Seattle City Council Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development & Arts Committee 8/13/19

Greetings and welcome to the August 13th meeting of the Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development, and Arts Committee.

It is 9.30 a.m.

I'm Lisa Herbold.

I'm the chair of the committee and council member representing District 1, West Seattle, and South Park.

On our agenda today, we are going to start with public comment and then we have a briefing item from the Arts Office, the Social Impact of the Arts Study, and also being joined by folks from Arts Fund.

And then we will have discussion of a number of bills, the first being a bill to harmonize Seattle's Just Cause Eviction Ordinance and some of our other tenants' rights laws with recent reforms made in the state legislature, specifically related to eviction reform.

We are likely to vote on that bill today.

Then we're going to get a briefing only on two additional tenants' rights bills, one related specifically to tenant liability for damages in the instance that the damages were created by a person who has engaged in abuse of the tenant.

Finally, the third tenant bill that we're going to be looking at is a bill related specifically to the rights of a primary tenant to have either a roommate or a family member live with them that is not on the lease.

And then finally, we're gonna hear a report from Seattle Public Utilities.

This is an annual report required by prior ordinance.

And this report is on our waste prevention and recycling efforts here in the city of Seattle.

And so with no objections here, I'm going to approve the agenda and we'll move right into public comment.

Six.

Thank you, Noel.

We have six people signed in, and Noel will be keeping time.

You have two minutes, and he'll let you know when you have a minute left, 30 seconds left, and when your time is up.

I'm gonna read both names into the record, and if you could line up at both mics, that would be great.

We're gonna start with Joelle Craft, and Joelle will be followed by Marilyn Yim.

Hi, my name is Joelle Craft, and thank you so much for being here today, and thank you, Lisa, for putting this in.

I'm actually with a protection order right now, a DV protection order that didn't go very well.

And so this kind of thing is very important to have the present from survivors having to be charged for rental damage.

My sheet says I survived, but I still have court to go to, and there's so many other things that this is the second time I've been out of the house.

When DV survivors leave an abusive relationship, finding stable housing is one of the most important things to figure out.

And if I didn't have that, I'd still be there.

the last time phones were thrown at me.

I've never been hit, but that doesn't mean that's not going to happen.

And there was damage in the unit that luckily I didn't have a lease on, but I know so many people that do.

So it's really important that we make sure that it's possible for these survivors to find and keep stable housing.

But if they're in debt to landlords, we know that that's almost not possible.

And further, we shouldn't punish them for the choices of their abuser.

I shouldn't get punished for him choosing to throw a phone at me three times against a wall.

And those holes in the wall should not be my responsibility.

I already have enough on my plate.

This is the second time I've been out of the house, but I could not be here.

It's very important.

We shouldn't punish DV survivors.

They're already being punished enough by their abusers, being punished enough by people wondering why they didn't leave.

I read three books.

in less than a day, and I have ADHD.

I don't read a book in over six months.

And so this is very important, and we really need to pass this legislation today, and I appreciate you putting it out.

Thank you.

Thanks for sharing your story, Joelle.

Marilyn Yim will be followed by Meryl Cousins.

I might need a little bit more time because I'm going to be commenting on two pieces of legislation, but I'm a small mom.

You have two minutes.

Thank you.

I'm a small mom hop landlord.

I'm troubled by the language in Bill 119-606 that extends rights of occupancy to persons not on the lease.

It's too broadly written and it appears to deprive the owner of the right to determine who will occupy and live in their property.

and gives that right to the tenant in violation of State law.

Bill 119.598 proposes to shift the cost of damages onto a landlord.

This is troubling, but even more so when coupled with 119.606 and previous counsel actions that eliminate every chance a landlord has to limit their liability.

So the bill would give, 119-606 gives the tenants the right to move anyone in with them at the start or mid-lease without being added to the lease.

Technically, I couldn't even tell that person that they're trespassing, which I have done for tenants, a tenant in an abusive relationship in the past.

Landlords are also prohibited from checking criminal backgrounds, so we can't check to see if the new boyfriend has a long and violent criminal history, a history of protection orders from women, or is a pimp or a drug dealer even.

So if a tenant moves their new boyfriend in and he causes damage, The bill does not actually connect the damage to the act of domestic violence.

It's very broadly written.

Section 720403H1 allows the tenant to claim an exemption for any damage at all in the unit regardless of whether the damage occurred during an act of domestic violence.

There's also no specific language saying that the domestic violence has to have occurred during occupancy.

It could have been long in the past, but this person caused it.

The draft ordinance doesn't require that there be an arrest or conviction for domestic violence, simply an informal statement.

There is no cost threshold limiting the exemption, and it doesn't allow the deposit to be applied to damage first.

The domestic violence perpetrator doesn't even have to be a tenant, he could just be an unknown guest, and the landlord would have no way of tracking that person down.

So this has the potential to be very costly for landlords.

The council talked last week about creating a $100,000 fund to help RV ranchers avoid accountability for their predatory actions, but this bill doesn't create any kind of funding for the tenant or the landlord to seek reimbursement.

I'm dealing with a $27,000 damage caused by the worst tenant we've ever had.

This ordinance just is a blank check that the landlord has to pay.

Okay, I just want to add one thing.

I have a lot of constructive comments, and I will submit them in writing, but I'd really encourage you to include landlords in the development of legislation that we're stakeholders in.

I pay attention, I have valuable input, and I'm willing to and available to work together on solutions.

35-plus member organizations who provide services to thousands of survivors of domestic and sexual violence in Seattle every year.

I'm here to express our support for Council Bill 119598. relieving a tenant experiencing domestic violence from liability for damages done to the property by her abuser.

The ordinance lays out all the reasons for this legislation.

Domestic violence is a precursor to housing instability for hundreds of survivors and the financial hardships that tenants who are held liable for damages can lead to a cascading chain of events that including eviction, bad credit history, loss of access to Section 8, and other forms of housing assistance, an inability to find other rental housing, and all too often homelessness.

And as the Seattle Women's Commission and Housing Justice Project report that's cited in the legislation finds, women and children of color and especially black tenants are most disproportionately impacted by these impacts.

I've heard countless survivors, stories from advocates about the stories of survivors who experienced this and the domestic, we know that domestic violence is a pattern of coercive control and that abusers can often cause damage to a rental housing property, not as part of an act of assault on that partner, but as a way to economically control them.

And this is all too common when the survivor is trying to leave and protect herself and her children.

So we would actually like to see the law strengthened in a couple of ways.

One is to expand the definition to more closely mirror the language in the state law and includes non-intimate partner and non-household member sexual assault, stalking, and unlawful harassment.

and other, you know, looking at other things, we really want to thank Council Member Herbald for your leadership on this and look forward to working with you and with landlord organizations to address their concerns as we move the legislation forward.

Thanks.

Gina Owens will be followed by Isaac Organista.

Good morning.

My name is Gina Owens and I'm an 18 year member of Washington Ken.

I'm also one of the newest members on the Seattle Renters Commission.

I'm here as an individual today in support of Council Member Herbold's tenant protection legislation and will address the bill that allows tenants to live with a roommate.

The bill is critical towards preventing housing instability and homelessness, especially for young people like my granddaughter.

My oldest granddaughter, who is 20, is currently in college and works part-time.

She could not afford to live by herself, but by living with me, she's able to focus on her studies without the stress of living and finding a housing and paying bills she cannot yet afford.

My help is affording her a smoother transition from childhood to adulthood.

Further, when she does move out, she will likely need to live with roommates because, let's face it, our rentals in the cities are so high.

Ensuring tenants have the right to live with roommates protects families and the working class.

Please support this legislation and keep people housed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Isaac Organista, I believe it is, followed by Xochimilcovich.

Good morning.

Yeah, my name is Isaac.

I'm with Washington Can, and I'm here to support the initiative regarding tenant protection and the right to live with a roommate.

So I'm a renter here in Seattle, and I became one while I was a full-time student here at the University of Washington.

Let's go, Dawgs.

I recently graduated, and school was expensive, to say the least.

So looking for housing was just another financial nightmare I had to face.

With the exorbitant cost of higher education already at the forefront, there wasn't any real possibility I could afford to rent a place on my own, because I'm broke.

But the only way I could afford it was to live, I did what a majority of folks did, and I found roommates, because that's the only way that, in all honesty, people can afford to live in the city, because that's what we're just trying to do, just live and survive.

I'm not asking for a six-figure salary.

I'm not asking for all of these high, nice glossy things, but I'm just trying to make enough to live.

And the fact that I'm living paycheck to paycheck and it's only done because of living with roommates, it's a bit scary.

Living in the city is expensive.

Trying to survive here is expensive.

And the fact that if Anything happened, God forbid something happened to my parents and they had to live with me or with my siblings, and the fact that I could be kicked out because of that and face homelessness while I already graduated and I'm facing all of these debts and just trying to survive, it's sad, it's scary, and it's stressful.

So that's why laws and policies need to be in place that'll actually help students, actually help people, actually help the folks that are living here that are just trying to survive and just trying to make a living out here in the city.

It's for people who never had to it's for people who are living paycheck to paycheck and not for the folks who haven't had to worry about where Groceries gonna come or if they're gonna have enough for the rent or bills.

So that's why I just Thank y'all.

I'm first and foremost for us including the creating this bill.

I'm making sure that y'all support this fully in and Thank you And the last speaker that we have signed up is so she may give it

Hi, my name is Sochi.

I'm with the Women's Commission and Washington CAN.

I'll just touch a little bit on what the landlord briefly talked about, which I will also say I question the sincerity of wanting to work together with folks if they're not going to even stay for the full public comment.

Anyway, so one, this isn't, the landlord isn't liable for the damage, it's the perpetrator that is liable for the damage on the DV bill.

And I think that's common sense, like no one is asking for someone to destroy an apartment unit, and the person who does that is the person who should pay for it.

And this came up, this whole thing even came up because there was one tenant last year who an abuser came over to their apartment and beat them severely, and there was blood everywhere, and they were charged for bodily fluid cleanup.

It was thousands of dollars, and that money is on their credit report, and they couldn't find housing because of that, which is, as was said earlier, is just creating a cascading effect of just really detrimental impacts.

So this bill is very important and so a lot of appreciation for bringing this forward and for moving this.

And then also for the other bills, they're also very important.

It's really critical for people to be able to live with family and roommates in order to both afford this city as well as to deal with emergencies that pop up.

I mean, I think about for myself, I have an older brother with disabilities, and when, I suppose, when my parents pass away, that he'll live with me.

And if that happened while I was a renter, I'd want to be able to immediately have him move in and not have to go through some long, drawn-out process or risk the landlord saying no.

And so this is just really important for families and really appreciate y'all pushing this forward.

Thank you.

Great.

So that concludes public comment.

Thank you everybody for sharing your stories.

And we'll move into the first item on the agenda.

Agenda item one is social impact of the arts study.

I want to recognize that we've been joined by Council Member O'Brien.

Greetings.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Can we start with some introductions, please?

Good morning.

Calandra Childers with the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture.

Hi.

Hi.

I'm Sarah Sidman with Arts Fund.

And I'm Katie Corello with Arts Fund.

Great.

Fantastic.

So who will kick us off?

I think I'll kick us off.

So it's my pleasure to be joined by my colleagues, Sarah and Katie from Arts Fund.

They'll be presenting on the social impact of the arts study that they completed this last year.

And we were partners on that study.

And so it's their study to present.

But we wanted to represent how much we support it and appreciate the findings of it.

I think, you know, we've partnered with Arts Fund on economic impact studies in the past, and those have been great.

They've had really good information that we can use, but I was really excited about the social impact because I think it really gives some backup to what we already know, which is sort of the intrinsic value of the arts, and it really backs up in really specific ways the values to our community when we do invest in arts and culture.

Two of the specific areas that get called out in the study are around arts education and cultural space, and that's really helpful to know that the deep investments that the city has been making are really backed up by really good data that show that these investments help drive a really healthy, vibrant cityscape.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

And maybe just as a little bit of background, and perhaps it's already part of your presentation, can you just talk a little bit about what a social impact study is as compared to, I mean, obviously, an economic impact study.

What are the indicators that you're measuring?

I can answer that.

It is part of the presentation, so I'm happy to go through the presentation, and if it does not, in fact, touch upon that, that'd be great.

And thank you, Calandra.

Thank you for that question.

That already excites me that we're going to have a great conversation.

I am excited to be here to share the findings, which really talk about how the arts create public value.

And what I hope to do is share the findings, a brief overview of them, and then along with Katie and Kalandra, answer your questions and have a conversation.

Arts Fund has been here for nearly 50 years, and we are deeply invested in the health of this community.

We see firsthand the powerful impacts of our region's cultural nonprofits.

And as Calandra mentioned, for over 20 years, we've tracked the economic impacts of the cultural sector, how the sector supports tens of thousands of jobs, attracts cultural tourists who wouldn't otherwise come here, and generates $2 billion in business revenue.

I really enjoyed sharing those findings with you the last time we did the study and hope to keep that conversation going.

But as Calandra mentioned, significant as these numbers are, they only tell part of the story.

And we knew arts have a much greater impact, a social impact, so we set forth on this new research project, which is a first of its kind.

To clarify, when I say arts, I'm talking about non-profit organizations and all of their activities, their programs, their events, and classes.

both in and outside of their traditional venues.

So one of the things that we begin with in talking about what we discovered is a contradiction, which I call the misperceived value of the arts.

When we first began our research, we found a surprising disconnect in how people in our community perceive the arts.

79% of people believe arts benefit their personal well-being, and 60% cite the arts as a factor in their decision to locate here.

But only 28% think the arts promote social change at a community level.

It's only 28% who see the benefit arts have to people beyond themselves.

So why do we call this a misperception?

Because arts have social impact, as we'll dive into.

Our study shows that arts are a viable, powerful, and proven tool to affect positive social outcomes.

Yet as reinforced by the poll, all too often they are unacknowledged and therefore underutilized as part of a community development strategy.

And I will clarify, when we say social impact, we are talking about the ability of arts to advance community priorities.

So we focused on three key impact areas, each intersecting with the social issues and community needs facing our region.

They're broad buckets because the needs are broad.

Youth development and education, health and wellness, and neighborhood vitality.

A focus on equity runs across these three themes as we examine how arts are a mechanism for supporting equitable outcomes.

Over the past 10 years, a significant body of research that connects art to positive social outcomes has emerged.

We reviewed over 150 of these resources, scanned 200 King County arts nonprofits, and profiled 10 regional case studies.

And as I mentioned, our social impact study is among the first in the nation to really take a look at arts impact across social issues.

And it offers us a good deal of new information to digest.

Some of the highlights I'll be covering are also in this summary brochure.

And if you're interested in a copy of the report, we're happy to leave it with you and your staffs.

So let's start with youth development and education, which Calandra mentioned.

And our findings clearly show involvement in the arts can improve academic and social outcomes for youth across socioeconomic status and across ages.

So let's take preschool youth and how at-risk students in arts-integrated preschools better regulate emotions than those in traditional preschools.

To high school youth and how students who take art in high school have higher SAT scores than those who don't.

In fact, the data shows students with sustained arts access not only have higher test scores and GPAs, but also lower dropout rates.

And I think the city's own Creative Advantage program is a powerful example of how these sustained impacts are transforming lives in the Seattle Public Schools.

Neurological research is also showing us how arts strengthen the parts of the brain where executive function is developed, which improves goal-setting and follow-through.

And the data shows positive impacts are especially strong for youth from low-income backgrounds.

At-risk students involved in the arts are 23 percentage points more likely to attend college than their peers, 23%.

So knowing that low-income youth have the most to gain and yet all too often have the least exposure to arts programs, creating this access can help close the opportunity gap.

An example, Urban Artworks provides justice-involved youth on probation job training and life skills as they install murals throughout the region.

These are kids who are trying to move out of the juvenile justice system, and art is creating an off-ramp from the school-to-prison pipeline.

And a staggering data point, 83% of urban artworks youth don't re-offend.

Not only are they out of the pipeline, they are out in the community, giving back.

So now on to health and wellness.

We find that both in and out of medical settings, arts can improve both individual and community health.

In primary care and behavioral health, art and music therapy are widely recognized and implemented strategies.

In fact, nationwide, 45% of medical institutions offer some sort of arts programming.

That's nearly half the institutions in the country.

with 80% of those saying that they do so to benefit patient recovery.

Across any number of medical conditions, arts can help lower anxiety and reduce dependence on medication, and in many cases, shorten hospital stays.

Aging adults and those with diseases that cause dementia show particularly favorable health impacts.

You likely know Seattle Theatre Group by their wide range of shows at the Paramount, the Moore, and the Neptune theaters.

They also run a county-wide program called Dance for Parkinson's.

Beyond promoting the flexibility, the confidence, and the strength that Parkinson's patients need, the physical interaction offered through the dancing reduces social isolation.

Isolation which is otherwise known to accelerate a decline in Parkinson's patients.

And put that in greater context, for an aging person, social isolation has the negative health impact equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Arts can be a powerful antidote, leading to better lives, longer lives, better lived.

And now on to neighborhood vitality, which I think is particularly relevant in a region expanding as quickly as ours.

When arts are present, there's a documented increase in neighborhood livability, community identity, and social well-being.

This builds community cohesion and can help bridge cultural divides.

Research specifically ties arts participation to a shared sense of belonging and pride.

And in fact, arts participants are more than twice as likely to volunteer in their communities.

Public safety also comes into play here.

Research shows that the presence of arts and cultural spaces in neighborhoods correlates directly with a rise in foot traffic and with an increase in property value.

And Seattle itself was a case study in the research that generated those results.

these benefits, they extend to arts participants and non-participants alike.

In fact, cities with high concentrations of art not only have increased civic engagement and social cohesion, they also show improved child welfare outcomes, along with reductions in crime and poverty.

and the results are magnified in low-income neighborhoods.

Here's where examples like Path with Art come in.

Path with Art works with 750 homeless and formerly homeless individuals each year using art and music as a means to support and empower these vulnerable populations forge connections and trust, and transform lives.

Another powerful example profiled in our report can be found in the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, which I would imagine Councilmember Herbold, you are well familiar with.

It's serving as a community anchor point in the Delridge neighborhood.

Youngstown and its fellow building tenants invite neighborhood residents in to participate in community food justice dinners, after school recording studios, movement, dance, and so much more.

It's a cultural space that brings arts and neighborhood together, a place for multicultural and intergenerational neighbors to engage with one another around issues that matter.

So as with all the examples I've mentioned, when we talk about arts impact, it's important to also recognize that arts aren't working in isolation, nor are we suggesting that they do so.

In fact, in King County, 84% of arts nonprofits report partnership outside the sector.

That's more than four out of five arts organizations working together with schools, with refugee and immigrant organizations, with city departments, with senior centers, hospitals and clinics, environmental organizations, and so many more.

We uncovered substance use disorder clinics partnering with improv comedies, hospitals who are bringing art to patient bedsides, and others who are incorporating arts into physician training, and homelessness social service agencies who wrap arts throughout their programming because, in their words, the arts provide their clients with community connections that strengthen their ability to stay housed.

The results are clear.

When art is integrated with another intervention and in complement to traditional approaches to social issues, it makes people more successful.

We're talking about new possibility here and an aspect of solving community challenges that really isn't currently acknowledged.

the public benefits of arts.

What we're talking about is how arts are a strategic, proactive investment in community.

If there's one thing that I hope that you take away today and that we all do is that arts are not a charity, they are a strategy.

So what can we do?

First off, invest.

As the data suggests, both investing in the arts and supporting policy promoting arts access and affordability have positive equitable outcomes that ripple throughout a community.

This can mean directly funding arts providers and programming and incentivizing others to do so.

This can include furthering arts education and access to the arts, especially in the K through 12 years with programs like Creative Advantage.

And it can mean investing in new cultural facilities and the preservation of existing ones.

And it definitely means advancing policy aligning with these goals.

Geographic expansion is also a specific way in which you can advance equitable outcomes.

And where a desired impact might extend beyond the boundaries of the city, partnering with organizations like Arts Fund and so many more with a broader geographic scope may be an avenue.

Another key approach is partnership.

Partnerships are key to all the success stories we unearthed, and you can leverage your positions as city leaders to make introductions across sectors and to open doors for new collaboration.

But another key way in which you can take action is to invite arts voices and arts-based strategies to the planning tables that are shaping our city's growth.

When you sit down at a policy planning table, and we were at the last creative meeting, so I'm just gonna reference the items on that agenda, be it addressing any of the items, including environment, community outcomes, or community outreach, equitable policy, et cetera.

Sitting down to start to tackle those issues, think about including a voice from the cultural sector at the outset, and design programs and creative solutions that are incorporating these powerful contributions that arts offer.

At the core of Arts Fund's work, it's the belief that arts strengthen community, and our social impact study proves it.

I really want to thank our sponsors, including the Office of Arts and Culture, for investing in this research and in critical conversations like this one, and I want to thank you for inviting us here today.

I hope this briefing will provide, and the data itself provides useful data and tools to support you in more meaningful, not more, in meaningful, public investment, policy, and strategy.

And I really look forward to answering your questions and working with you to move this forward.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And I also want to thank you for coming back after our long committee agenda the last time.

We have incredible respect for the work that you're doing and, in fact, appreciated the opportunity to experience it in full.

So a couple questions.

One, can you give me or give us a sense of how you picked the three themes that you did this deep dive in?

And then secondly, I'm wondering, does the data reveal particular, I think about like the city for open space, we have a gap report where we've identified where the gaps are and we use that for planning.

You know, and just like looking at, for instance, the health and wellness theme, 45% of medical institutions nationwide offer some sort of arts program.

Have we done an analysis of our of medical institutions locally to see what percentage offer arts programming here, knowing and understanding the health benefits.

Because if we had that information, it would then reveal, I think, through identifying if there are gaps, opportunities for partnerships to fill those gaps.

And so I'm just wondering, and I'm just using that as an example, I imagine you could do something similar for all three of the elements, and to a large extent we have done so with youth development and education.

with creative advantage and our goals to get creative advantage in all the schools in the school district.

But just trying to grapple myself with how we use this in a planning context.

Absolutely.

Let me answer your first question first.

In terms of how we identified those three priority areas, there were a few.

really key aspects in forming that.

One is we had an advisory committee, a cross-sector advisory committee that also included Randy Engstrom, the Director of the Office of Arts and Culture.

It included folks from corporate partners.

It included civic partnerships, business associations, nonprofits, et cetera.

Really a wide region and also county leadership.

And we were therefore gathered input across sectors as to top priority areas and challenges facing those sectors.

We also looked at the National Conference of Mayors and what are top civic issues facing cities, including this one, looking at agendas.

And we looked at the, this was a King County study, so we also looked at the King County priority areas.

in the executive's plan.

That said, we also were looking to where there was longitudinal data across time.

As I mentioned, there's been a wealth of data generated over the past 10 years.

We wanted to build upon solid data, so we wanted to make sure that there was a significant amount of data across time, as well as intersecting with issue areas that we knew were facing this city and being addressed by cultural organizations.

So it's kind of an amalgam of those key areas.

The reason equity was pulled out is that it intersects with all of those themes.

So rather than having a specific focus on equity as a subject area, it intersects so much with all of them.

We also had two secondary intersectional areas, which were business and the environment.

And so we dove into how arts intersect with those two areas as well.

But business is not separate from how arts advance the next generation of thinkers in education, nor is it separate from how arts are building neighborhoods and helping to recruit top talent.

So that's how we selected those.

To your second question, and I'd also invite Kalandra and Katie to join in on this, that is what we'd like to do next.

This was the first study in the region and among the first in the nation really diving into the theme areas.

We did conduct a geographic landscape scan of where programs are being offered.

that really loosely aligns with where population is.

But what we want to do when we do the study the next time is also either across the subject areas or in particular, let's say the one you tackled, also gather data from that sector, from the health sector.

We partnered with Swedish Hospital on this study, so we have some of their data in terms of how they're integrating arts in their programming.

But we'd like to do that across the sector.

Yeah, I think we know anecdotally that there are organizations like Swedish that have really great arts programming, but we haven't specifically partnered with a lot of those health and wellness organizations to really dive deep.

And that, I think, really relates to sort of the history of our office and really being focused on supporting the nonprofit sector.

And so that's really been the area of our focus.

But with the work that we've been doing on the creative economy, I think we're looking a little bit more broadly and more sort of landscape analysis about if it's for-profit or non-profit or community groups.

We don't need to fit somebody into a category in that way that we have in the past.

We can really look a little bit more expansively as to how the whole landscape is being supported, and I think this is a piece of that puzzle.

Yeah, for sure, because as I would see it, there are other ways that the city can partner in order to meet.

objectives related to arts programming, that doesn't necessarily mean we have to fund them.

So I think that kind of a scan that includes entities other than nonprofits is useful.

Because we do a lot of work here on the council as it relates to regulating and requiring public benefits of large institutions that aren't nonprofits.

a master plan requirement for including arts programming if a large institution wants to expand is not necessarily something I would think of normally.

But it might be a good thing to think of as a public benefit for our for-profit partners that the city has an interface in regulating on occasion.

Absolutely.

I think the questions of public benefit are ones that we'd like to dive into deeper, just knowing how the city can use its influence to get at some of these areas of community impact that we're really interested in that don't necessarily have to be direct funding going out the door every time.

Exciting, great.

So can you talk a little bit about the next, you mentioned you're going to be doing a second phase following up on the study.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, absolutely.

Our goal moving forward is to really continue to do the critical economic impact work and then pair that with the social impact work.

So we are just underway with the next iteration of the economic impact study.

It will be informed by some of the issue areas that we've been uncovering while rolling out the social impact studies.

So we'll, you know, we will gather the numbers that are important numbers, tax benefit, jobs created, cultural tourism, which is such a big draw.

And we'll also likely dive deeper into areas of affordability, perhaps of cultural space and what the ramifications of those challenges are to the cultural community and the community at large.

perhaps affordability of space for artists or housing, that type of thing.

So the conversation will continue to evolve.

We also hope to then do another approach to the social impact study, identifying more of these gap areas.

with more specific data collected to this region.

This first study involved a significant literature review to establish the baseline for what the research is.

Having conducted that, and in fact all of our materials are open source, they're available online for other municipalities, other regions and other areas across the country to build upon.

We can now build upon that and dive deeper into the data collection and analysis here.

You've touched directly upon where we'd like to go with this, and we would love to do so in partnership with the city and with the county.

I'm also really interested in that, and I appreciate Customer Herbold asking that question.

It's been a few years since I've got an update on public school funding and arts, and I imagine it's shifted as the economy's got better, but I don't know for sure.

I'm assuming that most private schools have robust art programs for students, and that probably correlates with income for households.

I know for a while, you know, if you lived in a wealthier neighborhood with a strong PTA, those households were able to backfill arts programs that got cut.

And then other neighborhoods without, you know, a less wealthy neighborhood and less resources and a PTA, may get less exposure.

And so, you know, the types of gap analysis to figure out where we want to target our investment in the city I think can be really useful.

I'm also curious how, this is maybe more qualitative than quantitative, The ways in which art impact youth, I can imagine a young person who gets exposed to music early in their school career and ultimately gets to go to essentially Ellington.

and performing with the best of the country on a national stage.

I mean, you know, just the powerful experience that has.

And so, you know, the opportunity for folks that maybe struggle in school and other aspects and also find something that they are, like, successful in.

And then I can imagine there's so many other folks that are never going to achieve an Essentially Ellington show or a major art show, whatever it is. but still just the ability to use their mind in different ways.

It doesn't show up necessarily on the news at night.

And I'm curious, you know, is the success, I imagine it's a little of both, but are there things that we should be looking for?

Are we looking for, like, opportunities to find someone who's really struggling and really lift them off the top?

Or is it, like, no?

You know, even, I mean, you talked about in the healthcare system, and I can imagine lots of senior programs, too, you know, probably rarely are these seniors gonna achieve greatness in art at this point in their life, although maybe there's some examples of what happens, but for the most part, it's just, it's like, it's pleasure, but it's enjoyable, it's interaction, and is that alone a good measure of success, and especially when we're thinking about youth?

Do you want to go first?

Sure.

So I think the great thing about arts education is that it really provides, what we've found is that it provides these skills that go far beyond just learning to play the violin or learning to paint or learning to sculpt or, you know, any of those things.

There are these 21st century learning skills that are all about collaboration and communication and growth mindset.

And they're all the skills that we need kids to have to be able to get into the careers that we know exist.

So right now, there are a lot of people coming into Seattle because the industries in Seattle are not hiring from the local group here.

But we know that an arts education provides the skills that will allow students to get those careers.

It's the creativity.

It's all those skills that allow people to, it's not just, I'm sorry, I'm not being super articulate.

It's not just teaching a particular tactic, it's the ability to grow into the new areas.

And so we know that we're not necessarily going to train up people that are going to go play for an orchestra or, you know, become somebody that sells million-dollar paintings, but the arts really teach these skills that allow people to get into these careers that we want them to have access to.

And so it's really important that we provide that access to everybody.

And it isn't just the students that happen to live in a wealthy neighborhood where they're able to get that access, but that every student in every neighborhood has that access from day one.

Well, and I'll throw some data behind that as well.

We cite in the study an IBM study that indicates that creativity is the number one skill that employers are looking for in their top executives.

And it is the most difficult to find and the one which cannot be automated.

So as we are moving into more and more automation in the workforce, that is the one thing which cannot be automated, that will always be a highly valued core human skill.

And with so many of these innovative companies making their homes here, creating a workforce that can support and sustain and evolve, that is critical.

The other thing I think when you mentioned qualitative, I do think it's a blend of the qualitative and the quantitative, and that's really what our approach to this study has been.

Because another example to a young person, one of the case studies we profiled is Seattle Arts and Lectures, and they do a lot of data collection from the young people who work with them, and have collected a lot of feedback that essentially says, you literally saved my life.

The rates of young people who have mental health challenges or who are contemplating suicide are increasingly They're expanding at a horrifying rate, especially in the junior high to high school rates.

And there are young people who have offered feedback to the programs that they've participated in saying, you made me feel heard.

I got to tell my story.

I feel like I matter.

That's making a difference.

Yeah, thank you for coming and sharing the story.

I really hope that there is more that we can do to increase that percentage of people who believe that art and culture has a social impact on our goals as a community.

If there is something that I can do to help get that 28% number up, please let me know.

I think that should be, if it's not already, a real focus of this effort is really changing people's hearts and minds about who the arts impact beyond just their own personal appreciation of the arts, a real recognition that they're helping us meet our community goals.

I really appreciate that invitation for partnership.

You, as our elected leaders, are the amplifiers.

You are the voices people listen to.

And if we can find ways to really work with you to share that messaging more broadly, I think we really can make a difference.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate you joining us.

Thank you.

I want to recognize that we've been joined as well from Councilmember Pacheco.

Thank you for joining us.

No, just item two, please.

Thank you.

Item two is Council Bill 119584, an ordinance relating to residential rental properties.

Conforming the Seattle Municipal Code with changes in state law, amending section 7.24020 and 030, 202080, 22206160, 22206180, 22210030, and 22902120 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Thank you so much.

Introductions, please.

Asha Venkatraman, Council Central Staff.

Thank you.

And this is our second discussion on this particular bill, is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

You want to kick us off?

Absolutely.

So this bill, it's Council Bill 119584. It takes the changes that were made in the legislative session earlier this year and incorporates them into our code.

And so the two bills that passed through legislative session were Senate Bill 5600 and House Bill 1440. They made a variety of changes, some of which we need to incorporate in order to align our code with the state code.

And so those changes include extending a pay or vacate eviction notice from three days to 14 days.

Changing the definition of rent.

Our definition of housing costs was essentially the definition that the state adopted.

So we're just aligning our specific definition, excuse me, definition of rent to make sure all of that is consistent.

The Senate Bill 5600 also required that any payments made have to go to rent first before they can be applied to any other fees.

And it also gave judges more discretion considering the circumstances of an eviction.

That's not one that we need to align in our specific code, but it's something that that bill did.

House Bill 1440 required that landlords must provide a 60-day notice of any rent increase.

In our code, we had provided 60 days if a rent increase was over 10% or more.

Otherwise, it was a 30-day notice.

This would standardize to all rent increases being a 60-day notice.

And lastly, it just provides an exception for affordable housing providers who set rent based on a tenant's income.

And so all those changes went into effect July 28th.

And by aligning our code with the RCW, just make sure there's no confusion around what law actually applies.

Great.

So that's what we mean when we say harmonization bill.

It's making sure that our legislation here in Seattle is not in conflict with state law.

And in this case, state law is already in effect.

It's been in effect since the end of July.

At our last meeting, we had a presentation from the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, and they had given us an overview of what they had done to notify property owners of these new requirements under state law, and some of those steps that they took included using the Rental Registration and Inspection Ordinance Database that they have in order to notify nearly 20,000 registered landlords of these new obligations under state law.

And they've also been doing some landlord trainings.

After they visited this committee last, they said that they were actually going to be doing additional landlord engagement after that last meeting.

And they're developing future landlord curriculums, training curriculums, and infographics to be used on the city's Renting in Seattle website, as well as in those trainings.

So, given that, you know, again this is just harmonization with existing state law, I have no further questions and ready to vote.

I'm ready to vote.

This one seems very straightforward and I'm so grateful the state made some changes.

Fantastic.

And just for the record, the changes that the state made were changes that were lifted up as a result of a study that the Seattle Women's Commission led on and presented to us last year before the legislative session.

The council had passed a resolution identifying what our priorities were from that Seattle Women's Commission study called Losing Home.

We identified a number of items that we had committed to work on if the state legislature had not worked on.

Happily, many of those items were taken care of and we're going to be, after this vote, dovetailing into some of the other items that were in that report that were not addressed at the state legislature because they were very focused on.

the eviction reform pieces.

So with that, I'm going to move passage of Council Bill 1195-84.

Second.

All those in favor, vote aye.

Aye.

None opposed, none abstaining.

And Council Bill 1195-84 will move on to full council.

Thank you, Asha.

Item three.

Agenda item three is Council Bill 119 598, an ordinance relating to rental agreements and tenant liability for damages relieving a tenant experiencing domestic violence from liability for damage to the landlord's property caused by a perpetrator of domestic violence, and amending section 7.24020, 724030, and 22206170 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Thank you, Noel.

Asha, you want to give us the background on this bill and explain what it accomplishes?

Sure.

So Council Bill 119598 comes from a series of, excuse me, not a series of, it comes from the issues identified in the Losing Home Report that was in this committee back in September of last year.

It was a report by the Housing Justice Project and the Seattle Women's Commission that was essentially looking at an analysis of eviction causes, processes, outcomes, who was being impacted, how they were being impacted.

And one of the issues that was identified in that report was the financial hardship that tenants who were survivors of domestic violence face.

And so in discussing those, all of those issues in resolution 31861, which is a resolution that we, that the council adopted earlier this year, which outlined the findings of that report, the actions taken during the last budget season, and the items that council wanted to address in the short term, the issue, the issue of the financial impacts for these tenants was brought up.

And during discussion of that resolution, a central staff memo had discussed various options for creating resolution.

One of those was prohibiting landlords from holding a tenant liable for those damages if the tenant had a protection order in place against the person causing the damage.

Another option was holding a tenant, prohibiting landlords from holding a tenant liable if the tenant filed a report with a qualified third party describing the property damage and the domestic violence and that report was provided to the landlord.

And another option was to create a mitigation fund that would cover damages caused by perpetrators of domestic violence.

Those options weren't intended to be mutually exclusive or the complete list of options that council could take action on to resolve this issue.

But those first two were incorporated into draft legislation that was discussed at the committee meeting back in March.

And so the items in Council Bill 119598 do include some of the items that were in the draft legislation.

So this bill is intended in a lot of ways to mirror the state law, which allows survivors of domestic violence to terminate the rental agreement without further obligation if they provide the landlord with notice and proper documentation.

And so this bill essentially states that the tenant cannot be held liable for damage to a landlord's property if that damage was caused by a perpetrator of domestic violence with proper notice and documentation.

And so the tenant would essentially have to tell the landlord that they or a family or household member was a, is a survivor of domestic violence, and that the damage that was caused to the landlord's property was caused by that perpetrator.

They would also have to provide documentation to the landlord, either in the form of a protection order, if the protection order had all of the elements that are described in the legislation, or a report to a qualified third party that contains the following information.

So it would require that the tenant or household member notify the qualified third party that they were a survivor of domestic violence.

When the act of domestic violence or property damage occurred, where it happened, a brief description, and that the tenant or household member inform the qualified third party of who the perpetrator was.

The legislation defines a lot of those terms.

It defines qualified third party, which is essentially the same definition as is used in state law except with the addition of case managers at social service agencies.

just to make sure that any potential person to whom a person is reporting domestic violence is covered.

And if it wasn't, one of the things that based on public comment that I should make clear is that this legislation is intended to apply not just in a circumstance where the damage is caused during an act of domestic violence, but even if it wouldn't qualify legally as a incident of domestic violence, as long as the damage is caused by the perpetrator of domestic violence, that would be covered under this as well.

Can you restate that?

I don't understand the difference or the distinction you're making.

So many times the definition of domestic violence can be even if a person is put in fear of assault.

And so property damage that's caused during an incident of domestic violence can be, you know, if somebody If a perpetrator were to throw something at the survivor, for example, and it hits the wall instead, that could be defined as an incident of domestic violence.

But in circumstances where it's not entirely clear whether something would legally qualify as domestic violence, but the person that is causing the damage has perpetrated domestic violence in another incident, if that person were to create property damage that wasn't specifically in the legal parameters of the definition of domestic violence, they could still be held, or the tenant would still be exempt from liability in that case.

And so it's mostly to make sure that even if the legal piece around what an incident of domestic violence is isn't exactly clear, the burden is not on the survivor to prove that this was, especially when the perpetrator of domestic violence has already been established, that the property damage happened during one of these incidents.

And is this, is the approach that we're using, does it mirror the approach in state law as it relates to not being liable for broken leases or not giving proper 20 day notice in a month to month agreement?

So the state, because the state law is conditioned on just the incident of domestic violence as opposed to any other incident being included, it doesn't actually account for this sort of circumstance.

The state law is specific to It's any act that constitutes a crime of domestic violence, sexual assault, unlawful harassment, or stalking.

And so if that incident occurs, then that's the direct link to the breaking of the rental agreement.

In this case, because the property damage can occur outside of one of those circumstances, as long as the perpetrator is somebody that's committing domestic violence, has committed one of those incidents, that triggers the property damage.

And for the other, I get what you're saying, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison with state law because we're talking about a different set of circumstances.

We're talking about damage, right?

As opposed to somebody's right to terminate their lease agreement or to leave a month-to-month agreement without giving 20 days advance notice.

As it relates to other parts of the proposed bill, definition of domestic violence, what the triggers are, is it aligned in other ways?

And the reason I think why it's important is that the principle in state law is still a principle of liability, right?

It's difference between liability for damage or liability for breaking a lease, which is still a liability that landlords have a right to assess from a tenant.

And if under state law, the standard is no, there is no financial liability under certain circumstances in the case of domestic violence, then it, I think, that those, that same framework and those same definitions and triggers are useful as a guide for us in extending the limitation of liability in the case of damages.

Yes, so this current bill uses the definitions that was in the draft bill.

And that draft bill was done before the changes at the state level happened around the definitions of domestic violence and family and household members.

So the intent was always for this bill to mirror the definitions in state law.

And the intent to align those can be done through amendment at this point.

So the difference is the definition of domestic violence extends to non-family or household members to the difference in definitions between intimate partner and family and household members.

So all of that will end up being imported into this bill through amendment.

So the idea is to keep it as closely aligned as possible.

Thank you.

Any thoughts or questions?

Yeah.

I have a question on, in public comment we heard, that the landlord's not necessarily responsible for the damage, but that the person who created the damage is responsible.

Is there anything in this, is that just existing case law, or is there anything in this legislation that strengthens that case?

So the way this bill is currently drafted, it removes liability from the tenant, but it doesn't specifically place that liability on the perpetrator.

And so one of the things that I'm currently researching is looking at how that shift in liability would apply.

At the state level, one of the things that I'm currently researching is at the state level, it's very specific that the record of the report shouldn't name the alleged perpetrator of the act, just that the person told the qualified third party who that person was.

And so in that circumstance, the landlord doesn't necessarily have access to the name of that person, which would make liability a little bit difficult.

But in balancing the privacy and the safety piece of it, I'm trying to figure out what that looks like in terms of how to balance those factors.

And that is something that you all may have to figure out policy-wise which way.

Because if we're contending that it's the perpetrator of the domestic violence that is liable, but we're prohibiting the landlord for accessing that information, it makes it really difficult for the landlord to exercise the rights to go after the perpetrator.

Right.

And the other item that exists in the state law that is not yet reflected in this bill is the limitations around how those reports can be used as evidence against a survivor of domestic violence.

And I'm trying to align what that looks like in terms of the ability of a criminal or a civil proceeding for what that, the evidentiary value of what that report is.

So that is also ongoing research.

So that's outstanding.

I look forward to hearing what you learn in the research.

And what I heard you say is there may be some policy decisions that we're going to have to make.

And so one of the things that will be helpful for me, and I'm looking to folks in the audience who have expertise in DV, is to think through what the implications would be of exposing the perpetrator's identity to the landlord.

From a liability perspective, I think that makes a lot of sense.

If someone did some damage, they should be held accountable to it.

Also care about the, you know, recovery of the households and if there are negative consequences of that.

I'm sure there are, obviously, to that individual.

Understanding the implication in the broader spectrum of what our kind of theories of change are within the domestic violence world.

So some feedback on that, if we may be faced with making some policy decisions to try to be as well-informed as possible would be helpful.

Thanks, Meryl.

And so we have this coming back to committee on September 10th.

And we'll have potential amendments discussed at that meeting.

So when would you like to know the potential amendments that you'd like to have discussed?

By what time?

As soon as possible, hopefully.

But within, I think, the next two weeks would be really helpful.

All right, great.

Thank you.

Any other questions, thoughts?

All right, we'll move on to the third item related to tenants' rights.

Item 4 is Council Bill 119606, an ordinance relating to rental properties, restricting a landlord's ability to limit the number of persons residing in a rental unit, prohibiting the use of conditions that are applied to persons residing in a rental unit who are not tenants, and amending Section 7.24.020, and 030 of and adding new section 7.24031 and 032 to the Seattle Municipal Code.

Thank you.

So similar to the previous bill about domestic violence that we just discussed, this bill came out of the losing home report that was in this committee in September.

One of the items that were identified in that report spoke to the challenges that many tenants face in affording rent.

So sometimes leases can restrict the number of people that are allowed to live in a unit or there are additional fees or conditions attached to adding a roommate to a unit.

or a landlord can just unreasonably reject a request for a roommate.

And so in identifying those issues, when we discussed Resolution 31861 earlier this year, we identified several options in terms of how to resolve that issue.

then the options presented at that time were to require that the rental agreement provide a tenant a right to live with immediate family members and up to an additional occupant subject to maximum occupancy limits.

Another option was to require that if a tenant wanted to add a tenant, or excuse me, add a roommate to the rental agreement, the landlord couldn't subject that person to screening criteria that was stricter than the screening criteria used for the original tenant.

and couldn't impose any additional fees except fees around actually running a screening report.

And the last is to prohibit a landlord from unreasonably rejecting requests for a roommate.

And so Council Bill 119606 incorporates a couple of those items.

Essentially what this bill would do is require that any rental agreement that is entered into after the effective date of this bill would allow occupancy by a tenant, a tenant's family or household members, an additional person who is not a tenant's family or household member, and then that additional person's family and household members, essentially subject to occupancy limits that are established by local state or federal law.

The term family or household member is defined in the bill.

As it stands, it's currently the same definition that we used in the DV bill, but it may be worth considering whether to amend that to align with the state level bill, or excuse me, the state law around family and household members and intimate partners.

But it describes a variety of people that meet that definition.

The proposal would also restrict a landlord from changing the lease to limit the number of tenants allowed in a unit after someone has moved out.

And so essentially, for example, if three people live in a unit and they're all splitting the rent and that's how rent is affordable to them and one person moves out, this would restrict the landlord from saying you can't move another person in, you have to handle the rent, just the two of you.

And so it would limit the landlord's ability to do that so that rent could remain affordable for the people living in the unit.

As mentioned in the potential options around this bill, it also prohibits landlords from imposing any new conditions when somebody moves in.

So they couldn't require stricter screening criteria for somebody that's moving in than the screening criteria that was used for the tenant themselves.

The last piece of this is that the proposal contains one exemption for federally assisted housing units because those housing units can be subject to regulations that require a landlord to deny tenancy if a member of the household is subject to a lifetime sex offender registration or they've been convicted of manufacturing or producing methamphetamines on the premises.

So those are the major tenants of Council Bill 119-606.

And so I have a question about the prohibition on landlords imposing new conditions when a family or household member or roommate is added to the household.

And you give the example of stricter screening criteria for additional persons than the landlord used for the tenant.

So the roommate, or whether or not they're a family member or unrelated roommate, still would have to be screened by the landlord?

Not necessarily.

Well, the landlord has a right to still screen them, I guess is my question.

Yes, the landlord would, but depending on if the person was being added to the lease or not, I think is the operative difference.

So if a person is going to be added to the lease as a tenant, so someone that's in relationship with the landlord, and the person were to, there would be strict screening criteria, excuse me, not strict, but the screening report were to go through, that person would end up being subject to the rules around who's allowed to be a tenant and who isn't.

based on the landlord.

If the person is moving in, but isn't planning to be party to the lease agreement, then sure, a landlord could run a screening report, but because of the right to have your immediate family, for example, there's not anything they could really do about that screening report.

So they could still run the screening, but they could not use the screening report to prohibit a tenant who is not on the lease from being, I suppose I shouldn't call them a tenant because I think we have some different definitions for non-lease.

The person who is not the tenant is the phrase I've been using.

And then similarly, the landlord does not have a right to require all occupants to be on the lease under this proposal.

And this proposal is mirrored in, I think, many ways.

mirrors in many ways a similar law in New York.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Yeah.

New York has a law that is relatively similar to this one.

It's a little more specific around if there's one tenant or there are two tenants in the rental unit.

But it similarly allows occupancy by a tenant, the immediate family of a tenant, an additional occupant.

The New York law is specific to dependent children of the occupant rather than immediate family.

It's specific to if the tenant or the spouse occupies the premises.

What is proposed in Council Bill 119-606 is a little bit less complicated in that it just requires the occupant and then their immediate family.

And one of the other issues that was raised in the losing home report, I'm wondering if we deal with if the person who is on the lease passes away.

the rights of the non-lease signing occupants to stay?

Is that something that we address here?

So that's not currently addressed in this bill, but it certainly could be addressed by amendment.

We could certainly include it.

All right, I'd like to flag that issue.

since that also was something I think that was raised in the report.

I think this is really important legislation as we heard in public comment and the cost of living in this city.

The National Low-Income Housing Coalition shows that the average necessary wage to afford a two-bedroom apartment here is double the minimum wage.

So it really, I think, points to the need of folks to be able to have roommates.

And we also know that 46% of renters in the Seattle region are cost burdened, meaning they pay more than 30% of their income on rent.

So by extending the right of leaseholders to have roommates, whether or not they're family members or otherwise, I think it's really incredibly important to addressing our affordability challenges in the city.

So thank you for your work on this.

A question on how the adding tenants plays out, or adding, yeah.

I'm trying to get my terms right.

So let me start from the beginning.

So a landlord rents to a single tenant.

They are the tenant because they have signed on to the lease.

Based on square foot definitions and other things, let's assume that this unit is capable of legally housing four people.

So the tenant has the right to bring in a family member, and they could bring in one other roommate?

Yes.

Okay.

And then that roommate could also bring in family members, say one family member, now we're up to four.

Right.

As those, as a tenant adds those roommates, is there requirements that they notify the landlord?

Do they need to get on the lease and become tenants too, or are they just?

So the requirement to notify a landlord is not currently in this bill.

It certainly could be added if that is a thing that you all think is necessary, but it's not currently required that anyone notifies the landlord in that case.

And I'm sorry, your second question.

Oh, do they have to be on the lease?

Yes, sorry.

Clearly, if you don't have to notify the landlord, then they wouldn't necessarily be on the lease.

Right.

And so the, sorry, just the, they either need to be on the lease if it's a written agreement.

If it's an oral agreement, then it's a bit of a more fluid situation just because the tenant-landlord relationship exists with an oral agreement.

It's just not clear because it's not written.

So that's all.

And we're using the term lease to include month-to-month agreements?

Yes.

Okay.

I'm thinking, well, I'd be curious to hear from folks in the audience who've been working on this to think through the implications either way.

In the case where a landlord has a tenant, they're only aware of the single tenant, the tenant dies, and then some other people claim, well, we have a right to stay here.

How would the landlord even know if they've been living there or not?

Okay, so, and you know, from the landlord's perspective, I would like to, the principle here I think makes a ton of sense, but I do, I am interested that the landlord should know who's there.

There's probably a variety of reasons why knowing who is in the tenant, or who is part of the, living on their premise would be helpful.

So figuring out how to do that and what the implications are, maybe something you could say.

Yeah, I mean, I think a notification without the, an accompanying right to exclude would be useful to consider.

And the New York law does have the requirement that a tenant should inform the landlord within 30 days of the commencement of the occupancy by a person, so it's not without precedent.

Yeah.

And I, you know, scenario, you know, you're living in a place of friends in hard times.

Hey, why don't you come crash on my couch?

Turns out after a few weeks that this might be a longer term deal.

You know, whatever that would look like, but to just formalize that in some way would be helpful, I think.

So.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Great.

Thanks, Martin Pacheco.

I'd be really curious to see the language, but I'm going to be personally a little sensitive to how that's defined or what we do, just from both, I think, personal experiences and just how that in itself in the context of where people right now are just really just trying to find a place to live.

So I'm just curious.

So one additional person who is not a tenant families.

tenant, family, or household member.

Why one as opposed to two, for example?

Let's just say, since we were just talking about the scenario of domestic violence, you see someone who needs a little bit of help.

or shelter and so forth, as you provide to Council Member O'Brien's point, hey, I need a place to stay, but I have a child, right?

My child's 17, that's 16. So I'm trying to, I guess, why did we choose just one additional person who is not a family member?

I think we just started at one as a, because you have your immediate family, and then if you wanted one roommate, you would have the right to that.

If it was going to be more than one roommate, it would be a discussion with the landlord about whether there would, the occupancy would allow that, if the landlord is okay with that, but it really is a starting point.

And again, the one roommate can bring family members in.

And so in the case, if you're trying to shelter a friend who's a victim of domestic violence and they're bringing family members in, that would still be qualify.

Right.

Great.

Thank you.

Again, this also will be coming back to us at the September 10th meeting of this committee.

And I hope you can join us then and we'll be sure to get ideas for amendments to you, Asha.

Okay.

Thank you.

Item 5 is the 2018 Waste Prevention and Recycling Report.

Thank you, Newell.

We're actually on time for a change.

I know.

It's cranking.

Greetings, hello.

Hi.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Let's start with introductions, please.

Brian, good night.

Council Central staff.

Susan Pfeifferis with Seattle Public Utilities, the Solid Waste line of business.

Great.

So we're going to hear the annual Waste Prevention and Recycling Report.

So first, I got to get this closer.

Thank you for inviting us here to present the 2018 Waste Prevention Recycling Report.

So this is an annual report to council where we're basically talking about the progress that we've made towards reaching our recycling targets.

We also highlight programs from 2018 or the previous year, every year, and then we also talk about what we're going to be doing in 2019. We calculate separate recycling rates for both the municipal solid waste and then for the construction and demolition debris.

And municipal solid waste is single-family, multifamily, commercial, self-haul sectors.

And then basically that's what we're focusing on today.

So on the slide right now is a lot of numbers.

This represents the data that we can highlight.

Basically, our citywide recycling rate declined in 2018 slightly by less than half a percentage point to 56.54%.

The big highlights are that the total citywide waste generation in 2018 was actually down by 0.4 percentage points from the previous year.

And then we're actually 21% below our zero waste target, which is based on the 2006, what we export for disposal.

So we're 21% below that zero waste target in 2018. And then if we look just at our residential sector, which is our single family and our multifamily sector, Our per capita waste generation number is at an all-time low of 2.16 or 2.16 pounds per person per day.

So that's an extremely low number when you look especially nationally.

And is that, I'm looking below this, So that includes garbage and recycling.

Does it also include composting too?

It means composting and recycling?

Yeah.

So yeah.

So waste generation, and we'll look at a table, is when we talk recycling here, it includes both the recycling that goes in the blue cart and also the composting that goes in the green cart.

So it's those two combined equal our recycling number with respect to what we look at in the report.

So what does this mean and what does it look like?

I thought this was a good graph just to give you kind of an idea of where we are.

So first off, when we're talking about a recycling rate, that's a target that we set.

And I always talk with my staff about where you hang your North Star.

You tend to focus your resources, and you tend to focus on.

But it can sometimes distract you from the big picture.

And so instead of looking at a North Star only, let's look at a constellation.

And we're in the process of trying to look at what are the stars in the constellation, not just the recycling rate, which is a waste-based And so this picture gives you an idea of our population, which has increased approximately 30% over the last 10 years.

But even though it looks like we're somewhat flat, we're actually doing pretty well when you look at how much population, this is residential only, but our population has increased so dramatically.

Our recycling rate has gone up, And though our overall waste generation has remained flat, it hasn't gone up as you would normally see with such a population increase and such an increase in just economic activity in this area.

Susan, I agree.

I focus on the percentage.

It's an easy number.

It's one point to look at.

But it's absolutely not the thing that I really care most about.

And I think the per capita, tonnage overall and the breakdown between what's landfilled and what is recycled is the numbers that probably are more important, I think.

Yeah, in the report I mentioned that the state is moving away from a recycling rate focus.

They're actually, this year they announced that they're going to stop the recycling rate per se, and they're going to be focusing on waste prevention.

And waste prevention is really what the top priority is.

It's waste prevention, then reuse, and then recycling.

And so we have programs that focus on waste prevention and reuse, and then recycling, but we tend to focus I think we're doing better.

We're doing better.

We're doing better.

We're doing better for the environment.

One of the most maddening things in the world is all the packaging that comes with the stuff we get in our life.

It makes you feel modestly better about it when it's recyclable packaging, but it's still not good.

And, you know, one way to make our recycling rate look great is just to make sure that everything is packed in 18 cardboard boxes, and that just drives up the tonnage of recycling and makes the number look better, but clearly that's a bad outcome.

And conversely, you know, as manufacturers, delivery folks, whoever, retailers reduce their packaging, that is a really good thing, yet it might make our number look bad.

So.

Yeah, packaging, we could spend a long time talking about packaging, but that is definitely an issue that reducing the amount of packaging and then as we are dealing with the changing nature of packaging.

You'll see more and more situations where the packaging is not as recyclable.

Whereas a cardboard box we can easily recycle, some of the more flexible packaging now is not as easily recyclable.

So those are things that we're dealing with.

And I talk a little bit about this and I go into a little bit.

Lightweighting.

Yeah.

Learned a new term.

Yeah.

right?

But it directly deals with the the ability to make our numbers look better because of recycling packaging that is more lightweight, but is, as you say, not as recyclable.

So we have, on several occasions, passed legislation that set recycling goals.

We set a 60% recycle goal by the year of 2012, and we didn't hit that.

In February of 2013, we passed another bill setting recycling rates, again, 60% by 2015. We haven't hit that.

Are we considering a new metric and trying to set goals for meeting those metrics?

And in that case, would we be looking at a per capita waste usage metric?

So we're in the process right now of amending our solid waste management comp plan, our comprehensive solid waste comp plan.

And so through that process, it's only amendment, it's not a complete revision, but through that process, we're looking at what are the targets, what are the metrics and the targets that we should be looking at.

And that will come to council probably in early 2020. So we've been in the process of doing the analysis, looking, you know, we look at programs that will help us achieve our recycling rate, but also are there other metrics that we really should be focusing on?

So that is something that will be coming.

We'll be going to the mayor's office and then coming to council in the near-ish future.

We'll probably be putting it out for public comment later this year towards the Q4 sometime.

And yes, as part of that process, we're looking at what are the other metrics that might make more sense.

Oregon Department of Ecology has done a lot of work on what are the different things that you should be looking at from an environmental point of view, and it tips it on its head a little bit.

I think that's why Department of Ecology, Washington Department of Ecology is changing how their focus is.

So we're trying to lead the way from a local jurisdiction point of view on are there other metrics we should be focusing on.

And I know that our partners over at King County and our partners at all the other jurisdictions that we interact with regularly are really looking to us to lead the way in this area.

All right, well, let's lead the way.

Yeah, that's exciting.

I also want to mention, part of this population, when you're looking at it, is changing where people live.

We've gone to where people are primarily in the residential sector, in single family, where we're more and more moving into multifamily, and that's also part of the challenge of keeping a recycling rate up.

So, and we have talked about that in this committee as it relates to what we can do as the regulators of the development of multifamily housing to help address what the outcomes are from people moving into different types of residential settings and the numbers of people who may have been recycling in single-family, there being increased numbers of people who we need to help to recycle in multifamily.

Yeah, and another part of this, too, is we have people moving in from areas where they didn't have recycling or they had a completely different learning.

So I like to talk about, think of a tree, and it's a fruit tree, and we've gleamed all the fruit off the low-hanging fruit.

But we're trying to get up to that higher hanging fruit, but we're constantly having to go back and get that low hanging fruit and keep doing that and then figuring out how to get up into the tree branches higher to get that higher hanging fruit.

Whether it's a recycling rate or whatever kind of environmental goals that we set, you're gonna constantly having to strive up.

And that takes resources and it takes efforts and it takes commitment, so.

And I appreciate that our recycling contractors help with that as well.

They engage with the managers at multifamily buildings and share with them their observations about the recycling stream and offer resources for how to increase compliance of the residents of that housing.

But I do think we need to do more, again, as the regulators of the construction of multifamily housing to make it easier for tenants to recycle by requiring the inclusion of access to recycling garbage and composting containers on every floor of a building.

co-located in a way that we know will increase participation in recycling.

Before we move on, can we just take a quick minute to talk about where we're at on that?

So, SPU and SDCI have been working with stakeholders and collecting some new information.

And so, obviously, council is very interested in that specific aspect.

There are some technical details in the code as well that SDCI and SPU are working with the stakeholders on assembling a package to send to council, which I believe we're expecting potentially sometime this fall here in September.

Fantastic.

All right.

That's great.

Yeah, and I do want to emphasize we have a wonderful partnership with our contractors and then the community too.

We work with a number of community groups that especially focusing on the multifamily sector.

So what are some of the factors that are impacting our recycling rate?

One of the main factors is we did a home organics survey in 2018 and During that time, we calculated that we were overestimating how much was actually being managed on-site by people in their backyard.

So backyard composting or on-site composting.

And so when we're doing our annual report, we make calculations or estimates based on data that we've had, and then we extrapolate forward.

And we were overestimating.

So we had a 2,500 ton decrease just right off the top because we had been overestimating based on the survey results we found that out.

Another thing we mentioned and I think you mentioned the weighting of recycled materials.

We may still be diverting 100 plastic bottles.

They are lightweighted to the point that they take up the same volume, but they are significantly less weight.

So when you have a weight-based recycling rate, that will just naturally decrease or look, give the impression that you're not recycling as much, even though you actually are diverting the same number of bottles.

We also have improved messaging.

So I'll talk a little bit about the China Blue Skies next, but because of the China Blue Skies situation, we have been working with our regional partners.

We've been working through a responsible recycling task force that we were a partner in.

Out of that came a regional group that's working on messaging, where we're trying to do unified messaging across the region on empty, clean, and dry, basically teaching people how to recycle right, and then also not be optimistic recyclers.

And maybe now we're making them.

negative.

But, you know, some of that too is people are thinking more about what they're putting in.

And so they may be diverting materials into the garbage, even though they are technically recyclable.

So we may have gone from optimistic to may be a little pessimistic.

But again, these are speculation.

These last three are kind of, well, the last two are speculation.

We don't have our data that shows this, but it's kind of that when in doubt, throw it out.

Whereas we'd really like when in doubt, look it up.

and then people actually put it and make it empty, clean and dry and prepare it.

China Blue Skies, the media coverage was extensive in 2018. We had a lot of negative media across the nation.

A lot of recycling programs retracted significantly.

You might have heard about Tacoma.

debating whether they were going to cancel their recycling program completely or not until the residents rose up.

So that negative messaging that was out in the media, we have a feeling may have impacted our own customers, questioning whether what was in their blue bin was actually being recycled.

I know I get asked about that all the time, and you probably do too.

Is it really getting recycled?

People on airplanes, people on, you know, bus, they'll just ask, well, is it really?

And what I want to emphasize more than anything is everything that has gone in the blue bin that's recyclable in Seattle has been recycled.

We have not landfilled any of our recyclables.

So I want to emphasize that for our customers so they know we're doing.

And that's because we found domestic markets.

We found domestic markets.

We also take the economic risk in our recycling contract.

So we pay our recycling vendor solely to manage the material, and then they sell it, but we take the risk of the cost or the commodity.

And recyclables are basically a commodity.

So, yes, we've taken economic hit, Over the last year, we're not making as much money off our recyclables, but we're still making money, and we've worked very hard at finding domestic markets.

So we have changed, and we had a presentation to you about a month ago on the markets.

We've changed to where about 75% of our markets or our materials were going, being shipped overseas, to where about maybe a quarter of our materials are being shipped overseas, so.

So I think it might be a related question.

As it relates to the light weighting, we are measuring our success towards our goals by weight, not volume.

Why is that?

And would a shift to a volume-based measurement also potentially have an impact on the economic return?

So that's something we're looking at in the plan, but why do we do that?

It's ease.

You know, 30 years ago when recycling rates were starting to get rolled out and that's how tons or how we work in the industry.

It's easy what you pick up, it's weighed at the transfer station or it's weighed at the vendor and then it's shipped and it and bails are based on tons.

So they're not really based on volume.

And when you have a compacted material versus non-compacted, volume gets tricky.

Things that we're looking at, though, are capture rates.

So a capture rate might say, well, we know that 100 bottles are going into the market.

We're going to do a study, a waste composition study at the end where we're actually boiling down into how many bottles actually made it into the recycling so we can do capture rates.

We can do curbside where we take an entire neighborhood and we study at the curbside.

So we're looking at the possibility of doing some of that capture rate work.

And there's other metrics that are coming out and ways to measure that we're learning about.

So that's part of what's going to be wrapped into the comp plan.

And I guess my question, though, is not looking at these different metrics not just for purposes of setting goals, but also to address some of the economic impacts.

If we are, if our contract allows us, you know, if the economic risk is around a measure that is currently based on weight, is that economic risk reduced if we're, we're getting compensated for the value of our recycling based on volume, if that ends up being higher.

Probably not.

I can't answer that off the top of my head, to be quite honest.

But I think the weight base is how the industry works, and so I'm not sure the volume is a practical measure.

It's like a commodity.

the materials, the plastics, the paper, it's bundled, it's weighed, and then it's sold.

And the vendors or the ultimate users of that material is buying it based on this bail.

of paper, and the quality of that paper, though, determines the price that you can get for that paper.

So the cleaner our material is, that has a significant impact on the ultimate economics.

So some takeaways from our study.

None of our recyclables were landfilled.

We worked really hard to look for domestic markets and open more domestic markets.

We are still continuing working behind the scenes, seeing if we can't bring more industry to this area.

And when I say this area, I don't necessarily mean just Seattle, but to the Pacific Northwest, where we can all benefit from those vendors who can process our materials and use our materials.

So we continue to do that.

And early on, there were reports of Republic having recyclable material that they couldn't move.

What ended up happening there?

So, Republic reported waste paper that they were stockpiling waste paper because of the material not being, the price for the material had bottomed out.

Republic manages materials from all over the region.

Our material only makes up about 40% of what goes through that, and some of the material that they were taking into their facility, I do believe that they landfilled, but the material that was coming from Seattle we ensured was still getting sold on the market, even if it was only $4 a bale, as opposed to the $80 a bale that it was selling at.

Because again, we're taking the risk.

Because we're taking the risk.

So we're paying them solely to process the material through their MRF, sort it, regardless of what the ultimate.

And so we took the hit.

And how do we verify that the product is not going to landfill.

So Hans Van Dusen, who you know, who works with us, he is in constant contact and weekly he'll go down and visit the MRF.

He verifies, they give us reports on a weekly basis.

So we have that kind of, and we also have some inspectors, we haven't done this a lot, but more and more we're going to use our inspectors to kind of verify stuff.

But that's basically that personal

And what about when the recyclable material shipped to another country?

How do we verify in those instances?

So that's actually been something that was identified in the Responsible Recycling Task Force as problematic.

There have been non-profits that have tagged material and, you know, there's in the electronics.

that's pretty well known.

We're actually coming up with some protocols right now through the Responsible Recycling Task Force to try to figure out how can we verify that the material we're shipping to Southeast Asia or other are actually being used into or put into products and used as a feed source.

So that's something that we actually have had a hard time with, but we're trying to figure out protocols to do that.

Yeah.

Pretty much I've covered all these already.

So what are we doing now?

What are actions we're taking now?

So we're targeting contamination and improving the quality of the recyclables.

We're working really hard to expand the domestic markets for recyclables.

We're expanding outreach and education.

And we're really working on that regional basis.

So, something we're well aware of is that people who work in Seattle don't necessarily live in Seattle.

And people who live in Seattle don't necessarily work in Seattle.

So you have a lot of what I'll call cross-border movement.

And so the more that we can work as a region and with our regional partners to have common messaging, the easier it is on the customers who are using our system and the employees who work here to do the right thing.

So that's something that we're really trying to work on.

We're working with the property owners and managers to increase accessibility.

You know, convenience is really key, not only in multifamily, but in commercial properties of all kinds.

And then we're expanding our food program.

We have a lot of work that we're doing in the food rescue arena.

I am very excited about what we're doing in that.

We're working very closely with Mary's Place, an industry Even people who didn't realize they were in the food rescue world or could influence that, like the transportation lab up at the UW, we're working with them to try to improve moving edible food into the hands of those who are food insecure and need it.

Also, we work diligently at trying to translate our material or transcreate our material into other languages and in context so that they understand it and it's useful for those where English isn't your first language.

And then we're partnering.

We're partnering both with our local jurisdictions.

We're partnering with our NGOs in the area.

And we're partnering with the industry in general, like the plastics industry.

We're working really closely with right now with respect to our bags.

We're going to pull the bags out of the curbside at the end of the year.

And we're working with them to deploy more drop-off locations.

And so we'll be back with more on that later.

As it relates to pulling bags from curbside recycling, I'm imagining that there's going to be a robust public education campaign that SPU is going to be doing on that.

Yeah, we're working on that right now.

It's actually going to go region-wide.

So we're working with our regional partners to come up with the common messaging.

And I would anticipate that it will be launched later this fall so that everyone's ready and knowledgeable about what to do with their plastic bags and film, because it's not just plastic bags.

We do have a plastic bag ban here, but still there are plastic bags in our system, but also the film.

If you go to Costco, you go to any, you get things wrapped in film, so also what to do with those materials, yeah.

Do you have something?

And I think that's it, so questions?

I have a couple questions.

One, I really appreciate the regional partnering And I, you know, it's hard because there's always new materials, we change our rules, and then you look at the mix of different jurisdictions across the region.

I was doing some landscaping at my aunt's house in Kirkland, and I found out after the fact that green is actually the garbage bin over there.

Did a little resorting on the driveway, which isn't so fun, but whatever, made it work.

And so just, you know, the types of things, you know, I know that in Seattle we probably have tens of thousands of people that are so into recycling, because they talk to me all the time, that know all the different things, and every time something changes, and what goes where, and what happens in what jurisdiction, because we have that ethic, which is awesome.

But as you mentioned, people are coming and going, and a lot of people don't track it that closely.

So the things that we can do regionally will be really helpful.

I'm curious, what kind of dialogue you or the industry has with someone like Amazon?

And I see, you know, we get plenty of stuff delivered from them, and I notice the packaging shifts over time.

REI too, you know, they do a fair amount of retail.

And so I think, as you mentioned, the cardboard boxes are fairly straightforward, and at least that's...

nice that we know exactly what to do with it.

I mean, it seems like that's fairly valuable material to be recycled.

It's a little frustrating, though, when you get a shoe box, put it in another box that's the exact same size of a shoe box, and you think, now I got two boxes to recycle.

Is there a way that someone could just design the shoe box to be the shipping box?

And how do we do that?

And then you also see the shift to more like plastic bags that things are delivered in.

And again, this is where the optimistic recycler shows up in me.

Like, is this a plastic bag?

It's not quite where it's supposed to go.

The bubble wrap things that are heat sealed.

And so, and I, you know, I imagine that, I imagine that a company like Amazon is making decisions based on their economics, probably both the cost of materials and the weight for transporting things on airplanes and all or however they move stuff around or the bulk.

They're also probably imposing costs on our system as they do that.

And at a minimum, we should be having conversations, especially since we have some big retailers based here in Seattle, to talk about what they're doing.

And I imagine they all have.

you know, environmental leaders within their company.

I don't know what those conversations would look like, but figuring out how to have those conversations, and even considering, you know, imposing fees to just recover our costs.

I mean, if the reality is that the plastic bubble wrap costs us money in our system, and we want to say, if you want to shift to that because it makes economic sense for you, that's fine, but we're going to recover the economic cost you're imposing on us.

Or maybe it's not fine, and we say it's banned, and you can't deliver those.

I don't know.

I would be interested, you know, they should be part of that conversation to tell us their analysis and what they're doing.

But obviously that's becoming a bigger source of the waste stream, whether it's being recycled or not, that we care about.

So I can tell you that we do talk with Amazon and a lot of the big, companies that are based here, Starbucks, Amazon, Costco, all of those companies we talk to regularly about the packaging.

We work closely with groups like the Product Stewardship Initiative.

We're very involved with a number of initiatives and groups and nonprofits around the country that also are working with them, the Recycling Partnership, and so we're working.

A lot of people think of the recycling stream, and I always say Seattle has control over a small slice of that stream.

We have influence, and we're really trying to use that influence upstream where the products are designed and developed.

And that's where the Amazons and the other companies and that's where the product stewardship initiative comes.

We're also working with our local jurisdictions and at the state level on ideas with product stewardship.

You'll hear extended producer responsibility.

Extended producer responsibility is kind of the closed loop, the circular economy where we're working on both a national, local, state level on looking, is that practical?

We were involved with helping write legislation that became a study bill this last legislative session where they're going to be looking at the extended producer responsibility for packaging and whether that's practical to go statewide.

That would actually push the cost that currently our customers are paying us to manage at the curb, would push those costs to manage that packaging upstream.

And the producers would create, it's similar to what's in BC.

British Columbia has a product stewardship.

extended producer responsibility, BC recycles program.

And we've been watching that really closely.

And basically it pushes the costs up on the producers.

And then there's no free riders too.

So it's, so, you know, right now it's not just Amazon.

There's a lot of other companies.

It's not just Starbucks.

There's a lot of other companies.

So trying to make sure everybody's at the table and everybody's paying into the system.

And it's been very interesting, but we are definitely working upstream and trying to influence how products are designed and that they be developed in a way that A, uses recycled content and B, is more easily recyclable and C, maybe doesn't even need to be there in the first place and maybe can be reduced.

And actually C comes first.

Yeah.

On that note, I just want to lift up, in addition to my earlier mention about composting and recycling access for multifamily residents, we're also going to be working on some plastic reduction measures.

I know the executive has some proposals, as does this committee that we've discussed before in previous meetings and was lifted up yesterday in the Seattle Climate Action Plan as an objective to enact legislation that will reduce single-use plastics.

And we had intended to have a presentation here today to discuss every other week garbage collection.

We had invited a city administrator from Renton who's been doing every other week garbage for 11 years now to share with us their experiences.

They were unable to make it.

We also were going to be joined by 350 Seattle.

We're going to have them come back at a subsequent meeting when the time works for everybody.

The product stewardship initiative, is that an industry driven or advocacy group or is it a blend?

It's a blend, but it's really their primary funders are industry.

And actually the executive director actually just recently moved to Olympia.

So we're having more easily meeting with her and discussing, but yeah, it's industry driven in a response to knowing that they need to do better and they need to be more environmental and what can they do.

So yeah, but it's a nonprofit.

One of the things that I would be intrigued by, if it were possible, to see if someone from that initiative could come to the table, perhaps with a pure advocacy organization like Zero Waste Washington, and maybe someone from British Columbia.

I know, my sense is, at least in Europe, they have a lot more, a lot stronger, kind of closed-loop product stewardship laws.

And, you know, companies like Amazon have a large presence over there, and so oftentimes we We hear we can't do this, but you are doing it right across the border, and you just don't want to do it.

But it might be interesting to have a conversation and see if there's a role for Seattle to play in accelerating some of the ideas that are already working elsewhere.

But anyways, I defer to you, Chair.

Did you say that the product stewardship effort came out of state legislation?

No.

Well, we've been working on product stewardship in different pieces, like paint.

There's a study or something?

But what's coming, what came out of the legislation for packaging is there's going to be a study on is extended producer responsibility viable for state and what would it look like at a state level?

Because it actually, something like that works better in a larger macro situation because of just, you're talking about packaging and that crosses borders really quickly.

You mentioned Europe.

most of Europe has extended producer responsibility.

They also have what they call modulated systems.

So the people are paying in based on what their container looks like, and then they're paying less if it's more easily recyclable and it contains, or they're paying more if it's harder to recycle.

So that study it's when do we expect it?

I think they're just starting to go out but Department of Ecology is charged and I believe it should be done by the end of next year but I can get back to you on the specifics on that.

So I was hoping you were gonna say before the next legislative session because I think that we could help set the table if there was a study.

to assist in your and others' advocacy at the state legislature, but it sounds like it's not going to happen.

It's a little optimistic, but I think maybe before the next legislation.

Well, I mean, I think there's still an opportunity to have that kind of a conversation, even if it's not about the results of the study.

Yeah.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

All right.

There's nothing further.

It's 11.35, and the meeting is adjourned.