Seattle City Council Select Committee on Homelessness & Housing Affordability 12/5/19

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you so much for joining us today.

This is our Select Committee on Homelessness and Housing Affordability.

The date is December 5th.

It's 2 p.m.

I'm Sally Bagshaw.

I chair this committee, or co-chair this committee.

Thank you to Council Members Gonzalez, Council Member Herbold.

Councilmember Peterson for being here with me today and we have only one item on our agenda and that item is to hear more about the updates and where we are with the governance and to hear what we what happened at Regional Policy Committee today RPC at King County and I know that we've got our noble central staffers here Jeff Sims.

Thank you so much and Tracy Tracy Ratzliff.

Thank you and and Tess Colby from the mayor's office.

First, is there, do we have public comment?

And while I'm looking at that sheet, I am going to, if there is no objection, to adopt the agenda without any changes today.

And seeing no objection and hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Okay, we've got eight people.

So if you want to offer two minutes to everybody, David Haynes, Brian Ford, Karen Schilling, Katie Law, Danielle, in that order.

So David, Brian and Carol, if Brian and Carol will line up so we're ready to go right after David.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, City Council.

In order to have regional authority success, you still have to investigate the abuse homeless customers are subjected to by contract providers.

I'm here to ask you to consider investigating and stop nominating the wrong people for this new regional authority whose agenda seems to be perverted, racist, and bullying at allhome.com and some of the city government and social welfare nonprofits.

They are applying a systemic racism using tax dollars this budget cycle for educations of hate, hiding behind a race and social justice lens to up in the gringos, I hate to say it, In order to keep Christian compassion strong, 10% of the budget needs to be spent alleviating the oppression of the houseless citizens overthrown by treasonous Democrats, correlating visa lottery, sanctuary, and prolific cheap labor substitute migration to the homeless crisis in America.

The state has one million non-citizens taking a home off the market to make big bank Democratic donors happy, while city council thinks tapping into and managing the homeless By selling out the integrity and the scrutiny of the six-figure salaries, getting away with lying every day about how much data and many people that they've helped, all for re-election support has solidified guarantees for contractors at taxpayers' expense and the rights of the homeless.

You cannot reappoint the perverted, racist bullies of allhome.com, getting in the way of real progress.

It's not fair.

All Home gets away with hiring a New York company with a perverted, racist, plagiarized agenda, a company to fill in the blanks on regional authority guarantees of organizing, just so that All Home can sit on the top of the heap, where they do virtually nothing but add systemic, undermining, racist agendas well, racist, anti-social and desperately like injustice to, excuse me, I'm sorry.

It's just an injustice to allow racism to continue in this city.

Brian Ford, Carol Schilling, KD Law.

Hi, Council, how's it going?

I'm here today to talk about the sweeps that are going on currently with the unsanctioned camps in Seattle.

I work with a group called Facing Homelessness.

I work with a group called Facing Homelessness and we go out every other weekend and do unsanctioned camp cleanups and I think these sweeps are a terrible thing.

You're forcing people to move from place to place with nowhere to go and sometimes losing their possessions.

And having people move around like that is radicalizing a new group of people every time you force them to move into a different neighborhood.

It turns people against the people that are living there.

I think that resources should be put into services like garbage collection and portable restrooms.

The cleanup afterwards has to cost more than providing these services up front.

We are going to pay for it, the citizens, one way or the other.

Just to have it pile up and then to come by later and clean it up just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

The unsanctioned camps aren't going anywhere.

You know, forcing these people are experiencing trauma every day by living outside and just trying to survive.

And then you add to their trauma by coming and sweeping them out of the place that they're living.

I think that you guys should come out and participate in one of these cleanups with us and come and see you know, without come and see how these people are living out there and come and see what they're going through on a personal basis.

Thank you.

Thank you, Brian.

And I can assure you for myself and a number of my council colleagues, we have been there and we have assisted.

So I appreciate your coming down.

Thank you, Carol, Katie, Daniela and then Teresa.

Hi, my name is Carol Schilling.

I'm here to talk about I have a printout that I left for you.

I wanted to talk about building a multi-use building to support homelessness, a YMCA type facility with societal mixing, a high CBD grow in the top of the building to create a neurological medical cannabis therapy access, as well as campgrounds on the I-5 corridors.

There's no campgrounds on the I-5 corridor.

If you look at the rest of the state, there's campgrounds everywhere.

There's no campgrounds here.

There's an obvious need for campgrounds.

When I came to the state in 2008 to attend the UW, I noticed a woman laying on the side of a K-Mart, and she was crying.

I said, oh my God, these people will let you be homeless.

It's 11 years later, and it's only gotten worse.

There's tents next to just regular buildings.

It's ridiculous.

We need campgrounds, and we need services.

The building that I designed, I designed because Seattle Unity sold their land next door, and so I went to work four years ago developing what I thought should be next door.

And of course, it's gonna be a residential building, but maybe there's a tax foreclosure is what I'm thinking.

a building that's just going to waste.

We need to provide, homelessness is multi-level.

In 2007, we started to re-register the Environmental Protection Agency neurotoxins.

The neurotoxins not only do direct damage to the neurology, they also awaken viruses within the system, dormant viruses within the system.

And what the system's immune system does is it creates inflammation as part of its war on those viruses, and that inflammation creates encephalitis and meningitis within the vessel.

What we have is a chronic, systemic, we have a epidemic of encephalitis and meningitis that does not kill, that does not lead to seizure, that does not lead to death.

It leads to chronic homelessness, and we need to deal with that, and so that's what this building will do.

Thank you, Carol.

Katie, Daniela, and Teresa.

Hello, my name's Katie, and I thought that she up here was like to sign up if you're gonna be here.

So I do have to say something though.

Oh my God, I'm so sorry.

Ever since I was born here, there's been like plenty of homeless people like over the years.

the homeless population started to increase, even though you have these big tech companies paying, like, taxes, $500 per, like, employee, but I don't see that money going anywhere.

So it's my first time.

Good.

Well, thank you for coming, and come back again.

Daniella, Teresa, and Sean.

Hi, my name is Daniela Buscariolo.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

So I'm a resident of Northeast Green Lake, and I just wanted to share a little bit about my experience, my family and my neighbor's experience with an encampment on I-5 near our home.

So I had moved in and bought a property at the corner of 76th Street and 5th Avenue with Department of Transportation property running behind in July.

At that point there were no sign of camps and then probably by late September started noticing people trespassing into my backyard and eventually realized that the area right behind my house was a major entrance to this encampment.

So as it, you know, it grew on the order of a few weeks and within those weeks until it got cleared in late September, I was having people coming into my property, leaving weapons, constantly had to call the police, had people come in, you know, police officers to investigate.

My next door neighbor's empty property was broken into and there were squatters there.

So this was right next to my house.

Needless to say, I did not feel safe in my own home that I had just purchased.

And, you know, thankfully, since the camp got cleared out, it's been much better, so I haven't had people trespassing.

But I'm concerned because I'm already seeing new tents, you know, in the area right behind my house.

And that cleanup clearly caused new tents to form in areas nearby.

So then, you know, I think that this, you know, not only are the people suffering who are living in these encampments, but we have to remember too that when they form right next to, you know, our homes that we're having direct impact on citizens like myself and my neighbors.

So that's what I wanted to share.

Thank you for coming, Daniella.

Teresa, Sean, and is it Alex, Alice?

Okay, pretty good.

Okay, good afternoon, council members.

I actually had a different statement prepared, but knowing that we've had some emails and conversations, I just want to speak a little bit about thinking about this committee and its work.

So first of all, thank you for the work that you've done.

The purpose of this committee when it was convened, I believe, was to really pool knowledge, information, and minds and to really try to figure out more about an effective way to solve homelessness.

And as you know, I'm here today on behalf of the community at Ravenna and Cowan Parks, but also other communities around the city.

whose residents are working or raising children or caring for elderly parents and actually can't be here.

So I just wanted to say that we're gratified by the leadership that city council members have shown in this crisis, the work on the budget, the advocacy for those who are living outdoors.

And because we're still seeing, of course, as you are, tents on the hillside, greenways, tents on the freeways, tents on the city streets, we're really concerned about the safety.

of those folks who are living outdoors and the safety in the city and we just all need more safe and stable places for all of us to live whether we're living outdoors or living in our in in in homes.

So as I was thinking about this is the last meeting of the committee for the year and again gratified by the work that's been done we do have I think six council members who are coming back who are incumbents and then a couple of new folks and I just, as I've seen the information, I'd just like to ask the committee to continue to focus, asking questions, work together, put together a plan that we can not go through another season with tents, people living outdoors and suffering from that.

So thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

And we may have one more meeting next week.

We will see.

Sean and then Alice.

And, Alice, if you'd like to make your way up.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Council.

I'm Sean Van Eyck with Protech 17. My organization represents the members that are employees at the Human Services Department as well as soon to be, the soon to be organized PPMs at the King County that will be impacted by the regional governance model.

We previously, just yesterday, sent a letter objecting to the amendments that the RPC has made to the proposal regarding the regional governance, and I wanted to come and share some additional thoughts.

Specifically, Sound City has stated that even though suburban cities won't be paying directly, they should still have a seat at the table given that they are in the county and pay existing and the county's contributing $57 million, which their residents contribute to.

While that may be true, so does the city.

This came up during the EHT discussion.

Put plainly, the City of Seattle makes up 41, I'm sorry, 40.4% of the total assessed value of King County and about a third of the population.

As a result, the residents and businesses in Seattle are essentially paying $23.028 million of the county's contribution, plus the $75 million directly.

Put another way, Seattle will be footing the bill for nearly 75 percent of this new authority, but will not have nearly the level of representation at the table.

This proposal essentially allows other cities to spend Seattle's money based on the political ideology of their elected officials in stark contrast to the prior proposals, which was reliant on best practices and an evidence-based policy leading the work.

Ultimately, our members know much more about the best practices than the politicians that are trying to use Seattle's money to ostensibly implement draconian policies that were, frankly, strongly rejected by the city voters last election.

While regional approach makes the most sense, jurisdictions that have done so successfully have been successful thanks in large part to keeping politics as far away from the decision-making as possible.

I urge you to reject the plan as amended.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sean.

Alice?

And Alice is our last speaker.

Just pull that down toward you.

It bends.

Hi.

Tell me if the volume is right.

I'm Alice Cummings, one of the organizers over at Bene Pop-Up Kitchen.

We serve a home-cooked meal every Sunday in the Roosevelt neighborhood.

And every week, we talk to people who are living outdoors in various ways, sometimes doorways, cars, tents, and many of whom have significant health issues.

A few weeks ago, I received a call from one of our neighbors who was very sick and needed to go to the hospital.

And she'd been hospitalized a few weeks before, or actually about a month before, and with a severe infection that she got after a bicycle accident.

And when she was released, she ended up having to have surgery where they removed amounts of tissue that was affected by the sepsis.

And so I called, rather than take her directly back to her tent, which is what she wanted, I ended up calling the NAV team and talked to one of the officers that I've talked to several times.

And he arranged for a visiting nurse, which I was happy about because she clearly was going to go back to the tent.

And then, and that seemed good.

She seemed to be doing better.

And a few weeks later, their camp was swept.

And then about three days later, it was swept again.

And then another two days later, it was swept for the third time, this time confiscating all of their possessions.

And then, I mean, I was, shocked and surprised and angered by that.

You know, hearing about this, I'm thinking, these people are living outside.

And so, you know, I see my time's running out.

But to make a long story short, she was, then two weeks later, she called me and said, I need to go to the hospital.

I went to pick her up.

Her entire body was full of sepsis.

They transferred her to Harborview, where she was there for about five days.

She had surgery, they gave her lots of antibiotics, and then time to go.

And I went up there and tried to arrange for some sort of respite care for her for a few days.

Finally, after looking into all of what they had, and nothing was available, they said she could stay one more night.

Next morning, 10 o'clock, she was out.

And I missed talking to the social worker, but they said they'd gone through everything with her and there was nothing.

And meanwhile, I had called probably 10 different places trying to find some kind of help for her.

In the end, I dropped her at a shelter.

And I don't know what she's doing now.

But it's a very, very vulnerable person with nothing, you know.

So.

Alice, thank you for your heart and thanks for all the work you've done.

Thank you for coming down here today.

Thank you.

All right, that's the end of our public comment.

And I would like our presenters to come up to the table.

Great.

Thank you, Jeff.

Do you want to start introductions?

Sure, just a moment.

Jeff Sims, Council of Central Staff.

Tracy Ratliff, Council of Central Staff.

And Tess Colby.

Sorry, Tess Colby, Mayor's Office.

Very good.

Thank you.

And all of you up here know how many months and how many meetings we have had moving forward with an agreement that started off with lots of different input.

All the way through the budget, I was meeting with my colleagues at King County and with Sound Cities Association.

This morning, the Regional Governance Authority took what we had, I think, hit a good negotiating point on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, Then there were a few other amendments that came forward.

We call those the Thanksgiving amendments.

So what came in front of Regional County, the RBC Regional policy committee today had a few additional amendments, so I believe that you all have what we refer to as the Thanksgiving copy.

We'll talk about the amendments today, dive back in, and maybe you could start off just explaining a little bit about what happened today, and I don't know which one of you wants to do that, but then also talking about what the schedule is as part of your presentation.

But I think it's really important for my colleagues to get up to date on all of the underlying agreement itself, the amendments that we heard today, and then our opportunities for providing additional amendments, if not today, in the next few days before final decisions can be made.

Certainly.

Thank you, Councilmember.

For, to make sure we have consistent terminology and are all looking at the same things, I wanted to make sure that what Councilmember Bagshaw just referred to as the Thanksgiving amendments, Councilmembers all received a memo on Monday, Tuesday morning, and I, at that time, in that memo, I referred to those as amendments as of 3.51 p.m.

on December 2nd.

Those are the same things.

It was changes that were introduced very, very late in the process.

And then that will be, that is, Those will be reflected in the chart that I have up on the screen here.

Going back a little bit.

Can we get that chart over there on that screen?

Thank you.

Going back a little bit, as Councilmembers are aware, we've been working and discussing this topic of a unified approach to regional governance for several months, going all the way back to even December when NIS presented a report calling for a uniform and defragmented approach to governing our investments, and there have been numerous meetings since then.

In September, there was the mayor and the county executive transmitted to the respective city and county councils a proposal for creating a unified entity.

That is what you see in the second column of the document that is displayed.

And I will walk through all the particulars of how that differs from what was considered today in just a moment.

As Council Member Bagshaw already discussed, multiple changes occurred all the way up to even this morning when the Regional Policy Committee of the King County Council met and adopted approximately six amendments.

I'll state each of those briefly, but I'm going to go through the document that's on screen and you will see that the third column reflects the what was passed by the King County Regional Policy Committee earlier today.

Excuse me, before you jump into that, perhaps just for people who are tuning in for the first time, if you can talk about the principles, what it is we are accomplishing between the city, the county, and our sound cities association.

So you just give us kind of an umbrella and then we can go through and look at these various amendments as proposed.

Perfect.

Yeah, I'm happy to.

So broadly, as I started, as I alluded to a little bit, but with a little bit more detail, The goal of this approach was to create a single authority that is a region-wide authority guiding all of the investments that our governmental entities are making in homeless services in order to have a unified approach to addressing the problem that's informed by best practice that centers the voice of people that have lived experience of homelessness and the input of people that are on the front lines of doing this work and putting all of that together to move forward as a region and to make sure that we are responding in a unified way and a region-wide way to the emergency of homelessness in our community.

Is that, Council Member, would you like to say more?

I mean, we could probably spend the next four hours talking about this, but I'd also like you to frame what it is you've identified well that people with lived experience and with providers with experience will be informing decisions that are made.

But I'm just thinking about that infographic with the governing board, our implementation board, and the various advisory committees leading up to that.

If you could just describe that briefly.

Sure.

And as I describe it, I'll describe it as it currently would be reflected from what was just passed by the county today to make sure that we're all mostly on the same page.

And that would be something that was passed today as a highlight on the screen, but all of this is in the third column.

So generally, You have a structure where the first board that I would discuss is called the Governing Board, or sorry, Governing Committee.

In the previous iterations, it had been called a Steering Committee.

That is a group composed primarily of elected officials and individuals that either have personal experience of homelessness or are responsive and representative of those groups, and they would be nominated by people with lived experience of homelessness.

That group, well, I'll go into particular detail about what that group would do as we go through step by step, but that's a group of 11. 12 people, apologies for the changes that have been going on.

12 people in total.

The second group is a group composed primarily of what we probably refer to as subject matter experts or technical experts that are also connected with a variety of systems throughout our community, such as child welfare, the criminal justice system, housing developers, people that actually provide services, and people with lived experience as well.

And that group is appointed initially by, actually in the current draft, is appointed by various government entities, such as this council appointing to, or the county executive appointing to, confirmed by that first group that I discussed, the governing committee.

And then that group would be working extensively and really would be managing the day-to-day operations and oversight of this combined regional authority that would have all of the funds from the county and the city that have been discussed so far put into it to provide homelessness services.

And on both of those groups, I want to emphasize again that people with lived experience have representation of three individuals on both of them.

So turning to specifics, I'll go through broadly, and this sort of follows the memo that was provided previously, as well as the structure of the actual interlocal agreement that would be passed.

The first item that is a major change that was made over the last, let's say, week and a half or two weeks and continues now, is that rather than putting forward a public development authority that would have two corresponding documents that needed to be passed, the version passed by the Regional Policy Committee creates an interlocal agreement between the county and the city of Seattle to create a separate governmental administrative agency.

That's actually the technical term.

that you can see the statutory citation there referring to it.

Essentially, it is working together to create a separate agency that combines our funding, but is an agreement between the county and the city.

It's notable, and this is on the next row then, that in what was initially provided, additional parties, i.e., other cities throughout King County, could become parties to that same agreement.

Under what is passed this morning, that is by the Regional Policy Committee, Other cities in the county can be subscribing agencies to this authority, and in doing so would be asked to provide some sort of resources or contribution and broadly align with the goals and the five-year plan of that agency.

But at this time, it is only between the county and the city, and though there is representation for other cities on the governing board, sorry, the governing committee and the implementation board.

Any questions at this point?

Council Member Herbold.

If you could speak to the extent that you, or not understand, that's not the right word, I'm sorry, I've got a head cold so I'm not gonna be at my best today.

But your analysis of why the decision was made to not pursue a PDA model, instead go with this interlocal agreement.

I was under the impression one of the benefits of a public development authority is the ability to issue bonds and that whereas there would still, with the issuance of bonds, there would still need to be a revenue stream in order to pay those bonds back and a local PDA wouldn't have the authority to raise taxes on its own without getting that authority from the state, the issuance of bonds was something that was attractive in the understanding that the next step after creating a governance authority would be to start having the funding stream conversation and that that would be a valuable tool to have as part of that conversation.

You're correct on all your descriptions there and the difference between what was passed this morning and what initially would have been proposed as a public development authority.

I can't speak to all of the motivation behind why a public development authority was not desirable by county council staff, sorry, county council members.

However, what was articulated frequently was a desire not to go so far in creating such a wholly different agency.

And then also, as I will highlight later, the idea, as you raise, of being able to bond or have taxing, though taxing authority would not have been provided, it would have had to have been granted later by the State Legislature.

was also an issue that was raised and actually in what was passed this morning is explicitly prohibited in this entity.

So even if the state legislature took action, there would need to be changes to this interlocal agreement.

No taxing authority is permitted.

Yeah, I guess I've always been under the impression, going way back to one table, that we were eventually going to have a conversation around our funding needs, as described by the McKinsey Report, and that this was a first step to get us on that path.

And I don't know why we would, in this structure, foreclose our opportunities to do that at this stage.

But thank you for the background.

Right, if I can leap in here.

Honestly, it was one of those issues that had been negotiated for months.

And Sound Cities Association made it very clear that they were unwilling to be taxed.

They did not want to participate in an organization that could effectively tax them.

So clearly, if we move forward and there's additional revenue, it's going to have to go through King County Council.

and the Regional Policy Committee would be an advisor.

So it would be countywide regional, the King County Council will work with us to identify what revenues sources might be available, whether that goes, we go to the state and we get additional revenues or the authority to request that is something that we're going to have to look at in the future.

But right now we do not have that authority to either bond or tax under the current structure.

Can I just ask a clarifying question as a follow-up to your comments, Chair Bagshaw?

I just want to make sure that there's nothing in the interlocal agreement or in the proposal that is before us that came out of the Regional Policy Committee just a couple of hours ago that impacts or affects, modifies, or restricts the city of Seattle's taxation authority?

That would be correct.

There's nothing in what was passed this morning by RPC that would do that.

So, Chair Baggio, when you say that any additional revenue sources would need to be done by King County, what do you mean when you say that?

If it would impact the sound cities.

I mean, we can tax ourselves through any kind of a either authority that we have as city council members, or if we go back to our voting public and ask for a levy, and that money would come back to the city.

That money would not go into the regional governance as proposed right now.

So, if we needed to have additional revenues that would be utilized for the entire King County region, that would have to go through the King County Council and voters.

And so, again, we're in a position, though, that if King County wasn't to do that, then it's left to Seattle to be funding the needs associated with what we have all agreed is a regional problem.

Absolutely.

And that's the concern I'm expressing here is that, you know, making this negotiated agreement that, to be fair, only included a small minority of council members, at least the Seattle City Council.

I continue to have questions about whether it's wise to structure it in a fashion where we are, as Council Member Herbold has already articulated, foreclosing even the conversation of having regional financing tools to address what we have all said is a regional issue.

I'm a little frustrated with figuring out what the solution for it is on that, if all we're hearing from suburban cities is no.

Right.

And suburban cities are very interested in maintaining their independence.

At this point, there is no city that has stepped forward in saying that they will offer land or resources.

We are hopeful that if we have something that is clearly a regional authority and that progress is being made, we're going to see more cities involved.

And that said, the term of this agreement is, for the initial term, is five years.

And at any point, it can, if the parties agree, we can withdraw.

And after five years, individual entities.

But in those five years, we're committing $73 million of City of Seattle taxpayer funds, correct?

That's correct, yes.

And those $73 million will be commingled with King County funds, correct?

Correct.

And so there's nothing in the ILA that says Seattle dollars will be used only to the benefit of Seattle residents?

And I just will...

I'm sorry, I'm waiting for an answer on that one.

That is correct.

There's not an explicit statement that it can only benefit Seattle residents.

I would point to some of our current investments right now, such as a diversion program, where an individual who might not physically be in the boundaries of Seattle currently, but was possibly going to be coming to one of our shelters, That individual could be, for example, given diversion assistance to not therefore need to stay at one of our shelters.

So our current system does not say you have to be fully within the bounds of our system as long as it's benefiting the Seattle system overall.

But I think you're making my point, which is that the city of Seattle has a history of being very generous.

in subsidizing the needs of non-Seattle residents in addition to taking care of the basic needs of Seattle residents who are experiencing homelessness.

And yet that reciprocity is pretty much non-existent in terms of how this deal is structured from sound cities to us.

And I just wanna make sure that that understanding is clear.

So Sound Cities will benefit from City of Seattle taxpayer dollars, but the other way around is not necessarily true.

So in other words, we're not going to get money from a member of Sound Cities associations to benefit our residents.

You're correct that initially, while county funds are put into the entity, there are no suburban city community funds that are put into the regional authority.

To your point about whether or not Seattle funds could be used more broadly in suburban regions, we would have a variety of options.

by which that could be restricted, including through our budget processes or the contract with the regional authority.

I don't believe it currently.

To make sure that I'm addressing exactly what your concern is, I would want to go through and vet the language again, but I don't believe that is currently in the language at this time.

Yeah, and I mean, I don't have, I think when we acknowledge that it's a regional problem, then we have to all be willing to contribute to addressing the problem that we've identified and characterized as being regional.

So I'm not objecting to the commingling of the funds necessarily.

What I am objecting to is or expressing a concern about is the fact that there seems to be an apparent lack of reciprocity and principle in terms of the realities of what the scale of the need is and what funding will be required to meaningfully address the scale of the need.

And so I just want to make sure that as we're having this conversation, we are not framing up the conversation in a manner that communicates to the general public that they should have expectations that are greater than what they might and should be, right?

So if we still have a limited amount of money to deal with a very large problem, in large part because we in the city of Seattle are the ones who are making the most significant investment, then I don't think that we should be communicating to the public that somehow this is gonna be fixed in short order because that's just not real.

And that is a very good point.

And I just want to just say everything that you articulated is something that has been under discussion for months.

What we are looking for ultimately is to have Sound Cities be real partners in terms of offering land, offering space for people, stepping forward and having, creating their own shelters as we move forward.

Right now we don't have that commitment from them.

Yeah, Council Member Peterson.

Just a point of, or a question to clarify where the revenue is coming from, from when we say it's coming from King County.

So is it, is the revenue that King County is providing to this coming from other cities or people who live in those other cities already?

Yes, they are countywide funding streams, a portion of which is Seattle and a portion of which is suburban or sound city communities.

I'm not familiar with exactly, if you went into the particular levy or the particular source of those funds, how the distribution between those two breaks down.

So it's not just coming from unincorporated King County, it's coming from incorporated cities?

That's correct, yes, including Seattle.

Okay, thank you.

Including us?

Yes.

Good.

Please proceed.

So moving to our third row, there's a section in Article 4 of this interlocal agreement where it calls for a variety of principles, such as seeking to offset the disproportionate impacts of homelessness on many racial and ethnic minorities, or utilizing data-driven practices.

Initially, those principles were in the transmitted legislation.

Over the last few weeks, they were put back into the proposal as it was drafted.

However, language around Monday night was added that would say that we would only strive to meet those principles rather than that the authority shall meet those principles.

As of this morning, that strive to was re-removed.

So I apologize that that title is probably a little confusing, but those principles do stand fully intact and they are required using the words shall in each of those sections.

I'll move next to the Governing Committee.

This, as I noted before, was previously called the Steering Committee.

It is essentially the group that is people with lived experience or elected officials.

There are a variety of changes that have taken place from what was transmitted.

The most significant of which is that Sound Cities Association was provided representation on this and that all of the county, the city, Sound Cities Association and representatives for people with lived experience all have an equal number of representatives.

Over the course of the last few weeks or days, a change was made so that one of the people with lived experience should be currently located outside of the City of Seattle, so that, for example, if it's all consumers, it would not only be people that are currently utilizing Seattle services.

And also, this morning, a change was made to require that of the two King County Council members, one of them shall come from, shall be a member whose district, at least in part, includes Seattle, while the other one shall be a member that has a district entirely outside of Seattle.

This stems from concerns that I'll dive into a little bit more in a moment, but that were expressed here at this council and in this, at this committee meeting, these committee meetings about the, amount of Seattle funding that are being put into this authority as Councilmember Gonzalez and Herbold were just noting.

In addition, another amendment that was made this morning was to require that both the Governing Committee and the Implementation Board have compositions that are reflective of the racial and ethnic populations in King County.

That was phrased as strive to when in the case of the governing committee, acknowledging that people of color are not clearly proportionally represented on the King County Council at this time.

And so there may have been challenges in meeting that requirement if it was phrased as shall.

However, on the implementing board, that was stated as a goal.

And the purpose behind this is to make sure that populations that are disproportionately being impacted by homelessness, such as Native Americans or such as basically all people of color, would have adequate representation on these boards and that their voices would be heard.

get some clarification from you on that, Jeff.

So on the governing committee in terms of representation on that committee, are you saying that there needs to be an overlay as to the racial composition of that governing committee as a whole or just for those representing lived experiences?

the governing committee as a whole.

So we need to elect more people of color is what I just heard you say.

Essentially.

Okay, so how do you comply with that?

Given, I mean, I'm not, I'm very confused as to how this in practice plays out.

That is why the language was specific to say shall strive to, so to the degree permissible, but as you noted, that would not be something that could be absolutely required at this time, given who is currently holding office.

With the exception of the Seattle City Council, because we're.

majority women, majority people of color, so we're doing fine.

Jeff is like, I don't want to say anything.

I'm so uncomfortable looking at you.

Are you clear at this point with the idea is that from King County, the King County executive and two people from King County Council will be The first three.

That wasn't my question.

My question was around the changes that occurred, I think, just this morning around having a desired and stated intent to ensure that the representation on the Governing Committee was more reflective of the population of King County.

But when we are looking at the Governing Committee, it is made up of elected officials with the exception of three people.

So I think that that's a goal on paper, but perhaps not in reality until we see changes to who is representing the people of the county and the city.

On the implementation board, the same philosophy was included by the Regional Policy Committee this morning, but instead of saying that it needs to reflect the diversity of King County, it says that it needs to be representative of communities that disproportionately experience homelessness.

Did I hear that distinction correctly?

You're correct that it does not use strive, it says it must.

And the exact language, give me just a moment.

It's identical.

I believe it is identical.

It's the same language, yeah.

So it is not people, it is not populations disproportionately represented.

Rather, it would be reflective of the population of King County.

Okay, so.

So break that down for me in terms of what that would mean in practice.

Because my understanding is that King County isn't particularly diverse.

So I think there's also language in that same section that calls on that board to strive to make sure that populations that are disproportionately represented, which we know are people of color, are reflected on that.

So that your population of people that are homeless, which is disproportionately people of color, would be reflected on this implementing board.

And this essentially adds to that saying also the racial and ethnic makeup of the county.

So overall the effect is to make sure that people of color are represented on the implementing board.

Okay, can you just give me the language offline, please?

Sure.

I need to understand the highlighting on this document means what?

The highlighting is what was added at the Regional Policy Committee meeting this morning.

Okay, so we've got We've got back in the agreement one council member having a district that includes Seattle.

That is correct.

Yes.

We didn't have that as of the second.

So we've got that back in.

Yes that is correct.

That's good news.

That's good news.

And I'm just going to.

take this opportunity, I don't know how important this amendment is now given that we have that back in.

Do you want to get your microphone?

Yeah, I'm sorry, thank you.

I did have an amendment that I was considering bringing forward next week.

I think as a principle it might be still worthwhile.

It doesn't get specific to the King County Council representation, but it speaks to a principle that I think everybody might agree to, because it is not specific to any particular jurisdiction.

speaks to the principle that it is the intent to have a governing committee with representation relatively proportionally based on the contributions made by a given municipality or municipalities to the regional homelessness authority.

So I had originally proposed this because I was concerned about the December second version that did not have the inclusion of one of the King County Council members being from Seattle.

I am less concerned knowing that that's back in there, but still going to reserve my interest in potentially bringing this forward next week.

So, tell me about how this would work, Councilmember Herbold.

The way it looks to me, it is the intent to have a governing committee with representation relatively proportionally based on the contributions made by a given municipality.

Would that be like an eight to four, eight City of Seattle representatives and four King County representatives?

No, it would be more like a little bit more than half to a little less than half, right?

I mean, based on where we're at now, but of course, you know, as we know, I'm thinking sort of King County as inclusive of the Sound City interests, as opposed to a separate, A separate group.

One could think of the Sound City representation as a separate group as it relates to this proportionality that we're talking about, but given that they don't have any skin in the game right now, I'm kind of just thinking of the proportionality between Seattle and King County, if that makes sense.

I would respectfully tell you that if Sound Cities is not part of this governing board...

Oh, no, this isn't...

The intent is not to not have them on the governing board.

But, I mean, you raise a good point.

All right.

That is not the intent, but you raise a good point, so I'm going to continue.

Madam Chair, if I may.

In terms of the ability to implement such a provision, so certainly representatives coming from the Sound Cities Association would still be from the Sound Cities Association, which are not putting any funds in.

The only avenue by which you could really affect that intent would be with the King County Council members, but because of the language that was added this morning, saying one must represent a district that at least in part covers Seattle, but parallel language was also added saying that the other King County Council member must be from outside of Seattle.

So it's difficult to see where leeway would be to change who gets appointed for that reflection.

Right, right.

That makes a lot of good sense.

All right, please continue.

The screen's going to lock up on me, but I believe all of you have this in hard copy as well, is that correct?

Yes.

Okay, great.

So moving to the rules of the Governing Committee, there were a variety of changes that were discussed both in your memo, and these were not largely affected this morning.

The Governing Committee would be able to approve and amend major plans.

This was a change from the initial transmission, which would just have provided the Governing Committee the ability to do an up or down vote.

There was a lot of discussion about the threshold by which a change should be possible.

And I'll go into that more when I get into some issue identification here.

But that was a proposal that was put forward by Council President Harrell and Council Member Juarez this morning.

It was not accepted.

It failed on a four to eight vote.

In addition to being able to amend major plans and the budgets, also having authority to remove the chief executive officer, again, with the same threshold.

In this case, the current language requires a vote of nine members of the governing committee.

That does not change based on the quorum or anything like that.

It is nine at least must vote to remove the CEO.

And tell me, I know there's been lots of different amendments on this, but currently I'm concerned about quorum and two-thirds and super majorities and all of that, and it strikes me that for the sake of consistency and clarity, if nine people had to vote for either a change, a change in CEO, an amendment, that it would make it a much clearer requirement.

Because what we're trying to do is to get the implementing committee, the board there, to provide their input, their expertise for them to be providing to the governing board their best recommendations.

And frankly, the governing board, as I understand it, is only going to be meeting quarterly.

And the hope is, is that, and the big change, the thing that is making this different is that we're having an implementing board with the experience that we want to tell us across the county how things are going to be made better.

And we don't, frankly, want to make it easy on the governing board to muck with those recommendations.

So, can you tell me where we are now from after RPC recommendations and all the back and forth?

Yes.

So after, if I could also not only clarify where we're at now, but step back a little bit, I want to point out that the change that you just discussed where an absolute number of people on the governing board, regardless of quorums or proportions, being set at a certain number was actually the proposal that was agreed upon just before Thanksgiving, mere hours before that.

The changes that occurred, I've determined it as on December 2nd, changed that.

The change that was made and is what is carried forward to what was passed by the RPC this morning is that quorum is nine out of the 12 potential members.

and that for an action to either amend a major plan or amend the budget, you have to have a two-thirds majority.

That could be a range then.

If you have all 12 members are in attendance at that particular meeting, you would require eight individual votes.

If it was only nine people in attendance at that meeting, then you could have a plan amended with only six votes.

So I think that's a problem to have just eight or to have six votes out of 12 being able to show up.

And this is I know how difficult and how stretched thin elected officials are.

I don't want to make it easy.

And if if somebody is going to commit to being on the board and the requirement or the request is that they be there four times a year.

I really want them to be there.

And to have major actions taken potentially by just six people, that really undoes the work that we've been trying to do and to bring forward, once again, is to have the recommendations of the implementation committee board, something that we live with, unless there is a major reason not to.

And I don't want to make it easy that six people could make that change.

I would agree with that.

I think that the distinction between how many votes you, so the way that I've seen it and that I've described it is that we're basically creating two different standards within this agreement in terms of voting.

requirements.

So in order to fire or hire the chief executive officer, it's the highest standard, being nine out of 12 governing committee members need to signal support for the chief executive officer or to fire them.

But decisions that are related to the budget, amendments to the budget, or Or what?

Or removing the CEO?

No, no, no.

It's the confirming the implementation plan, the five-year plan, or amending budgetary decisions recommended by the implementation board.

Those decisions are actually subject to a lower standard in the sense that it only requires a majority of those people who actually bothered to show up for the meeting to take those affirmative actions as it relates to recommendations coming from the implementation board.

So I am not seeing a rational basis by which to subject a firing hiring decision of a CEO to a higher requirement and stricter scrutiny but not have that same level of strict scrutiny applying to really significant decisions around policy choices for our five-year plan and strategy on how to address the substantive issues of people experiencing homelessness and the associated financing decisions.

It makes almost no sense to me to create two different standards of voting for those, and if anything, it should be in the reverse of what is currently before us that came out of the RPC this morning.

significant concerns around what I what I see is those double standards and double standards in a way that really sort of slices against what I think the ultimate purpose and intent should be here which is to hold ourselves to a higher stricter standard around some of these critically important decisions.

Jeff, I know we talked about the potential of bringing forward an amendment that would just make this streamlined and in accordance with what Councilmember Gonzalez is recommending, and to say on any of these major votes, and I'm going to say nine members, would have to be in agreement to make a change, either for the CEO, for the budget, or for a change in the plan.

So, is that something that we could bring forward and discuss?

Yes, I've put it on screen.

I've already, this has already been prepared anticipating that you would be asking for that, Madam Chair.

This, what you see on screen, the green changes, sorry that that's very difficult to read up on the overhead, would effectuate what you and Council Member Gonzalez have spoken to.

It would return to that night before Thanksgiving proposal where the governing committee can give an up or down vote with a simple majority.

to do any, that's an up or down vote of a major policy or plan that the implementing board has provided them, or also a budget proposal that has been provided to them.

They can also confirm the executive officer, which again would have been recommended by the implementing board, with just a simple majority vote.

However, and we'll see if I can scroll down here.

As you can see further down, this would return to, the language is hard to read and track changes here, but the effect of it is to say that amending any goal, policy, or plan, amending the annual budget, or removing the chief executive officer would all require an absolute vote of nine members or more.

So there's no questions of quorum and what proportion of quorum it is, nine members or more must agree to make either those changes or to remove the CEO.

And if they didn't like the budget, it's an up or down vote, and that's just a majority vote.

They can't be getting into the intricacies and making amendments unless they have nine votes, affirmative votes from the governing board.

I would support this, and I hope that we can have an amendment coming forward in the next day or so that we could share with our King County Council colleagues and members of the suburban cities to see if we can bring this back again next week to them.

Okay.

Great.

Thank you.

Okay.

I'm not seeing further comments on that, so do you want to go to the next?

What is wrong with your screen, by the way?

It keeps fuzzing out.

I thought it was my glasses.

Yeah, I'm experiencing the same issue.

So we'll keep moving along.

Those were generally the changes, the primary and most significant changes to the roles of the governing committee.

Next, let's turn to the implementing board, implementation board.

Apologies.

As you can see on, well you can't see on screen now.

Initially there would have been a total of 11 members and what was passed, what was agreed to even prior to this morning was to add two additional members to that that would be appointed by the Sound Cities Association.

And also a broader change from what was transmitted back in September to what would have been considered even as late as just before Thanksgiving.

would be that the governing board would confirm all of these individuals, regardless of if it was the Seattle City Council or the King County Council or the mayor or the county exec or SCA, whoever put that forward, that individual would be confirmed by the governing committee.

This morning, one of the, again, the, I'm sorry, what you see on your paper has something highlighted that should not have been highlighted.

It says that one of, am I on the wrong page?

Sorry, just a moment.

There's an error in this column and on this row.

There's not a restriction about where the King County Council appointees to the implementing board should come from.

In the rush to get this prepared in the last hour, just a mistake was made.

So there would be two people appointed by the executive, two by the King County Council, two by the mayor, two by the city council, two by Sound Cities, and three people by the advisory committee for the people with lived experience.

Again, going back to the change that was adopted this morning related to ensuring that the makeup of this board is representative of the racial and ethnic makeup of the county, that is noted further down as a highlight.

We've already gone into that a little bit.

That was the primary change added this morning.

Were there questions on that?

Yes.

So I know we've gone around on this question as well.

It's not like we're expecting of these different groups to appoint people in a vacuum.

We are very interested in having people in the implementation board that have the list, that litany that we had talked about of experiences, whether they're you know, providers now, whether they've got lived experience, whether they've come out of a faith-based institution, whatever it might be.

Those are the elements, those are the kinds of experiences that we want to have included in the members of the implementation board.

So, something that I have been a little bit leery of is how do we make sure that we are coordinating this well enough And I've been assured it can be done, and I know Council Member O'Brien spoke to this, that when we are adopting board members, that people come together and they identify who has these experiences, and they believe that we'll be able to accomplish that.

But how do we assure that to people who may be sitting back and watching this sausage being made, to be able to say, yes, we're getting the very best people of these 13 members of the implementation board that cover the gamut of experiences and abilities that we're looking for?

That's actually, to your point, the third highlighted sentence in this box.

This morning at RPC, what was envisioned is they added a requirement that there would be a nominating committee that would consider the many different types of requirements, the needed representation, the needed skills and expertise, making sure that overall that this has the racial and ethnic composition that would be expected.

All of those considerations would be taken by a nominating committee.

that would guide where the various party, whoever is actually making the appointment, who they would put forward as an appointment.

Good.

That nominating committee helps a lot, because up until then, we were just sort of saying, okay, well, one person from each group will come together and talk about this, but we need to have a very dedicated board helping us to select that, so the nominating committee makes sense.

Yeah, the prior language was clear that collaboration and coordination was anticipated, but this formalizes the need to have a nominating committee.

Go ahead.

Who is the nominating committee?

That was not outlined specifically, though there are some broad guidelines.

There wasn't individuals identified, like in certain parties or anything like that.

Because it's the nominating committee for the implementation board, right?

Correct.

So who's the nominee?

It's going to be the members of the King County Council, the city council, the mayor's office, the county council.

Those are all the appointing entities for the implementation board.

So it's the governing committee?

That would be the nominating committee for...

The governing committee would be the nominating committee for the implementation board with the exception of those individuals who represent lived experience.

Or designees, right?

It could be.

I think it's fair to say it could be.

It does not say that it would have to be those governing board members who are part of that nominating committee, but it could be.

The exact language council member is representatives of the appointing entities.

So since you have the county executive, the mayor, both councils, SCA, and people with lived experience, it would not necessarily be those people who are participating in the governing committee, but at least someone representing each of those entities.

Okay.

So is that it?

That's the extent of the details that was included by the RPC this morning?

Yes.

Okay, so who's going to fill the details?

That is not articulated in the ILA.

Okay.

And we don't have an indication of who is going to own this body of work?

When we've had, as we've had earlier conversations before a nominating committee was formalized, but as the concept was being discussed, this was an area where being vague in the ILA was discussed in order to allow, for example, this city council to have its own internal process, whatever was deemed by this council to be appropriate for identifying those representatives.

Okay, I'm at a little bit of a loss in understanding or comprehending how this nominating committee is coming together, when it's going to come together, and how it's going to do the work necessary to effectively identify the individuals who will be nominated to be on the implementation board.

So I think that we need to put a little bit more thought into some of those details.

and at a minimum create expectations from our end about what that process is gonna look like.

We can also try to get some more details from the sponsor of this amendment.

Again, this was one of those late breaking items that showed up this morning.

Who was the sponsor of that one?

Council Member Stokes, but I'm not familiar with where.

As it is, written now, it seems to suggest that we're giving, if we're creating a nominating committee that includes folks from the other jurisdictions, we're giving them say over who our council decides that we want to put forward.

Whereas normally, our decisions around who gets to be on the regional committees that need city council representation is a decision that our council makes internally as opposed to externally with other representation from other bodies.

So if I can dive in on one thing, or Tess, did you want?

I just wanted to maybe provide a little bit more context.

Please, go ahead.

But Council Member Bagshaw, you can do this just as well, because I think you heard the same concerns in the conversations.

So when we were talking among King County Council Members, Council Member Bagshaw, the Exec's Office, the Mayor's Office, specifically about this issue of appointment, the same level of sort of questions about the practicality of it came up.

The original language that I think may still be in here but was talked about was essentially a guarantee or a commitment that all parties would collaborate.

This was an attempt, I believe, to put a little bit more teeth into that, and I think the reason behind this is because the kinds of experience and the sorts of representation that are expected to exist on the implementation board are vast.

And they wanted, collectively, I suppose we all wanted to make sure that it wasn't just one or two members, that one of those seats didn't get nominated by three or four different individuals, but that, in fact, there was an acknowledgement a grid, if you will, of everything that needs to be all the different characteristics that need to be met and that collectively folks were working together.

And I agree with Jeff's representation that part of the reason that it is remaining vague about how the nominating committee gets put together is because that was left to the discretion of each of the council bodies and each of the jurisdictions.

The mayor's office made clear that we thought it was important to have the councils engaged, councils as a whole, as a body engaged in this piece of the work in whatever manner the council chose to, specifically because that is such a critical piece of the work that's happening.

So I just want to make sure I understand.

what the amendment was versus what the, at least the draft of the ILA contains.

So the amendment doesn't necessarily change the appointing authorities.

It simply says that the appointing authorities have to coordinate and confer with each other.

But they have to do that via a nominating committee.

Is that, am I, that's what it literally says, that you have, that the nominating committee is designed to.

apparently organize a meeting between the appointing authorities so that they can coordinate and confer on appointments to the implementation board.

Correct, and that the appointing entities shall convene a nominating committee to coordinate and confer.

So that is, it is placing a structure around that convening and conferring concept.

It was convening and conferring that was essentially the original language, and the nominating committee is the body, if you will, that would come together.

And I completely agree that at the end of the day, it could be simply the two members from council, each of the councils that are already on the governing committee, or the councils could make a decision that they would like to expand the participation in this process and appoint two other council members to this nominating committee.

It will truly be up to each council to determine who will go on to that nominating committee.

And Council Member, I made an error earlier.

I read that representatives of the appointing entities, that was actually part of the struck language.

The inserted language is the appointing entities described in section 2C-I through 2C-V, or five, of this article eight shall convene a nominating committee to coordinate and confer on appointments of implementation board members in order to ensure that each skill and expertise specified, and it goes on, is fully represented and seated on the implementation board.

So it does not define it that it needs to be a representative of each.

It says that each of these four entities, five entities, will somehow convene.

And I know that, and I appreciate what you were just saying, Tess.

A number of folks who are either having lived experience or are providers themselves had said they were worried about how do we get 13 members that actually have these experience and the expertise that we were interested in.

And they were afraid that, you know, we would go two people here and two people here and two people, and we wouldn't to cover the gamut of experience and expertise that we were looking for.

And so having a nominating committee doesn't strike me as doing anything other than help us coordinate it.

But I want to make sure that our council is not restricted, that our council could nominate 25 people to be considered as long as ultimately we get that group of people that have the expertise we're looking for.

Okay.

So just to be clear, this nominating committee, which I'm now going to affectionately refer to as a meeting about the meeting committee, they don't all, the requirements of this nominating committee are satisfied by the simple act of coming together and court conferring, but the nominating committee doesn't have any voting power or authority to veto the appointing authorities nomination.

Correct.

The appointments themselves still come from to from this council to from the mayor and so forth.

Okay.

I want to make sure I'm not remiss in mentioning that on the implementing board, and this was identified previously as a concern in your memo, that having people had been previously expressed, people that are familiar with youth homelessness in particular and also connections to the child welfare system were both added as skills and expertise and connections that should be expected of this implementing board.

That was actually something not done this morning, but something done in the course of creating this draft.

If I may, next let's move to the, the next issue of sub-regional planning.

This is a major addition that was added from what was transmitted by the Mayor and Executive in September to what is now in the current draft, where the statement that sub-regional planning needed to occur took place, and also that as of this morning, a change that was made is that the resulting sub-regional plans will actually form the basis of the five-year plan for the Regional Homelessness Authority itself.

That was a change that was made this morning.

Chair Baxter?

Yes, please.

I'm sorry.

Before we get too much into this stuff outside of the structure of the two bodies, I want to just go back to, I don't want it to be lost, the fact that the thing that we were calling a governing body before is now an implementing body.

And the thing that was a steering committee is now a governing committee.

And so, I feel concerned that we have flipped the script for what it is, you know, much like I was saying earlier about my concern that one of my goals for this regional entity was to come together with our partners throughout the region who all recognize that homelessness is a regional problem to look at once we have a body, a decision-making body in place that we could talk about a funding approach and funding revenue, identifying new funding revenue that doesn't exist.

putting that objective aside right now and foreclosing some of the opportunities.

Similarly, one of the early objectives that I've heard countless times over the last 20 years now from like back when we had the CEH, the Committee to End Homelessness, and when we had All Home, the frustration that I've always heard from those bodies is that We have electeds who are in the decision-making roles, in the governing roles, when what we really need is we need subject matter experts making the decisions.

And the central staff memo states that there's some concern that giving abilities to the governing committee undermines the role of the implementing board.

as the primary governing body of the RHA and does not achieve transformative change of the current system.

I don't want to sit here and create another community and homelessness or another all home.

I want us to be moving towards transformative change.

And for folks who have been doing this work for decades, they're sitting back and they're looking at us.

We're just moving the deck chairs.

And as Councilmember Gonzales said earlier, we're acting like this is going to make the difference.

You know, and I really believed over the last, you know, six months that we've been talking about this that we were going to be making a difference because we were going to do something radical, something that allows the people who have deep expertise in this area to be making the decisions for how we're going to be spending our resources.

So we're foreclosing opportunities around funding and we're not changing our decision-making structure and that really concerns me.

I appreciate the amendments that were put forward.

I think it helps maybe strike a little bit different of a balance than what has been coming to us from RPC most recently, but the bottom line is we have the electeds occupying the governing board and I think ultimately that is still going to be a problem.

You want to take this one on?

Before we move on, I guess I would like to ask the question.

The amendments that we just went over, do you feel that those amendments, when we're changing what it takes to make decisions, for the governing board to make decisions.

Does that in another way empower what is now the implementing board in a way that is more transformative?

The intention, you're referring to the thresholds to pass?

The intention behind those amendments is to achieve that, to restore some of the authority that was given to the implementing board and what was initially transmitted and have it returned there from what is the current draft passed by the Regional Policy Committee.

Thank you.

I just want to say that I agree with the observations being made by Councilmember Herbold in this context, and I always appreciate the independent analysis of our council central staff.

I think you all do an amazing job to identify and really sort of zero in on what the exact policy issue and concern might be without necessarily suggesting to us what the solution should be, but I do appreciate your willingness to flag and highlight issues that might deviate from the original stated purpose of an overarching effort.

And so I certainly appreciate the opportunity to review your memo and to really sort of hone in on that piece of it that really does talk about how the scales have been tipped quite a bit through this new structure that we're discussing today in terms of the role of the governing committee, which is made up largely of elected officials and the implementation board, which is intended to be that subject matter expert forum.

So, and I'm not hearing a rational policy reason why that scale was tipped.

What I am hearing is a lot of political reasons as to why that scale was tipped back in favor of elected officials and away from subject matter experts.

And I think that that's an unfortunate situation that we find ourselves in, but it is the reality of where we're at.

And so I think we as a Seattle City Council, have an obligation and a duty not to just rubber stamp what is coming out of the Regional Policy Committee, but to be as transparent and as honest as possible in acknowledging that the reality here is that we are potentially about to take action on implementing an all home version 2.0 that doesn't have the ability to address the revenue issues associated with the scale of the need here, that still retains significant power amongst the elected officials.

and that has some representation from people who are familiar with a little bit of experience of homelessness, but that voice is certainly in the small minority in terms of representation on the governing committee.

So I just don't want us to fool ourselves into thinking that we're doing something transformative when it appears that we're just taking one little teeny tiny step towards trying to do it a little different.

Thank you for clarifying, especially the question at hand as well.

I think it would be beyond my role on central staff to opine on whether or not the change is transformative enough or those matters.

To the particular question, though, on what were the policy reasons that led to this outcome, it was a focus on feeling that elected officials are that individuals throughout the county can hold an elected official accountable with votes.

And that's totally isolating those out too far removed the board and made it difficult for an average person or the general populace in King County to have a way of forcing a change if that was the desire.

Yeah.

And I'll just remind folks that election cycles are only about every four years.

So.

I'm not persuaded by this argument of electoral accountability.

Certainly electoral accountability exists, but I don't think it occurs every month or after every opportunity that you've made a decision that the electorate might disagree with.

So I think, again, to me that smacks a little bit more of a political motivation as opposed to a true policy rationale for why we are focusing on a model that will further centralize power amongst elected officials as opposed to subject matter experts.

So I would like to acknowledge everything that you said, and I agree that it was more of a political issue, but there was tremendous conversation among those who were involved to say they felt that they were the ones that needed to be held accountable on how this was working.

So if you can give people good intentions, and I believe that, my objective is that with the governing board, that if they only meet quarterly, they are really having to listen to the implementation board and to the CEO.

They need to hear from them.

And it's not like the governing board is going to be rubber stamping, but it's the implementation board with the experiences that we're hoping to have that will actually do the work.

And I know that our conversations we've had with our human resources department, with King County, they're the real experts.

And then as we're reaching out into the community to bring their voices in, that that implementation board is the one that is going to provide the advice based upon this regional action plan.

And we've seen drafts of the regional action plan over the course of the last number of months.

Whether I would say that it's transformational, I can't go that far.

But it does move us in directions that are much further than we've been able to go in the past.

I will have to say at the end of this day, I think it's a journey worth taking, it's an effort worth making, and I'm very respectful of all the work that's gone in, and particularly with the three of you at the table helping us draft this.

I'll move forward then if that sounds appropriate.

Next would be a discussion of the chief executive officer.

And the transmitted draft from the mayor and the executive would have had an executive officer, the title's been changed to chief executive officer.

that would have been appointed or could have been removed by the governing board, which we now call the implementing board.

So there's easily, there could be confusion because of titles there.

So I want to be clear that the board of experts is who previously would have hired and fired the CEO.

Under the proposal that was passed by the RPC this morning, there were not changes made.

However, the CEO would be jointly recruited by both boards.

and would be recommended by the Board of Experts, the Implementation Board, for confirmation by the Governing Committee.

So that is a change in rules that goes to the issues that were just discussed by multiple council members about a change in authority from one board to another.

And then the implementation board is also required to conduct regular evaluations of the CEO as an ongoing matter.

That is not something that's given to the governing board.

Again, there were no changes made here this morning.

And then the last four items on our chart, I think I can go I believe that we've generally already covered, we've already discussed that taxing authority is explicitly prohibited.

A request was made for a performance audit every six years of requirement, I should say.

There were changes to increase the linkage with behavioral health and criminal justice systems to make sure that this authority would be working in tandem with those.

And then I want to note that in the Office of the Ombuds, which was originally created, that was something that does not currently exist.

It was a new office that would be established to make sure that complaints of individuals that are utilizing our systems and concerns that are generally arising would have an avenue to be heard.

Under the iteration that was passed this morning, the Office of the Ombud would provide reports to the Implementing Board.

I believe twice per year on the nature of those concerns that had been expressed.

If there are no further questions about what was actually, actually, if I could, just in summary, it would have been easy to have lost.

There were six things passed this morning, beyond what you have probably heard multiple times before.

First, the governing committee and the implementing board, through an amendment, will reflect the racial and ethnic makeup of the county.

Second, in the area of principles, shall strive was removed, and it will be shall meet certain principles.

That's in Article 4. The third would add the geographic requirements for who the King County Council members can be.

One has to be partly representing Seattle.

The other must be outside of it.

Fourth, the implementing board, they identified Oh, so the fourth is that the implementing board members would come from a nominating committee.

The fifth prescribes that the sub-regional plans will be the basis for the full plan for the Regional Homeless Authority.

And then sixth, and this actually I did not go into, it's rather minor, requiring that reports that are presented be in writing, that they were written was an earlier detail that was then added back in this morning.

And then there was a seventh amendment that, as I said, was discussed extensively, we've already gone into it, about the proportion of votes needed for actions like amending the budgets.

You know, one thing that you just mentioned that maybe we glossed over it, but I think it's important to raise again, and that's the question about whether it forms the basis of or that it was integral to.

And I think that was language that we had initially said that the subregional groups would provide information and that it would be integral as we're making our decisions, but not just forms the basis of.

So, can we go back to that and just talk a little bit about what the implication will be?

Yeah, I think that there's the changes related also to the principles, I think, comes into play here, where the principles do require the authority to look at data-driven, the data of the entity and their services.

But there is not requirements on what those subregional plans must stay, other than that they must, that the, Parts of King County that would be represented by those plans have the say on who is going to write those plans and would have say over what those plans entail.

And previously, there was language that would require the overall five-year implementation plan.

to align with the Regional Action Plan that has been discussed at this committee previously.

The Regional Action Plan will go into things like evidence-based practices, broadly recognized best practices, potentially will include performance metrics towards achieving goals and how that could be done.

That language was removed.

My understanding is that there were two reasons for that.

First, because we will not have the regional action plan until February, and this would be passed prior to that, presumably.

And then, second, that the lack of knowing exactly what was in there, but a desire to allow the regions to have autonomy over what would go into these plans.

And that actually, because I was about to switch into issue identification, that is one area that was identified previously as a concern, and even more so by central staff and based largely on comments and conversations we've had with council members, that there are not prescriptions that those plans should still align to a broader vision.

and going back to, I'll quote the NIS report that instigated a lot of the work this year, that we should be achieving a uniform and defragmented approach towards our homeless services, and concerns that that may not be achieved in that case if we don't have some guidelines within which these plans should fall.

Thank you for going back to that.

So, you want to dive into issue identification?

If that's okay, I want to make sure there's no further clarifications either from this morning or other pieces.

Thank you.

I had a question about the, it seems, I want to commend Council President Harrell and Council Member Juarez for going to bat for us at the meeting this morning, and I think the mayor's office was helpful too, as I understand it, and it was really important to me with the evidence-based strategies that those be a part of the plan, and that could be potentially transformational if those are adhered to.

And I just want to understand the difference between how it would be impacting the WRAP versus the fact that they did remove the STRIVE II language, the weakening language, they got rid of it for those guiding principles in Article IV, Section 3. They removed all those STRIVE IIs, which talk about evidence-based practices, accountability, data-driven decisions.

So it seems like that's good news that they did remove those strive twos and those guiding principles are sort of overarching umbrella as to how this is supposed to work regionally.

Yes, Council Member, you are correct.

And I do believe that it's gone.

The language currently does move closer towards requiring data-driven practices.

And I apologize, certainly since we met briefly, I've had a little bit more opportunity to delve into the specific language.

So first, Article 4, where these principles are stated, Section 3, subparagraph, it's Roman numeral 5, is where these are discussed in particular.

And there are not, there is, although data-driven decisions and the need to analyze data is called out, That same section also calls on data to tailor approaches to specific communities.

And there's not a mention of either evidence-based practices or broad best practices in that language as it currently stands.

So that's where some of that, I didn't have that information fully available when we spoke previously.

And then also as we look at the sub-regional plans, now they should be informing the broader plan, but these principles that are outlined here are supposed to be focused on the authority writ large, but do not explicitly get applied to the sub-regional plans.

I don't see language where that's occurring.

Thank you.

So at best you could have a situation where you have conflict, where a sub-regional plan might get developed that actually doesn't comport with those principles.

And so how that might be handled by the authorities, especially when this language says that those sub-regional plans shall be the basis for subsequent five-year plans, that could be problematic.

I just want to add on to that, and we've got head nods up here.

One of the things that NIH mentioned early on in there, at least some of the early documents that we received, was the need to have a real unified theory of change.

And that unified mean not just the city of Seattle and not just King County government, but to have our sound cities also agreeing with this approach.

So what do you think at this point?

What can we do to bring them in and have them be part of these decisions, because what would be terrible is that if each of the cities decided, or within the group of the sub-regional work, that they want to do something completely different than the theory that we've been working on, and particularly with the regional action plan, which we know is supposed to be the transformational change.

A variety of avenues would be available to council members to make a change.

I think the area that most directly that would affect these is in Article 8. Do you have the application?

Article 8, Section 2, subparagraph, or Subsection I, Paragraph 9. I'm getting my sections and paragraphs confused here.

That is where sub-regional planning is described in most detail and where previously there was language requiring alignment with the regional action plan that's now been changed to may, so permissive, be informed by the regional action plan.

Early iterations might have used may, or sorry, might have used informed but did not use may.

It said shall be informed.

So there's a variety of permutations.

Right, and I know the sound cities were concerned about, and I would have been too, having to sign your name on a line for a report that you hadn't seen yet.

So we were obviously giving them summaries and what we believed were the directions we were going, but they said, you know, we're not going to say shall until we see it.

I think we're trying to balance some of this so that everybody has an opportunity to come forward, but I am really concerned about that underlying uniform, unifying theory of change that we've all been talking about to make sure that we're moving forward in a different direction.

So, I don't know that there's a real question in there.

I'm just stating that I'm hopeful we can get there.

I'm not sure we are there at this point.

I just want to be clear that there's only two authorities who are assigning the ILA, right?

So it's the King County Executive and the Mayor?

Correct.

It does not require a signature by anybody representing the Sound Cities Associations?

Correct.

Okay, so if we leave the language the way it is, which is permissive, you know, if you want to, you can, but you don't have to,

if you feel like it.

If you feel like it.

I guess what I'm getting at is, is the impact to sound cities that they don't get access to funding or do they still Are they still in the running for receiving funding from the regional governance authority if they choose to deviate from the guiding principles and from the five-year plan?

That's a good question customer the the language so you're correct in noting that sound cities are not not signing it and therefore if a municipality has its own funding that it is spending on some kind of an intervention that would not be affected here if that if if that municipality wanted to become a subscribing agency to the regional authority, they would be expected to align with the broader principles and goals of the Regional Homelessness Authority and its five-year plan.

And given the changes of this morning, that five-year plan will be developed by taking, let's assume that this would happen.

I don't know that there is a desire to have every region making its own sub-area plan, but if there was a southern county, eastern county, northern county, and Seattle sub-regional plans, one for each, aggregated up that may not have the same, that may not be advocating for the same type of approaches to individuals that are homeless, you could, So you could have a situation where someone from that municipality or sorry not someone this and this municipality could be joining the Becoming a subscribing agency to this regional homeless authority and the services that they provide Would not necessarily be required to do something like a housing first approach if the sub-regional plan For their area did not call for a housing first approach Right and and I and I understand

the need to make sure that localities are able to craft solutions that are specifically responsive to their needs, right?

I don't wanna foreclose the opportunity for that level of independence in terms of evaluating what might be best suited for the population in their community experiencing homelessness.

What I get concerned about is when those tools or strategies that are being utilized are not evidence-based or even promising practices, but instead are punitive or programs and strategies that we know don't work, haven't worked, will never work, like jail, for example.

And so I just want to get an understanding of how that plays out in this conversation of the sub-regional plan, right?

So if you're a subscribing agency and you've submitted your sub-regional plan and you're proposing you know, to do your primary strategy for addressing these issues is like high barrier, 100% sober for two weeks before you can get into a shelter programming, and that's the only thing you wanna fund, can you still qualify for funding from the regional governing authority?

If your sub-regional plan allowed for that, and that's what you're doing, then yes.

especially if that has to be incorporated into a subsequent five-year plan, which is really of the authority, which is really the concern, I think, and that's the language that was added today that says that those sub-regional plans will form the basis for subsequent five-year plans.

So that sub-regional plan, that oil and gas for high barrier, could become the basis, could have to be wrapped into a subsequent five-year plan for the authority.

And so the language we had originally, or at least at the day before Thanksgiving plan, had that it was going to be integral, but not based upon.

And that struck me as being more permissive, giving more opportunity for the data-driven results that you're talking about, that we have to We have to be looking forward and not just using the punitive tools because those might be expedient.

And expedient for one small or one locale isn't going to help us regionally.

And so I hope that we can either come back to the integral language or be thinking more in terms of using our regional action plan to build the five-year plan upon which we are all uniting around to see us moving forward.

And that big transformative moves are going to be based upon this regional action plan because that is based on national best practices.

Is there any language in this proposal that would require that the sub-regional plans And we actually require that the subregional plans, including our own, subjecting us to this standard as well, have to be based on national best practices or promising practices in this space?

No, there's not.

The language is focused on data-driven decision making, but does not refer to any of those specific terms you used.

Well, tell me what you mean by that.

It says they'll use quantitative and qualitative data to make decisions, but it does not call evidence-based practices or broadly recognized best practices out as the guiding principles for this authority.

And what if we wanted to add that language?

I don't remember how we ended up, and I'm sure we've had many conversations about this.

Tess, maybe you remember on some of our conversations.

But if we were to use language like that, that we want to see it based upon best practices and not just the data-driven results.

Can I, I'm sorry, sorry.

In response to that question, Council Member Bagshaw, one of the options I think that we have is to take a look at the guiding principles, which again have been, have reverted to shall language from strive for language.

and think about language that might talk about regional plans aligning with those guiding principles.

Because they address, in fact, all of the best practices, evidence-based, data-driven that the council is talking about right now.

Good.

Thank you.

Councilmember Herbold.

Yeah, I just want to sort of lift the veil here for anybody who might be watching from home and wondering why we're so worried about these words.

You know, we in Seattle, we guide our funding decisions.

according to a housing first model, which means that we understand that in order to address people's underlying issues that might have led them to homelessness, that they need a roof over their heads first.

So that means not requiring sobriety in order to provide housing.

And I'm really concerned that this language being stripped out by our partners is basically them saying, no, we want to have rules of our housing that restrict people from coming inside, that create barriers from people coming inside and ending their homelessness and addressing their underlying issues.

So I just, I think it's, troubling that this seems to be the step that we're starting out on.

And I hope I'm wrong in this.

I hope that there is a broad recognition throughout, not just that this is a regional issue and that we need regional resources to address it and we need transformative structures, but also in order to bring inside people who have drug addiction issues, substance abuse disorder, and mental illnesses, we have to provide housing first and remove the barriers to housing.

And that's, those, when we talk about evidence-based models, those are the models that we're talking about.

We're not just using lingo up here.

Yeah.

And just to sort of draw that out, you know, sort of, I think when we connect it to what we are trying to create here, which is a regional governance authority that is pooling its financial resources together.

The policy question for me then becomes is, should municipalities who want to primarily or solely focus on non-evidence-based strategies to address homelessness be able to qualify to receive money from these pooled resources?

And the answer for me is no, they should not.

If they want to fund those punitive programs, then they need to utilize their own resources to do that.

But the limited dollars that we are pulling together to address the regional realities of homelessness should remain squarely focused on performance outcomes and should be, I believe, utilized to support evidence-based strategies that are either national best practices or local best practices or emerging promising practices that have shown to be effective in addressing the needs of those who are chronically homeless or, you know, continuing to fall into the cycle of experiencing homelessness.

I think those are very good points.

I can just recognize that of the many conversations that we've had, that there are some jurisdictions who have said to me, we don't want to hitch our wagon to Seattle Star because look at all the problems you have.

I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

You know, this is our region.

are people, and we're going to have to use a different model to change the way and how many people we have outside.

But that said, I would also like to say, well, if one jurisdiction doesn't want to accept the money that's coming from the regional entity, and they want to build something that says, yes, you can come inside, but only if you are sober, and only if you remain sober, or whatever the issues may be.

And they want to use resources other than what we're bringing forward from this regional organization.

You know, I'm like, well, you know, it's your right to do that, and we honor that.

But I would like us to be able to consider how we spend the money.

and do it in a way that's based upon these recommendations we're seeing that'll be coming out of the regional action plan.

So I really like this conversation.

It's very valuable just to clarify where we are and then also to acknowledge that people are going to differ, but maybe they don't, they're not gonna be recipients of the limited pool of funds that we have annually.

And we can work on some language for you to respond to some of these concerns because there is some language that exists in the ILA.

I think that is a bit troubling, given your interest and concerns.

Good.

I would certainly be interested in seeing that language.

Thank you, Tracy.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you, all three of you, for engaging in this.

I think it's really important.

Council Member Peterson, do you have a point?

I look forward to that language, too.

Tracy Ratzler.

I didn't know if you were holding up your hand.

Sorry.

I didn't mean to call on you.

Very good.

Thank you.

All right.

Please continue.

Some of the other areas that were identified as potential issues for council members we've already actually delved into and likely confirmed that they were issues.

One of them is related to the relative proportion of funding being put into the system by Seattle compared to other municipalities and the representation on the governing committee.

We just talked about sub-regional plans and we've already spoken about how voting on that governing committee would work.

We will continue to highlight that we don't have the Regional Action Plan that was also highlighted previously, that we don't have that at this time.

It's not expected until February.

Two other issues that have come up in various conversations, one reflected on the reporting structure for the Ombud, the Office of the Ombud, reporting primarily to the, the implementation board rather than either both or to the governing committee and where the appropriate reporting avenue or pathway should be.

And then also a separate issue asking about the programs that would be moved to the authority and looking at, since the navigation team would be kept at the city, if moving the staff that are currently directly employed by HSD to the regional authority would enhance the linkages between the navigation team and other outreach providers, or if it is better to retain the current structure.

And so how is that decision going to be made?

I'm sorry, how would the decision be made?

Correct.

I mean, I thought you just raised that as a question.

Yeah, those are other areas that have been identified in conversations with council members, either as something that they had concerns about and wanted to specifically have raised as a question.

I think, for example, with the navigation team that's likely been assuaged at this stage, but I nevertheless was trying to be responsive to all concerns that have been expressed to this point.

All right.

Thank you.

I've got one.

Okay, please.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

It's just an amendment as it relates to the ombud.

The request that I've received is that we should explicitly make clear that the ombud can also get input about the implementation board itself.

and that we would have an expectation that the implementation, I'm sorry, the Office of the Ombud not only present to, reports to the authority, but that they should present to the governing board as well.

That seems like a very reasonable request.

I hope so.

One thing, when you were talking about funding, and I will say that this continues to be a concern of mine, is that initially we tried to bring the bodies together with the least amount of additional expense.

So yes, we know we're going to have a CEO.

And yes, we're going to be investing a lot of money in this, but part of it's money that was going to our human services department or to outside contractors.

In the body of the ILA now, do we measure what the costs are and apply that to the benefit?

How many more people are getting inside?

How many more buildings that we have that are providing services or more case managers?

Is there a way that we can quantify that?

Because I would imagine three years from now that my successors are going to take a look at it and say, yes, it's working, or no, it's not.

And I really would like to make sure it's not just another governing body that ends up not being as effective as we had hoped.

The ILA does now contain language that requires exactly that type of a performance audit that would assess how effective it had been in providing services and its mission overall.

There is not language that requires or necessitates that efficiencies would be achieved.

There is a section that deals with the back office, so to speak, services, your human resources, information technology, things like that.

Those, in creating this separate governmental authority, those services will still be required.

So you will not be eliminating those as a need or gaining dramatic efficiencies by eliminating those.

And so the language in the ILA calls on the authority to, to identify its cheapest approach to achieving those, whether that's doing it itself or contracting either through the city or the county.

It's not clear at this time.

I don't think we've had the legal analysis to know what exactly is available at this stage.

That'd be an area that we can continue to look into, but that was not possible in a couple hours.

Really?

I'm so surprised at you.

And then I also would note that there are new functions being taken on by this authority.

For example, the Office of the Ombud that was just discussed, and also sub-regional planning.

So there are new activities that have associated administrative costs that will go with them.

So while there could be efficiencies achieved in some locations, it is likely that I should say, it is unlikely there would be dramatic cost savings by merging these entities because you are doing new things and also still have some of those underlying administrative burdens.

Correct.

And I think what people are looking for is to keep those in control.

Frankly, we have a new Office of the Ombud that's just getting going.

She's doing a great job.

fairly new, and I believe King County has done something similar, and I don't think they call it the ombud, but it's something comparable.

Do we need a third one of those, or can we use one or the other?

It's a question that I hope that, as we're getting going, that we can take a look at that.

So I'm not making any pronouncement here.

I'm just asking questions.

There is further language to go into even more detail, not only about the, you know, the HR, the IT.

There is, that includes language saying that for the Office of Ombud Functions, that that could be contracted out, not just done internally, if it was found that it was suitable to utilize either the city or county.

Right.

Good.

I remember that we had discussed that.

I'm just glad it's still there.

Thank you.

Other questions down there?

Okay.

Thank you.

Let's keep going.

Actually, that concludes.

I know it's like two hours in, so.

So any further questions down here?

So Council Member Gonzalez would like to spend another half an hour asking questions.

But with that, anything else, Tess, you've been remarkably quiet.

That's because Jeff has done such a superb job walking through everything that's happened over the past week or so and today.

No, I don't have anything else to offer.

I know that, Emily, you have been extremely helpful stepping in on this for our office.

I want to say thank you.

She's been on many of the phone calls, many of the meetings, taking great notes and helping me just get reorganized.

Okay, well, any other questions?

Any other comments up here?

So, can we talk about timeline, please?

So it was the proposal must, of course, match what is ultimately approved by the city council here and the county council.

This morning, as I mentioned, the Regional Policy Committee of the King County Council approved a current draft that does not have many of the amendments that were discussed here or possibly other issues that have been identified.

In order for the King County Council to pass something, a final product that matches an amended version, it will need to go back to the Regional Policy Committee at the county.

There is a meeting scheduled for that committee on this coming December 11th, which is a Wednesday.

So there is also a King County Council meeting on Wednesday, December 11th, though it is earlier in the day.

So it would be feasible, though it would require some likely suspension of certain rules, but it is possible for the King County Council to incorporate amendments if this council wanted to communicate some to them by either adopting, by sending the legislation back to the King, the Regional Policy Committee, and then going on recess until the Regional Policy Committee was able to incorporate any of those changes, and then could presumably pass those changes back to the County Council, which the County Council could take action on.

So would that be something that we would have to offer amendments like at this Monday's meeting?

Because we don't have the underlying legislation, but would it be more of a statement of intent that here are directions or amendments that we believe that we would have a majority support for here?

How do you perceive that working?

I think that likely the more clear that if you can actually have the language change, as was done this morning at RPC, that aids everyone in understanding exactly what is accomplished and identifying concerns.

It's not something that has to be done.

This committee and our council do not have to adopt the actual language of those amendments.

As you all know, we frequently collaborate to get amendments and the proper back office work that staff do to make sure that the draft that comes forward is done.

So we could work with you to communicate any changes with the county council and whether or not they prevail is, of course, a different question.

And then presuming that RPC and the King County Council pass something, there are two options.

One, if it is, if they've incorporated all of the concerns that have been expressed here today and that this council ultimately wants to see incorporated, then next week when this committee meets or subsequently on the 16th of December when the full council meets, we can incorporate and pass that interlocal agreement.

Or if the document adopted by the county or the regional policy committee was still found to be lacking, work could continue into next year, in which case it would likely be more back and forth of edits and getting those incorporated and voted on at RPC.

Okay, any questions on that?

Council Member Gonzales, you got a half an hour.

I only marginally followed what Jeff was saying.

Well, we can work with you very expeditiously in the next few days to come up with the amendments that matter most to you, and then we can communicate those to our counterparts at the county, and we also can position you to take action if you so desire next week.

We have an ordinance that's ready to be introduced, as well as could have the draft ILA with amendments ready.

Good.

Well, my last comment is I want to acknowledge Councilmember Jeanne-Cole Wells and Councilmember Dabrowski and all the council, the King County Council staff working with Shannon Braddock and Rachel Smith and in the executive's office, April Putney, tremendous work.

Thank you for all the work you've done and the patience with us.

And to you three, thank you so much, Jeff and Tracy, for all your good work.

And I know it's not been easy.

Really, I'm very respectful.

Tess, thanks so much.

Emily, thank you for organizing things.

Jodi, thanks for being here until 4.06 in the afternoon.

The meeting's adjourned.

you