West Seattle Virtual Community Town Hall

Thank you everyone for joining us on this town hall.

This town hall is in collaboration with the mayor as well as other departments within the city of Seattle in an effort to bring you the most current information available.

We are going to present this town hall in 2 parts.

The 1st part will be a presentation from mayor Jenny Durkin and council member Herbold followed up with a Q and a.

The second part will be presentations from departments.

With regards to questions, I would like to mention that this town hall is to be for resident and neighborhood focused.

For any media attending, if you would like to ask questions, please reach out to the mayor's office communication staff.

For residents asking questions, please type in any questions you would like to ask in the chat feature.

For those questions directed at Mayor Durkan or Council Member Herbold, please type those in during their speaking time.

All others will be directed to the departments after the webinar during the second half of the town hall.

As always, we will do our best to accommodate as many questions as we can.

I would like to take this time to remind you about the mayor's COVID-19 resource page.

This is a great resource for finding all the latest updates from the city.

So please visit the COVID-19 resource page at www.seattle.gov forward slash mayor D.O.N. also hosts a weekly webinar every Friday at 2.30 p.m.

In order to join that, I will put the link in the chat here shortly.

I'm now going to pass it over to Mayor Jenny Durkan to begin her presentation.

Thank you, Andres, and thank you for convening this.

I also want to thank Councilmember Herbold for joining, and thanks to all the people from West Seattle who are on this.

I think one of the hardest things about this pandemic response is the huge impact it's had on our community.

We know that there's been both a health impact as well as a economic impact, and together they've created a huge social impact.

I was reviewing some of my notes earlier this week from the very beginning.

We are two months into this, but on February 28th, when we learned about the first COVID case in King County.

And then the next day about the death, we immediately started working with leaders at the county level and the state level.

And we're also blessed to be home to some of the best scientific research people.

I found the notes from one of the first conversations I had with them in that first week of March.

And because of the research they had been doing with the Seattle flu study, they were actually able to type the genome of the COVID virus and see how it spread through the community.

At that time, we thought we only had a relatively handful of cases, but because of their modeling, they were able to determine at that point, we probably had close to a thousand cases.

And without quick and swift action, we would have over 70,000 cases at the beginning of April.

We got together with our community leaders.

at the state level, the county level, and the city level.

And I think very blessed to be working together and have speak with one voice.

And we did what was very hard.

We just knew that the only way we could stop the transmission of this virus was to stop people from coming together because that's how the virus transmits itself.

And so we began to turn the dial and closing down parts of our community.

It has been really hard for people to stay home.

We know that so many people have lost their jobs, small businesses have closed, and families have been really hurt by this virus.

We also know that these impacts have shown to a great degree the inequities in our city that existed before.

The racial demographics of who is suffering the pain of both the health impacts and the economic impacts could not be more clear and more unjust.

Our communities of color and particularly our African American communities have suffered the greatest, both in terms of unemployment numbers and the health impacts.

So we know as we go forward and finally come out of this, when we reopen as a city and a community, we've got to reopen differently.

We've got to build back better.

But we're a long ways from building back.

We've done everything that was asked of us.

We have flattened the curve.

We saved our health care system from collapsing.

But and the good news is because of that, 95% of the people in Seattle and King County have not been exposed to this virus.

But the bad news is that means most of us are susceptible.

And so as we start moving to the next phases, we will see a rise in the virus.

And that's why it's so critical that the state and the county and the city have been trying to let everybody know exactly what the metrics and the science we're using to guide us are.

We believe in science here in Seattle, and we will be guided by the public health truths.

And we want to communicate really clearly to you at each stage what it is each of us can do to slow down this virus and what we can expect from each of our governments.

We know this has had tremendous impacts on all of the city, including West Seattle.

We also know there's going to be a lot of questions today about the West Seattle Bridge and other impacts directly.

And I want to address some of those directly because I know we won't be able to get to everybody's questions.

You're going to hear from a number of my cabinet members who will address the phases that we're going through.

The West Seattle Bridge is a vital, vital piece of infrastructure, not just for West Seattle and the city, but for our whole region.

One of the most traveled corridors we have.

But we know losing that bridge and not having the ability to use it has had huge impacts on West Seattle, even in this time when people are staying home.

I really want to commend Council Member Herbold for working with us around the clock to not only center the communities in West Seattle, and Dell Ridge and South Park, but to be at the table trying to figure out how we move forward together to solve the mobility issues.

We're moving on multiple fronts.

We're going to do everything we can to see if that bridge can be fixed, and if so, how quickly we can fix it.

At the same time, we're going to be working on how can we replace the bridge if we need to do that.

I've already had multiple discussions with our congressional delegation, with our state leaders, our state delegation, the county, and Sound Transit, because we want to explore all avenues in both repairing, replacing, or replacing that bridge.

We know that we've got to have that vital infrastructure back as quickly as possible.

We've gotten a lot of questions about why people, more people, can't use the lower bridge.

We really have to preserve that bridge for our first responders, fire and police, and for transit so we can move the most people.

There's a couple of things that restrict it.

Number one, we just can't afford for it to get too congested because we know we have to be able to have those critical first responders get through.

But also because it too has load restrictions and we have instruments there trying to measure to make sure that we don't create too much load on that bridge and lose it.

We're looking at all mobility options in the meantime.

We're talking to King County and Metro about increasing foot ferries, We're talking to the Washington State Ferries.

We're looking at every option we can to see how we increase mobility.

We also know that the traffic patterns have had huge impacts on communities like South Park, and we'll be looking at ways to reduce and mitigate against those impacts, to look at smart ways to have better signaling and better intersections.

But even with all that, we know that there's a huge impact, and you have my word that we're going to do everything we can to work as quickly as we can to increase mobility there.

And I will say West Seattle is fortunate because you have not only Councilmember Herbold, who is just a terrific advocate for her district.

You know, you have a number of other very influential people there, including our Council President, Theresa Mosqueda, Dow Constantine, Joe McDermott, Congresswoman Jayapal.

All of us working together are going to do what we can for West Seattle.

A lot of people have also asked us about Alki.

and what the status is there.

We're really trying to make sure that people can enjoy their parks and their healthy streets at this time when we're all staying home.

We know that that's a critical outlet for people's mental health and their ability to get outside.

But we've also seen that Alki can get too crowded and we really need your help in making sure that people keep moving and keep those parks open.

It can't be the place for picnics.

It can't be the place for barbecues and the volleyball games and all the things we've done over the years at Alki.

We really have to lessen the crowds and keep people moving.

That's why we decided to close the park at 8 p.m.

because we were able to determine that that was one of the times when people were gathering as they shouldn't in this public health crisis.

And so we want to continue to listen to the West Seattle community about how we get Alki so that it works for the neighborhood and community, but doesn't get too crowded.

Again, South Park, we know there's been huge impacts already.

We want to work with the South Park community and with Delridge and Highland Park to make sure that we are thinking very thoughtfully that as people move in and out of West Seattle, we don't have unintended impacts on communities that already are so fragile.

We also are standing up.

We've done some testing in South Park today.

There was a testing facility set up at the stadium.

We're going to work as hard as we can to try to get as much testing as we can in the communities.

Testing has been one of the greatest struggles that we in Seattle and Washington State have.

Our public health officials estimate that before we can reopen, we might need as much as five times the amount of tests on a daily basis that we have now.

We have had a total lack of leadership at the federal level on this, and we're doing everything we can as a city to increase our access to supplies.

We're working with our medical providers and the state to provide not just more testing citywide, but particularly to make sure that those communities that have been disproportionately impacted, the communities of color, have access to testing for free and access to adequate health care.

That's true also of our congregate living places.

We have seen that those people are at great risk, both our senior centers and our homeless centers, and are really working closely with the state and the county to do all we can to minimize the risk in those places.

We know that some of the senior centers in West Seattle have been impacted, and it is one of the reasons why our fire chief has led the way, and we were able to get our emergency medical personnel in the fire department certified to administer tests.

Public health just didn't have the capacity in the strike teams to do enough tests in our long-term care facilities or our homeless shelters.

And so we were able to train our fire department personnel to do that.

And I'm so proud to say that not only were they set up the first testing facility for first responders by first responders, they are now doing lots of testing in our long-term care facilities as well as working with strike teams and the homeless And they've administered over 900 tests, just our fire department.

We'll continue to work with communities to listen to what they need.

I got the first round of unemployment numbers this week, an analysis on what it means for Seattle and King County.

And the numbers are truly horrifying.

So many people have lost their jobs.

So many small businesses have closed.

And again, those burdens have fallen disproportionately on our communities of color.

We're going to be setting up a task force within our city to look at those disproportionate impacts to make sure that as we come out of this pandemic, we build back a city that is more just and equitable, because this pandemic has laid bare some of those gross inequities that we knew were there, but now are such a chasm for all of us to see.

So I wanna thank all of you for doing your part in really stepping up to help us flatten the curve.

I do wanna emphasize, We are not out of the woods.

Flattening the curve was just what we needed to do to preserve our healthcare providers.

But we have a long ways to go.

This virus is really dangerous and we know it will grow.

We need people still to stay home, to keep your social distance, to wash your hands, to wear a face covering when you go out.

But we also need you to treat each other with kindness and compassion.

It's been a really hard time on everybody.

We will make it through it.

We will come out a changed and I believe better city.

But we'll only do that if we really do come together and have those common goals and inspiration to get through it together to be a better city.

So I look forward to some of your questions and now I'd like you to hear from Lisa Herbold who again has been I think through this has has worked really hard with me and with others not just for West Seattle but for the city at large to be thinking about how do we deal with this pandemic in a way that is making sure that we deal with the public health emergency, the economic emergencies, but also point ourselves to being a better city.

So with that, I'll turn it over to you, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you, Mayor, for that kind and considerate and loving and clear message of support for my work.

Thank you for that wonderful introduction.

I really appreciate it.

And even more than that, I really value your leadership in this really difficult time for our city, our country, and our world.

I hear from folks in other parts of the country how much they contrast your leadership, Mayor Durkan, with the leadership of other cities, other states, and, of course, the leadership that we're getting out of the White House.

Your leadership has been science-based, it's been clear, and we all know that in order to come out of this stronger.

We really need the cooperation of the public.

So much of what is going to make us stronger and healthier requires the voluntary cooperation of the general members of the public.

And that is, to the most extent, that is happening.

And that is happening because of the clear and reasonable direction that we're getting from the top in this city.

So I thank you very much.

I thank everybody in the public who's out there watching, who's been able to tune in today.

I know it was really short notice and most folks only found out that this was happening just a few hours in advance.

I guess it's sort of how we all found out about the bridge closure as well.

But we're all here together in this together.

And I think I just want to spend a few minutes of my remarks first talking about the West Seattle bridge closure.

And then I'm going to just do some very high level touches on the work that the Council has been doing.

In many instances, the work that we're doing is responding and adding to the Mayor's emergency orders.

The Council has the ability to approve, reject, or amend the emergency orders, and so much of our work has been doing that.

But we've also been passing our own legislation But again, largely related to the same issues that the mayor has been enacting emergency orders on.

So we're really aligned on the issues that we need to be focusing on on behalf of the residents of the city.

As it relates specifically to the West Seattle Bridge, I want to really honor and appreciate the collaboration from the mayor's office, from SDOT, in making sure that just like we're doing in the in the face of the COVID-19 crisis, This is another crisis for West Seattleites and the surrounding neighborhoods, and we need to make sure that we are all rowing in the same direction together.

And a lot of the things that we have begun to do immediately in the face of this transportation crisis is our steps that we've taken collaboratively.

For instance, we immediately convened with Councilmember Peterson, who's the chair of the Council's Transportation Committee, and SDOT, something that we call a client group on the bridge.

And we're focused not only on the phases associated with stabilization of the bridge and decision making about replacement or repair, but we also have a laser focus on many of the traffic management needs that we have now and that we know that we're going to really need to emphasize as we open up more businesses.

And so this client group meets Once every two weeks we get a weekly report from SDOT on the activities of the previous week.

I share the information from the weekly reports in my weekly blog posts.

One of the first things I did after hearing about the closure was I reached out to the Seattle Fire Department to ask whether or not we needed additional resources to respond to emergencies in District 1, considering the limitations of other fire stations throughout the city and being able to respond to large events.

I was really pleased that the fire department announced last week that another ladder truck and medic unit would be placed in District 1. And I want to thank the mayor again for responding favorably to Fire Chief Scoggins' recommendations that we do that.

We co-hosted again, Sound, I'm sorry, Estat and myself co-hosted a town hall.

there were 4,600 views of that town hall, and there were 1,000 questions submitted.

It really shows not only how much interest people have, and it's not just interest, right?

It's real need in finding out what our solutions are going to be.

But there's also a really, Again, collaborative spirit on behalf of residents in this district on what things we can be doing to make travel better in the interim.

I want to thank SDOT for the work that it has been doing as it relates specifically to traffic management.

They, in the last week or so, repaved the five-way intersection at the Chelan Cafe.

They've read time signals on Roxbury.

There will be repaving of Roxbury between 16th and 18th, both on the city side and then on the other side of the street, which is owned by King County.

King County is also going to repave their part of the street.

There'll be, and of course, the traffic light that was very quickly installed.

at the top of Highland Parkway.

I'm going to continue to advocate for residents as it relates to access to the lower bridge, especially for use during COVID-19 when the traffic use is lower.

And you know, especially for folks who are doing overnight shift work, and there's nobody else using the bridge and there's not a congestion issue.

So I am going to continue to monitor the use of the lower bridge and urge SDOT to consider being flexible there.

The most recent update that we've received from SDOT is that they have completed the installation of the real-time monitoring equipment.

And what that real-time monitoring equipment does is it lets us know whether or not much of the work that's associated with stabilization can be done, whether or not there's the bridge has the structural integrity to even do that initial work.

But we're going to hear more, a lot more from SDOT about that when we get into the departmental presentations.

Again, high level on the legislation that Council has been working on in order to respond to the COVID-19 crisis, our legislation has focused on the needs of workers, of small businesses and nonprofits, renters, folks who rely on our human services, whether or not that's food services or services for seniors or homelessness services.

And then we've also done some work within the area of emergency child care legislation.

For renters, we started off with a city eviction moratorium that again was enacted under an emergency order proposed by the mayor.

That is in place until June 4th.

After that, Council has passed three different pieces of legislation.

The first creates a defense to evictions for non-payment of rent.

for six months after the end of the declared public health emergency.

The second bill allows residential tenants to make up past due rent and installments.

So landlords have to accept time payment plans.

And if you're, for instance, two months behind on your rent, that can be paid over six months after the end of the public health emergency.

And then the third piece of legislation prohibits The screening out of tenants by landlords because of evictions that occurred either during COVID-19, although those evictions are not supposed to be happening because of the eviction moratorium, or six months after the end of the civil emergency.

Finally, as it relates to renters, the council has responded to the mayor's request to increase funding for rent assistance.

to the tune of so far $1.7 million in additional rent assistance just over the last couple of months in addition to the existing $3.3 million that was already in the budget for this year.

For workers, we've passed legislation to expand our paid sick and safe time laws to permit the use of paid sick and safe time when the city's the city employs family member or school or a place of care is closed.

And it also requires, this bill also requires private companies that have 250 or more employees, requires those employers to allow employees access to their paid leave banks, their paid sick leave banks, when the business is closed for health reasons.

So it's not that necessarily in those cases that the employees are sick, but the businesses has been closed for health reasons.

So we felt really strongly that it was so important to allow those employees to access their paid leave banks.

Further, I'm working on a bill with Council Member Lewis to provide additional pay for Uber and Lyft drivers and transportation delivery network drivers like Grubhub, Postmates and Uber Eats.

Drivers are providing essential services in food delivery, and they're transporting essential workers.

And so it's really important to make sure that those drivers are being compensated, not just for the risks that they're taking doing this essential work, but also the extra effort that they have to take to sanitize their vehicles in between each and every trip.

In the area of small business and nonprofits, Again, this work, the work that the council has done was really layered on to the leadership of the mayor.

The mayor proposed an eviction moratorium for nonprofits and small businesses so that they cannot be evicted for nonpayment of rent.

But in those cases, the rent is still owing.

So what the council did is we passed legislation that, again, just like we did for tenants, for residential tenants, we're doing this for small business and non-profit tenants, it requires their landlords to be willing to enter into payment plans to get caught up on that past due rent.

So it gives people something to do between just not paying the rent at all and having it stack up and still be owed or having to pay all of it.

It gives people a path that is both good for the commercial and small nonprofit tenants, but it's also good for the landlord as well.

That bill also includes commercial rent control for the period of the crisis.

And then finally, we passed legislation authorizing the mayor's recommended $2.5 million for small business tax relief.

We supported the mayor's emergency orders for business and operations tax, you know, tax relief and utility payment relief.

And then finally, I worked with the mayor on an emergency order to cap third party delivery fees at 15%.

Those were fees that were coming directly out of the earnings of small restaurants that are just struggling to stay open by shifting their model to 100% food delivery model.

And those commissions were as much as 30% coming out of those earnings.

So again, this cap at 15%, it doesn't only help the restaurants, but it also helps the workers at the restaurants because restaurants aren't making a whole lot of profit right now.

They're just doing just what they can to be able to continue to pay their staff.

And then on the area of human services, hosted a call for many of our District 1 service providers.

I brought them together in a format like this.

Everybody from the West Seattle Food Bank to the Delridge Neighborhood Development Association to Food Lifeline and the West Seattle Senior Center, many more.

And we really decided that the issue that everybody was experiencing in common was an identified need for increased personal protective equipment, what we all call PPE now, so that the nonprofits can continue their important work but still be protected when they're interfacing with the public or other staff.

And so we connected those service providers with the city's centralized supply ordering function for PPE.

And we also connected public health with communitaria in South Park to address the need for education and supplies about wearing masks in ethnic markets.

We also have worked to, in the human services area, worked to connect frontline workers and homeless shelters with a quick turnaround coronavirus test resource that the Seattle Fire Department is providing.

And really I'm so grateful for the fire department and their willingness to share their testing capacity that was really focused on testing first responders.

They on our request agreed to provide this service to our frontline shelter workers as well.

We're also engaged with the Human Services Department and the Mayor's Office for better policies and practices focused towards people living unsheltered, spanning the range from better access to hygiene facilities, as well as halting encampment removals consistent with the CDC guidelines during this crisis and supporting the navigation team to remove only encampments in extreme conditions.

And then finally, you may have heard on the Human Services side that Youth Care and HSD, the Human Services Department, have been working together to open up the Southwest Teen Center and to allow that location, that facility, to be used by Youth Care.

so that they could move some of and practice social distancing within their youth care shelter.

They can move some of their young people out of the youth care shelter in one location and have some of those young people come to the Southwest Teen Center.

Other things that we've been focused on is passing emergency child care legislation for children of health care workers and first responders and advocating that those employers of those healthcare workers should pay their staff hazard pay.

Since the parents of the children that they're caring for right now, because those childcare centers are really mostly open only for essential workers right now, the parents of the children that these healthcare workers are taking care of are at higher risk for contacting the virus.

So these workers themselves are putting themselves in harm's way.

Yes.

Sorry, we have some questions coming in here.

If you can just quickly wrap up and then we'll go to some questions from the community here.

Absolutely, I'm just about to do so.

We've also passed legislation authorizing over $6.2 million in food vouchers.

The constituent emails that my office has been answering in this time are over 4,000 emails, which is about four times the number of emails that we typically answer in a month.

And as it relates to public safety issues, I just want to tag that I'm in regular contact with Chief Best about public safety, especially public safety issues related to the businesses that are closed in our business districts.

I'm also working to monitor the city jail population and encourage its reduction.

Current city contracted population in the King County Jail is under 50 individuals and it's usually about 180 people.

And just in closing, I want to flag that we are anticipating a $300 million shortfall for this year's budget for 2020. We cannot expect an austerity budget to help our city truly recover and the people in the city to truly recover from this economic crisis.

We must have progressive revenue to replace the revenue that we lost.

We cannot expect that the packages that are coming out of Congress are going to do that.

I just read an article yesterday that 43,000 millionaires are going to end up receiving stimulus funding averaging $1.6 million for each one of those 43,000 millionaires.

We have the most regressive taxation system in the country.

And again, we really need progressive revenue to replace the revenue that we're losing.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you, Council Member.

We have a few questions here that we'd like to get to.

And as a reminder, if you do have a question, please put it in the chat box.

And if we don't get it to it with the mayor or the council member here, we will try to address it when the departments do their webinars.

So mayor, going back to issues of transportation, there's a question here around additional types of transportation, whether it be investments in the water taxi or additional bus hours.

Can you talk a little bit about the solutions that the city is brainstorming with Metro?

You're on mute, please.

Thank you for that, Andres, and thank you, Councilmember, for all of your words and all the work that you've been doing.

It is an all hands on deck, all options on the table for mobility from West Seattle.

We are talking with King County Metro about adding additional water taxis when traffic starts to pick up.

We're also looking at, can we add additional transit?

We're looking at how we do more mobility.

Literally, we want to do everything from can there be a new mosquito fleet that goes from even Salty's or Alki or Fauntleroy and comes to downtown Seattle.

We're talking the Washington State ferry system to see if there's any additional capacity there that might work.

There's no stone that's going to be unturned about finding more ways to get from West Seattle while the high bridge is out of commission.

We will continue to look at requests for uses of the low bridge.

during the regular work hours and that we will continue to keep that for transit and for emergency responders.

But Councilmember and others are asking us to look at a range of uses that may benefit West Seattle and the community at large, including health care workers who we might need in our emergency rooms or to respond to the COVID emergency who need to get quickly from West Seattle.

So we'll be open to all those requests.

But what we have to do is make sure that we don't lose that bridge, too.

And in the meantime, we will look at every mobility option that we have.

Mayor, as we address community needs, basic community needs, how is the city ensuring that underserved communities, particularly in West Seattle, South Park, Georgetown, are at the center of that recovery?

We saw in very stark relief at the very beginning of this what might happen in our economy.

Because one of the first actions we took was as an employer, we decided to activate our telecommute practices.

And today, almost 60% of the workers in the city of Seattle are telecommuting for their job.

We also saw our large tech companies in South Lake Union Institute telecommuting.

And when they did that, we saw that as employees no longer came to downtown those small businesses in and around those employers started to have no customers and started to fail.

So we knew as we turned the dial and had to shut down this economy, the largest impact was going to be on our workers and our small businesses and disproportionately on our communities of color.

And that's why we mobilized so quickly, the executive branch, myself and our departments working with the city council to get as much money as we could into the hands of the people that needed it the most as quickly as we could, because we knew it would take time for the federal government, the state government to act.

We haven't done as much as we want, but we've been able to give grocery vouchers to thousands of families and grants to small businesses to stop evictions, to make sure that people's utilities stayed in place.

And we will continue to work with the council and our philanthropy and business to fund those programs like rent relief that people need today.

Very mindful every time the first of the month comes that families should not have to choose between putting food on the table and paying their rent ever.

And in this crisis, they're choosing on whether they can even get the food because there's been so much impacts even on our food security at food banks.

So we are driving as much relief as we can to those communities that need it the most and listening to those communities and empowering the community-based organizations in those communities to serve their people.

We will continue to do that through this.

And I will say on this regard, there has been the strongest of partnerships between myself and the city council and particularly Lisa Herbold, who every day is a champion for the working people not just in her own district, but throughout Seattle, and knows the pressure that renters and others are on.

So we will continue on those efforts to make sure that the people who have suffered the most, that we can get as much aid as we can to them directly.

Mayor, there was some recent guidance on face coverings.

There's a question here around how is the city working with seniors and other low-income populations to get masks or face coverings to them?

Such a great question because face coverings have shown that they can help.

At the beginning of this, we gave the advice to people, if you're sick, stay home.

And then the more we learned about this virus, we learned that people were highly contagious before they had any symptoms or before they even knew they were sick.

And face coverings can help control the spread of that virus.

But we also know that not everybody is going to have access.

So working with the county again, The city is providing almost 50,000 face coverings to community-based organizations and congregational living, and the county over 100,000.

Together, the distribution, we really want to get that to the people who can't have access otherwise.

Really urging people, don't go buy medical-grade face masks.

We need those N95 and surgical masks for our healthcare workers.

But cloth masks can work.

We're distributing them.

We also posted a video.

People that have bandanas or hijabs or T-shirts, there's ways you can use those for face covering.

You just need to close your mouth, cover your mouth and your nose.

So we know that people need more access to those, but they're really important, really urging people.

If you're going to a public place, please wear a mask in your grocery store, in your pharmacy, at the farmer's market.

If you can't socially distance, wear a face covering.

But it doesn't make up, you still have to socially distance.

You still have to wash your hands.

This virus is still very dangerous.

Thank you, Mayor.

Council Member, there's a question here around what this pandemic has meant for small landlords in West Seattle that are also dealing with the need to pay their mortgages.

Can you have a comment about that?

And I think you were on me.

Now you're good.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I mentioned in my opening remarks that we've increased the funding available for rent assistance programs.

And so we've increased so far an additional $1.7 million And that is just over the last two months on top of the $3.3 million that the City had already contributed to rent assistance.

Now that's just that's just the City's contribution.

The home-based program during just these last few months has, and that's the program that is the statewide eviction prevention fund.

It has grown in size fourfold just in the last two months.

So I think people really understand that we can't just simply give relief to tenants on rent, but we have to also provide a resource to tenants so that tenants can continue to pay their rent.

And so we're going to keep doing that, but then I also am aware that there are national efforts to create coalitions of tenants and small landlords to take the argument to the federal government that small landlords also need foreclosure relief from their financial institutions.

Some financial institutions have already done that.

Freddie May and Fannie have both given some forbearance on rent during this period of time.

But again, we recognize that those dollars are still going to be owed.

It's just that the banks are giving landlords more time to pay those costs.

One of the other things I want to flag is I'm in conversations with the King County Assessor's Office because I know another one of the burdens on small landlords is property taxes.

And so the King County Assessor is is working on some property tax relief ideas that he has that hopefully we'll be able to share more information with you about those in the upcoming weeks.

Thank you Councilmember.

Mayor, there's a question around the Safe Street, Stay Healthy Streets program.

Can you talk more about the City's plan to make some of those permanent and Is there a plan to expand that?

Sorry, Mayor, you're on mute.

So I think this is really, we have to reimagine what Seattle's going to be.

When I said we're coming out changed, our city is going to be fundamentally changed and urban environments throughout the globe right now are rethinking what does a city look like post-pandemic?

We already see that many, many employers are saying that they will never again have office space where people come together and people will continue to commute and work from home.

That's going to change what our downtown looks like, both in who works there and who lives there.

But it's also going to mean that our urban villages and our neighborhoods and communities are going to be a center of living in a way they haven't been for a long time.

Safe streets, I think, is not only will be permanent, but I think it will help us reimagine what is that community and neighborhood look and feel like.

Those are already, none of those streets are the streets that are arterials.

They were never streets that people were meant to use as their main passage for vehicles.

And by opening them for families and communities and neighbors to have more space to walk, to bike, to see each other, it's been an incredibly healthy thing.

And I think it will be a healthy thing moving forward as we start to reimagine in each part of our city what Seattle looks like and how we can be better, not just through this pandemic, but coming out of this pandemic.

And I think we will see a different kind of city where we, again, can reduce our reliance on automobiles.

We can have streets available for communities and neighborhoods.

People could still get access locally if they need to get to their driveway or their house.

But to really reduce the amount of traffic flowing through that, I think will be a healthy thing in the long term.

And we've gotten a lot of positive feedback from people throughout the city, how they use it, how they love it, and how they want to continue it.

Especially on Beach Drive.

Thank you, Mayor.

Next question is around business reopening.

What can the city do to provide more outdoor space for businesses as they're looking to meet the public health guidelines and provide potential PPE to those businesses?

So we're working with our small businesses and different sectors right now to kind of work through what does reopening look like?

And how do we make it so that people will want to come to those businesses, that workers will feel safe in those businesses?

We're looking at whether, for example, we can give restaurants more outdoor space in which to serve.

But it's a double-edged issue because we want to create more space.

But I think in everyone's mind, they think of, you know, the outdoor patio on a summer day where everyone's there together.

It is going to be a very long time before we can gather in the way we did before.

So we want to create more space and have access for more space.

And Sam Zimbabwe, who's on this call, and a lot of our departments are looking how we can make that available.

But it's not going to be a space where we can have beer gardens or large tables of people gathering together.

We're in this for a very long time, no matter what phase we're in, where there's still going to have to be significant social distancing.

And every business is going to have to rethink how it did business before and how it not only keeps its employees safe, but it gives its customers confidence that they are safe.

There's no playbook for this.

We are in a different world than we've ever been before in this city.

We're going to be working it out together.

We're going to have to support each other.

And we're going to have to find what works for every business is going to be a little bit different.

But we want to make sure that as Seattle reopens, We do it smart and we do it in a way where we don't end up not just back to where we were in February, but in a worse place because we know today we have far more people getting sick every week in Seattle and King County than we did in February when we had to shut things down.

Thank you, Mayor.

I think we have time for two more questions.

Council Member, we've seen the impact of this pandemic on cultural organizations.

Can you talk about kind of the plans around cultural organizations, art organizations in West Seattle and what does that mean?

And you're on mute.

Thank you, you know, I know we're going to hear directly from the Arts Office about not just what they what they've been doing, but what they what they plan to do.

But I just so I want to defer to their expertise and their leadership on that.

But I I do want to say how much I I value that work on behalf of our cultural infrastructure here in the city and particularly in West Seattle and South Park.

You know, part of what makes life a life worth living is what we are able to experience through arts and culture.

And I think many of us are realizing that in a way that is really profound right now.

And many of us are looking for new ways, not only to support artists, but to get that kind of enrichment and fulfillment that creative endeavors provide all of us.

And then finally, I want to just recognize what I think most of us know to be true is part of what, it's not just part of what makes a life worth living is being able to enjoy and get enrichment from the arts, but it's part of what makes a city a livable city.

And it's part of what makes business want to open up new businesses, bring more innovation to a city is when you have a vibrant arts culture in that city.

And so there's a really important economic development component of arts for our city, but also for the artists who do that work.

And it's really important that we center our efforts as a city on a recognition that the arts are a livelihood for people.

And we want to make sure that the ability to benefit from that livelihood is one that extends into black and brown communities.

in a way that is equitable with other demographics of folks who are artists.

And that's an area that I think this city and other cities also struggle with, is that some of the highest paying arts jobs are jobs that are not held by black and brown people.

So I know that the Office of Arts and Culture is really focused on that issue.

And I know that a lot of the financial support that we're providing in this time is really focused on that using that equity lens.

And I know we'll hear more about that from them later.

Great.

Mayor, the last question for you here is, with no vaccine available for the foreseeable future, how do Seattleites continue to remain positive and have hope through this time?

So, I think some of what Councilmember Herbold just said is a reflection of what can give us hope, is even through this hard and dark time, I have seen so many acts of kindness and courage and love It's neighbors checking on neighbors.

It's our healthcare providers showing up at risk to themselves, our grocery store workers, people checking in on each other.

If you get to Pioneer Square, look through some of the boarded up businesses there that now artists have turned into just beautiful works of art that bring us together as a community and tie us together.

We're in this for a long haul, folks.

And we have been really successful in beating back this virus, but we're still at great risk.

And we know when we come together that the virus will go up and that we're hoping that we have enough testing and contact tracing that we can keep track of that so that we can do what we need to do to stay safe.

But it's a marathon.

But this city is a tough and gritty city.

It's a loving and compassionate city.

It's a demanding city.

But I believe we can get through it.

And the way we keep hope is to be thinking and imagining not just how do we help someone today, but as we come through this, how do we make sure that when we come out of it, we truly do build back better, that we're more just and more equitable.

that all those lines that we've seen of how people who already were shouldering a disproportionate part of the burden of our society are now sharing even more of that burden.

And we reach out and make sure that doesn't happen, that we really face head on the implications of systemic racism and recognize its impacts on every part of our society, that we learn from history, and that we take those lessons and say, we can be better than that.

I believe in this city.

I believe in my bones that we are the best city with challenges, but with those challenges, we also have great opportunity.

So I think we keep hope by looking at each other, by being kind, by knowing it's gonna be hard.

People have suffered, people will continue to suffer, but we also can come together and we can be stronger because of it.

And we can take joy in things like, our art together and our culture together, by the work we're doing together to really reach out to those people who need it the most, and by setting an example for the nation that if you're smart and compassionate and loving, you can make hard choices and you can get through it.

So that's what keeps me hopeful is what I see every day in this city and reinforces my love for the city.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Councilmember.

We're going to have to move on to the webinar portion with the departments, but thank you for joining.

Everyone stay safe.

And can I say one last thing, Andres?

Yeah, go ahead.

I want the people of West Seattle to know that these webinars don't just happen.

They come together because the teams of people behind it and everything that the Councilmember and I were able to talk today about on what we've been able to do as a city in terms of rent relief.

or grocery vouchers, and all those programs happened because we have such a tremendous team at the City of Seattle.

I couldn't be more proud of not just how each of my department directors have stepped up, but how the workers of the City of Seattle immediately defaulted to their values.

They knew that to get through this, we had to turn on a dime and try to take care of the people that needed it the most.

And we had to do it in a way that could be enduring and last through the duration of this crisis, to create connections when we were pulled apart.

And so I just want to thank all of the people from the city who are on this call, but just as importantly is the teams of people I know who are behind you, who are working really hard to make sure that we can not just make it through this, but be a better city in the meantime.

So thank you for all the work you've been doing too.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Okay, we're going to move forward here on the slideshow and give you a short overview of the webinar topics.

If you can go to the next slide, please.

So our agenda here is we're going to start with Director Mariko Lockhart on the No Hate Campaign, and then we're going to hear from Director Lee and Director John around small business and worker resources, and then from the Office of Housing on eviction moratorium and rent relief.

Then Director Johnson is going to talk about homelessness.

We're going to hear about food access, actually, from my colleague, Audrey.

And then we're going to hear from the utility, from Deborah Smith.

And then Sam Zimbabwe is going to talk about the West Seattle Bridge.

And then Randy Engstrom about Artist Relief and Seattle Together.

Then we will go into a question and answer period.

So please continue to enter your questions into the chat box, and we will address them at the end of the webinar.

So we're going to go to the next slide.

And I will turn it over to Mariko Lockhart.

Mariko.

Thank you, Andres.

It's really such a pleasure and a privilege to be here.

I'm really grateful to all of the folks who've come out to engage with us.

And, you know, we're here to serve you.

I am really heartened and so proud of the message that the mayor gave about the city's commitment to address systemic racism and in all of our efforts in this pandemic and then beyond, which is where we have a tremendous opportunity.

And one of the things that has been really concerning to all of us has been as I'm sure you're all aware, the uptick in racist violence specifically directed at our Asian community and across the country.

And we know that this type of reaction and violence and bias, acts of bias, come out of fear and ignorance.

And we want to clearly communicate to everyone that COVID-19 is not the Chinese virus or the Wuhan virus, no specific group of people is responsible for its spread.

Like the mayor said, we are basing our response on science, not rumor and innuendo or fear and ignorance.

And as Seattleites, we need to come together and support one another and not allow racism to flourish.

The mayor also said we need to learn from history and You know, many of you will remember the other times in which racism has shown up in response to crises before or have experience in your families as I do in mine.

I am half Japanese and half black, and my Japanese family was incarcerated during World War Two after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

After the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center, we saw a huge surge in Islamophobic vitriol and violence.

In 2014, the Ebola outbreak led to an intensification of anti-Black racism, especially toward people of West African descent.

And so trying to address this issue, the mayor asked Kouvu, who is the director of the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, and I to coordinate a response in the immediate term.

And so we started out by reaching out to members of the API community to find out what would be important for us as a city to do in response to their concerns.

And so the feedback we got were have ended up forming the basis of our response.

And so one of the first things we did is we have Expanded our hotline at the city we that is housed by my office, the Office for Civil Rights.

We have always had the hotline or we've had it for many years, but we want to make sure that we're really getting the word out that is on the slide that you can see the number is 206-233-7100.

In addition to providing that hotline, we've also expanded the option of online reporting, so we now have.

The option to report any acts of bias or discrimination that you may witness or experience yourself online and that website is at Seattle.gov.

Forward slash report bias and you'll see in many social media posts that information because that's the other area where we have stepped up.

All of our efforts is to really get that word out and so.

We are doing that through.

Add PSA's in a number of the ethnic media and also will be launching a bus ad campaign.

So in the upper right of your screen you can see an example of one of those ads and in addition will be partnering with the Office of Arts and Culture and.

Sharing beautiful works of art created by local artists, in some of the bus ads that you'll see on our buses in the coming weeks.

So what we're looking for from all of you is your support in making sure that if you see something, say something to make sure that all of our community knows that no acts of bias, hate, or discrimination will be tolerated and it's not acceptable.

It's not who we are in Seattle, and so please make sure to share that information.

If you see something, make sure to report it.

And we're just looking to all of you as partners in this and appreciate your help.

So thank you.

Thank you, Mariko.

Next, we're going to go to Bobby Lee and Janae to talk about small business and recurr resources.

Good evening.

My name is Bobby Lee.

I'm the Director of Office of Economic Development.

On January 21st, 2020, Seattle became the first city in the U.S. to face the pandemic by the time Congress passed the CARES Act on March 27th.

Consumer spending here in Seattle dropped by 30 percent.

As a result, many small businesses has had to lay off their employees and unemployment insurance claims shot up 3,500 percent during the month of March.

Today at the national level, unemployment rate has gone up to 15%.

So for the first few months, City of Seattle had to quickly push out as many different safety nets while hoping that the federal government will quickly ramp up their SBA and unemployment insurance programs.

And the pandemic, as the Mayor and Council Member Herbold pointed out, the pandemic is having a disproportionate impact to small businesses owned by people of color, immigrant and refugees, and women.

And many are still on their own.

While the coronavirus does not discriminate based on race, without immediate action, its economic fallout will disproportionately affect underserved communities.

And in general, there are six action plans that we have put in place immediately.

Deferment of taxes and utility payments, small business grants, assistance with SBA loans and grants and other federal relief programs, moratorium to stop commercial evictions and restriction on commercial rent increases, promoting restaurant delivery, and also centralizing online resource guide and weekly Wednesday webinars that my office organizes every Wednesday at 11 o'clock.

If you're a small business owner and you have questions, please do not hesitate to contact my office, 206-684-7000.

8090, we will return everyone's phone call.

And we also have over 10 different languages that we use to help you navigate this difficult time.

We know that these actions are still not enough, but we are committed to finding other ways to help stabilize our small businesses so that we have an economy to come back to when we get to the other side of this unprecedented crisis.

Thank you, and I'll turn it over to Director John.

Thank you, Bobby.

Good evening, West Seattle.

It's a pleasure to share this virtual space with you.

My name is Janae Jan.

I'm the Interim Director of the Seattle Office of Labor Standards.

The Office of Labor Standards is a city department that's responsible for overseeing a number of our city's worker protection laws, including laws like the minimum wage, wage theft, our Domestic Workers Ordinance, and our Paid Second Safe Time Ordinance.

Our office provides a number of services, including education on those laws.

We answer worker and employer questions.

We investigate and resolve potential violations of the law.

And then we also partner with community and business organizations to share information to the community about our laws and our services.

Next slide, please.

So tonight, I want to focus on one of our laws very briefly.

Council Member Herbold mentioned this law in her remarks earlier, and it bears repeating.

So in 2011, our city passed the paid sick and safe time ordinance, a law designed to protect public health in moments like these.

The law requires employers to provide employees with paid time off from work to care for themselves or a family member for illnesses or health conditions, to go to doctor's appointments when individuals are recommended by public health officials to self quarantine for critical safety issues that are related to domestic violence or sexual assault.

And employees can also use paid sick and safe time for an absence caused by a family member's school or place of care closure, the closure of a workplace by a public official for health reasons.

And if your workplace is a business with 250 or more full-time equivalent employees worldwide, you can also take your paid sick and safe time if your workplace is closed or your hours are reduced because of a health or safety reason.

The law ensures that employees and family members can stay home, away from co-workers, school and customers when they are sick, which helps to limit the spread of disease and help support our community's economic security.

As a council member mentioned, City Council recently amended this law to expand the situations where employees can use paid sick and save time hours to meet the emerging needs caused by COVID-19.

So we understand that employees and employers may have questions about this law as we navigate the impacts of COVID-19 on our workplaces.

And it's important to us that you have access to that information.

So I encourage everyone to visit our website where you can find helpful information in several different languages.

You can also email or call our team with your questions.

So you can see contact information there on the slide is a little bit tiny.

Sorry.

So our telephone number is 206-256-5297.

And our email is laborstandards at seattle.gov.

Next slide, please.

As the mayor and Bobby mentioned, Director Lee mentioned, we have seen a harrowing job loss in our city.

And although the city doesn't administer unemployment, we know that many workers and the self-employed community have been impacted deeply.

So we want to take time to share information about unemployment benefits and the fact that Washington State expanded their unemployment insurance under the Federal CARES Act.

And now there's a program that covers independent contractors and self-employed individuals.

That includes delivery drivers, rideshare drivers, domestic workers, and more.

And so if you have been impacted by job loss, we encourage you to apply to receive unemployment assistance from the Washington State Employment Security Department, which is the department that oversees unemployment insurance.

And so to apply or to find more information, you want to visit their website at esd.wa.gov forward slash unemployment.

or you can give them a call at 1-800-318-6022.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Up next, we're going to hear about eviction moratorium and rent relief.

Emily.

Thank you, good evening West Seattle neighbors.

The mayor and Councilmember Herbold both discussed the topics previously, so I will be brief.

We care about your housing stability in these challenging times and we understand that many residents are struggling financially and unable to pay their rent or mortgage.

If you're a renter, you should know that on March 14th, Mayor Durkin signed into law an eviction moratorium.

And on April 17th, Governor Inslee extended a statewide eviction moratorium and provided even more protections for tenants.

This law is in effect through June 4th.

And during this time you cannot be evicted for not paying rent.

Your landlord cannot charge late fees or increase your rent or deposit amounts.

But during this time, if you can pay your rent, you should.

All rent payments delayed through the moratorium will still be due, but a landlord must offer a tenant a reasonable repayment plan.

And if you believe that your landlord's violating the moratorium, you can contact the Washington Attorney General's Office, whose information is on this slide deck, to make a complaint.

In addition, as Council Member Herbold mentioned, Council has voted to provide residential tenants with a defense against evictions for six months after the coronavirus emergency moratorium in place right now expires, and also voted to require landlords to offer payment plans to residential tenants.

As was previously mentioned, we are working hard to offer rental assistance to low-income households in need.

Last month, the United Way launched a rent assistance program called HomeBase that provides assistance to households under 50% of area median income who are impacted.

and the City contributed to that fund along with private money, and we've made and committed additional federal dollars, $4.1 million, to invest in rental assistance.

Some of that new resource will go to United Way's home-based program.

We're hopeful that they will reopen their application process and they can be reached at 211. And another portion will be made available through community-based organizations, including those with a track record of providing outreach to marginalized communities.

So please stay tuned for information on how to access those newly allocated resources.

If you're a homeowner and you're having trouble or may have trouble making your mortgage payment, call your loan servicer, who's the organization that you make your mortgage payment to.

And depending on the type of loan you have, they are either required or strongly encouraged to work with you to help out.

If you have trouble getting help after you speak to your loan servicer, or if you know you can't make payments, called the Washington State Homeownership Resource Center.

Their information is also in this slide deck.

We want to make sure that homeowners do not lose their homes because of this crisis.

We have the Office of Housing in partnership with Homesite, a program that uses our housing levy funds to help qualified homeowners get current on their payments, and remain in their home.

You can be referred through the Homeownership Resource Center to that resource.

Again, we aim to be a resource for you.

You can find out more information or contact us at Seattle.gov backslash housing backslash COVID-19.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Emily.

Next, we're going to go to Jason Johnson to talk about homelessness.

Jason.

Andres, thank you so much and hello neighbors.

Good to be on a town hall with from my own neighborhood here in West Seattle.

My name is Jason Johnson and I have the great privilege of serving as the director of the Human Services Department, a department whose role is to ensure community safety, health, affordability by combating hunger, violence, poverty and homelessness.

We do all of this through an equity lens to ensure that we are addressing racial disparities.

And today I wanted to talk about some of the critical work that the city is doing in partnership with King County and Public Health to ensure that shelter, outreach and hygiene services are in place as part of our response to the COVID epidemic for people experiencing homelessness.

Next slide.

So first, we have been working very, very hard to make sure that there are additional spaces for people experiencing homelessness and spaces that offer a variety of tailored services for individuals experiencing homelessness.

So first, we, in partnership with King County and Public Health, want to make sure that there are isolation and quarantine beds available when someone without a home needs to isolate from the rest of the community.

And there are a number of additional beds that have been created across the county to make sure that there are these isolation quarantine options available.

Likewise, in preparation for very full hospitals and clinics, we wanted to make sure that there were additional beds available for people who needed to recover from COVID.

And we have open right now a assessment and recovery shelter in Shoreline, but have at the ready hundreds more spaces in the case when our hospitals become beyond capacity and we need additional spaces for people to go.

We know that there are thousands of individuals experiencing unsheltered homelessness, meaning they are sleeping outdoors, and so the city has been able to open new shelter capacity, brand new beds as part of the shelter system in a variety of neighborhoods throughout Seattle.

And I think, you know, in response to COVID, most critical bodies of work that the Human Services Department has been able to lead is to de-intensify or redistribute the beds that are in high, large, high concentrated congregate shelters in the city and use additional spaces like facilities at Seattle Center and community centers, such as the community center that Council Member Herbold mentioned at the Southwest Teen Life Center to make sure that there is more space and that people have beds that are at least six feet apart, have access to meals and services so that they do not need to leave these locations.

And we believe this has greatly impacted, positively impacted the spread of COVID in the homeless population at shelters.

Next slide.

We also want to ensure that outreach continues and the city has a navigation team whose job it is to engage with individuals who are experiencing homelessness and living outdoors.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the navigation team has been focused on making sure that individuals have access to the information they need from public health.

They have also been distributing hygiene kits and working seven days a week to provide outreach services and provide litter removal.

And they've changed their services and how they schedule encampment cleanups and encampment removals and are really suspending that body of work and only conducting that work when living structures have completely blocked sidewalks, are prohibiting safe entry and exit from buildings or facilities, or if there's a severe public health or safety danger for the occupants in an encampment or in the greater area.

Really appreciative of the navigation team and their ability to continue their important life saving work out in Seattle streets.

Next slide.

I want to thank the Seattle Public Utility for their leadership in ensuring that there are more hygiene facilities and hygiene services available across the city.

They've been able to show great leadership in partnering with Seattle Center, FAS, Parks, and the Human Services Department to make sure that there are critically important hygiene services available during the COVID outbreak.

Parks has been able to accelerate the opening of winterized parks restrooms.

We've been able to open temporary hygiene locations with port-a-potties and hand washing stations.

We've increased access to closed public libraries so that individuals can still use those restrooms.

And we've also been able to gain access to shower and bathroom trailers, which will be available in the community very soon.

So really appreciate the work that the City has done and that the Human Services Department has been part of.

But I want to acknowledge that none of this work could be done without community-based organizations and the connections that community-based organizations have to community.

We work with a number of city departments, as well as King County and Public Health, but it's the community-based organizations that are a critical partner in making sure that services continue.

So, now I want to hand it over to the Human Services Department Deputy Director, Audrey Biering, who can talk about food access.

Thanks so much, Jason.

Next slide, please.

We know that with so many people losing incomes, food security is the top of people's minds right now.

And I want to share an overview of the resources available for people who feel uncertain that they have enough food right now or won't have enough in the near future.

So first, the image of the map here is a still shot from a map available on the mayor's COVID-19 resource page.

This map is updated every weekday to make sure it has the most up-to-date information.

So if there's one thing you take away today, it is this map.

As meal programs shift to delivery services or food banks might have to change their hours, this map will provide you with the information you need to access a variety of food services in your neighborhood.

Some of the specific programs available include Seattle Public Schools.

They are distributing meals, lunches every day, every weekday from 11 a.m.

to 1 p.m.

at 26 school sites throughout the city.

Students do not need to be in attendance, meaning that parents, guardians, siblings can pick up meals for students.

Meal support is also available for weekends and those meals consist of nonperishable food items like canned goods, snacks, juice, and they can be picked up at all 26 meal sites as well and are available for all families in need, even if you've never participated in a backpack program before.

Food banks are still open with social distancing protocols in place so people can pick up pre-bagged groceries at food banks and take them home, and some are also offering home delivery of those food bank groceries.

Almost all of the year-round senior meal programs are still operating and have changed to offer to-go meals or food boxes that are in many cases also available for delivery.

The map I referenced before on the COVID-19 resource page has the details of specific services for each food bank and meal program.

For folks who are part of the basic food program, or you might know it as EBT, if you previously didn't receive the maximum benefit available to you, you should have seen that benefit increased to the maximum now for your household size due to the Families First Coronavirus Act passed by Congress.

In addition, you can now use your snap EBT cards for online ordering of groceries for pickup at Fred Meyer and QFC.

You just go to their website, do your online shopping and when it's time to pay, you just click pay with EBT or you can use EBT for grocery delivery from Amazon Fresh, Amazon Pantry and Amazon Grocery to go at amazon.com slash snap to register your EBT card.

Also, grocery vouchers.

The mayor launched a program to provide weekly grocery assistance for eight weeks to families enrolled in many city child care assistance or food assistance programs, as well as folks engaged with a number of community-based organizations.

Through this program, we've been able to provide emergency grocery vouchers for 8,000 households.

And now we know there's more need in the community for this program, and so we're working with private sector and philanthropic partners to raise additional funds so more people can benefit.

And finally, I want to highlight the grassroots community resources on the mayor's COVID-19 resource page.

Many, many community groups have stepped up to offer food assistance at this time.

And again, every offering we know of is included on the website, and we encourage people to visit and bookmark the website.

Thank you.

Thank you, Audrey.

Next, we're going to hear from Debra Smith from Seattle City Light.

Debra.

Hi, thank you so much for having us and thank you for spending your evening with us.

My name is Deborah Smith and my partner in crime, Mami Hara and I, we run Seattle's publicly owned utilities.

So that's electric water, storm water, sewer and solid waste.

And many communities receive those services from investor owned or for profit utilities.

But for us, you are our investors, you are the folks that we work for, and we're honored to do so.

And we appreciate the opportunity to look for different and new ways to meet you at your point of need right now.

Next slide.

So very early on, one of the first things that the mayor's office and the council said was, how can our utilities help?

These are essential services.

So I want you to, we want you to know that Since March, we've been suspending all utility shutoffs and reconnecting all customers who were previously shut off.

We recognize that we provide essential services and that these have never been more important to you with folks staying from home, working from home, and schooling from home.

So that's true for residential and commercial customers.

We're working hard to create flexible payment plans for you.

We're reaching out to commercial customers in particular But all we need is for you to reach out to us.

If you're having troubles making your utility payments, please reach out.

We're here to help.

And we are absolutely committed to finding something that works for you.

We've got the utility discount program, which is really one of the coolest things about Seattle.

The UDP, as we call it, offers a 60% discount from your electric rates and a 50% discount from your water rates.

We've always worked collaboratively with the Human Services Department.

Thank you, Jason Johnson, to administer that program.

And what we've done now during this COVID time is we have taken a previously authorized pilot, which allowed folks to self-certify, which makes it a whole lot easier you can go online you can find an easy to fill out form you can fill it out in the heat of night send it on and and we'll get you enrolled in the utility discount program if you're at if your income qualified and so our goal there has been to get as many folks enrolled as possible and to do it and make it as easy for you as possible so if that's something that you believe you may be that you may be qualified for you can find out information about that on our website which will be coming up here soon We've been reaching out proactively to small businesses with delinquent accounts to set up flexible payment plans.

We know that, especially for small businesses right now, folks are super nervous and super worried.

So all it takes is a phone call and we will work with you to find something that helps.

And thanks to the council and the legislation that the mayor's office and the council move forward, we're waiving late fees on all delinquent accounts.

Next slide, please.

Next slide, please.

Thank you.

So, accessing a utility bill relief.

So, you know, again, we're here to help you to request a deferred plan, to make a payment arrangement, to learn more about the bill assistance programs we offer.

It's one phone call.

We share a contact center.

Our folks there can help you, whether it's with water, electric, storm water, sewer, solid waste, call us at 206-684-3000, or you can email us anytime online at Seattle.gov backslash light or backslash utilities to access the fast track enrollment in the UDP program that I just mentioned.

You can fill out and submit that form online at Seattle.gov backslash UDP.

Next slide, please.

I think the thing we most want you to know is that we're here to keep the lights and the water on.

And again, we understand that that's never been more important as folks have been sheltering in place and hunkering close to home.

So we have staffed our organizations in a way that allows us to, one, ensure that we have people to make safe and to make ready should we experience outages, but also that we have our folks available to deal with things that may come up as we move forward.

So we're pausing planned electrical outages except for emergencies or to support COVID-19 response sites until further notice.

And we're committed to keeping our employees and the public safe.

So social distancing, in-person greetings, gatherings, et cetera.

And the thing that we want you to know about that is that you may come across utility workers who are working in close quarters.

And we're working with them to make sure that they are doing so in a safe way that includes PPE, protective personal equipment, as well as social distancing.

And sometimes it's not as possible.

Please be tolerant.

Please be patient.

Please let them know that you appreciate their work that's out there.

They're doing their best to keep your services on so that you can do your best to keep your life moving smoothly forward.

I guess the last thing I would say as the director of the electric utilities, we also recognize that you're home more and you may be using more services.

Please check out our website.

We have energy efficiency folks, conservation folks who are available.

They can work with you remotely.

They can look at ways that you could increase your home's efficiency.

And that's what we're here to do 24-7, 365 days a year.

And we would especially like to do it for you right now.

Thank you so much for your time.

Have a great night.

Thank you, Debra.

Next, we're going to hear from SDOT Director Sam Zimbabwe on follow-up of the West Seattle Bridge.

Good evening and thank you.

I know probably a lot of folks have been waiting for this topic for the last little bit.

I will reinforce what Mayor Durkan and Council Member Herbold said and just give a couple of real quick highlights.

So you can move on to the next slide and I'll try to go quickly.

But just to reinforce our priorities and what we're doing, top of list is public safety and we will always hold that as the top of our priority.

We are working with great urgency to return traffic to the high bridge and reconnect West Seattle with the rest of the city.

Working on our traffic mitigation to help residents and businesses while the bridge is closed.

And then the process of stabilizing, ensuring the West Seattle high-rise bridge.

Right now we have the asset and it continues to deteriorate and we are working as quickly as we can to stabilize it right now.

We are working also to make sure that we maintain the viability and the condition of the low bridge, of the Spokane Street swing bridge, and then working to determine the right path to get that traffic back up on the high bridge.

And then we remain committed to clear communication and transparency throughout this process.

You can go to the next slide.

So really important and preparedness is always important.

We always encourage people to sign up for Alert Seattle.

This is especially important right now in the event that the high-rise bridge does move towards failure.

Right now it continues to be stable, but folks can sign up for Alert Seattle and get emergency alerts about anything that is going on in the community.

I recommend it at all times, but especially now.

And we've done a lot of work You can go to the next slide.

We've done a lot of work on what would happen if the bridge does move towards failure, including modeling what parts of the areas around it would be in danger.

And so we've done some fall zone analysis.

That does include the area along the low bridge.

And so we need to have as much warning as possible to make sure that we maintain public safety throughout this process.

It includes a little bit of area on both sides and some of the roadways, including West Marshall Way on both sides too.

You can move to the next slide too.

So if we do move to, or let's see, I guess just maybe go back one slide really quickly.

If we do move to a point of failure with the bridge, we do have emergency road closure plans in place and then have plans in place to clear the area as quickly as possible and get those other surrounding roads back open as quickly as possible as well.

Now you can move on to the next slide and talk a little bit about just what we mean when we talk about transportation mitigation.

connecting West Seattle and the rest of the city.

So this is a really big change in the capacity of moving people and goods from one side of the Duwamish to the other.

So where we had 21 lanes available to us, we now have 12 lanes.

Of the 140,000 trips taken under normal conditions across all the Duwamish bridges, the West Seattle High Bridge was 100,000 of those.

So this is a big, big change, very rapid.

We understand that.

We understand the frustration that folks have at this time when there's a lot of other stresses in people's lives.

We also know that there are limits right now to transit capacity because of social distancing requirements.

So we know that there will be all of the above will be needed as we move people and goods to and from West Seattle.

as well as in addressing the new traffic patterns in communities like Georgetown and South Park.

As Mayor Durkan and Council Member Herbold said, we are working very actively with Metro, the Port, Washington State Ferries, all of the above in looking for what we can do to increase the carrying capacity across.

And we are working also to identify with private businesses and other mobility providers about what ideas we have, how we can help everybody, what we will need to do as a community to mitigate the period when the bridge is out.

You can move on to the next slide.

And I just want to break this up into three big areas of work that we are working on.

We've got on the bridge, on the ground, and then in the community.

So on the bridge, we've hired, we brought on a contractor for the stabilization work, which includes the repair of some bearings that are on Pier 18, just on the east side of the Duwamish River.

We've also installed new monitoring instrumentation that is giving us real-time information about the condition of the bridge and really helps us understand what is going on and what direction we need to go.

And we finalized that emergency response plan.

And then we've begun the work on repair and what it means, repair and or replacement would look like.

And that will be some work that will still take us some time.

And I'll talk a little bit more about that too.

On the ground in the community, we've done more than 80 actions already to mitigate traffic.

That includes a new signal as Council Member Herbold talked about, some repaving at the Chelan five-way intersection, other things we've just begun to do.

We know that there's more more work ahead in June will begin the Delridge way Southwest project that that will include multimodal improvements and and make way for the new rapid ride H line and then some paving work on the on Roxbury between 16th and 18th in partnership with King County.

And then we're also working on neighborhood traffic plans that we'll be bringing forward to bring forward ideas, engage with communities throughout the area on exactly what we'll need to continue to do on the ground in the community.

Next slide.

When we talk about in the community, we have been very proactive in talking to any group that will have us.

We've been to nearly 20 meetings already.

We've been activating mailing lists and all other forms of communication.

And we continue to post regular updates, very detailed information on our SDOT blog.

I encourage folks to sign up for those communications as well and be able to stay informed and stay up to date about exactly what's going on in the community.

Next slide.

And I'm almost done here so we can get to your questions.

To get this right, we need more information.

This shows some of those places that we've installed the instrumentation on the bridge, just what that looks like inside the hollow girders of the bridge.

And this is really what is critical for us to be able to act with urgency to protect public safety and return traffic to the bridge as quickly as possible.

Next slide.

So just a little bit more about what we're doing.

Coming up really quickly here, we've got neighborhood plans that we're working on exactly what projects we can bring forward, work on how we manage through the network capacity and how we move people and goods, and then continue this engagement with the private sector, with business partners, with residents, with various stakeholders.

And there's a lot more on that to come soon, too.

You can move to the next slide, my last slide.

Uh, really briefly, uh, before we move on to Randy, uh, just about stay healthy streets.

The mayor talked about this.

Uh, this has been an effort that we've done to, uh, upgrade existing neighborhood greenways and work in collaboration, uh, with parks on beach drive near near Alki, um, to close select streets to through vehicle traffic.

So all access is maintained for people that live on a street, but we've closed streets to through traffic to enable.

to open them for people walking and biking in the street, working to allow for recreation and transportation with social distance at the same time.

We have received a lot of positive feedback.

We've also heard some concerns about what that means for access, confusion about what street closed means and whether that street is open for people walking and biking.

Mayor Durkin has really pushed for us to think about this and think creatively about how we have thought about our streets, how we can do this, how we can do it in a sustainable way.

We also know that there's a lot of additional work that needs to be done as we think about making these permanent.

And I heard that there was a question that came in through the chat about ADA access.

There are places along here where we have new curb ramps.

There are places that still lack curb ramps.

For now, using the street enables accessibility, but we know that making these streets and all of our streets accessible is very important to making the city open and accessible to everybody.

So that is ongoing.

We build a lot of curb ramps, over a thousand curb ramps a year.

We build across the city and things like the Stay Healthy Streets help us focus our activities as well.

I will pause there.

I'll turn it over to Randy to take us home and then look forward to questions and answers.

Thanks, Sam, and thank all of you for joining us this evening in these challenging times.

I first just want to thank the mayor and Council Member Herbold, both for their leadership in this crisis, but also in their support for the cultural community, as you heard both of them articulate earlier today.

I also just want to acknowledge each of my colleagues on this call who are putting in long hours and long days to try to help our city collectively get through this.

The Office of Arts and Culture was chartered in 1971, the same year that Boeing laid off 65,000 employees, and it was the biggest recession in Seattle's history up to that point.

And when asked why you would create a local arts agency in the context of such an intense recession, Mayor Wes Ullman said, because we have to give people hope.

And I really do think that in this time, whether it's murals on community businesses or whether it's GoFundMes set up in the name of small businesses by local artists, We are seeing that hope carried forward.

We are seeing that spirit carried forward.

And I think that it's in that context that we continue to do our work, both as a city and as an arts agency.

Next slide, please.

We were the first city in the country to be hit by this pandemic, and we were the first city in the country to respond with an arts and culture intervention.

We set up a $1 million arts stabilization fund, putting resources out the door to over 200 cultural nonprofits throughout our city.

We worked in partnership with Seattle Center and the Parks Department to provide over $400,000 in rent relief.

And we also wanted to support individual artists.

We know that individuals, and particularly those artists of color, those low-income artists, were the most dramatically and disproportionately impacted by COVID when it hit.

On March 11th, the cultural sector was essentially taken offline, and that was part of why we had to respond so quickly.

We invested $50,000 in the Artist Relief Fund that was established by author Ijeoma Oluo, specifically for artists of color, and $50,000 to our partner artist trust, who also had an artist relief fund for individual artists.

We know this isn't enough.

This $1.5 million was an opening conversation with our community.

We estimate by some recent numbers over $135 million in lost revenue just from our cultural sector alone.

So we know $1.5 million is not going to solve the problem, but it was important to say that the city is here for you and to give our community that hope.

Next slide.

Part of that hope is through this campaign that we've co-created with our partners in Department of Neighborhoods and now more than a dozen departments citywide, which is called Seattle Together.

And really it is calling the question of how we can stay connected while we're forced to physically be apart.

We heard the mayor and the council member both speak to the rising anxiety and mental health challenges that are increasing as we are forced to stay home.

and stay apart.

And Seattle Together really seeks to forge a sense of belonging and to create a capacity for connection through a race and social justice lens, even as we're forced to stay home.

A few examples of that work were the Make a Joyful Noise campaign early in April.

We invited folks at 8 o'clock to make some noise for the people who are really out there on the front lines, keeping our communities together.

That was really well received.

The image you'll see right there on the screen is by South Park artist Amaranta Santis.

She's one of 10 artists that participated in a campaign called Public Art Comes to Your Front Yard.

10 emerging artists of color from throughout the city who were each commissioned to create a series of yard signs that we placed throughout the community from South Park to Northgate.

The Creative Advantage program has been a partnership between our office and the school district for many years, and we hired 30 teaching artists to create 10-minute lessons, three of them each, that are streaming online at the Creative Advantage YouTube channel on SPS-TV and starting next week on the Seattle Together website.

And that is for parents like me who are now learning how to homeschool their children.

And we are hoping to find ways to redeploy our creative community to meet the needs of our city at this time.

We heard Mariko talk about the anti-hate and anti-bias campaign.

This is actually one of the images by Amaranta that's being used to spread the message that we will not tolerate hate and bias.

And Seattle Together is an amplification platform, not just for the arts office or D.O.N., but for all of the city's work to try to meet the needs of our community at this time.

And finally, essentially Seattle, an idea that was conceived of in partnership with Seattle Public Utilities and realized in partnership and with resources from Seattle City Light.

It is a project by which we will document, by hiring a fleet of artists, all of the incredible essential work that's happening on the front lines of our city, from our utility workers to our firefighters, our public health officials, to our grocery store workers.

We really want to capture in this moment the folks who are standing up and leaning in, a lot of the unsung heroes of this effort.

As you heard the mayor say earlier, webinars like this don't happen by themselves.

And that's true of so many things in this city.

There is a village of people who are putting it on the line to try to keep things moving for our city.

And so we want to engage our creative community to help lift them up and tell their story.

I hope that arts and culture continues to be a beacon for this community.

I hope that our artists are able to help continued to keep us together and help knit this community back together when we're on the other side.

And it's a privilege to be able to do this work at this time.

Thank you all for being here today.

Thank you, Randy, and thank you to all of our presenters and my colleagues.

We're going to go into question and answer.

We are running a little over, but we want to go and answer some of your questions here.

If I don't get to all of them, we will be tracking these questions and will be noting the answers later.

The first question goes to Sam Zimbabwe.

Sam, when closing the West Seattle Bridge and then closing certain streets, what is SDOT done to kind of provide a balanced analysis of what does that do to traffic patterns in West Seattle?

Sure, so as I mentioned, The closure of the bridge is a large change to the capacity to move people and goods across the Duwamish.

The stay healthy streets are comparatively are on low volume residential streets that are already designated as neighborhood greenways.

And so they already have traffic calming features.

They already are intended to serve really neighborhood traffic.

And so the Stay Healthy Streets are a way to make sure people have all ages and abilities.

The ability to get within neighborhoods to retail destinations to neighborhood serving uses without needing to get into their car to try to mitigate some of the travel constraints that we will have while the bridge is closed, both within and between West Seattle and the rest of the city.

So it's really trying to provide people with as many different choices as possible so that everybody can make the trips they need to make.

And we recognize that many people will continue to need to make trips by car.

And that's also where having a little bit less travel capacity on transit is going to be a challenge in the near future.

But we so we need to maintain that the ability for those essential trips to be made by car while encouraging every other possible trip to be made.

By other means, if people can make that choice.

Jason, as you look at homeless shelters on West Seattle and shelter, do you invest in intensification?

What are some additional plans in West Seattle to address?

some of the homeless service?

So we're really looking citywide and trying to look at what services and service infrastructure already exists, where we need to make changes to that infrastructure, and where there are gaps.

And so we, you know, while geography is critically important, we want to make sure that, you know, when people are in a shelter environment, living in transitional housing, accessing, you know, any kind of housing services that they are in close proximity to their place of work, their school, other services that they need to access.

And so, you know, looking at geography, looking at and making sure that there is diversity of services across our city in all neighborhoods is really important.

But right now, we're really focused on the individual spaces and facilities that the city has access to and how we can set those up in a way that complies with social distancing, has a provider who can adequately maintain hygiene and sanitation guidelines, and most importantly, that can offer 24-7 ability to provide a safe place for people to stay home and stay healthy.

So we are looking across all neighborhoods in Seattle to see what opportunities exist to increase shelter capacity, whether that's new capacity or spaces that can be used for the de-intensification during this COVID epidemic.

Emily Alvarado, the next question is for you.

For those individuals that weren't able to either access or navigate the United Way process, what other ways is the City exploring to direct funds?

Thanks for that question, Andres.

Thanks community members.

We really want to make sure that as we provide rent assistance, we're able to do so in a way that reaches folks who need help the most.

And so we made an initial investment in the United Ways Rent Assistance Program.

That program was oversubscribed very quickly.

And as we received additional federal resources to give to rent assistance, we wanted to make sure that not only did we continue to help serve those who had gone to United Way, but we also expand our outreach to additional community based organizations, including those with a track record of working with marginalized communities so that we're able to have really broad touch of the resource.

The new allocation, we're continuing to finalize contracts now, but are working with organizations like El Centro de la Raza and Home to West Seattle, Neighborhood House, and other organizations so that we can reach more communities and we can have community-based providers who diverse communities feel comfortable accessing.

Thank you, Emily, Bobby Lee, a question for you are the city business funds available to undocumented business owners.

You do need to have in order to apply for the grants, and it just all depends on the color of the money.

But with federal dollars, which is what we use for the small business stabilization grants that was released recently, you do need a Social Security number and TIN number.

Great, thank you for that answer.

Jene, as Labor Standards rolls out these webinars and requirements, what is OLS doing to get the word out to workers?

Yeah, that's part of me.

That's a great question.

So we do both direct and direct outreach ourselves.

We have a staff outreach staff of about four different folks, in addition to other staff members who pitch in.

They also work with two different groups with our Community Outreach and Education Fund partners, as well as our Business Outreach and Education Fund partners.

There are about, I want to say, 22 different community based organizations that are tasked with helping us spread the word.

So through both our direct outreach, as well as those through our community partners, we try to spread the word as far as it can go in the city.

One thing to note about what we call the CUEF and VUEF partners is that their focus is primarily on folks who are traditionally not reached through traditional methods of outreach.

So we're talking about workers and business owners of the color and immigrant or refugee communities So they primarily focus on getting the word out to the most vulnerable folks.

So through those partnerships, we try to do our best.

On our website, we have a lot of information in multiple languages.

So in the form of questions and answers of helpful documents, like how to read your pay stub and find your paid sick and safe time balances, sample policies for employers.

So we have a lot of information on our website.

We push it out through social media and through our partner departments including Andres' department, John, who helped us audio record a number of our questions and answers documents in multiple languages.

So we are trying to get the word out as broadly as we can.

And of course, I am always, I always welcome additional suggestions around how to do that better.

So please, if you have ideas, give us either a ring or send us a email with your suggestions.

Thank you, Janay.

Deborah, a question about, as SPU and City Light are looking at their utility payment deferments or assistance, what relationship does the City have with PSC to do similar arrangements?

That's a great question.

Thank you so much, Andres.

So the city doesn't have a specific relationship with PSC, but one of the beneficial outcomes from this event is that we have really increased the level of collaboration that we've had with PSC.

And in fact, all of the Puget Sound utilities have had weekly calls.

So it's been PSC, Snohomish PUD, Tacoma Power and Light, as well as City Light.

And I can tell you that we are all very, very well aligned.

PFC has a new CEO.

I shouldn't say she's new.

She's been there a bit, but she's wonderful.

And, and we love her and we've had a great relationship with her.

And again, um, they are very focused on trying to work with their customers as well.

And we have mutually all been, uh, focused on.

trying to provide a kind of seamless set of services for customers.

So what I would say is that you could expect similar levels of service and of understanding from PSE as you would from City Light.

And if there are issues that the individual customers have, you can feel free to reach out to us and we can help with that.

But again, I don't expect there to be any trouble or any real difference.

Thank you.

Thank you, Debra.

Sam Zimbabwe, a question about pedestrian safety as maybe traffic speeds are increasing in neighborhood areas, specifically in Georgetown and South Park.

What is SDOT looking at in terms of guaranteeing pedestrian safety, especially for young kids?

Uh, that's a great question.

So, um, during this, uh, pandemic, we've seen traffic volumes go down across the city, uh, you know, where we have fewer than 50% of normal levels of traffic, uh, entering and exiting the downtown.

Uh, we've seen similar reductions in on streets across the city, but we've also seen speeds go up.

Um, so we've seen, uh, speeds go up by an average of 10%, uh, from across the city and all the places that we have, uh, school zone, Uh, safety cameras, um, and so, uh, what we've also seen is is a reduction in the overall numbers of crashes as people have stayed home and stayed healthy.

But, uh, we've seen higher levels or higher incidences of severe vehicle crashes.

And so, um, we're trending at about the same levels that we've seen in terms of.

Uh, serious injuries and fatalities in our transportation system overall.

Um, so, uh, there's a few things.

I think 1 of the things is, is that, uh, we need to continue to make sure people understand what the impact of speed is on on, uh, on people.

Uh, we continue to make safety investments, um, and a lot of our Greenway investments, uh, which, which are, are, um.

helping people cross the street, new signals, things like the new signal at Highland Parkway and Holden.

There's a range of things that we continue to do in terms of intersection treatments and other things like that that we work on to make people safe crossing the street.

It's something that we are aware of and working to make sure that We manage speeding in our city, but it is something where we've seen, as there's been fewer cars on the road, people feeling like they can drive a lot faster, but there are some serious implications for safety out there.

Thank you, Sam.

And finally to Randy, as we look at the summer months, how is the city planning on supporting cultural festivals and or live music in a space where maybe there can't be convenings?

That's a great question, Andres, and to the community folks who asked it.

That is something that we continue to wrestle with.

One of the challenges of this pandemic is that it makes planning and responding difficult because there's just so much that we don't know.

And we've often heard that the response and the reopening strategy is a dial, not a switch.

So as we carefully try to allow for folks to come together, we are likely, as the mayor said earlier, some ways off from being able to gather in large numbers.

There is already a pretty significant pivot towards online broadcasting.

Obviously not the same thing as gathering in person, but for example, Festall last week saw over 2,500 folks tune in for a concert for one of their programs.

The Northwest Arts Streaming Hub launched just about two weeks ago, and a ton of content is happening there.

The Capitol Hill Arts District hosted the first streaming festival about a week and a half ago.

So folks are being pretty creative, but we also know that as the summer months come upon us, we're not going to want to stay inside and be stuck in a two-dimensional digital sphere.

So how can we use, for example, our healthy streets in a more thoughtful way?

encounter performances and culture and creativity in a way that is still safe and socially distant.

We're working on that.

I don't know that we have any really great answers, but we have a whole lot of folks from Seattle Pride to the Solstice Parade to West Seattle Street Fair, folks that we know care a lot about this and want to bring their work out into the community, and we want to help them do that.

So we're going to be partnering with community and partnering with our local creatives and trying to figure out how we can do the best job of providing that content while still being safe.

Thank you, Randy.

And thank you again to all the participants and all my colleagues for their presentations.

Just a quick reminder, again, about the mayor's COVID resource page, seattle.gov forward slash mayor forward slash COVID-19.

You can get all the information that we've listed in today's webinar there.

Also a reminder that DLN hosts a weekly webinar every Friday at 2.30 PM.

And so go to Seattle.gov forward slash neighborhoods for more information there.

Thank you again for all your participation and questions.

And this webinar is over.