Seattle City Council Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans and Education Committee 6/20/19

So good evening, everyone.

It's Thursday, June 20th, 2019. It is 6 o'clock p.m.

This is a special meeting of the Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans, and Education Committee.

I'm Councilmember Lorena Gonzalez, one of the citywide representatives at the City of Seattle Council and also the chair of this committee.

And joining me here this evening is Councilmember Shama Sawant, who represents District 3 which is the district that we are currently sitting in thank you for being here councilmember If there is no objection the agenda will be adopted Hearing no objection today's agenda is adopted So before we begin, it's customary for me as a citywide elected official to acknowledge that we are in a particular district and to provide the district representative to give us a welcome to the district and some opening remarks.

So I wanted to provide Councilmember Sawant as a District 3 representative an opportunity to provide us that welcome and to give a few brief opening remarks to kick off our meeting and then I'll go through some logistics and we'll go ahead and get the meeting started.

It's my priority to start the process of hearing from community members at 7 o'clock.

So we're going to run a really tight show over the next 60 minutes to make sure that we fulfill that commitment.

Council Member Sawant.

Thank you, Committee Chair and Council Member Gonzalez.

My office and I are really happy to partner with you on this important meeting, and I want to join you in welcoming everybody who's here.

As the District 3 Council Member, obviously, these are very important issues.

I also wanted to use this opportunity to express my condolences to the family of Royal Lexing, the young 20-year-old black man who lost his life.

Clearly that is one of the tragedies that our community is collectively dealing with and it's really important that we're here with the mayor's office representatives as well and department Officials who will brief us on many things but as councilmember Gonzalez said our main aim today is to hear from the community So we're really looking forward to that.

Thank you

Thank you, Councilmember Sawant.

So of course, before we go ahead and begin this evening's agenda, I would like to thank each of you for being here as members of this community.

I want to thank all of our community partners who've worked with us to bring this public safety conversation together.

Really appreciate all of you.

A special shout out to the Alliance for Gun Responsibility for providing us with both food and refreshment in the back of the room.

So let's hear it for the Alliance.

And there is plenty of food in the back, so please help yourself to as much food as you'd like, and you are welcome to take home food as well.

And whatever it is that is not actually consumed this evening, we'll go ahead and we're planning on donating that to a shelter in the area.

So please, please, please take as much as you'd like, and whatever's left over we'll make sure does not go to waste.

And of course it takes a lot of hard work to prepare and organize these meetings outside of City Hall.

So I want to appreciate the hard work of all of my staff who is here this evening.

And a special thank you goes to Cody Ryder and especially Roxana Gomez from my office for all that they've done to make sure that we have a really smooth and comfortable evening and conversation this evening, so thank you so much.

Some logistics, quickly, we do have interpreter services available in Spanish.

Si alguien necesita traducción en español, se ofrecen esos servicios y la persona está afuera de esta puerta, así es que si necesitan esos servicios, favor de marchar para afuera y hay servicios de traducción disponible.

Second is we have child care for those of you who don't speak Spanish.

I was just explaining in Spanish that there's translation available So it's actually helpful information For those of you who might need child care if you brought any kids with you this evening We also have child care services available and you can find those outside the door as well you're not required to use them, but if you would like to they are available to you and All right, so tonight we are here to discuss ongoing community concerns about gun violence in the Central District.

In doing so, I want to really recognize that this is, of course, not a new issue for the Central District, and it's not a new issue for us as a city or as a country.

Sadly, we know that gun violence knows no geographic boundaries.

But I find that it's incredibly important for us to center this conversation in this neighborhood in particular who has consistently advocated for concrete solutions in this space and who continues to, I believe, bear the brunt and the disproportionate brunt of experience with gun violence throughout our city.

And it's important for me to make sure that we are here with community acknowledging those impacts.

And so I just wanted to take a moment to recognize that there are many of us in this room who have been impacted personally by this issue.

There are many of us outside of this room who have been impacted by this issue and gun violence in particular.

And I wanted to just take a moment to allow us to take a moment of silence to remember the folks and the people who are both from this community and outside of this community who we have lost to gun violence and really reflect on how we are going to recommit here in this room together to keep each other safe and to work hard to make sure that all of our neighbors feel like they are welcome and safe and moving about in this community.

So if you'll join me in a moment of silence, I would appreciate that.

I want to thank you all for that.

So the goals for tonight are twofold.

First, we're going to have an opportunity to hear from the mayor's departments.

And to hear a presentation from them on strategies that were there intended to address gun violence in the central district that go beyond But also include law enforcement strategies the city departments include Seattle Police Department Seattle Department of Transportation City Light Department of Neighborhoods Human Services Department Seattle Parks and Recreation and the Seattle Office of Economic Development Second our goal is to hear directly from central district residents about their reaction and their thoughts about those strategies and any other things that they would like the city council or the mayor's office and her departments to consider as we move forward.

And we're going to go ahead and begin the agenda for this evening.

I'm actually, before the next part, I'm going to ask if you're here as part of the first phase of presenters, I'm going to ask you to start making your way up to the room while I do this next part because I want to minimize the logistics.

Okay.

So before we get started, I wanted to actually give Victoria Beach, Chair of the African American Community Advisory Council, an opportunity to also provide us with some introductory remarks.

I'm really grateful to you, Victoria, for allowing us to do this in collaboration with your ordinary meetings in this space.

I really appreciate the cooperation and the willingness to sort of bring us all together in the same space.

So thank you, Victoria.

Well, I want to thank you for making it happen.

I'm Victoria Beach, the chair of the African American Community Advisory Council.

And I thought it was important for us to be together because it's affecting our community, and we should be involved in the conversation.

I'm going to keep it short because I want to hear from the community.

But we meet every third Thursday.

Thursday of the month at Well, I'm not sure our meetings are gonna be I think this is our last meeting here But we need to come together as a community to help make a difference and it's important for our voices to be heard So we should always take advantage of that and I want to thank everybody for coming

Thank you, Victoria.

I just really, I wanted to share a quick story about Victoria and I really appreciate her commitment to community and these issues.

She emailed my office last month wanting me to come to a meeting and I was unfortunately unavailable because I had a different commitment and Victoria was really upset with me.

She got so mad at me.

And I was like, oh man, I don't like it when people are mad at me.

So I reached out to her and she immediately offered a phone call.

And we had a really good conversation about how long she's been working on these issues, about frankly how tired she gets, and how she really wants to see something happen that is meaningful because she cares so deeply for neighbors in this community.

And so I just want to acknowledge your willingness to get mad at me and then not be mad at me anymore.

And more importantly, your service to this community and serving in this role is really seen and appreciated.

And I hope you will continue to engage in this kind of community service because we need you.

So thank you so much.

Yeah, of course.

And I think councilmember Sawant wanted to add something really quickly.

Yes I just wanted to make sure I take this opportunity also to thank a few other people.

I wanted to thank the community members many of whom are here today actually who came to my committee meeting a few weeks ago.

It was just a few days after the recent spate of shootings.

Really appreciate you all coming and I see Emily there who came to my committee and talked about not only the recent spate of shootings, but have correctly been extremely concerned about the fact that in the current school year, there's already been a series of drive-by shootings and that there's a specific problem that we need to address.

I really appreciate that.

And after that, I appreciate the mayor's office also got involved.

I also wanted to thank some of my staff members, Ted Verdone, who are here, and Nick Jones.

And also, Adam Zimkowski, who's not here because he's on parental leave, but who's been attending EastPAC community meetings and also the African American Advisory Council meetings as well, but he's unable to be here, but I know he wanted me to pass his regards on.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member.

Okay, so why don't we go ahead and begin the presentations of these matters.

And I apologize for all the technical stuff we have to do because it's technically a special meeting.

Oh, wait, never mind.

Victoria would like to add something.

One more thing that I say before all of my meetings.

We all want to be heard and I'm just asking that everybody is respectful towards each other and we have a list over here of our guidelines, but please be respectful.

Really, really important.

So we have our rules here behind us over here and We are being hosted in this space, so we are going to make sure that those rules continue to apply.

And I'm going to ask you to help me make sure that we are all staying true and accountable to those rules so that the burden doesn't fall just on one person as we have this conversation.

So the council rules also apply in this setting.

And so disruptions and violations of the council rule will not be tolerated.

And if you are disruptive in the meeting in a manner that is preventing other people from engaging in the meeting in a safe way, I will have you removed.

All right.

Roxanna, if you can read the agenda item into the record, I'd appreciate that.

Agenda item one, presentation of strategies to address gun violence for briefing and discussion.

Thank you so much, Roxanna.

Okay, so we'll go ahead and do a quick round of introductions of the folks to the left of Councilmember Sawant, and then I will hand it over to Senior Deputy Mayor Fong, who I believe is going to kick us off.

Mike Fong, Mayor's Office.

Rodney Maxey, the Deputy Director of SDOT Operations.

Maura Brugger, I'm Director of Government and Legislative Affairs for Seattle City Light.

And I'm Mark Garske, and I'm the Deputy Chief of the Seattle Police Department.

Thank you all so much for being with us this evening, really appreciate it.

Deputy Mayor Fong, would you like to kick us off?

Great.

Thank you Councilmember Gonzalez.

On behalf of Mayor Durkin I want to thank you for your continued leadership as chair of this committee and also giving us the opportunity to be here tonight both to share some information about some of the strategies we've been deploying in this neighborhood and we will be as brief as possible as we walk through a number of efforts that we have underway that is tied to the mayor's holistic approach towards public safety.

And as both Councilmembers Gonzalez and Councilmember Sawant have mentioned, our primary interest tonight is to hear from you and make sure that we are fully capturing the range of perspectives and thoughts and experiences in the community that we can take back and help inform our holistic approach that we want to be able to implement.

in this community.

As I mentioned, when I refer to a holistic approach towards public safety, it really is, as both council members have remarked, is beyond what is critically important, but more than just SPD's focused operations and tactical response to gun violence in the neighborhood.

At the same time, we are engaged in applying a very specific place-based, geographic-based, concentrated set of efforts, knowing that given the vast majority of crime happens in very specific locations, we want to be very data-driven and precise in how we're approaching the challenges that you're seeing.

At the same time, we are trying to marshal the full capacity and resources of city government.

so that we can apply multiple disciplines and multiple efforts to be able to address not just SPD related issues, but other community neighborhood specific issues that range from infrastructure to services and programming, economic and business and community development.

And you'll hear quite an extensive report on the range of things that we're doing right now as we speak.

The other point that I want to emphasize is such like meetings like this is that we are committed and the mayor's committed to an ongoing dialogue and engaging community continuous feedback loop is the direction that we've given to our Department of Neighborhoods.

to develop a regular rhythm for which we can have this kind of dialogue, but at the same time as our departments are in the field, that we are getting as much real-time information back in terms of what's working, what isn't, and where we need to make adjustments.

So help us ensure that and hold us accountable for making sure that feedback loop is consistent and working for you.

And then finally, you'll hear a little bit about our efforts that are focused on what I refer to as going upstream.

Our strategies that, in particular, as it relates to youth and young adult violence, gun violence, in terms of how we are deploying other strategies and efforts to focus on youth and family engagement and support.

and where we can try to make a difference a little further upstream in the prevention side of the equation so that we can have longer-term impact on community.

So with that, we, because this is City of Seattle Government, we have a PowerPoint presentation that we will walk through.

And as we go through the various elements of the work that we are engaged in, we will go and rotate folks from our city government and our leadership up to the table here to our left.

So with that, I think we're going to get started.

Deputy Mayor Fong, if I can interrupt you just momentarily.

I just wanted to, for the record, acknowledge that Council President Harrell, who represents District 2, has now joined us at this meeting.

Welcome, Council President.

Yeah, no, it's quite all right.

And if you'd like to make any opening remarks, you're welcome to share with the audience.

There's no opening remarks, and I'll just chime in.

When you come late to a meeting, you don't start with opening remarks.

You shut up, you listen, and then you pick your moves.

And so thank everyone for being here, but I'll just look forward to the discussion.

Thank you, Council President.

So I'll zip us through a couple of introductory slides.

The first one is a central district neighborhood snapshot of some of the issues that we are hearing from the community.

And Sarah Morningstar is here from our Department of Neighborhoods, and if there are any questions about how we are gathering this information.

But through various surveys and community engagement opportunities, we are trying to capture for every neighborhood in the city a sense of what some of the pressing issues are.

And I wanted to just make sure we highlight some of what we're hearing from neighbors and residents.

Not surprisingly, issues of public safety, housing and homelessness, transportation, community and economic development are hitting our radar, and I presume should be consistent with what is on your mind this evening.

So, if there's any questions about this and how we're gathering this information, Sarah can speak to that a little bit more later during her presentation.

Next slide is, I'm going to defer this to Deputy Chief Garth Green to speak to, is that we are committed to data-driven effort here at SPD.

Wanted to make sure we were capturing a snapshot of a little bit of data with regard to shots fired.

And Chief, if you want to speak to this slide for a moment.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

So what this is, the Seattle Police Department, we try to capture as much data as we can.

And what we do is we do what we call our shots fired dashboard.

And what that entails is counting the number of shots fired calls that we have and breaking them down into a series of groups.

The first group is what we call the shots fired group, is where we go out and we can actually recover some type of evidence to ensure that it was a shooting.

So there'd be some casing, some property damage, a direct witness that actually saw it, and then we capture it in the report that way.

The next portion that you see there is what we had the non-fatal shootings is a shooting in which somebody was actually struck by gunfire.

And then unfortunately, we have another block for fatality shootings as well.

So we look to count them to try to figure out where we're going within the different years.

So as you can see, we're up one from last year at this point in time, but down from several of the years prior to that.

And while that looks good in a sense to me because we're down from some, the problem is we're up and we're still having them.

So it presents the problem right then and there that one's too many as we go through with this.

We have had an increase in shootings throughout the city that we're working with and we're dealing with, but we're here to really concentrate, kind of talk about what's going on in the Central District.

So we know there's shootings going on, so the real question I know that you want to know is, what do I know and what am I going to do about it?

All right, that's kind of where we'll go.

So a lot of our shootings are what we call gang-involved shootings.

They're not necessarily what we would call gang shootings in the sense of that it's one rival gang just shooting at another rival gang for no reason other than the sense that they're in a different gang.

A lot of our shootings run around to where it is a dispute over narcotics or a dispute over young ladies for the most part.

And two folks get into a dispute, there's a shooting involved with that.

What we then see is we see what we would call gang shootings after that.

It's where members of either of those gentlemen's parties now want to take it out on each other because they see it as some type of umbrage to their gang.

So that's where we start to see the spikes of that.

What we see with a lot of it here in the Central District is that they're shootings of opportunities.

They're not targeted, they're not generally set up and waiting for somebody.

They're driving through an area and then when they see somebody, they'll jump out of the car and they'll shoot and then they'll jump back in the car and then flee the scene.

So they're a little harder to deal with in that sense with the investigations and going on.

Ultimately what we do when we have the shootings is we start to investigate.

We work with our federal partners as well, with the ATF, to try to match the shell casings, so we can string these shootings together.

Because a lot of the shootings, the information we get at that point in time is, I heard some shots fired, I looked out and I saw a car drive away, I can't tell you the color of the car, the make of the car, and I never saw anybody.

So while we're never going to be able to put somebody in jail for that shooting itself generally, what we do is we can gather a lot of information and intelligence about that.

And so what we do is we start looking at which ones are related to which, and in those other ones that are related, who was involved in that?

And then why were those people then into this other area and what were they doing?

Who were they going after?

And how can we stop that and fix that problem?

There is a high level of enforcement.

Obviously, that's what the main charge of the Seattle Police Department is to do, is to go out and to put these folks, take them into custody, so to stop that shooting, to stop the next follow-ons as well as we go.

And so we make our strides working with our federal partners for different things along those lines, and then our own investigative needs to try to identify these people and then place them into custody.

Unfortunately, it takes a little bit of time to go through this.

A lot of times if we don't have the person on scene.

The other complicating factor in that is a lot of times we do not have the cooperation of the victims.

We just had a shooting down at Second and Pike the other day.

Very up close range.

They know each other.

The victim will not tell me who did it.

So as long as we as a community allow this code of don't tell, don't snitch, just let these things happen or I'll go handle it myself, we're going to continue to kind of see these things as we go.

So we work with the enforcement part.

What we've done in the central district, we've added emphasis patrols into the area, both foot beats and bicycle patrols.

So we've added additional officers out there working.

In fact, the proactivity time when we're looking at it and logging for the amount of calls is up almost 25% in this area.

And that's really good news for me to make sure that the officers that we're putting out there are actually making contacts, talking to people, seeing what's going on, and making arrests.

Arrests for the crimes are what we're looking for, but what I'm looking for beyond that is how to generate a better sense of work with the community and to prevent these things from happening.

So while we're out there, we're doing a lot of that.

I have the gang units working throughout the city and especially up here into the Central District because we have traditional shootings that go on with the Central District and the South End.

We have traditional old beefs that are still out and about and we're still focusing on those as we go.

So we've got specialty units up into the area that are working investigative.

We're also deploying specialty units into the areas for additional patrol.

We've asked the traffic units to come up into the area.

Different things like that where we can be more visible, we can be more seen, and if we see something then we can take some action as well.

as we work through that.

So that's kind of the enforcement part of it.

Beyond that, we're doing more into the community as well.

That's the other prong of where we really need the assistance and help.

The other day we did a walk with some of the members of the the neighborhood here and what we do is we look for environmental designs that kind of lead towards crime or things that we can do and working with our city partners to kind of make it a little safer into the areas, cutting trees, getting street lights put back in, things along those lines.

So that's something we partake in and try to give our experience of what kind of leads to some crime or what can actually prohibit some of the crime going on and so we're doing things like that.

out into the community with community meetings.

Because really what we're asking from the community is we're asking for the community to partner with us.

We're asking for the community to let the folks know that are doing this that it's not acceptable.

We're asking the community to work with us so that when folks are out there doing this that we can bring those folks to justice as well.

So we work with the community.

On the other end, we're also working with our outreach partners.

Because we know that a lot of these folks are just getting involved at the tail end and may not want to go down that path, but they may feel that they don't have other options.

So in the city of Seattle, we have the comprehensive gang model.

And what that is, is we look at folks that we believe that may be tangentially involved with gangs or just becoming susceptible to that lifestyle where they're going to trip over into that life of violence.

And what we do is a holistic approach.

It's the Seattle Police Department, it is Seattle school districts, it is vocational schools, it is counselors, outreach, everybody we can get our hands on sits at this table.

And then we try to, we bring people in, we say this is a person we'd like to look at and we believe could benefit from the program.

And then they're taken in and they're asked if they'd like to participate in the program and then we do wraparound case management from it.

Whether it be substance abuse, vocational training, job training, we're working at everything to see how can we get this person better, right?

Job, just over broke, right?

We're looking for careers for people that can sustain themselves into healthy lifestyles and their families as they go on.

And so we want to continue to work with that.

So that's one of the big things that we're doing with it.

And these are going to continue.

And I know I'm sucking up a lot of air here.

So Deputy Mayor Fong, I'm going to turn it back over to you, but I will be here for questions later.

Okay, so just hold just a moment because Council President Harrell has a question.

Thanks, Chair.

Chief Green, just a few questions on the data there.

So I take, I'm understanding the difference between a shot and a shooting is a shooting is at a person as opposed to someone like shooting in the air.

Is this a random shot or am I?

No, sir.

The shots fired is it's just we don't know what they were shooting at.

It could have been a person.

It could have just been in the air.

The other night we had a gentleman come out of a nightclub and just fire the gun off in the air when the bouncer told him to leave.

Some we know when they're shooting at people.

So the non-fatal shootings are the ones where we do know from evidence it was at a person.

That's actually where somebody was struck, sir.

Okay.

Oh, and they just didn't.

Okay.

I'm trying to get a feel for the confidence in these numbers.

These are where there were shots and people called in 911, but I have to assume that there are times where there are shots fired and perhaps no one called 911. It just wasn't complained about.

I saw years ago, I thought some charge where, maybe it was a guesswork, I don't know, but they talked about the percentage of shots that are made, but just no one calls in, so you have no way of knowing about this.

So can you talk a little bit about shots that perhaps weren't fired out there and there just weren't a record of it, maybe it came in late or something like that?

Yes, sir.

So we do know through anecdotal but really experience nationwide that people in areas where there's a lot of shootings or seem to be a lot of shootings become immune to them, right?

People don't want to get involved, they close the windows and they don't call 911 because they don't believe they're personally involved in that shooting.

In some districts where, in some areas, cities where they've gotten an acoustic gunshot locator.

Shot spotters is one of the brand names.

Where they've seen that we've deployed those in the cities, the amounts of shootings have gone up.

And what we really look at is that the shootings haven't risen.

It's just the fact that we're actually capturing data now that we didn't capture before because people didn't call in on them.

Maybe thought it was backfire, maybe they thought it was a fireworks or some things along those lines.

So we do know that this is, while this is what we can point to and say definitely we have information of, we do know that there are more that we don't have the information of, sir.

Thank you.

Any other questions before we move on?

One last question, I'm sorry.

How does this relate to, in the central district that we're focusing on this evening, how does this relate to the other districts, to use the legislative districts as an example, are they pretty much all the same, or in my district, for example, District 2, how would this compare to that kind of, this kind of frequency, or do you know?

So I don't have the breakdown initially of them all, but what we've seen is a rise in gunfire in some areas that we typically have not seen some at where we'd hold steady.

So we are closely monitoring that.

A lot of what we see is it's transient, right?

Where someone will come up here and shoot, and then they believe that the opposing group maybe lives in West Seattle.

And so then they'll travel to West Seattle to actually do the shooting and get back.

So it's not really located in one area.

What we hope to do is displace those shots so that they're not.

Thank you.

Chief Garth Green, as part of the materials that I asked you to give my office, there was a rundown of locations in the Central District where some of the shots fired, fatal shooting, non-fatal shootings have been occurring.

And I was just, you mentioned that in other areas this behavior can be transient, in other words sort of temporary in nature and not necessarily connected to that geographic location.

Would you say that in the Central District in particular that the issue is not transient, meaning that it tends to be geographic based and it's been geographically based for a long period of time?

yes ma'am so historically we do have you know a number of shootings in the central district and the south end where we have two opposing gangs that often are at feuds and at odds with each other and so where like downtown may be more transient because of nightlife and other things along those lines uh it's more historically stable within the east precinct and the south precinct of shots yes ma'am okay thank you

Deputy Mayor.

Council Member that's a great segue to the next slide which is the Deputy Chief Garth Green has covered sort of what I referred to as sort of our focused SPD tactical response and as you see in the short-term strategies obviously we've had some emphasis patrol work in the precinct and he spoke to that earlier I'm sure we'll come back to the Deputy Chief as we move on in the presentation.

But I want to also just mention again, as we mentioned earlier, the mayor's commitment to a holistic set of strategies.

And we're going to hear from a couple other departments that, to the point that Councilmember Gonzalez has mentioned, we have been analyzing the overlays of where there is sort of hot spots of activity and trying to overlay activity that is associated with physical infrastructure and other neighborhood improvements that our departments can deploy and implement.

Physical change that can often help contribute to the environment's public safety goals.

And you'll see that we'll talk about some things related to parking and physical improvements, right-of-way management issues here shortly.

And then, just to highlight, to be a little more specific on my earlier reference to longer-term upstream strategies and engaging folks in a more strategic way, our Human Services Department and Economic Development Parks Department, Department of Neighborhoods, you're deploying a whole range of efforts related to youth opportunity investments, youth and family programming, business and community development efforts that we'll get into a little bit here shortly.

On the next slide, I just want to make sure to emphasize what we've talked about before, the mayor's commitment to be in the community.

And we have been here in the recent past, as we've had a community-led walk with the Seattle Police Department.

We did an SPD evening tour just a couple weeks ago.

And of course, a roundtable discussion at Garfield.

And again, as I mentioned, I want to reinforce the point of that continuous feedback loop and finding a way to get into a rhythm for regular engagement so we're not just reactive to the issues that you're surfacing, but that we hold that relationship in such a way that city government and the community are in constant communication around the issues that So, with that, the next slide covers some of the things that Deputy Chief Garth Green already spoke to with regard to officer proactive on views and other specialty unit emphasis.

Chief, I don't know if there's anything more you want to speak to on this slide before we move on to SDOT to talk about some of the physical improvement work they've been doing.

No, sir.

Okay.

All right.

Mr. Maxey.

Good evening.

My name is Rodney Maxey, and I'm the Deputy Director of Maintenance and Operations for SDOT.

And I want to thank Chairperson Gonzalez and Deputy Mayor Fong, as well as Councilmember Sawant and Councilmember Harold.

Our role is to support this community.

Our role is to support the city, the city council, and the mayor's office in helping in any way we can to help reduce crime.

The community, along with the Seattle Police Department, asked for a crime prevention through environmental design analysis, and that was done.

We immediately responded to that and came into the neighborhood and looked at some things that we could do to support reducing a conducive environment for any types of violence.

We came in and pruned the trees on 21st.

We came in and pruned the trees on Union.

We let the street lighting back in.

We changed the load zones.

We're still in the process of looking at some of the driveways that we may eliminate to prevent traffic from turning around, but still allow the businesses to be able to unload and load their goods.

So we've been looking at things of that nature.

We've also been looking at traffic calming.

We're looking at any traffic engineering that might help the environment or might help the Seattle Police better enforce crime prevention.

So, we're here to support, we're here to listen, as Councilmember Harreld said.

We're here to do whatever we can for this community to hopefully reduce these unfortunate incidents.

So, starting with some of the other things that we talked about, other than the tree trimming and other than replacing some of the signs, we've committed to looking at putting some different bike facilities at strategic locations around 21st and Union to help with the flow of traffic.

We also are still looking at the whole corridor, including the 21st all the way to Cherry, and looking at some other traffic calming options.

In the next slide, where we talk about our physical improvements in terms of traffic engineering, as you know, we just recently finished several projects on 23rd, paving projects and re-channelization and new signalization for the community, really from Rainier almost to the second phase I think will be up by Holy Names.

We have redesigned some crosswalks at the east end of Union and 21st.

We're going to put some flashing beacons in that area to help pedestrians safely cross.

We are also looking at sponsoring and demonstrating times or play streets where we close down the streets for the community and remove vehicles so that the community can gather together and and have that sense of belonging and hopefully deter this type of criminal activity.

We are also looking to do our union project and some additional multimodal improvements along the union corridor to come over the next 12 months or so.

So, like I said, we're open to any type of traffic engineering suggestions, any type of physical right-of-way suggestions that we can change in terms of sidewalks, roads, street trees, anything of that nature.

Right now, as you know, we had a traffic count last year on 21st and Union, and we only have about 200 cars per day go down 21st that way.

An average residential street is about 500 to 800. However, we're going to do another traffic count next week, now that the weather's gotten a little sunnier, and the last traffic count was last March.

So we will, again, we'll revisit that and check to see if there's any other things that we can do in terms of traffic calming, which I understand many members of the community wanted to explore.

So with that, I'll be open to any questions.

Okay, so Mr. Maxey, you haven't had the pleasure of being in one of my committee hearings yet, so I'm going to ask you some concrete questions around some things that I like here, but what I don't like is that there's no timelines associated with when the delivery can happen, or I just don't like the timeline.

So, for example, on the crosswalk issue related to the east side of Union at 21st, it talks about how construction is anticipated as early as fall of 2019. My understanding is that that project was supposed to be delivered sometime this summer, I think in August or so.

Can you talk to me a little bit about why the timeline is in the fall as opposed to sooner?

Well, basically with my experience, we can put crosswalks in rather quickly, but when you add some of the other traffic engineering challenges like the beacons, I would say that doing the wiring and making the connections with City Light to set up the beacons before we actually put in the crosswalk is probably causing a little bit of that delay.

Most of the other things that I talked about, we have already done and we did rather quickly.

But I would be again open to moving anything that you see would help immediately up on the work schedule.

I think if these projects are already planned, it would be important to get going on them and to work in collaboration with many of the departments that you've already identified that are necessary in order to complete the project.

And, you know, I think that these These are not insurmountable barriers to advancing the timeline, and I've heard pretty clearly from community members that they're really interested in seeing these projects come to fruition, these capital improvements in this space actually happen.

I'm a little nervous about waiting until the fall to accomplish and deliver those projects.

You know, summer is very active in the city of Seattle, and I wanna be responsive and cognizant of the realities how summer can change the dynamics on the street in terms of activities.

So I would request that we take a closer look at that fall 2019 deadline and work diligently at seeing if we can do something sooner than the fall.

I can absolutely do that.

I think Deputy Mayor Fong will tell you.

I see him lightly nodding his head.

When it comes to operations, I grew up in this neighborhood, so I take this very close to my heart.

So we will definitely, I will talk to my colleagues about moving these things forward.

I really appreciate that.

Councilmember Sawant, I think, had a question or a comment.

Just a very brief comment.

Councilmember, we will certainly look at the opportunity to accelerate schedules and I hear you loud and clear in terms of the importance of the prioritization here.

At the same time, I want to acknowledge SDOT's work in the field throughout the summer as we've been carrying out a number of emphasis zone activity in terms of complementing and supporting concurrently SPD's emphasis patrol work across the city.

Director Zimbabwe and Rodney and his team have done an excellent job, and I just want to make sure that he gets public acknowledgement tonight.

So, okay.

Great.

Thank you.

I also wanted to acknowledge all the work that the Department of Transportation has done already.

Thank you for giving the report.

I just have two things to add, and one of them is a question.

One is I wanted to echo what Chair Gonzalez has already said, which is if the summer is the season when the community is most susceptible to these issues, it doesn't seem right to me to wait for any of those milestones until the fall.

And a related point, it's sort of retrospective, but still I think it would be good to hear something from you, which is my understanding is that community members, especially on the 21st section, the specific issues that we're talking about, have been reaching out to SDOT and the mayor's office since several months because they have experienced since the school year began.

So I just wanted to hear from you and maybe also Mr. Fong about what response and outreach you've been doing over the months, not just this last month and a half.

Okay.

As far as SDOT, we've been involved in the crime emphasis from the start when the Mayor and Deputy Mayor Fong and the Police Chief Carmen Best brought this to our attention.

We've probably completed 95 percent of the work in the seven or eight other neighborhoods, including South Park, Ballard, Fremont, Soto, of the work that we were originally signed on this task.

We continue, with the same resources and the same crews to do the same things.

Unfortunately, the crews that I have that put in crosswalks are the same crews that have done that in these emphasis areas in every single neighborhood in the last three weeks.

The crews that I have trimming trees, the same.

But we've also tried to leverage our partners and bring other people to the table to try to get as much of this done.

To your point, Council Member Sawant, we are deeply concerned about getting as much of this work done before we get into the heart of the summer because we don't want any more shootings.

What I would just say to that is my managers have tried to prioritize and keep these things moving into each community.

And they're doing a good job.

They know that time is of the essence, like I said.

In terms of the complaints before, I'm not too familiar with very many complaints.

in terms of transportation issues that we could do around crime prevention that came before.

But I can check again with my colleagues and look into that.

And if there's anything that wasn't responded to, I can assure you I will make sure it will be responded to.

Thank you.

And just on that, please communicate with my office as to what you find out in terms of how it was followed up.

Yes.

Thank you.

I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

I'll be real brief council member.

I just wanted to follow up on the question of community engagement.

Obviously, we have been approaching the summer with a far more extensive and exhaustive effort around this holistic effort around public safety.

At the same time, I know that Chief, for several months now, Chief Best and members of SPD, as well as members of the mayor's office and other departments have been having conversations around some of the heightened concerns related to shootings and gun violence in the Central District.

I think that it's reached a point where we decided we needed to approach this, not just with an SPD tactical response, but with something a little broader and more extensive as it relates to multiple department strategies, which is sort of what you're seeing manifesting now.

But Council Member, you have our commitment to continue to engage with people in the district, and we will continue to take that feedback into consideration as we continue to roll out different strategic efforts.

And we'll work with your office as well.

I appreciate that commitment and really do want to acknowledge the work around making sure that this is holistic and not just solely and squarely a law enforcement approach.

I think, again, law enforcement approaches are important for other reasons, but I think making sure that we are not looking at it through just that lens is critical for for the long-term goals that I think we all collectively share to ultimately create a more stable, permanently safe area for everybody who wants to visit, live, or pass through that space.

So really quickly on the Play Streets and placemaking projects that could be sponsored by SDOT this summer, can you talk a little bit more about What the play street concept is and what some place making projects could look like so

That's not my area of expertise, but I can talk to you a little bit.

I mean, the idea of play streets or temporarily shutting down streets is creating an environment where you can bring community members and have events and safely close off several blocks, sometimes of roads, so that everybody in the community can come out of their businesses and homes and get to know each other.

in a relatively safe environment.

The programs are permitted through our street use section and coordinated, I believe, with the Department of Neighborhoods.

To get down to some of the intricacies, you know, I wouldn't do it justice because I'm in operations.

type guy, but I can get you more information on that, or I would defer to the Department of Neighborhoods representatives that are in the audience.

We'll be hearing from them a little bit later, but I appreciate that.

I think that's an important concept I do want to acknowledge that some of these shootings in fact many of them happen in In the dark of night and early morning hours and so well, I'm a big advocate of play streets and activating public spaces and generally so that we have more positive uses of that space.

I also think we need to really acknowledge some particular strategies that could be used around the peak hours of when we're seeing these incidents happen, which, you know, according to the list I have, are anywhere from 9.30 p.m.

12 24 a.m.

To you know, these are really late hours when a lot of folks are already sleeping.

So I think thinking through a little bit more about Environmental design issues and proactive policing strategies that could help us think through those those That particular complexity could be helpful Absolutely.

All right, so move on Okay Again, I think very appropriate nexus to the next set of slides.

And Maura Brewer from Seattle City Lighting can speak to some of the issues as it relates to the nexus between lighting and public safety.

Maura, if you want to.

Yes, thank you.

And thank you chairperson Gonzalez for this opportunity and councillor Swann and customer Harrell for being here City light as the municipal electric utility our sort of public safety role is really in meeting the streetlight and public lighting needs of city residents and communities and so We work very closely with the Seattle Police Department and the Seattle Department of Transportation to make sure that we're meeting those needs.

Typically, you have a street light every 300 feet, but we're able to, in working particularly with the police department, identify opportunities to add additional lighting.

Deputy Mayor Fong talked about the emphasis efforts going on.

We've been to seven different communities and we did do I did a walk here in the central district.

One of my colleagues was there from the streetlight department in City Light.

And we have four targets that we're looking at.

The next slide will be about the LED deployment, which is the broader streetlight deployment.

LED, which is light emitting diodes, are brighter.

provide a cleaner, brighter light and help tremendously with pedestrian and traffic safety as well.

But I'll have another slide for that.

So, which is there.

You can see we've done a tremendous amount of deployment already.

The magenta is the LED lights.

And there's still some decorative and floodlights in some difficult to reach areas.

You can kind of see those are yellow there.

And often they were They were lights that were put in by private developers or others, and so we work with them as they want to upgrade those.

But the public street lights are almost all, the conversion was done back in 2013, 2014. So we did some targeted improvements, which were on the last one.

For those of you who are tracking this, 21st and Marion, we're going to be looking at adding a light there.

That one is still awaiting a field survey.

And then we have work orders in progress at East Union and West 22nd to add lights there.

And then also at 22nd Avenue and Cherry, we've got a work order in progress, and that means it's It's going out to a contractor to be done, and then we're looking at Barkley Court between Cherry and Jefferson.

There's no lights right now, and we're taking a look at what we can do there.

Overall, we feel pretty good about the lighting levels, particularly after the really great work done by our partners at SDOT who came in and did a lot of A lot of trimming of trees.

SDOT trims the trees for lighting needs.

We trim the trees for distribution.

So we really work closely on making sure that we're doing what we can to take advantage of our lighting.

So we feel pretty good from a lighting standard where we are.

That said, I want to talk about the third thing, which is our rental light program.

So we do work with Seattle Police Department on street lights for alleys and other public locations that might not be part of our regular street light distribution.

And we work closely with the precinct leaders there from the police department on whether or not they feel that additional lighting would be helpful from a public safety standpoint.

take their direction and then we coordinate getting the installation done and it just becomes a part of our system.

If a customer or community members want to add lighting, we encourage them to work with the precinct and with us.

We can do that and determine whether or not that lighting is needed for public safety.

If it's not Determines needed for public safety.

There's still an opportunity to be able to do that lighting and we have a rental program and we work closely we try to get any rental lights put on our distribution pole so that it's easier and cheaper for the customer and then We have a rental agreement that that we do so that is an option as well for those for people who feel that they would like additional lighting, but it wasn't deemed a public safety need from from the city's perspective, so and And again, we feel really strong about our important role in making sure that the public lighting and the street lighting in the city of Seattle is doing what it can to help make our community safer.

So thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight, and I'll be available.

Here, later, and also if you call anybody at City Light, we are very interested in meeting your needs to have public lighting and street lighting that's keeping this community safe.

Thank you.

Thank you, Maura.

On those projects that you identified that have work orders currently, when do you expect those work orders to go from work orders to installation?

Yeah, I knew you were going to ask that.

And so we have, as Rodney talked about, we've been doing this all over the city.

And so I'd be very happy to give you a list of all of the stuff we're doing and sort of what that, so I don't have that.

that specific time on when it's going to be done.

It means that it is going out to a contractor, so that's, but you're right, I don't have a date.

But we can get, I can get that information for you.

That'd be great, I really appreciate it.

Okay.

Next.

Okay, great.

So before we move on, I just also want to acknowledge that City Light, SDOT, SPD, to the council member's point about our ability to respond and react to the fact that criminal activity is not happening just during the daytime.

It's also in large part why we went out on an evening tour with community members to be able to sort of actually carry out our in-field analysis as far as what the situation was out in the field in order to be able to get a full feel of the dynamics.

So I appreciate the work that the departments are doing, but at the same time the community's willingness to engage us really at all hours of the day so that we can really be able to implement the kind of whole range of strategies that I think the council members have been speaking to.

So thank you.

This is our pivot to the longer-term strategies that we have also been deploying.

And just to pull our next set of folks up from the executive, Tanya Kim from the Human Services Department, Bobby Lee from Office of Economic Development, I think have the next two immediate pieces.

So I'll go ahead and turn it over to them to talk about some of the youth empowerment and opportunity strategies that we've been engaged in.

Good evening.

So we're on round two.

So thank you for your patience.

I'm going to try to give my talk, keep it as brief as possible.

I recognize many of you, and so thankful that you're here, as well as thanking council and the mayor's office.

My name again is Tanya Kim.

I'm with the Seattle Human Services Department and we're going to round out the conversation and go upstream.

In the Human Services Department there are many things that we do for the community but I'm going to focus on some of the youth opportunities starting with food.

So school will be out soon and on the table in the front when you walked in there were many handouts as well as a sign in.

I wanted you to know that I have some flyers that I brought to help inform the community about free food that is available during the summertime.

And we work with parks, as well as many of you, to provide free food.

What's good about the food is it's not just about feeding tummies for young people.

It's bringing people together, kids and families.

But for anybody age 18 and under, low barrier, just come and eat with us and play with us.

That is available, again, at the table as well as online.

The other with the Human Services Department is we provide direct services.

Some of you know about our direct services.

We have our Upward Bound Program, which is a national program, and we're in two different high schools.

Specifically for this area, we're at Garfield High School, but we're also at Rainier Beach High School as well.

If you don't know what Upper Bound is, we work with high school students who would be first generation, meaning first to be in their family to go to college or access college.

We work with that young person for multiple years to not only get them into higher education, but to help them to succeed.

And that's really critical to make sure that they cross that finish line.

The other is our most popular program, our Seattle Youth Employment Program.

And that's citywide, but we certainly have a large concentration of young people who we work with from the Central District, as well as Rainier Valley, West Seattle, and up north.

That program is dear to my heart.

When I was working at a nonprofit, I had youth employment interns with us.

And so it's 16 to 24 low-income, mostly youth of color that we work with during the summer.

Many times it's their first job and we're providing the support services to get them there.

We provide everything from food services, transportation, helping to mitigate those, you know, I'm late, I'm stuck in traffic, I can't talk to my supervisor, all of those basic things that we've experienced ourselves.

We provide support for young people.

Finally, I wanted to note that we also provide funding opportunities.

So what that means just in plain language is we allow organizations to partner with us to provide those services that the community knows that are needed in your neighborhood.

We procure those dollars through competitive funding processes, or some people know them as request for proposals.

So we have a lot of them active right now.

Organizations apply for funding.

One thing that I did want to note is that we're starting to plan for our youth development RFP that is going out in the spring.

So coming up, so prepare, get your ideas ready, and look for those opportunities to apply for funds.

So we provide food, youth opportunities, as well as funding opportunities for communities.

Any questions for Tanya?

Okay.

Thank you, Tanya.

Next we have Justin from the Parks Department, but I want to just emphasize the point of the nexus between the Human Services Department and the Parks Department here, and why we have chosen to emphasize this work.

Because part of the holistic approach that the mayor has committed to is that during the summer months, during out of school time, we are trying to ensure that we are creating as much positive activity and opportunities for our young people as possible.

And the connections between these two departments and the opportunities they present throughout the summer is an opportunity to keep kids engaged in positive activity as a deterrent effect, really, in terms of Preventing them from engaging in perhaps less than positive activity.

So Justin's about to talk about some of the things that the Parks Department does but the suite and portfolio of things as the city offers we have tried to be as comprehensive as possible in our communication and To the extent that there is interest or questions about what we are putting out into the field Our folks here can speak to those opportunities after the art of our discussion.

So just go ahead and

Yeah, thank you Deputy Mayor Fung.

My name is Justin Cutler, I'm the Recreation Services Director, and thank you all for being here tonight.

And also thank you to the African American Advisory Council for hosting the meeting, and specifically Chair Gonzalez, Council President Harrell, and Council Member Swamp for hosting the event as well.

Tonight I'm here to talk a little bit about the different programs that we have going on on your behalf within the Recreation Division and Seattle Parks and Recreation broadly.

The first one is Destination Summer Camp.

This is a new summer camp program designed to really meet a need that we saw specifically at Garfield Community Center and Rainier Beach where we didn't have a good saturation of summer camp participation.

So this is an activity camp meant to provide ease of access.

We offer scholarships up to 90% of the registration fee.

And we still have scholarships available and slots available both at Garfield and Rainier Beach for your participation.

So if you know of a young person that's looking to connect with something fun and exciting to do this summer, please encourage them to come to Garfield Community Center and sign up for the destination summer camp.

Another thing that Chair Gonzalez spoke to is that late night type program, right?

The hours between 9 and 12. We know that some of our young people are out doing things that we maybe wouldn't like.

And so we provide a program Tuesday through Thursday from 2.30 to 8 o'clock at Garfield Teen Life Center, which is adjacent to Garfield High School.

And then Friday from 3 in the afternoon to 12 o'clock at night.

And then on Saturday from 7 to 12 o'clock at night.

So we provide a safe place for young people to come and congregate.

It's an age range of 14 to 18 years old that are able to come and access the Teen Life Center to play games, to play basketball, to connect with a safe adult, to have a conversation about maybe something that's troubling them and really connect with other people.

to really build that strong community that we desire to see in our city.

Real quick, I also want to talk about Medgravers Pool, which may be on a lot of your minds as to the closure there and the remodel that's taking place.

It will be open on August 5th, and so we're really excited to have that back open for the central district community.

Pratt Spray Park is also under construction and that will be opening next spring in time for summer, so please look forward to that.

Summer camp starts July 1st.

Our wading pools and beaches open this Saturday.

Please make sure that you're safe when you're out swimming.

Make sure that you're swimming at one of our lifeguarded beaches.

And also we offer free swim lessons at our beaches during the day and on the weekends and in the evening.

So there's a lot of opportunities for you to be water safe around all the water that we have in our community.

Also, we continue to do ongoing graffiti removal, which is a difficult effort sometimes.

We have a lot of committed staff who want to do the right thing and are out there addressing graffiti as proactively as they can.

We're trying to take a data-driven approach by where we look, where we, if we know a wall or a specific surface in a park is receiving graffiti on a regular basis, we have a route that we're deploying our painting crews to make sure that we're proactively addressing graffiti in order to reduce the presence in our community.

Furthermore, we believe that activating public spaces is the best way to prevent crime in our parks.

And so we partner with HSD on our summer food service program to create an activity during the day.

And then we also work with local musicians and artists to create more sense of safety at our downtown parks and many parks throughout the central area.

And then just in addition to that, please feel free to stop in at one of our four community centers.

They are free to the public.

Oftentimes they have different activities happening throughout the day.

They have fitness equipment if you want to bulk up and have a good time and reduce diabetes and meet some people.

So that's a great place to have some fun.

And we also have some programs for older adults that may feel socially isolated in this world.

Please make sure that you're connecting with older adults and inviting them to our community centers and we have a...

Okay, great.

Siri found something.

Siri wants to go.

Yeah, Siri wants to go, exactly.

So we're really excited and thank you for being here tonight and I'll be here to answer any questions as well.

Thank you, Justin, for that report.

Okay, thank you and thank you City Council members for your leadership and Deputy Mayor Fong.

I'll keep my comments short because all of you have been listening for an hour now and so I'll just get to the point here.

And some of you are wondering why is the Office of Economic Development even involved in this discussion?

So we both the previous speakers talked about the holistic human development component and the upstream part of this strategy.

What we provide we add the career development and employment opportunities for the population.

And so that's the other dimension that we would add from our office.

At the same time, so that's a workforce development strategy.

In fact, we just laid out an RFP that will be targeting the neighborhood here just recently.

And the second part is the supporting small businesses.

Our neighborhood small businesses are really our best partners in dealing with crime because they are out there on the front line.

They see what's going on at the street level.

They provide feedback to our police departments and all of our departments.

So really, they are the eyes and the ears for the community.

So not only are they the important part of our economic development ecosystem, but they're really the backbone of our civic infrastructure as well.

So keeping them vibrant, stabilizing our small businesses is an important part of creating healthy neighborhoods.

The small business technical assistance, we have a whole team that focuses on the neighborhood businesses and keeping them stable.

The last part is allowing community development activities to also occur.

So there's a collaborative that's going on now between different business association and neighborhood association.

And the goal here is to identify opportunities and risk within the neighborhoods and come up with priorities so that we have a common vision around how to make the neighborhood even more stronger and vibrant.

I'll keep it at that level just because of the time.

Thank you, Bobby.

I really appreciate that.

And I think that the, oh, there I am.

I think that the Office of Economic Development has a really important role to play.

We see that sometimes negative activity can occur around certain types of businesses, and I think it's an important conversation for us to have about how we help businesses who've been in the neighborhood for whatever period of time to really understand the public safety impacts of their business and to provide as much support and resources available to be a good partner to the city and to community in addressing some public safety concerns that could be generating part and parcel around particular locations that are businesses.

So I appreciate your perspective here and I hope we can continue to have a conversation around how we can achieve that goal.

Absolutely, if I can just comment on that, is that if we don't stabilize small businesses in our neighborhoods, and they close their shops, then crime will go up.

Because they're the eyes and the ears.

And this is an important ingredient, so I 100% agree with you.

And to the members of the media, it's important that when the word goes out about the shooting, it will actually reduce foot traffic to these neighborhoods.

So we gotta be careful also in the way we present this to the public as well.

Thank you, appreciate it.

Council Member Silant?

Yeah, I just wanted to just on the point that Mr. Lee brought up about small businesses, I think especially it should be acknowledged that small business, very small businesses, we're talking about very small businesses, especially owned by black community members, community members of color in general, have been so vulnerable to gentrification.

I mean, for I mean, for every small business, black-owned small business that has found a new home in the Liberty Bank building, and that's a phenomenal achievement for Africa Down and the community.

Probably 10, 20 other businesses are being closed.

I don't know if any statistical study has been made, but I'm just saying that so many businesses are on a knife's edge right now.

I mean, as we speak, my office has been working with, you know, for months now, but it's not, the problem has not gone away with Sabah Ethiopian Cuisine on 12th and Yesler.

But many other businesses in the whole 23rd and Union Corridor who've been, who've had a really hard time, but also then when you go more south to Jackson, but still in the CD, ID area, they've been extremely vulnerable.

And I appreciate you making the point that actually all of these issues are interconnected, and that the neighborhood as a whole suffers when you have these small businesses disappear.

Thank you.

I appreciate that point.

Council Member Salon, it's certainly absolutely true that the issues that we're facing around lack of affordability, gentrification, displacement, certainly impacts our legacy businesses in neighborhoods everywhere throughout the city.

And it disproportionately impacts those entrepreneurs who are people of color, immigrants, and refugees.

that changes fundamentally, it breaks the fabric of a community and a neighborhood and allows for other types of street level uses to occur that make the neighborhood feel unsafe.

And so I really appreciate, Mr. Lee, your focus as the new director of the Office of Economic Development.

You've really made a strong commitment to tackle this issue and to help us formulate a vision on how we can hold up support and really encourage the entrepreneurship of people of color who want to continue to thrive as business owners or want to enter into that entrepreneurship field.

So thank you so much for that.

Our last presentation, last but not least, Department of Neighborhoods.

Hi, I'm Sarah Morningstar and I'm the Deputy Director for the Department of Neighborhoods.

And I just wanted to quickly wrap up this presentation and talk a little bit about how the Department of Neighborhoods is a part of this process.

I like to simply talk about it in three pieces as it is up on the PowerPoint.

The Department of Neighborhoods has really been partnering with our capital departments for some months now around continuing to do authentic and appropriate engagement with the community.

So we'll work with City Light, we'll work with SDOT, we'll work with Parks and OED and whomever else to make sure that their projects, their communication, their time with the neighborhoods is what it needs to be in the languages that it needs to be in.

and at the times that the meetings need to take place and things like that.

And that is one way that the Department of Neighborhoods works with our partners.

And it's been a lot of fun getting into the weeds and doing that work.

Additionally, we have some of our standard-bearer things like our community engagement coordinators, those folks in the Department of Neighborhoods whose job it is to be on the ground at the community meetings, neighborhood gatherings, things like that, hearing what's going on and bringing it directly back.

I'll say Senior Deputy Fong at the opening of the meeting talked about the community snapshots.

Those are living documents that I know the council uses, that the mayor's office uses, that other departments are beginning to use, and those are much of that data that you can get online is information that's either from, you know, demography, demographic surveys, but also what we hear when we are out.

And that is our job in the Department of Neighborhoods is to be out.

And so to answer his question, that's where a lot of that data comes from.

Additionally, we have the People's Academy for Civic Education, literally teaching people how to engage and be, and really tap into their own agency and their own advocacy.

And I think this panel here, as they were saying, is looking upstream.

It's the more sort of, I guess, the whole community piece.

And with that, I'll just say that this is also what the mayor's office was saying about addressing gun violence.

But what needs to take place?

in order to not react to it.

It haven't happened, so we're not just talking about how we react to it.

And again, it's about place and community and feeling safe and feeling a sense of belonging and creating a sense of community.

And with that, some of it's just those classic neighborhoods programs.

It's the matching funds.

It's the small sparks.

It's the night outs that pay for those play streets and things like that.

It's pea patches that act as hubs for neighborhood gatherings.

And boy, if you want to know what's going on in your neighborhood, just wander down to a pea patch.

They've been doing all the things.

And again, a piece that people don't always tie together, like what is historic preservation?

have to do with crime?

Well, how about if we protected some of our buildings and we had places that remind us of who we are and who we were and what we're about?

It creates a sense, again, of place and a sense of importance and a sense of legacy, whether it's a business or a home.

or an old building somewhere.

And so that is what my department proudly does every day.

And it's beautiful to be here with Victoria Beach and council and the mayor's office as a perfect example of what we do in working together to get these things done.

So it may seem like Department of Neighborhoods doesn't, I'm not telling you what, you know, street I painted or what light I hung up.

But we will talk about how we work with our team at council and in the mayor's office and in the community to bring everybody together.

Thank you, Sarah.

So that concludes the presentations.

I'd like to move us into public comment.

And before we do that, I just wanted to give you, Deputy Mayor, an opportunity to give any closing remarks on behalf of the executive.

And then I know Council President Harrell would like to make some brief remarks as well.

I just want to, again, just thank the residents and community members that have come out tonight and patiently listened to our hour-plus long presentation.

I have asked our senior leadership, and I'll ask Deputy Chief Garth Green, Moira Bruger, and Rodney Maxey.

to come on back up and be part of the panel as we listen.

We want to be present and we want to listen to the feedback that you have for us and not just reacting to what we've said, but also other things that are on your mind to make sure that we're able to take this information back and continue to build upon some of the work that we've already started.

With that, I will turn it back over to Council Member Gonzalez.

And again, thank you for giving us this opportunity today.

Thank you.

Council President Harrell, you wanted to share some words?

He's going to come up then.

So if I can, I just want to speak from the heart a little bit.

I'm not going to sing.

I did that this afternoon at a city function.

I won't sing.

So at the end of the day, the act of shooting someone with a gun, in my personal opinion, is an unnatural act.

It's an act of defiance.

And we could talk a lifetime about what went into that decision, that impetuous decision of a person, whether they're young or old, to pull that trigger and to put themselves in that situation or to be in that situation.

When we start talking about that kind of harm and we start talking about stripes on a sidewalk or LED lights or things like that, it may seem somewhat removed, but I just want to impress upon you that as a policymaker, as a city council member, we're trying to look at everything.

And I'll tell you that when Justin talked about the Garfield Teen Life Center, that's something near and dear to my heart because years ago, my two of my kids, they spent their Friday nights and their Saturday nights at Rainier playing basketball.

And because I have a daughter who is actually the best athlete in our family, I asked the question, well, what about girls?

What about where are they supposed to go?

Can they go out and can there be mentors for them as well?

Because they could find themselves in a bad situation as well.

This year as we look at the budget, I'm going to ask all the departments, as will the other council members, that we can't stay on cruise control.

We've come up with some great ideas like the Teen Life Center.

I think we've changed some lives.

Is it possible that we can have some of the non-profits that come from some of these demographics, can this be a meeting place for them?

They meet perhaps on a Friday or Saturday night.

Maybe are there mediation facilities?

A lot of the, for some reason the term gangs just doesn't Every time I hear that, I don't like it, but I don't know a better word, so I've got to use it for the purpose of this conversation.

Gangs are like organizations.

I belong to several organizations, several clubs, and I like being in some of these clubs.

You feel a little cliquish, you feel good.

These different clubs or gangs, Can we set up a framework with some of our participants that have left that lifestyle, and can we use our facilities for meeting places, mediation conflict, these kinds of things?

rather than just reacting, can we really think creatively more and more.

And so that's the kind of thing I think that the departments, the mayor, and the city council are really going to try to push.

The LED lights is a good example.

I don't know if this was explained to you, but years ago I went to a demonstration where the LED lights, well, before the LED lights, we had these sort of yellow high-pressure sodium lights.

And in that kind of lighting, A white car looks like a gold car, looks like a light brown car, and the LED lights, and they did this down in Los Angeles, it activates an area.

Could change the mood of an area.

Gives you an actual rendition of the color.

And so I push for that for public safety reasons, but just to activate it.

If a young man or woman are in a car and they're going to shoot, I don't know if they care about whether there's LED lights.

I don't think they're going to put the gun and say, hey, I'm not going to shoot here because there's LED lights.

Of course not.

But we're trying to activate areas and trying to make sure that our young people feel welcome.

I want to impress upon you when I hear some of the CEPTED stuff that you may think, well, man, what's that going to change?

But we really are trying to look at a holistic approach.

I want to thank the departments.

And particularly, we really need to get out of cruise control and really think of new creative, dare I say, just risky propositions to save lives.

Because at the end of the day, that is our responsibility to make sure you are safe.

So thank you for the presentation.

I just wanted to add one more dimension to the discussion obviously our next big agenda item is hearing from community members so I don't I'm not proposing a discussion on this but I think this should be added into the framework that we are talking about, and this is also actually an acknowledgment of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, who have provided dinner for everybody, and I thank them for that also.

But some of the points that they have been making in their advocacy is looking at data from other cities and seeing if that is some sort of a guideline for which way Seattle or the Seattle region should go.

And one of the most fascinating pieces of evidence comes from Oakland and the Bay Area as a whole.

And it seems to be really successful.

I mean, just a caveat before I, I just wanted to quote a couple of things from this article, but just a caveat is that area is also obviously, as we know, even before the Seattle process started, has been intensely gentrifying.

And I think, I don't, I mean, I just want to say I would not trust statistics if it said, well, the area is much richer, much wider, and it's safe for them.

The communities that have always been vulnerable, that have always faced oppression in society, all the gun violence has moved that they have to deal with.

So we have to be a little bit circumspect about it, but what we do see so far has been quite And I won't go over the statistics by which they have reduced gun violence, but it is quite significant.

And I'll just quote quickly from the article where it says, there's early evidence that local violence prevention strategies, including a refocused, more community-driven, quote-unquote, ceasefire policing strategy, meaning not actually police coming as sort of, as a, as a force, but having community-driven approaches have worked, and intensive support programs that do not involve law enforcement at all.

They were a key change in contributing to the huge decreases.

And then the last bit I wanted to read, which is of tremendous interest, is gun homicide rates for all races have fallen.

but the drop was largest for Black Bay Area residents, a 40% decrease.

So I really think that we should be looking at how they were able to achieve it and concretely see how we can adopt that for Seattle.

Thank you, Council Member Salant.

Really appreciate you bringing that example up.

I think in Seattle we always pride ourselves on being the first and on the edge, but you know, we also like to steal good ideas.

It's good to take good ideas when other people have innovated around them, so really happy to hear that you found that as a potential model and example here that we could cater for the unique specific community needs here.

I'm happy to continue to have that.

conversation with you and perhaps maybe even make contact with some of those folks in Oakland to see if they can talk to us directly about how they model that program.

Really important for us to do.

So we only have about 11 folks signed up, so that's about 22 minutes worth of public comment.

So it looks like we're right on time to allow all of those who signed up to express that they wanted to speak an opportunity to do so.

I wanted to close out kind of just to dovetail on what Council President Harrell said.

I want to emphasize that I recognize that environmental design on its own and on its face is not going to be the answer to all of the issues that are facing us when we're talking about gun violence.

And I know that there is intensive amount of work happening right now.

There's a report that's supposed to come out in July that will give us a better sense.

of what kind of environmental design projects and issues should be tackled for this particular geographic area.

I'm eager to see that report and to identify some other ways that we can be working collaboratively to advance some of those priorities.

Obviously, the long-term strategies here is to make sure that people never have to make the hard choice of pursuing a lifestyle where they feel that they need to have a gun to protect themselves or to have a gun in order to survive or make a living.

One of the most impressionable stories that I've heard as a council member is at a town hall that actually the mayor hosted shortly after some of the national shootings that we saw.

And there was a young black man on the stage who said to us, and I think if I recall his age at the time was 17, that in his world a gun was currency.

It is how you paid for life.

It is how you survived.

And that is, that's wrong.

It is morally wrong for us to be in a place where our children believe that a firearm is the equivalent to currency.

We not only can do better, we must do better by our future generation.

And we can't do that just as elected leaders.

We are here because you have elected us to be here and to be your voice.

But at the end of the day, it's going to take all of us together to combat gun violence.

Because as Council President Harrell mentioned, what we're talking about is just not the act of violence.

people's sons and daughters and mothers and fathers, aunties and uncles who are being taken from them.

And it is a traumatizing experience.

And the fact that we have members in our community who feel that there is no other option for them, that is a product of years and years and decades of trauma.

I want to acknowledge that and I also want to, again, recommit ourselves to doing better by each other and by our future generations.

And I am still hopeful that we can do that and look forward to hearing from you all in a few seconds about your all's collective commitment to join us in that effort.

So with that being said, we'll go ahead and start with public comment.

Just a quick overview of how public comment works.

Again, because this is a special meeting of my committee, the council rules apply, which means that every person who signed up for public comment gets up to two minutes.

to give us public comment in order to get through the full list.

So there is a timer up in front.

There is a microphone right here in the center.

When I call out your name, and you should have a little ticket with a number on it, come on up, tell us what your name is, and then give us your public comment.

This is technically a council meeting, so that means the council rules apply, which means you have to speak to something on the agenda.

And if you violate the council rules with inappropriate behavior or conduct, I will have you removed.

OK.

That being said, let's go ahead and get started.

I will have you removed with a smile.

OK.

The first individual who signed up is number one, Amari Tahir Garrett.

My name is Omari Tahir Garrett, and I'm not what you see.

I grew up as a dark-skinned white person, as a quarterback, for eight years, all the way through college.

Half the college team that I quarterbacked joined the Seattle Police Department.

So I got an opportunity to observe about 20 to 30 police officers before they were policed, and after they were policed, during their being policed, and after they were policed.

Because some of them, I have to go visit at the Washington Care Center because they've had strokes and blah, blah, blah.

Then some of the others are preachers.

Is there anybody in here with a gun?

Is there anybody here in a gun?

Probably our officers.

You see the code of silence.

Is there anybody in here that's part of a gang that believes in the code of silence?

My background is in science and physics and construction.

Now, there's two things that are the problem here that weren't even mentioned.

One is the gun.

I've been all over the world.

Japanese police officers don't kill people.

because they have an object in their hand, whether it's a knife or whatever.

When I lived in London, the police don't carry guns.

When I was in Africa, they don't even have walkie-talkies and a stick.

If you get into it with the police, he takes his belt off and beats you like a kid.

Now, you can fight with the police if you're right, but if you're wrong, don't touch, because they respect authority.

Now, where does the gun come from?

It was introduced to the Native American, oh, at the same time, is there anybody in here of Native American ancestry?

Ms. Gonzales, all these people with Spanish surnames of Native Americans, they got crushed by the Spanish that came and first started killing them.

And then they got defeated by the French, and then they got defeated by the English.

That's why so many black people have English surnames.

They have a school right across the street named after an Indian killer.

and a slaver, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson.

I used to teach school, but guess what?

The history they taught me was not true.

It was a bunch of lies.

Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, Indian killers and slavers were not the champion of freedom and justice equality.

That's what the problem is and the first person that I knew that got killed was one of my 13 year old schoolmates at Meany Miller School when I was 13 by the Seattle Police Department.

Thank you.

The next person up is Alex Zimmerman followed by Reverend Harriet Walden.

They hired my sweet dirty clown.

Ah, ah, ah, ah.

human garbage from animal farm.

My name Alex Zimmerman.

I like this.

I see this bullshit for, pardon, BS for many time and will be BS for another 20 years and nothing will be changed.

Before we not change mentality of several hundred thousand idiot, nothing will be changed.

Every nation deserve your government.

Look who here is a mentally sick minority.

Yeah, why too?

Mr. Zimmerman, I need you to speak about an item on the agenda or I will find you to be disruptive.

I speak about gun.

I spoke about gun.

I spoke about gun.

I once spoke about gun.

I once spoke about gun before and I once spoke about gun in future and nothing will be changed.

And I give you classic example.

I have how us government working.

Yeah, and if I not find one honest man in government for 30 years, what is I live in Seattle, yeah.

So you give me 11 trespass for 1,200 days.

Mr. Zimmerman, I need you to speak to an item on the agenda.

This exactly what is I speak because you have low quality and I give you example.

Mr. Zimmerman, I need you to speak to an item on the agenda or I'm gonna find you distracted and be removed.

Don't interrupt me because I give you example.

You trespass me 11 time for 1,200 days.

Okay, that's it.

So I cannot go to consul chamber for five years because you are mentally sick people.

Can we change guns?

You are done.

Mr. Zimmerman, you are done.

Your microphone has been turned off and I'm going to ask you to leave.

Mr. Zimmerman.

So Alex Alex Alex, can you be quiet and listen for one moment?

You've already been barred from City Hall But I'm asking you to stop because you're now gonna be barred from anything outside of City Hall I don't think you want that so so so I barred you from City Hall if you keep talking I If you keep talking, you're going to be barred from even outside of City Hall meetings.

So we're going to ask that you be removed.

We're going to ask that you be removed.

We do not have the force.

And there's a rule that says when you ignore being removed, the repercussions are higher.

So be now on notice that the repercussions just got higher, sir.

And I made the record, and we'll take actions when we get back to the office.

And Mr. Zimmerman, you are asked to leave, so you would need to leave the room now.

Mr. Zimmerman, I'm not asking you to speak some more, I'm asking you to leave.

So, because, uh, you can keep talking too, Mr. Zimmerman, this is for the record.

So I want the record to float, to reflect the fact that the Chair and the Council President asked him to be removed.

He refused to leave the premise at a public hearing, and he's been put on notice, and we will take the legal, we will take the legal action necessary to prohibit him from attending these meetings, even if off premise.

Thank you, Council President.

I apologize for that.

This is a serious meeting and we want to take serious consideration of public testimony.

So I apologize for that and thank you, Reverend Weldon, for stepping in.

As usual, the strong woman in the room.

Well, thank you.

Gee whiz.

I want to thank you all for your presentation and I want to especially thank Parks because Parks was my babysitter years ago.

All my kids learned to swim at Madrona Park.

You know, Madrona Beach, you know, you were there from 12 to 8. Nice babysitting time.

So they spent the whole summer, all my kids spent the whole summer at Madrona Beach.

So a lot of people's kids spent the whole summer at Madrona Beach, you know, so thank you.

They all learned to swim.

Shout out to Parks.

I want to just speak to the fact that, you know, it's almost been a generation since our kids have been killed.

Starting in 1990 all epic Garfield and all around and it's been many of these meetings And I want to you know the police have have done some good I Arrest in those days, and they'll send a lot of people to jail I mean to prison and so what we've been calling for every sense every a long time ago, is for cameras in the high profile areas with a sunset date.

We've been calling for this ever since 2014, the spot shotter.

We call for that too, to be able to see exactly where the shots are coming from.

We also, with the Silent War campaign, not mothers, but the Silent War campaign and Family Empowerment Institute, we have a partnership with the police.

on solving crime.

I mean, there's Tyrone Love.

We have all these other crimes that has never been solved.

And at one time, we had to campaign on who shot me.

And we had some billboards around.

We need to go back and look at some of these other things.

that we'd already signed off on that wasn't implemented or didn't have enough time out there.

I mean, that was a telephone number that somebody could call with a tip and all of those kinds of things.

But until we get high cameras in high-profile areas, people shoot people in the daytime because they know they're not going to get arrested.

Because they know that nobody's going to talk or nothing like that.

But this is almost a decade.

This is almost a generation now.

That's almost 30 years that this has been going on in Seattle.

And I do believe it's the issue of class, too.

I mean, because class has something to do with this.

It's why we have not solved all of these situations.

Thank you all for the cooperation.

And shout out to everybody who's here.

And I think this is what democracy looks like.

But sometimes we have to cut it short and send some people outside.

All right.

The next person up is Marguerite Richard followed by I think it's.

Is it Beverly Fletcher Robeson.

OK.

Number five.

Yes, I don't know if you have to see that comment, speaker number four, but nonetheless, here it is.

I'm Ms. Rashard, and I was born and raised here, and I know a lot of people have seen me around, and I'm very unhappy with the circumstances at hand.

And I'm going to speak to this thing on tonight, because I made an observation.

And it's the little foxes that spoil the vine.

So when I was standing back there, I noticed that a detective cookie went like this with her hand.

And this stuff is going on across the country, where they belittle us.

They degrade us.

And we never seem to have enough of the things and the tools and stuff that we need to make it sometimes in life.

So the Congress have to address reparations.

But then we have Mitchell Connell saying, well, I don't know about that because 150 years ago, I wasn't around.

So how can we go back and fix this problem?

Maybe you can drop from the earth and it'll be fixed.

Some of you ain't fit to live and fit to die up in here.

And you know what you done already did.

You're the scourge of the nation.

And I'm going to keep on speaking it until the day that I die.

It was a requirement to read in high school the autobiography of Malcolm X. I couldn't even do it because I said, oh, no, I'm scared.

If I read this book, then I had an epiphany with that man.

It was almost like he came right into my room and spoke to me.

So don't tell me you don't know nothing about why these black children are dropping off of the planet around here.

Yes, you know.

Even before you called us into this room, you knew what you knew, what you were going to do, what Folk wasn't going to get what folk was going to get, how they was going to get it, and if they didn't get it, what you were going to do.

How are you looking at me now?

I'm spinning around like the globe that you see.

This stuff is worldwide what we're going through, and you better wake up in here.

Time is up.

Thank you.

Next person is number five, Beverly Fletcher Robeson, followed by number six, Anastasia Dunn.

Good evening and I appreciate the opportunity to come here before you and listen to what the Seattle City of Seattle is doing in regards to gun violence prevention and intervention.

I won't be as colorful as the prior speakers and I might pride myself on that but probably shouldn't.

The reason why I'm here is I am here with Grandmothers Against Gun Violence.

Several of my grandmothers, please raise your hands, they're here.

Okay.

And I have been with that organization for the past four years.

In addition to that, there are some of us, including myself, who have been working in the South Seattle community for the past year, intensively trying to understand what the issues are to intervene and prevent gun violence in that area.

First of all, I'd like to represent the fact that many of the individuals who are committing these violent acts are crying out for help.

They're a violent cry for help.

One of the issues is their homelessness.

One of the other issues is they are African-American males, which we are primarily not addressing.

Specifically, these are the individuals that are getting killed.

And the reason why they are committing these crimes, as well as being killed by them is they have no sense of value.

And so one of the things that I want us to do is to work better with the community service organizations.

I work with, I'm on the board of Community Passageways.

And I am learning so much about how these individuals are really seriously interested in working to overcome the past generations of abuse and a feeling of lack of value.

So one of the things that we've talked about is looking at the city of Oakland and other cities who've been successful in intervening and preventing gun violence.

There are other cities, such as Boston, And so what I want us to do is really be serious about having community engagement and working in partnership.

And that takes us not just sitting here talking but actually actively involved.

And I'd be more than happy to share with you my experience and participate in any way possible.

And some of you know I have been doing that.

So thank you so very much.

I appreciate your effort and I look forward to us working together.

Absolutely.

Thank you for that.

And I think I have your contact information here, so we'll make sure to follow up with you.

Thank you for the offer.

OK.

Anastasia Dunn will be followed by Rebecca Adrian.

Thank you.

So, Anastasia Dunn, I'm resident of 21st and Union, been at all those meetings, and I want to start by saying I really appreciate, myself and my neighbors, really appreciate the mayor's team response to the violence that has occurred and gone up recently.

We really appreciate the engagement as well as a lot of the actions.

You know, that on those walks we saw people, a lot of the director heads come along on those walks and take action, like you've illustrated here.

The question I have, and I don't know if it's something that we can follow up on later, is, is there a process, an exception process?

Because we clearly saw actions being taken that are clearly within the siloed natural process departments of all of those city departments, lighting, trimming, all of that kind of stuff.

But on those walks, we saw everybody together, all these directors, leaders in their own departments saying, hey, yeah, that's a good idea to do traffic calming.

But Director Zimbabwe might not have the data at his fingertips to follow the normal process of saying, oh, traffic calming is important or appropriate.

right, per the normal process.

But I think we have other data from our police department as well as other data from other cities that should fuel an exception.

How can we make it different, like some of you have said, and how can we make it specific that it should arrive in the summer?

Because we know we can do it.

We know we can do traffic calming.

We know we can do all of those activities.

How can we help these managers as a leadership team?

What is the exception process if Sam Zimbabwe thinks he's got a collectively creative idea?

Is there a formal process that can be followed so that it could be expedited?

Because I know it is, you know, it is administrative work, right?

What is the practical steps that those leaders can take to partner and say, I think we have the data we need.

We don't need another study.

We appreciate the study.

I'm all for the study.

But but but we don't we might not need it.

Right.

And how can we take action because we need this to be different.

This neighborhood the first slide said this neighborhood's different.

We shouldn't need to peanut butter.

Right.

It should be OK for it to be different.

Even simple things you know that letting our departments do what they do best.

So thank you.

Thank you.

And Anastasia, the department folks are gonna be here and the deputy mayor is also here, so invite you to continue to emphasize that this is a priority for you all, but I think this is part and parcel of making sure that we are creating this connection and making sure that it's both urgent and sustainable well into the future to address the issues.

Please, Rebecca, and then we will hear from Dan Sanchez.

Hi, I'm Rebecca and I'm a parent and an educator.

Sorry, I'm a little nervous.

I'm a 13-year resident of the central area.

I'm here because I heard and saw the shooter in a not gang-related murder.

And it's given me a lot of PTSD.

And so now these recent crimes that have been in daylight hours in places where my child and I walk and bike are really stressing me out.

I don't feel that I can walk to Starbucks.

I don't feel I can walk to the library.

And there's been shootings in a place where my child bikes regularly.

And I'm sorry for the loss of those lives, but I feel our whole community is suffering, because I've been a 30-year resident of here.

I'm from the Bay Area.

And I feel like I'm just nervous, too.

Sorry.

I feel like we really need to address this in a couple ways.

And one is that when I first moved here and there was some gun violence in this part of town, I didn't live here then.

I lived north.

And I heard that there were gun buybacks programs.

I'd like to hear more about that.

I would like to hear more about how we can have youth involvement with more advertising of all your programs in all the places.

I think all your stuff should be on a big board.

How do youth and young people get involved?

I mean, all these things that you're telling me about, I don't know about all these things.

And so I want to hear about them in all the places.

Do all your neighborhood projects staff all these little flyers?

I want to hear about them.

In the Bay Area, my mom was part of a community mediation program that has fostered a lot of these community mediation things that you're hearing about.

So I would like to hear about how we can have a big meeting of all the groups that belong to the central area to foster a community grant writing workshop for the young people.

Let's get kids at this grant writing meeting to talk about how to invest in these neighborhood projects that your other department is doing.

What is that?

The youth development program in the spring.

I want to talk about displacement.

All these things have happened.

These three major shootings that have happened in my neighborhood, four if you count the one on East Union, have been since there's been all this economic redevelopment.

The neighborhood meeting places are lost.

People used to hang out at the Red Apple in community ways.

They can't.

We asked a lot of people in the redevelopment, could we have farmer's markets?

That has not happened.

Can we talk with the economic opportunities, the economic council and with the developers about having some other place for people to meet?

Can we have portables?

Can we have little community coffee shops?

that are staffed by the businesses that are displaced.

And then I'd like to talk about how can we have...

a real voice through the community councils, because I'm on the Jackson Place Community Council right down here by the Shell Station, and we don't have a voice.

So can the mayor bring back the voice of the community councils, because we speak for the people, and we've been disenfranchised by the last mayor.

And the last...

Rebecca, I'm sorry.

Can you wrap it up really quickly?

Yeah.

The last thing is just, I don't know, thank you for the opportunity, but I believe in the mediation ideas, and I hope that we can all address those.

Thank you.

Thanks, Rebecca.

Okay, our next person is number 8, Dan Sanchez.

And then number 9, Ian Eisenberg.

Hopefully I can make my notes make some kind of sense.

It might sound like I'm going to go off topic just for a second, but it's going to wrap around.

It'll be about 15 seconds.

So, I mean, gentrification is a big problem and a lot of people are frustrated out there.

I don't think it's all gangs.

You've got kids, you know, whose families don't live here anymore.

And the city just nods their head about, yeah, property taxes is a problem.

But here's how.

I know a lady on 21st and Fir, her house is worth about $700,000.

According to the tax assessor, 50% is the land.

But her land is worth about $350,000.

Now you can build a house in her backyard because it was just rezoned.

Builders will pay one-third of the finished value for the land.

So her backyard is now worth $300,000.

Her $700,000 house is now going to be taxed assessed at a million dollars, 50% increase.

There was a hardware store in Lake Union, same thing happened.

The guy was taxed for a 20-story building.

And he had to sell the hardware store because he couldn't pay the freaking taxes on it.

So this lady's going to move now at 21st and Union because she's on a fixed income.

So that's just one thing.

I mean, the city, to me, just for stuff like that, up zone, just take the money, and then nod their head when they say, yeah, maybe property taxes is a problem.

There's a lot of credibility they don't have.

The broken window theory, I think everybody agrees, yeah, the broken window theory is a thing, but we've decriminalized all drugs.

Don't gangs sell drugs?

That's the business they're in, right?

But we've decriminalized drugs, and we're like, where are all these gangs coming from?

What happened to micro-policing?

Everybody knows where the hot spots are.

I love that store at 21st and Union.

I get my teriyaki there.

They sell crack pipes.

I talked to a police captain the other day.

He knows they do.

There's nothing illegal about it.

Gee, people got shot there.

The traffic calming at 21st and Union is lovely.

Isn't that the street where they took the victims from that shooting down to Cherry Hill, Swedish?

I'm not sure if traffic calming helped or hurt that situation, but that was one of the cars.

Traffic is down to 600 cars, but that was one of them.

And I guess that's it.

Stop living in your silos and stop creating groups that only convene to meet the outcome that you want to have and let more people come to these meetings and stop letting departments just pick and choose who they want to have sign off on their projects.

Thanks, Dan.

Next person is Ian.

That's number nine.

And then 10 is Angela Davis.

Hi, Ian Eisenberg.

There's been a lot of talk about the crime prevention through environmental designs.

Years ago, we could have SEPTEDs done, and they were done in a matter of weeks.

At 21st and Union, I own the southwest property.

And myself and the owner of the southeast property have been asking since early February for a SEPTED.

And we don't even know what department.

It used to be neighborhoods.

We don't know who does it anymore.

You guys are supposed to be the experts.

We've taken down walls, we've put up cameras, we've put up lights, but we're guessing.

We want something from the city.

Everybody keeps saying the SEPTED is going to come, and we have no idea.

And at the Union Market side of the street, The family that owns that property has delayed putting up lights, delayed putting up cameras, delayed doing really anything waiting for the city to give us the sept head that's supposed to be coming.

And we just, we don't know who to ask or to talk to.

And it's great that everybody's here.

Everybody goes on these walks with us, but there's no real outcome, like actionable outcome that we as private property owners can take that advice and implement, you know, changes that'll help the neighborhood.

Number 10 is Angela Davis and then number 11 is Joanna Coleman Yes, first of all, I'd like to say I thank you all for taking the time to come out here I'm gonna try to be as brief as I can.

I grew up in the Central District.

I lived here from 1969 to 1976 with my mother I moved back into that same house in 1989 and lived there until 2005 with my children.

When I moved in with my children, it was in the height of the crack cocaine era.

And on that block, there was a continual 911 response, which re-triggered my trauma from PTSD.

At the same time, there were brown and black people that I knew that I went to school with.

Some of them went to the same daycare, same community center, same childcare that my children went to that were going to the juvenile detention center, which I also was an employee of.

And at the same time, the officers that were doing their job, they were having black men laying in the street with guns on them in the front of my house on 22nd Avenue right around the corner from Ezel's.

Now we have different people in this community and the identity of what this area represents I think also is a symbolism of how race, class, gender, education and all of those things, there's a huge disconnect.

Those that are able to navigate the educational system and be able to articulate what it is that they need are the ones that are able to be able to get it.

So how do we assimilate information so that it is not so sophisticated for other people so that we can come together and have real conversations.

I think that it is very vital and very crucial that we make it so that the everyday person that may not know how to put a complex sentence together to be able to talk about the same issues that we are in this room.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Davis.

The last person signed up on the sheet is number 11, Joanna.

Hi, thank you.

I'm going to get to the first point really quickly.

We met, I live on 21st Avenue, and this morning Vicki Beach and I and several people, and Emily met with the mural artist who's supposed to make the mural on Ian's property.

And the one thing that came up is the Seattle Neighborhood Group is supposedly going to do the septet.

And but we have no idea when they finish how then it's presented to the city and what the process would be to implement any of the ideas in that septet.

So we would like to have some answers on that.

And then I also just want to thank all of you for being here.

I want to thank Shama Sawant's office for having us at her committee meeting, the mayor's office for coming out, and bringing the departments to meet with us.

Councilmember Gonzalez for having this meeting and Vicki Beach for helping letting us be here tonight.

Thank you.

So that is the last person who formally signed up on a public comment sheet.

Is there anyone who didn't get a chance to sign up for public comment who feels really inspired and would like to provide testimony to us now before we close out.

All right.

So great.

So let me before I do that let me go ahead and close out public comment.

So I didn't see anybody else come forward.

Did you want did you want to make a public comment.

OK please.

Hi, I'm Vic Roberson.

I am a track coach at Rainier Beach Community Center.

I've done that for 25 years.

And one of the things that we haven't heard about today is trauma for young kids, as well as those who are impacted by violence.

Last spring, we had a track meet at West Seattle.

500 kids having a good time.

A gun battle turned out.

One of the fathers in my track team was killed.

Folks saw it, they were afraid, they were frightened.

A year later, kids can't sleep.

The family is torn.

Many of my track, for instance, thanks Justin for helping out with track to make that a safer place, but people don't feel safe.

The idea that our kids are going through some amazing, imaginative stuff that traumatized them, and there's no, I didn't hear a thing today that really talked about that trauma.

The families are broken.

Multiple generations of brokenness.

And we didn't talk about how we heal those families at the beginning.

Every time you have a shooting, it's the person, the family, the friends, the community.

And now the central area, especially white folks who didn't used to live here, are feeling it.

It's terrible.

I feel sorry the young lady, woman said that.

I don't feel safe.

That's happened to black and brown communities for decades, hundreds of years.

So our inability to create opportunities for dealing with trauma is really, really poor.

There's very little in the south end.

There's none in the city.

There's no health, human services problem that says, when a shooting happens, we're going to go in the community and that family and solve that, begin to do that.

We don't do that.

Kids get out of jail, and they're just hoping the best they can get a job or something.

There's no trauma.

So the opportunity to do those sort of things are really important.

It allows people to heal, and therefore be better serving citizens of the community.

So I'm going to say that.

Thank you.

Really, really wise words around dealing with trauma and making sure that we have trauma-informed models, which is a really important part of sort of a public health strategy to dealing with meeting people where they're at.

And I really appreciate the push from everybody here to make sure that we not only acknowledge some of the good stuff that we've all done together, but also continue to challenge ourselves to do more.

And so clearly we have a lot more work to do in this space.

And I'm personally committed to continue to work with you all and work hard to dig in and continue to identify those concrete things that we can do and to do it with a sense of urgency.

And I'm looking forward to working with the mayor's office and with my colleagues on the city council to continue to do that work on the inside as well.

Really quickly on the SUPTED report, I did get an email from the folks over at the Seattle Neighborhood Group earlier today.

Somebody was supposed to be here today.

There you are.

Why don't you stand up so folks can see you.

Sorry to embarrass you all.

Hi.

So my understanding is that they're getting ready to publish that report sometime in July.

Is that correct, Linda?

Sure.

Yeah, why don't you come up to the mic, introduce yourself to everybody, and just maybe talk through when you expect to see that.

Sure.

My name is Terry Nelson-Zager.

I'm the associate director at Seattle Neighborhood Group, and Linda Spain is my executive director.

So we were connected to the neighbors at 21st and Union.

by somebody at SDOT who said, the neighbors want traffic calming as a crime prevention method.

We don't know what that means.

Can you please help out?

So Jules and Emily connected with those folks and met with a handful of the neighbors and talked about what SEPTAD is and what it can do and what it can't do.

offered our services to produce an assessment.

They said they had asked for an assessment previously but didn't know if they were actually going to get one, that there was some miscommunication or perhaps they weren't sure if somebody was trained in the East Precinct yet.

And so there was a gap there and so we offered to step in and produce an assessment.

And it takes us a little while.

We have to spend a lot of time on site, many hours observing what's going on at all different times of day and night.

We're looking at the built environment for things that support and facilitate negative behavior.

And we are very careful about what we recommend.

We like to talk to a lot of people also before we produce our recommendations.

After we make a set of recommendations, we like to share it with the community, and I would love to do that in a community meeting.

I don't quite know what the venue would be for that, but I am going to ask the neighbors what the best way and time is to do that, and we will do that in probably mid-July.

And then, of course, I will share it with everybody in the city who I have been in contact with over this set of issues.

The document that we produce is just a set of recommendations.

It doesn't have marching orders for any specific people, although there are various jurisdictions that can step in and take care of different parts.

So if there are any questions about that, I can answer at any time.

So we're looking at July for an initial preview with community around initial recommendations.

There'll be refinements after that.

And then you'll provide interested parties, including the folks sitting up here, with a copy of a refined report.

So probably sometime in August.

I'm hoping it would be all wrapped up by mid-July or the end of July.

Great.

Well, I'm looking forward to, personally, I'm looking forward to receiving that report.

We kick off our budget process at the City Council in the third week of September and look forward to seeing if there are things that need resources and funding or if it's just policy changes or can be done within the existing resources.

I think several of us up here are committed to engaging in that analysis, so I appreciate you giving us additional information about that.

Thank you.

I'll be around later.

Could you set up a meeting with the young gang members so they can come and tell you what the problem is?

Because these people ain't the problem.

We work with several community-based organizations that engage with gang-involved youth or otherwise criminal justice-involved youth, including Choose 180, Community Passageways, and several others.

We're going to continue to support those organizations as trusted messengers and conveners of those groups to help us interrupt these cycles of violence and to ultimately encourage people to get out of that lifestyle or not pursue it at all.

You know, we work, it's really important for us as city leaders to not pretend like we know what the solutions are and what communities need and to instead focus our energy on supporting community-based organizations that come from communities that are negatively impacted in this space to make sure they have the resources available to them to do the convening and the hard work that they need with the resources that are required to do this tremendous amount of work.

Okay, so I think that is it for this evening.

I'm not sure if I was able to answer the second question because I didn't write it down, so I'm doing this by memory.

Exception process, I'm sorry.

I think that really when we're talking about this work, I'm not sure that we talk about it in the context of an exception process.

It's really about prioritization.

And that prioritization comes from, I'll be frank, making sure that community members are organizing and collectively with a very strong and loud voice telling us what they expect to see and by when.

And so I would encourage you all to keep that pressure up.

And then two, you know, making sure that we know exactly what is a priority because, you know, if everything's a priority, nothing's a priority.

So how do we prioritize the things that have already been identified?

How do we make sure that it's sustainable?

And how do we make sure that we're working with the mayor's office and the departments to facilitate their ability to prioritize this work together?

And I think the fact that the mayor's office is here with all of these departments at the same time is a very good sign that this issue has been prioritized and that they are talking to each other.

in a manner that is multidisciplinary so that we don't get into the silos and get into a situation where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

So I don't want to speak too much for Mayor Fong, but my sense is that that is a correct, that's the model that we're gonna see from the executive here.

Yeah, and I appreciate that, Councilmember Gonzalez.

On your question, I think let's continue the dialogue and take it offline because I think I know the reference point, but let's spend a little more time engaging around the topic, though.

Thank you.

As always, as a government agency, there is a fair amount of bureaucracy and red tape that we've got to cut through sometimes, and talking about sort of how we can make our systems more efficient to be more responsive is an important part of this dialogue.

So that is it for our items of business on the agenda.

So we're going to go ahead and close out.

It's 8.08 p.m., so we're going to go ahead and adjourn this meeting.

We have so much food in the back.

Please, please do not be embarrassed to take a plate home.

Whatever is not eaten, we are going to figure out our way to make sure that we donate that so it doesn't go to waste.

So this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you all for being here.