Public Safety and Human Services Committee 6/13/23

Thank you, good morning.

The June 13th, 2023 meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee will come to order.

It is 9.31 a.m.

I am Lisa Herbold, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Present.

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Peterson.

Here.

Vice Chair Lewis.

Present.

Chair Herbold.

Here.

5 present.

Thank you so much.

On today's agenda we will be hearing three items.

The first is a Community Police Commission proposed bill that would make some operational amendments to the accountability ordinance.

This will just be a briefing and discussion of an unintroduced draft bill.

Second, we'll be hearing and discussing and voting on Resolution 32094, the Wage Equity for Nonprofit Human Services Providers Resolution.

And lastly, we'll be receiving a very timely briefing from the Office of Emergency Management on their Heat and Smoke Preparedness Plan.

With that, we will move towards approving our agenda for today's committee meeting.

If there is no objection, today's committee agenda will be adopted.

hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

Next, we'll be moving into public comment.

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

Each speaker will be given one minute to speak.

I will alternate between virtual and in-person public commenters.

I will call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they registered on the council's website and the sign-in form.

If you have not yet registered to speak, but you would like to do so, you can sign up before the end of the public comment session.

Once I call the speaker's name, if you are using the virtual option, you will hear a prompt, and once you've heard that prompt, you need to press star six to unmute yourself.

We ask that you please begin speaking by stating your name and the item which you are addressing.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 minutes are left of their allotted time.

Once the speaker hears that chime, We ask that you please begin to wrap up your public comments.

If you do not end your public comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's mic will be muted after 10 seconds so that we can hear from the next speaker.

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

And if you plan to continue following the meeting, which we encourage you to do, you can follow along via the Seattle Channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

We've got 17 people signed up for public comment, 12 are virtual, and five are in person.

And I'm going to alternate between folks who are I will start with the in-person speakers.

The first in-person speaker

My name is Kim Muir.

I have worked in the human services field here in Seattle for over a decade.

And this summer, I will be earning my master's degree in mental health counseling from Seattle University.

And I would like to speak to you about the need for wage equity for our human services workers.

I thank you for recognizing the need for higher wages for us in the field.

And I would like to also add that equitable pay is only the beginning.

At one of my jobs in particular, I was a case manager for a large housing organization.

My wages were never able to keep up with the cost of living, and I found myself living in subsidized housing while working at an organization that provided those same services.

It was at the same job that I was faced with the seemingly often impossible task of helping our vulnerable citizens to connect with mental health services.

At this organization in 2020, a co-worker of mine was murdered by a client with severe mental illness.

This is a tragedy that I firmly believe could have been prevented with enough funding to our mental health system, including access to treatment beds and a lower threshold for the involuntary treatment process.

I implore you to consider not only increasing our wages to meet human, to help our human services workers make ends meet in the very city that we serve.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Valerie Surette, and Valerie will be followed by Vic Amole.

At CPC's regular public meeting last week, the co-chairs presented a wildly inaccurate and dangerous description of our attendance at their previous meeting.

When we attended that public meeting to silently protest their shutting down of both public comment and community engagement.

CPC co-chair Reverend Patricia Hunter stated last week that, quote, there was yelling, there were distractions during the meeting, there was concern for physical safety of commissioners and staff, and security was called.

We expect to be able to do our work without interference or fear of violence, unquote.

CPC co-chair Reverend Harriet Walden added that quote, the level of what was going on in the yelling like in your face almost with the cameras was over the top.

If that ever happens to me again, that someone like that is yelling at me, then I will absolutely make sure that I will call SPD.

For the public record, we must note that we were a group of five who remained at our seats and in silence during the entire meeting, engaging in no disruptions or distractions.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Vic Amole, and Vic will be followed by, moving on to online speakers, Megan Stewart.

My name is Vic Amole.

My name is Vic Amol, another one of the five people present at the CPC meeting Valerie spoke about.

The entire time we were in the room on May 17th, during and after the meeting, we remained in our seats.

Our cell phone cameras were never in anyone's face as alleged.

As you can see in the posted video, what transpired after the May 17th meeting ended, we made some comments about how during the just finished meeting, the CPC misrepresented the affected persons program, a program proposed and drawn up last fall by two people who are in the group present at the meeting, Castile Hightower and Howard Gale.

Some CPC staff members, not co-chairs Hunter or Walden, then chose to engage with us.

Since the meeting had ended, everyone was free to leave the room at any point, as can be clearly seen in the posted video.

Our interactions with two CPC staff members came about because we were deeply disturbed by the misrepresentation of the affected persons program, and for the reasons for that program not moving forward, as well as the CPC ignoring the presence of the two people who created it right there in the room.

There was no yelling.

There were red voices, of course, given the false and absurd statements made by CPC staff, especially those made by CPC interim director, Callie Ellis, who told us that our existence in a public space and our engaging with CPC staff was a violation of Seattle ordinance.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Megan Stewart and Megan will be followed by Castille Hightower.

Hi, my name is Megan and I am sharing a comment today about CB120580.

I'm here because I use Rover for overnight care for my dog Tucker.

I believe that it is misguided to apply this ordinance to platforms that provide in-home services like pet care.

When I use Rover, I have near strangers coming into my house.

It provides me peace of mind that today it is standard practice for businesses that provide these in-home services, including pet sitting businesses, to require service providers to pass comprehensive background checks.

The risk that pet owners like myself take when hiring a pet sitter to come into their home and care for their pet while we are away is exponentially higher than the risk we take when we have food delivered to our doorstep.

This ordinance does not take into account those risks.

My dog can't tell me what happens when I'm away, so I'm relying on Rover to do all they can to promote a safe experience for pet owners and their pets.

This bill would interfere with these efforts.

I ask you to please protect pet owners from this proposal.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Jake Fedorowski.

I'm sorry.

Our next speaker is Castille Hightower, who will be followed by Jake Fedorowski.

My apologies, Castille.

My name is Castell Hightower.

My brother, Herbert Hightower Jr. was shot and killed by Seattle police when he was experiencing a mental health crisis.

Earlier this month, myself and several other community members that you just heard from and will continue to hear from held a silent protest regarding the CPC's refusal to allow public comment and have since been threatened by CPC co-chairs Patricia Hunter and Harriet Walden with police violence for exercising our First Amendment rights.

This is a pattern of an escalation of violence by way of the CPC to continue to silence, undermine, belittle, mock, and now threaten with violence the very communities they are initially created to center.

In response, I am here to demand that the CPC relinquish any control of the complaint appeals process and the continued interference with the creation of the affected persons program.

I am also demanding that an investigation is launched into the CPC's co-chairs, attempts to slander and endanger community members, simply for exercising their First Amendment rights.

Our family went through hell.

My brother was killed.

How dare you threaten us with violence?

How dare you?

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Jake Fedorowski, and Jake will be followed by Arthur Guilford.

Moving back to the in-person speakers.

Jake?

Hello, my name is Jake and I live in District 7, Councilmember Lewis' district.

I have used Rover for several years now to find pet care for my dog, Ollie, and I would like to share a comment on CB120580.

I believe this proposal was clearly developed for delivery services without considering whether it is appropriate for other types of services like pet care.

For example, the ordinance cites failing to maintain a state driver's license as an example of egregious misconduct.

but does not explicitly cite animal abuse or neglect as similarly problematic.

As a pet owner who hires pet sitters to stay in my home with my pet alone while I travel, I assure you that I view animal abuse as egregious misconduct.

In my opinion, CB120-580 would create new risks for pet owners like me because the bill wasn't drafted with pet care in mind.

I urge the council to avoid hastily passing laws that could hurt Seattle residents.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Arthur Guilford, followed by Howard Gale.

Hello, I'm Arthur Guilford, and I'm continuing the comments on the CPC meeting.

I want to reiterate that at no point did we leave our seats to follow them or force any unwanted interaction.

It is deeply dismaying to see a public commission intentionally craft statements whose only purpose is to slander and libel the members of the very community it's supposed to serve in a blatant attempt to intimidate and restrain free speech.

You needn't take our word for this decade-long pattern of behavior.

Top-of-the-line conclusion from last year's CPC Commission year-long strategic planning process states, quote, the CPC's engagement of the public is subject to much criticism regarding who it engages and how.

CPC's community engagement is, to date, is lacking depth.

CPC is viewed as uninvolved and disconnected from community, only engaging in certain voices they agree with and transactional in their engagement, unquote.

This culture and behavior has worsened over the course of the last year.

The CPC's nearly $2 million budget should not be used to bully and silence community members without money or official power.

I would also like to distribute to the council members a printout of that same study, if you would.

Mr. Clerk, thank you.

Thank you very much.

Howard Gale.

Hi, Howard Gale, one of the five people attacked by the CPC last week.

Given the increasing attack, as we've outlined in this letter, letter that we've handed to all you guys.

on the community and on people most seriously affected by SPD violence, the CPC must relinquish any control of a complainant appeals process and end any interference in the creation of a truly independent affected persons program, a program designed to serve the very people that the CPC has systematically excluded over the last decade and now seeks to silence.

We demand an investigation into the CPC co-chair's attempts to slander and endanger community members.

Additionally, The City Council should reject the request before you today by the CPC to make changes in the ordinance that made them permanent.

There needs to be a public community process to address the changes needed to the ordinance in order to radically realign the cultural goals of the CPC so that they can honestly and fully engage in the community, especially with those most impacted by police violence.

Again, people were only exercising First Amendment rights in May 17th.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker, Kirsten Peterson, is showing as not present.

If that changes, we will come back to Kirsten Peterson.

Our next speaker signed up that is showing present is Dresden Gardner.

And Dresden is followed by Tami Hedrick.

Dresden?

Hello, my name is Dresden, and I am a pet owner that lives in District 7. I am sharing a comment today on CD 120580, There are a lot of us pet owners in Seattle.

Actually, the Seattle Times reported in 2022 that based on the census data, approximately 30% of all households in the Seattle area own cats and more than 25% own dogs.

There's a lot of pet owners who rely on someone, whether a pet sitter they found on Rover, an independent pet sitting business, or a friend to watch their pet when they are away.

In my case, I now use Rover to care for my cat, Cheech.

The service I use is called House Sitting, which is when a pet sitter stays at my home with her Since they will be spending so much time in my home, I value the opportunity to interview pet sitters before I hire them, as well as precautions Rover takes, such as running comprehensive background checks on pet sitters and operating a 24-7 trust and safety team.

CB120580 seems like a bad deal for pet owners by limiting Rover's ability to take reasonable proactive measures to promote safe pet care experience.

Pet sitters don't drop a meal off on a doorstep.

They stay in owner's homes and provide unsupervised care for their pets.

Please protect pet owners from this bill.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Tammy Hetrick and Tammy will be followed by Maria Curry.

Good morning, my name is Tammy Hetrick.

I represent the Washington Food Industry Association, the independently owned grocery convenience and specialty stores.

Here asking that you do not pass CB 120580. This ordinance interferes with the rights of private businesses to address safety concerns immediately when delivery drivers pose a risk to their employees and customers.

Safety of these employees and customers are top priority of our member stores.

This would infringe on the store's right to refuse service when that risk is identified.

Our members are experiencing these dangerous incidents in their stores and employees are being attacked or stores are being vandalized by delivery drivers.

This is not often.

Some stores report one every two months, but when it happens, they need to stop it at the store before they get to the customer's door.

Please do not have the time or resources to intervene.

It is the quick response of the stores and the app-based businesses to take action to protect their employees and customers.

Please do not restrict our ability to protect customers.

Many times those deliveries are to vulnerable adults who cannot make it to the store.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, Maria Curry, is showing as not present.

Next, we have Megan Murphy, and Megan will be followed by Colleen Lang.

Hi, I'm reaching out.

I've reached out to Council Member Teresa Mosqueda in the past and other several Council Members several times.

I'm not sure if it's because I'm an activist or because I turned down a former client of Jeffrey Epstein to live with him.

when I was 21 and offered a lot of money, who was the CEO of a computer company in Sioux City, Iowa.

And it's some sort of fear, but I seem I am being stalked by somebody with quite a bit of money, and it's terrifying.

And they have, the person I turned down when I was 21 had $8 billion, and they have enough money to hire people to follow me or to influence people to try to make me think of them, and it's terrifying.

And I go to Zoom meetings.

It's a blatant abuse of power, and it needs to stop.

And I'm asking for help.

Anyone in the community who, if they know what's happening, to demand that people with a lot of money, they're the one who are surveillance to make sure they don't use their wealth to sexually harass, sorry, sexually harass women from a distance, because it feels disgusting.

And when I reached out to the police about this 12 years ago, it was escalated to where I was.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Colleen Lang, and Colleen will be followed by Fadumo Gattali.

Colleen?

Sorry, I pressed pound six.

Sorry about that.

Thank you.

Good morning, council members.

Colleen Lang with United Way of King County.

On behalf of United Way, I'm asking you to pass resolution 32094 regarding human services contract wage equity.

The proposed resolution recognizes that wages for human service providers such as home visitors are suppressed due to historical race and gender biases and recommends a minimum 7 percent increase.

We're grateful to Chair Herbold and the committee for considering this resolution.

As long as a longtime partner with the city in funding the parent child plus home visiting program United Way is working with other philanthropists to address wage equity in our funding, and we're grateful the city is considering addressing this as well.

I urge the council to pass this resolution and to include all city human service contracts in the resolution regardless of the contracting department home visiting contracts have not been eligible for the 7% inflation adjustment.

Please don't leave some providers out, that perpetuates inequity.

Low wages lead to high vacancies in nonprofit providers and impair availability and quality of services.

Please pass this resolution and thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Our last speaker that is showing as present is Faduma Gattali, and I apologize if I'm mispronouncing your name.

Fadumo, if you could hit star six to unmute yourself.

Thank you.

I'm going to ask again, if you can hear me, Fadumo, we do need you to hit star six to unmute yourself.

And it's F-A-D-U-M-O-G-U-T-A-L-E.

I'm sorry, I'm going to ask one more time and then we're going to have to move on.

My apologies.

Fadumo, Gatali, can you hit star six so we can hear you?

All right, again, my apologies, we are gonna have to move on.

You can absolutely share your public comment intended for today with council members via email or you could call our offices.

Thank you for being with us here today.

All right, that will conclude public comment.

Thank you everybody for joining us today to speak mostly on items on the agenda, some not.

And we'll move into the items on the agenda today.

Will the clerk please read in agenda item number one.

Agenda item one, Community Police Commission, or CPC, proposed amendments to accountability ordinance.

Thank you.

And as our presenters are joining us at the table, just I'll make some brief introductory remarks.

This is the first briefing on proposed amendments to the 2017 accountability ordinance.

These amendments have been brought forward for our consideration by the Community Police Commission.

These amendments are only regarding the operations of Community Police Commission.

It is not intended to be a deep dive into the powers and authority of the commission.

Many of these are types of amendments that we might consider technical in nature.

The legislation linked to the agenda is draft and unintroduced, and the legislation will be formally introduced after additional review and discussion at the CPC, and this item will be before the committee at a meeting in July.

With that, I'm going to hand it off to the CPC co-chair, Joel Merkle and the Interim Executive Director Ellis for their presentation.

The Council of Central Staff will also be joining us, Greg Doss, and he can provide a brief overview of the bill and how it implements the provisions proposed afterwards.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Herbold and Council Members.

Thank you for your consideration today of the Seattle Community Police Commission's recommended improvements to the 2017 Police Accountability Ordinance.

My name is Joel Merkel.

I'm an Assistant Attorney General and a Co-Chair of the CPC, and I'm joined today by the CPC's Interim Executive Director, Dr. Kali Ellis, to my left.

I'd like to start today with some context for why we are recommending certain improvements to the Accountability Ordinance.

As you know, the CPC is nearly 11 years old.

It was established in July 2012 by the Memorandum of Understanding between the Department of Justice and the city, which was a central part of the consent decree.

And the CPC was set up as an independent community-based oversight commission originally made up of 15 community members.

And when the city council approved the landmark 2017 police accountability ordinance, it made the CPC a permanent and independent community-based police oversight entity within the Seattle Police Accountability System alongside the CPC's accountability partners, OPA and OIG.

And at that time, the CPC was expanded in size to 21 community members.

Under the consent decree and the accountability ordinance, the CPC is empowered to provide community input on needed policing reforms.

And the CPC's vision is for SPD and Seattle's communities to be aligned and shared goals of safety, respect, and accountability.

Our mission is to listen to, amplify, and build common ground among communities affected by policing in Seattle.

We work with the community and our accountability partners to ensure that police services in Seattle are rooted in the Constitution, justice, equity, and transparent accountability.

And currently the city is in the process of transitioning away from the federal oversight under the consent decree and returning the primary responsibility of police oversight and accountability to the community and city government.

And this is why it is even more essential now that the CPC has the tools and the resources it needs to fulfill its mission under the 2012 MOU and the 2017 accountability ordinance.

Thank you.

The 2017 accountability ordinance established 21 volunteer commissioner positions with three appointing authorities, the mayor, city council, CPC, each having seven appointees.

Each commissioner is confirmed by city council and serves a three-year term.

We currently have 16 commissioners.

The ordinance states the commissioner shall be representative of Seattle's diverse population, drawn from different socioeconomic backgrounds and racial and ethnic groups, and shall have the expertise in areas such as law enforcement, community engagement, organizational change, constitutional, criminal, or labor law, social justice, or other disciplines important to CPC's work to obtain a balance that allows the CPC as a whole to benefit from the knowledge and expertise of individual members.

The ordinance mandates specific positions on the CPC, a representative from SPOD, a representative from the Seattle Police Management Association, and at least two attorneys with experience in public defense and civil liberties.

Most of the work of the CPC is carried out through work groups made up of these volunteer commissioners.

These work groups evaluate policies and make recommendations based on community input and feedback.

So to support this work, the CPC currently has nine funded staff positions, including the executive director and three departments that each answer to the executive director, policy, community engagement, and communications.

Is your mic on?

I'm sorry to interrupt.

It might just help.

It's on.

I think it might just help to get right up on it.

Thank you.

OK.

As you can see here, the excuse me, this is not on it.

No, could you please make sure that green light is on?

On my end, we couldn't hear what she stated, so thank you that I could try now, please.

OK, is that better?

That is better.

Yes.

The green light just needs to be turned on.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And you may need to repeat what you just said because the Zoom broadcast in here.

I'm happy to.

So this is the last slide for those of you in the room.

The 2017 accountability ordinance established 21 volunteer commissioner positions with three appointing authorities, the mayor, city council, and CPC, each having seven appointees.

Each commissioner is confirmed by city council and serves a three-year term.

We currently have 16 commissioners.

The ordinance states that commissioners shall be representative of Seattle's diverse population, drawn from different socioeconomic backgrounds and racial and ethnic groups, and shall have expertise in areas such as law enforcement, community engagement, organizational change, constitutional, criminal, or labor law, social justice, or other disciplines important to CPC's work to obtain a balance that allows CPC as a whole to benefit from the knowledge and expertise of its individual members.

The ordinance also mandates specific positions on the CPC, a representative from SPOG, a representative from the Seattle Police Management Association, and at least two attorneys with experience in public defense and civil liberties.

Most of the work of the CPC is carried out through work groups made up of these volunteer commissioners.

These work groups evaluate policies and make recommendations based on community input and feedback.

To support this work, the CPC currently has nine funded staff positions, including the executive director and three departments that each answer to the executive director, policy, community engagement and communications.

As you can see here, the CPC staff is the smallest of each of the oversight partners.

OPA has approximately 28 FTEs with about half working in an investigation capacity, and the OIG has approximately 21 FTEs, with three more being hired to take on some of the responsibilities of the monitor.

By comparison, CPC only has nine FTEs to fulfill our mandates under the ordinance to review and provide input to OPA, OIG, SPD, and others, engage in community outreach to obtain the perspectives of community members, maintain connections with representatives of disenfranchised communities and with other community groups in all the city's legislative districts, as well as SPD demographic and advisory councils, Providing SPD, OPA, and OIG with community feedback.

Providing technical assistance on community matters to OPA and OIG.

And identifying and advocating for reforms to state laws that will enhance public trust and confidence in policing and the criminal justice system.

The CPC's mission and work are guided by the 2017 Accountability Ordinance.

We work closely with our accountability partners at OIG and OPA.

However, each accountability partner has a unique role and responsibility in the accountability system.

OPA is primarily responsible for investigating and adjudicating instances of alleged police misconduct.

OIG works to ensure the fairness and integrity of the police system as a whole.

Then CPC is responsible for ensuring the public confidence in the police accountability system primarily through community engagement and policy recommendations.

This is our mission, spelled out in section 3.29.010, to help ensure public confidence in the responsiveness of the police accountability system to public concerns by engaging the community to develop recommendations on the police accountability system and provide a community-based perspective on law enforcement-related policies, practices, and services affecting public trust, all for the purpose of ensuring constitutional, accountable, effective, and respectful policing.

So in June of 2022, about a year ago, the CPC elected Reverend Patricia Hunter and myself as new co-chairs alongside Reverend Harriet Walden.

And at that time, the co-chairs began a process of a top-to-bottom review of the CPC's work and our authorizing authorities, including our authorizing ordinance, the MOU, and our bylaws.

And we were looking at what was working well, what could be improved, and where can we do better, particularly understanding that at some point, the consent decree was gonna go away.

And through the experience of co-chairing the commission and in our role as the executive director supervisor, it wasn't long before the co-chairs identified several areas where the bylaws and the ordinance could be amended to better enable the CPC to fulfill its mission and serve the public.

And this began months of engagement with key partners on revisions to the bylaws and the ordinance.

We engage with members of the community and our accountability partners, prior CPC co-chairs, prior commissioners, other city commissions, including the Ethics and Elections Commission, the Mayor's Office, the Monitor's Office, and City Council staff.

And on May 3rd of this year, the CPC held a discussion at our public CPC meeting to recommend the identified improvements to the CPC bylaws and accountability ordinance.

And following that discussion, the CPC unanimously voted to approve the recommended changes to the bylaws and the ordinance.

And the ordinance changes are before the committee today.

And at the recent hearing on the consent decree, as Judge Robart said, he applauded from the bench the collaborative approach and the work coming out of the CPC over the past year.

And with these recommended improvements, we believe the CPC will be even better positioned moving forward as the city's accountability system absorbs the work of the police monitor.

And with that, Dr. Kali Ellis and I would like to summarize a few of these recommendations.

The first proposed change is to establish a position of deputy director in the CPC.

This is an equity issue, supporting the mandated community engagement work of the CPC at the same level as our oversight partners.

Ordinance 125315 provides for a civilian deputy director at OPA, quote, to perform such duties and have such powers as the OPA director may prescribe and delegate.

The ordinance also provides for, quote, a civilian deputy inspector general to perform such duties and have such powers as the IG may prescribe and delegate to fulfill and effectively manage the duties set forth for them.

Given the importance of the CPC's work to a critical city priority of police oversight and the breadth of the executive director's responsibilities, including commission administration, representing the commission externally with stakeholders, internally to all city departments and elected officials, liaising with other city accountability agencies, and in meeting with community stakeholders, the addition of a deputy for daily internal and fiscal staff management of the CPC provides a critical stability for the agency, which it has not had since its inception in 2017.

Next change is to establish minimum qualifications for the CPC Executive Director position.

Currently, the ordinance is silent on the CPC Executive Director's qualifications.

The ordinance is not silent with respect to OPA and OIG Executive Director qualifications.

Since the 2017 ordinance, the CPC has hired one Executive Director, and we are currently in the process of hiring another permanent Executive Director And the experience that we've had as co-chairs leads us to believe that having some qualifications written into ordinance would be helpful for that process.

The next is to improve the process for removing an executive director.

The ordinance, it was intentional about making sure the CPC was an independent entity within the accountability system and city government.

And it authorized the commission to remove a executive director under a certain process.

But that process creates tension with the co-chair's current responsibility as the ED supervisor, but it also increases the likelihood that certain private HR matters could be discussed in public.

So we have proposed a different process that would maintain the CPC's independence and also allow commissioners and the executive director to engage on that process if that's something that the co-chairs The next change is to return the size of the commission to 15 as it was originally incarnated in 2012. The commission's experience from 2012 to 2017 was a period of great productivity and engagement.

There was a lot of discussion at the commission level about policy and policy recommendations.

And then in 2017 there were other city commissions that were looking at expanding their size to 21 and and the CPC, given the workload that it was tasked with thought it might be useful to have more commissioners and kind of boarded that train.

However, the experience has been slightly different.

More commissioners has not meant more productivity.

It's almost like more cooks in the kitchen.

And so based on that experience and conversations with co-chairs who were involved with the commission before and after the change, along with commissioners and other accountability partners, we believe returning the commission to 15 members would improve our productivity.

The next is to clarify the CPC's authority to remove commissioners for cause.

This is already in city ordinance.

However, there is some language in city ordinance that seems to conflict with itself.

Essentially, the ordinance on one hand authorizes the CPC as an independent commission to remove commissioners for cause that it appoints a CPC appointed commissioner.

But in the next sentence, it says any commissioner removed shall be subject to city council confirmation.

We are recommending that to maintain the CPC's independence that if the CPC decides to remove a CPC appointed commissioner, that should not be subject to city council, a vote.

This is another point about clarifying the mission of the CPC.

So Ordinance 125315 has language in several areas around CPC's role being to help ensure public confidence in the effectiveness and professionalism of SPD.

But this is a little bit misleading because only SPD can do that, i.e. earn the trust and confidence of the public.

The onus should not be on CPC.

The CPC's job is to engage with community in a holistic way to understand their concerns and to work with community to recommend changes to SPD policies and practices based on those concerns.

The quoted language make it sound like the CPC is there to ameliorate the image of the SPD rather than to provide community-based accountability.

Our request is to cut that language throughout the ordinance as it relates to the role of the CPC.

The next recommended change is with respect to commissioner qualifications and commissioner assignments.

Essentially, there's a section within the ordinance that created commissioner assignments to city council districts and required that those assigned commissioners essentially act as quasi city council members for the commission in those council districts.

And the challenge is the provision in the ordinance that asks commissioners to do that, it requires commissioners to do a lot more than they can do as volunteers.

That might be something that would be possible if these were full-time employees, but commissioners are volunteers.

So the first concern is that this is just not possible.

It's never been done.

It's never been complied with essentially, because this is beyond the capability of voluntary commissioners.

But more to the point, the work of police oversight and community engagement should be based on communities, should be based on people impacted by policing and not dictated by geographic or political boundary lines.

So the CPC is recommending we strike the council district assignment requirement in the ordinance.

The next proposed change speaks to Commissioner stipends as outlined in City Ordinance 124543 from 2014, which authorized monthly stipends to be paid to CPC Commissioners.

The rationale for this originally is that the CPC is responsible for representing community interests and perspectives in the development of reforms related to police practices, training, and community outreach.

Commissioners spend a significant amount of time each month working on the various tasks assigned to the CPC.

The expectation is a minimum of 10 hours per month.

Because the city recognized that the importance of maintaining diversity of views is on the commission, the city implemented a stipend program so as not to deter individuals from becoming commissioners due to potential financial hardship that may engender.

At the same time, the CPC co-chairs spend substantially more than 10 hours per month on this work.

CPC bylaws prescribe many more duties to the co-chairs than most commissioners, such as drafting letters and op-eds to the CPC communication strategy, planning for meetings, and providing oversight for the executive director.

This proposal seeks to recognize that extra work.

And finally, if you're wondering what the CPC is up to, how we're engaging with the community and community spaces, I encourage you to visit our website.

Here is the URL.

We have a very active community engagement team and all of this is documented, updated regularly on our website.

This is also where we post documents related to the ongoing work about our continuing engagement with the federal consent decree and requests from SPD, for example, one we posted just recently about emergency vehicle operations.

We also welcome public comment at ocpcsseattle.gov, which we emphasize on every page.

Thank you very much.

Thank you both.

Hand it over to you, Mr. Doss.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Greg Doss, Council Central staff, here to give you a tour of the bill.

I think that Co-Chair Merkel and Director Ellis gave you a good overview of the policy changes that are sought by the CPC.

You have in front of you a draft bill that incorporates those policy changes.

I'm just going to take a couple minutes and point out how those changes were made and take any questions that you have on the technical transactions.

I'm not going to focus on all of the changes made in the bill because most are pretty straightforward.

There are some changes, however, that are a bit tricky and require some explanation.

I will provide some background on those and would also note that there might be some tweaking to this bill before it is introduced.

It's my understanding that the chair is going to allow this bill to circulate for a few weeks and that the CPC will be taking a look at it again in one of its regular meetings and that all of that will occur before it is introduced and there will be another hearing on it with a chance for potential amendments before it is passed.

So all of that by way of saying that this is still a draft, but want to let you know that it is a draft in progress.

So just three things really that I wanted to point out relative to the policy changes.

The first one has to do with the executive director qualifications.

And there's some language that effectuates the qualifications that the co-chair and the director talked about that they would like to see in their executive director.

And as Joel mentioned, this language is similar to what you would find in the accountability ordinance for the OPA and the OIG.

The one thing that's different about the section in the CPC is that it does not require law enforcement oversight experience as is required in the other two agencies.

Instead, it requires criminal legal system and police reform issue experience in those issues.

That would allow the commission to hire somebody that necessarily hasn't worked in a law enforcement agency providing supervisory or having supervisory experience.

Then under On page six, section E, there's some language about the executive director and their duties where it reads that the executive director now shall, in consultation and under the supervision of the co-chairs, perform such duties as hiring, supervising, and discharging employees of the office of the CPC.

This language is adding the co-chairs to make a little clearer that the management structure of the commission is changing and there's a closer tie between the executive director and the co-chairs.

And then the next thing I'll point out, I just have two more things.

The next thing I'll point out is probably the more complicated one.

It's the reorganization of the commission.

Central staff and the code advisor took a novel approach to making changes to effectuate the commissioner reorganization.

requested by the CPC and to do so also within the requirements of the code.

One of the more tricky provisions within the code requires the staggering of vacancies, which I understand has been a bit of a challenge for the commission over time.

The approach that the code reviser uses along with central staff and the bill allows the commission complete flexibility to manage its own transition.

It can control how and when it reaches 15 positions and may do so in a way that allows for the staggering of future positions.

So just really quickly how it does this, it reduces in section A on page eight, immediately, well, not immediately.

It allows for the reduction of the commission from 21 to 15 members and assigns the specialized positions to each authority.

The Seattle Police Management Association position is reassigned from the CPC to the mayor's office.

And this is consistent with the CPC's requests.

Then section C eliminates all the position numbers.

The CPC may continue to organize itself by position numbers, but this is not something that the code reviser sees as necessary in statute and it tends to create some complicating situations when position numbers become off from appointment packets and it becomes difficult for the agency and for the legislative branch to track.

A new codified section in section six is added that allows for the transition of 21 to 15 members and subsections A and B eliminate immediately all current vacant positions and say that new vacancies will continue to be eliminated until there is a commission made up of 11 general members and four specialized members.

And now those specialized members, of course, Seattle Police Management Association, Seattle Police Officers Guild, the Civil Liberties and Public Defense positions.

This section does not preclude the reappointment of existing members.

And so in that sense, it is again, once conforming with the principles of the CPC that no existing member loses their positions.

Depending on how vacancies become available, the makeup of the commission may vary.

So when it finally reaches the total number of 15, it may be that one appointing authority has more sitting members than another.

Say the mayor's office or the city council may have one more position than the CPC.

In such case, there are provisions under section D whereby a method is established that will allow appointing authorities to be skipped or forego appointing terms until the commission is balanced and each has five members.

And then there's a regular taking of turns method established so that each authority gets to take a turn when vacancies become available.

And that's how the commission will shrink from 21 to 15. And it, as I say, again, will be controlled by the commission itself, not in statute.

And then finally, the section that lays out the requirements for stipends used to point to City Ordinance 124543 as the requirements for how stipends are determined and reimbursed.

That's now laid out in full in this bill.

And what that means is instead of having any requirements around the stipends, requirements that Director Ellis spoke to around minimum hours, specific duties or attending meetings, Now this section just simply says that the purpose of stipends is to compensate for the financial burden of performing the duties of a commissioner.

Then it goes into some logistics about how those stipends are reimbursed.

Those are really the technical aspects of how the policies that you've heard from the commission today are implemented into the bill.

As I said before, they may be tweaked between now and the time the bill is introduced.

Open to any questions you may have.

Thank you so much to everybody on the panel.

I really appreciate the deep dive into these requested changes.

There is also attached to the agenda a helpful matrix that describes the requested changes from the CPC.

Taking a pause to see if anybody has any questions.

No questions?

I have a couple.

I just want to get on the record.

We don't have to necessarily resolve them.

I'll get to the questions in one second, but I did want to comment on some of the changes first.

I just want to recognize that the request on the size of the commission is a request that not just the co-chairs here with us today are making, but also commission members who were on the commission at the time when the commission size was increased from 15 to 21. So some current commission members were actually there at the time in 2017. And it was a time when a number of city commissions were requesting to expand their size with the idea that more people would mean more productivity.

And I think the CPC is not alone in finding that this number of commissioners has been challenging.

Also want to just I do want to note that the monthly stipend that is currently available for CPC members has not been updated since 2014. The first question I have is related to that.

I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit to how we ended up on the particular recommendation of $1,500 a month.

Just would love to know a little bit about the thinking there, if it is an escalation dating back almost 10 years now of the original number, or if it takes into consideration other factors.

I'm happy to answer that Councilmember Herbold because that number was my suggestion.

So I've had the opportunity since I began in my prior role as policy director in October to work very closely with the co-chairs as they went through a number of organizational processes, some of which you see here, but not all of it.

As I said, the expectation of commissioners is about 10 hours a week, although it ends up being more.

This is a substantial amount of very important work.

I've seen that the co-chairs do substantially more than that, more than three times the amount of work of an average commissioner.

And part of that is due to the requirements, as I mentioned, that are in the bylaws, the expectations of things that they're supposed to do that other commissioners don't do.

but also making changes like this to the bylaws, making changes, proposed changes to the ordinance, gathering feedback from all of the commissioners to do this is a tremendous amount of work.

So we currently have three co-chairs, but from looking at the budget, learning about the budget since January, preparing our budget for 2024, It's certainly my expectation that that rewards, it's not a reward, but actually provides the compensation that the co-chairs actually deserve for the tremendous amount of work that they do to keep this running successfully.

Thank you.

I'm just wondering, thinking this out loud, we haven't discussed this, the idea of perhaps applying some sort of an inflationary adjustment to all of the co-chairs.

in addition to adjusting, I'm sorry, of all of the members of the CPC in addition to perhaps adjusting upward a different amount for the co-chairs in recognition that they do more work.

And maybe we can find a balance there because it does occur to me that the stipend from 2014 for all of the members of the CPC might be adjusted.

I also wanted to add two other questions.

One related to the request to remove the district assignment for commissioners.

Co-chair Merkel, you spoke to added duties of the district assigned commissioners and likened those added duties to sort of general duties like a council member.

What are the specific requirements related to being a district commissioner?

So this is a section that I had discussed at length with some of the co-chairs and commissioners that were on the commission and assisted in drafting in 2016 and 2017. The expectation based on what's in the ordinance as it currently stands is that the commission shall assign commissioners to each council district and that they should be kind of experts in that council district and hold regular community engagement in those council districts and bring that feedback to the commission.

The concern is kind of twofold.

One is, That that that specific engagement assignment for each volunteer commissioner is a little beyond what a volunteer commissioner has the capability of doing, but the, the secondary concern is that.

based on what the mission of the commission is, we feel it's a better use to focus engagement on affected communities and that commissioners have more of a relationship and engagement with neighborhoods, the city as a whole, and impacted communities, not necessarily council districts, if that makes sense.

Sure.

I'm just really focused on the extra duties of a district commissioner.

And so the ordinance requires them to have meetings in the district that they represent.

Is that the extra duty?

I'm sorry.

Yes.

My reading and my understanding of the ordinance, and also talking with other commissioners who worked on this at the time, is that it does place some responsibility on individual commissioners to do their own community engagement in that council district.

Whereas community engagement has predominantly been the responsibility of the community engagement work group, community engagement staff and the commission as a whole.

Thank you.

And then my last question relates to, it relates both to removal of commissioners as well as the director.

I'm just wondering if you could put a little bit of a finer point on what for cause means.

I think it might be defined in the bylaws, but I don't have them in front of me.

Correct.

So with respect to the executive director, for cause is not defined.

It's not defined in the bylaws, it's not defined in the ordinance.

With respect to commissioners, however, forecast is specifically defined in our bylaws.

So for example, Dr. Ellis mentioned a number of requirements and expectations of commissioners, 10 hours of volunteer work per month towards commission work, but also to attend regular meetings and work group meetings.

If a commissioner has more than 25% of unexcused absences, for example, or breaks, confidence and executive privilege, or a number of other things that are specifically listed in our bylaws, that rises to the level of cause for that commissioner to be removed.

And those are the provisions that are impacted by any change to that.

So, but with respect to the executive director, that's really up to the judgment of the ED supervisors, the co-chairs in consultation with HR.

Thank you very much.

Those questions I had the others no and not seeing any online from colleagues joining us virtually.

Again, I have some questions.

That's okay.

My camera wasn't popping in right away.

Oh, very good.

Councilmember Mosqueda.

Thank you so much.

Yeah.

Thanks for the presentation.

And thanks for taking this up for an early conversation.

I do have a few questions and I look forward to chatting with the chair about this as well as the community before the next meeting.

I appreciate this is just a briefing right now.

I have a question for Greg Dawson from central staff.

Having sat on a number of boards and commissions in the past, including the health benefit exchange board, for example, which was really high profile and lots of scrutiny on it.

I don't remember there being a role for the board members to have, let's say, supervisory authority over personnel within an entity.

Obviously, for the director, that is pretty standard.

But can you remind me of some other examples if there is any off the top of your head or perhaps for the panel as well, if there was a board or commission that you referenced when trying to identify ways for commissioners to have supervisory and, I guess, reprimand authority over personnel.

And just to clarify, I mean, that structure partially already exists in the original 2017 ordinance in order to preserve authority.

So it's not the executive or the legislative bodies meddling in commission affairs.

So we're not adding that, but we are making a few tweaks to it.

Yes councilmember thank you for clarifying that's exactly it it's it's the opposite councilmember mosqueda the original ordinance required uh law enforcement supervisory experience uh the changes that are made in this ordinance would not require that it eliminates that requirement and instead instead would put in criminal legal uh and um I'm sorry.

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At the time, there was some concern, particularly from the about the mayor's office intervening in the CPC affairs and and the executive having the supervisory authority over the ED and that is why the council shifted that structure to have the co chairs be more of the supervisory authority.

and that is also, it's been in the bylaws, and that's how the CPC is operated.

I know that one of the commissions that the CPC was structured after in 2017 was the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, and based on creating an independent structure, And the Ethics and Elections Commission has the language that is proposed in the ordinance that in consultation with and supervision by the co-chairs.

So that is the model, the language today I think just clarifies the existing structure and brings it more in alignment with the Ethics and Elections Commission structure.

Thank you, co-chair.

Merkel.

Council Member Mosqueda, additional questions?

You might be frozen.

Council Member Mosqueda, if you are still with us, I see you on mute.

If you have additional questions.

I'm wondering if you might be having some technical difficulties.

I don't want to cut off this conversation.

We are at the, Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

Thank you for bringing the commission here to just commission leadership here to discuss these changes.

I'm generally supportive of them and think a lot of thought and experience has gone into crafting them.

So I look forward to discussing them at the next meeting too.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

Thank you.

Council Member Mosqueda, I see that she is, looks like she's no longer with us.

I fear she is having some technical difficulties.

If you can hear us, Council Member Mosqueda, we do welcome your additional questions.

We are at the end of the presentation and we are going to move on to the next item.

Just filibustering a little bit here in case you can get on.

Otherwise, it doesn't seem like we're going to hear the rest of those questions and we will move on to the next item on the agenda.

Really appreciate CPC co-chairs being with us here today.

As mentioned before, we will be taking this bill up after it's introduced, and that introduction will not happen until after the CPC's next meeting.

And we're looking at potentially having a vote on the draft bill at one of our July committee meetings.

Thanks again.

Thank you.

Mr. Clerk, can you please read in agenda item two?

Item two is resolution 32094, a resolution concerning wage equity for nonprofit human services workers, expressing the city council's intent to consider increasing human services contracts to support wage equity and collaboration with other funders and requesting information and action from the executive to advance human services workers wage equity.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate being joined by council central staff.

I'll hand it over to you for introductions and going over changes in the resolution since we last saw it.

Just want to say a few words.

The introduced resolution on wage equity for non-profit human services workers is a body of work that that council has undertaken for years now.

We've done so to address Uh, Disparately low wages in the human services sector, leading to costly turnover for the organizations that we depend on, as we heard today.

And all too often, critical services funded by the city going unoffered because of that turnover and those vacancies.

It hits our BIPOC workforce especially hard, who are overrepresented in a field where people are underpaid.

In July 2019, the Council passed Council Bill 9542, which required that the Human Services Department provide annual inflation adjustments for renewing contracts so that our nonprofit providers already struggling to maintain workers don't fall further behind due to inflation.

Many thanks to Council Member Mosqueda for her strong leadership in passing this important legislation.

And the council has consistently acted aggressively to protect and ensure these inflationary increases are always included in the city's approved budget.

Jumping forward to fall of 2021, the council added $600,000 to the Human Services Department for the 2022 adopted budget via a budget action which I sponsored that funding was used for a study that analyzed the comparable worth of human services jobs as compared to jobs in different fields that require similar skills, education, and difficulty.

I want to thank the Human Services Coalition for your vision on this research and your advocacy.

Moving forward to May 2022, the coalition convened a steering committee to serve on as oversight and in an advisory role for the study.

The committee supported human services department request for qualifications process and provided ongoing feedback for researchers.

The steering committee not only included coalition staff, but also experts on wage equity analysis and City of Seattle Council staff.

In July of that year, the University of Washington School of Social Work was chosen to conduct the comparable worth analysis.

In February of this year, the wage equity report was published by the University of Washington.

That market analysis found nonprofit human services workers are paid 37 percent less than workers in non-care industries with similar types of responsibilities and qualifications.

And those who leave the field see a 7% increase in net pay just one year later.

Its job evaluation shows that the pay is less despite the high level of skill, responsibility, and difficulty required by these jobs.

Just in March, we in this committee heard that research presented by the University of Washington Wage Equity Study and heard the recommendations for addressing the 37 percent pay penalty.

The committee meeting in April, central staff presented a draft version of this resolution adopting the UW recommendations.

And stating, and when I say adopting the recommendations, I mean recognizing the recommendations.

The language itself does not commit council to action.

It states the council's intent to consider increases in human services nonprofit worker wages.

At that meeting, I stated my interest and flexibility in working with committee members and the executive to draft final resolution language.

My office met with Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington and Budget Director Dingley several times and received their feedback and suggested edits to the resolution, many of which are incorporated into the version we're considering today.

I thank them for their partnership in strengthening this resolution.

My office also reached out to the offices of other committee members to offer the opportunity to provide edits for feedback and extended the deadline to do so.

We incorporated edits from the two offices that offered them.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson and Council Member Mosqueda for your thoughtful suggestions that again made the intent of this resolution much clearer.

Today, we have before us, I think, a stronger and very more specifically clarified final resolution, which has benefited from the insight, wisdom, and ideas.

Before I hand it over to Jen and Karina from Council Central staff to take us through the introduced resolution, and note changes from the previous draft as well as questions for our consideration.

I do want to just sort of daylight what we heard from the Harrell administration about this resolution.

They write that The lack of a signing of the resolution in no way is an indication of objection to the resolution.

I'm gonna quote, we certainly won't object to this legislation and the mayor has asked that our departments engage with the Seattle Human Services Coalition convening, a convening that is referenced in the resolution itself, to explore strategies for addressing wage equity regardless.

Please know that Just because his name isn't added to the resolution, we remain eager to identify solutions to support our human services providers.

Thank you and always feel welcome to reach out at any time.

So I just want to highlight that because there are There are roles for the executive identified in the resolution, and I just want to be very clear that not including the signature line on the resolution is not at all an indication that the executive is going to withhold their participation in the roles for the executive as identified in the resolution.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Give me just a moment to share.

Thank you.

Madam chair.

Councilmember Mosqueda.

the community element of public engagement is something that I'd love to see lifted up and underscored in that previous agenda item.

But I know we're on a tight timeline, so sorry for dropping off the line there back with the internet.

Thank you so much for working to get back with us.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Good morning, Councilmembers.

My name is Jennifer Lebrecq, and I'm here with my colleague Karina Bull.

We are both legislative analysts with central staff, and today we will be presenting on Resolution 32094 regarding wage equity for nonprofit human services workers.

This is today's agenda.

A couple highlights.

We'll be discussing the components in the introduced wage equity resolution, talking about changes since the last draft that this committee saw in April.

We'll provide an assessment of the UW wage equity study methodology, which heavily informs this resolution, as well as discuss five different policy considerations.

I believe that Councilmember Herbold just walked us through our timeline, but just a reminder that we've been here a couple times before at committee.

The University of Washington School of Social Work presented in March on the Wage Equity Study for Nonprofit Human Services Workers, and in April, central staff presented on a draft of the Wage Equity Resolution for discussion.

The wage equity resolution as introduced has five different components.

It recognizes the recommendations in the UW wage equity study, although it does not commit the city to doing all of them.

The resolution calls for collaboration between private and public funders in order to make joint progress on wage equity.

It says that council may intend to consider increases to contracts administered by the Human Services Department for purposes of wage equity, including a 7% increase in 2025. It requests a plan from the Human Services Department to ensure that contract increases are used to raise worker wages.

And it requests that the executive consider wage equity increases for contracts administered outside of the Human Services Department.

For example, those administered by the Department of Early Learning.

So this slide walks us through the substantial changes or substantive changes that have happened since this committee last saw a draft of the resolution on April 25th.

And I will just start walking through these.

The resolution now has two new whereas clauses that are related to funding.

that was added in the 2023 to 2025 state operating budget during this last legislative session, and both of them add funding for purposes of helping to stabilize the human services workforce in the state.

The next, for the next one, the first draft of the resolution had requested that either the executive or council convene a new group to make joint progress on wage equity.

The revised resolution recognizes that the Seattle Human Services Coalition is already doing this work because they are already convening a funding round table, which is comprised of government funders, including the Seattle Human Services Department, along with a range of foundations.

This, the resolution now requests that the funding roundtable commit to wage equity goals and delivering recommendations for achieving wage equity by the end of September, and that that information be delivered by the end of September so that it can be considered during the budget process.

Originally, the resolution requested that any savings from lower than projected inflationary adjustments be used for purposes of wage equity.

That language has been removed.

The resolution now requests a less detailed plan from HSD on how wage equity increases will be used to increase worker wages.

And finally, the resolution acknowledges that funding wage equity is contingent upon there being sufficient resources and that funding wage equity may require reduced spending in other areas.

And I will pause here for questions.

That's okay?

Yeah, that's perfect timing.

I just want to, again, thank Councilmember Peterson.

The change identified in number five was changed in multiple places throughout the resolution on your request.

Appreciate the recognition that In making budgeting decisions, we have to balance the needs and the demands on the budget.

And just it acknowledges that there are spending tradeoffs.

In addition, the mayor's office also requested that addition and CBO.

Items three and four, again, were requests from the mayor's office and the city budget director.

Item number two, I think one of the things that came up in one of our recent discussions here in committee was a recognition that city funding is blended with funding from private and other governmental jurisdictions and since there is a roundtable that includes those funders.

We want to make sure that they are also engaged in the discussions around wage equity.

And before we take up our budget in September, we want to hear about their progress in getting similar commitments from other funders, both private and public funders, in also making these types of investments in their workforce to ensure that the city isn't going it alone.

We do recognize that there are other governmental efforts, whether or not you're talking about King County RHA's efforts to increase wages or the recent King County ballot initiatives.

Also, we're focused on raising wages.

But again, this is an effort that we all need to do together and we need to, in the city taking this next step, we need to be able to evaluate the success of this roundtable to get commitments from other funders.

So that is the of the basis for the inclusion on number two, that was, I think, really came out strongly in our last committee discussion about this issue.

And just checking online and Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

I did have a question for central staff on the wording of, in section eight of the resolution, where it says the council intends that any increase to contracts administered by HSD for purposes of wage equity would be used to increase worker wages.

Could you unpack that a little bit for me?

What does that mean in a practical operational basis?

The intent of that statement, and I think that was another place where you helped to clarify the language for us, was that if HSC contracts got an increase, and that increase was intended to be for the purpose of wage equity, that that increase would be passed on to workers in the form of increased worker wages.

and that is where the resolution goes on to ask for a plan from HSD that would go into the details, the more specifics about the process by which that would happen.

Thank you.

Council Member Nelson.

When you say the process by which that would happen, what did you mean by that?

I was wondering when you were talking how we would how we would know that that increase was passed along.

So is that what you were getting at?

That's exactly right.

So I think the, and again, the resolution doesn't have these specifics, but some ideas could include that there could be expectations for how that increase would be used that would be embedded into the request for proposals.

The evaluation process for responses to requests for proposals could include, you know, did organizations use the additional funds to increase wages, and then that could be embedded into the contract that's executed and then into contract monitoring as well.

So really a plan from HSD about how this would be embedded into all steps of the process.

And I think this is an item that was identified back in the effort in 2019 to raise the contracts under the leadership of Councilmember Mosqueda.

This was highlighted, I think, and maybe we asked for a report because there was earlier this issue of our wage equity investments going to wages or are they perhaps also being used for other agency overhead because all costs increase, but the intent of these funds are to increase wages.

The report back that Council Bill 1195-42 did not occur partially because of the COVID emergency.

We are restating our interest and desire to figure out how it is that the Human Services Department can help us ensure that these dollars are going for specifically the intent as identified in our wage equity efforts while also recognizing it is a reality that agencies are also receiving other increased costs associated with inflation, but the intent of these dollars are for wage equity.

Any other questions?

Councilmember Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

Appreciate the work that has gone into this and the sponsor's positive intent in crafting this and for the generous and collaborative revisions that were made to improve the document.

and to the extent our City of Seattle taxpayers are able to provide additional dollars for such a good cause, I agree we want to enhance the assistance we provide to nonprofits serving Seattle's most vulnerable, especially when we can share added funding investments with other levels of government and philanthropy.

I would especially want to retain those productive frontline workers at the most effective organizations who are bringing inside the most people experiencing homelessness, which is a priority for my constituents.

So I continue to support the positive intent of this resolution.

I'll be abstaining on this today.

This is one of several good causes that would require additional funding and and it is being floated outside of our annual budget deliberations.

I still believe decisions on spending more money than we currently have should occur during our regular budget process.

But I also understand the intent of this.

This is a priority too.

I just, for me personally, want to see all the needs and requests and resources in one place and then make the necessary trade-offs holistically with the public process at that time.

The development of the budget, as we know, starts with the mayor's office, and I appreciate their open-mindedness toward the goals of this resolution and working with the sponsor, even though they are not signing the resolution.

I'm just not able to commit to this today, so I'll be abstaining today.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

I respect your intent to abstain, but for the public record, I just want to clarify this resolution does not make any decisions.

It does not make any commitments.

It simply says shall consider throughout.

Councilmember Mosqueda.

Thank you so much.

And sorry, I'm on my phone given our internet situation.

So if you need to stop sharing the screen, that's fine.

I just wanted to make some comments in support of this effort here today.

And also to some of the earlier comments that were made, this is one of many ways that we can help reduce the costs for our human service provider contracts.

And it's important to recognize that historically, many public entities, including ours, have outsourced or worked with community partners to invest in this core public service.

Services for our elders, our kiddos, our seniors, our vets, our homeless population, folks who are unstably housed.

This is core government services, and we have historically outsourced it.

I think the conversation that's been initiated over the last few years, and I thank Council Member Herbold for her leadership on this and the outline she went through, Council Member O'Brien in his tenure as well was a strong champion of this.

And I as well have made this a core tenant of why I'm involved in public service because this is a core public good and we ought to be investing our public resources accordingly.

It is also ideal for I think the chairs of public utilities and city light to see what other solutions they might have at their disposal because one of the issues that we heard in 2019 was the amount that these organizations actually pay right back to the city in public utilities, so another opportunity for us.

I wanted to lift up the importance of this work, though, because many of us, including folks who might have concerns about this legislation, have raised concerns about the increased numbers of folks who are dealing with crises, who might be visible as unhoused members of our population, or the increased crisis that we've seen only worsen in the pandemic, whether it's elder abuse and neglect, isolation and depression, abuse and neglect of kiddos.

This has absolutely been worsened during the pandemic.

The conversation that initiated in 2019 that I was proud to work on with my colleagues has only become worse, and I think that this resolution is paramount.

This is time for us to move forward on the recommendations that have been outlined.

And I want to thank the chair for her continued effort to push us, not with new revenue, but with an existing revenue or any revenue that becomes available to our city.

We ought to be looking at how we make trade-offs and investing in this core government service.

I appreciate the two recitals that are included in this resolution as well.

And Madam Chair, I know we're pressed on time.

I'm just going to read them briefly.

It says, whereas the Seattle Office of Housing released $25 million and request for interest in 2023 to pay for workforce stabilization, maintenance and operating expenses in existing permanent supportive housing.

And this was referring to jumpstart investments that my colleagues made possible.

Whereas the proposed 2023 Seattle housing levy, if approved by voters, includes 122 million to pay for operating maintenance services and expenses, including workforce stabilization.

And the executive has proposed for the funding from the housing levy to be paired with funding from Jumpstart to raise the amount of investments that we're making available to housing stabilization.

I raise this as two examples of where we are trying desperately to make sure that we're investing in our human service contractors.

Because the organizations like Plymouth Housing, DEFC, Chief Seattle Club, Lehigh, Compass Housing, Catholic Housing Services, Mary's Place, so many other incredible organizations that rely on contracts with the city, they cannot continue to provide services at the high level of turnover that they were experiencing.

So we've made some inroads into addressing the cost of living needs, but we have not made significant impacts into the underlying wage instability and discrepancy that currently occurs with our human service contractor providers and what they could be making in other sectors or what they maybe even would be making within the city of Seattle as a direct city employee.

It is critical for us to be investing in these workers as if they were working directly for the city and I want to thank our partner organizations who have seen turnover rates actually decrease in the little bit amount of time that we've been able to invest in cost of living increases but we also know that their turnover rates remain higher relative to other industries and other organizations who don't have historic underpayment in their wages.

I'm committed to this and I want to underscore the importance of us doing this with the city revenue that we currently have and hopefully what we'll be able to bring into the future, but it's not contingent on our ability to raise additional revenue.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

We appreciate your remarks and your context and your leadership in this area.

Are there other comments or remarks from other council members?

Not seeing any.

So I'm going to, I do have some final remarks, but I'm going to wait until we get this in front of us procedurally.

And I am going to move that the committee recommends the adoption of Resolution 32094. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of Resolution 32094. Are there further comments?

Okay.

not seeing any at the table or online.

So just before we call the roll, I just want to give my thanks to central staff, Jen Labreck, and Karina Bull, and my staff, Christina Kotsubos, for all of their work.

Thanks as well to the Seattle Human Services Coalition, especially Jason Austin, Tree Willard, and Julia Strzokowski.

Really appreciate the work of the UW research team.

led by Jenny Romick, Emiko Tamija, and Shannon Harper.

Thank you to the Human Services Department who helped with the analysis, Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington, and Budget Director Julie Dingley.

And thank you as well to my colleagues on this committee who offered edits and feedback.

really appreciate everyone who called into public testimony this morning and in previous committee meetings to share their real-life impacts of the pay penalty.

I do want to give some examples of the impacts of these low wages.

You might remember when King County purchased 10 hotels and apartment buildings to house people living unsheltered during the pandemic, but couldn't open half of them due to workforce shortages.

The King County Regional Homelessness Authority has repeatedly told us that among its five largest contracted organizations, there are more than 300 vacant positions.

This is something that they are working on with their wage equity investments to address.

During public comment at the March meeting, we heard from nonprofit leaders who testified that multiple childcare classrooms, including some for infants, are going empty because they can't find staff to work such low wages.

We heard public comment from Amanda, a human services worker with 14 years of experience, who still has to take a second job in food services to afford to work in this field.

We know that Crisis Connections experiences a 50% turnover rate due to low wages, even as they are on the front line for thousands of people experiencing a behavioral health crisis on the worst day of their lives.

I think we can all point to multiple instances in for these essential urgently needed workforce investments, such as responding to people in behavioral health crisis or sheltering people living on the streets, funds that went unspent because providers were unable to hire staff.

Fixing a 37% pay penalty isn't easy, and we know the city can't do it alone.

All public and private funding partners must work in concert to increase wages for these essential workers.

We are not alone.

We saw that wage equity efforts are currently underway or proposed by the county, the state of Washington, the Regional Homelessness Authority, and the mayor's office.

During public comment, we heard from United Way of King County, who is also similarly working to increase worker wages, consistent with our recognition that private funders also are really important in addressing these issues.

As jurisdictions and levies move forward with increasing these wages in non-profit human services sector, our human services department will find itself falling further and further behind if we do not keep up.

Because their contracted organizations will be competing to hire the same pool of workers but potentially offering lower wages.

If we expect our city departments to act robustly and quickly in response to this council's priorities, we cannot tie their ham by providing the lowest wages in the region.

In closing, this is a careful, measured resolution which will allow the council and the city to continue our work to ensure equitable wages for workers who are tackling some of the most difficult work of the city, and I urge my colleagues' support of the resolution.

Thank you.

The clerk, please call the roll.

Chair Herbold?

Oh, sorry, my hand was up for Nelson.

Could you please read what you received from the executive before we started this discussion?

We won't object to this legislation, and the mayor has asked that our departments engage with the SHSC, the Seattle Human Services Coalition, convening to explore strategies for addressing wage equity.

Please know that just because he hasn't added his name to the resolution, we remain eager to identify solutions to support our human services provider.

Thank you and always feel welcome to reach out at any time.

And so the main function for the executive in this resolution is the participation in the roundtable.

And this is a message saying that they will participate in the roundtable and they don't need to sign the resolution in order to convey that commitment to the council.

All right?

Yes.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Sorry for not seeing your hand up before calling for the roll.

And if there are other questions, I will hold the call.

No?

All right.

Mr. Clerk, can you please call the roll?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Council Member Nelson.

Abstain.

Council Member Peterson.

Abstain.

Vice Chair Lewis.

Yes.

Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Three yes, two abstentions.

Thank you so much.

The resolution will move to the full council meeting on, I believe it's June 19th.

And with that, we can move on to agenda item three.

Will the clerk please read in agenda item three?

Agenda item three, Office of Emergency Management Heat and Smoke Preparedness Plan.

a virtual presentation.

Thank you.

And, yes, I see that we are joined virtually by Director, with Director Mayer joining us.

I just want to mention a couple thoughts here before I hand it over.

We know sales summers are increasing in their intensity.

Between 84 and 2020, the city had only recorded 4 days total with 100 degree temperatures.

In 2021, the city and region experienced record breaking temperatures for 3 days, reaching a new record of 108 degrees Fahrenheit, which damaged critical infrastructure like I-5, overwhelmed our hospital emergency rooms during the COVID pandemic, and causing significant environmental impacts to local wildlife and natural resources.

The heat wave led to the death of over 30 people throughout King County.

We know that climate change has given us a new time of year that many Seattle residents refer to as a smoke season.

Our city's location between mountain ranges helps to trap air pollutants, like smoke, sometimes for weeks.

And the Pacific Northwest is a cornerstone for our nation's conservation efforts.

We really recognize that Seattle had the worst air quality last September in the entire world due to smoke from a fire.

in the Eastern Cascade Range.

With this recognition of these new challenges, the City Council has asked the Office of Emergency Management to integrate into its planning for a variety of emergencies to integrate an incident operations plan for extreme heat and wildfire smoke.

As part of the Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan today, Director Mayer is joining us to present information from a draft of this plan.

And I really want to say I thank you for joining us today and taking on this really important work and your presentation today is timely.

Thank you.

Oh, I see Council Member Esqueda's hand is up.

Did you have some opening remarks?

Not an opening remark, Madam Chair, but I just wanted to compliment what you said as you handed over.

As we saw New York grapple with the incredible smoke and consequences of global warming, the mayor commented, there is no playbook for this.

And I disagree with that.

I feel like you and your team, Seattle and our region, including King County, have offered a playbook, unfortunately.

But we have been on the cutting edge.

So there is a playbook.

Obviously, we continue to try to strengthen it and make it more equitable in our services.

But thank you for actually being on the front line.

And hopefully, we won't have to deal with it as much if we continue to address global warming.

But I think you just all deserve credit for being out there early.

And maybe our New York neighbor will recognize that.

Yes, thank you very much.

I really, really appreciate that.

Thank you Council Chair Herbold for inviting me to the committee and thank you committee members for being here and for your interest in in both extreme heat and smoke preparedness.

I actually, oddly enough, just returned from a crisis leadership program in Washington, D.C.

last week right in the middle of their smoke, extreme smoke from Canada.

So there's really no place that is that these kinds of events are not impacting.

So I appreciate that.

I did want to mention that this is an annex to the Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan as Council Member Herbold mentioned, it has gone through all of the committees, except the emergency executive committee which are the department directors for the official adoption and then it will move to the mayor's office and to counsel.

So as I mentioned, it is an annex.

Its purpose is to enable this coordinated multidisciplinary and multi-departmental and multi-jurisdictional response during both heat and smoke events.

It applies to all city departments, talks about their roles and responsibilities and how we all support each other and also to those partners that we rely on like King County Metro, public health and others who are outside the city.

The scope is that it aligns with the processes and structures that are already in our comprehensive emergency management plan, which is really the larger document that talks about roles and responsibilities for all departments during anything that impacts the city's ability to provide services to residents and visitors.

There's additional detail here about how we would coordinate that response To heat and smoke events and includes actions needed to heat related hazards.

So something in our comprehensive emergency management plan is the Seattle hazard identification and vulnerability analysis or Shiva that not only looks at hazards, but uses the social vulnerability index community profiles.

So we can really pinpoint.

Which communities will be impact most impacted and what are those actions that we as the city can take to help people under all those different types of circumstances.

And of course with heat related hazard there are a number of kind of cascading events that can cause power outages.

infrastructure and other kinds of structural failure.

You've heard about impacts to bridges and overpasses.

So all of those things we need to look at for heat in particular.

And then also we know and make sure that people know that we may need to adapt even those response actions to specific conditions at the time of the actual incident.

I did want to mention that there are a couple of limitations.

City departments, of course, will do our best to respond and help people impacted.

But there are some things that make some of that response more challenging.

One is that our infrastructure was not built for extreme heat.

And as you all know, more than half of the Seattle homes here do not have air conditioning or good filtration systems.

Actually, many residential buildings were built to retain heat because in the past, as you know, it had been relatively cool and we're so far north that we wanted architecture that would retain heat, which now makes it more difficult when we have extreme heat situations and need to help people cool off.

We also have limited options for cold spaces that we can direct people to go to.

You may remember that we did focus groups about a year ago with different communities throughout Seattle and learned that some of the options the city had provided in the past, for example, a cooling center that was a community center, other large room that was cool, but there was not much else there, was not appealing to people, was hard for people with children, or people who were elderly or people that had to travel a great distance to just sit in a room that was cool.

So this last summer, the summer before the one we're in now, we did provide some cooling options to places that people already go.

Some senior centers in the international district and other places where people already were gathering so that they didn't have to travel and it was someplace they were familiar with and had other services there as well.

This is a little bit more about the Shiva that I mentioned and really the consequences of extreme heat and wildfire smoke.

10 to fall in these 3 categories, health, transportation and infrastructure, and then other weather and climate hazards combined with those you could get some.

lightning storms and other things that would make the heat more consequential.

There's also a number of consequences identified with each of these categories, and those are all listed in the annex.

If you're interested in seeing what some of the consequences and the actions are.

OEM, Office of Emergency Management, is the plan coordinator.

You'll see the primary departments, meaning the departments with the major responsibilities for heat and smoke, are on the left-hand side.

So HSD, Parks and Rec, utilities, the mayor's office communications department, transportation, finance and administrative services and city light.

But on the right hand side, you'll notice there are a number of supporting departments and agencies that also have really important roles, public health, that kind of goes without saying.

The library often has cooling centers, the fire department, police department, information technology, the city animal shelter, HR, human resources for the city, the Seattle Center, the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, Seattle Public Schools, King County Metro, and the Office of Economic Development.

Some of our response strategies include those that you see here.

Seattle City Light monitors the power system for load and making sure that there's not too much stress on the system.

That often happens during extreme heat events.

And so system failures are detected early and can be resolved as quickly as possible due to that monitoring.

US DOT also engages in extreme heat mitigation and looks at potential damage to infrastructure.

They focus on water cooling of roadways and bridges.

those kinds of things to keep everything flowing.

They have an extreme heat readiness and response plan that details specifically what those response actions will be.

And of course, they're also, both City Light and SDOT are concerned with worker safety.

And any department that has workers that are outside are monitoring the conditions and making sure that they can either modify, reschedule, or cancel planned outdoor work during periods of extreme heat.

Some other strategies are that the city works with outdoor partners, I mean out of the city partners to provide cooling locations.

So existing public spaces that people already go to like the library and community centers The armory is also available if need be.

Air conditioned spaces that are not typically available to the public can also be made available in a very in very short order through S.P.R. and S.H.A. and others.

We can provide temporary cooling like portable air conditioners to those places that vulnerable populations such as the elderly or daycare centers where people obvious already are.

or frequenting.

Also, we partner with some private sector organizations like malls and other places that have air conditioning so that people can go there and get cooled.

As you might imagine, public messaging is really important for all of the ways that we do that through city council and letting your constituents know Where those places are that they can go, or they should stay inside if there's a lot of smoke or wear a mask, then all of the other ways that the city communicates with the public.

So there's a few additional strategies for smoke.

During an extended severe wildfire smoke event, the city would work with regional partners to identify indoor spaces that have filtration and establish clean air spaces, not just places that would be cool.

And as I mentioned earlier, city departments can curtail outdoor work.

And all of these things that we do are in line with what the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries rules are for how we deal with smoke and how we protect people.

So, some of the things that does is 1st, we monitor, we're constantly monitoring all the things that impact the city.

And 1 of our big partners for this is, as you might imagine, is the national weather service.

So, usually there is a 2 to 5 day advance notice of hot weather.

And usually we get some advance notice for smoke as well.

And so when those forecasts indicate that these are going to be issues, we share that information with stakeholders and other groups that we regularly interact with.

And then we set up a situation assessment conference call.

so that we can do several things.

Look at those responsibilities for key city departments along with outside partners like public health and KCRHA.

We go through the weather forecast, how long it's likely to stay.

We look at the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency ratings.

We assess impacts to those that the city serves, And then we look at what are those actions that we're going to take immediately.

Those actions, some include things that would happen prior to it getting really hot and smoky and then also how long we may need to have either cooling centers or filtration centers with filtration open and then communicate that out.

We do a lot of this coordination using Microsoft Teams.

In smaller events, city departments and our stakeholders can use that platform.

It's easy for us to get together in a hurry as opposed to bringing people into the EOC, but we can do that as well if it looks like the impacts are gonna be larger and that we will need that in-person face-to-face coordination.

For an event that is larger or expected to go on for a long time, we would ask city department representatives to come to the Emergency Operations Center.

Our objectives for this type of event would include, what is the impact to city services?

Our infrastructure, is it vulnerable?

Is there likely to be heat impacts to infrastructure?

And what are those communities that are going to be most impacted?

And of course, most especially vulnerable populations.

And then what are the actions we can take to help mitigate that?

We also look at the need for cooling and smoke-free locations, as I mentioned earlier, and making sure that people who are impacted know where to go and how to get either protection equipment, how to make a really easy filtration system with a box fan are some of the things that we put out, and making sure that we use all our communication avenues for that.

Also, we have a city of Seattle heat and smoke website that is just directed to here's what to look for in those types of events.

And what do you do summer heat safety?

You'll find that at Seattle dot gov slash heat.

In addition to this annex that I've been.

we're talking with you today about.

So in summary, this plan is based on not only input from internal and external stakeholders, but also the focus groups that we continue to do with different community groups to make sure the efforts that we have put together with our partners that we all think those are a good idea, but making sure that the communities impacted agree and often they have.

they have input about how to change things that either make it more accessible or easier to access.

As I mentioned, it's all city departments, outside partners as well.

The actions focus on city department work and helping the community.

Of course, our focus at OEM is to ensure this unity of effort when we're managing the consequences of heat and smoke, just like we would do unity of ever for any other type of incident or disaster.

So happy to take any questions or comments.

And again, thank you so much for your interest in the heat and smoke annex.

Thank you, Director Mayer and as well as to all of your staff.

coordinating all this really important work.

I'm just going to maybe start off with a question, and maybe my colleagues will have some additional ones.

But the plan says right up front that our infrastructure is unprepared for extreme heat and smoke.

I'm wondering, from your perspective, what is the most effective investments, what are the most effective investments that we can make in the next few years to address some of those infrastructure needs and best protect vulnerable communities from heat and smoke events and increase our overall preparedness.

So I know you've heard, there's been a lot of conversation across the country as well as here in Washington State about aging infrastructure.

So I think a comprehensive analysis of what is first most vulnerable to heat, whether that's bridges, other overpasses are the things that come to mind first, but also could be having to do with water and wastewater.

So a really good assessment of One, how heat affects those infrastructure, which ones are the oldest and which are in best need of repair, and then prioritizing what should be first, second, and so forth.

And then also looking at what is the cost and how you could do some kind of infrastructure repair in a phased approach so that you're not having a really expensive infrastructure repair all at one time.

And just following up on that, because you did mention the national conversation around infrastructure investment.

Do you think that, aside from the poor shape of our infrastructure nationally driving those conversations, are the impacts of extreme heat also a consideration in those national conversations about infrastructure investment?

Yeah, good question.

Yes, absolutely.

I think they're the conversations that I've heard are.

For heat anyway, and heat impacts to infrastructure tend to be in those places who have historically.

had very hot weather.

And also sometimes humidity can be a factor depending on the age of pipes and other kinds of structures.

But I think it's really, as you mentioned at the beginning of this, how the change in climate is really obviously impacting everywhere, that those places that are not used to having the conversation about heat impacts, like Seattle, will will need to come to the forefront, but it's definitely conversation I've heard in my profession about integrating emergency management and emergency management mitigation with infrastructure.

not only strengthening infrastructure, but more interaction between infrastructure owners and the public sector.

You know, it's usually a combination of the public sector and private sector that own infrastructure or have some say in in protecting it and strengthening it.

So as we continue to have those conversations and get away from worrying about exposing vulnerabilities to infrastructure and then really focusing on how do we make things stronger, I think is really important.

Absolutely.

Any other questions?

Because I'll keep plugging along.

I'll just say that we're a city that's lucky to have many natural swimming areas.

So I'll put in a plug for ensuring that we have adequate staffing for lifeguards at our beaches.

Absolutely.

So, 1 of the items that you flagged under limitations was that community members, particularly elders are reluctant to use cooling centers.

Can you speak to how we are addressing this?

Yeah, so that I appreciate you bringing that up.

So.

It was that it was not so much that they were reluctant to, but it was the other reluctance had to do with 2 things.

1. Nobody wanted to, regardless of their age, wanted to go sit in a room that was empty but had air conditioning.

So a big open space with cooling, that's not appealing.

And then I think for elders, the transportation piece is hard.

It's a kind of interesting dilemma because oftentimes people who are elderly or have mobility issues don't wanna leave their comfort of their space, and then that can become dangerous.

They tend to stay put even if they're uncomfortable and they're hot, and then they're put in a dangerous situation because it's too hot and they can have health concerns.

They can even die from excessive heat.

The main ways that we've looked at that is, what are the community centers or organizations or programs That already their target population or audiences are elderly so that people are already going there already familiar with it and giving them cooling options.

And then also, how can we help provide transportation?

or partner with community groups that can help us speak with people who might be reluctant, like, oh, the government says I should do this.

It's better to get that message from a community partner that works with those populations so that it's a trusted partner.

And then they can say, we can help you with transportation.

Or what are the other barriers to you using someplace that's cool, like the library?

So those have been the main ways that we've addressed that.

We're always looking for new ways to engage, so.

So we are looking at transportation accommodations?

Absolutely, absolutely.

And depending on the nature of the event and how long it is, King County Metro has been a great partner at helping provide that transportation.

Yeah, what about for folks who don't want to leave their homes and that don't have any cooling infrastructure?

Has there been any thought provided to staff providing either city staff or contracted provider staff that would offer sort of technical assistance to elders about how to do a box fan cooler, it seems like that would be really helpful information to get out broadly and to actually maybe do some hands on demonstrations of how that is a function that people can do themselves at home.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

So we have done that.

We haven't We haven't been able to reach everybody that could probably use that service, but that's one of the things that we then add to our education and outreach programs.

Even before it gets really hot, we start talking about that.

There are how to's on the website.

We also share that information with those trusted partner community groups that I was talking about, because sometimes the person doesn't want to go to a class and they maybe don't use social media.

So giving that information to those trusted community partners is also the best way to get that information out.

But we blanket our social media with, here's how to make the really easy fan.

so that it's on all the different ways that we connect with people through technology, but then also the in-person interactions as well.

Thank you.

Pausing for other questions.

Any others?

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

Your ears perked up when they started talking about bridges.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

And yes, thank you, Director Mayer for mentioning the impact to our bridge infrastructure for these severe heat events.

I did wanna talk about cooling centers and wanted to know if when the budget is submitted to the city council in September for consideration, whether there will be some prioritization of climate resiliency so that people can go into the remaining libraries and community centers that might not have air conditioning.

I know for the Northeast Seattle Library and Southwest Library, it took, you know, after we budgeted the money, it took two years.

In fact, that project still hasn't even started in the Northeast branch.

in terms of breaking ground for that cooling center.

So considering the lengthy lead time to actually install cooling and air filtration, are we gonna see some resources devoted to that in the upcoming budget?

Yeah, that's a really great question and I can't speak to exactly what would be included regarding that for next year's budget.

However, there are some exciting things happening through some mitigation funding that we got for library to libraries that I'm aware of.

to put in cooling systems and do some of the seismic retrofitting that is needed at the libraries, which is great that we got to combine those two into one.

I'm not sure when that grant cycle, that work starts from that, but we were awarded, the city was awarded that mitigation grant funding for the libraries.

There are also, Is some building resilient infrastructure and communities are brick.

grant money that is specifically targeted to that we just recently applied for.

So we haven't gotten the money yet, but for a number of climate mitigation efforts, not just for emergency response, but OEM helps coordinate other city departments applying for that grant money.

So I believe there's one for Um parks and recreation and I think s dot has one.

I can't remember all the departments, but I can get that list for you Um, so yeah, we're constantly looking for ways to um get outside funding to help um, um supplement what we're doing with with the city budget to mitigate those impacts from all that is, all the impacts from climate change.

Well, maybe not all of them, but a good number of them.

And of course, heat is on the top of the list.

There's more people that die from extreme heat worldwide than any other disaster.

Thank you.

Yeah, just a couple more questions.

You mentioned that more than half of homes in Seattle do not have or cannot afford air purifying technologies or in-home environmental controls like air conditioning and heat pumps.

Given that, I think it is very likely that many of those homes that do not have in-home environmental controls, maybe low-income residents.

I'm wondering whether or not there have been conversations with the Office of Housing about their low-income home ownership repair program that extends typically to weatherization.

making homes more energy efficient.

But since this is another climate issue, I'm wondering whether or not there might be an opportunity for some of these funds to be used for this purpose.

Yes.

So I meant to mention that as part of this work for this extreme heat annex, um, we, and after the focus groups, we also got together, we, uh, we, um, got together with all of the city departments and the emergency executive board to talk about here are the recommendations that we've heard from you and from the community.

Um, and, Doing some prioritization of those in terms of what are the things that we can do right away that would help people and what are the things that will take a little more time and a little more investment.

And then that prioritize list that's from this effort.

Once it goes to the final committee, we'll then go to the mayor's office.

And of course, we'll also share with you to look at, you know, here's some things that we can do right away that maybe only take a little bit of money, like buying portable air conditioners for some places.

We can't, of course, afford to buy air conditioning for everybody in the city.

But we can definitely do some targeting of that and then what are those efforts that will take a little bit more investment, whether that has to do with how we strengthen infrastructure or provide additional green spaces in the city with more tree canopy.

Parks and places that are shady for people to cool off, which will take more time.

The interesting thing about the architecture piece that I think I read.

Just in the last 6 months that Seattle had Seattle homes.

We, and those of us who live here in Seattle have the lowest number of air conditioners in residential homes of any place in the country, which is surprising.

I'm from California, so that was surprising to me is a lot of people in California have air conditioning, but I think because of.

The geography and you know historically this area has not been really warm so that had not been a priority.

So we're kind of catching up.

I know there's also some conversations about and this would apply to Seattle housing and providing providing them with more money.

There is some conversation about looking at because heat is so deadly for people that For new construction, talking with developers about heat mitigation, whether that's a heat pump or air conditioning is really a public health issue.

It's not a luxury.

It used to be that people in the past, like, oh, only that's a luxury item to have air conditioning and it really isn't.

It's it's a public health issue.

But how we enforce that, you know, as part of the work that the city does, I don't know how we answer that.

But it's definitely something that's been talked about for for quite some time now.

Thank you.

I would like I'm looking forward to receiving a copy of your recommendations, but I would like to specifically flag that the office of housing has a home ownership repair program focused on low income homeowners.

And so that is an existing source of funds that if there was a way to expand the use to ensure that a infrastructure improvement like this is considered a repair for their purposes.

There may be funds already available through the Office of Housing.

So just wanting to flag that.

And the last question I have.

Yeah, absolutely.

The last question I have is a two-parter.

I know a lot of folks watching this committee hearing might be curious about how the city supports homeless residents during an extreme weather event like heat and smoke, and I know this information is available in the report, but can you just speak a little bit more about the process for addressing those needs when the EOC is activated for these events.

And then separately from that question, I noted with interest that animal control is listed as a stakeholder, but it doesn't go into a lot of detail about what animal control's role is in emergencies, protecting our furry friends.

I'll start with a short, easy one first.

I'm going to talk about animals first.

Really, it's about making sure people understand that heat is dangerous for animals as well, and things that you can do to make sure they're not locked up in a place outside that's hot, that you don't leave the animal in a car or some other structure that's too hot for them.

making sure they have enough water.

So animal control helps with getting the word out to pet owners and others with animals, you know, service animals and whatnot, to make sure that they know what are the best ways that they can protect their pets.

So then the question about homelessness or people experiencing homelessness, we partner with KCRHA and also public health to start and we, you know, working ahead of time, ahead of the forecast for extreme heat and getting information to our residents and the public that's experiencing homelessness of That this heat event is coming where there are where they can access.

You know, masks if it's for smoke, or where the closest cooling centers again, also providing some transportation.

We also work with fire and law enforcement to be on the lookout for people who might be that are outside and housed and experiencing health-related conditions from, sorry, my light went out, from heat or smoke and then providing them with either, so it's usually about transportation, giving them some kind of mitigation, either water, masks, things like that.

It's definitely challenging.

And as you know, the KCRHA is the lead for that, but we do as best we can to support with other city department actions for people outside.

And are there, I'm not gonna say sufficient, because I know there aren't sufficient indoor locations, but are there indoor locations that are opened up similar to when we have cold weather extreme events?

Is that accommodation made for heat and smoke events to open up more spaces?

And is there a plan to open up more spaces than we've opened in past years.

So we definitely use some of the same spaces like the libraries and the community centers and both of those locations have other things that people can do.

Community centers are can be a little bit tricky if there are other programs going on.

So how we accommodate those who might be coming just to get cool and those who already have an after school program or something else going on.

The locations are in short supply and we're often looking to our private sector partners to open other locations.

As you mentioned, we do not have enough.

Libraries are open during the day, which tends to be the hottest part of the day, so that's often helpful.

But yeah, we're constantly looking for what are the other places that we might use and then relying on those partners that could help with transportation, and then of course getting the word out of where people can go.

But there's definitely a shortage of facilities.

Yeah, I think the need really exists to lean into private sector property owners to help with this great need during the day at the hottest time of the day.

I'd like to think that there are some opportunities there that the city can pursue.

Yeah, I agree.

That's definitely something we're doing.

Yep.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Any other questions from colleagues?

Anybody have questions online?

Council Members Lewis and Mosqueda, I know sometimes I can't see your hand up.

Just want to make sure I'm giving everybody the opportunity.

All right.

Thank you so much for this presentation.

Thank you for your work.

I want to call out specifically your work supporting resilience hubs in South Park and Georgetown.

Really, that is, I'm so grateful for those efforts and all of the emergency preparedness trainings that your department offers via community safety ambassadors who you've come and talked to us about before.

Yeah, thank you.

Very much appreciated.

Thank you.

Thanks for inviting me and happy to share with you what we're doing.

Thanks so much.

Let's definitely keep talking.

Appreciate it.

All right.

So if there are no additional comments from my colleagues, I will adjourn today's meeting.

The next Public Safety and Human Services Committee is scheduled for Tuesday, June 27th.

If any committee members anticipate being absent from that meeting, I ask that you get in touch with my office.

And again, if there are no additional comments, We will adjourn and the time is. 1148 am Thank you.

Everybody.