Seattle City Council Briefing 6/8/2020

The June the June 8th 2020 Council briefing meeting will come to order.

The time is 934 a.m.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Mosqueda?

Here.

Peterson?

Here.

Sawant?

Here.

Strauss?

Present.

Herbold?

Here.

Lewis.

Present.

Morales.

Here.

Council President Gonzalez.

Here.

Eight present.

Thank you so much.

If there is no objection, the minutes of June 1st, 2020 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

President's report.

Colleagues, I don't have anything formal to present on my president's report related to our operations other than you can expect to see some additional direction from me in the coming week about our telecommuting policy as a legislative department in light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

And so I wanna make sure that you all are aware that that'll be hitting your inboxes hopefully before the end of the week so that we can all plan our work accordingly.

So, colleagues, we are here again this morning.

Our next agenda item is going to be a preview of today's city council actions, council and regional committees.

I'm going to call on council members in the usual rotation.

I am going to do a couple of things.

I'm going to take Councilmember Herbold out of order and put her immediately before Councilmember Mosqueda.

And I think it makes a lot of sense for us to do that in light of another difficult weekend and week of action on the streets of Seattle related to the ongoing demonstrations.

I'm calling on us to be transformative and in the space of policing and public safety.

So I just before I hand it over to Councilmember Herbold, who is our public safety chair, I want to just take a moment to acknowledge my shared frustration and anger with many in the community who continue to believe and see that police are continuing to escalate the situation out on the streets as it relates to the demonstrations.

I wanna be really clear that in my mind, it is absolutely unacceptable to turn one of our most densest neighborhoods, the Capitol Hill neighborhood into looking like a complete war zone night after night after night.

We are hearing from hundreds and thousands of constituents that they are tired of being gassed at night, that they are tired of seeing the incredible amount of pepper spray and tear gas just filling their neighborhoods.

And we need to be able to be responsive to these concerns.

We expect more of our police department.

There is a world in which this police department can make the choice to not respond with violence.

And I feel like those choices have not been made effectively in the course of the events this weekend.

I know many of my colleagues were there on Saturday night.

I want to thank you for showing up and for bearing witness to many of these events.

But I just want to say that I am just, I'm really frustrated by the administration's response and management of the situation out in Capitol Hill.

You know, again, thousands of my constituents are being gassed every night.

Thousands of my constituents are having to deal with pepper spray in their neighborhood every single night.

And it is just unacceptable.

We, I believe, can find a better way.

I believe we have to find a better way.

And we have to think collectively together about how we are going to chart that path forward.

which is why I want to take Councilmember Herbold out of order to allow her as the Public Safety Chair to share some remarks with us.

And then, very importantly, I want to hear from Councilmember Mosqueda, who is the Chair of our Budget Committee, who is going to, again, share with us additional details about what we can expect to be I'm excited to be able to share our work here on the City Council as it relates to being transformational in this space as is being demanded by thousands of protesters on our streets.

I look forward to this morning's conversation and I look forward to the hard work that lays before us over the

Thank you.

So my opening remarks are going to be pretty brief.

I'm going to spend most of my time talking about the council's actions that we've all been working on together, and that I think we're going to see a lot of movement forward on a number of these actions in the next couple days.

And I'll go through those.

But first, I do want to echo Council President Gonzalez's remarks about our frustration and dismay of the events that are happening night after night.

Acknowledging there was a short break.

But that continued to happen up on Capitol Hill at the East Precinct.

Having attended a protest in the junction, attended by at least a couple thousand people on Saturday.

On Sunday, attending the event down at Othello Playfield that then marchers marched to the Safeway parking lot.

Those events were not, there was no element of confrontation.

no element of militarization, and to juxtapose those events against what's happening in the East Precinct really brings to mind my questions that I think we've all been asking, but have not received satisfactory responses for why this confrontation is happening in the East Precinct.

and the mayor in their press conference on Sunday evening, as well as in a telephone conversation that myself, Council President Gonzalez, and Council Member Mosqueda had with the chief on Sunday morning, referred to a credible threat from the FBI and suggested that that credible threat is coming from somebody intent on doing damage to the city of Seattle as well as other cities' infrastructure.

It's unclear as to whether or not this is a generalized, credible threat that the FBI has issued to all cities that have a proud history of civil disobedience.

or whether or not there's specific intelligence related to a credible threat among people protesting the death of George Floyd.

But what we saw happen last night, I don't think reflects anybody's intelligence what kind of violence could happen out at the East Precinct as it related to the attempt of an individual who did not appear and does not seem to be in any way affiliated with the movement against police brutality, but the actions of that person to drive into the crowd.

Actions that the crowd and protesters were most effective in in addressing and mitigating.

It was protesters who, as has been reported to me, that took a piece of the hard barrier wall that was not securely fashioned and used a piece of the hard barrier wall to basically stop the car.

And as far as I can tell, There was no attempt on the behalf of police officers to detain this person.

And so that also brings into the question of whether or not there was an inverse proportionality, disproportionality, as it related to apprehending this individual who clearly had a real-time threat intended against protesters, not against the East Precinct.

And the chief and mayor spoke quite a bit on Sunday evening about their efforts to be more proportional in their responses to protesters' actions.

I'm concerned that this is an example where there was an inverse in proportionality in that I did not see any way in which our law enforcement responded to that very real on the ground threat.

And so I raise that again, because it's a question that I'm hearing from the public, in that it really underscores the injustice of the response that protesters are receiving the brunt of as it relates to the department's response.

to activities that the department itself identifies as shining green lasers in officers' eyes and throwing projectiles.

I really strongly question whether those types of actions necessitate of the use of pepper spray, which as we learned last week with the mayor's and chief's order to stop using, I'm sorry, the chief's order to stop using tear gas, we now know that the exception to that, that ban, that 30-day ban was or is with the order of the chief.

So I can only assume that last night the use of tear gas was at the order of the chief.

I'm going to move into remarks related specifically to council actions this week.

For walk-on, for introduction and referral on the introduction and referral calendar today at full council, I'm going to be walking on an ordinance requiring that certain uniformed police officers do not cover with a morning band the serial number that is engraved on their badge.

The fiscal note itself notes that people have participated in the recent rallies and demonstrations protesting the killing of George Floyd.

And they have indicated that they sometimes have been unable to identify officers because they could not see a name tag and that the officer's badge serial number was covered with a mourning band.

This legislation would allow the continued use of mourning bands as long as they do not obscure the officer's badge number.

This fiscal note assumes that officers would continue to use the badges that have already been issued by SPD, but would simply move the mourning band away from the serial number.

Early last week, I announced my intent to introduce this legislation.

the police chief ordered officers to display badge numbers.

The mayor stated yesterday that they are still receiving reports of officers covering their badge numbers, and that those will be treated as complaints to the office of police accountability and investigated as violation of policy.

I do appreciate the police chief's order, but want to enshrine it into city law so it does not depend on the policy of this chief or any future chiefs.

This bill itself is amending legislation adopted in 2000 after the WTO protests, which required the display of names on uniforms, and this legislation was sponsored by former city council member Peter Steinbrook, and this is an appropriate role for the council.

A vote could be held next Monday at full council.

Let's see here.

We also have, scroll down to the public safety related items here.

We have a committee meeting tomorrow morning, the Public Safety and Human Services Committee.

We will be hearing two briefings delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and those are the annual reports of the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of the Inspector General.

The Community Police Commission was invited, but they have a very heavy workload, so this will need to be presented later.

I invite any council member not on the committee to attend if they'd like to do so.

I think it's important for us to make sure that we are I'm going to have OPA and OIG touch on those issues and give a quick overview of the content of those annual reports.

But I am allowing them to pivot the discussion in committee to really focus on the activity and engagement that they're doing right now.

And I know that they are working on a number of different sets of recommendations to the mayor and the council, and so this will be an opportunity to lift those things up.

In addition, for letters and proclamations to sign today, council members very likely heard about a local leader's letter that was sent to the mayor and Chief Best yesterday, and So the letter itself focuses on a few different themes.

One, an expectation that SPD changes tactics and takes a demilitarized stance, that we further restrict the use of excessive or deadly force by police, that we increase accountability and transparency transparency in police union contracts, and that we give subpoena power and other investigative powers to the independent oversight partners, and that we work to redirect department funding to community-based alternatives.

The many, many folks council members reached out over the weekend to inquire about this letter.

I think most of you have have read that the reason why.

it was restricted to only four councilmembers.

It's because of Open Public Meetings Act restrictions around coordinating a majority of councilmembers' signatures.

It is not only a letter from the four councilmembers that signed it.

Other councilmembers are invited to sign, and I intend to do a roll call request at full council today.

And in joining the council members who have signed it, myself, Council President Gonzalez, Council Member Mosqueda, and Council Member Morales.

You will also be joining a large number of other local electeds across jurisdictions, including the King County Council and our state legislature.

The second letter that I just circulated last week, actually, I guess it was over the weekend, is a letter requesting that the city attorney withdraw the City of Seattle's litigation.

seeking to block inquest reforms initiated by the King County Executive, King County Executive Constantine, spoke over the weekend at the West Seattle Junction rally, and in his comments, he He called on cities, not only Seattle, to withdraw lawsuits against King County inquest reforms that were developed over, I believe, about eight months with the families of Tommy Lee, Che Taylor, John T. Williams, and Charlena Lyles, as well as other community groups and expert legal advisors.

community police commission was one community group that endorsed these changes.

And the reformed inquest process was supposed to be put in place in 2019. In January 2018, Executive Constantine put all inquests on hold pending the review process.

The community police commission, as I mentioned earlier, has taken a number of stances.

in support of inquest reforms, including participation in the inquest process review committee, and a statement of support for the reforms.

The letter, as drafted, notes that the mayor mentioned during a meeting of the CPC last week that she was unaware of the legislation, and the CPC indicated that they had no advance notice of a city filing challenging these reforms.

For many years, the inquest system operated functionally to legitimize and immunize all deaths in police custody because of the narrow focus on the question of whether or not police officers had felt that their safety was in danger.

The King County Executive's Distinguished and Balanced Panel led to a community-wide conversation about possible reform to the inquest process, and I would really appreciate your consideration for signing this letter.

Let's see.

What else here?

is pressing as it related to the issues related to policing.

I mentioned earlier that we are going to be putting forward a bill related specifically to subpoena power, and we've been working with the city attorney's office for a number of months before the COVID-19 emergency began.

The executive has also been engaged.

There were a couple different approaches for how we might address the legislation related to subpoena power and the The events of the day really point to the need for a subpoena power ordinance that clarifies the process for using subpoena power by our accountability partners, specifically the OPA and the OIG.

And so I just wanted to flag for folks that there is a bill.

We're not quite ready to walk it on.

It is drafted and it has I think that covers the public safety items that I wanted I'm going to defer to Councilmember Lewis to speak to that as the prime sponsor of that legislation.

And we've had engagement with the labor stakeholders around the steps that we're going to be taking moving I addressed my committee meeting items for tomorrow.

Just as far as an update from the Human Services Department, the National Guard has extended placements with Food Lifeline to support food distribution efforts through the end of June.

The extension will be a reduced level of staffing from previous months.

And the National Guard has been reaching out to each food and meal program and working with them and the EOC to find volunteer replacements as they ramp down.

92 sites applied to the Summer Food Service Program to date, 52 of which are Seattle public school sites.

HSD, the Human Services Department, is now developing safety guidelines and hiring critical summer staff.

This week on Wednesday, we're going to be having the first meeting of the West Seattle Bridge Community Task Force that will be co-chaired by former City of Seattle Mayor Greg Nichols and community activist, advocate extraordinaire from South Park, Paulina Lopez.

And I think that is, oh, just want to also flag this week, Thursday coming up, we are also having the lead policy coordinating groups quarterly meeting.

There continues to be concerns around the referrals to the new co-lead program.

I really appreciate that the executive has worked through the contracting issues.

Now there are challenging issues associated with co-lead receiving referrals from the police department.

They're challenging and understandable given the police department's focus right now.

But they are challenges that I think are challenges that can be addressed with other ways of getting COLE referrals to lead.

And feel free to ask me more about that as well.

And that is all I have for today.

Happy to take any questions.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold for that report.

Colleagues, any questions or comments for Councilmember Herbold?

Councilmember Mosqueda, I see your hand up.

Please.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Were you given any additional information about the escalation last night?

And I want to thank Councilmember Sawant.

I know that you were out in the streets last night as well.

A lot of folks were mentioning your live stream video and that you also experienced getting gassed.

I want to know, Council Member Herbold, did you get any sort of clarification from the chief or the mayor about what led to that escalation officially?

I did not receive any official communications about the escalation.

I did not personally, but I did read that the position of the department, because of the blotter statements that were going out, the position of the department was that the escalation happened because of projectiles, including what they said were incendiary devices, the Times that they believe that those incendiary devices were candles.

I don't know.

But again, the escalation to the level that we saw, did seem again to be very disproportionate to what officers were, what the department was reporting was occurring.

There was a report of injuries of six officers, including two that reportedly also went to the hospital.

I don't have independent information about that.

I was monitoring SPD's live Twitter feed in their real-time explanation for why, from their perspective, the actions were called for.

But again, there's the question of disproportionality that I know we've all been asking.

Oh, the green lasers too, that was another one of the reasons not conveyed to me personally, but the reasons that the department gave publicly for us all to read for why the chief apparently authorized OC spray and why they proceeded with flashbangs and pepper spray.

I would like to respond to this directly because I was there myself.

I saw you put your hand up, Councilmember Sawant, intending to call on you next.

If anyone else wants to make a comment or have questions for Councilmember Herbold, you need to raise your hand if you are on video or you can use the raise your hand feature on Zoom by clicking on participants and then raising your hand that way.

Councilmember Sawant, the floor is yours.

Thank you.

I have other comments to make, obviously, but just to respond to this question that Councilmember Mosqueda asked about what was the provocation.

There was no provocation, and the reason I am able to testify to this is because I was on the front line, literally on the front line, just a few feet away from the first line of the police force.

There were no projectiles, no incendiary devices, nothing harmful.

And as I will explain later, this is absolute gaslighting because these are police that were donned in top-to-bottom riot gear, and they were faced with ordinary people with nothing other than some of them having, you know, homemade face shields from cut-out plastic water bottles.

That is all that people had for their protection.

and all the weaponry was on the side of the police force.

And there is absolutely no question that the Seattle Police Department and Chief Best and Mayor Durkin are responsible for wanton and vicious violence.

Thank you, Council Member Salant for that additional information.

Are there any other questions or comments for Council Member Herbold or just about that policing subject?

Okay, I'm not seeing anyone raise their hand.

Okay, Council Member Strauss, please.

Thank you, Council President.

I do have comments to make, but I can hold them for my own section if you prefer.

No, we have a couple options.

I think if you want to make comments about the police response, now would be the time to do that.

You'll also have another opportunity to make comments related to the police response.

after Councilmember Mosqueda's report.

So perhaps that might be a better opportunity and we'll have the benefit of both the public and us having sort of the full context of some of the thinking and work that I think the City Council is gonna have before us in the coming weeks.

So why don't we plan on doing that if that's okay?

Yes, that sounds great.

Thank you.

Great.

OK, so with that being said, colleagues, I'm going to go ahead and yield the floor over to council member Mosqueda, who is who is next up on the roll call list again.

This will be an opportunity for us to round out the conversation around.

many of these policing issues.

I continue to believe that we really need to push ourselves to think about how to think in a transformational way as it relates to funding of law enforcement and of delivery of public safety.

And when we are having this conversation, I oftentimes think to myself, when we talk about public safety, we don't talk about for whom public safety is designed in the city.

And it is clear to me that what we are hearing from protesters and from members of the black community here and across the country is that the way that our public safety models are currently designed do not serve the purpose of making our black brothers and sisters feel safe.

And that is, you know, obviously something that we have an opportunity to queue up a conversation about.

It is a basic function of the City of Seattle to deliver public safety services.

And we get to have a conversation, both from a policy perspective and from a fiscal perspective, about what we want our public safety model to look like and what we want it to be.

And, you know, I think in the past few weeks we've been talking about what we don't want it to be.

But we have an opportunity now to shift and to pivot and to really think about what we want our public safety model to look like and really begin to define who it is we want this public safety model to truly meaningfully serve.

So I'm excited about the opportunity to have this conversation, and I think it's an important conversation.

It will come with its challenges.

I think we have a lot of work to do.

I think these are challenges that are worth taking on.

I am glad and honored that I have an opportunity to do that with this group of people on this current City Council.

With that being said I will hand it over to Councilmember Mosqueda and our budget chair.

Thank you, Council colleagues.

Thank you, Council President.

I think what we've heard over the last few weeks here in Seattle, and frankly, calls have gone unanswered in years and decades prior, we have done many things in the city of Seattle to reform our public safety efforts.

And I want to thank the folks, including Council President Gonzalez, who've really helped to lead on these issues.

But what we're hearing from community right now is that our residents do not feel safe in our own city from our police.

Today, I'm using my privilege to change this.

As budget chair today, I'm announcing that we will be launching an inquest into Seattle Police Department's budget.

Unlike past practices, we are not going to nibble around the edges of the mayor's proposed budget.

We will now make a statement that this year, we are not going to pass the mayor's 2020 revised budget until we, as a council, have a chance to get a full, thorough, and simultaneous transparent deep dive into the Seattle Public Seattle Police Department's funding.

We want this to be part of this month's conversation around our budget as a city council.

I expect the full cooperation of the city departments, who can often only share with us what the executive has allowed them to share.

And I am committed to defunding the police, to using most of that money, 50%, ideally, to invest back into communities that we failed, creating an anti-racist, low-barrier housing option investing in equitable transit, providing permanent supportive housing, providing housing options for survivors of domestic violence, and shelter for the thousands of people in our street who are unsheltered.

Many of us have already asked what our current budget is, and many people have been frustrated by the black box that is the Seattle Police Department's current budget.

We know we have over $400 million in that bucket, and we want to know, as many councils have asked, what is the current cost going to?

Specifically, what has the cost been over the last week and a half?

How much has this escalation cost us?

How much have we spent on tear gas, rubber bullets, jailing people like the young man who recorded the nine-year-old getting tear gassed?

He was arrested and remains in jail today.

Many of us have asked what the cost is of continuing to train folks to travel, to learn from other areas of the world about escalation strategies.

We want to know why we haven't applied the lessons of the WTO.

There was an inquest done.

There were strategies learned.

There was cost and analysis of whether or not it was the right thing to do.

And from just the fiscally conservative perspective, it was the wrong thing to do when you look at how many people were paid out because the city was in the wrong.

That was during the WTO.

There was a reason that they stopped using CS gas.

We want to know what those lessons learned were and why we have not applied those mechanisms to the current budget.

We wanna know how many individuals have experienced, I guess, hardship and will be filing or have already filed grievances against the police and what we expect that cost to be.

But we have to recognize that defunding the police is not the end of the problem.

We need to continue to invest in black-led organizers, black-led organizations, Organizations creating change so that they can continue to hold us accountable.

Organizations like Africatown who are looking at community owned property to create community owned housing.

They have places ready to go if they just had additional funding for housing could actually house many of our community members.

I'm committed to doing this with all of you and by doing so of July 17th of this year so that we can work with Seattle residents to ensure that the 2021 and 2022 budget fully reflects our community needs.

I'm calling on our community to work with us as the City Council launches this simultaneous, transparent, deep dive into the Seattle Police Department's policies, funding, and procedures so that we can begin this conversation in June with suggested changes by July.

We know that we have a serious crisis in our street right now, and we're calling on the mayor and SPD to immediately cease the use of weapons against our residents or anyone who chooses to protest in this city.

If this seems drastic to you, let me tell you why we need it.

Our police department, as we've seen last night and the night before and the night before that, is using weapons of war on our own residents.

I heard reports last night of people being three stories up and not being able to breathe because of the gas.

Last week, we heard a story of the three-month-old baby who was foaming at the mouth.

We heard other stories subsequently reported in the Seattle Times of six month old babies sitting in hallways with their parents trying to seek refuge for fresh air because their apartments were filled with gas.

This is a crisis that we must respond to.

And we also have to recognize that we have a budget that allows for us to maintain controls over these efforts.

I also want to note that I support the legislation that's being put forward today by council members to want to ban these materials so that these can get out of our hands.

But as a budgetary item, we also have control over identifying where our dollars go to make sure it better aligns with our values.

All of this has been sanctioned by the executive.

Just one day after we commit to no tear gas, protesters in the street experienced pepper spraying.

Yesterday, the executive said that she and the chief were going to deescalate.

And last night's headlines read, this was the most aggressive form of tactics used in the last week and a half.

Across this country, people are looking for a change.

And here in Seattle, we have the opportunity for true progressive leadership.

We have headed in the opposite direction today.

There's other headlines saying that as other cities have deescalated and pulled back their force, Seattle's going in the opposite direction.

Instead of working on the systems that create inequity, and municipal government is one of those systems, we instead turn our backs on our own residents right now.

The responsibility of being an elected official is protecting our residents.

It's not tear gassing them.

It's not pepper spraying them.

It's not deploying rubber bullets on them.

Yes, I was out on Capitol Hill on Saturday, and I want to thank all the council members who were out there and the state Senators and state representatives and the King County Council members.

We should not have to be out there to prevent people from getting sprayed.

Council Member Sawant was out there yesterday and she experienced spray herself.

When is this going to stop?

That's the email that I've been receiving.

Those are the calls and the text messages I've been receiving in the middle of the night.

People just want this to stop.

I made a decision to leave my infant sleeping, my baby sleeping in her crib because I was thinking about that individual who was experiencing the type of tear gas with their own kiddos sleeping in their crib.

You know, we have community residents who've been writing us over the last two weeks talking about, yeah, maybe it's time for additional reforms.

And then it went to, it is time to defund the police.

Then it went to, we have got to have major radical change from the leadership.

because this is not working and there needs to be change now.

I heard folks out on Saturday night that said that they were happy that there were council members there because they believed that it stopped this situation from escalating.

But we cannot afford to try to put ourselves between black and brown bodies every night.

Council member Sawant tried that last night and there was still gas.

Colleagues in Minneapolis, they've said, that they used to believe that reform was needed, and now they've completely dismantled, they're in a process to completely dismantle their police system.

They are working with black-led organizations, black and brown community members to start from the ground up.

We have seen Minneapolis do similar structural changes in their police department, and their council president has continued to say that they knew that they needed to do more, and they are taking this effort to radically change what policing looks like and to reinvest in community.

Council colleagues, Wednesday, during our budget committee, begins that process.

Wednesday, during that budget process, we will get to the black box that is the Seattle Police Department's budget, and we can begin our process here in Seattle to replicate what Minneapolis is doing.

I disagree with the mayor's statement yesterday.

She said that she thought we had the foundation to make changes on our existing system and that it did not need to be dismantled and built from the ground up.

I disagree.

I think we need to replicate what Minneapolis has done, and I think we need to do that as a cohort together.

It begins on Wednesday by looking at the investments that we have already put forward in the Seattle Police Department's budget, identifying how individuals can be more focused on social services, retraining to provide mental health services.

Minneapolis is leading the way in many ways by spurring us to take to the streets, and now through this policy action led by black and brown communities to radically reform their police department.

We cannot wait for others to lead.

When taxpayers have had their tax dollars used against them in the form of police violence, when residents are told that they cannot be on the streets they voted for and paid for, we are disconnected from Seattle if we think that we can't have radical change right now.

There is a vacuum of true leadership And doing hard things, colleagues, let's fill that void.

Let's be the leaders that this moment calls for.

But as community of color-led organizations and leaders from communities of color have told us, especially within the last 24 hours, a change in office or a change in a figurehead without radical change to the institution that is policing is not transformational.

That's why I'm offering counsel, colleagues, that we focus over the next six weeks on replicating both what Minneapolis has done, transforming our police system, and addressing what will be coming down to us as an austerity budget for us to have a chance to truly provide leadership in responding to COVID and providing public safety and providing public health and transforming our system.

The demands that have been made from the community have gone unmet.

And I want to be clear that those demands were included in that letter that Council Member Herbold referenced.

A number of city council members continue to sign on to that letter, including state legislators from the entire region and our King County partners.

We're talking about a sign on letter from almost every elected official in our region who was asking our city to deescalate demands that are both near term and long term.

But let me focus on the near term demands that have gone unmet.

The common sense short term requests were to deescalate They were only met with greater escalation last night.

Promises have been broken.

These include, do not use respiratory irritants during a deadly public health pandemic.

During a deadly public health pandemic that affects the lungs, do not use any irritants to the lungs.

Pepper spray is included in that.

We saw flash bangs used last night.

We saw tear gas used.

We saw rubber bullets or heard reports of rubber bullets.

of the demands that the letter included from these elected officials across the region.

And for goodness sakes, stop hunting down and arresting people days after they participated in a protest and putting them in jail during a public health crisis.

We heard stories of an individual being dragged out of her car in front of her child and arrested for participating.

We've heard the story of the reporter, or I'm sorry, the individual who recorded The nine-year-old getting maced last Saturday, now being arrested, and he's still in jail waiting for the 2.30 hearing to happen.

These are just the short-term demands that have gone unmet and had promises broken.

The longer-term demands, again, come directly from Black-led organizations, and I think it bears repeating.

Defund the Seattle City Police, reinvest in health and safety for our communities, and do not prosecute protesters.

The list of demands that we've seen posted from black-led organizations in the community say, to stop the violence, the police must be reduced in size, budget, and scope.

The police are rooted in violence against black people.

In order to protect black lives, this movement calls for investing in and expanding our safety net and well-being beyond policing.

So that's why, council colleagues, a number of organization, a number of elected leaders signed onto that letter with the hopes that there would be de-escalation.

There wasn't.

There was just more escalation last night.

So I asked, how many people need to write in about being gassed in their own homes?

How many people have to be sprayed in the street every night or experience getting hit with flash bombs or rubber bullets?

How many people have to call for the police to be defunded, for you to consider resigning, or for the mayor to embrace radical change.

I think the mayor should assess that in this moment, ask herself if she's the right leader and resign.

Regardless of whether she does that, regardless of the specific tactics, it's clear we need to elevate the urgency and the scale of the change that is needed.

The problem is, that the weapons that the police are using are not illegal, necessarily.

The tactics, they have been trained on.

The riot gear has been paid for by us.

We have allowed them, as a city, to grow into the entity that they are.

We have continued to invest in the very system that is now being criticized.

And we have continued to find them.

So I think that is the question in front of us.

How are we going to take ownership over the budget?

Let's do that beginning on Wednesday.

Let's look at the changes that we need.

Let's work with Black and Brown-led community organizations to recognize that we cannot wait for action.

We are done asking for things.

We are going to take bold action into our own hands, rooted in community of color-led organization demands.

We will follow their advice to reinvest in the health, stability, and safety of our residents We will change material conditions to improve lives.

We are going to begin that process on Wednesday of defunding the Seattle Police Department's budget and examining and reassessing the overall proposed budget that will begin to allow for us to correct any austerity cuts.

Seattle, if you've watched over the last two years and been in outrage about babies being separated from their parents at the border and thankful that we were up here in progressive Seattle, If you've wept at deportation hearings and seeing children being removed from their parents or being prosecuted as a standalone child and thought, I'm glad things are different here.

Well, this is your moment.

We're now in a situation where in Seattle, babies are being exposed to tear gas and children are being pepper sprayed in the face.

Parents are having to pour milk over their children's eyes to solve for the violation of exercising their right to call for change.

Children are bearing witness to their parents getting pulled from their cars and arrested in front of them for participating in protests.

As we reassess our Seattle Police Department budget and overall investments for the city, I hope that we can do this by being led by Black and Brown community members' demands that were included in that letter and that we take this as the real moment that it is to be truly transformational in how we invest in our communities.

and reprioritize.

Council colleagues, you saw from me on Friday a memo that summarizes the process.

Be prepared, I think, for an overview of what's in the proposed budget coming down on tomorrow.

And Wednesday will be our first chance to get into it.

We have reserved every Wednesday from now until mid-July for us to have the budget discussion and revenue discussions.

And it's been increasingly obvious that we also need to to identify the spending proposals in the SPD budget from the past so we can make changes for the future.

Thank you, Councilmember.

I think it is powerful for us to remember that the same chemical agents that are being used in our city were the chemical agents and the tactics that were being decried by so many Seattleites and this administration that were being used at the southern border when families were being separated and children were being put in cages.

That tear gas that was used by the Trump administration on the US-Mexico border is the same tear gas we're using in Capitol Hill.

So who are we as a city?

Who do we wanna be?

Who do we think we are?

These are the questions that I think are before us and we have an opportunity to answer those questions clearly and be on the right side of history in this moment.

And I am just mad that we cannot seem to appreciate the fact that this isn't other people's problem.

This is our problem.

Racism exists in Seattle.

And if you don't think racism exists in Seattle, you are just wrong.

These tactics that are being used in Capitol Hill are tactics that are prohibited in other countries.

There are also tactics that are used by the Trump administration that continues to be decried by every single progressive living in the city of Seattle and every elected official in this city.

This is the moment.

This is a moment for us to rise to the occasion and say, basta, no more, we are done.

And I am tired of negotiating.

with people who don't seem inclined to negotiate, who don't want to listen to the cries of dozens of elected officials who have now asked publicly that this administration not just act proportionally to what's happening in the streets, but actually stand down.

Other cities are standing down.

We instead are sending in more troops and doubling down on tactics that are clearly rooted in violence and designed to oppress people's rights, to demand that police violence against black people end here at home and across the country.

So I wanna fully endorse as the president of this council, But also more importantly, as a resident, a longtime resident of the city of Seattle, as an American, and as a woman of color, I wanna endorse this process that Council Member Mosqueda has laid before us.

It is not gonna be easy.

We will experience an incredible amount of challenge, but I believe that we have the sentiment and the will of the people behind us.

And as people who are all independently elected, some in districts and some citywide, we have an obligation to respond to those calls for swift, immediate, and transformational action.

I don't think we're talking about reform anymore.

I don't think we're talking about reform anymore.

And as a civil rights attorney, as somebody who comes to this position as a civil rights attorney, as somebody who spent over a decade suing police agencies across the state, including the Seattle Police Department, I have spent my entire life trying to correct injustices, trying to find an opportunity to correct violence against black and brown folks across the state who were subjected to police violence.

I have nonetheless been committed over the last several years to reform, to thinking that this is something we can fix.

And I have now come to a place to believe that you can't fix what is fundamentally broken.

what appears to be fundamentally broken.

And so I stand with Council Member Mosqueda.

I want to stand with, more importantly, in solidarity with Black-led organizations and members of the Black community, both in our city and across the state and across the country, in this call to transform policing as we know it in America and as we know it here in the city of Seattle.

So thank you, Council Member Mosqueda, for laying out the opportunity that we will have before us.

And I will now open up the floor to comments and questions from any other of my colleagues.

Council Member Herbold, the floor is yours.

Just very briefly, I just want to say that as the Public Safety Chair of the City Council, I too am very supportive and stand with Budget Chair Teresa Basqueda in her call for an inquest on the Police Department budget and our efforts over the next six weeks.

to not reform, but reimagine and reinvent what public safety looks like in our city.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any other comments or questions?

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Council President.

Apologies for me needing a moment to collect myself.

No apologies necessary.

I'm again thankful for the oversight process that we have here in our city because it will be put to the stress test at this time.

I showed up with other council members to deescalate the situation at 11th and Pine on Saturday night because I believed we had received assurances that the gas would not be used against Seattle residents.

We cannot continue to use disproportionate force of gas, grenades, and spray against the residents peacefully assembling to exercise their First Amendment rights.

I was told that tear gas would not be used, yet what I saw was a fog in the streets that attacked and irritated people's eyes, throats, and respiratory systems.

If you want to split hairs with me and tell me that the serial number on the device that you use is not the device you stated that would not be used, yet you achieve the same outcomes.

You're not fooling me.

We cannot continue to use gas grenades and spray on the residents in the face of peaceful assembly.

Commitments are hollow and trust is broken if the actions at night are not aligned with the words said in the day.

You might feel a bit of tension from me this morning, because I was up until 4 AM watching what occurred last night.

I got to spend most of Sunday marching with black community from the Othello playfield.

It was peaceful, joyful.

I didn't say much, didn't post anything.

I was there to listen.

I understand that I will never understand what it is like to be black in America.

I do understand that I have a lot to learn.

My ears are open and I'm ready to take the direction of our community to ensure that we have a better Seattle tomorrow.

better Seattle today.

We will be funding community-based solutions that our community is requesting.

The organizing I witnessed in Othello is, was, and is separate from what we're seeing on Capitol Hill.

It is separated by time, space, people organizing, desires for outcomes, and so much more.

I was heartened when I returned from Othello to watch the mayor's press conference last night and believed that we would have a peaceful night.

Instead, I was watching live streams until four in the morning.

I'm here to state that if, again, if we as elected, I'm here to state that if we as electeds are gonna show up at the police barricades, we need to make sure that that's, that we are, the sole mission is deescalating the tension.

If SPD does believe that it can wait until the middle of the night to use force, be reminded that the whole world is watching.

and that includes city council.

While I'm not good with social media, I'm smart enough to turn on multiple live streams to get multiple perspectives on a situation with multiple screens.

I don't need to be in the UOC to be able to see what's going on on our streets.

What I saw was a tense and peaceful encroachment of the police line.

There were still de-escalation tactics available to SPD.

It is as simple as taking a knee to show that you are hearing the people that you are facing off with.

The words I have to express the reaction to what I witnessed are not appropriate for this meeting.

The response I saw was nearly two and a half, possibly three hours of gas grenades, spray, rubber bullets used against residents.

I watched as multiple individuals were struck directly by flashbang grenades to the point that they were laid out in the street, unable to move, to be dragged off to safety by others.

I understand the need for officers to feel safe.

I understand the need to reestablish a police line.

I do not understand the use of force in the face of peaceful behavior.

I do not understand how two and a half hours of aggressive and violent behavior is proportionate to a peaceful encroachment of a police line.

We will be relying heavily on our oversight bodies to understand exactly what occurred.

And it seems that we cannot wait for review because military-grade weapons continue to be used night after night in our city after assurances are made that these weapons will not be used.

I won't support budget items that militarize our police force to any degree.

I will support the budget items that the community identifies as necessary to create a more whole, safe community.

What I will close with is again, the statement that I understand that I will never understand what it's like to be black in America.

When I discussed demilitarizing the police with people, people tell me, teach me and remind me that they're not as worried about facing off with military grade weapons used against them as they are worried about meeting a lone officer in the middle of the night or just by themselves, broad daylight.

This is why our accountability framework is so important.

And it also brings into focus for me that we have two tracks of work to accomplish, ensuring that every resident in our city is safe when interacting with the police and that we must demilitarize our police force.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss, for sharing those words.

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Thank And, you know, as we begin to discuss this need to rebalance the budget for 2020, I think it's important for us to consider what guiding principles we will use.

You know, we certainly have a fiscal fiduciary responsibility to balance the budget, and this is going to be a hard discussion that we begin this week.

But I want to be clear that I will be using a racial equity lens to ensure that communities of color are not disproportionately impacted by the cuts I think some questions that we need to consider as we move forward, not just for budget decisions, but for everything we do, but especially for right now, is to begin, who benefits?

Who will be better off as a result of the decisions that we make?

Because especially when we're talking about budget cuts, somebody is going to benefit.

Otherwise, the cuts wouldn't be necessary.

So we need to think about that.

We also need to think about who will be burdened and who's going to be harmed Is there going to be a way to reduce negative impacts?

We want to make sure that the degree of harm is not, again, disproportionately left on communities of color.

We need to ask who's missing, how the consequences of a particular group or how a particular group will be impacted, who's been unrepresented or left out in the decision-making about what we have to discuss, and we need to know what the data says.

Are there gaps in our knowledge?

Is the data that we're using to inform our cuts being tracked through existing programs, existing performance data?

Do we know how our communities of color have been served or not served by the programs and initiatives that we're looking at?

We have to make sure that there's not a disproportionate impact on the folks in our community who have been marginalized and who are most vulnerable.

And we certainly need to make sure that communities of color aren't disproportionately impacted by this.

This is about eliminating the racial wealth gap.

And we do that by building black community wealth.

So given our current budget, it means that we have to transfer power.

We have to shift the burden of who pays for city services.

And that's why I'm excited that we will also be discussing the progressive revenue legislation that Council Member Sawant and I have brought forward.

And we look forward to advancing that legislation to make sure that there is additional revenue coming in so that we have an ability to lessen the impact somewhat, at least for the next year or two.

I'll have more comments about the police question in particular, but I will wait till it's my turn in the rotation.

councilmember Morales.

Any other questions or comments on councilmember Mosqueda's report?

Council president, this is councilmember Juarez.

May I have a few moments, please?

Absolutely.

Floor is yours.

Thank you.

First of all, I apologize for being late.

Let me just start with I agree with you, councilmember Gonzalez, in the work that you had done.

I think there is a lot of discussion on the reform and the energy it will take to balance the changing political needs and the need for police.

I do agree with some of what councilmember Mosqueda shared where I think there is the discussion that has to happen in the spectrum.

I can't agree with that until I know exactly what I'm talking about, what is 50%.

So for me, if some of you are familiar with the theory of the Overton window theory, it's a political situation that maybe 10 years ago was unthinkable, but now it's more than possible.

And we've seen that with a lot of public policy issues.

10 years ago, nobody would have thought of disbanding or defunding police.

And I think we should make clear that the Minneapolis City Council intends to disband the city police force entirely, which is, I don't think that's what Council Member Mosqueda was saying.

She's talking about defunding.

So for me, the argument and the discussion and the debate, and which I hope everybody has heard, is that it's a spectrum.

You go from where we're at right now, which is full funding, to the complete other side of the spectrum, No funding disbanding.

And I don't think that's what we're saying here.

I do agree, and evidence does show that less policing shows less violence.

And it's clear, and I've always stated this, and been a proponent of this, that I believe in the politics of protest.

I don't believe political protests automatically equal threats to the public.

And that's another area where we have to have a discussion.

I do agree that we need a, if you will, the receipts from the Seattle Police Department on the things they spend to hurt people.

Flash bangs, rubber bullets, tear gas, militarized equipment.

I believe that we can take that picture and pull those things out.

I think what troubles me most is that we can't allow this chaos or allow this chaos to turn us into turning on each other.

and not listening.

Over the weekend, I got over a dozen calls from small businesses on Capitol Hill who were heartbroken, heartbroken, many of them queer businesses, that their businesses were destroyed.

And I think that is part of the question and part of the equation and part of the spectrum.

When I hear people say there's just a few bad apples, and as Councilor Gonzalez talked about her career, You know, I had been a lawyer for well over 30 years as a public defender, legal services.

I was a King County Superior Court judge.

I put people in prison.

I also went from a governor's office to Wall Street.

I have some lived experience and I have some professional experience.

And as I tell people, I'm not really that smart.

I've just lived longer.

And what I'm seeing now, and I hope what we see in this council for once, is a real goal in leadership to move together.

And when I hear people say that there's just a few bad apples on the police force, I adamantly disagree with that.

It's just not a healthy tree.

We need to plant a new tree.

And as President Gonzalez said, we have to completely reimagine, revision what community policing is.

I do agree with the principle on defunding that we have to take out some of that money and put it in places for our black and brown brothers and sisters.

And I've been watching that my whole life.

I don't know if any of you had an opportunity, but I had read this book, and I see now it's on the national news, by Alex Vitale, called The End of Policing.

And it's very provocative about what happens when you, are we talking about taking away the police?

You just flip a switch and all of a sudden there are no police.

What do you do when there's a murder?

What do you do when there's a crime?

And there's really good responses to that.

That's not what people are saying.

They're saying that you can't use violence as a primary tool to control people who have a First Amendment right to tell the world that they are being violated.

And we know riots are the voice of the unheard.

So I don't want to jump into, let's recall the mayor, let's get rid of the police department.

I'm not about that.

And you all kind of know that about me.

So I am hoping, listening to President Gonzalez and her leadership, that we actually have fundamental and honest and respectful conversations about how we go from looking at the police department, full funding, to what we defund and where that money goes.

And we don't fall into this trap of finger pointing, or if you're not with me, you're against me.

I'm tired of being called an establishment Democrat because sometimes I want to insert a little common sense.

I was at one of the protests.

Council Member Peterson and I were at the University Village one and the Lake City one.

And I should also add that because a long time ago when we thought that the North End needed a police station, that Councilor Gonzales and I weren't the masterminds behind $160 million police station.

We just weren't.

There were 12 votes that said yes before we got there, and then people said no.

And we learned a lot from that.

Council Member Gonzales and I sat down with the Black Lives Matter folks back then, and we talked to them.

And I commend this mayor for talking directly to Black Lives Matter, the Canadian Police Commission, the IG, OPA, and Nikita Oliver.

I may not agree with everything Nikita says but I respect her right to say it and a lot of what she says is the truth.

But in order for us to be real leaders we can't be reactive.

Yes we can carry our personal experiences and since I'm older than all you I get to say this.

I think I'm almost elder status now.

I have been through a lot more racism and violence than you.

I just have.

So is my family.

And the other side that breaks my heart is I have two nephews.

one on the Blackfeet Reservation, and one in Bakersfield, California.

Both of them are police officers, and I hear what they say.

So I try to come at this from not only a human perspective and lived experience, but looking to the leadership and the subject matter expertise of people like President Gonzalez, who's been through this stuff, and when we did the accountability legislation.

A lot of people were angry about the contract, but I know the people that were on the Labor Relations Board did a really good job and the best job they felt we could do to move forward.

Are we always going to get it right and perfect every freaking time?

No.

You know why?

Because we're human.

You know why systems are screwed up and flawed?

Because we're not perfect.

Humans make those systems.

We have shortcomings.

What I hope to see from this council, and I hope what we instill in our great city, is we give everyone an opportunity to have some room to speak, to have some grace, to have some humanity, to understand and hear the cries of the people that need to be protected, and not just be reactive in an anger force because that doesn't make us any better than the people that we're pointing our fingers at.

So with that, I look forward to working with this council and President Gonzalez and her experience in moving not only this conversation forward, but real legislation that changes our city and changes us.

Thank you.

Thank you, councilmember.

I'm sorry, president Gonzalez.

you know, needing to tear each other down in order to effectuate the change that we need to effectuate is a point well made.

And, you know, I have, I have, I will make a personal commitment that to stay focused on the issues and the demands of community that are being made by black led organizations and, and the people who are most negatively impacted by policing and violence at the hands of the police.

And I make that commitment to you and to all of my colleagues to engage in this conversation in a way that is going to stay focused on the substantive issues and that I believe can be done without tearing each other down in the process.

I think that's all I have to say.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any other comments or questions?

Councilmember Mosqueda?

Thank you, Council President.

I want to say thank you to Councilmember Juarez for her words.

And I want to again reiterate the importance of us having the list of the recommendations from the black-led and people of color-led I appreciate councilmember Juarez calling out where additional investments should go.

and Los Angeles have some really great examples of how they're redirecting funding as well.

But this will be a process that will be really about reinvesting in our communities, not just de-investing and really reprioritizing where we put those dollars.

So I just want to say how much I appreciate her message.

And as we also think about this being the first Monday before, I'm sorry, the first Monday after the city has begun to reopen some of its small businesses, We've heard from a number of businesses who are very concerned about what is happening and the fact that they couldn't open their doors or they've had patrons who've been experiencing gas and other forms of arrest right in front of their establishments.

And I think that there is some common ground there with some of our small businesses who've been reaching out to say, we have to find another strategy.

So I thank you for raising up the question about small businesses as well, because I think that there's another voice that's calling on us for transformational change from that perspective.

and I did not mention that before, so I just want to say thank you to all the small businesses who've reached out and asked for a different strategy as well.

We will also be including those voices, especially as we think about women and minority-owned businesses and how important it is for them to get up and running as well.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Any other questions or comments for Council Member Mosqueda?

We're going to go ahead and go through the roll call.

So next up is Councilmember Peterson.

Hello, colleagues.

I want to support the comments of Council President Gonzalez and Public Safety Chair Herbold regarding police accountability.

And I look forward to the deep dive on the budget led by Budget Chair Mosqueda with the attention to details articulated by Councilmember Juarez.

While I participated in some of the many police accountability demonstrations in my district, I was not able to attend the ones in Capitol Hill, but I watched and was sickened by the disturbing video feeds, unacceptable responses by many police officers in that precinct.

It's obviously wrong for a government to use violent tactics against their people.

The actions that prompted these protests this past week the murder by police in Minneapolis of George Floyd and the long history of racism and other injustices against black and brown lives.

People are fed up and they have a right to protest this injustice without suffering further brutality from those who have pledged to serve and protect them.

Over this historic week, trust has eroded between many of my constituents and a police department funded to protect them.

I believe most of our police officers are good people, but they're working within a tainted institution.

We need to boldly rethink and change things.

As we confront a budget deficit of over $300 million, I want to signal to my colleagues that I'm open to reallocating substantial dollars so we clearly and boldly demilitarize and fully fix our police department.

The funds for military-style weapons were approved by previous city councils, and this city council has the authority to defund them.

I have a strong track record of funding upstream solutions, including high-quality preschool and tens of thousands of units of low-income housing.

After consulting with and hearing from hundreds of my constituents over the weekend, and conferring with the King County Council member whose district overlaps District 4, who carefully crafted a pledge from community input, I have signed this pledge.

And I'm also joining my council colleagues to sign the letter which has the similar pledge.

Demilitarize our police department.

Restrict the use of excessive force.

Increase accountability and transparency in police union contracts.

give subpoena power to our official independent oversight boards, redirect police department funding to effective community-based alternatives.

With the use of tear gas on protesters in Capitol Hill over the weekend, despite the mayor's earlier directive not to use tear gas, I also believe legislative fixes are warranted as soon as possible.

I look forward to working with my council colleagues to take stronger action this week I support Councilmember Herbold's legislation to reform how morning badges are used by officers.

I also support the legislation proposed by Councilmember Sawant to eliminate chokeholds and chemical agents against the people of Seattle.

So I know it's traditional for Councilmembers at the morning briefing to report on legislative items we're sponsoring or coming out of our committees, so I'll transition to that now.

There are no items from the Transportation and Utilities Committee on today's agenda.

Not for my committee, but impacting my district, today the council will consider adopting Council Bill 119779, which reauthorizes the business improvement area for the growing university district.

There is a substitute bill circulated by our city council central staff, Yolanda Ho, with technical corrections, and a non-controversial change to clarify the composition of the BIA board.

And regarding the more challenging amendments to reduce the term of the BIA and to speed up the competitive process, I simplified that and consolidated that into a single amendment to make it easier today at full council.

The purpose of that amendment is to make sure we enhance our goal of giving small neighborhood businesses a greater voice and making sure we quickly have a competitive process for awarding what's essentially a $1 million contract to the program manager that administers the BIA.

I want to thank Councilmember Morales for leading this through her Committee and Economic Development Committee meetings and a public hearing.

People can email their comments still to uDistrictBIA at Seattle.gov.

Please contact me or central staff with any questions about reauthorizing the BIA in District 4. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson for those remarks.

Colleagues, I want to just let you know that I'm experiencing some internet issues in my home.

So if there's an awkward delay for me in the transition, I wanna make sure that you're all aware of that.

And if I get kicked off of the line, I'll, I promise you I'll be back.

So I think I'm going to send the roll call list to one of you to see just in the event that I continue to have technology issues on my end.

But just want to let you know that I'm having some issues with my internet this morning.

OK.

Any questions or comments for Council Member Peterson on his report?

OK.

Hearing and seeing none, we're going to move over Council Member Sawant.

Before I do that, I do want to note that we have Yolanda Ho from Council Central staff on the meeting today.

This was at the request of Council Member Peterson in order to present his amendments to Council Bill 119779 related to the U District BIA.

I do want to provide Yolanda a quick opportunity to address those amendments.

and to be available to each of you colleagues in terms of any questions or concerns that you might have about those amendments.

And Council Member Morales, please feel free to chime in as it relates to the amendments being proposed by Council Member Peterson.

If it's all right with you, colleagues, let's go ahead.

And we have asked Yolanda to be on the call today.

So I feel like it's important to make sure that she has an opportunity to walk us through these amendments.

So Yolanda, I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to you, have you walk us through the amendments.

We'll open it up to questions and any comments from Council Member Morales.

And then we'll close out this report.

I'm going to turn it over to you.

Thank you, Council President.

So just to address there are two amendments as Councilmember Peterson noted.

The first amendment is primarily technical corrections, clarifications, and a change to the BIA advisory board composition.

So in terms of the technical corrections and clarifications, emergency that were recommended by the law department.

We clarified some terminology used to calculate the assessments, and we changed the responsibility for contracting with the program manager from the Department of Finance and Administrative Services to the Office of Economic Development as per our adopted city policies regarding BIAs.

And also consolidated the seats held by business tenants so that there are a total of three seats two of which are business tenants subject to a triple net lease.

This amendment one would also limit the number of seats held by the University of Washington on the BIA advisory board to 35% of the board or a maximum of five seats, whichever is lower.

I would note that the University of Washington currently holds five seats on the BIA's current board.

And as drafted without this amendment, The legislation would allow the UW to hold up to seven seats if it was only limited to the current cap that is in the legislation.

So that is Amendment 1. Amendment 2, the term and program manager changes, would reduce the duration of the U District BIA from the proposed 12 years to 10 years.

It would also limit the contract term of the initial program manager which is currently the U District Partnership, to one year before the Office of Economic Development would be required to conduct a request for qualification process for the BIA's program manager, which would then have a five-year contract.

Towards the end of this contract, the Office of Economic Development would then conduct a request for a proposal process to select the BIA's program manager for the remaining four years of the BIA.

The intent is that the RFQ, so there's an RFQ process and an RFP process then, and the RFQ process is intended to be simpler and less administratively burdensome for the Office of Economic Development, acknowledging the shortened term of the interim program manager, because as drafted, the program manager would have five years before needing to run the RFP process.

If the BIA is reauthorized, the organization serving as a program manager at that time would be allowed to serve as the interim program manager for one year.

So the intended effect is to essentially create two five-year terms for the program manager.

Happy to answer any questions.

Okay, colleagues, any questions for Yolanda?

Council Member Morales, oh, I'm sorry, Council Member Mosqueda, do you have a question?

Okay, Council Member Morales, anything you'd like to add to this conversation?

Yeah, I will just say that, you know, from my conversations with folks and my looking through the amendments and having conversations with the proponents and with folks who are concerned about how this works, I think, you know, the first amendment is, as Yolanda said, a technical to the office of economic development.

And with the addition of the U-Dub sort of limitation on the U-Dub's ability or seats on the BIA.

So that is fairly straightforward.

And the U-Dub has consulted with Councilmember Peterson, and I think there's full support for that.

I think the second thing I want to point out is that the second amendment is a little more, um, has a little more contention to it.

Um, uh, so I'm happy to talk about that during the conversation this afternoon.

Um, but we've got, um, I have some concerns about, uh, shortening the interim program, which are so much, uh, when there is already a process in place for any other organization who might be interested in participating in applying to become the program manager.

There is nothing preventing that from happening right now.

So I think that there's a potential for creating some disruption when there is not a need for a new process at this time.

And the five-year lead time would give another organization time to sort of ramp up and build capacity and apply to provide that service when they are prepared.

So happy to answer any other questions.

I'm sure council member Peterson is prepared to answer some questions too, and we can do that now or we can do that later in full council, whatever the council president prefers.

If there are, you know, sort of ongoing questions about those amendments, my preference would be that those be addressed here because we have Yolanda here and she can be available to council members to answer any questions or provide clarification.

She will not be available to us at two o'clock this afternoon.

So again, colleagues, if there are questions about the amendments and the underlying bill that we need Yolanda's assistance in navigating through.

Now is the time to pose those questions and make those inquiries.

Obviously, at 2 o'clock, we'll engage in debate, and that's much more about persuasion than anything else.

And, you know, we can reserve I don't know if there are any other questions around the underlying bill or the amendments as proposed by Councilmember Pedersen.

Councilmember Mosqueda?

the budget and police budget specifically.

So thank you for those comments.

I did want to ask Councilmember Morales to explain a little bit more of some of the questions that you've received.

I've received a handful as well, so I just wanted to defer to you to see if they were the same thing.

And then if not, maybe Council President and I can ask a few questions about the amendment.

Yes, please.

So questions around the The process itself, you know, so the advisory board typically manages the contracting process.

And if they're dissatisfied, you know, what's the process now?

So, you know, if they want a different program manager, if they want, feel like somebody is not involved or not, you know, serving the BIA appropriately, then a different organization can approach the advisory board to participate and to take over that role and to create a bid for the process.

So there is nothing precluding an organization from doing that right now, which for me raises the question, too, about why we need a new process.

So, you know, there was questions about setting a precedent for the Office of Economic Development to manage an RFP process and what this would mean for the capacity of OED if there are other nine BIAs that we have in the city also want to move toward this RFP process and whether there's capacity for OED to be able to do that.

My understanding is that they are you know, accepting the legislation as transmitted, um, but would still be looking to make sure that the actual decision-making about who might win a bid to be the program manager would fall back to the advisory board itself, um, rather than having the city designate who that is, since this is, this is intended to be a neighborhood driven process.

Um, so yeah, that was some of the, some of the questions that came up about who gets to make those decisions.

I think that is all I have to say.

≫ Excellent.

Any other questions or comments?

Councilmember Peterson, anything you would like to add?

≫ I really want to thank Lakeisha Farmer on Councilmember Morales' staff.

I want to thank my staff person for her work on this.

City

Great.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Peterson.

Are there any other questions or comments on this particular component?

Okay.

Seeing and hearing none, I'm going to thank Yolanda for joining us this morning and sitting tight with us for a couple of hours.

I appreciate your patience.

and of course, you're welcome to go back to other priorities that I'm sure that you have.

Thanks for being with us again.

Council Member Peterson, if you're done with your report, I'd like to shift over now to Council Member Sawant.

Yes.

Great.

Okay, Council Member Sawant, the floor is yours, please.

Thank you.

Following yet another night of police violence, I'm introducing legislation banning all police use of chemical weapons and other so-called crowd control weapons, as well as legislation banning chokeholds.

Seattle police maced and gassed hundreds of us on Capitol Hill last night.

As an elected representative of those fighting against racism and police brutality, I find it completely unacceptable that this militarized police force is viciously targeting a peaceful protest movement.

Seattle has seen daily protests since Saturday, May 30th, and Seattle police have daily used stunning and indiscriminate violence against ordinary people and the protest movement that has risen up in the wake of George Floyd's murder at the hands of Minneapolis police.

Seattle police are attacking peaceful protesters daily from young children to the elderly with chemical weapons that are internationally banned in warfare.

They have used chokeholds on protesters, including the same kind of chokehold that killed George Floyd.

On Friday night, a mother and her child were pepper sprayed by the Seattle police while they were sitting in their car.

Saturday night was another night of police brutality against overwhelmingly peaceful protesters on Capitol Hill, as many of you were there to witness, where police aggressively attacked ordinary people with more tear gas, pepper spray, blast balls, and arrests.

Yesterday, first I was with the Othello protest rally which marched to the Rainier Beach Safeway, where I joined other speakers at the rally.

And then last night, I was part of the group of hundreds of multiracial activists, many young people, protesting peacefully at 11th and Pine.

We were maced and gassed by Seattle police with no provocation.

All that the movement was demanding was, let us march because these are our streets.

And we were chanting, whose streets?

Our streets.

Members of the public who are watching this can go to my council office website for the live stream video of my address to the movement, standing a couple of feet away from the police lines and when they sprayed mace and exploded tear gas grenades.

I also want to note, among many other things that I don't have time to record right now in this briefing, the police loudspeaker with a disembodied voice, I was never able to see the actual commander who was issuing these orders, saying, I don't know what your intentions are with your umbrellas.

This is stunning gaslighting by a militarized police force.

These are police officers, many of them, fully donned in riot gear.

Pads protecting shoulders, arms, calves, shins, having bulletproof vests, face shields, body shields, gas masks, batons, rifles, chemical weapons, rubber bullets.

All of this is paid through taxpayer money, through the most regressive tax system in the nation.

I do not appreciate Councilmember Strauss' remarks saying that, quote, the sole purpose of a Councilmember to be at the front line is to deescalate, unquote, insinuating that I might have played some role in provoking violence from the police.

I don't know how else to interpret this other than this disgusting insinuation and an attempt to score establishment points against me, who is an openly anti-establishment socialist and who stands with the movement.

And these remarks, I'm sorry to say, are ominously reminiscent of blaming the victim.

This is what Black people and those who are fighting for social justice are told.

You must have done something to provoke it.

To quote brother Joe Mizrahi, leader of the UFCW Local 21, quote, the conclusion is clear.

We are seeing politically motivated police brutality.

People who speak out and fight back are at risk.

Incremental reform cannot fix this, unquote.

And these were from tweets that were in response to your remarks.

If council members want to be united against police violence, and I really welcome that and I want that, and if you claim you are against police violence, making these kinds of remarks is not the basis to accomplish that.

I hope you will clarify your remarks.

Our protest movement, completely unarmed, except for our cell phones, our umbrellas, and our multiracial working class solidarity, stood and courageously faced an armed to the teeth police force.

The police and the National Guard had come prepared to inflict violence.

There was no provocation.

And this militarization of the police force stands at the doorstep of the city's Democratic Party establishment.

Last week, my office distributed two draft bills that I intend to walk onto introduction and referral calendar this afternoon to be voted on at city council meeting next week.

Council members have mentioned that, so I just wanted to go over that in a little bit.

Both bills are short and to the point, so they should not take you long to familiarize yourself with if you have not done so already.

The first bill bans the city from owning and the police from using so-called crowd control weapons like tear gas, mace, blast balls, flashbangs, plastic bullets, and other weapons that are typically used indiscriminately on gatherings of protesters and protest movements.

Some of these weapons, like tear gas, are banned from use in war by the Geneva Convention.

The mayor, Mayor Durkin, has said something to the effect of, we need to study these chemical weapons.

You don't need to study anything.

Stand on the front lines like me and you'll know what I mean.

And maybe you want to Google Mayor Durkin, maybe you want to Google Geneva Convention to know what tear gas is all about.

Several council members have witnessed this and council members who have not have certainly heard the public testimony of hundreds if not thousands of your constituents or you've watched videos.

This violence and brutality has unbelievably continued despite the widespread anger and outrage in our city since Saturday, May 30th.

Mayor Durkin's announcement that there will be a 30-day so-called ban in the use of tear gas shows the pressure of the movement.

However, she has demonstrated night after night that her press conference pledges were empty PR gestures that bore no relationship to the reality on the street.

And let's be clear, the mayor's touted quote-unquote ban was not a ban in the first place.

And it's patently inaccurate for the media or others to characterize the mayor's action as a ban or even a pause.

It is actually not.

The emergency order issued by Chief Best only restricts non-SWAT officers from using CS gas.

The order specifically notes that SWAT team members continue to have the authority to have chemical weapons, to include the use of CS gas, continuing this idea that we don't accept, that somehow, with appropriate training, it's okay for the police to inflict this violence.

This is not about training.

This is about what kind of society and what kind of city we want to be.

I experienced all this firsthand last night, of course, alongside hundreds of very courageous young protesters.

And I don't want anyone to tell the movement that this was technically not tear gas or something else.

Its chemical composition was something else.

And so it was OK and not a breaking of Durkin's supposed promise for a 30-day pause.

What myself and hundreds experienced last night was a gas that operated exactly like tear gas in its effect on our eyes, ability to breathe, the burning sensation in our mouth and throat, and the impact on the lungs.

All chemical weapons need to be banned.

Here in Seattle and around the country, demonstrators have been grievously injured by these weapons.

And an open letter signed by over a thousand medical professionals has explained that weapons like tear gas and mace significantly increase the danger of COVID.

The purpose of this legislation is to prevent, the legislation from my office, is to prevent the police from meeting protests with violence.

If Seattle police instead show up with even more lethal weaponry, then of course we have to ban that as well, but that is not an excuse to not ban chemical weapons and rubber bullets and other so-called crowd control devices.

If the Seattle City Council passes this legislation, it will be historic and it will be an inspiration for what movements around the country can win.

Thank you to council members Mosqueda and Peterson for already declaring their support with my legislation.

I hope other council members will join me in this and pass it at the city council meeting next week without watering it down.

The second bill, I am walking on to the introduction and referral calendar today.

For a vote next week is a bill to ban the use of chokeholds by the Seattle Police Department.

This is largely self-explanatory, and I will not go into a lot of detail here, but from Eric Garner to Manuel Ellis to George Floyd, we have all seen the devastating consequences of chokeholds.

Similar restrictions have been put in place by other cities, most recently in Minneapolis.

Absolutely, we need to keep in mind a sobering word of caution.

Banning these weapons, banning chokeholds will not be enough.

We will need to grow our movements, escalate our peaceful movements, peaceful civil disobedience, because passing laws, as hard as they will be, because they require pressure from movement, will not be enough.

Chokeholds were banned in New York City when Eric Garner was killed, and obviously that law was insufficient to save his life.

Legislation like this is critical if we win these two bills.

And as I said, it will be because of the power of the movement overcoming the opposition of an entrenched establishment.

But we need the legislation to be paired with more structural changes in society.

We need real police accountability measures like elected community oversight votes with real powers over the police, including hiring, firing, and subpoena powers.

We need strong measures to reduce poverty and inequality.

We need immediate COVID relief and we need housing.

Again, I wanted to thank council members Mosqueda and Peterson for supporting these bills.

I would like to really thank Greg and Amy from city council central staff for working so hard and giving up their time with their family over the last few days to get this legislation prepared and through its city attorney's office review in time for it to be introduced today.

I thank the city attorney's office as well.

It's really important for our movement, and I appreciate all of them being so available.

Tuesday, which is tomorrow, June 9th, at 6 p.m.

at Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill, I will be alongside Black community leaders and members hosting a People's Town Hall at the park, and also alongside rank-and-file workers of the labor movement.

We are demanding an immediate release of all those arrested at Seattle protests, ban the use of chemical weapons by Seattle Police, ban chokeholds, cut the Seattle Police budget in half, and fund social and restorative justice programs for an elected Community Oversight Board, no austerity, tax Amazon, and no coronavirus evictions.

We are going to be discussing budget as a city council.

As I announced midweek last week, I intend to bring forward legislation in support of the demand of the justice for George Floyd movement to defund police and cut the Seattle Police Department budget by 50% to instead fund grassroots programs for restorative justice and other socially necessary programs like housing.

This can be done, among other means, by ending the purchase of the so-called crowd control weapons, as we discussed, ending the police violence against demonstrations.

I'm really happy to hear Council Member Musqueda has joined the community and me in demanding that we need to defund police and cut the police budget by half.

I really welcome that.

Additionally, the idea of an austerity budget that is cutting the funds of the city departments that do support our communities is totally unacceptable.

The COVID-19 crisis is creating an economic crisis and has resulted in a recession that is almost as bad and probably will get worse in the Great Depression.

leaving millions unemployed in the state, tens of millions throughout the nation, and tens of thousands, probably over 100,000 now in Seattle with either lost jobs or reduced hours.

We cannot have politicians saying that Black Lives Matter and then turn around and represent big business and the wealthy and oppose the Amazon tax or some other measure for substantial We need to spend substantial hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes on the largest corporations so that we can fund our needs.

The Amazon tax as put forward by Councilmember Morales and me on behalf of the movement is a modest tax on big business to expand publicly owned rent controlled social housing so we can begin to strike a blow against racist gentrification, against working class communities of color, and create decent jobs with priority hire and pre-apprenticeship programs.

Throughout history, the greater the inequality in a society, the more militarized its policing needs to be from the ruling class to perpetuate and defend those inequities.

Sociologically speaking, we can predict that in the coming years, Seattle and the nation, and globally, we will either make massive new public investments in jobs, social housing, and other policies regular working class people need, or we will see more and more violent policing.

That's the logic of the capitalist system.

I wanted to remind members of the public that my socialist council office, alongside the people's budget movement, has for years, for years, proposed cutting the police budget to fund housing and tiny house villages and stopping the sweeps.

Most council members throughout various councils have voted no on these measures.

And everyone except me at that council voted yes on the police contract that rolled back accountability.

have voted against stopping the sweeps.

I am so glad that there is a mass movement now, the beginnings of a mass movement.

We have a long way to go, but the beginnings of a real uprising to put pressure on the establishment politicians.

And I welcome all the words that have been uttered by council members, among others, the words that we want to reimagine and reinvent what police, public safety, sorry, looks like.

So I look forward to your yes votes on concrete action to ban chemical weapons, other weapons, chokeholds, defund police by 50% and fund community programs, tax Amazon and other big businesses to fund housing for the most marginalized communities.

I look forward to working with you all on this.

I support the growing number of people who have signed a petition calling on Mayor Durkan to resign or be impeached for gassing her own people.

The change.org petition has now over 21,300 signatures.

I released a statement on Saturday calling on Durkan to resign, and that if she does not, I will, on behalf of the movement, bring articles of impeachment.

Thank you so much to Council Member Mosqueda for joining the community and calling on Durkin to resign.

I will now read my statement from Saturday to share with the public.

Jenny Durkin has failed the working people of Seattle since day one of the administration.

The brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police has lit a spark of national and global protest by youth and working people fed up with this racist, violent, and deeply unequal society under capitalism.

In Seattle, thousands upon thousands of ordinary people have come out courageously in daily protests to demand justice for police killings and systemic change.

It has been tragically ironic that this growing movement against police violence and brutality has been consistently met with more violence and brutality.

The responsibility for this vicious targeting of these overwhelmingly peaceful protests in Seattle lies with Mayor Jenny Durkan.

Durkin and the city's Democratic Party establishment have utterly failed ordinary people.

Since the first protest on Saturday, May 30th, Durkin has repeatedly unleashed Seattle police to use ever-escalating violence against ordinary people, protesting the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many other black and brown people.

Under Durkin's direction, the police have inflicted tear gas, mace, rubber bullets, flashbang grenades, curfews, arrests, and other repressive tactics on Seattle activists and residents, including children, in an attempt to bully and silence the protest movement.

The police under Durkin's leadership have deployed militaristic tactics in full riot gear to try to spread fear among ordinary people.

Video footage reveals that the police appear to come prepared with instructions and equipment to orchestrate violence.

That is why as a socialist elected representative accountable to Seattle's working people, it is my duty to join with the rapidly growing calls in the community for Jenny Durkan to step down.

Even before the events of this past week, Durkan was failing the people of Seattle.

She aligned with the Trump administration and the police in seeking to get the police department out from under the federal oversight of the consent decree, even as police brutality towards and killings of black and brown people, poor and homeless neighbors, and those facing mental illness continued unabated.

Her administration has ignored repeated community efforts to halt the inhumane and ineffective homeless sweeps of encampments and has in fact doubled down on the sweeps policy.

The sweeps have even been continued during the pandemic despite cries of outrage throughout the community.

Since being elected with the help of a record political donation by Amazon, Durkin has doggedly fought to maintain the tax haven that Amazon and other big businesses enjoy and fought against progressive taxation.

Tens of thousands of Seattle residents have lost jobs.

and income in the last two months.

Countless are on the verge of homelessness and are struggling to get food and basic necessities, and yet even now, Durkin insists on protecting Amazon and other pandemic profiteers from taxation to fund urgent human needs.

Worse, she is poised to unveil a new austerity budget which would brutally slash hundreds of millions of dollars in funds for already underfunded social programs, further risking the health and safety of working people.

On April 23rd, as working people had already begun to reel from the pandemic recession, Durkin flatly rejected the Amazon tax saying, yeah, that it never is going to happen and I think that it's irresponsible for anyone to say that that's even possible.

That's a quote.

Socialist alternative and I have no illusions that simply putting a liberal democratic politician in the mayor's office is going to solve the problems that working people and communities of color face in this deeply unequal city.

Notwithstanding that, There are many honest and progressive rank-and-file activists in local Democratic Party organizations who do important work in the movement and whom we are proud to work alongside.

The initial call for Durkin's resignation has in fact been led by many of these grassroots Democratic Party activists.

I urge, alongside myself and Councilmember Mosqueda, that Democratic Party City Council members join us in calling for Mayor Durkin to resign.

Our movement must also recognize the long-standing truth that fundamentally the Democratic Party at the national level is bought and paid for by the titans of Wall Street and locally serves corporate interests and our movement needs to build independent political power and a new party for working people that takes no corporate money and is accountable to our movements.

Mayor Durkan has failed the working people of Seattle since day one of our administration.

She has now abused her power and harmed thousands of ordinary people on the streets, all in defense of big business and the status quo of racism and inequality.

This past week has been the final straw.

It is time for Jenny Durkan to finally be held accountable.

It is time for her to go.

If Mayor Durkan refuses to step aside, it will be the responsibility of the City Council to remove her by introducing articles of impeachment.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Sawant for those remarks.

Colleagues, any questions or comments on that report?

Councilmember Herbold, please.

Thank you.

I just want to make a quick comment as it relates specifically to Councilmember Sawant's I'm going to go ahead and open it up for questions.

to the council and to the mayor as it relates specifically to the enactment or proposal of policy issues as recognized under the consent decree and the 2017 accountability ordinance.

So I'm just going to read directly from this one very small section.

We learned yesterday that Chief Best issued a memorandum on May 31st, 2020, authorizing patrol officers to use CS gas canisters and 40 millimeter launchers during the ongoing protests.

We are dismayed that SPD did not alert the CPC of these changes and that they were not mentioned by Chief Best or Mayor Durkin when they attended last week's CPC meeting.

We are left wondering what other policy changes are occurring without our knowledge or the community's knowledge.

The CPC's responsibilities under the consent decree and the 2017 accountability ordinance include the review of Seattle Police Department policies.

We cannot do this job without this information.

Please immediately send us copies of all policy changes and related memoranda that have occurred to date and all policy changes and memoranda that are going forward as they occur.

And so in the spirit of this request, which was more directed to Chief Best and the executive regarding the recent order about CS gas, I think that plea for us to honor the role granted the CPC in both the 2017 accountability legislation as well as in the consent decree.

Just keep in mind that the CPC was the first community-based organization in the nation to be granted amicus status in a consent decree.

And so in that spirit, I've shared Council Member Solan's bill with the CPC.

and I understand their meeting today.

They understand that we have a quick turnaround and I'm seeking their recommendations as it relates to their role and any amendments that they might propose.

I alerted Council Member Sawant of this a couple of days ago and I'm very supportive of the legislation, but again, I just wanna make sure that we are honoring our obligation to consult with the CPC on policy within their jurisdiction.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

I think those are excellent points, and I think that all three accountability entities are pointing out sort of a flaw in an approach that they are seeing from the executive side, and I think it's prudent for us to make sure that we aren't replicating that.

And I don't mean that as a slight to you, Council Member Sawant.

Things are moving very fast, and I appreciate the spirit with which you are proposing this legislation, which I also support.

And so I think we could just benefit from making sure that in advancing the bill, we're not I think it is important that we continue to work through the I look forward to hearing those recommendations.

I suspect, although I don't know, I suspect that they will be favorable to your legislation and look forward to Councilmember Herbold's leadership and hopefully with your cooperation, Councilmember Salant, on making sure that we get those recommendations sooner rather than later because as you have pointed out, time is of the essence here and these are short-term to be able to act swiftly on.

These are short-term impacts, really severe negative impacts that we need to be able to act swiftly on.

And so certainly don't want to have, you know, undue delay in getting this bill before the City Council and considered so we can begin the process of implementation here.

Thank you.

I, of course, needless to say, am happy for the Community Police Commission to give us their thoughts.

And my staff, of course, were planning to be in touch with them throughout this week because the bill will not be voted on this week.

By law, it will be voted on next Monday and I welcome, as I said, I welcome their suggestions and their ideas, but I want to be very clear.

At the end of the day, Seattle's working people and ordinary people and young people and the protest movements and our communities of color are not asking for recommendation.

What they are demanding is a law to prohibit people from getting gassed by the Seattle police.

And so if we're talking about leadership, I agree.

Let's show leadership.

Leadership means doing what we were elected to do.

The Community Police Commission's work is extremely appreciated and honored.

But at the end of the day, the city council is the highest legislative body.

We are elected.

They are not.

We have a duty as elected representatives to defend the tens of thousands of our constituents who are daily being gassed and harmed by the SPD.

And in reality, a powerful study has, you know, in response to whatever The mayor's office comes up with about study this and study that.

A powerful study has already been conducted by thousands of people in the laboratory of struggle on the streets of Seattle and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, on the streets of other cities over the past week.

And the results from that laboratory analysis are in.

Chemical weapons should be banned.

Councilmember Silva?

Councilmember Silva?

Councilmember Silva?

Councilmember Silva?

Councilmember Silva?

Councilmember Silva?

Councilmember Silva?

Councilmember Silva?

Councilmember Silva?

Councilmember Silva?

Councilmember Silva?

Councilmember Silva?

Councilmember Silva?

Councilmember Silva?

I think it's important for us to be able to vote on this and weigh informally on it.

Really appreciate your stated intent to do that engagement this week so that we can have the benefit of their perspective before we vote on this on Monday.

And again, you know, these are three entities that have previously articulated their opposition to the I'm looking forward to hearing more of what they have to say.

And if there's anything that, you know, my office can do to sort of help facilitate the connection there, and I'm sure Council Member Verbal, you and I should actually I'm looking forward to that.

I'm looking forward to that ongoing Thank you.

Any other questions or comments for Councilmember Sawant on her report?

Councilmember Sawant, any parting words before we go ahead and move on?

Oh, thank you so much.

Okay.

Thank you so much Councilmember Sawant for advocating for those particular bills.

Really, really appreciate it.

The next person is Councilmember Strauss.

The floor is yours.

Thank you, Council President.

There are no items from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on today's agenda or introduction and referral calendar.

This Wednesday, the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee will be meeting virtually at 9.30 a.m.

to hold the post-adoption public hearing meeting on Council Bill 119769, the emergency permitting legislation we adopted last April.

All Council members are invited to attend and we will need quorum at least three to consider the legislation directly as the legislation was considered directly at full council.

I had previously discussed the scheduled June 24th meeting, which is a public hearing regarding the omnibus bill and childcare near you.

This meeting will be canceled due to the budget deliberations and the public hearings for the childcare legislation and the omnibus bill will be rescheduled for July 22nd.

Last week, I joined the Bicycle Advisory Board to discuss the omnibus bill.

I held district office hours over the phone, which I heard and which I discussed with residents about homelessness, dedicated bus lines, and more.

We continue to work on the Cafe Street proposal, and we as a city need to move faster for it to be useful in a timely manner.

Departments do seem to be poised and ready to roll out this program.

My office is also coordinating with community members wishing to thank.

send thank you postcards to the frontline workers, and my office continues to work with small businesses as they move into modified phase one.

In particular, advising them on how to best adapt and comply with the new ways of operating and continue to help these small businesses struggling with issues from leases to which resources are best for them.

Thank you, Councilmember Sawant, for your comments that what you shared was not what I was insinuating.

I was not watching your thread last night, so I do not know what your actions were on the front lines, and do not pretend to think I do know what you were up to since I wasn't watching your thread.

I was speaking to the role that we as Councilmembers need to be when I and we as Councilmembers approach front lines and police lines.

I have also since my earlier comments received reports that an individual hit with a flashbang, had at times lost their pulse.

While this is not an official communication and I will wait for official review to make a determination on those actions, I will reiterate that even when I'm not present in person, I am watching the actions and behaviors on the front lines.

I'm reiterating this to the general public, to all Seattle residents, to the mayor, to the chief of police, and all officers on the line.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Strauss.

Any questions or comments on that report?

Okay, hearing and seeing none, we'll go ahead and move over to Councilmember Juarez.

The floor is yours.

Thank you, Council President.

There are no items on the Public Asset Native Communities Committee on this afternoon's agenda.

I will go into our parks update, the COVID-19 programmatic update Park usage will be emailed to you this morning from my office as I do every week.

So on Friday, June 5th, King County announced the start of a modified phase one of reopening, allowing the opening of businesses and a range of activities under certain conditions.

The various phases of reopening are described in the governor's safe start Washington plan, which we have all been looking at and monitoring.

We should have more information and details this week on what that means for the City of Seattle and for Seattle Parks and Recreation programs and facilities.

It's been over a week, as we all know, since we've witnessed and participated in the massive and important Black Lives Matter protests.

16 Seattle Park and Rec staff members from the Parks and Environment Division and 18 from the Facilities Division have responded to requests from the Emergency Operating Center, EOC, to help clean up in and around Westlake Park and Cal Anderson Park.

The work has included removing graffiti, cleaning up broken window glass, picking up litter, and boarding up windows of more than, of over 40 downtown businesses.

The heavy equipment crew also helped FDOT with periodic street closures.

And last weekend, Yale Parks and Rec staff distributed masks to protesters on the street.

Seattle Park and Rec's Emergency Manager, John Jenga, has been working at the EOC every day this week.

Thank you, Parks, for making it safer and cleaner for our peaceful protesters to continue to march on.

The Shelter Program, the Indoor Shower Program, and the Emergency Child Program continue and have been successful.

And again, you will receive more detail by the end of the day on the report on where we're at in the numbers for each of those programs.

The next meeting of the Board of Park Commissioners will be held on Thursday, June 11th.

And a little good news, I have some overdue yet excellent news to share.

Seattle Public Library has been named Library of the Year in the country.

So I think there are over, I can't remember how many libraries we said, I think a thousand, and Seattle was chosen number one.

While this is an honor for the city and something to celebrate we're figuring out how to thoughtfully share this out on social media given the space that the city is in right now.

At the very least I will take the time as chair of the committee to share a few reasons why Seattle won this prestigious award.

The Seattle Public Library first opened as a reading room 130 years ago and since then the library has expanded to 26 locations focused on programming to authentically serve our diverse communities and their individual needs And the system serves more than books and state-of-the-art programs.

Thank you largely to the support of Seattle voters.

In recent years the Seattle Public Library has turned its attention outward actively listening to community needs and transforming its work to make equity a top priority earning the 2020 Library of the Year Award.

I'm incredibly proud of Seattle Public Library.

Marcellus Turner thank you so much.

Always a pleasure working with you.

So, as far as the library award, we also have the issue of the restroom access.

It's been over a month since the library opened its facilities for COVID-19 restroom support.

In that time, more than 1,200 patron visits have been made to the library restrooms.

Except for a few isolated issues, the vast majority of restroom visits have occurred without incident.

All sorts of people have taken advantage of our open restroom, including homeless patrons, Seniors out for a walk and families visiting the food bank in the U District.

As far as the library link some of you are familiar with that.

All K-12 Seattle Public School students now have access to the Seattle Public Library's full digital collection of books and resources through the library link program.

They do not need a library card.

Instead they can use their student or staff ID number to get access.

Previously this program served grades 6 to 12 but due to COVID Seattle Public Schools and Libraries have expanded this program for remote learning.

In regards to District 5 last week Mayor Durkin announced the launch of two new free COVID-19 testing locations in Seattle which will expand excuse me testing capacity in the city by more than 1,600 tests per day.

The facilities are in North Seattle 12040 Aurora Avenue and Soto.

The locations will operate Monday through Saturday from 10 to 3 and accommodate drive-thru clients who book ahead through the website.

These testing sites are designed and intended for drive-up testing.

Residents who need walk-up testing with ADA accommodations will still have many options for free COVID testing.

More information can be found by visiting publichealth.gov.

on-site testing will be coordinated by trained Seattle fire department personnel.

Estimates preregistration will allow the testing procedure to take fewer than 10 minutes per test.

will be the first test on the Aurora site.

Lastly, good news again from the Native American community.

I'm happy to share with you that Washington, D.C.

via the U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD, released a sizable amount of money for 10 tribes, and six of those tribes are in Washington state and are local.

And this is important because this, rattle off the tribes and then I'll just tell you what they're for.

The Chehalis tribe, the Caulfield tribe, the Lummi Nation, Muckleshoot tribe, the Skokomish tribe, and the Spokane tribe.

Of all these programs, they are dedicated to construct buildings and building housing units to transition folks from homelessness into permanent housing.

So these are all to build homes for Native American people experiencing homelessness as well as their families.

And the Skokomish tribe, which is pretty cool, will clear 22 acres for 21 home divisions.

So what we have is a total of six tribes that will receive about $750,000 apiece to build housing on the reservation for low income and those experiencing homeless, those coming out of treatment, those coming out of incarceration.

So this is a great example of how when we recognize and understand that we are all connected and how we can work together to build and do things that make all of us greater and safer.

So with that, I end my report.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez for that report.

Any questions?

Okay, hearing none, Council Member Juarez, thank you so much for sharing the news about our Seattle Public Library system.

Congratulations to Chief Librarian Turner and to all of the Seattle Public Library public employees who make it possible for the Seattle Public Library to be considered in such high regard both here at home and and nationally.

So just want to send my note of gratitude to M.T.

and to his entire mighty team of folks who continue to play such an important role through our Seattle Public Library system.

And thank you so much again for sharing with us a bit of good news.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Okay.

Next up is.

Yeah, of course.

Next up is Council Member Lewis.

Thank you so much, Madam President.

it is there is so much on practice week uh...

on the job right into it uh...

there's no uh...

matters from the select committee on homelessness strategies investments on introduction referral or on today's afternoon uh...

might did last week introduced in circulate a resolution condemning the threat made by president trump last monday a week ago it seems like a lifetime ago on June 1st to use the 1807 Insurrection Act to send United States military forces to American cities to bring order to the cities, Seattle probably being included on his list.

I'll come back to that resolution later after covering a few other matters of business.

First, I want to state that I was really proud last week to join my neighbors and a number of colleagues here at several demonstrations against the systemic racial injustices in American policing.

on Monday, June 1st, Tuesday, June 2nd, Saturday, June 6th, which went into the morning of Sunday, June 7th, and then again on Sunday, June 7th at Othello Park, where I know a number of my colleagues were as well.

I was deeply saddened to see that several of those demonstrations, particularly on June 1st and 2nd, ultimately ended after being met with excessive and disproportionate force by the Seattle police.

And I join many of my colleagues here in condemning the use of those weapons of war on our streets, and I agree that we must ban them entirely.

I believe such legislation is necessary, given that we saw what looked like more tear gas than in any previous instance last night.

And that was only a few days into what was supposed to be a 30-day ban.

And let's just be clear about this conversation.

In the most progressive city in this country, Should we even be having a debate or discussion about the wisdom of deploying tear gas in the densest residential neighborhood in the entire state?

And I know I'm echoing what has been said many times by my colleagues already.

And I joined several colleagues here in stating that I'm fully prepared and ready to vote for legislation to ban this weapon and have been since last week and have tweeted about it, sent emails about it.

This is a weapon that our federal government will not sell to Hong Kong because they're concerned that Hong Kong will use it for the exact same purpose we are using it right now on demonstrations.

I completely favor banning this weapon by law once and for all.

I further support Councilmember Mosqueda, the roadmap that you've laid out to have a conversation around demilitarization and reductions in funding to accomplish that task of demilitarization.

I fully agree that we need to have I think that is something more than reform around the edges.

Reform around the edges is not good enough.

A systemic problem is going to require systemic change.

I have many other proposals to address inequity and injustice in our criminal legal system, and I'll be pursuing those in the coming weeks, and I look forward to working with all of you to make them a reality.

I want to give a shout out to moving on from the demonstrations to Camila Brown in my office who helped organize the march and violence in Othello Park yesterday.

She had told me that they were tentatively, cautiously expecting maybe 500 folks to show up and boy, I mean, it was really inspiring to see the presence of thousands of my neighbors and I know Council Member Strauss.

Morales were there as well.

We were not able to meet up because it was so crowded.

We could not find each other.

But I was really proud to stand alongside them, as well as my staff, Jacob Thorpe, Parker Dawson, and Catherine Sims, in addition to Camila, who were there.

And it was a great job.

It was a very powerful event.

And I salute everyone that put work into that massive peaceful demonstration yesterday afternoon.

I also want to recognize that Councilmember Strauss, Herbold, Mosqueda, and I did rush to the barrier at 11th and Pine on Saturday evening at the urging of community members to help deescalate another potential use of force.

I particularly want to recognize Councilmember Herbold, who I believe, just based on what I witnessed, was very instrumental in to move their line back 10 feet to deescalate the situation and prevent another use of force.

And I was proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with all of you in addition to Senator Joe Nguyen, Representative and I think our presence did do a lot of good.

I do want to recognize Council Member Sawant that your experience last night unfortunately does show that our presence alone is not enough to always deescalate the situation.

Um, when I saw what happened to you last night, I was extremely saddened, um, to see, uh, that just our presence alone as elected officials is not sufficient.

Um, you know, I, I am not bringing up the experience, um, of our, um, of myself and my colleagues on Saturday night to in any way imply that your presence would not have a de-escalating effect.

But I am bringing up the fact that it does show, unfortunately, that our presence alone is not always going to be enough.

And that is more evidence that we need to be pursuing I think we need to take action through our legislative powers to provide that safer guarantee to peaceful demonstrators.

Everyone who has been out there to put themselves in between the police line and the demonstrators has my utmost respect.

I want to call attention to the letter of elected officials being distributed, calling for changes in the funding tactics and makeup at the police department.

I am definitely prepared to sign that letter.

I actually also distributed it to everybody, not realizing that Council Member Herbold was going to do the same thing.

So I will ascribe my signature to that letter through a roll call vote this afternoon.

I also just want to publicly say I strongly and unequivocally support Council Member Kerbold's letter to urge the law department to withdraw its opposition to King County's inquest reforms.

I think that is a very necessary step and I look forward to signing that letter as well.

So this brings me back to the resolution that I submitted.

I think all of us can agree that the last thing we need in the city of Seattle is the presence of the United States military to manage these ongoing peaceful demonstrations.

This resolution is drafted to signal in very strong terms to the Trump administration that there is no chance whatsoever that they will receive the necessary majority vote of the city council to allow federal troops in our city under the terms of the Insurrection Act of 1807. In fact, this resolution will preemptively rebuke any such attempt to deploy federal troops to our city.

And it's a very real possibility, depending on the longevity of these demonstrations, that this threat that was made by the president last week will continue to be pursued by the federal administration.

And I think the earliest and most unequivocally we can say that the majority of this council will not assent to it, which would be a legal requirement to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, is something that we need to make clear to prevent any unconstitutional assumption of force of our United States military in the streets being used against American civilians.

we will not be bringing that up for vote this afternoon.

and we will continue to do that.

With that, colleagues, I have no further updates.

I really look forward to continuing to work with all of you this week and beyond and appreciate all of your leadership in these difficult times.

hearing none, we'll go ahead and move over now to Council Member Morales, please.

Hi, good afternoon now, everyone.

I want to first thank my colleagues who were out this weekend.

I think it is important for us to show up and understand that we aren't always going to have the impact that we're looking for necessarily, but it is still important for us to be there.

I also want to thank my colleagues who did come out and joined us here in District 2 yesterday.

I attended the We Want to Live rally here in my district.

Estimates are that there were about 5,000 neighbors here who peacefully marched without a single police officer in sight.

And I believe that, in part, they weren't present here because self-protection of their own resources is what's at stake in Capitol Hill.

And that wasn't the case here.

But we didn't have a single officer in sight.

And we had, as other council members have said, a very joyful afternoon and a powerful afternoon listening to the diversity of our community come together in solidarity to say that we are not gonna tolerate police brutality.

racial inequality in our community any longer or in our country any longer.

It's clear that we can have public safety without centering the police.

And it's time that we ask ourselves who we are as a city.

Instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on police overtime and crowd control tactics that harm our community members, we have to invest in black lives.

And I will say that we won't always have the answers.

You know, right now, we don't necessarily know what it means to dismantle a police department, but we have to commit as policymakers to asking ourselves some really important questions.

You know, what does a world with no police look like?

How do we redefine safety to focus on the well-being of our neighbors?

And what does it mean to invest in black lives?

The city council is hearing from thousands of people.

I think my personal inbox is up to about 6,000 just since Saturday.

We're hearing from people about the changes they want to see in funding, in structure and systems, and certainly in leadership.

You know, when the mayor says that we don't need police escalation, and then hours later, the department releases a fog of gas in a dense residential neighborhood, when she proposes a new commission to address the problem of police brutality, um, the, the tone deafness of that response really means as, as council member Mosqueda said, and council member, someone had said, you know, perhaps it's time for her to consider resigning.

I do want to say though, now more than ever, it's important that we center black voices in our deliberations about how to proceed.

And I do want to acknowledge that the Black community is not monolithic.

There are many organizations that represent the community.

Some are very comfortable with the access to power that they have.

Some represent more radical perspectives.

And all of that is okay.

But it's important that we're transparent about who we're working with.

At the district, at the rally in my district yesterday, here's what I heard from Black community leaders who spoke.

including Joaquin Garrett and Nikita Oliver.

Invest in Black land ownership.

Invest in violence prevention.

Invest in healthy communities, and that means housing that's affordable, well-paying green job opportunities, high quality education, digital equity, access to healthy food, clean water, places to play and rest, I also did hear loud and clear that we need to cut the police department budget in half.

For far too long, the department, under the shield of public safety, has not supported workers, has exploited labor laws to support racialized violence, and has resisted accountability measures that do not serve our neighbors, all with taxpayer dollars.

I heard yesterday that the changes that we need are structural.

We need to change the institution of policing.

Transforming the social contract with our community to reimagine the way that we provide community based programs and services.

This is gonna be a heavy lift, there's no doubt about it, and it will require our focus.

But I think we're up to the task and I'm really happy to hear so many council members committed to doing that work.

I know there's also many calling for the eight can't wait actions that are supported by campaign zero.

And I wanted to say that the problem is that we already have many of the policies in place in Seattle that they're calling for.

And we still have a problem with police brutality.

We have de-escalation strategies in place.

We have a use of force continuum already.

But none of these have mattered over the last week, as we have seen so clearly from our department.

That's why we're talking about defunding the police by 50%.

and instead investing in our communities.

Because our previous attempts to legislate a more just, a less racist police department have been met with resistance for far too long.

The last thing I want to say, I want to mention a letter that has been sent by the Race and Social Justice Initiative co-leads from across the city.

These are the staff members in different city departments who are charged with helping implement and put into place race and social justice principles in the city.

So part of what they've said in this historic moment, many of these co-leads who are collectives of racial justice advocates, as well as other RSGI leaders and racial affinity groups in the city sent a letter to the mayor And the letter calls on her to respond to community demands to defund and demilitarize the Seattle Police Department.

They call on her to fund community-based health and safety programs and significantly increase police accountability.

So finally, the letter does identify some specific actions to help make the demands for systemic change a reality.

And I just wanna read through some of those demands.

A long-term hiring and recruitment freeze for police officers as part of the defunding the budget by 50% or more.

A community-led racial equity analysis of SPD's budget that identifies specific city investments in alternatives to policing that advance public health and safety goals.

Creating and enforcing de-escalation protocols specific to protests and eliminating the use of so-called less lethal weapons that create an environment that engenders violent confrontation, renegotiating the SBD union contract to increase accountability, addressing one of the biggest barriers to systemic change, and a call for the mayor to acknowledge her own whiteness and complicity in systemic racism, and to take principled, consistent, and accountable actions for racial justice.

The demands presented in this letter are intended to serve as a starting point for ongoing and transformational actions by the mayor and by all city staff that support the call to action from black people and other people of color in our community who are most impacted by structural racism.

As I said before, I'm excited to work with my colleagues to change the oppressive systems that we have in our community and to stand in solidarity with our black and brown neighbors.

And I'm looking forward to the work that we're about to begin.

That's all I have.

Thank you, Councilmember Morales for those words and for reading from that letter.

Really appreciate it.

Any questions or comments on that report, colleagues?

Okay, seeing and hearing none, we will go ahead and conclude today's report.

Actually, before I go, I got a note from Councilmember Mosqueda that she forgot to mention something on her committee report.

So, Councilmember Mosqueda, if you're still with us, now could be a good time to do that.

But I'm not seeing your video feed come up, so I'm going to shift over to Councilmember Herbold, who I saw raise her hand.

And you're on mute.

I just got some late breaking news about the Public Safety and Human Services Committee meeting that I referenced earlier in the meeting.

The OPA and OIG have requested that we postpone and reschedule their appearance because of their capacity limitations given the amount of work that they're that they're doing right now.

I am understanding of that request and understanding of the need for them to prioritize that work.

And for that reason, we are going to be actually canceling the Public Safety and Human Services Committee meeting.

Thank you for that notice.

Really appreciate it.

Council Member Mosqueda, would you like to button up your report before I conclude today's meeting?

Councilmember Escamillo, there you are.

Thank you, Council President.

I'm looking for my notes.

Council colleagues, we do have one item on today's full council agenda that I forgot to mention just a moment ago.

If you bear with me really quickly, I will pull that up.

On today's full council agenda, colleagues, we have Council Bill 119802. This is a transfer of the UW Laundry facilities to the city.

This legislation authorizes the city to accept at no cost the transfer of property at UW Laundry site for the Laundry site near Mount Baker light rail station from the University of Washington for the purpose of development of affordable housing along with other potential educational research and clinical uses including early learning facility.

This is an extremely exciting opportunity for transit-oriented affordable housing, co-located with other important community amenities and services.

The legislation introduced today is routine legislation that just accepts the property.

Office of Housing will initiate a community engagement process this year to inform the plan.

for the eventual project.

There is a timeline for the city to act on this legislation now in order to align with the state's requirement that the University of Washington transfer this property to the city by June 30th.

So because of that, we are working with the council president's office on securing time on the Monday, June 15th, Monday, June 16th for council briefing from the office of housing and FAS to come and present on the legislation and hoping for a vote on June 22nd.

So let me correct the statement is not on full council agenda today.

It's on the introduction and referral to council today.

And I just wanted to flag that document for you.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Any questions on that piece of legislation?

Okay, great.

Colleagues, I will conclude today's council briefing by giving a quick report from me.

There is an item of action from my office on this afternoon's agenda.

I circulated this last week on Thursday, so it included a memorandum that was explaining proposed resolution 31947, which would amend our standing committee schedule to suspend regular committee meetings between June 15th and July 17th.

This action, I believe, is necessary in order to allow the council and our council central staff to focus on efforts, to focus all of our efforts and resources on the challenging decisions before us regarding changes to the 2020 adopted budget, which we have had much conversation about, and Budget Chair Mosqueda already walked us through the roadmap of what we can expect in those conversations.

Again, I understand that a continued suspension of the regular committee schedule which has been effectively on hold since early March, has an impact on your work plans and your committee's workflow.

And while regular committee meetings will be suspended, it's not the case that all non-budget council business needs to end.

So the city obviously still faces many critical and time-sensitive matters that require our attention, and we will do our best to allow the council to take up those matters and I would just ask that you please alert me and central staff to any legislative items that you believe require council action in the next six weeks so that we can make a determination as to the best path forward for addressing those particular policies, whether it's through the regular city council meetings or through scheduling of a special committee meeting.

So I don't want to be completely the budget process.

I think this is absolutely necessary at this have all hands on deck and all resources available to plow through the many questions and conversations that will be facing us in the next six weeks.

So this resolution will be before us this afternoon.

I'm happy to answer any questions, but I do look forward to your support in making sure that we are effectively able to shepherd our limited resources and people power in this way to support the budget work that needs to occur over the next six weeks.

Colleagues, any questions about the resolution or any aspects of the memo that I circulated?

Okay, great.

I don't have anything else to report at this time, so if there isn't anything else for the good of the order, we can go ahead and conclude.

Anything else, colleagues?

Casein and hearing none, colleagues, that concludes our items of business for this morning.

We will now be adjourned, and I will see all of you at 2 o'clock p.m.

this afternoon.

For the viewing public, please be aware that our public comment period is now open.

It opened at noon p.m.

today.

You can go to www.seattle.gov forward slash council, and look for an opportunity to pre-register for public comment.

If you cannot give public comment today, you are always welcome to submit public comment to us via email at council, that's c-o-u-n-c-i-l at seattle.gov.

That's an email that goes to all nine of us.

And of course, you can call us.

Although I know that for many of my colleagues, and I'll include myself in this, our voicemail is completely full after this weekend.

And we are working really hard to clear out the backlog of those voicemails.

So email is gonna be a much more effective way of getting a hold of us and getting us your public testimony.

Again, you must pre-register for public comment.

If you intend to give public comment this afternoon, That pre-registration opportunity is now available on our website.

You can also find the link on our agenda, published agenda.

So with that being said, colleagues, we are adjourned and I will see you all at two o'clock.

Thank you so much.