analysis, and our metrics that we produce to take stock of this, fossil fuel and the clean energy sectors have shown that there are, the King County's job market has a greater number of jobs in the clean energy sector than in fossil fuels.

Also, clean energy jobs are more likely to offer wages greater than the area's median wage of 69,000 for King County.

Clean energy industries include about 11% of jobs in categories with above average wages compared to 8% for fossil fuel industry.

One other important key finding is that as the transition to clean energy accelerates, there is a need for deliberate action to address existing racial and gender inequities in the workforce, which our analysis has revealed.

Recommended actions include focusing on demand-side interventions to support high road employment, effective workforce and stakeholder engagement to support co-led efforts to grow good jobs, and targeted training interventions for the upskilling of workers.

The transition from fossil fuels will impact occupations in the fossil fuel industry differently, depending on the transferability of knowledge and skills.

For some occupations, workforce retraining can be relatively straightforward.

Workers can update their skills from fossil fuel work to clean energy work in the same industry.

For example, automotive service technicians and mechanics of ICE vehicles will likely require some level of EV-related skills training.

For other occupations, worker retraining will be harder, especially when taking into account the impacts of automation.

For example, pipe layers who are relying on fossil fuel dependent skills will need job training and transition support for specific occupations with transferability of skills and knowledge.

This research also looked at the impact of automation on the occupations under consideration in fossil fuel transition.

And it specifically found that freight laborers and construction laborers, which are two occupations that are fossil fuel dependent, also have the largest percentage of workers of color and were the most impacted by automation in the future.

Amongst other findings and takeaways are an increase in employment in construction and building trades due to an increased demand for electrification.

and efficiency improvements.

There are also various administrative, legal, financial, and business services, so kind of support and admin jobs that are not necessarily unique to either the fossil fuel or clean energy sector.

So as these jobs presumably have skills that are transferable from one sector to the other.

Next slide, please.

As part of this research, we've conducted stakeholder outreach.

We've reached out to over 300 businesses and organizations in the clean energy and the fossil fuel sector.

We did interviews with stakeholders, as well as an online survey we received around 49 responses to the survey and interviewed 18 stakeholders, including 15 minority and women business enterprises.

Most of the concerns that were raised among fossil fuel stakeholders focused on the disruption to existing work.

and the need for a more thorough understanding of the economic costs that will be borne by impacted workers.

Some of the themes that we heard are around creating and funding a transition plan, considering energy conservation's role, and thinking multi-jurisdictional.

From the clean energy sector, companies are facing competition for diverse talent in the Seattle area, with other industries such as tech and aerospace also tapping in the same talent pool.

Seattle clean energy business leaders stress the importance of increasing public-private partnership to finance infrastructure projects.

And decarbonizing single family residential sector was considered to be a great opportunity for employment growth moving forward.

And next slide, please.

Finally, we brought together all this analysis, the stakeholder engagement into our recommendations.

These are grouped into three categories.

Policies to prioritize demand-side clean energy strategies.

These are focused on demand-side intervention to support those high-road employment opportunities.

Examples of strategies include investing in decarbonized district energy, targeted investments to reach those underrepresented workers to ensure a pool of talent for the clean energy industry.

Our second bucket of recommendations include effective workforce and stakeholder engagement.

That would provide opportunities for communities that are mostly impacted and businesses to drive and co-lead efforts to grow good jobs and minimize job loss.

Strategies included here would relate to creating conditions to build skilled workforce from local talent pools, increasing opportunities such as paid internships and pre-apprenticeship opportunities in clean energy, and creating a displaced fossil fuel worker transition assistant fund for displaced workers.

Finally, business expansion support, targeting clean energy supply strategies.

These interventions include upskilling of workers through micro-credentials, and public-private partnerships to create opportunities for disadvantaged workers.

Thank you.

I will turn it over to Abudie.

Thank you, Madalena.

Did somebody want to walk through this slide?

I do want to get to the community panel in just a moment.

Yeah, I just I wanted to close it out, Council Member Morales, really quick.

I just wanted to say that the recovery vision for Seattle is a vibrant, innovative and diverse city that has an inclusive economy where all Seattleites can thrive and share in these new opportunities of the future.

And as you just heard, the clean energy offers an opportunity to create healthy family wage sustaining jobs, and to capture that opportunity, we want to make sure that individuals receive the training and supports they need to move into this clean energy career.

Our recovery strategies is to invest in workforce development related to training, retraining, pre-apprenticeships, and retention programs.

And we want to discuss these with our partners that are attending today to hear about the supports their workers and the clean energy employers need in order to make this happen.

And we also want to make sure that this work is connected to the Green New Deal IDT and transportation electrification efforts so that a comprehensive citywide workforce strategy is implemented with our colleagues across the city.

And finally, we will need to work with our partners and business to make sure that these opportunities are equitable and inclusive.

And we've really appreciated the council's support of focusing the ARPA investments on equitable recovery strategies and looking forward to getting this work underway.

Thank you very much for having us today.

And we're looking forward to the conversation with the community.

Thank you.

Yeah, I really appreciate this.

We do have a request from Katie Garrow.

If the panelists can be sent this PowerPoint, can we.

It's probably available on the council website, but happy to send that to you, Katie, and make sure that everybody has access to this as well as to the full report.

I've got some you've answered some of my questions, but I do see that council member has a question and then I will bring the rest of the panel in, and I've got a few particular questions for them.

Council Member Sawant, do you have a question?

Thank you, Chair Morales, and thank you for the presentation, and maybe if my questions are going to be answered in the coming discussion, that's great, but I was just wondering if This report was going to present some kind of sort of concrete analysis on the impact of people's jobs if Seattle passes the, for example, the bill prohibiting new natural gas hookups and, you know, and also I know People in the labor movement have questions about what would be the overall balance of jobs?

Are there any jobs that would be threatened?

And I think it's fair to be able to, for people to ask that question and then answer the question in terms of what other jobs will be created?

And on balance, can we have sort of a blossoming of union jobs that are in clean energy sector?

what can we do to make a just transition so that people whose jobs are threatened are guaranteed jobs that are at least as good as current unionized jobs?

And I didn't know if we should expect these in this presentation or if that analysis is forthcoming.

Thank you.

Director Banks or Chris, do you want to respond to that?

And then we'll bring a similar list of questions.

So I do want to bring the panel in because I'm sure we will all be talking about the same thing.

Well, Chris, can you sure?

Thank you.

Sorry.

I appreciate the question.

Council member salon.

We did not analyze explicitly that policy action in terms of the job impacts.

I do believe with.

home construction and home contractors and building contractors in general.

There are some very specific occupations that Madeline and team found that will need retraining for new opportunities.

And the pipe fitters is a good example of one where the natural gas pipe fitting is just a skill set that will be in less demand with clean energy.

It's not to say that those individuals don't have transferable skills.

They probably do.

There'll just be some retraining that's necessary to be able to meet those needs.

There are examples in clean technology and clean construction, such as heat pumps, for example, where there is piping involved.

But this might be to a lower demand of the quantity of those workers.

So as the industries migrate and turn over within each industry and within each application of trades from fossil fuels to clean technologies, there are undoubtedly some retraining that is necessary as a part of that.

And the trades, all the trades, the labor unions that help organize some of the trades, they will certainly be engaged as part of that transformation happens.

But the apprenticeships and everything else are going to be focused on keeping up the technology I would expect it to be as much driven by demand, especially in the Seattle markets, as much as policy.

So hopefully between those two forces, a vibrant conversion can happen and positive economic benefits will follow.

Can we go ahead and take the presentation down?

I'd like to bring the rest of the folks in, and maybe go ahead and just ask Monty and Keith and Katie Garrow from Labor Council.

Thank you to everybody who's presented so far.

Maybe I can just ask our labor partners to sort of respond to the questions and your reactions to the report.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts about how your sector might be affected by this.

Okay, I'll go ahead and jump in.

Oh, you got me.

You beat me.

I'll go ahead, Monty.

The head of the building trade.

You go ahead, Monty.

Thank you for putting this together.

Obviously, you know, the building trades here in Seattle.

My local just turned 125 years old, and most of us have been operating for over a century here in Seattle.

So we have seen every kind of transition that can happen in a major city.

Could you imagine what the mechanical and the systems and things look like 100 years ago?

So this is nothing new to us, transition to new technology.

Some of the things worry me a little bit, obviously, because I'm about family wages and benefits.

Not only wages, but benefits.

We want people to retire with dignity and be able to retire and live in the home that they could afford when they were working, you know, in the field by the hour.

So that's, my job's easy.

I just get to concentrate on working class families and opportunity.

So around this, I always have concern like in 2008-9 when the ARRA money came out, we had this huge influx of money.

And all of a sudden, whenever you see a pile of money, you see people kind of come and a lot of these training programs popped up.

Oh, we're going to teach caulking of windows, or we're going to teach heat pumps, or we're going to teach solar, when the building trades already do that through state-approved apprenticeship programs.

What we did is we had a lot of pop-ups coming, and young men and women being taught something that wasn't transferable to an apprenticeship or a long-term job.

And the underserved communities, once you How do you say this nicely?

You can only fool people so many times before they lose the ability to believe you anymore.

And I saw hundreds of people come back to the building trades that had kids that had gone through these 5, 8, 12 week programs.

with no certification or no job.

And the ones were offered were $15 an hour, no benefits.

So I think as we see this, we're going to see a lot of people thinking, oh, there's this new technology.

Well, it's not really new to us.

We do that.

Everything that's done in a building, the building trades do.

There's nothing I would press anybody to show me something that we're already not training for.

with good family jobs.

So one thing I just want to make everybody aware is if anybody's got this new thing that only they can teach and it's proprietary, be careful because we can do it all.

Fair enough.

Thank you, Monty.

Keith, did you want to chime in here?

Yes.

Thank you for your time this afternoon.

No, pretty much echoing what Monty said, the red flag for me is always the word we own.

Building trades own apprenticeship, right?

I am from a licensed craft.

I do a five-year apprenticeship to obtain my license.

I'm the past board chair and I sit on a pre-apprenticeship now, work in concert and everything with those programs, but those programs actually offer wraparound support services and get folks into living wage, not jobs, careers.

I hear the J word all the time and that kind of upsets me.

My career field is not a job.

You come to meetings, we'll have a building being built the anti folks come in and they say those are all temporary jobs.

No, my entire career is temporary jobs.

It's a career filled with temporary jobs that pay above apprentice wages here, the $69,000 a year median income.

So, um, just a little, a little, uh, raw as money said that the whole RF funding, uh, piece didn't, didn't go as we expected.

I mean, we, we tried our best, um, but for all the money that flowed, You tell me what we got for it.

I don't think we got the biggest bang for the buck that we could have out of that federal money.

We have the Biden administration pushing his plan that's coming now and hopefully we'll get it, but we gotta be a lot smarter and we need to make it actually work.

That last piece, you know, the solar, the piece in there about solar and wind came out of that well.

In the union sector, we don't own that market.

Shame on us, should have tried harder, but a lot of those jobs are not good paying jobs.

in that industry, regardless of what you hear.

They are not union wage jobs.

They're not prevailed.

So a little bit of a misnomer there.

Sorry if I'm sounding a little grouchy, but it's just, you know, I'm about people getting true equity, right?

I'm happy to take people in, get them for five years, they get a license.

They can grow a business after that, right?

I'm not blowing smoke up anybody's tent.

You know, I want people to have, a real living wage career where they can supply for themselves and their community and their family members, right?

You'd think that I would be the happiest person in the world dancing circles because electrification, that's great.

That's going to be a lot of work for my members and thank you very much and we'll step up and offer folks the opportunity to come into the industry and we'll train folks up to that standard.

However, I am also not going to leave my brothers and sisters in the fossil fuel industry behind either, right?

I have IBEW members that work for Local 77 that work in the gas industry.

That is also- Keith and Monty, I want to say this to you as the interim director of Office of Economic Development.

I'm not really new to this game with unions.

My daddy was a long haul truck driver, okay?

So that is a career and I appreciate you correcting us on that language because that is really important.

But as a director and any money that OED gets, is going to go to y'all.

I don't believe in putting people through pre-apprenticeship trainings and they sit on a bench for two years or a year to get into an apprenticeship if we can come straight to the union.

So my commitment to y'all and to the unions, who I was a union member forever until I got into management, is to support what you have going on and not to reinvent the wheel.

And these are careers.

And, you know, a lot of the work I do, especially in black and brown communities, is, you know, you don't need a college degree or putting all these people going through college, getting in debt to do the work, to obtain the careers that y'all have.

And so, again, we're looking to you.

You're our partners in this.

And so it's not as giving some money to some agency to do pre-apprenticeship or apprenticeship training.

I'd rather go straight to the unions and work through organizations like the Workforce Development Council, people that have those connections with you all.

I want to bring in – thank you, Director Banks.

I want to bring Brittany and Deepa in to see – get your perspective on the report itself and really just this broader issue of how we mitigate, if you think there are ways to make sure that we're mitigating and lay the groundwork for a transition that really supports workers and also addresses the broader clean energy issues that we're looking at.

So your reactions, Deepa or Brittany?

Thank you, Council Member.

I'd actually like to defer to Jess from 350 to start us off, and then we can chime in as well.

Thank you.

Sure.

Thanks, all.

And thank you so much, all the folks who worked on this report.

It was really tremendous to see this come together.

And I love how this conversation is starting out with very explicit understanding of when we're talking about what are the opportunities in the clean energy economy that we're growing, let's talk about what's going to take care of people.

That feels so important and resonant with the values of the Green New Deal.

But there I am resonating.

I just do want to introduce myself briefly.

I'm Jess.

I'm an organizer with 350 Seattle and we're a grassroots climate group with over 10,000 members in Seattle and King County.

We co-launched the Seattle Greening Deal campaign in 2019 with Got Green and have since then been proud to work in coalition with community and labor to pass transformative measures like Jump Start Seattle.

And y'all probably have some context, but just to seed this for us, like we began exploring how to transition our homes and buildings off of fossil fuels back in 2019 and got so far as working with some council members to introduce a policy and heard some really valid feedback from folks on this call and partners in labor that there was a lot more work needed to understand how fossil fuel industry workers would be impacted and plan for that workforce transition to make sure no one was left behind.

So in the fall of 2018, we paused policy discussions and then worked with leaders at MLK Labor Council and a lot of the council members here to win funding for this study in the 2020 budget.

So it was really great to be here with you all, be together for the report back and discussing next steps.

A quick reaction, I wanna make sure that my partners also get time to share is that this is a really great time to be having these conversations, the report and the Green New Deal Oversight Committee coming online.

This is the moment to take bold action in transitioning our homes and buildings off of fossil fuels.

which is tackling Seattle's fastest growing source of climate pollution.

It's also, as you heard in the comments from folks giving testimony today, essential for health and safety of Seattle residents.

And as we just heard from Keith and Monty to ensure that as the clean energy economy grows, all of these new jobs or careers, that they're good living wage careers accessible to all.

So, you know, 350 Seattle is really excited to see that this report offers concrete solutions for how to equitably begin that transition.

We broadly support the recommendations in the report, and we're really looking forward to working with both the city and labor partners on how to implement them to equitably phase out fossil fuels and build a healthy, clean energy future for all.

I'll pause there because I know we've got a good bit to get through, but Deepa, I'll hand it to you and invite you if you want to talk a little bit about what that means for communities inside.

We'll cut mine off over for you.

Yeah, absolutely.

First of all, thank you to the council members and staff for having me as part of today's panel.

I'm Deepa Sivarajan.

I'm the Washington policy manager at Climate Solutions, which is a local nonprofit working to accelerate clean energy solutions in the Northwest to address our climate crisis.

And I just want to start off by framing this issue as one of public health racial justice, economic justice, and climate mitigation, particularly around buildings, there's no question that we need to be able to start our phase out of fossil fuels in the built environment, which Seattle has already committed to through the Green New Deal legislation and a number of other policies in making greenhouse gas reduction commitments.

There are enormous health impacts from the use of of particularly gas, but also oil in buildings, including indoor air quality concerns and outdoor air quality that leads to health burdens for, particularly for frontline communities and communities of color.

And so we, you know, we're coming from a place of really wanting to collaborate with everyone here to make sure that these solutions are equitable and include a just transition, but understanding that our baseline is we need to stop using fossil fuels.

There's just no way around it.

We're really pleased that Seattle has already begun work on this transition.

We were thrilled that the city adopted a strong energy code earlier this year that eliminated most uses of fossil fuels in new commercial and large multifamily buildings.

That was a great step, but we need to make sure that all other buildings are also brought up to speed so that people who use those buildings, which include tenants, homeowners, workers, pretty much everyone in the city, that those folks get the same health and safety protections that are now going to be built into new commercial buildings.

And we know that this movement is happening already.

Seattle Public Schools has recently made commitments to stop using fossil fuels in their buildings and vehicle fleet.

And so we're really just hoping that the city can be a leader in this as well.

So we'd really love to get started with everyone here in developing policies that commit to clean, safe buildings while also incorporating the report's recommendations.

I'm very excited by some of the demand side solutions that Madalina touched on in the presentation, which hopefully can create a path towards clean energy careers for the workers who could be most impacted.

For example, we'd love to work with you all on investing in decarbonized district heating systems, which can use pressurized pipes running hot and cold water to provide heating and cooling for buildings.

There are also great examples from other cities who have passed building electrification policies For example, San Francisco paired their building decarbonization policy with installing gray water and stormwater infrastructure.

And so we would love to find those spaces of common ground to work together.

We also, you know, broadly support recommendations for community scale decarbonization, that is targeting neighborhoods as a whole for a planned move off of fossil fuels.

This can be a great way to address neighborhoods with particular needs, such as those with higher levels of air pollution.

But I want to emphasize that any decarbonization efforts, especially for existing buildings, need to be paired with strong anti-displacement policies.

The frontline communities who face the biggest health burdens from air pollution, particularly communities of color, should get to live in clean, safe homes, but they should also not have to worry about being priced out of those improved buildings.

And that same principle holds true for affordable housing.

I'm going to stop there and let Brittany speak a little bit as well.

But yeah, we're really excited to see this report and see that there are concrete solutions or concrete steps, at least, that have been identified to start this transition.

Thank you, Deepa.

Brittany, please go ahead.

Thank you, Deepa.

Thank you, everyone.

Thanks, Council and everyone else on the panel.

I'm really excited to be here.

My name is Brittany Bush-Bollet, and I'm chair of the Seattle Group of Sierra Club.

Sierra Club is a broad, volunteer-led environmental organization working across the United States and in Canada.

And we're working hard on building electrification, both locally and nationwide, because we know it's an area where we can get big results in improving both health and the climate.

I'd like to talk really quick about why we need to act on buildings.

Just to emphasize, a report from the United Nations released earlier this month clearly states that expanding the use of natural gas is just incompatible with the Paris Climate Agreement and keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

And another recent report from Energy Innovation shows that meeting the Biden administration's national target, cutting climate pollution by 50 percent by 2030, means that all new buildings must be all electric by 2025. So it's clear that the urgency is there.

But while our transition to clean electric buildings is both exciting and inevitable, how we go about it matters quite a bit, too.

And that's why we're all here.

And that's why we encouraged and supported the study and why we're really excited to now have the data from it to help us move forward in line with our just transition principles, ensuring that workers are taken care of and that no one is left behind.

We know and we see from the study that some workers are going to need help transitioning into new jobs or careers, and specifically good-paying, secure union jobs with good benefits.

And we're really ready and excited to back policies that aid this, including not only job retraining and placement, support services such as child care and technology access and financial assistance too.

We also know that further community engagement needs to be done as we shape specific electrification policies, especially in the frontline communities who have been hit hardest by both climate change and COVID-19.

But I also want to point out that there's a huge overlap here.

I want to emphasize this, that the report indicates that workers who are members of BIPOC communities are also the workers most likely to benefit from transition support.

And this outreach and support work cannot be separate our climate work.

It's part of it.

It's all the same thing as Jess said.

We're all here to make sure that everyone can thrive.

So cities in California and across the country have already begun making sure that all their new buildings are built safe and fossil fuel free.

And I think Seattle has a chance to really be a leader on this in the Pacific Northwest and sort of level up the work.

And so I'm excited that we can take the data from this report and we can all work together and model a truly equitable process.

It can be used to improve the lives of everyone in Seattle and also inspire other communities as they move forward in this work.

So I thank you all for your partnership.

Thank you so much, Brittany.

I do want to mention that Devalina Banerjee from Puget Sound Stage was intending to be here.

She had an event come up and so she was not able to make it, but really want to thank her because she's been an integral part of all of these conversations.

Katie I think I am going to leave it to you to have the last word here We do need to move on to our next agenda item, but I wanted to give you a chance to bring it home for us today Awesome.

Thanks for the opportunity Katie Garrow.

I'm the deputy director at MLK labor.

I use she her pronouns I'm also a member of laborers local 242 construction union here in King County and I I think that like what I have learned about doing this kind of work just transition work in the last five years at the Labor Council is that the devil really is in the details and that the the work of making.

The work of transitioning to a cleaner economy really is about meticulous analysis of who will be harmed and what lies on the other side.

I love that Jess sort of told the story of how we got here, because it was rooted in us saying, okay, if we're going to change the rules around how natural gas is used in the city of Seattle, then we need to understand exactly who will be harmed.

And I heard council member Sawant say, hey, can we really drill down on that?

And who are we talking about with what policy and what will happen and how much will it cost?

And I think that like, The vision that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez set in her initial Green New Deal at the national level that our local Green New Deal was modeled after is rooted in a commitment to keeping workers whole with wage and benefit parity during and at the end of transition.

And frankly, like that's a lot of money.

And so we but it's possible and it requires some regulatory changes.

And I think so long as there's a good faith commitment from our elected leaders and from our environmental partners, we can get there together and just want to really appreciate that.

And it feels like we're all Trying to get there together and I'm looking forward to seeing what the sort of concrete next steps are on policy and for worker retraining plans for the folks we've identified as being In need of those services because there's lots of work we can do together.

Sure, thank you.

Well, thank you all.

I see Monty has left a comment.

We do need to make sure that UA32 is here as well.

Leanne was part of the original conversations, and I think a big part of why we continue to have the conversation about needing to bring all of our partners to the table to have these very specific questions answered.

So I look forward to continuing this conversation and to really putting our heads together to figure out how we move forward in a way that ensures that we are having clean buildings, clean communities, healthy neighbors, workers who continue, as Katie said, to have good-paying careers with benefits all along the way.

And the question of how much this is all going to cost is something I look forward to talking about, too, because I think you're right.

That's going to be a big part of our conversation about how we invest to make sure that this happens.

Thanks to all of you for being here, and we look forward to continuing the conversation.

Okay, let's move to the next item.

Lakeisha, will you please read item two into the agenda, into the record?

Regulatory budgeting update briefing and discussion.

Thank you so much.

Okay, we're going to move on to participatory budgeting.

I do want to sort of set the background again for this conversation.

In the wake of George Floyd's murder last year, we heard from community members, particularly from Black and Brown community members, about the need for deep systemic change in all kinds of systems in how this city runs, but especially about how we allocate resources for community safety.

One proposal that we unanimously supported as a council was a participatory budget process that would allow our neighbors to vote on how to allocate some portion of city resources so that folks in our communities could have a say in how we share power and how we share resources in the city.

This isn't just about trying to reform the police department, which is something we've been working on for a long time.

This is really about a reallocation of public dollars and investing in a way that reverses generations of racist policies.

I believe as a council we have a moral imperative to begin dismantling the existing power structures that are rooted in anti-Blackness and really find new ways to share power and to share decision-making.

I think participatory budgeting is an important first step in that direction, and I'm really eager to keep this policy moving forward so that we can get the money out the door.

So today we're going to hear first from Amy Gore from Council Central staff who will walk us through the draft legislation.

And then I'm excited to have two guests here today who will talk about the potential for participatory budgeting to help change community conditions that can lead to better community safety for everyone.

Amy, I'm going to hand it off to you to get us started.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Council Members.

My name is Amy Gore from Council Central staff.

The second item on the agenda is draft legislation related to participatory budgeting.

Today, I wanted to provide a brief background on participatory budgeting, the participatory budgeting initiative, give an overview of the legislation and provide some policy considerations for the committee.

As you know, council has been working towards establishing a new participatory budgeting program since the summer of 2020, when after significant advocacy efforts, council funded $3 million for a community research project to conduct a needs assessment and to develop a roadmap for an equitable participatory budgeting process, which is intended to improve public safety, particularly for those most impacted by racism and policing.

The council then appropriated $28.3 million in the 2021 adopted budget for participatory budgeting, including funding for community-based organizations and city departments to run the PB process funding for a civilian crisis response and social services triage system app, and finally, the investments in projects and programs to be recommended by the participatory budgeting process.

These funds are currently held in Finance General under Proviso.

In November, Council entered into a contract with the Freedom Project to conduct the Community Research Project, which is also referred to as the Black Brilliance Research Project.

The project team conducted extensive research about community safety and community needs, which provided the basis for the team's recommendations for the city's participatory budgeting program.

Their recommendations identified community needs to support participation in the program, a framework for an equitable PV process, and recommended priority investment areas, which were discussed previously in presentations at council briefing and this committee.

Since then, the executive has worked with the Black Brilliance Research Project team to develop a program spending plan based on their recommendations.

On March 30th, the executive provided a memo with two approaches to the participatory budgeting program.

Those two options are included in the attachment to the memo on today's agenda.

I'll briefly describe them.

The first, the executive's first proposed option would authorize the Department of Neighborhoods to issue a request for proposal for a third party to administer the participatory budgeting program.

They estimate it would cost $7.5 million and would take five to eight months to develop and issue the RFP, negotiate the contract, and give the third party time to hire staff before the participatory budgeting program could begin.

The third party administrator would be responsible for hiring and managing the steering committee recommended by the Blackburn's Research Project providing technical support and expertise and managing funds to reduce barriers to participation, such as digital equity initiatives and youth fellowships.

This option also included $375,000 for the Department of Neighborhood staff to provide administrative data and logistical support as requested.

The executive second proposed option would authorize the Department of Neighborhoods to run the participatory budgeting program, including hiring 15 independent contractors to form the program steering committee.

This option was estimated to cost $2.6 million and would take three to four months before the program could begin.

Under both options, the participatory budgeting program would take six to 10 months after the initial setup described in the two options.

The draft legislation is included in today's agenda.

It is intended to move the participatory budgeting process forward but does differ from the options proposed by the executive, which I will highlight momentarily.

First, the legislation would lift the proviso imposed by council budget action FG482 on approximately $18 million in finance general.

As I mentioned, this is only a portion of the total participatory budgeting funds, and the remainder would stay under their original provisos.

Second, the legislation would create three new positions at the Seattle Office for Civil Rights, to work with community to develop and issue a request for proposal, to select a third party administrator, to negotiate and manage the contract, and to staff the participatory budgeting program, which would include coordinating internal city staff and collaborating with external partners in support of the program.

Third, the legislation would appropriate funds to support these positions.

Because the participatory budgeting funding is one-time funding rather than ongoing, the legislation appropriates sufficient funding for these positions through 2023, which is $1.08 million.

It also includes $15,000 to support community participation in the development of the RFP and in the selection of the third party provider.

The legislation also imposes two new provisos, first on the funds appropriated to SOCR and second on the remaining funds in Finance General.

Finally, the legislation would Finally, the legislation includes a ratify and confirm clause, which would allow SOCR to begin work before the legislation becomes effective.

So, for example, they could begin writing job descriptions, things like that.

That concludes the basics of the legislation, and I do have a few policy considerations that I wanted to highlight for the committee.

First, as I mentioned, the proposed legislation creates authority for three new positions at SOCR and funds the positions with one-time funds sufficient for 30 months.

To continue the PB program beyond 2023, the council will need to identify another funding source for any additional staffing, the PB administrator, and for actual projects.

Second, the legislation funds the development and issuance of an RFP for a third-party administrator, as well as the department staff to manage the PB contract and provide support for the PB program, but it doesn't yet fund the contract with a third-party administrator.

It assumes that the council will make future appropriations to support the contract once SOCR selects a third party administrator through the RFP process.

Third, the legislation would commit the funds to SOCR, which is consistent with the recommendation made by the Black Brilliance Research Project team rather than to the Department of Neighborhoods as the executive proposed.

This would be an expansion of the duties of SOCR, but could build off the collaborative grant-making work that was used to develop the community alternatives to incarceration and police requests for proposals previously.

This action would have no effect on the Your Voice, Your Choice program, which is the existing participatory budgeting program run by DULand.

Fourth, the council's original intent was that this PB program would occur in 2021. However, as demonstrated by the executive's memo to council, the process to set up the PB program will likely take several months, meaning that the actual PB program will not begin until the end of 2021, with the bulk of the program being conducted in 2022. Fifth, Deputy Mayor Washington's March 30 letter lists several issues and suggested council address them in the proviso left.

Those issues included race and social justice considerations, pay equity, organizational capacity of the third party administrator, and potential legal limitations on project funding and voting eligibility.

The legislation does not address these issues specifically.

Instead, it depends on SOCR, the community stakeholders, and organizations responding to the RFP to ensure that the proposed PB program considers and addresses them appropriately.

I also wanted to raise the fact that an RFP does require additional time and resources from organizations to prepare proposals.

The legislation would provide an additional $15,000 to support community participation in the development of the RFP and to create a more equitable RFP process.

It could also include technical support for bidders for other supports identified by the community and SOCR as they develop the RFP.

Finally, as I mentioned, the funding provided by council is in the 2021 adopted budget, it anticipates funding a civilian crisis response app.

This legislation does not fund that and would require future council action to fund that project.

And that concludes the policy considerations that I wanted to highlight about the legislation.

And I'm happy to answer any questions for council members.

Thank you, Amy.

I I don't have any particular questions right now.

I know this pretty well by now, but I will see if my colleagues have any questions for Amy before we move to our special guests.

I am not seeing anything.

Oh, Council Member Herbold, please.

Thank you.

I was just wondering, Amy, could you talk through the implications of not acting on the recommendations, or not the recommendations, but not amending the proviso in a way that addresses the request for the development of an app.

What I think I heard you say is there's a proviso on those dollars now with the expectation that some of the dollars would be used to develop the app.

The proposal that we have before us does not include that expectation.

And so if we did nothing, it would just move forward without the inclusion of that expectation.

Is that more or less correct?

The remaining provisos still include the app as part of the proviso.

So I think that expectation, at least in terms of the language, is still there.

Council could choose, I will say, I think that for the department staff that have been working on that, nobody has rushed forward to claim responsibility for the development of the app or funding that portion of this.

And so I think it will require a little bit more work with departments to figure out the appropriate home for that, the appropriate scope and the appropriate budget for that.

And so if council did want to move forward with that, it could be included in this piece of legislation.

It could be included in a separate independent piece of legislation, or council could choose to fund the development of an app only if it's chosen as a project funded through the participatory budgeting stakeholder process.

It was an app similar to what is described, was mentioned in the Black Brilliance Research Project as one of the potential types, the types of projects that could be developed and funded through participatory budgeting.

So that is a choice that council could make.

And Amy, I just, I'm remembering as well, a $50,000 allocation for the, development of a new sort of crisis response.

And there are a lot of moving pieces where many of us are participating in the What Works Cities Sprint.

I'm just wondering if there might be an opportunity to discuss that $50,000, which was not, even though the council allocated it for that purpose in the budget process, there's a budget error.

It was not transferred over to HSD.

And so they're not currently working on that element.

But if there is a funding need associated with the development of the app and the stakeholdering shows that there's still a need for somebody to develop an app, that might be a source of funding that we want to consider.

That sounds very much in line with the original in terms of that funding, I think.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Okay, let us move on.

Amy, please, I know you'll stay, but questions may come up as we continue through this conversation.

So I am very excited to have two guests here today to talk about this process.

We have invited New York City Council Member Carlos Manchaca, who represents District 38 in New York City.

They have 51 city council members there.

Imagine what their central staff must go through.

So District 38, I'm excited to share, has produced the highest number of PB voters citywide and welcomed voting by residents regardless of immigration status.

They had middle school students participate in their process.

So I'm excited to hear from the council member about how things work in New York.

And then we also have Sean Good, who is the executive director of Choose 180, which I know many of us already know is an organization that partners with institutional leaders to connect young people to opportunity, to empower them with choice, and to teach them skills necessary to avoid engagement with the criminal legal system.

So Shawn and Council Member Menchaca, thank you so much for being here.

I wanted to ask you both to just sort of share with us your perspective as you think about participatory budgeting.

Council Member, one of our goals for participatory budgeting is that it be a tool for community development.

That it really fosters civic engagement, helps create better relationship between community and the city.

and that we build capacity and resilience in our communities.

So we are thinking about, in order to achieve those goals, what kind of short-term and long-term measures of success we might have.

So I'll just put that out there as sort of a broad question, but would also love to hear from you a little bit of your experience in New York.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Morales and all the Councilmembers that are on this committee today.

And as a fellow Councilmember in Brooklyn, I just want to say how much I've been enjoying this public hearing, listening to the initial voices on the ground and really walking through how you do your work.

Amy Gore's presentation about the kind of technical components really show that you've all been thinking really long and hard about this initiative.

And as someone who is now seven years deep into participatory budgeting in the district, and as Councilmember Morales said, we are really thrilled with the incredible response from our community.

And I'll tell you a little bit about who they are.

I got to tell you, you're on your way.

You're in the right direction.

The compass is pointing north.

And I'm just here to say, take that leap.

And I'll talk to you about a little bit about what we've seen in the leap that we've taken in New York City.

First, I want to talk about the district itself.

With the highest participation, we have over 50% of the residents who are living, the some 200,000 people in our district are foreign born.

They're not speaking English at home.

They're speaking another language, Arabic, Chinese, three different dialects, Spanish, and English.

We, we have the second largest public housing development in the city of New York.

So we have public housing residents.

And we also have a very working family, low income economic status in the neighborhoods that are part of the district.

And so you would almost think that this would make it impossible when we have other districts that are a lot more affluent and connected to technology and whatnot.

But what is driving this conversation is that energy that I heard from many of the folks that testified earlier today in this hearing, is that hunger to connect, connect to government, and with the ideas that they have as people who are living in their neighborhood and seeing their parks, their schools, their kids' schools, streets and light posts and saying, how can we engage?

Many of these community members are not eligible to vote in elections, and so they're hungry to really see things change.

And so what we have done is in a one-year process that starts at the end of summer, goes through a fall and spring process, and at the end, voting happens, is collect ideas at the beginning, bring committees together to really think about what is eligible for capital, because our projects and our process is mostly through capital infrastructure improvements, development, and then everybody votes.

And so what we've been able to see is that our immigrant families are really driving and are just our mothers in the district are driving this process because they've seen a value.

Once the project gets into the budget, we see an immediate agency response, the agencies get to work, and we're starting to see the light posts come up, or the playgrounds, and so in a few years, and this is why Council Member Morales was saying, how quickly can we see results?

This is going to take some time, but once people start seeing that their ideas are being listened to, that they're able to engage, they're understanding the cost of a program or of a capital improvement, that they're able to understand how government works, they no longer become inside, outside feeling they're part of government.

And we have parents that are teaching other parents about how government works, what things cost, and no longer are you doing this as one office, one district office in your community.

Now there's a whole neighborhood.

understanding and engaging each other and bringing the temperature down and saying how do we move this forward and it's launched other auxiliary projects like the fact that our district is now going to be home to seven new schools because they have taken what they understand in pb and they are now engaging the school construction authority directly and saying we need more schools That's not a PB conversation.

That's a holistic budget conversation.

And so it really is bringing an intelligence that I just was not anticipating.

And they are partners with me.

They're no longer just angry at government inaction.

They're part of that action.

And so I think that's the first thing I want to just leave you with.

The second is the access points.

And I think there's some criticism sometimes that says, well, people who have time, they have the luxury of time, or they have higher economic status that allows them to engage is just simply not true.

We are engaging everyone where they're at.

And so a lot of the voting process that we do at the spring after everyone has pulled their projects together and we create a ballot, we go to churches.

And on Sunday afternoon, we talk to people.

I get to go and speak to the congregations and volunteers go and we bring the ballots to the people, which is not a typical voting process.

But what we want to do is really make this voting process accessible so that everyone can engage.

removing language barriers, removing time barriers, removing the kind of institutional barriers.

We're going to people directly and talking about the projects.

And what you see is because there are so much excitement around these projects as you have these teams going around saying, I worked on this.

This is kind of cool.

And these are young people, which is the last thing I want to say is that it has really ignited the young people in understanding the power of their vote at a time where Nationally, we've seen conversations about votes.

Whatever side you're on, it's excited young people and they understand their power.

And once a young heart is ignited, they're ruined forever.

Democracy is in their heart and their spirit.

So I'll leave it there and I'll answer any questions that you have, but I think those are the things that I wanted to add to this conversation.

Thank you.

Really appreciate that, council member.

Sean, I want to let you respond and share your thoughts about what the potential for a participatory budget process means for your community.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

I appreciate the opportunity to be present, to share space and thoughts.

And I appreciate the Council Member from New York and your contributions and insight as someone who's already begun the process and is fully living into those PV principles.

and watching the impact that it has in mobilizing community.

One of the things you said, I actually considered and thought maybe in the inverse, it was this thought that people are becoming more a part of the government.

And I can't speak for the collective us, but I can speak for myself individually that my hope is that the PV process actually has the reverse effect, that the government becomes more a part of the people and that the people understand that these inalienable rights that they've been endowed with by their creator, is all the power they need in order to see the type of systemic change happen to allow our voice, our presence, our humanity to be honored.

I do believe that the compass is pointed and that there is an opportunity to go towards our true North.

When I woke up this morning and I was considering remarks for today, I considered our ancestors and what it was like to be enslaved in the South and to be in these horrific conditions and not know what they were going into, but knowing that what they were escaping was to something better than their present circumstances that were in front of them today.

And that the path ahead for particularly those who made the journey at first wasn't clear.

It was long, it was arduous, it was complicated, it was difficult.

And yet and still, my ancestors persevered because there was a deep conviction that there had to be something better.

That if we simply traveled north, that there was something better on the other side.

And after experiencing what has been dubbed the Seattle process over and over and over again, watching black and brown and indigenous people of color in our community, our voices become politicized and used for posturing for the sake of advancing agendas or reelection campaigns, it's unmistakably clear to me that what we need to do is begin to travel a new direction and bring the collective us along with us as we move forward to a place that builds hope and prosperity and communities that have been historically marginalized and under-resourced.

Now, anybody listening and all of us that are on the Zoom call right now know with great certainty that $28 million is not even going to begin to make up for the economic inequalities that are present in the black community.

the economic inequalities that have impacted the indigenous ancestors that are still holding on and living in the Seattle area today, the economic inequalities that are visited upon our relatives that are people of color, our brothers, sisters, and our non-binary siblings, it's not going to begin to make good on the injustices that have been perpetrated against black bodies by law enforcement in the city of Seattle.

It's not going to begin to make good on the gentrification that continues to happen day in and day out.

It's not going to begin to make up for the inequalities in access to food.

And as our friends in the labor movement so wonderfully put, actual careers and not just jobs.

It's $28 million.

But what we can do with this $28 million is begin to blaze a trail forward that then speaks to how we allocate resources in the future and a process that we can instill that says this is the right way to spend money that's coming from taxpayers in the city of Seattle to be able to meet the needs of those of us that have been pushed to the farthest of the margins.

Now, what that looks like in the context of today is a timeline that is nothing like what many of us would hope it to be.

I mean, yes, we need the money urgently.

But I would much rather personally make sure that the path that we're traveling is one that's full of equity and not expediency, and that an equitable path forward that honors the voices of those that have been impacted is the one that we choose.

Now, in the Black Brilliance Research Project, they were quite clear in the feedback they got about the Department of Neighborhoods.

I'll call out a couple of things just for the sake of this conversation.

In the research project, it said that Don was ineffective at deeply engaging with BIPOC communities, that people felt that Don ignored an overpowered community voice, that they didn't follow up with community after the voting was done, and that they broke trust and haven't meaningfully repaired the harm.

And they said what they wanted was, from the lead city department, was someone who was experienced engaging with BIPOC communities.

that a department that would be patient and starting to work into the community extends the invitation to begin.

So not a department that was going to dictate start and stops, but was willing to be actually led by community and somebody that was going to lift up the participatory budgeting priorities that were set by the community and actually operate in a true partnership that is relational and not just transactional.

So this is where we find ourselves in this conversation about the Office of Civil Rights in the City of Seattle.

which I think personally is uniquely positioned, absent of bias by virtue of the fact that its existence is to uphold what is right and to call out what is wrong, regardless if that right or wrong is being done by the executive or by the council.

That this entity in itself, by virtue of its positioning, is uniquely placed to be able to do this work that the Black Brilliance Researcher's data says is being requested to be brought forward.

Now, it's going to take longer, and according to Amy's report and what you shared, it's also a more costly way forward.

But what is the actual expenses of doing things in the way that we've always done them?

What is the gradual cost of us self-sacrificing by surrendering to the supremacist timeline and relinquishing our authority to white dominant culture and effort for us to be able to get things done in a hurry?

This $28 million is not going to build the dam that we need.

If anything, it's just a larger bucket for us to pull water up from our communities that we're already drowning in.

So if it's only a bigger bucket and it's not the dam, then let us use this moment and this opportunity to build a path where we can construct something different that will make a future where we don't always have to go through the same rotation, the same rigmarole, the same politicking and posturing, because this may have been instigated by the social unrest that happened after the murder of George Floyd, but this is a movement that's been built over generations and generations, a movement that embodies many of our ancestors of our past.

Our living legends and those movement makers that are present today.

I understand that we have to move forward.

And that there is a limited patience for the process that often happens in the city of Seattle.

But I ask my brothers and sisters and my non-binary siblings that we begin to not think about what we can get right now but what we can create as we move forward.

And as we create, as we move forward, that we hold the city, the council, the executive, the Office of Civil Rights accountable to honoring participatory budgeting at its truest form.

And that they employ people from the community to be stakeholders that are helping make decisions on our behalf.

And that they're going out and they're gathering the votes from the people who are most marginalized and most impacted.

And that those dollars are actually creating the type of programming and resources and brilliance that we earnestly believe will be catalysts for change, that they will be the seeds that we need to plant in the very fertile ground of our brilliance that we hold so we can begin to cultivate a future that is greater than the moment that's now.

Family, I am fully persuaded that we can and will move forward together.

I understand that community, as is dubbed, is not inclusive of all, and that Black community, we are not a monolith, that we have a diversity of opinions and perspectives, and there are multiple ways that resources will be spent and allocated as we continue to move forward.

That being said, with this bucket of money, with these resources, let us honor the Black Brilliance Research Project.

Let us honor the data and the voices that were collected therein.

And let's use these dollars to not just fund projects that may last a season, but to plant seeds that will last generations.

Well, thank you, Sean.

I think it's really, I appreciate.

everything you said.

Thank you so much.

You know, the thread here is that, between what you and Council Member Menchaca said, is just that we are planting seeds, we're blazing a trail, we have a future ahead of us, and what we need to be really thoughtful about is how to use this resource in a way that leverages you know, the real possibility and not just investing in sort of a typical business as usual.

This is about trying something new and we might not get it right.

And we have to be okay with that.

And we have to know that we are starting something new and bigger than we've done before.

And if we have to course correct along the way, we'll do that.

But I think it's really important now more than ever not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, as they say.

So thank you, thank you for that.

I see Council Member Peterson has a question and other colleagues, if you have a question, please raise your hand in the feature.

Council Member Peterson, please.

Thank you, Chair Morales, and thank you everybody for being here today.

Welcome to our council colleague from New York City.

Appreciate your being available to us.

In terms of how it's done in New York City, and you said it's been going on for several years there, you mentioned capital projects as the focus.

Is there a reason that you have capital projects as your focus rather than social service programs or other types of interventions like that?

Thank you, Council Member Peterson, for that question.

I think there are two main reasons.

One, the capital projects are impactful in an infrastructure kind of way.

And a lot of the issues that have come through are capital needs in schools, et cetera.

I think where it gets a little bit more tricky, oh, and they're one-time purchases, if you will.

their one-time projects.

And there are some council members that have started experimenting with the programmatic, to fund programs, non-infrastructure.

This is more personnel.

What we find are just interesting moments where we're thinking, do we fund this for two or three years?

If we're funding a basketball after-school group, Is it just a one-off, start people voting for one year or less?

That requires a more top-down mayoral support because they can offer three to five-year contracts and the mayor has not been very supportive of that, but it was in the recent elections that a civic engagement commission was authorized through a charter change that the people voted on, and that will then solve the problem, and we're still tinkering through that now, and we're under elections.

So long story short, it was easier to do capital, because individual members of the council could do it.

We're experimenting with programs.

And very soon, we'll see a mayoral agenda that includes three, five-year program that can solve the multi-year issue.

And Chair, may I follow up with one additional question?

Sure, go ahead.

Council Member, does New York City pay the participants in the budgeting process?

Are you saying the voters?

Are you asking about the?

Yeah, the people who are bottom up participating in the participatory budgeting process.

Do they get paid for their time?

So the only folks who are essentially getting paid through this process are central staff that manage the processing of the ballots, the consultants that we bring on to help us with a marketing strategy, But essentially most of the work is built from the ground up in district offices of volunteers.

All the committee members that are thinking through some of these pieces, these questions about eligibility are driven by volunteers.

The city agencies are already doing this work.

They're the ones that are going to be implementing or already part of the city infrastructure.

And they're mandated to sit with us and talk through us, to talk through things at the community level.

But a lot of this is volunteer driven at the community level, through community boards, community board style infrastructure and are not paid.

Thank you.

And just to clarify, Council Member Peterson, in New York City, and Council Member Menchaca, correct me if I'm wrong, the way participatory budgeting works there is that each council member gets an allotment for participatory budgeting for your district, which is why your district staff are so much more involved.

Is that correct?

That's correct, and that's a really important distinction as everyone across the country and the world is kind of experimenting.

I get about $5 million a year to my discretion.

I can do whatever I want with those $5 million.

I choose to take four of those $5 million and bring them to the community for decision making, and that's what starts the process.

And that's where local community energy volunteers come together to go through that process.

And my staff facilitates the discussions and supports the volunteers.

We host meetings in our office, et cetera.

That's for capital projects.

Those are for capital projects.

And the council members that are doing the expense program dollars essentially are following the same structure, they just add a different ballot.

So people are voting in the spring for both capital and expense.

Thank you.

I'm going to move on to Council Member Herbold.

I saw your hand up.

Do you still have a question?

I don't.

I actually had the same question about how to deal with creating potential year-to-year needs with people's interest in programmatic funding when PB, the priorities might change from year to year.

And so thank you very much for addressing that.

And thank you, Council Member Peterson, for asking.

Can I can I offer a new point to that question.

I think what's interesting about this question too is it begs us to ask, how, how do we create what no.

It begged the conversation in the community to say, could we do something one time?

Can we offer an experimental moment?

And some creative stuff has emerged.

Young people saying, well, we have this one issue.

And if we had just that one group of helpers that we can pay for to kind of unsolve and think about an issue in a different way, we would we would be a different and better community.

So it, you know, constraints are helpful in these conversations where you don't have a three-year funding stream, but if you have one, what could you do with it?

And it's, I think it's been very positive for the experiments that I've seen other council members do.

Thanks, that's helpful.

So programmatic priorities can be one time.

If they're- And ideas are like- That way.

Like a mural, for example, it ends with something but a mural process that really brought people together around the conversation discuss discussing hate crimes and was was enough to be able to be impactful one year and.

And there we go.

Rather than funding a social worker for one year, it was not going to be.

So again, it's shifting how we think about how communities can have something to throw.

And for some of these projects have excited some of the agency commissioners to say, that could be a five-year program.

Let's talk about it.

Let's think about that in a different way.

And now you have dialogue.

Now you have power at the community level to say, this is how we want to spend a $20,000 grant and change the way government works.

I do have one more question, if I could.

Please.

Thank you.

When I was doing some research on participatory budgeting, I came across a data point that said the larger the pot, the more people you have who actually participate in voting.

And I'm wondering, I don't know if the number of dollars available to you as a district representative has been static for the amount of time that you've been in office, but if it hasn't, if the pot has grown, have you seen more people participating as the pot has grown?

That's a really interesting question for a couple reasons.

One is we actually all get $5 million as council members, no matter what district.

I have some comments about that.

There are some districts that I think need more than that.

That's an equity issue.

But we all get $5 million.

And at minimum, members that are participating in this initiative have to put at least $1,000,000 down.

Most members just put $1,000,000 and then they take the rest of the four and do what they want to do with it.

I put in up to $4,000,000 every year and you may make an argument that there have been really high record setting participation in my district because they have been able to do some really big projects, bigger than cutting $1,000,000 into six projects, we're cutting $4,000,000 And some of the projects have been pretty big and substantial.

So I think there is something there.

And what's interesting too, this is an interesting marker about participation is the number of people who voted in my initial election that got me elected seven years ago into the council.

was surpassed by participatory budgeting votes a few years later.

And so that was this really interesting moment where we're doing something right here.

There's something going on where people are engaging because they're seeing their voice impact their neighborhood.

And usually it's, hey, vote for the person and they're going to give you something that's positive in the neighborhood.

And here they're taking power on their own.

So that's just another kind of fun fact that I'm trying to understand and digest.

as I close up my last year.

This is my last year in a city council as we're turned out.

So I think you're onto something there, council member.

Thank you.

Well, and as you said, Council Member Menchaca, you had young people voting, middle schoolers, you had people whose immigration status may have precluded them from voting in a city election, but who are still very eager to engage in whatever way they can.

So, Sean, I would like to ask you one final question and then we do need to move on to our next agenda item.

This is a participatory process.

This is about engaging our neighbors.

And especially neighbors who may have been left out in the past, we want them to benefit from this opportunity.

So do you have thoughts about how we could make sure that people even know this opportunity exists?

I think a lot of the things that we've heard about how the participatory budget process has worked in the past, because a lot of it was just online voting, for example, is that you had to already be engaged with the city in some way to know that you had the opportunity to vote.

So can you talk a little bit about what some other ways might be for us to think about getting the word out?

Yeah, I appreciate the ask.

And I believe in the heart of participatory budgeting, the idea that the RFP would go out to an organization and that organization then would employ people who a part of their job is to make sure that folks are rallying around voting and engaging in the process and are provided living wage jobs to be able to do so.

I think that's going to be transformative in and of itself.

I also think that our community is full of stakeholders.

Some are the traditional stakeholders that are often invited into spaces to share with people who are in positions of power, and then there's many stakeholders who aren't typically invited into those conversations.

that there's enough organization representation across our city to be able to make sure that people in every corner of our community knows and is aware of what's happening.

It's just going to really require us to be intentional on who we engage and how we engage and how we show up in space.

I think that there are moments where it's easy to call on the people who you're most familiar with or you have the greatest relationship with and activate them and have them do what it is that they can do.

But in order for this to be successful and for it to embrace and engage the collective us, we're going to have to have some tough conversations, build some bridges that may have been burned by promises that have been unkept, and really grow together as a community if we're going to make sure everybody's being heard and listened to in this process.

Thank you.

Okay, well, I wanna thank Council Member Menchaca for staying with us all the way from New York.

It's after seven o'clock there, so go get some dinner.

Thank you, Sean, for joining us, and thank you to Amy.

We are going to move on.

So, Lakeisha, can I ask you to please call, no, don't call the roll.

Please read the next item into the agenda, into the record, good grief.

Council Bill 120000, an ordinance relating to the organization of the Office for Civil Rights.

Briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Terrific.

Thank you.

Okay, so as I mentioned before, this bill would extend the term of the OCR director from the end of this year 2021 to the end of next year 2022 and would also remove the language added in ordinance 125470 that asked the department to conduct an RET Racial Equity Toolkit as that has now been completed.

I am going to hand it over to Asha from Central Staff to give us the details.

All right, I'm Asha Mekatraman, the Council Central staff.

As Council Member Morales mentioned, we're talking about Council Bill 120000. She described the effective provisions of the bill, extending the term of the Director of the Office for Civil Rights and removing a provision that's currently in the code.

So I'll just go back and talk through some of the background and how we got to this place.

So back in 2017, council members had heard a variety of concerns from stakeholders about the ability of the Office for Civil Rights to essentially do its job while still under the purview of the executive branch.

And one of the solutions or potential solutions to partially address those issues were to explore independence as a solution.

And this discussion back in, I guess, Councilmember Herbold's committee at the time led to the ask for the Office for Civil Rights to do a racial equity toolkit.

Some of the concerns that that led to this discussion and the ask for the racial equity toolkit dealt with the experience of many employees of color that didn't feel had a lot of recourse when they experienced issues around their race or microaggressions, sort of racist incidents really weren't getting addressed by management or supervisors.

That experience was communicated to council members.

One of the other issues came about in terms of how the racial and social justice team was able to do their work.

Inherently, the The work that the RSJI team does is intended to critique the institution in which they serve.

And so that comes with critiquing often the leadership, who also happens to be indirectly the ultimate authority on whether they are employed or not.

So there's a risk to those employees of doing the very job that they've been hired to do.

in terms of their job security.

And one of the last issues that prompted this exploration of independence was when the Office for Civil Rights was tasked with basically auditing the, I believe it was FAS at the time, but the executives, actions in encampments and to determine whether all of the administrative rules were being followed.

And in the lead up to the release of the report, there were concerns about censorship.

There were concerns that what the employees had actually seen and would like to have reported on were not allowed to be.

published in that report.

And so all of that leading to the Office for Civil Rights conducting a racial equity toolkit.

And part of the legislation that enacted the ask for the racial equity toolkit also talked about the structure of the department, which is what the ask for the RET was about, but also spoke to the leadership structure of the department.

looking at things like the director's term, appointment and removal processes.

And so those elements of the legislation were sort of put in place with the intention that once the racial equity toolkit was completed, there would be some more information about what made the most sense for leadership of the department.

So that process began, I believe in 2017, but the report itself didn't end up being released until 2019. And it came, that report came out with five recommendations.

Many, several of the recommendations regarding resources and staffing started to be addressed by both the council and the executive through adding of employees and resources.

So some of the concerns regarding OCR being understaffed would be addressed.

But there were some remaining bigger picture issues that the RET spoke to in terms of the wider structure of the department, its placement within the executive, what oversight looked like, how accountability was being implemented or not being implemented.

A lot of these things that were larger lifts and spoke to some more cultural change issues.

At that point, at the end of the 2020 budget process, or I'm sorry, the process in 2020 for the 2021 budget, Council Member Morales had sponsored and the council adopted a statement of legislative intent.

which asked the executive to participate in a work group that would go through the RET recommendations and figure out if the remaining recommendations, the ones about oversight and structure, were ready to be implemented.

That is work that is currently ongoing with the executive, and so it's not entirely clear what will come out of those recommendations.

That slide response is due back at the end of June.

So as it relates to this bill, there are two primary drivers for the extension of the director's term.

The first is related to the sly response.

If it turns out at the end of this sly response process that there are recommendations to make major changes or to change the structure of the Office for Civil Rights, the intent of extending the director's term is to ensure that there's some sort of stability in that process so that the person that has been with the staff throughout this past administration will still be in place while any kind of transition occurs, while there's any kind of structural change, and serve as a stable presence given the potential changes.

But given that the work around doing racial equity work and trying to undo institutional racism within the institution is long-term intergenerational work that's intended to be transformational and not transactional, it's possible that the sly response itself might come out with recommendations that don't necessarily say that that new structures are ready for implementation at this time.

But there may be other things that have to happen before large-scale changes are made.

In that situation, I mean, it's entirely possible that doing that kind of transitional work could take years.

And the intent here is not to keep extending the term of the directives.

of the director out until that transition is over.

It's just intended to make sure that if the transition were to occur in the next year or so, there would be stability, which brings me to the second reason for the existence of the legislation.

back during the discussions in 2017 about ways in which a department can achieve more or less independence from the executive, in the circumstance of the executive, but essentially the appointing authority.

there are, it became clear that there's no real way to be completely independent.

There are too many sort of interacting factors, particularly at the municipal level that require that an appointing authority have input, have control, have oversight.

And so one of the indicia of independence that was discussed during that initial discussion had to do with the ability of the director to One, be protected by things like just cause protections, which we put into place in the legislation back in 2017, but also things like term limits or staggered terms so that the appointing authority and the director didn't necessarily start and stop at the same time, but ended up overlapping for a few years.

And that indicated that there would be some more independence available to the director to be able to do the work of the department.

And so that brings me to the second reason why this legislation is in place, which is to put into place or start to put into place some of that staggering.

And so if the term had ended at the end of 2021, it would have been on the same schedule as the term, as the mayor's term.

Instead, to accommodate both the piece around the slide response, but gradually move towards a more staggered structure, this legislation moves that end date to 2022. So at the moment, there is full overlap between the terms of the mayor and the director.

This legislation moves it out a year.

And so it's possible that, you know, the recommendations of the slide response as we continue to have this conversation, that there is some desire for that staggering to continue, that it be two years.

But for now, the intent is to allow for both the slide response transitional transition to be more stable and to start the staggering process.

And so that is generally the drivers behind this piece of legislation.

So I will pause there if there are any questions I can answer.

Thank you, Asha.

That's a long history going back to 2017. Thank you, Council Member Herbold, for beginning this process way back when.

Council Member Herbold, I see you do have a question.

Please go ahead.

I do, and thank you, Council Member Morales, for continuing this really important work.

I think Asha did a really good job of explaining the conditions and concerns that the Council had around independence that led to our engagement around these issues.

My recollection, Asha, is that the 2017 legislation that asked for the, um, rat, um, that was, um, delivered, uh, I think probably fall of 2019, but that that 2017 bill, um, actually made a requirement for, uh, for good cause reasons for termination.

Am I?

Am I right?

Yes, that's right.

And does this legislation continue that, to maintain that obligation?

It does, it does.

It doesn't make any changes to the Just Cause protections.

It only changes the term and takes out the request to do the RET since it's already been done.

It's great.

All right, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any other questions about this piece of legislation?

I am not seeing any hands.

So I will move that the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 12000. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

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

Are there any other questions or comments?

I am not seeing any.

Okay.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Member Lewis.

Yes.

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Council Member Herbold.

Yes.

Chair Morales.

Yes.

Four in favor, none opposed.

Great.

Okay.

The bill passes and we will move it to full council with the recommendation that the bill pass.

Sorry, where am I?

Okay, thank you.

Let's see.

Will the clerk please read item four into the record?

Council Bill 120071, an ordinance relating to commercial tenancies amending ordinance 126066, briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Very good, thank you, Lakeisha.

This is a Council Member Herbold's bill that we are addressing.

Council Member, before I hand it over to Lish, would you like to make any comments?

mostly just my thanks to you councilmember morales for allowing the legislation to be heard uh...

you were a co-sponsor on the original bill that uh...

this uh...

bill proposes to tweak to address uh...

an issue of timing and uh...

making sure that the protections as we intended in the original legislation uh...

are are maintained uh...

and so really really appreciate your uh...

allowing this to be heard uh...

as the commercial eviction moratorium is expected to end on June 30th.

Great.

Thank you.

Lish, please.

Welcome from Central Staff.

Please take it away.

Hey, Lish Whitson, Council of Central Staff.

So this bill amends emergency legislation the Council adopted a year ago, recognizing very early on in the COVID-19 civil emergency that businesses were going to have a hard time paying their rent on time.

council adopted legislation that allowed for payment plans for those businesses that are not able to pay their rent in timely manner during the civil emergency or for six months after the civil emergency.

The payment plans have a couple of criteria they need to require no more than a third of the late rent be paid in a month.

And they also are required to fully repay the landlords within a year after the end of the civil emergency.

Council members have heard from small businesses and nonprofits that their landlords are pointing to provisions in rental agreements that state that if rent is paid late, that that is grounds for eviction.

And so one piece of this legislation is to clarify that if rent is being paid on time under the payment plan, that it is not to be considered late under term to the lease.

The second provision is that some small businesses are having difficulty negotiating payment plans with their landlords.

The city's office of economic development has model rental agreements available on their website.

If the small businesses or nonprofits provide a rental agreement to their landlord that meets the conditions of the ordinance one, two, 6066, then courts assessing the rental agreement should consider that payments under the city's model payment agreement are being paid on time.

So it's trying to clarify a couple of circumstances where there are conflicts between landlords and small business and nonprofit tenants while maintaining the purpose of the original bill.

Thanks.

Thank you so much, Lish.

Council Member Peterson, please.

Thank you, Chair Morales, and thank you both, Chair Morales and Council Member Herbold for bringing this forward.

to refine that original legislation supporting small businesses and other commercial tenants and during the pandemic and in the wake of the pandemic.

Question is for our central staff analyst, Lish, thank you for your memo and wanted to, because the city council is essentially getting involved in the contractual relationship for good reason and good cause, but just wanted to understand that this is temporary, that it will, after that six month period, after the civil emergency is over, eventually this will end, this will sunset.

Correct, this is temporary legislation clearly tied to the civil emergency.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member Herbold.

I just wanted to add, I'm just remembering also, this is a piece of legislation I think a number of us have touched in different ways.

Council Member Morales, I referenced the fact that you were a co-sponsor to the original bill.

Council Member Peterson, it was a small business owner that your office referred us to that got us working on this amendment, so thank you so much.

Council Member Lewis, did you have a question?

Yes, please go ahead.

Yeah, similar to Council Member Gonzalez, sometimes I don't have the little hand thing on my Zoom.

I don't know why that happens.

But in any event, I just wanted to jump in here and just signal that I'm very excited to vote this bill forward today.

I think anything we can do as we are transitioning now into the stage of recovery to help the small businesses that have hung on through COVID hang on a little bit longer to get the tailwind here of the economy reopening and things getting back to normal.

This is a good bill that helps us accomplish that, and I did just want to signal my intention here, or I should say my interest, if the sponsor will have me, to sign on at this point as a cosponsor.

I think it dovetails nicely with efforts from my office on personal guarantee regulations and some other things we've been doing to similarly interfere in a productive way to protect and preserve small businesses who are facing potential abuse of legal commitments that they made that did not anticipate a massive global pandemic that created massive hardship and put them in potential danger of losing their livelihoods and losing more than just the business, but some of their personal lives.

property as well, like their house or their savings.

So with that, I did just want to signal my interest in that, if the sponsor will have me, and we'll be voting on the bill today, in favor of the bill today.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Herbold, I saw a thumbs up accepting the sponsorship.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

You know, I think The reason I think this is so important is because all year, I have been hearing from small businesses, restaurants, movie theaters, nonprofits that are housed in larger buildings on a block, regularly hearing about how people are about to get kicked out.

landlords are selling, property owners are selling, and it's understandable.

They aren't receiving rent, and so it is hard for them to make their mortgage payments.

That said, what it means for some communities is a real heightened risk of disaster gentrification, right?

And that's part of what we are trying to stop.

If all of these small businesses, all these storefronts suddenly become vacant because nobody can afford to pay rent and they've been kicked out, That really leads the way to flipping all of these properties and then our communities are left with nothing to hold on to, you know, the businesses that have made their commercial districts vibrant are now gone.

And who knows what's coming in to replace them, or even in fact to replace the buildings they were housed in.

And so there's a real looming crisis here, that our neighborhood commercial districts are at risk if we don't do something to protect the small businesses that are in them and that make them vibrant.

So I really appreciate this and look forward to supporting it.

Council Member Herbold, if there are no other questions, I will give Council Member Herbold the last word.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I just wanted to add that I really hope that taking action now will encourage small businesses, nonprofits, and their lessors to enter into these kinds of conversations about what it will take for tenants to recover and address their arrears to the good of all parties and the communities you serve and to avoid the cascading impacts that you, Chair Mosqueda, identify as real looming possibilities.

Cascading impacts that can include not just removal of the businesses that are in the buildings, but the redevelopment of the buildings themselves.

I want to just let folks know that we've reached out to several of the small business owners and stakeholders who helped us with the original legislation to check for their thoughts.

Um, Joe Pugere of Tuttabella really emphasized the importance of giving landlords and tenants a reason to sit down together and talk about their respective financial positions and perspectives.

From his perspective as both a commercial tenant and a landlord, his experience has been that The conversations were difficult at times, but he was able to break through in all cases and negotiate plans that have worked for everyone.

We also requested that the Washington State Hospitality Association review the proposed legislation and gave them the opportunity to suggest additional changes.

They shared it with the members who gave it the green light.

And again, thank you Council Member Morales for letting us hear this today.

My pleasure.

Okay, colleagues, if there are no other questions, then I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 12000. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that the bill pass?

Hi, council member.

The council bill number was incorrect in their script.

Can you repeat it?

Oh dear.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I move that the committee recommend passage of council bill 12071. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

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

Now, will the clerk please call the roll?

Yes.

Council member Lewis.

Yes.

Council member Peterson.

Yes.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Chair Morales?

Yes.

Or in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much.

The bill will move forward to full council on May 24th, 2021, with a recommendation that it do pass.

Okay, thank you, colleagues.

We went a little bit long today, so I appreciate your indulgence.

I do want to thank Council Member Menchaca for joining us from New York and Sean Good.

Thanks also to the staff at OED and Community Attributes, as well as our partners from the Labor and Environmental Justice Movements.

Thanks to Amy Gore, Lish Whitson, and Asha Vaikatraman from Central Staff.

And then I do want to make just a final couple remarks about participatory budgeting.

I know we've got lots of heated conversation happening right now, and I just want to say that this isn't and shouldn't be about politics.

We have community members who have asked for this process.

And I just want to remind us what this is really about.

This is about a new process for stopping harm in our communities, for creating more inclusive policies and following Black and Indigenous leadership.

And it's about investing in thriving solutions where we can reimagine what community safety looks like for everybody.

So we know that this isn't a new process in the city, but I think we can learn from the way we've done it in the past and make some improvements to that.

We talk a lot in the city about wanting to improve our neighborhoods, reducing violence, creating alternatives for young people, changing our ideas about what community safety looks like.

And all of that requires a commitment to investing in our neighborhoods in a different kind of way.

And participatory budgeting allows citizens to do that.

It allows them to identify and discuss and prioritize public spending.

As Council Member Menchaca said, it really engages people and gets them to understand government better so that they bring down the heat, which we can probably all agree would be a good thing, but really gives people real power and real money.

And that's important.

So our constituents are asking for this, they are expecting us to deliver, and I'm excited about moving forward with this process.

So I wanna invite my colleagues to reach out if you have questions about the process, if you have amendments that you might wanna propose.

This is still being reviewed by law, but my expectation is that we can officially introduce this on May 24th.

And my expectation is also that we can vote on it at the June 3rd special committee meeting at two o'clock.

So with that, this concludes the May 18th, 2021 meeting of the Community Economic Development Committee.

Thanks to everybody for joining and for your participation.

And we are adjourned.