Seattle City Council Finance & Housing Committee 7/20/22

and some housing committee meeting.

Today is July 20th, 2022. The time is 9 33 AM.

Madam clerk, will you please call the roll?

I'm Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the committee.

Will you please call the roll Madam clerk?

Council member Herbold.

Excused.

Council member Peterson.

Present.

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Lewis.

Present.

Madam Chair Mosqueda.

Present.

Madam Chair, that is four present and one excuse.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

I want to thank all of you who are joining us virtually here today.

There's a few folks in person.

We do have a a full agenda for today.

I wanna make sure that folks continue to monitor the COVID cases.

We are now seeing hospitals at about 130, 135% capacity, which means that as reported out by the Washington Hospital Association and others, those who have other emergencies, maybe it's a gunshot or maybe it's an acute, health issue that's come up.

Folks are being turned away because the number of folks at the COVID crisis level, they're being asked to wait longer.

And this means that COVID, which is entirely preventable with masks, with vaccinations, with social distancing, needs to continue to be adhered to, and I wanna further emphasize the importance of the responsibility we all have to respond as if it was early COVID.

Right now rates are higher at this level of variant than they were at any level with the Delta case, which was a very concerning number of exposures.

So that's the reason we continue to do masking here.

And that's the reason that I continue to encourage all of our participants who would usually be at the table to join us virtually.

I do wanna make sure that we have public comment.

And before we get into public comment, I'm gonna summarize what's on our list.

As you may note, we and Council Member Lewis, I would invite you to speak to this as well.

We do have one item that is not on our agenda.

We were gonna consider a resolution from Council Member Lewis today related to, I'm gonna just call it ethical supply chain.

You can correct me Council Member Lewis, the appropriate title.

It's not in my notes anymore, but we're gonna hold that for our next meeting to make sure that we get a little bit more feedback and have a chance to work through some of the policy questions, but really appreciate the concept behind that.

So today's agenda does include the FAS Columbia City snippet property disposition for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Council Bill 120367, an ordinance accepting the gift of a Harvard government, performance lab fellow for briefing discussion and possible vote.

We have two bills related to the supplemental budget.

This includes Council Bill 120365, which is the supplemental budget and Council Bill 120366, which is the grant acceptance ordinance.

This will be for briefing discussion and possible vote.

There are three amendments that I'm aware of.

So we will see if we can get through all three.

And if we have the ability to vote today, that would be excellent.

And then lastly, we have cannabis equity.

This is an item that we had three times the beginning of this year, at least three times, and really appreciate the mayor's office for their participation in today's briefing and discussion on concepts related to cannabis equity and the research that they've been doing with their departments and also with community.

Council Member Lewis, is there anything else that you'd like to note about resolution 32060, the sustainable procurement resolution?

We will have it on our agenda at another date and apologies for the item being held over.

No, Council Member Mosqueda, thank you for raising that.

We're looking at how to reconcile that resolution with some of the existing city procurement policies.

And whether that resolution is even necessary at this point to represent what the city's policy is.

So we may be able to save the committee and the dock at some time based on continuing to look at what the implications of the resolution would be on current policy.

Stay tuned for that and we will see what that portends for the hearing in two weeks.

Excellent.

Well, thank you very much Council Member Lewis for your work on that.

And I know it's something at the state level you and I had been, I think working in the halls of Olympia at the same time when there was a similar type of resolution related to state procurement.

So appreciate you making sure that we are at least adhering to it and if not having something ready to go.

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

Hearing no objection, the items on the agenda are adopted.

We're gonna go ahead and go with public comment.

And Madam Clerk, do we have the video teed up for today's presentation?

Great, you will go ahead and, excuse me, you will hear the video outlining the presentation for remote public comment and in-person public comment.

We will take folks who are online first and then go to the folks in the room.

And Madam Clerk, you can go ahead and tee that up now.

The city of flowers and the city of goodwill, built on indigenous land, traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.

The Seattle City Council welcomes remote public comment from residents of our city.

If you would like to be a speaker and provide a verbal public comment, you may register two hours prior to the meeting via the Seattle City Council website.

Here's some information about the public comment proceedings.

Speakers are called upon in the order in which they registered on the council's website.

Each speaker must call in from the phone number provided when they registered online and used the meeting ID and passcode that was emailed upon confirmation.

If you did not receive an email confirmation, please check your spam or junk mail folders.

A reminder, the speaker meeting ID is different from the general listen line meeting ID provided on the agenda.

Once a speaker's name is called, the speaker's microphone will be unmuted and an automatic prompt will say, the host would like you to unmute your microphone.

That is your cue that it's your turn to speak.

At that time, you must press star six.

You will then hear a prompt of, you are unmuted.

Be sure your phone is unmuted on your end so that you will be heard.

As a speaker, you should begin by stating your name and the item that you are addressing.

A chime will sound when 10 seconds are left in your allotted time as a gentle reminder to wrap up your public comments.

At the end of the allotted time, your microphone will be muted and the next speaker registered will be called.

Once speakers have completed providing public comment, Please disconnect from the public comment line and join us by following the meeting via Seattle Channel broadcast or through the listening line option listed on the agenda.

The council reserves the right to eliminate public comment if the system is being abused or if the process impedes the council's ability to conduct its business on behalf of residents of the city.

Any offensive language that is disruptive to these proceedings or that is not focused on an appropriate topic as specified in Council rules may lead to the speaker being muted by the presiding officer.

Our hope is to provide an opportunity for productive discussions that will assist our orderly consideration of issues before the Council.

The public comment period is now open, and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

Please remember to press star six after you hear the prompt of, you have been unmuted.

Thank you, Seattle.

Excellent.

Thank you so very much.

I am gonna go ahead and actually go to some folks in the room.

We have some folks from Black Excellence in Canvas and Emerald City Collective.

So we're gonna go ahead and take folks in the room first in the following order.

Peter Manning, Alex Zimmerman, and then Mike Asai.

I hope I pronounced that right.

And you have two minutes to speak.

Welcome, Mr. Manning.

And just before you begin, let me confirm that your microphone is on.

And maybe the folks from IT or Seattle Channel can let us know if you want to do a quick mic check again.

Can you hear me?

There we go.

Excellent, thank you.

Yeah, I'd like to thank the council for giving me the opportunity to speak.

I am with Black Excellence in Cannabis.

I used to belong to a collective garden by the name of Bella's Light.

We had a dispensary here in the city of Seattle in 2011 until 2016. We were forced to close as a result of David Mendoza and Ed Murray's enforcement.

And you know, this, it was, I personally believe that it was an attack on all Black-owned dispensaries, because if you look at it, there's not one person, one organization that is here today in the city of Seattle that is Black-owned.

And prior to Murray coming up with his policies in the state, there was 20, known dispensaries that were owned by blacks in this city.

And it was beautiful.

We had a way to provide for ourselves.

There was no hassle.

There was nothing there.

It was beautiful.

It was no problems.

We didn't have a problem with the city.

Then all of a sudden Murray came in and he just with this draconian type measures, crackdown on us.

And as a result, now we have zero own stores here in Seattle.

And Seattle has to take some type of responsibility for that, because if you read the newspaper articles, if you read just the the blueprint on how it transpired there was no way black people could have survived that with the onslaught of the city government here this city government did that and that's not fair to us i have been fighting literally since 2014 until this current day to get inclusion here in the state of Washington.

I've been, I've had articles posted to me in the Washington Post.

I've been on Cairo 7. I am most definitely Black Excellence in Cannabis as a structure here that you guys may know.

I think we need to work on change.

I think that you guys need to pull in those organizations, touch out those, touch, those people that were affected that have legitimate dispensaries and bring them back to the table and give them a way in to this cannabis industry in the city of Seattle.

Thank you very much.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

And we will follow up with you.

Next on the list is Alex Zimmerman.

I want to speak about agenda number 10, about money, what is supposed to be accepted.

I think this money needs to be accepted.

us housing you know what does mean because many people not have housing i like you council mosquito you couple year ago talk we need a 250 000 housing i'm totally agree with you but i don't totally confuse why you did for last couple year rent double, all black, Latina, poor, out from city.

So if on one side you're talking about 250,000, from another side you're talking about out from city, all minority and poor.

Very nice principle you have.

So my question right now, maybe you can something doing about this 25,000 apartment who empty in Seattle Every year, year by year, Seattle Times print about this many times.

How is this possible?

Poor people go out, thousand people move out.

You know what it means?

Seattle only for aristocrat.

You don't do nothing.

You only talking, talking, talking.

How many year you need talking and talking and don't do nothing?

Look price, only for last year after corona, price jump by 50 percentage.

I have this in court right now hearing.

That's exactly what you did with minority, with poor.

Seattle is a place for aristocrats who make $100,000.

How is this with people who make only $40,000, or $30,000, or senior citizen?

Yeah, we need 250,000 housing.

We need 250,000 housing.

We need 250,000 housing.

You repeat this for many years, but you're doing exactly opposite.

So stand up, Seattle, freaking idiot.

Clean this dirty chamber.

And the next person is Mike Asai.

Good morning, Mr. Asai.

Good morning, City of Seattle Council.

My name is Mike Asai.

I am with Emerald City Collective Gardens.

We were the first downtown medical cannabis collective in 2010, as I can show you here.

We were the second black owner in Washington State.

I'm here today, and I understand, I found out about the mayor's social equity in cannabis, which is great, but it's late.

And I understand Bruce Harrell just got here.

I am a victim.

I am one of the many victims of the former Ed Murray's council.

This man here, former Mayor McGinn, as you can see here, was in support of medical cannabis.

In 2011, he signed ordinance number 123661, which really solidified medical cannabis here in the city.

It should have gave us a grandfather clause.

As it was stated before, former Mayor Ed Murray, along with many of his people, eradicated cannabis here in the city, and a lot of them were black owned.

We should have been grandfathered in.

We've been closed for six years now.

Myself, my family, my son has been deeply affected.

There's zero black ownership in the city of Seattle.

There is zero black ownership in King County.

There is barely 1% in the state of Washington.

The city of Seattle owes me and owes people like us.

reparations, reconciliation.

It's been painful to see.

It's been painful to deal with.

We did nothing wrong.

We were fully licensed.

We paid our taxes.

We were in compliance.

We never had an issue with local enforcement, state enforcement, any enforcement whatsoever.

Thank you for your time.

And I hope that we can have something that's going to make a change and bring Emerald City Collectives back in the city of Seattle.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

That concludes the number of folks that we have signed up for public testimony in the room and really appreciate the comments we've heard.

We talk a lot about reparations from the harmful effects of the war on drugs.

We haven't heard so much about reparations from the harmful effects of policies that were just 10, 12 years ago.

So thank you for bringing that up as we think about this item, which is gonna be just for briefing today, conceptual concept or conceptual presentation.

So there'll be more opportunities to get into the weeds, pun intended.

So with that, Madam Clerk, I don't see anybody on the list for online sign up.

Is there any additional people?

David Hines.

Oh, excuse me, David Hines, please go ahead.

You do have two minutes and we appreciate you hanging on here.

And David, if you'd like to push star six.

Hello, can you hear me?

Now I can hear you, David, thanks for your patience.

Hi.

Yeah, David Ames, District 7. We only legalized proper grown marijuana.

We should have had police reform that better trained the cops to focus on shutting down the crack meth and heroin.

Yet for some reason, we have politicians who are going out of their way to codify unconstitutional treasonous laws that exempt evil drug pushers who are committing crimes against humanity.

and they're listed low level misdemeanor.

Now I called in because the oversight on the budget dictates what the government invest in and does and the policies that it supports.

And we've needed and expected the homeless crisis to be solved and the lack of capacity that has not really truly been put forth in a diligent, honest effort.

And I'm asking council to reconsider their I dare say bad policy of redirecting all those American rescue plan dollars that were specifically earmarked to alleviate the oppression of people who are suffering a lack of, shall we say, like congregate shelter and proper interpretation of like living in a personal private space that isn't overwhelmed by other people's custom violating spit spray like concerns.

And yet, We don't have enough money or expertise to rapidly solve a homeless crisis that will not solve the homeless problem so much, but it will alleviate the unnecessary suffering of innocent people who are racially discriminated against by the policies that council created and the people that they pay within the nonprofits who are judging skin color and refusing to judge the character of a criminal.

It's like, anyway, you all keep trying to censor the truth and you're undermining our community.

And this is a public service volunteer job that you think you're entitled to destroy our society.

You don't have the proper policies.

You don't have the proper like truth to alleviate the evil that is conducting uncivil war in my community in Pioneer Square every single night.

And yet, You just kind of discount us like, well, you don't have to put up with it.

Thank you, David.

Okay, colleagues, that does conclude the number of folks who've signed up for public comment.

We are going to now go ahead and move on to the items of business on our calendar.

I'll go ahead and read in item number one.

Item number one on our agenda is council bill 120371. This is the FAS Columbia city snippet property disposition.

And we're going to have about 15 minutes for this.

I want to welcome Karen Gruen and Charles Mason of the office of housing and Tracy Roscoe from central staff.

And do we have everybody that we need in the zoom?

Let me just double check here.

I see Tracy and Karen.

and Charles, okay, I think we have a full lineup.

Before I turn it over to central staff, I had to walk us through this and then we'll turn it over to the Office of Housing.

I wanted to note how excited I am about this piece of property.

This is a small but important piece of legislation that will convey a small property snippet, but will have a large impact in helping create more affordable housing.

This property transfer is completely in line with our surplus lands policy, our land disposition policy and follows the precedent established over the last several years.

In 2019, we passed legislation to make sure that we are prioritizing city owned land and city light owned property for affordable housing with an emphasis on community driven projects.

and also pairing services with community and cultural spaces, childcare amenities, making sure that we are creating a space for folks as we also build housing for folks.

And this was really intended to be a displacement mitigation strategy as well.

This project by El Centro de la Raza fits that description to a T.

It is cited in, excuse me, it is family size units, childcare space, a play area, community space for worship and more.

And since we passed the land disposition policy in 2018, several properties have been conveyed at no cost for affordable housing.

This includes an, in the central area, in Finney Ridge, in Loyola Heights.

And this piece of property, you might look at it on the map when we take a chance to walk through it.

You might think it looks much smaller than the previous properties, but it does allow for that precedent and helps us move forward at this amazing affordable housing project with space for childcare, a play area and more.

So this is a great example of how we're using every parcel, including this small piece of public property that would otherwise just sit there and turning it into land that can increase the number of affordable housing units.

And in addition to that, create a sense of place by building through the lens of El Centro, enabling the project to move forward and increase community ownership.

and anti-displacement strategies.

So that is the background to a pretty wonky title for this legislation.

And I'm really excited because this is one of the projects that is receiving an award from our Jumpstart Housing Fund.

And we will be highlighting the full list of all of the affordable housing projects that received Jumpstart funding in 2022 on Thursday.

There will be a press conference highlighting the full list for the first time.

But this is one of those, so early preview.

Madam, Madam Tracy Resklet from Central Staff.

I'd love to turn it over to you to provide additional context and then we'll turn it over to the Office of Housing.

Council Member Nugent, as always, a very good job of providing good background information and context for this transaction.

Just to add that one of the other changes we made to the disposition policies was to say that if we were to sell properties and not transfer to affordable housing providers, that the proceeds from sale of city properties properties would go into the low-income housing fund and this legislation in fact proposes to do that very thing because we do have a portion of the property here that will be available for a market rate transaction or transfer in addition to the part that will go to El Centro on De La Rosa and I'll let FAS folks and OH folks give you more details about the legislation and those pieces in particular.

Okay, thanks.

Before we do that, I just want to signal for our folks at IT or for Seattle Channel, if we could toggle the image of the person speaking to the person in the Zoom who's doing the presentation, that would be wonderful.

Thank you so much.

And for folks at home who are wondering who that voice was, it was not mine.

I do have my mask on.

My mouth was not moving.

That was Tracy Ratz but from central staff.

Thanks for the overview, Tracy.

So let's go ahead and turn it over to Karen and Charles from the Office of Housing, and thanks to Seattle Channel and our IT team for making sure that this virtual presentation is being projected.

Please go ahead.

All right, good morning, everyone.

My name is Charles Mason from the Office of Housing.

I'm a strategic advisor here, and I will let my colleague, Karen from FAS, introduce herself while I bring up the PowerPoint.

Good morning, everybody.

I'm Karen Gruen.

I'm with FAS and the Director of Real Estate Services and happy to partner with Charles on this transaction.

Wonderful, thank you.

And I did get confirmation from folks that could see Tracy.

It was just on my screen that we couldn't see her.

So thanks so much for that update, everyone.

And thanks as always to IT and Seattle Channel.

Okay, please go ahead.

Good morning.

As I mentioned, I'm Charles Mason, a strategic advisor here from the Office of Housing, and my colleague Karen and I would like to talk about what we've been working on for the past couple of months related to a tiny parcel of land in Columbia City.

So we wanted to zoom out and start with the bigger picture here.

In 2021, OH, under its fall notice of funding availability round, awarded El Centro de la Raza approximately $11 million to create newly constructed affordable housing in Columbia City using local sources like levy And like Councilmember Esqueda mentioned, potentially jumpstart funding for this project as well.

The project will include 87 units serving households earning from 30 to 50 to 60% of area median income.

They'll have a mix of one, two, and three-bedroom units, as well as parking for the residents, childcare space, play areas, offices for Consejo Counseling, and a space for Columbia City Church of Hope, both organizations which currently occupy the site today.

And so just to give a little more background of who we've been working with, we've been working with FAS as they are the property owner of the site.

We've also been partnering with the city attorney's office as we are funding a portion of the development of this site.

We've also been partnering with the city attorney's office in terms of guiding us through the process of disposing of this property and SDCI to ensure that this property can be included with the neighboring as the future non-profit owner of the site and their development consultant, Beacon Development, as well as the neighboring property owner of the parcel to the north who will be purchasing their portion of the parcel.

Next, we'll give a little more context.

This parcel site is located about a block in off of Rainier Avenue South on South Angeline.

It's pretty diverse neighborhood, pretty transit-friendly area.

I will now pass it on to Karen to discuss some of the parcel specifics.

Thank you, Charles and yes, just to talk a little bit about the specifics.

This is a very small parcel.

We call it a snippet here internally at the city.

It's long and narrow as you see on the slide.

It is adjacent to some private property owners to the North and then to the area that El Centro de la Raza will be developing for housing to the South.

It's approximately three to five feet wide and approximately 110 feet long.

It is about 476 square feet.

And you can see it on the map there, but it's going to be divided into two sections.

The northern parcel would be sold to the adjacent private property owners and the southern parcel will be transferred for the housing development project.

Looking a little bit ahead at the timeline and just sharing that, we are working with council hoping to have council authorize the transfer and the sale in July and August of this year.

At the same time, we're working on the transfer agreement and the purchase and sale agreement.

Then from now until October, we will work with Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections on the lap boundary adjustment that we need to do.

We anticipate that the property would close, the transactions would close at the end of this year, 2022. In January of 2023, Office of Housing is planning on closing the loan.

Then between January 2023 and into the third quarter of 2024, we would have construction and then housing would open in the fall of 2024. So what we're doing today is beginning the process of seeking council authorization and asking for that action so that we can proceed.

And we're happy to take any questions that council may have today of either Charles or myself.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

So colleagues, I was gonna maybe put it in front of us to then ask some questions, and I see Council Member Nelson is up in the queue first, perhaps, okay.

Let's go ahead and put it in front of us, and then we'll take some comments and questions.

Colleagues, I move the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 120371. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you very much, Council Member Nelson.

So let's get into any discussion, any comments or questions.

Okay, looking that way, looking this way.

Okay, Council Member Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I'm very supportive of the project as presented to us today, and I had a comment and a question.

Normally I would prefer to see city-owned land provided to private entities or non-profit corporations as a long-term lease, like a 99-year lease for a dollar a year, just so we keep the land in the public in the public ownership.

In this case, though, looking at the map, it truly is a snippet of land.

It truly is not, it's not a traditional parcel.

It's just, as you showed in your map with the blue boundary, it's really just a little bit of that.

that sliver of land, so I support, in this case, how you're, the disposition of this particular, these two particular items, but just didn't want you to think that that meant I didn't continue to want most land to be transferred via a 99-year lease, which lenders view as ownership, frankly.

So that's my comment.

The question I have is, we don't have the benefit of having the district council member on this particular committee, but has the office of housing, are you, do you know that the district council member, district two supports this particular project?

Council member Morales?

Any projects in her district, so.

I will say I'm not aware if Council Member Morales supports or does not support this project at the moment that is currently handled by other folks in the office of OH.

I would believe that given some of the items and things that Council Member Morales has mentioned and supported before that she might support this, but I cannot speak to that directly.

Yeah, I know that all of us support building more low income housing.

I just, just as part of the typical due diligence, I always would want to check in with a district council member.

So I don't know if central staff is aware of that or not.

I'm not confident, but we certainly can draw this to the attention of Council Member Morales, who I actually think is going to be out.

She's in town now, but I think it's going to be out of town next week if this is going to be in front of a full council.

We'll make sure she knows about the legislation and the project.

Okay, great.

But it looks great to me.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Council Member Peterson.

I'm not seeing any additional questions over here either and none online.

So I'm going to go ahead and take that as indication of support as well.

I really want to thank you all for the work that you've done to really try to be flexible as we see additional organizations stepping up and stepping into the role of being developers to try to house their community and prevent displacement.

This is a great example of the flexibility that we were hoping for in the land disposition policies.

And it's also a great pairing of existing city funds through jumpstart and other funds to make sure that the vision of the community can actually come online.

So really excited about this moving forward and want to thank as well, the office of housing team who really got the funding for jumpstart, for example, out the door so quickly.

And again, we'll be featuring that full list on Thursday in a press conference.

So we'll make sure to let everybody know that, but this is really an opportunity to celebrate Office of Housing, as well as our central staff and the folks on our team.

Erin House and Stasia Preak, notably working on housing and the tax policy, respectively, and our efforts to try to make sure that more funding gets out the door.

So it'll be fun.

And this is great too.

We'll see you, El Centro, on Thursday.

If there's no additional comments or questions, I'm gonna go ahead and move this item, get in front of us.

Oh, it already has been in front of us.

Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll on the passage of the bill?

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Yes.

Madam Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you so much.

That is unanimous in our full committees today.

So the motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the July 26th Seattle City Council meeting for a final vote.

As you heard me say in full, excuse me, in council briefing the other day, I am not gonna be there.

So thanks to Council Member Lewis for stepping in and reporting on this item.

We'll make sure that you get my lengthy notes, unfortunately, but it's really exciting piece of legislation.

So thanks for your support in reading that out.

All right, colleagues, let's move into item number two on the record.

Madam Clerk, could you please read item number two into the record?

Agenda item number two, Council Bill 120367, an ordinance accepting the gift of a Harvard Government Performance Lab Fellow for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Okay, thanks so much.

And I see Ali Panucci, Deputy Director from Central Staff, on the line here with us.

This is an acceptance ordinance that was transmitted with the mid-year supplemental.

This bill accepts an in-kind gift to allow a Harvard Fellow to work with Finance and Administrative Services and the innovation team on the city's procurement and contracting processes.

Ooh, Council Member Lewis, we may wanna chat with this person.

And this is a relatively easy bill considering how complicated budget bills can be, but Ali, would you like to speak to this for us and orient us to the in-kind gift we're about to receive here?

Thank you, chair Mosqueda.

Good morning, councilmembers.

I'm Ali Panucci of your council central staff.

You mostly summed it up, I would just note.

So this would be, again, an in-kind gift.

This person would be a Harvard employee paid by Harvard and would provide staff resources for the purposes of working with our finance and administrative services department and the policy and innovation team in the city budget office to support the project focused on improving the city's procurement.

and contracting processes.

I'll just note that this in-kind gift complements a $500,000 grant acceptance that is included in the Mid-Year Grant Acceptance Bill that we'll be discussing next from Bloomberg Philanthropies that's split between FAS and CBO.

Together, those resources plus this fellow will support this ongoing project.

Is there any additional questions?

I have one question for you.

Have we confirmed that this fellow will be receiving compensation and benefits in line with the city's standards?

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, for the question.

I have confirmed that Harvard does pay their employees the starting pay for fellows in this program is about $85,000 plus benefits.

They will be compensated.

We did look at some comparative positions in the city and it is consistent with the midpoint starting point for several positions that I think would be similar to the work that this person would be doing.

Excellent, that's great.

Thanks for looking into that proactively and sure you knew that our office would be interested in that.

I think that that summarizes it.

I don't see any hands on the screen or in person.

So I move the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 120367. Is there a second?

Seconded by Council Member Nelson.

Thank you very much.

Any additional comments or questions?

Hearing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Yes.

Madam Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the July 26th Seattle City Council meeting as well.

We're moving right along.

Ali, I'm sure that that makes you happy because we have a lot to discuss on the supplemental budget.

Madam Clerk, could you please read items number three and four into the record?

agenda item number three, council bill 120365, and agenda number four, council bill 120366, an ordinance amending, I'm sorry, an ordinance authorizing 22 acceptance of funding from non-city sources, and an ordinance amending ordinance 126490, which adopted the 22 budget, including the 2022 to 2027 capital improvement program for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you very much, Farideh.

So we have items three and four in front of us, the supplemental budget and the grant acceptance ordinance.

Ali Panucci, deputy director at central staff and Tom Mikesell, our lead on everything finance and budgeting is here with us.

Let's go ahead and walk through both of these presentations.

I'm going to make sure that we have a lot of time for questions.

And there are a few amendments that we'll walk through as well.

You will recall colleagues that last year, one of the budget changes that I made as chair was to move away from the quarterly supplemental and grant acceptance ordinances.

It made no sense to pass budgets four times a year trying to amend our one year calendar year budget.

So what we've done instead is move to a mid-year supplemental that allows for us to truly attempt to get at a yearly budgeting and then have one supplemental.

This year, we have a pretty volatile budget situation, I would say.

There is high inflation, COVID variants, There is the Russian attack in Ukraine.

There is a lot of uncertainty in terms of whether or not there's going to be another recession on the horizon.

And as we've teed up, there's going to be the possibility of tough discussions and detailed scrutiny of the budget.

We will know more, we will know much more a month from now when the August revenue forecast comes together and three things happen.

We've asked for a full accounting from the city budget's office of any underspend from the beginning of 2022. We've asked for a full list of any of the federal and state dollars that were passed through the state legislature earlier this year, and also the federal dollars that are going to go to our region.

via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and some other federal activities.

And we've also asked for a full accounting of any possible general fund revenue adjacent streams that might have some flexibility.

And there's a few in there, not just one.

So we don't want to go to those general fund revenue adjacent streams or take any actions to decrease services until we see those full pictures, the revenue forecast, the underspend from last year and any additional state and federal dollars that might be available to our residents.

And so with that, this effort that we have today is really about making sure that we are moving forward with a supplemental budget and ensuring that we have strong oversight over the budget.

As usual, I strongly recommend and welcome any council members who are not part of this committee to go ahead and engage during the supplemental budget process.

And some council members who are not on our committee in finance and housing have offered some amendments.

We are happy to bring those forward for the purposes of discussion.

and to make sure that everybody's voice is heard in these conversations as we consider the supplemental.

But I just wanted to, again, lift up for folks that this is just the supplemental for the latter half of this year and the broader conversation, the picture we've been painting about the issues on the horizon, more information will be known about that in a month from now as we get the fuller picture from the revenue forecast and those other revenue streams that I mentioned.

Tom and Ali, thanks for the work that you've done on the supplemental budget.

We have your memo, really appreciate the memo outlining changes in the supplemental and grant acceptance ordinance, and I'll turn it over to you to walk us through the items in front of us.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I am going to share my screen with a presentation that was not posted to the agenda, but does just reflect information that is outlined in the memo.

This is just for ease of guiding the conversation today.

And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Tom to walk you through the discussion today.

Thank you, Deputy Director Panucci.

Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the committee, Tom Mixell with your central staff.

This morning building off the chair's introduction of what we're talking about today.

We are discussing specifically Council bills one 2 0 3 6 5. The media grant acceptance ordinance and Council bill one 2 0 3 6 6 which is some adjusting the 2020 adopted budget to supplemental changes.

As as Ali direct that the director community mentioned There is a staff memo that has been made available.

This presentation is really pulling out the high points from that memo will reference back to the memo.

As as I'm able for further detail.

They'll also welcome any questions about that or that I don't touch in the presentation that are in the memo and further any additional items that are within the bill that are not that are not specifically mentioned in either place.

Referring to page 1 of the memo, one of the steps that staff is endeavoring to do is do a consistent tracking of the budget changes that are brought to council and to the Finance and Housing Committee during the year.

Earlier in the year, the committee and council received carry forward legislation from the executive.

Also, subsequent to that meeting, there have been additional pieces of legislation I total I count 9 in total and they are detailed on page one of the staff now I'm not going to cover those today.

In the interest of time.

However, this table on the slide shows you the the size of the change of adjustments that have been considered through 15th of July.

So in total the general fund adjustments, including carry forwards and other legislation passed today indicates a 12% change to the general fund budget.

Bring it up was a revised budget of one point approximately 1.8 billion dollars in terms of other funds so these are all the other city funds that provide services across the city.

It's a total increase of 34% bring in the revised budget to 7.5 billion dollars for a total us revised city budget of 9.2 billion dollars which is a 29% overall increase.

In reference to the specific bills, if we could look at the next slide.

I'm sort of going to take these in reverse order and discuss the supplemental budget changes and then follow with the grant acceptance.

Council Bill 120366 is the second comprehensive budget adjustment.

So when I say comprehensive, it's meaning that it's all encompassing covering requests from the array of city departments across the city.

with many different detailed changes included.

Also referencing back to the state law that provides authority for this type of change to an adopted budget, the city is allowed or is permitted to make mid-year appropriation changes to positions, capital budgets, and operating budgets for items and needs that are assumed to have been unforeseeable when the 2022 budget was adopted.

That is the legislative authority provided for this type of change.

In terms of the bill itself and the the magnitude of the change that is contemplated that would be approved.

With the adoption of this bill it would it would actually decrease the city budget by a total of a 129 million dollars.

However, one key point to make in considering that number is that a very sizable portion of technical budget adjustments are included in this bill.

in total $222 million of appropriation reductions are included that essentially constitute abandonment of capital appropriations and some grants that for which the work has been performed and there's no no cash behind them and it's essentially the department saying they they can they can to fill their job objectives for the year without having that budget authority so it's it's really a technical adjustment.

The The detail on that is discussed on page 2 of the memo.

And after netting that out, you can see that the supplemental budget request would increase the budget by a total of $93.4 million.

Building off of the chair's comments about the dynamic budget situation and further on prior presentations to committee with regards to the general fund financial status, which indicated $117 million projected.

Difference between revenues and expenditures in the next year's budget to provide current services.

It's really a focus of what what this bill does to the general fund that that next to slide presentation will cover of the 93.4 million dollars the general fund would increase by approximately 54.6 million dollars.

And I realized as I said that not that number that it was a typo it's actually 52.6.

So that is not a mistake that it's correct in the memo but the presentation does not follow quarterly.

This slide shows the detailed items of that 50 to $2.6 million.

I'm opposed change and in the interest of understanding how it impacts the general fund given the the financial situation that has been described.

showing how it's paid for and what the various funding sources are within the general fund.

The first and largest change in the general fund is actually a replenishment of the city's Revenue Stabilization Fund, also referred to as the Rainy Day Fund, which is essentially a resource that is held for instances where due to adverse economic situations, forecasted revenues do not meet budget in the general fund.

So it provides essentially some financial support in the event of a future problematic economic situation.

So when it's raining, the fund is available to provide an umbrella, for lack of a better word.

During the COVID pandemic in 2020 and 2021, The city budget relied on resources from the Rainy Day Fund to meet budget objectives in those years, bringing the fund down to about $6 million at the end of 2021. The 2022 budget was programmed to start replenishing that Rainy Day Fund as the economy began to recover, with approximately $15.4 million budgeted for 2022 to start that replenishment plan.

As covered in May 4 presentation to finance and housing committee.

There was a fairly sizable year end and inbounds from last year's activity so expenditures that were lower than the budget projections and revenues that came in higher than forecast.

The the total unreserved general fund and the balance that carried into this year 2022 was about a 120 million dollars.

Ordinance one 2, 3, 7, 4, 3, and these details are covered at the bottom of page 2 of the memo that ordinance which established the fiscal policies for the the rainy day fund of the revenues stabilization fund indicate that in times when unreserved and in fact balances are available.

50% of that amount should shall go by or next to the replenish the rainy day fund.

Given that there's a $120 million available that indicates that on the order of 50 that really on the order of $60 million could go to the front, however, to fully replenish the fund only a total of 50 approximately $54 million is necessary to replenish the fund to its full maximum funding level in 2022. So in this table here.

There is a line which is $40.3 million which is paid for from that prior year ending balance and and adjust for the fact that the budget already included 15.4 million dollars for a rainy day transfer.

So this is the most sizable item from the general fund it's funded from prior year ending balance that this assumption was included in the financial projections that were discussed at committee in May 4 so there's no impact to the bottom line numbers that that were shared at that time.

So there is there's generally a no net impact from this to the general fund.

Tracking back to those projections from May 4th.

But there is a positive impact to the rainy day fund indicating that going into uncertain economic territory.

The rainy day fund will be fully replenished with this action.

The next item that I will cover is frontline worker pay and this is covered on the top of page 3 of the memo.

There was ordinance 126453 authorized the mayor to enter into agreements with collective bargaining agreements, including the Coalition of City Unions, Fire Local 27, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 77, which covered vaccination requirements and also provided $1,750 one-time payment prorated for whether a worker is full-time or part-time.

For any worker that was with the city providing service on-site from March 20th, 2020 through December 31st of 2021. An additional criteria was that the individual receiving the payment would have been on the city's payroll as of August 1st, 2021. That agreement was entered into with the bargaining units.

This appropriation here provides $5.9 million from the general fund to make those payments.

There is also another piece that was covered later in the memo, which is all the other city funds.

City Light Fund, IT Fund, Finance Administrative Services Fund, any fund that had staff during those time periods for which there is a payment that is due.

The total amount of the frontline worker payment is $9.4 million.

What you see here on this table is just the general fund piece.

Also referencing back to the May 4th, presentation.

This amount is part of the planning reserve.

So this is an executive managed not not appropriate account for where they have the reserve funds for potential future liabilities covering labor contracts and other and other items.

So the those monies were in essence set aside for this purpose and again there is no impact to the the estimated financial situation for 2023 as a result of this action given that the money was held in reserve.

Similarly.

But the bill would appropriate 2.5 million dollars to the finance general budget which is a holding account in the general fund for to to reserve funds for future purposes that they become become more real.

This is essentially providing 2.5 million dollars to pay for parking citations that were issued in 2021 by and by up enforcement officers to perhaps did not have the correct commission at that time issue those tickets.

So this is a 2021 obligation.

And it's similar to frontline worker pay was held in the plenty reserves managed by the executive for that potential liability.

The next item is $3.9 million, and so this touches on the Council Bill 120365, which I'll cover next.

It's basically the appropriation side for $3.9 million worth of grants that the city would accept from external entities.

Largest item in this group is $2.27 $2.27 million grant from the Washington Association of Sheriffs for Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, providing funding for salary and benefits for a deputy prosecuting attorney, overtime for detectives, and basic elements within SPD and the city attorney's office to staff that task force.

This is a regular grant that the city receives and is consistent with those past acceptances.

Also, there's $600,000 from Washington State Department of Transportation to OPCD for a public engagement process focused around reconnecting the South Park neighborhood, which is currently divided by State Route 99. The money provided from WSDOT would fund a plan produced by OPCD, which would be presented to the council and WSDOT about how to effectuate that connection of the South Park neighborhood.

That report will be due January 1st of 2025. And those are the largest items within that grouping.

Next item is actually reductions.

So this is places where there are budget reductions and to basically free up $2.7 million of general fund cash that is used for other items.

And actually I guess I'm talking about the other proposals will talk about that they have to ask first and then the reduction second.

The 2.7 million dollars is across several items the largest one is 1.1 million dollar increase in insurance costs paid from the general fund.

This is essentially taking our insurance bill from the general fund to 13.3 million dollars for this year which is an 8.7% increase.

I'm to insurance premiums on those and those premium increases are largely focused in our property and liability lines of business.

There's also a $500,000 increase in this other proposal line that 2.7 million dollars that would provide funding to the human services department for a just the for the development of a community health facility.

This item was actually added in the 2021 supplemental however it was not carried forward by the department And this essentially pulls that money back into play in the budget.

And it is intended to be combined with $1 million of general fund monies in the department that was added by a council budget action in the last year's budget adoption process.

Essentially, this provides money for the APACE funding facility, a total of $1.5 million.

All these items are detailed at the top of page four of the memo.

Next, the $2.7 million includes a $250,000 increase to HSD to expand access to reproductive health care through an enhanced investment in the Northwest Abortion Access Fund.

And then finally, a smaller item is a $175,000 increase to Seattle Center for winter premium pay during the winter season.

in December and January of this past year.

Basically for workers who are who are on site during those time periods.

And then finally as I mentioned there are 2.7 million dollars worth of reductions that provide the funding offset for that the additions that I just detail.

Largest one of those is a 1.6 million dollar reduction for items that were budgeted in 2022 from the general fund to the Department of Education early learning.

The items are detailed on page 4 of the memo include $500,000 for mental health services in schools.

$250,000 for an estimate of restorative justice programming $500,000 for cultural response after school programming and then $375,000 for programming for black girls and young women and black queer and transgender youth.

So that totals 1.1 6 1.6 million dollars.

And as I mentioned this was in the budget budget from the general fund this proposal would shift those those programs and services to the family education and preschool promise let me that that let me that is in this or by deal.

And essentially these would then be paid for from that that might be using balances in that fund.

And I would note that it was indicated by the executive that the funding shift was endorsed by the FEPP Levy Oversight Committee.

And then finally, in terms of large changes and large reductions, there's a $711,000 combined reduction to programs that were originally appropriated from the Coronavirus Relief Fund monies in the general fund that we have fully obligated and fully spent the Coronavirus Relief Fund monies I'm so these appropriations are essentially unnecessary to complete those those programs at this time.

So all told the total is 52.6 million dollars.

All of these items are either paid for through prior year ending balances reduction of managed planning reserves or grants grants accepted in in Council don't want to 3, 6, 5, 4, offsetting production so it's just essentially keep static the general fund projection that we discussed in May 4th.

So I will pause right there just to see if there are any questions.

That covers the supplemental focus.

The next topic I would discuss is actually the grant bill.

So I'll just pause and see if there are any questions.

Okay, thanks.

So we are on Council Bill 120366. correct, the supplemental?

I see one comment from Council Member Peterson.

Council Member Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I do wanna compliment the City Budget Office for their crafting of this mid-year supplemental ordinance.

Also, central staff for doing a terrific job breaking it down and building it back and then pointing out things that would be important to the City Council.

in making its decision on whether to amend or approve this supplemental.

I'm generally supportive of the mid-year supplemental and the amendments that I see before us today.

I do have a couple of questions about the two departments that are in my committee, Seattle Department of Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities for, Seattle Department of Transportation, in one of the attachments, it talks about amendments to the capital improvement program, and it's an attachment It's an attachment A, and there is a page there that talks about bridge seismic phase three.

So that is, for everybody in that capital improvement attachment, it's the second of 16 pages that have minor changes that are tracked in there.

And it looks like it's saying that the last sentence, 16 bridges are part of the current phase of the program, which is funded by the levy to move Seattle.

And then the executive is proposing to change that to strike 16 and put 11. And I think for the public and just to keep track of what's actually happening here is that 16 bridges were still, were originally part of the current phase of the program, but it has been amended to 11. And I think that's really important to just not wipe away or forget the 16 that were promised and to just be more specific.

So I'm noticing this right now, I was so focused on the dollar amounts that I didn't, notice this word change and so I may later make a voice amendment to just add a few words to this so that there's context that it's 16 bridges were part of this phase of the program, but it's been amended in 2022 to 11 bridges.

And then the second item.

Just on that point, Council Member Peterson, if you are interested in a verbal amendment to clarify for the record, if you don't mind, as we have this discussion, maybe just confirming with central staff the language, and then we'll work with our clerk and Amelia to make sure that we get that done before we leave committee today.

Yes.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Sure.

Thank you chair.

And so the other item is Seattle public utilities.

Uh, the, one of the largest dollar amount changes in the mid year supplemental is Seattle public utilities, uh, revising capital dollars that they need for their projects.

And, um, the term used is abandoned.

And so I was just hoping in your memo, uh, on in your memo, you talk about SPU, no longer needing the funds.

Could you just for the viewing public and get on the record here, how Seattle public utilities, uh, works on their capital improvement program.

And then they're not actually giving up $188 million, but it's just how they, they account for it.

Thank you for the question.

Um, So as I understand from the analysts to staff at a public utilities in our conversation about this specific change.

Seattle public utilities.

Actually appropriates the full amount of their capital need in each budget and so on which is somewhat different than how other departments manage if you're a reference back to earlier meetings of the finance and housing committee we discussed the discussions around the carry forward legislation, there was a significant amount of automatic carry forward, and a portion of which was capital appropriations for Seattle Public Utilities.

So essentially, because they fully appropriate what their capital need is for 2022, and then there's an automatic carry forward from prior year, which is a consistent process for all city departments, What they're essentially would be left with is a double count of their capital need for 2022, given the approach that they take to capital budgeting.

So this change in this bill essentially removes the automatic carry forward piece so that they're basically placing their capital budget appropriation for 2022 consistent with their need and wipes away the carry forward amount.

And again, it's just a different approach to capital capital appropriations but it's it's technically technically accurate and and that's and that's essentially what's going on with that large change.

Thank you.

Any additional comments.

Okay, additional comments or questions?

I do have a comment that I'd like to read into the record on behalf of Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Herbold is excused today, but she did want to note for Council Bill 120366, she wanted to highlight the inclusion of a quarter million dollars, $250,000 in the supplemental budget legislation to the Human Services Department to expand access to reproductive healthcare through the Northwest Abortion Access Fund.

The Guttmacher Institute predicts that with the disastrous overturn of Roe v. Wade, Washington State could see a 385% increase in patients from out of state seeking reproductive care here.

This is enough to flood clinics across the state, including right here in the city of Seattle.

Meanwhile, a recent poll showed not just strong support for abortion access here, and also found that 62% of Washington residents support efforts to help people from other states receive abortion access here in our state.

This is exactly what these funds will do.

In May, the Seattle City Council passed a resolution that called for adding funding to support abortion access this year.

After consulting with abortion access advocates and public health, Council Member Herbold offered an amendment to direct those dollars to the Northwest Abortion Access Fund, which provides logistical support, care, and safety for people seeking abortions here in Seattle from out of state.

Council Member Herbold notes, and I'll quote from her, I thank Council Member Harrell for answering Council's call by including $250,000 for Northwest Abortion Access Fund in the supplemental budget legislation transmitted to Council.

I call on my colleagues to swiftly approve this legislation with the full $250,000 included.

Thank you very much, Council Member Herbold, for your comments, and I agree.

Seeing no additional comments, either online or in person, I'm gonna go ahead and, oh, excuse me.

Excuse me, Tom.

Do you mind if we take action on this separate from the other bill and get this forward, or do we need to do them together?

Chair Mosqueda, if I might jump in here.

It's fine to take them up separately, but the three amendments are related to this bill.

So we can skip ahead to those slides if you want to take up those amendments first, but you'd want to consider the amendments before you move, take a final vote on the mid-year supplemental bill.

Okay, why don't we just go ahead and brief the other one?

I want to double check my notes as well.

So let's go ahead and brief the grant acceptance ordinance, please.

Thank you.

So Council Bill 120365, would be the first comprehensive grant acceptance bill for this year.

It would actually authorize city departments to accept approximately $67.6 million from external sources.

So of the total amount, 80% is from the Washington State Department of Social and Human Services for an array of HSD programs.

I would know there's a technical consideration in this acceptance and that is that approximately half of the grants that would be accepted into HST have been already appropriated in the 2022 adopted budget.

The appropriation authority for the grants for the second half of the grants would actually be requested in the supplemental bill that we previously discussed this is a new approach that is spearheaded by CBO FAS and HST and I just want to point that out since it is a new approach that they're taking with regards to accepting the grants.

I would note that staff has reviewed these various acceptances and did not flag any items of concern for the things that were accepted or that would be accepted it with passage of one to 0, 3, 6, 5, And that I believe it's covers My comments that the memo provides a bit more detail on some of the individual grants on pages.

It is 6 through 6 to 8 including a full table of the grant acceptance is by department which is a summary of the individual grant acceptance is that are included in the summary attachment to the ordinance.

So that concludes both discussions of both bills, and the next is with regard to the amendments to Council Bill 120366.

Got it.

Okay, I apologize, folks.

So I was looking ahead at the slide.

So the mid-year grant acceptance ends in 6-6, the supplemental budget bill ends in 6-5.

I'm back oriented, no, the other way, Tom?

Oh, wait, no, apologies.

Okay, that's okay.

So just for the purposes of making sure that we have amendments to the right bill, let's do this in chronological order.

The supplemental budget bill ends in 6-5.

Thumbs up?

Apologies, Council Member.

The grant bill is 3-6-5.

The supplemental is 3-6-6.

So that's a tight on that presentation.

That's okay.

Got it, okay.

Grant acceptance is 365.

That's correct, Chair Mosqueda, and if you wanted to, there are no proposed amendments to the grant acceptance bill, so you could go ahead and move and take action on that bill, and then we could discuss the amendments to Council Bill 120366, the Mid-Year Supplemental Budget Ordinance.

Okay, we'll go ahead and I'm just gonna keep them in order in which they are on my script here, which is 365, which is the Grant Acceptance Ordinance.

Are there any additional comments or questions on Grant Acceptance Ordinance, which is Council Bill 120365?

Seeing none, I'm gonna move it in front of us.

I move the Council Committee recommends passage of Council Bill 120365. It's been moved and seconded to approve the Grant Acceptance Bill, Council Bill 120365. Are there any additional comments or questions?

Seeing none, Madam Clerk, please call the roll on the Grant Acceptance Ordinance 120365.

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Yes.

Madam Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries and the Grant Acceptance Ordinance Council 120365 is advanced to full council where Council Member Lewis will thankfully pull this in front of the full council with a recommendation to pass.

All right, let's go ahead and move on to Council Bill 120366. This is the supplemental budget bill and we do have a series of amendments.

I want to thank Council Member Peterson for flagging for us.

He also intends to bring forward a amendment, a verbal amendment just for the technical correction for the for the record keeping on bridges and maintenance.

So we will add that as amendment number four and are confirming with the clerks and central staff that we have the appropriate language to make sure to move that forward.

So at this point, let me just update my script real quick here because I wanna make sure I keep the numbers in order.

Apologies for this, folks.

Okay, I think we're good to go.

All right, so we have a number of amendments in front of us.

Colleagues, the first amendment to Council Bill 120366 is going to be brought by Council President Juarez and myself.

So in order to get the legislation in front of us, I'm going to move that the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 120366, which is the Supplemental Budget Bill.

Is there a second?

Wonderful, thank you, Council Member Peterson.

It has been moved and seconded.

The legislation is now in front of us.

We will go ahead and consider amendments.

And central staff, please jump in any time as we're managing multiple screens here.

But the first amendment that I'd like for us to get briefed on is amendment number one.

This is from Council President Juarez and myself.

I move to amend Council Bill 120366 as presented in amendment number one.

Second.

Thank you very much, Council Member Peterson.

It's been moved and seconded to amend Council Bill 120366. Council President Juarez is not available to join us today, and I do have some comments from her.

Before I read those comments and add to the context of this amendment, I'll turn it over to central staff to walk us through the technical aspects of amendment number one.

And thank you very much, Ali, for presenting the amendment table in front of us.

And if folks from, the Seattle Channel could put the same screen up that you have on the large screen on the little screens in here, that would be appreciated as well.

Go ahead, Allie, amendment number one.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

So as you noted, amendment number one, This would add position authority for an analyst position in council central staff.

We have existing budget authority for this, but need a position.

So this is budget neutral, but it would allow us to replace a central staffer who has left, but we ran out of open pockets.

Okay, great.

Thank you so much.

And I'll just read my comments and see if there's any additional comments from folks.

As Council President Juarez is not able to join us today, here are some comments from her.

The amendment adds position authority for an analyst position to the council central staff group.

Central staff has existing ongoing budget authority to fund this position, so there's no impact to the general fund.

This amendment will align central staff's existing budget authority with their position authority as Ali just noted.

And I would also add is really important to make sure that our central staff has the adequate personnel positions needed in order to fully staff Seattle City Council.

They do tremendous work on behalf of all nine of us and an incredible amount of research.

So the number of personnel here in the legislative department, for example, compared to the executive branch is much smaller and the amount of work that they have on their plate is tremendous.

So we really appreciate their work and wanna add to their existing capacity.

Any additional comments or questions?

Please, Council Member Nelson.

Well, thank you very much.

I agree that central staff performance is an amazing resource, as these people learned last night answering my questions.

But my question is, it seems like, and this is more for Ali, it seems as though, and I'm new, remember, that there are several people have left, or a few people have left central staff, and so there are already vacancies.

So are those in the process of getting filled in addition to creating a position?

Thank you.

Councilmember Nielsen for the question.

We have had a, our former staffer Jeff Sims has left.

We were in the process of hiring a fiscal analyst position and then would have another analyst.

So we don't have a position to sort of backfill for the homelessness.

And in part, this is a reflection of changing the structure of central staff where formerly it was a manager position, but we have more analyst needs right now.

And so, That's the need for this additional position.

So we are in the process of hiring to both support the increased requests from council members related to the budget.

So we'll be adding to our fiscal policy team as well as backfilling for Jeff Simms' departure.

Thank you.

Great.

Thanks for the clarifying question, Council Member Nelson.

Are there any additional comments or questions on amendment number one?

Seeing none, in person or online, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on amendment number one?

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Madam Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries and amendment number one is adopted to the supplemental budget bill.

Amendment number two is in front of us.

Council Member Lewis, would you like to move amendment number two?

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair.

So moved.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Lewis has moved amendment number two to council 120366. Council Member Lewis, would you like to add to this before we turn it to central staff?

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair.

As was discussed in Council briefing last week, or it may have been two weeks ago, Council Member Herbold and I made some comments to the effect that the money that was allocated in the budget for triage one, or at least a portion of that money could be reprogrammed as part of our ongoing work with the executive to set up some kind of pilot for alternative 911 response.

It's evident triage one is not going to be a model that is pursued by Mayor Harrell's team, but certainly that same amount of appropriation could form some kind of pilot program that is more in line with the vision and goal of the Harrell administration in this policy area.

So what this amendment does, and I'm probably straying a little bit into central staff's territory of explaining the amendment, but this would move this money into finance general in order to preserve the opportunity to program it at some point this year for some kind of alternative response.

It may be that we pursue instead to do this through the budget, in which case this triage one money could be essentially used as part of the balancing for 2022's final budget gap.

But this preserves our options and flexibility to work with the Harrell administration on putting together a pilot to inform our ongoing work to meet the charter public safety obligations of the city.

So with that, I think I'll turn it over to central staff.

And I may have a few comments after central staff's presentation.

Thank you very much.

Please, yes, go ahead and add to that central staff.

Thank you.

Councilmember Lewis, I don't have a lot to add.

Councilmember Lewis covered it pretty thoroughly, but just to reiterate, these funds were originally provided to the Seattle Fire Department in the 2022 adopted budget for the proposed triage.

One program that we now understand is not moving forward.

This just reserves the funds for the same purpose generally as supporting an alternative response, but provides time and space for the council along side the mayor to determine what the appropriate department and program is for those investments.

I will just note that these funds were assumed to be part of the, or were part of the assumptions going into the August discussions about anticipated carry forward into 2023 to help address the projected general fund budget.

Moving them to finance general doesn't necessarily change that.

It is a signal that this may be a priority for council to invest these funds in 2022, and then they would be available to spend in 2023. However, if policy decisions are not made before the council's budget process this fall, those funds would be assumed to be part of the starting point for 2023.

Okay, is there any additional comments, please, Council Member Nelson?

Do you know if we've spoken to the fire department about this?

Do they, and I don't know how restricted or how, uh, how limited the, um, the definition of what those funds could be used for, for triage one.

But I do know that they, that they are facing some staffing issues with 911 response or whatever.

So I'm just wanting to know if we've gotten the nod from the fire department.

Maybe I'll add to that Council Member Lewis and then turn it to you for any additional context.

You know, Council Member Nelson, it's a good question and it helps to bring up some of the issues that we faced prior to your arrival on this council, recognizing that I think mid year last year, then Jenny Durkan, Mayor Durkan sent down a package of items that were quite a surprise to a lot of people, including the fire department, including the frontline IAFF 27 members.

And when I asked our friends at IAF 27 about this triage one concept, not to be confused with health one, not to be confused with the vans that we have expanded across the city in partnership with the fire department.

This triage one concept was not very well stakeholder.

And I think it was clear from my discussion with frontline personnel that they were really concerned about yet another van or another set of personnel that were expected to go out and triage with no place to send people.

The words that we continue to hear was, there needs to be a landing zone for people.

And so a triage one was not something that I think that had a tremendous amount of input from them to begin with.

So I'm not trying to speak on their behalf, but I would echo the concerns that I heard from them back then, which is a triage one completely new system being stood up is not a value add.

Something like what Council Member Lewis and Council Member Herbold, which has been stapled quite a bit and has been discussed for now, near three or four years.

is something that we all know is a value add and just needs resources.

So I'm not trying to put words in their mouth, but just for context in terms of where some of those frontline personnel were at with the concept of a triage one proposal was not that that was their top priority.

Council Member Lewis, would you add anything to that?

Yes, so I mean, this money, I mean, this money, I think the best way to describe it happens to be in the fire department.

It's not money that, the fire department was expecting to use for any other purpose.

So no, there's no concern that I'm aware of from the fire department in moving this money.

The Durkin administration, when they conceived of this triage one idea in the summer of 2021, decided to put it in the fire department for lack of them.

conceiving of a better potential place to develop the triage one pilot in 2022. The Harrell administration obviously had sort of a different concept of how they wanted to structure this work, which doesn't envision, as I understand it, the fire department being the vehicle to develop an alternative 911 response.

So there isn't any, programmatic issue with moving this, it's not gonna impact the bottom line or the business model of the fire department in any way that I'm aware of.

But I would, yes, thank you very much, Council Member Lewis.

And I would add, Council Member Nelson, I think your concern around making sure that personnel within fire have the support they need is a huge priority of mine.

Over the last few years, we've added additional support, both in terms of personnel and mental health counseling resources and both at the Seattle Fire Department and within IAFF 27. And I would also welcome central staff to add in if there's anything else that you'd like to feature within Seattle Fire Department in the supplemental, but I will tell you that's gonna be a big priority for me as well, this upcoming budget to make sure that our frontline fire get the support, additional support they need.

This is something that, we have seen attrition in this area as well, and it hasn't got as much attention.

So I'm gonna be looking at this area as well.

So with that, I know there will be more conversations to come about how to support our frontline fire personnel.

And Council Member Nelson, and then if there's anything else from central staff, you're welcome to join in.

Okay, so it's clear that triage one was not ready for prime time.

And so it makes sense to reappropriate that money.

And I'm just hoping that the, that the fire department and local 27 would agree that this is fine and these dollars aren't already being counted on for those frontline workers.

That's well said.

Anything else from central staff on this item?

I'm seeing shaking of the head, no.

So, and I'm not seeing any additional comments on, please go ahead Council Member Lewis.

I do have one last question for central staff.

On my review of what was originally appropriated for triage one, it looks like the total number was 1.9 million is what we put into the budget.

Am I not remembering that correctly, or was some of that money already reappropriated or moved?

How do we get to the 1.2 number?

Councilmember Lewis, I don't have all the spreadsheets in front of me, but I did confirm this with the analyst who staffs this area, that number.

There was both an initial proposed add, and then there was some reductions to that proposal in a separate amendment.

And so you have to take both actions together that ultimately left $1.2 million.

But we will triple check that following committee.

And if that was an error, we will make a technical correction in advance of the city council discussion on Tuesday.

I would also just add for the future budget implications, I did have, this is just as an additional bit of context for developing this over the course of the rest of the year.

I did ask about a month ago for Greg Doss and Council Central staff to prepare a summary, a spreadsheet summary of what it might approximately cost to do a pilot along the lines of what is envisioned for an alternative response.

And that number came back at about 948,000.

And it's possible that number could be driven far lower based on some of the assumptions that the Durkin administration made for the triage one pilot in terms of, for example, that includes like a quarter million of that number is monthly rent based on where you based that program out of.

And it's possible that could be lower taking advantage existing city facilities or something of that nature.

So I did just wanna flag that even though the number we're moving is 1.2 million, there could be a delta between what an actual scoped pilot would run and that number.

So I just wanted to flag that additional bit of context from our central staff.

And with that, Madam Chair, I don't have anything else to add.

Thank you very much, Council Member Lewis.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the adoption of amendment number two?

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Yes.

Madam Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much.

Amendment number two carries and the amendment is adopted to the supplemental budget.

We have an amendment number three in front of us.

As a sponsor of this bill, I did suggest to Council Member Morales that I would bring it forward.

So I will be doing that as a courtesy to her, but we, We do have some concerns that we learned about late yesterday, so just wanna flag that.

But on her behalf, because I don't see her in the Zoom and wanna make sure she's not in the waiting room.

Okay.

On behalf of Council Member Morales, I move to amend Council Bill 120-366 as presented in amendment number three.

Okay.

Second.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

It has been moved and seconded.

I'm going to turn it over to central staff to address this and walk us through it, and then I'll walk through some of the comments that we have.

Great.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

And just as an aside, apologies for taking my document on and off the screen.

I was trying to get Councilmember Peterson's verbal amendment ready to show on the screen.

So that is the reason it was going back and forth.

So this amendment authored by Councilmember Morales would add $75,000 of general fund to the Human Services Department to contract with an organization providing outreach services in support of the Chinatown International District and the Little Saigon Neighborhood Safety Model.

This would provide funding for the organization to provide to FTE dedicated outreach staff for four months, September through December, and would complement existing outreach activities.

And this, again, would be funding to an outside organization who has indicated that these funds would be sufficient to fund those positions.

But I do not have details about the specificity of exactly the salaries or what those positions are.

We do have Amy Gore on the line, but I do not think she has those details either.

And I'll just note that this proposed expenditure would use one time 2021 ending balances from the general fund that Tom described previously that are assumed to be available otherwise to address the projected general fund shortfall in 2023. And this is likely, typically when staff are funded, it becomes an ongoing obligation for the organization and requests to the city to fund it through the general fund.

So I just flagged that in the spirit of the ongoing conversations this committee is engaged in regarding the position of the general fund that's projected going into 2023.

Ali, I think I couldn't quite understand that last sentence.

It's sort of like trailed off a little bit.

Do you mind saying that again and I'll ask some of my questions in just a moment.

Sure, happy to, sorry.

The so these funds use 2020 this this would be funded using the what we are assuming as the carry forward from the 2021 ending balances so funds that came in.

revenues that came in over projection, as well as.

appropriations that were not expended last year.

So what this would do is it would reduce the starting balance that we were assuming for 2023. And it may also result in an ongoing request to provide funding to this organization for these two positions.

Okay, yes, Council Member Lewis has a question.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair.

So I'm just trying to understand exactly what this would do in practice.

I mean, it sort of reads like we'd be doing essentially an expansion to REACH's outreach contract.

I mean, it's worded in such a way to be neutral, obviously, but independent of like a bid, but I guess I'm just kind of wondering exactly how this is going to, be implemented, would this money go to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, which I would imagine would hold this contract, or is it envisioned to be directly RFP by the Human Services Department?

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

I believe the intent is for this to be contracted directly from HSD to the organization.

And this is more in the, I don't have anything to add.

the Chinatown International District and Little Saigon neighborhood safety model proposal.

So it is primarily thought of as a public safety investment, the whole program.

And that was why it was, this was written to send that funding to HSD for direct contract with the community.

You can have a follow-up, Madam Chair.

The description of the activities seem to be the types of outreach activities that we envision the Homelessness Authority contracting for.

The description in the, Amendment bio reads outreach activities would include harm reduction and unsheltered survival support, relationship building with unsheltered residents, deescalation, crisis response, and behavioral health outreach in connection to services.

So I guess I'm just curious, in terms of how it's crafted and where it's going, has the department kind of weighed in on whether, and, you know, unfortunately this is sort of, in reviewing the materials before this committee was the first time I've kind of seen this, and I can speak, certainly speak directly to the need in the Chinatown International District for this type of outreach.

I think it's just a matter of thinking through exactly how to cue this up and get it out there.

And so has the human services department kind of responded on how this is structured and does it sort of fit with what they, what they think their current line items of business and homelessness outreach are?

My understanding for the entire program is that it has been developed in coordination with representatives from city staff being present, particularly like D.O.N., S.P.U., SDOT, and some other departments.

I have not heard from H.S.D. about this particular component of the entire program and how they would, you know, and their kind of opinion about that.

I haven't heard that from them yet.

I would just add here that by proposing to appropriate the fund to the Supporting Safe Communities budget summary level, it is a signal from the council that their intent is for this contract to be managed by the Human Services Department rather than the homelessness authority.

So ultimately it is an administrative decision that is the power of the executive.

And if they decide to move forward with contracting for these funds and think the regional homelessness authority is a more appropriate path to move that forward, they would either need to propose a change in a future supplemental budget bill or use, there is some flexibility that the budget director has to move funds between BSLs under a certain dollar amount if they determine that is necessary.

Madam Chair, can I follow up?

Yes, please go ahead, Council Member Lewis.

I just want us to be really, really careful programmatically with any potential redundancies in how we are doing.

This is a homelessness outreach program.

I'm just gonna say that based on the description and the amendment and a very worthy one and one that we should be doing.

And I'd like to work with the sponsor on that.

how we can queue this up as part of our partnership with the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

I don't know if the supporting safe communities is the ideal place to put this.

And I want us to be careful about creating a redundant homelessness services bureaucracy within the city.

I certainly want to increase outreach and support these efforts and these models, but I'd like us to have a conversation with the sponsor about how we might structure this to do that work through what we've established as our future platform to pay for those services.

Council Member Lewis will send any additional comments.

Council Member Nelson, please go ahead.

Thank you very much.

I will be voting against this amendment because for a couple reasons.

First of all, it doesn't seem to meet the criteria or the test that items in the supplemental budget are there to meet needs assumed to be unforeseeable when the 2022 budget was adopted.

That's from the presentation earlier.

And Council Member Lewis's questions indicate that we don't really have that much understanding of the design of this program.

I had questions about whether or not $75,000 could be spent by the end of the year.

There are, but there is also a lack of clarity about is this, it does read like a, like homelessness outreach, which is definitely needed.

And there are several neighborhood organizations that do have a, So for example, the U District Partnership, Ballard, Soto, let's see, I believe there's one in the CID in First Hill, or the CD in First Hill, both share a homeless outreach coordinator.

So I think that we need to be comprehensive or systematic in how we add this work to work that's already been done, look at models that work and go forward probably next year with a more fleshed out program.

if necessary.

And I will say that on the safety front, coming out of my meeting in the Economic Development Committee, The business improvement area representatives have been working with Andrew Meyerberg on the neighborhood safety coordinators that would do some of the work that was identified as necessary.

And so they've been continuing discussions.

So all very important work.

Let's talk about it when we have an opportunity to really flesh out the details.

Thank you very much.

I'm not seeing any additional hands in the room or online.

I will be following the chair of homelessness and public assets here today as well.

I do want to thank council member Morales.

I know that her team has done a lot of work in the CID and with many community members that we work with frequently as well to talk about some of the highest needs.

And I do support this concept.

I also support the concept that we heard about in public safety a few meetings ago with the hub and spoke model.

I'm forgetting the name of it, but the various hubs around the city where council member Nelson noted some of the, high need areas and appreciate that what the council members have said today is that there is a need for this, but it does seem like the emphasis and the importance of doing this work should be in conjunction with what's the longer term funding process.

I would hate for there to be a short time impression that there would be funding with no actual action to get the dollars out the door in the next six month process, and then to not have this come to fruition in next year's budget.

It does seem like this needs to be a broader conversation.

in the 2023-2024 budget, but also as Council Member Lewis appropriately noted, in conjunction with the Regional Homelessness Authority, recognizing the intersection between folks who are living unsheltered and some of the work that our partners like LEED and REACH are trying to do with some really high needs folks in the community.

And so in addition to needing to be consistent with the one-time funding concerns that I've had about other bills that have come before us and the value of that legislation, just like the value of this amendment, I am supportive of the concept, but I'm also concerned about the ongoing revenue needs that we need to discuss in next year's bill without having a full funding source directly for this.

fully fleshed out, I think that we will make sure that this is part of the larger conversation in this fall's process and did emphasize my support for the concept with Council Member Morales and will continue to do so in the upcoming budget for this fall and in partnership with community members who have clearly articulated a need, and we need to make sure that it's actually funded regularly.

So we will have more conversations about that this fall.

Unfortunately, I will not be voting to support this today.

And a motion is in front of us, so Council Member, excuse me, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on amendment number three?

Council Member Peterson?

No.

Council Member Nelson?

Nay.

Council Member Lewis?

No.

Madam Chair Mosqueda?

No.

Madam Chair, that is four against, none for.

Okay, great, and I'm sure four in support of the concept, so more will happen later this fall, but the amendment does not carry.

We have one more amendment in front of us, that's amendment number four, Council Member Peterson, I understand you'd like to make a verbal amendment for us today, and I believe that central staff has this ready to pull up on the screen as well.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

And fortunately, our council rules do allow verbal amendments at committee, although it's ideal to have them prepared in advance.

So thank you for your grace in letting me bring this forward now.

Colleagues, please don't bring these types of amendments to the Transportation Committee.

So this is basically just amending a sentence that's in the capital improvement program regarding bridge seismic programs.

The current version that's before us is just striking the 16 bridges that were originally promised, but just to add a little clarity, I'll wanna keep the 16 in there, but then say it's been amended to 11, just so the public sees the whole story that's there.

It was 16, it's now 11. So I'll go ahead and make this motion and then I'll restate the sentence so it's clear.

Is that okay if I go ahead and move it?

Yes, please go ahead and move the amendment.

Okay, I move to amend Council Bill 120366, attachment A, bridge seismic phase three page, last sentence in the description paragraph, by deleting the first few words, deleting the 1611 bridges are, and replacing that with 16 bridges were, And then I would strike the period after the word structure and add, but this was amended to 11 bridges.

And that way that sentence will then read 16 bridges were part of the current phase of the program, which is funded by the levy to move Seattle, but this was amended to 11 bridges.

Council Member Peterson has moved to amend attachment A to indicate 16 bridges were part of the current phase of the program, which is funded by the levy to move Seattle, but this was amended to 11 bridges.

I second that.

It's been moved and seconded.

Are there any additional comments?

And you see it on the screen.

I believe so.

Thank you very much central staff for projecting that via Seattle Channel.

And no additional comments or questions.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on amendment number four, a robo amendment.

Council Member Peterson.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Yes.

Madam Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries.

And amendment number four, our verbal amendment, is adopted.

Colleagues, that means that we have the amended supplemental budget bill in front of us with amendment number one, two, and the verbal amendment number four.

Would you like to make any additional comments, colleagues?

And then I will think central staff.

Thank you very much, Tom.

Mike Sol, Ali Panucci, and for all of the work you've done to prepare us for today.

Thanks for the work at the city budget's office for helping work with us in a really transparent way.

I want to thank Julie Dingley and her team for the transparency and collaboration this year has been extremely and I'm looking forward to the upcoming fall budget, given the trajectory we had over the last seven months here.

I wanna thank my entire team who's reviewed the budget as well, our budget lead, Sergio Parique as Chief of Staff, Aaron House, and Fabiola Cuevas as well for all of the work that they've done on the budget.

And with that, council colleagues, Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll on the amended version of the supplemental budget, Council Bill 120366.

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Yes.

Madam Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is for and in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that amended Council Bill 120366 be sent to the July 26th Seattle City Council meeting for a final vote.

Again, Council Member Luis, I don't know if you knew what you're signing up for when you said you'd be happy to read it in for me, but we now have four pieces that we're sending for next Tuesday.

All right, let's move on.

We have the last 20 minutes, excuse me, the last 40 minutes, a little bit longer than we anticipated actually.

So thank you to everybody who has been waiting in the audience and online for this item on our agenda.

We are at the cannabis equity item, and I want to welcome the mayor's team and thank them for being here.

And before we officially read them into the record, Madam Clerk, could you please read item number five into the record?

Agenda item number five, cannabis equity for briefing and discussion.

Wonderful, it's great to see some familiar faces.

Folks that had previously been with us on floor two that are now with us on floor seven.

Really appreciate you being here with us today.

We have Dan Eater and Brianna Thomas of the mayor's office.

And I wanna thank you for the partnership that we have had with your team.

Previously, Gerald Hankerson and, Devin.

Yes, thank you.

For all of the work that they did, they came and presented a few times before.

And the topic is cannabis equity.

As you heard some of the public comments this morning, and as you've heard the first either three or four meetings of our finance and housing committee this year, we are very interested in moving forward some of the good research that's been done and partnership that's been done with finance and administrative services.

the folks at Office of Economic Development, the folks now with Office of Labor Standards, and community partners to help really be living our commitment to undoing the harms caused by the war on drugs and as discussed this morning in public comment, also undoing recent public policies that may have caused harm, especially to black and brown community members who've been trying to be part of this industry.

And as we think about cannabis being a growing industry in Seattle, in Washington State, applying an equity lens and applying public policies to really make sure that we're addressing the past and recently past harms caused by the Juan drugs and past public policies.

So with that, we're excited that the mayor's office is here with us today to share some concepts.

And I wanna again, reiterate that this is a concept presentation.

We have a PowerPoint, there is no legislation introduced as of yet, but you've been working very hard with community members and within your departments to bring forward a set of recommendations that I think the council will be very interested in hearing about.

And we'll have an opportunity of course, to then hear more from stakeholders about some of these concepts, but this is a good chance for us to daylight some of the good work that the mayor's office has done.

So I wanna thank you, Brianna Thomas and Dan Eder for being here, along with the community partners that we know you've been engaged with, but there is more work to be done, obviously, to stakeholder some of the discussion happening today.

And today is an opportunity to feature some of the pillars of what could be legislation.

So with that, I will turn it over to you.

Excellent, I guess we'll just start with introductions.

I'm Dan Eder, Mayor's Office Policy Director, and I'm thrilled to be with you today.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Good morning, Councilmembers.

My name is Brianna Thomas.

I am the Mayor's Office Labor Liaison and have been working in partnership on this legislation since my first day in this position.

It is my 90th day, so I find it very fitting to be back before the Council presenting to you today.

And thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda, for those opening comments that really helped I want to recognize those comments from public comment on members, particularly of the Black community, attempting to reclaim their space as part of the cannabis industry here in Seattle.

And I'd like to double down on your thanks for the FAS team that's been doing a three-year racial equity toolkit in this space, speaking to community members frequently and in-depth.

building a bridge from the policies we've set before to where it is we're going to go, along with our partners at the state and the county.

And of course, we are welcoming any help in this space from our federal delegation.

With that, I will hand it back over to Dan.

Sorry, I just had to find the unmute button.

So can you see the slideshow okay on your screens?

Okay, great.

Excellent.

So, as Brianna mentioned, the city conducted a racial equity toolkit that the Finance Committee has had a presentation on and heard about from some of the public comments at the beginning of this meeting.

In broad brush strokes, the racial equity toolkit concluded that there are significant inequities.

for BIPOC communities that were caused primarily by the war on drugs, a federal policy and series of programs at many governmental levels.

We're here to discuss the first steps that the mayor is proposing to take to address some of those inequities.

And we are proposing to begin with a suite of legislation that, as you mentioned, we will be transmitting on the 27th of this month.

That legislation includes a job retention bill, a license, a series of licensing changes that we'll discuss both of those, and also a step that memorializes the future actions that we intend to take as a city with assuming that we are on the same page as the council in the mayor's office.

It can't be overstated the negative impacts of this federal federal policy the war on drugs on the black community.

We are looking at families torn apart we're looking at losses of intergenerational wealth, we are looking at.

deep rifts in the fabric of our community layered on top of displacement, layered on top of gentrification, layered on top of inequitable practices for workers across many industries, but particularly in the cannabis industry.

It is important to keep in mind that there are limitations to what the city can do in this space.

One of those things that we can do is work toward equity in licensing.

We understand that the state has issued a series, an intention to issue a series of social equity licenses at the state level through the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board, and the city also has a hand in licensing every business that works in our fine town.

and we will be taking a social equity approach to that licensure as well here at the city.

We do know that the state licenses are primarily held by white men who are currently benefiting from the wealth building opportunities in this industry.

We want to definitely recognize, as we heard in public comment, the deep impacts to the black community and the transition from medical to recreational cannabis and the folks that were left behind in that transition.

Next slide, please, Danny.

But the legislation is included.

We've got three ordinances that will be coming to you.

The first one is a worker retention and transparency piece of legislation brought to us by the good folks over at the Office of Labor Standards and Central Staff.

A bill brought to us by the Finance and Administrative Services that addresses the social equity license issued by the city.

And keeping in mind that we do need to partner with the state and the county and the federal delegation, what next steps could look like for the city of Seattle?

Next slide.

OLS worker retention and transparency.

It was brought to my attention that one of the big challenges in this industry is knowing who exactly the boss is and who to hold accountable for the labor standards that we already have on the books and making sure the folks are getting their wages in a timely manner and they're feeling safe in their workplaces.

So we partnered with OLS and central staff to use language that we've seen before.

Not many surprises here.

We're asking for posting a notification of who exactly holds the Seattle business license in each of these cannabis stores.

So everyone who is an employee knows exactly who to hold accountable as an employer.

And then we'll also be looking at a retention policy that may be familiar to many council members, You saw when we worked on the suite of legislation to protect hotel workers around retention.

Often the Seattle business licenses move between owners, and during that transition, the stability of the workforce and the cannabis industry is meaningfully disrupted and there's quite a bit of turnover.

So this legislation would also attempt to address the stability for workers in the workplace with a 90-day retention with exemptions for cause.

But that workforce, when the boss changes, the workers don't have to.

And we want to make sure that they are stabilized during that economic transaction.

And all of this can be enforced by a private right of action and through the Office of Labor Standards, who has made it clear they are prepared to help us enforce this body of work.

Okay, the second piece of legislation in the suite of bills is a proposal to create a new social equity applicant category of Seattle cannabis licenses.

And this is consistent with the racial equity toolkit recommendations.

The social equity applicant definition is going to be provided and I can give a summary of that.

The bill will indicate that it must be a business that has majority ownership by owners living in an area that has been disproportionately impacted by the federal war on drugs.

Ownership by one or more persons who have been convicted of a drug offense.

and or other considerations to be fleshed out in future director's rules informed by the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board's deliberations about a state-level social equity applicant procedure.

The bill that will be transmitted next week would also increase the, I'm sorry, before I finish with the social equity applicants, Those who qualify for social equity applicant definitions would have a no cost city license.

The other applicants or other license holders who are seeking an annual city cannabis license would pay $4,000 in lieu of the current $3,500 fee.

So there would be a $500 increase.

And the final item in this bill is that ancillary businesses, if approved by the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board, would be eligible for receiving a city license.

And the details on such a program of potential ancillary cannabis businesses is to be determined by the state, And then we would have a lot more discussion about citing and other considerations.

Ancillary cannabis businesses, as just one example, could include consumption lounges.

And that's why we would want to have a whole lot more discussion about where such an ancillary business could be located, who could own it, how is it connected with or is it not connected with license holding in the retail space.

Finally, we're just acknowledging that this is the beginning steps of multiple steps that the city intends to take, and we want to memorialize the future steps that we know that we want to take in the nearer term.

And that includes partnering with King County and other jurisdictions to allow expunging prior cannabis convictions.

That's something that the city cannot do for other jurisdictions by itself, but we can advocate for and partner with other jurisdictions.

We intend to work with BIPOC and other impacted communities on approaches to build wealth through management jobs and ownership of cannabis businesses in the industry.

And again, acknowledging that this is a series of first steps and there's more work to do.

One of the things that we have been planning on and expect to do in the coming months is to stand up an advisory committee of workers and industry members and community members who have been impacted by the federal war on drugs.

And they will help us scope and receive and give advice about next steps on a needs assessment that will help us identify the highest needs of workers and recommendations for addressing those needs.

And just for the listening public, you will be able to see this legislation.

Hopefully, if everything goes well, we will transmit it from the mayor's office next Wednesday, July 27th.

And if my council calendar math holds, you should be able to see that on the introduction or referral calendar.

the following Monday.

We are working with Councilmember Mosqueda.

Thank you so much for time and committee to keep this bill moving.

Dan and I are intimately familiar with the pressures that are the budget cycle, so we don't want to step on those toes.

And so we are prepared to be available to answer any of your questions.

I'll be reaching out tomorrow to each of your offices to offer you a briefing on the full suite of legislation to make sure that we are on the same page and everybody's got the information that they need to make good decisions on this suite of bills.

And with that, if there are any questions that we can attempt to answer today from a high level, this would be the time.

Thank you very much, Brianna, and thank you very much, Dan.

You stole my puns.

Thank you for the presentation on a high level.

And we look forward to hearing more from you as you craft the final legislation.

And then we can have a fully baked suite of proposals in front of us for our consideration.

Is there any additional comments or questions?

Okay, Council Member Nelson.

And again, just wanted to reiterate that this is an initial briefing.

high-level concepts, the actual content of legislation, or the legislative suite of items is still being finalized, it sounds like, so I wanna make sure that folks know we are not with the final legislation in front of us, but happy to take high-level questions and comments.

Please go ahead, Council Member Nelson.

Thank you very much.

I look forward to learning more.

I'm all about not reinventing the wheel.

So it seems as though this is building on the work that's already been done by FAS in collaboration with OED, SDCI, and OCR.

and stakeholders, so that is great.

I'm hoping that this will also take into account the information that was provided in the 2019, let's see, Cannabis Equity Survey and Analysis.

All of that said, and also I appreciate that the mayor's office has been reaching out to the existing community and the retailers themselves.

So one question maybe you'll be able to answer it now is, is this, do you anticipate a reprogramming of the city allocation of the state excise tax dollars that, in parenthetical note, the highest in the nation at 37%, but will those dollars be used to support any of this work?

Thank you for that question, Councilmember.

At this time, it is not our intention to repurpose those dollars for this suite of legislation.

This is, again, a first step toward a larger body of work.

And so while I appreciate that there have been recommendations from our many stakeholders to repurpose those dollars, that is not our current intention.

Okay, thank you.

So the cannabis industry is already highly regulated and taxed while also subject to unique barriers like no access to capital, no normal banking, no tax deductions for federal income.

So it's vulnerable to competition from the illicit marketplace.

And I just hope that the forthcoming regulations will be really well thought out so as not to cause any major difficulties to our small businesses that are operating in this space.

So thank you very much.

I look forward to this.

And when you said, when you were talking about ancillary businesses, I look forward to that because I know that that's been called for.

Are there any anticipated changes to the regulations around buffers that could actually increase the number of licenses available for equity ownership?

That would be a separate conversation council member Nelson right right now that the FAS legislation is a an acknowledgement that the state could be issuing additional types of cannabis license and it.

It expands the the the code section to effectively anticipate that we would consider issuing such licenses for people doing business within the city if the state makes such a decision, but it doesn't get specific about which types of new businesses, where they'd be located or any other kind of details, not at this stage.

Thanks.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

Are there any additional comments?

Okay, I think that there will be more opportunity for discussion and I've received some of the contact information from the folks in the audience.

I'm gonna be following up as well.

But with that, I don't see any additional comments in front of us from the council members.

And I wanna thank Dan.

and Brianna for the work that you have done.

And in partnership, it sounds like with community conversations still ongoing.

So we look forward to that further feedback.

And the concept here would be to get additional feedback as Brianna noted, if there's legislation that's transmitted down.

It would then appear on the introduction referral calendar that first week of August.

And colleagues, we would then have an opportunity to look at the legislation and consider any possible issues for identification on August 11th.

So we have a quite a few weeks here, three or four weeks.

I should say three weeks between now and August 11th at 9.30 a.m.

And at 9.30 on August 11th, we'll also have three bills from the aquarium.

The DEMPAC, which is the Debt Management Policy Advisory Committee this morning did agree to send down a suite of bills for the council's consideration.

to further support the construction and the finalization of the aquarium, given some slowdowns in its fundraising and its experience.

Colleagues, we will have additional information from central staff with the clear sideboards that have been requested to make sure that folks understand why this project is unique.

That legislation will be in front of us on the 11th, as well as this Economic Resilience Plan presentation from the Office of Economic Development.

and in conjunction with Council Member Nielsen, that would allow for us to then lift the proviso so that the economic resilience pieces of Jumpstart could move forward.

And as noted, the cannabis equity piece then would be our largest item on the agenda.

If there's no objection, today's meeting is adjourned.

Thank you all for your presentation and your participation today.

And to Dan and Brianna who are with us, thank you again for being here to present the summary and we will see you on the 11th.

Take care.