Seattle City Council Finance & Housing Committee 8/3/21

I'm Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the Finance and Housing Committee meeting.

Excuse me, I just lost my Zoom there.

Good morning, I'm the chair of the Finance and Housing Committee, Teresa Mosqueda.

Today is Tuesday, August 3rd, 2021. The time is 9.31 a.m.

And the Finance and Housing Committee meeting will come to order.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Gonzalez?

Council Member Ruiz?

Present.

Council Member Strauss?

Excused.

Council Member Morales?

Here.

Madam Chair, that is a floor present to excuse.

Thank you very much.

Council President is excused and Council Member Strauss is excused.

He will be popping into the meeting here briefly as we discuss the Seattle Rescue Plan and the supplemental budget very briefly, but I understand they're not planning to be here for We have Councilmember Morales here.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Morales, as you have been present for most of these meetings as we've talked about both of these topics and our alternate.

It's great to see you again.

Okay, colleagues, we have a packed agenda for today.

I want to give you a chance to hear all of the items here so you know why we are potentially going to keep you at least until around 1230 or one.

I will do my best to get us out of here before one o'clock, but wanted to give you a summary of what's on our agenda.

We'll begin our meeting with public comment.

As always, we do have about 25 people signed up for public comment.

So those who are listening in right now, please note that you will have one minute to provide public comment.

You will hear a 10 second chime again at the end of your public comment.

But if you could start preparing your notes now for a one minute presentation, that would be great.

Then we can hear from everyone.

We will have, first on our agenda, the signing of the Domestic Workers Standards Board's recommendation response letter from this committee.

We will then have a meeting, excuse me, a briefing and possible vote on the Equitable Communities Initiative legislation, which we had the task force members with us last meeting.

We'll have a briefing, discussion, and possible vote on the Seattle Rescue Plan number two, which again focuses on transportation, senior care, and rental assistance.

We'll then have a briefing presentation and a possible vote on the intrafund loan.

And the last two items on our agenda include the grant acceptance and the mid-year supplemental ordinance, which we will hold for a vote for our next meeting.

And then last on our agenda as well is just a discussion on the multifamily tax exemption annual report, which tees up more information to come on possible legislation at our next meeting as well.

So those last three items, just briefing discussion.

Okay, any objection?

Hearing no objection to today's agenda, the agenda is adopted.

We're going to move right on into public comment to endeavor to get through this in a 30-minute time period.

I'm going to give folks one minute to speak.

We will call on you in the order in which you are registered.

If you are not registered to speak but would like to, you can still sign up before the end of public comment by going to the options listed on today's agenda.

for public comment.

You will need to make sure that you're using the same number that you dialed in to speak on when you registered for public comment this morning because we look at that phone number.

So please do make sure you're on the same number that you registered with.

I'll call three speakers at a time.

You will hear a prompt that says you have been unmuted, and that's your turn to hit star six, star six on your own phone, and make sure your phone is off of mute so that we can hear you and you can begin speaking.

Again, you'll hear a chime at the end of your one-minute allotment.

That chime will come in at 10 seconds, and that's your indication to wrap up your comments so you don't get cut off.

And again, you are free to send us any comments in writing at Seattle.

We will ask you to disconnect from the line and continue following us on Seattle channel or the other listening options on today's agenda.

and we will start calling on folks in the order in which they appear on today's call-in.

If you are signed up for public comment and not yet there, please do dial in.

This is a heads up that we're going to move through these and we'll start calling for folks who are here in person.

Shamir Tana, Danielle Alvarado, and Maria Solis, you are listed as my first three.

Good morning, Shamir.

Hello.

My name is Shamir Tana.

I'm a District 7 resident.

I'm calling to ask you to follow through on your commitment and transfer all $50 million in salary savings out of SPD.

This money should go to programs that provide true community health and safety, like Just Care.

Just Care, for example, has like a 39% reduction in 9-1-1 calls in areas immediately around the encampments it serves.

That's community safety.

That's truly investing in community.

Sinking more money into SPD is the exact opposite.

A recent report indicates a horrific but unsurprising and consistently surfaced conclusion.

SPD harms, harasses, and traumatizes Black and Indigenous people.

In the interest of time, I'm going to share two of the numerous findings from that report.

One, black and native men were more likely to be searched than white men, even though white men were most likely to be found with a weapon.

And two, black people were subjected to force at a per capita rate more than seven times the per capita rate than white people.

These facts are completely unacceptable and require us to change the entire system.

I'm strongly urging you to start by listening to the community, following the facts and commitment, and transferring all $50 million out of SPD and into community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next person is Danielle.

Good morning, Danielle Alvarado.

Good morning.

On behalf of Fair Work Center and Work Team Washington, I'm here to reiterate the importance of the Domestic Workers Standard Board recommendations related to portable benefits and funding community organizations.

Workers consistently tell us that lack of access to sick time and paid time off is a huge problem for them.

Most continue to get no paid sick time, even though domestic workers treated as employees have technically had it since 2011. Workers know that Seattle needs a portable benefits program to ensure that everyone in the industry can take paid time off when they need it.

And we know that developing good policy depends on centering the expertise and perspectives of workers.

When they're included from the beginning we can be we can be sure that the policies we develop actually meet their needs.

And the best way to do that is by resourcing community organizations.

We're proud of the accomplishments of the COES program over the past five years.

Right now, we have an opportunity to build on that success by resourcing the outreach and education work that is critical to ensuring that workers' voices are included both before and after a new ordinance is adopted.

Universal access to pay sick time is critically important to protecting public health throughout the pandemic and to an equitable recovery once it's over.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you for your time this morning.

The next three speakers I'm going to read are listed as not present, so please dial in if you can hear me.

Maria Solis, Marisol Alonso and Rosabal Vasquez.

You are listed as not present.

The next three speakers that are listed that are present are Laura Gonzalez, Trevona Thompson-Wiley, and Stephanie Ingram.

Good morning, Laura.

Good morning.

I'm a nanny for 18 years in the city of Seattle, and I'm part of the Nanny Collective.

And as you know, our industry, it has suffered for not having benefits as other workers have.

So please, I'm asking you that we need more discussion about the resources We need to learn, like the community needs to learn how to exercise our rights.

And at the same time, the families need to know about that now we have these ordinances that protect some part of the rights that other workers have.

Please, I am asking you to consider to give money to the resources enough to please put the benefits, portable benefits that we need to develop in the standard goals.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Laura.

Trevona, good morning, Trevona.

I see Trayana on my line here.

Sorry about that.

Please go ahead.

Trayana?

Yes.

Hi, good morning, council.

Thank you guys so much.

I am here to support the funding for the Garfield Superblock as noted by Sharma Sawant's office.

This will help get this project to ground level ready, right?

We've been seeking funding and there is an amendment that really allows us to move forward This is a effort by the community for over a decade.

And so I think it's very important I support this project as a legacy resident of the Central District and somebody who does work heavily in the Central District.

I'm also really excited that nearly 600 community members have signed our petition to support this grassroots effort for the Garfield Superblock.

And I'm personally excited because This project will really showcase the legacy families that have made the Central District what it is and the legacy communities and ethnicities that built the Central District.

So please approve the $500,000 in funding for the Garfield Superblock Project support.

Thank you very much.

And I do believe we still have Trevona as well who needs to speak.

Trevona Thompson-Wiley.

So we're going to see if Trevona is on the line along with Maria Solis, and then we'll go to Doris Garcia.

Good morning, Trevona.

Hi, my name is Trevona.

I'm calling today to ask for you to follow through with your commitment and transfer all $15 million in salary savings out of FPD.

This money should go to programs that provide true community health and safety, like the Community Safety Capacity Building Fund and Just Care, who actually provide services that address root causes and make our community safer for everyone.

Two recent reports commissioned by SPD make the case for transferring money to the community.

One report shows that they continue to harm, harass, and traumatize Black and Indigenous people.

The second report showed that alternative and non-sworn response could be appropriate for nearly 50% of the calls.

STD and cops simply do not stop violence.

It's plain and simple.

And using any fear-mongering tactics about crime and violence is an age-old tactic whenever police legitimacy, power, and resources are challenged.

Experts suggest that homicides are increasing due to pandemic and economic stress and increased gun sales and closure of community institutions.

We need that money to the community because our community is suffering and not in the hands of murderous SPD.

I really wish that was my time.

Thank you.

Thank you for calling in today.

Maria Solis, you are next, followed by Doris Garcia.

Good morning, Maria.

And Maria, just push star six on your phone.

Si puedes empujar estrella seis, por favor.

Vamos a esperar un momentito.

Let's wait just a second.

Push star six, estrella seis, por favor.

Okay, vamos a esperar.

Maria, voy a llamar la próxima persona, pero yo voy a buscar su nombre, si estás.

If you can push star six, I'm going to call on the next person.

Let's keep you up on the screen, though, so I can see when you've come unmuted.

Again, star six.

Doris Garcia, we will call on you next.

Good morning, Doris.

Buenos dias.

Perfect.

Go ahead.

Hi, good morning.

I'm going to share an audio from one of our members later.

I hope this is OK.

And we try to do this in two minutes because I didn't know it was one minute only.

So I apologize for that.

Here it is.

Thank you for your attention.

This is Colleen Boyer.

I've been a nanny in the Seattle area for seven years, and I have supported the Domestic Workers Organization through its many phases, including the rulemaking process.

I feel really proud of that.

I'm so happy to support it now and have supported it the full time.

I'm here today to ask for your support for our industry by providing us workers with the rights that we deserve.

As you well know, domestic workers have been subject to inequitable standards for far too long.

And even when the city of Seattle passed the PSST ordinance in 2011, our industry was, yet again, left out of these rights, just like in the past.

And still today, many workers in our industry don't get the basic benefit of paid sick time.

We need a mechanism and a structure so that all the workers can get paid the time off to take better care of their health and their family just like many other workers already do and just like is a pretty normal standard for other workers and other industries to have.

Portable PTO would be that mechanism.

The city should follow the expertise of domestic workers in our community and follow the Domestic Workers Standards Board's expert guidance.

You need to allocate sufficient funding and resources for the Domestic Workers Standards Board, the community organizations, and the city for them to be able to engage in a meaningful way with workers and other stakeholders.

Okay, thank you so much.

Appreciate it, Doris.

Thanks for playing that.

And we will happily take the recording as well if you want to email that to us.

Appreciate the time today.

I'm going to try for Maria Solis one more time.

Maria, if you can push star six.

Maria, si puedes empujar estrella seis para empezar a hablar.

Okay, muy bien.

Bueno.

Hola.

Hola, buen dia.

Mi nombre es Maria Solis.

Soy niñera de la ciudad de Seattle por más de 15 años y estoy orgullosa de participar desde los inicios y esfuerzos de la creación de la ley de las trabajadoras del hogar.

Como niñera me he dado cuenta de la importancia de nosotros las trabajadoras del hogar.

Es muy importante y crucial y además debemos, tenemos la experiencia y sería muy bueno que nos tomaran en cuenta y reforzar a nuestros derechos de la creación de los beneficios portátiles.

Le pido a este consejo que considere y aplique las peticiones de la mesa de estándares laborales.

Nosotras, las trabajadoras del hogar, dependemos de nuestro trabajo y las remuneraciones de tal.

Tenemos tiempo y recursos limitados.

Los trabajadores activos deberíamos de ser remunerados por tiempo y experiencia.

Este comité podría dedicar fondos y recursos necesarios para involucrar a los trabajadores y desarrollar la política en conjunto con nosotros la mesa de estándares para que podamos asegurar que los trabajadores tengamos tiempo libre y pagado en momentos necesarios.

Muchas gracias.

Gracias, Maria.

Voy a traducir, voy a tratar.

I'm going to try to translate that.

Maria said she's been a domestic worker for 15 years.

She's very proud of the work that they have done as domestic workers and proud of the work that they did originally on the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

Noted that it's very important to have domestic workers who have the experience of working in this field to have them help craft the tables to talk about the policies that need to be changed.

Please listen to the recommendations of the workers.

They have limited time and limited resources, but what they're not limited in is experience.

And what they're saying is that they want the funds, the funding and the policy so that they can have things like paid time off.

and to advance the recommendations in the Domestic Workers' Letter.

Más o menos, more or less.

I hope I did a good job of translating that for you today.

Thank you for calling in.

Okay, we're going to try to get through everybody who's signed up, so again, one-minute timer.

The next person is Stephanie Ingram, followed by Peter Condit and Karen Esteban.

Good morning, Stephanie.

Hi, thank you, Council, for having me here today.

My name is Stephanie Ingram.

I'm a long-time Capitol Hill and Central Area resident.

I'm calling this morning to request that council allocate $500,000 to the Garfield Superblock project as part of this year's supplemental budget process.

This community-led project has been ongoing for 15 years now, and it's time to support the community by providing the funds needed to get this project ready for construction.

This project has been strongly supported by the community, as shown by the over 600 survey responses Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours that have been put in by community members.

We are also actively partnering with Seattle Parks and Recreation to raise funds for this project.

So we are really looking for this money to get us to that point.

Investing in our public spaces in the central area shows commitment to the history and diversity of the area and is an investment in the livability safety and future of this vibrant community.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

And good morning, Peter.

Just star six on you.

Good morning.

This is Peter Condit in District six.

I'm calling on City Council to transfer all of SPD's fifteen million dollars in salary savings out of the department.

There are many reasons to do so.

Two recent reports commissioned by SPD at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars to taxpayers have provided data that supports transferring money out of the SPD.

One report found what we already know to be true.

SPD continues to harm, harass, and traumatize black and indigenous people at a rate disproportionate to their population.

And Shamir cited those numbers.

A second report shows that alternative non-sworn response could be appropriate for nearly 50% of calls for service.

Nearly 80% of SBD calls were for non-criminal events.

Only 6%, 6% were associated with felonies of any kind.

Why then is the mayor proposing to offer SBD hiring bonuses?

SBD just had its largest class of new hires in 20 years.

More money for anti-black, anti-indigenous violent policing is not the answer.

Transfer all 15 million out of SBD and into

Thank you very much.

And we'll go to Karen Esteven, and then we will go back to Marisol.

Good morning, President Esteven.

Good morning, Committee Chair Mosqueda and members of the committee.

My name is Karen Esteven, and I am a member of the Garfield Superblock Coalition and longtime resident of the neighborhood.

I'm speaking in support of Council Member Sawant's amendment to allocate $500,000 towards the Garfield Superblock through the underfund ability of the SPD budget.

The Garfield Superblock is a special space made so by the people who have lived here long before I moved into the neighborhood.

This project is by the people for the people and most importantly honors the people and rich history of this area.

This project helps to undo some of the harms that the community has endured endured such as gentrification at a serious rate.

This space creates vital community space that honors the people who have lived here over the millennia from the Duwamish people to Black Americans.

Rarely do we see a park do this in a way that truly honors the people and history of an area using art nature play and gathering spaces.

I urge you to support the allocation of these funds for the tremendous work of our community that has already taken place is not lost.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

And we're going to go to Marisol Alonso.

And then I want to note for the record, Ann Sutter, you're next, but your list is not present, as well as Raul Talacia.

So if you are listening in, please do dial in Ann and Raul.

OK, good morning, Marisol.

Buenos dias.

Or did we already hear from you?

Marisol?

Just star six to unmute.

Estrella 6 para empezar a hablar, por favor.

Okay, we're gonna, oh, buenos dias.

Buenos dias, mi nombre es Marisol Alonso.

Gracias por recibir mi llamada, si me escuchan.

Si, por favor, si puedes continuar y voy a traducir despues.

Perfect, okay, mi nombre es Marisol Alonso y formo parte del colectivo de niñeras.

Como miembro líder, he tenido la oportunidad de apoyar a otras trabajadoras como yo, ayudándoles a conocer sus derechos y pelear por ellos como yo he aprendido en mi tiempo con el colectivo.

Como trabajadora del hogar, he vivido diferentes experiencias y he vivido de primera mano la falta de derechos y beneficios en nuestra industria.

Las trabajadoras del hogar merecemos derechos a días de descanso y enfermedades pagadas.

importar si somos empleadas o contratistas independientes.

Las trabajadoras del hogar necesitamos de un mecanismo para que podamos acceder a tiempos libres pagados por enfermedad como muchos otros trabajadores ya lo tienen.

Tener acceso a beneficios portátiles sería este mecanismo.

Les pido a este consejo que apoye a nuestra industria proviendo los recursos necesarios para desarrollar una póliza para la creación de una plataforma de beneficios portátiles, así como la creación de nuevos materiales compartidos por diversos medios de difusión para que más trabajadores conozcan sus derechos.

De antemano, gracias por su apoyo.

Thank you so much for calling.

So I'm going to try to translate and for folks who are listening, the next time we have a domestic workers item on our agenda, we're going to have a translator.

as we always try to do, but we did not have a request for that two weeks in advance, so we're just going to include that every time we have a domestic worker item in the future so that there's a translator.

Here we go.

I'm going to translate for Marisol.

Hello, I am Marisol.

I'm a member of Nanny Collective.

I'm here advocating for the domestic workers who are similar to me.

Among the things she said, she said she's here to talk about the need for benefits like every other worker has, but that they don't have.

Things that allow for them to be able to take breaks, like paid time off and sick leave.

We need a mechanism to be able to access paid time off and sick leave to make sure that we can get this benefit to all workers in the industry.

They need a platform to be able to access paid time off, sick leave, health benefits.

And she is hoping that we will take these recommendations and continue to advocate for more domestic workers so that they can access benefits like that.

Okay, the next three people are Rosaval Velazquez, Ann Sutter, and Sharon Koshla.

Good morning, Rosaval.

Hello, my name is Rosalba Canino, yes, and thank you for your time, and I'm here to ask the council about approving the portable benefits for us.

And that way, when the employer hire us, they have to let us know about this.

Here in Seattle, there are a lot of us who doesn't know about our benefits.

And we are kind of scared to ask about it.

And it's the law, right?

Sometimes we don't have time to take breaks.

We don't get paid overtime.

We don't have the benefits to get a PTO.

And we deserve that.

We deserve that because all of you guys have that.

So it's the same for us because we get tired and we are doing a really important job for your life.

And we love it.

We love your kids.

We love to be around your families.

So we deserve that.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you.

And good morning and center followed by Sharon.

Good morning and.

Okay, I'm looking for Anne to pop on the screen.

After Anne, we'll be Sharon.

We can get Sharon or Anne on the line.

Okay, I see Anne.

Anne, do you wanna hit star six to unmute yourself?

Okay.

I'm gonna leave Anne on the line, and if you can pull up Sharon.

Anne, if you can hear me, it's just star six to unmute you.

And Sharon, if you can hear me, star six to unmute, please.

Okay, I'm going to continue calling names here.

We can leave this.

Hi, Sharon.

Please go ahead.

Hi, my name is Sharon.

I'm a longtime resident of the Central Area.

I'm actually calling from the Garfield Superblock this morning with a group of people, which I'm really excited to be out here supporting this project with.

We are asking you to support the amendment for funding the Garfield super box project.

She is asking for 500K for this project which will help us get through the design process.

This is a tough process in a community project.

We know we always want to see the project being built but a lot of design goes in before that and we need the money to get through that.

We're at, this will also help us with matching funds that we are further looking at, you know, the building a park of this size will take a lot more money than 500K.

So this, if we don't get this money now for a grant that we're applying for, we're leaving money on the table.

Further, this money is being asked for through the STD money.

And I can't think of a better way to spend this money in a public park and the safety of our community.

Parks are such an important part about safety and security.

help them help bring down mental illness and bring down crime.

I think this is the best place to put it and I would love all of you to vote yes on this amendment.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And the next person is Latonya.

Good morning, Latonya.

See on there just star six unmute.

After Latonya will be Penny, O'Grady, Rainier, Metzger, and Laura Lowe.

Good morning, LaTanya.

If you can hear me, just star six.

Okay, I'm gonna leave LaTanya up on the screen.

Let's go to Penny.

Oh, good morning, LaTanya.

I see you now.

Good morning.

Hello, my name is LaTanya Sevier.

I'm a resident of Beacon Hill, and I'm calling today to ask you to follow through on your commitment to transfer all the $15 million in salary savings out of SPD.

This money should go to programs that provide true community health and safety, like the Community Safety Capacity Building Funds and Just Care, and provide services that address root causes and make our communities safer for everyone.

Fear mongering about crime and violence is an age-old tactic whenever police legitimacy, power, or resources are challenged.

Research shows cops increase violence.

Research also shows that increasing community-based organizations reduces homicides without increasing violence through police.

There are two recent reports commissioned by SPD that make the case for transferring this money to the community.

One of the reports found that what we already know to be true, SPD continues to harm, harass, and traumatize black and indigenous people.

A second report shows alternatives non-sworn response could be appropriate for nearly 50% of SPD's calls.

Why then is the mayor proposing to offer SPD hiring bonuses?

SPD just had its largest new hiring class in 20 years.

More money for anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, violent policing is not the answer.

Thank you very much, Latonya.

Penny, good morning.

Good morning.

Can you hear me?

Yes, I can.

Thank you.

I could hear you.

Now you're back.

There we go.

I see.

All right.

I got it.

Okay.

Good morning.

I'm Penny O'Grady from District 6. Thank you, council members, for your commitment and your hard work.

Today, you have before you a golden opportunity to continue bolstering community safety by following through on your commitment last summer and transfer all $15 million in salary savings out of SPD.

This money should go to programs that provide true community safety and health like the Community Safety Capacity Building Fund Just Care and participatory budgeting.

Offering bonuses will not provide more safety as indicated in reports cited by others on this call.

Data shows that adding more police will not provide more public safety.

More money for anti-Black anti-indigenous policing violence is not the answer.

Please.

transfer all $15 million out of SPD and into the community.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And Rainier good morning.

You are up next.

Just oh perfect.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Rainier Metzger.

I'm a longtime Seattleite and graduate of Garfield High School and I'm calling in this morning to voice support for the Garfield Superblock.

This is a fantastic community-sponsored project that brings obvious sort of urban design benefits to the Garfield site, including ADA improvements, better street and site connections, clay areas, improved plantings, but the best part of this project is the legacy promenade.

And this is a pathway that tells the story through art installations of the rich cultural diversity and the history of the central area.

And this is exactly the kind of project that Seattle needs in order to define its community to build its community and to continue community as the CD changes into the future.

Please support the $500,000 to complete the master plan and design up.

Thank you very much.

And Laura Lowe, good morning.

Good morning, council members.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

My name is Laura.

I'm a renter in District 7. I ask you to take action for real public safety.

transfer $15 million to public safety solutions being asked for by community members who have suffered greatly because of years of willful ignorance about the harm of policing systems.

Last year, you agreed to transfer $5 million of SPD salary savings to support jury budgeting, and it's super disappointing that no funds have been transferred so far.

I encourage you to look at the patrol division of SPD, which is currently about 25% of the budget, A patrolman last year got paid $414,000 in salary, including overtime.

For the same cost, the city could have hired six or seven human service counselors at $33 an hour.

And in contrast, the United States full-time minimum wage can only afford rent in 7% of U.S. counties.

Our budget and our values.

Police officers are getting rich while often traumatizing our communities, including chasing people without housing wastefully and traumatically from one side of the street to the other, something I've seen happen

Thank you very much, Laura.

And we're going to do Ann Satter followed by Valentino Montesinos and Benjamin Martz.

Good morning, Ann.

Hi.

Looks like you're off mute.

Can you hear me?

Ann, you might be on mute on your own phone.

We've had that happen before.

If you could double check that.

Sorry, can you hear me now?

Yes, thanks so much.

Thank you.

I am speaking in support of the $500,000 of funding for Garfield Super Club.

I am a member of the core coalition and participated in this project for over three years voluntarily.

This funding will allow us to take an important step on the long path to have a project completed.

As a member of the 23rd Avenue Action Community Team, I saw the impact The changes in zoning have produced for Jackson, Cherry, and Union Street intersections with the 23rd Avenue.

My interest comes from my long history with Praptine Arts.

In closing, a major piece of this project is the Legacy and Promise Promenade, which will feature seven public art pieces of the earliest settlers to the Central Area in one piece that's a collaboration.

In closing, again, We build a community day by day.

We build stories and decades of lives.

We build history and centuries.

Please help us to this goal.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you.

And colleagues, I did say we'd have 30 minutes.

We have six more people signed up.

So if there's no objection, I will extend public comment for six more minutes so we can get the rest of the folks in.

OK, hearing no objection, we'll continue here.

Valentina, I see you on the line.

Just star six to unmute, and then you'll be followed by Benjamin Maritz.

Hi this is Valentina Montesino.

I am calling in to urge the council to allocate five hundred thousand dollars to the Garfield Superblock.

It is long overdue that the city of Seattle live up to its commitment to renovate renovate the Garfield Superblock.

Now is the time for the city officials to restore public trust in government and fulfill the request of central area residents for better lighting accessibility and safety in our parks.

I have joined the group of volunteers of Garfield Superblock to advocate for these basic requests as well as to honor the rich culture of the area.

I urge you to allocate the $500,000 to this project as the tangible and non-tangible benefits will be reaped for years to come.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And Benjamin, good morning.

Hi, my name is Ben.

Thanks for having me.

I'm speaking in support of Council Member Sawant's proposal to fund the next stage of the development for the Garfield Superblock.

I'm an affordable housing developer and part of a team that is building Acer House, an equitable development with 107 affordable units across the street at 23rd and Sherry.

I've been incredibly impressed by the Superblock team and their tireless volunteer commitment to helping the city complete its promised public space improvements.

This is the kind of civic engagement that we all absolutely should support.

And while I'm here on this call, I've been learning about this issue for portable benefits for domestic workers.

I'm the father of four kids and the employer of an absolutely essential domestic worker myself.

And I just like to add my unequivocal support for this important measure.

Thank you very much.

Excellent, thank you.

And the last four speakers are going to be Andrew Kyship, Robert Steffens Jr., Rosabal Velazquez, though I recognize that name, want to make sure it's not a duplicate, and Adrian Carroll.

And we have Rao Talasia and Ty Messiah.

Rao and Ty, you are listed as ready to speak, but you are not present.

So if you can hear me, dial in.

We'll try and get you.

Andrew, good morning.

I see you unmuted.

Thanks so much.

Thank you.

Good morning, Madam Chair and council members.

I'm Andrew Koshyap and I'm an attorney at Legal Voice, which advocates for gender and racial justice through policy change alongside our community partners.

And today we'd like to highlight and commend your support for the development of portable benefits legislation by the Standards Board and community in collaboration with OLS.

Domestic workers need portable benefits, specifically portable paid time off.

As the worker speakers before me have explained, the current benefits system and laws are not built around the realities of their work.

So we need new laws to help these workers.

A mandatory portable PTO policy would be such a new law.

It's a new way of providing benefits to keep up with the changing economy that's leaving out low-wage workers the most.

And as we see with domestic workers, this means an overwhelming majority of workers who are BIPOC women and immigrants are those left out.

So it's a racial justice policy also aligned with the city's race and social justice initiative.

And we applaud the community's support for this new policy for mandatory PTO that will provide basic economic justice for domestic workers.

Thank you.

Wonderful, thank you.

And our last two speakers are Robert and Aiden.

So good morning, Robert.

Good morning.

My name is Robert Stevens Jr., Central Area resident and founder of the Garfield Superblock.

I'm going to be very short and simple this morning.

This is a project that the community agreed to work with the city to get done so we could have a historical marker and tourism and economic development in the core of this historical site.

We have a group of professional coalition of architects, union and residents that we need your help now to fund this portion of the project.

So we beg of you to keep your promise so that we can work together in a positive way to deal with the fallout of gentrification and race and social justice equity.

We want to do these kind of things in a positive way.

Please continue.

We want to do these kinds of things in a positive way and we want to work together with you guys.

So please help us with funding of the 5K.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

And the last speaker is Aiden.

Good morning Aiden.

Thank you.

This is Aiden in D6 calling today in support of Black Action Coalition and so many others in the need to transfer all $15 million out of SBD budget into community safety and also support the Garbo Superblock.

But we continue to see more uh...

and more learned about her uh...

forms of community safety and i think it's very ironic that that recent report almost fifty percent exactly uh...

at the call could uh...

non-form uh...

you know uh...

it's clear that what went when when many of you committed last year to fundraising fifty percent you met over a period of two years and if you want to invite i think this is one of them I'm now working nights and that gives me a privilege opportunity to call in when a lot of other people can't.

Last year I was off work and that's part of why perhaps.

Thank you.

We appreciate you dialing in today.

Folks, that does conclude our public comment.

Everybody who was listed as present did get a chance to speak, so we're going to continue on with items on our agenda.

Thank you for your flexibility and your time.

And again, for future meetings that have a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights items, we're going to try to have a professional translator on the line as this is the policy and practice of the city to make sure that those who have that skill and experience get paid for it and there's adequate.

and accurate translations.

So, let's continue on.

Madam Clerk, could you please call, will you please read into the record, item number one.

Agenda item number one, response letter to domestic workers standards for recommendations for briefing and discussion.

Thank you very much.

And Karina, do you want to introduce yourself?

Hi, I am Karina Bull with Council Central staff.

Glad to be here this morning.

Well, we're thankful for your time and thank you for all the work that you've done on the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights to begin with.

Thank you for the follow-up work that you've done in responding to this letter of recommendation.

We've seen you in committee before.

And a face that we haven't seen in committee but that was instrumental in our office was Lori Maher, who is in our office.

who is our legislative intern and has been doing a tremendous amount of work with you and visiting with members of the Domestic Workers Standards Board, as well as the coalition working on portable benefits.

So I want to thank Lori for her work as well.

Just to orient us very briefly, Domestic Workers Ordinance passed in 2018, colleagues.

This was the first of its kind at the city level in the nation.

We did have eight other jurisdictions to look at that were more at the state level.

But this was a historic passage at the city level.

We guaranteed access to minimum wage.

We guaranteed rest and meal breaks for domestic workers.

We set up the standards board that has provided the recommendations to us today.

We made sure that the Domestic Workers Standards Board was composed of both hiring entities and domestic workers to make sure that recommendations coming to council had the benefit of both hiring entities and the workers themselves.

Those recommendations were submitted to us on May 18th, 2021. This is the first time we had the chance to receive recommendations from the Standards Board that was stood up the year prior.

And we had a presentation in our committee on July 20th.

Again, that presentation has been linked to our agendas, and we have had the opportunity to hear directly from the Domestic Worker Standards Board's representatives and have had multiple chances to hear during public testimony as well.

The requirement for our committee is to respond to recommendations within 120 days.

Our office has engaged in multiple meetings with the Domestic Workers Standards Board, the Coalition of Portable Benefits Members, and have worked through some of the various recommendations as well with the Office of Labor Standards to identify if there are certain policy recommendations or funding recommendations that could be advanced on a faster timeline that did not require legislative action.

I want to thank members of the board and the coalition for sharing their priorities with us and being present to walk us through those recommendations for their engagement with the committee as we considered the board and coalition's request and have worked together to refine our response in the letter that is in front of us.

I want to thank as well Office of Labor Standards, specifically Jasmine Rwaha, and also Steve Marchese as well as Janae from Office of Labor Standards who've been engaged with us as we have been looking for early action items that our city family could take in response to the recommendations that were put forward by the Domestic Worker Standards Board in Maine.

The letter that is in front of you is an opportunity for us to both A, recognize the important work and expertise, as one of the callers said today, the expertise that the Domestic Worker Standards Board has included, and commit to a few items for I'm going to hand it over to Corrina Bull from central staff to walk us through the committee's response letter.

So this is a chance for us to see how those recommendations align with the five opportunities for options for the committee to respond to.

Again, I want to note that this is not us as a committee forward committing the full council to any future action, but more a recognition that the committee would be interested in receiving proposals or additional information and potentially working with the Standards Board and Office of Labor Standards for future policies as well.

So really it kind of falls into those three categories.

Interested in receiving proposals, interested in learning more information, and possibly working on a longer time frame on some of these proposals.

And as we welcome this feedback and opportunity to work on some of the immediate and longer-term solutions, Again, we cannot forward commit future councils or, you know, determine exactly what will come out of the budget process, but more interested in receiving information and working with them to try to advance some of these recommendations.

I hope that is a helpful grounding and I'll turn it over to Karina to walk us through the letter.

Thank you.

I will begin by sharing my screen so that members of the committee and the public can actually see the letter.

Here it is.

There is no presentation for this.

Instead, we'll be able to focus directly on the language of the letter.

And I'll also begin with a note that there will be a forthcoming Spanish translation of this letter, and it should be available on the council website either later today or tomorrow morning.

And this, or my presentation today, since there was a more in-depth We'll be giving a high-level overview of things that remain the same from that previous presentation, and then some more information about a few of the clarifications that exist in this final version of the committee's response to the Domestic Workers Standards Board.

So, as Councilmember Mosqueda mentioned, the Board presented their recommendations on May 18th.

And there were four broad areas of their focus, investing in community expertise and building trust, providing more materials and resources to those affected by the ordinance, implementing policy changes for improvement to the rights that domestic workers now have, and then also mandating portable benefits.

The committee's response will fall into one or more of the five categories of supporting the submission of a proposal, requesting more information, requesting the board to develop alternatives, rejecting the proposal with reasons, or requesting a longer timeline.

So none of the responses to the recommendations include a rejection.

It's either one of these, of the four remaining options, and sometimes there's more than one.

That's something that's changed in this final version of the letter, in that In order to provide the board with clarification and some help with priority settings, since they are very eager to work on a large number of projects, sometimes more than one response could possibly help the board figure out how to prioritize what comes next.

So in the interest of time, you can see here that there's a fair amount of a narration, but I will move ahead to one of the charts that is at the end of the letter.

which provides a summary by recommendation of the committee's response.

So to begin, the first recommendation was to fund community organizations that OLS has contracts with.

OLS has contracts with a wide variety of community and business organizations to be the anchor of outreach for the community.

And so the board is recommending to further build on the trust of these community partners and recognizing that domestic worker outreach is inherently different and more difficult than perhaps other types of outreach for labor standards.

So they're interested in more funds to make this work happen.

So the board would support a submission from the board or office of labor standards for that proposal.

And that proposal could come in the form of the Office of Labor Standards budget proposal that would be submitted to Council in September, or it could be a separate proposal from the board that is made directly to Council members.

Number two is a recommendation to compensate domestic workers for their expertise.

Those would be domestic workers serving on the Domestic Workers Standards Board and perhaps domestic workers who are answering information in the form of a focus group or a survey.

In the last presentation and the draft version of this letter, There was a potential response of a request for further information that remains the same with some extra clarification in the narrative part of this letter that recognizes that OLS has identified a path to pay workers within their existing budget and there needs to be some more time to figure out the trajectory of this path to vet it with the law department and to think about it within the framework of similarly situated boards and commissions across the city.

So this would be requesting more information pending the result of OLS's process to learn more information about using their existing budget to pay domestic workers.

Number three is a recommendation to fund development of new outreach materials and to expand language access for translation and interpretation.

What remains the same is that the board or the committee welcomes submission of a proposal to fund this recommendation with clarification that the idea of funding a mailing to go to all households in Seattle or a targeted segment of households in Seattle has been wrapped up into this recommendation as well.

and those that would be contemplated considering a consultant that the board is interested in hiring to learn more about what would be the most effective methods for outreach.

And so this is a two-part response, supporting the recommendation of the proposal and also a longer timeline pending the results of the consultant's recommendations.

Next is funding improvement of the domestic worker section on the OLS website.

This is a similar response from the committee.

It would be supporting the submission of a proposal and also wanting to learn more from Office of Labor Standards and feedback from others about the scope of the project and what is going to work best to improve the website and make it more user friendly.

Number five is a recommendation to ensure third party platform compliance with domestic workers ordinance.

Those would be third parties like say an app based nanny website or brick and mortar, nanny services company or cleaning services company that might hire workers that are then sent into a family's home.

So what's different about this is that instead of requesting a submission of a proposal, is requesting more information and stakeholder engagement on this issue and also a pending more stakeholder engagement and wanting to learn more about where compliance is lacking in these third parties.

Number six would be addressing the devastating impact of lack of healthcare for domestic workers.

This would be the same.

requesting or saying that there would be a support for legislative changes in the state legislature and also wanting to allow more time for the recommendations so that Office of Labor Standards could engage in an interdepartmental team to learn more about how, from other departments, about how to improve direct access to healthcare for domestic workers.

Number seven, regarding implementing policy changes, would be requiring hiring entities to provide domestic workers with information about their rights and conditions of work.

So the Notice of Rights is standard for other labor standards as a requirement.

The Domestic Workers Ordinance, it is recommended, but it is not a requirement.

So this would be as far as the committee's response, would be supporting the submission of a proposal to put before the council in 2022, so that 2022 is added clarification.

It would be for next year.

Number eight, eliminating the exclusion of publicly funded home care workers from the Domestic Worker Ordinance.

Same idea.

The committee would support the submission of a proposal to put before the council next year, pending stakeholder engagement.

and number nine, eliminating the interference standard for joint hiring entity liability.

The committee is interested in this recommendation on a longer timeline, pending stakeholder engagement and further research and of the board's prioritization of this issue.

Just for quick reference, right now, the domestic worker ordinance would not hold a customer who engaged a domestic worker through a third party such as a cleaning company or a nanny services provider unless that family directly interfered with the worker's rights such as denying rest breaks or denying a meal period or discrimination or harassment.

So that would be pending further stakeholder engagement on whether or not to move forward with that.

And then last is a recommendation to develop affordable benefits program for domestic workers.

This response has not changed since last time, but it has been clarified.

The committee would support the submission of a proposal for the 2022 budget that would fund Office of Labor Standards to develop a policy in collaboration with the board and community partners for council's review in 2022. So what that would mean is that the committee would be supportive of a resolution that could memorialize the committee's support for OLS developing a portable benefits policy in conjunction with the community.

And there could be something in the budget process as well, where there could be a statement of legislative intent, or there could be funds added to the budget to support Office of Labor Standards in doing this work, recognizing that it would take a significant amount of time, extra staffing might be needed, and there might be more funds needed for consultants as well.

So that is the overview of all of the recommendations.

Are there any questions?

Thank you very much, Karina.

I also really appreciate the way in which the memo has been constructed, the narrative aspect, the summary table by recommendation, and then the final attachment, which is a summary table by which option each of those items fall into.

So great, great response.

And again, I'm not seeing any questions.

I would reiterate for this last piece, I know we've heard a lot, especially from members of the Portable Benefits Coalition, interest in not just having OLS do the work themselves, not just having the city central staff do the work itself, but really wanting there to be a joint partnership with stakeholders so that a policy is developed in tandem.

We looked at places like Philadelphia and one of the concerns was they didn't want a model that had a department go away for two years, come up with a policy and then reveal it after rulemaking.

So this kind of reiteration of joint partnership throughout 2022 to develop the policy, I think helps strike that right balance.

So any questions on this letter?

Okay, I'm not hearing any.

At this moment, I'd like to have the clerk call the roll for the council members who would wish to sign on to the Domestic Workers Standards Board response letter.

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Madam Chair, that is four council members that wish to sign on to the letter.

Wonderful.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

We will finalize this letter and we will have the translated Spanish version as well.

I will do one final round to other council members, as the council president has suggested.

If any additional council members would like to sign their name, we would, of course, welcome that.

And it is my interest in trying to get this out as quickly as possible, though.

So for members of the Domestic Workers Standards Board, do note this letter is on its way to you.

And Karina, great work.

Appreciate all of your time on this item, as well as Lori from our office.

Much appreciated.

Wonderful.

Let's move on to item number two.

Item number two, Council Bill 120131, an ordinance amending Ordinance 126237, which adopted the 2021 budget, changing appropriations to various departments and budget control levels for briefing, discussion and possible vote.

Wonderful.

Thank you very much.

I want to welcome to the table here Director Dan Eder from Central Staff.

Thank you very much for being with us.

And this is, excuse me, this is the second time we've had the chance to really talk about this in committee.

We had multiple conversations about the the ECI and the task force in the last year in this committee.

And this is our opportunity to move forward on the recommendations that we heard directly from the Equitable Communities Initiative Task Force.

So to put this item in front of us before we begin discussion, I'm gonna go ahead and move the passage of the bill so that it's in front of us for discussion.

We also have two amendments that we'll consider after we do a little grounding conversation.

Colleagues, I move the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 120131. It's been moved and seconded that the bill be in front of us before we consider amendments.

Director Eder, would you like to walk us through any orientation of the legislation?

Yes.

Thank you, Chair Mesquite.

I'll be happy to do that.

Good morning.

For the record, Dan Eder with your Council Central staff.

As you mentioned, Council Bill 120131 would do two categories of things.

First, it would lift a pair of provisos that were imposed as spending restrictions on the budget for the Equitable Communities Initiative or ECI task force.

The second category is that it would move $30 million in appropriations from finance general to the budgets of departments that will implement the recommendations from the ECI task force.

I will spend just a couple of minutes highlighting information from a staff memo that is posted to today's agenda.

And I want to thank many members of the central staff team for, even though my name is on it, it was a group effort.

So thank you to the central staff team for their support on pulling this memo together.

By way of some quick background, the 2021 adopted budget included significant new investments to address systemic and government-sanctioned racism by improving outcomes for Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities.

In particular, the 2021 adopted budget included $29.9 million to be guided by the ECI Task Force recommendations and another $28.3 million to be guided by recommendations from a participatory budgeting process.

And in 2020, last year, the Council allocated an additional $3 million for a contract with the Freedom Project.

The so-called Black Brilliance Research Projects Report has informed the design of the participatory budgeting process, which is ongoing.

As the chair mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the Finance and Housing Committee heard a presentation from ECI task force members about how to spend $30 million on a range of investments.

The ECI task force members were all appointed by Mayor Durkin, And I think it's worth noting that Council Member Juarez is an ex-officio member of the ECI task force.

So the memo walks through six policy considerations that are issues we thought worth highlighting as you consider the proposed bill.

Some of these issues will need to be resolved during implementation of the recommendations, assuming that you approve Council Bill 120131. And others would need to be addressed when the Council takes up the Mayor's proposed budget this fall.

So I will breeze through the six issues, but please feel free to stop me with questions or if you want to have discussion, I'm happy to stop at any point.

Issue number one in the memo is a coordination question.

Council expressed an interest in having the ECI task force and participatory budgeting move forward together in a coordinated fashion.

And one of the two provisos that would be lifted by this bill has a statement to that effect.

The staff memo notes that the bill would effectively move forward the ECI task force recommendations on a separate track from and ahead of the participatory budgeting process.

We don't think that is a showstopper in any way, but didn't want to call that to your attention.

unless there are questions, I'm just going to continue on.

Item number two is the amount of funding that is included in the bill.

Council Bill 120131 would appropriate $30 million in 2021 for the ECI task force, even though the adopted budget included a somewhat smaller amount, in particular, $29.9 million.

CBO reports that the $100,000 of additional funding – that is, the difference between the budget, $29.9 million, and this bill's appropriations, $30 million – that extra $100,000 comes from an anticipated underspend on other finance general reserves If not spent on the ECI task force recommendations, this $100,000 underspend would otherwise be available to support different spending priorities.

So it's just a question of opportunity cost here.

I'll continue on.

Item number three is staffing and administrative costs.

The executive has committed to use existing staffing to the extent possible to do the administration and oversight of how the money gets from the city to a series of community investments.

This approach will – is expected to minimize how much of the $30 million needs to be spent on city administration, but it's still possible that some share of the $30 million will be needed for this purpose, meaning that in all likelihood not every penny of the $30 million will be available for direct programming, and the specific amounts are to be determined at this point.

The fourth issue raised in the staff memo is ongoing funding.

The ECI task force recommendations explicitly assume ongoing investments beyond 2021, and a number of the programs would only make sense to stand up if the programs will continue in 2022 and beyond.

that we are going to be able to do that.

However, it is not yet clear what the source of funding will be to support ongoing program investments beginning in 2022. And this is one of those issues that will need to be resolved when the Council takes up the mayor's 2022 proposed budget.

Thank you, Dan.

OK.

Second to last is item number five, legal constraints.

Earlier this year, Deputy Mayor Washington sent a letter to council identifying potential implementation concerns with what was then being considered for funding a participatory budgeting process.

And I draw your attention to attachment one to the central staff memo, which is which is that letter from Deputy Mayor Washington.

In particular, the letter indicated a need to ensure that the investments comply with, quote, legal impacts of contracting, hiring, I-200, and the gift of public funds, end quote.

The city will, of course, need to live within the same constraints should it move forward with the programs that are funded through the ECI Task Force recommendations in this council bill.

And I believe as Council Member Chair Mosqueda referenced in her opening remarks that there are two amendments that are related to this issue.

The last item is timing.

My understanding is that some of the investments would require a request for proposal to select particular community organizations who could accept the city funding and begin to implement programs.

This process could take longer than the end of the calendar year for actually expending the money that would be authorized under this bill.

As a result, and foreseeing this possibility, The bill includes language that would automatically carry forward any unspent portions of the $30 million included in Council Bill 120131. And that concludes my summary of the issues and background.

I'm happy to address any questions.

Thank you for the memo, Dan, and thank you for walking us through this.

Vice Chair Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Quick questions.

One, it sounds, I think I know the answer, but it sounds like we don't have any estimate at all at this point of the administrative costs for these investments.

Is that the case?

And then secondly, I'm pretty sure I heard it described that some of these investments, it wouldn't make sense to fund for a single year, but so that, in essence, by approving this action, we are, for those investments, making a commitment to funding beyond this year.

Would that be accurate?

Thank you.

In terms of the first question, the estimate of administrative costs, I have heard a ballpark of 5 to 10 percent.

I'm not clear if that's particular to this $30 million slice of money or if that is based on some past experience, but that gives you an order of magnitude expectation of how much of the money would need to be spent on city staffing and related process costs.

So that's on the order of $1.5 to $3 million out of the $30 million, the balance of which would be available to make direct investments in community organizations.

In terms of making a commitment, I suppose that's I guess legally speaking, no, you wouldn't be making a commitment.

Yes, I think the general idea is that if you approve the funding, it would make sense for you also to approve ongoing funding for many of the purposes that this initial $30 million is going towards.

But you'll have yet more information when the mayor proposes her budget this fall, including an updated look at the revenues that are available for all city purposes, including these.

And it's certainly possible that while it might not be ideal, to have some of these programs start and then stop.

If you found yourself in financial straits, there are all kinds of things that you wouldn't want to do that you may have to in that circumstance.

So I do think it is a live wire that council will have to take up during the fall budget process.

Thank you, Dan.

Thank you so much.

Are there any additional questions?

Thank you for that question, Vice Chair Herbold.

I think that's an important point.

Dan, do you mind summarizing both of the amendments that are in front of us for today?

Sure, I'd be happy to do that.

What's labeled as amendment number one would add a new section to the bill with findings about ongoing disparities and a declaration about the city's intent to remedy those disparities.

What's labeled amendment two would add a new section to the bill that memorializes the council's intent that implementation steps be consistent with all applicable legal limitations.

And both of these are in response to the legal constraints question, sorry, issue that I highlighted as number five in the staff memo.

Thank you, Director Eder.

Are there questions on either of these amendments before we consider them?

Okay, I'm not seeing any questions on the amendments.

Director Ader, thank you for walking us through that summary.

Colleagues, I, I, oh, please go ahead, Vice General.

I'm sorry, I'm just, I have a follow-up question to the administrative costs issue.

Just looking for what I understand to be language from the memo.

If these administrative costs are paid from the 30 million proposed to be spent, then the balance would be available for direct spending on community investments.

So that suggests we don't know whether or not administrative costs are going to be paid for with the $30 million.

And I guess I'm just pausing a little bit about that because I want to make sure that we're being, if the order of magnitude that you identified, Dan, is some other bigger number.

And it doesn't come out of the $30 million.

It potentially would come from somewhere else.

And if it does come out of the $30 million, that is a I think an issue of expectation setting for the community on how many dollars are going to actually go out the door.

And it would just help me a lot if we had a little bit more certainty around that issue, and maybe that's something we can work on between now and full council if folks agree that we should I would be happy to follow up

One option, which I would just tee up for your consideration, is you could, as we have done in some other bills, set a cap of how much of the funding at the top end could be used for that purpose.

I think one of the potential downsides of doing so is that could, you know, set a target that gives the the executive a sense that the council would be okay spending up to that maximum amount, whereas it might otherwise be a smaller amount.

I don't know that there's a perfect answer there, but it would be an easy amendment that I could work up for your consideration and you might consider whether you wanted to move forward with that at full council.

I think my interest is less to do with setting a cap and more about having some clarity about where the costs come from.

Do we expect the total $30 million to be reduced, or is that – I mean, I guess maybe that's just another way of thinking of the cap potentially, but if the expectation is that the funds for the administrative costs associated with this investment come from that $30 million.

It just, it feels to me like we should be saying that.

If not, if we are expecting the executive to find another source of dollars to pay for those costs, it feels like we should be clear about that as well.

Sorry, folks, I have a sick kiddo here at home today, so she's with us.

Okay, let me say something.

I also think that that dovetails nicely with the issue identified in number two, and Council Member Herbold, I think if there's an interest in trying to address this before the full council meeting, that might be another way for us to make sure that if there are cost savings, that is also helping to contribute to the administrative solution.

Are there any additional questions?

Council Member Herbold, I appreciate you flagging that.

And it sounds like maybe we'll do some additional work before Monday.

I'm not hearing objection, necessarily, to moving forward today with considering these two amendments or the underlying bill.

And really, again, appreciate, Director Eder, your walkthrough of this analysis with us.

And of course, members of the task force who've been working on this over the last eight months or so, and appreciate their presentation in our committee last week.

excited to make sure that these dollars, like the other dollars that we've allocated both in the 2021 budget process and also for Seattle Rescue Plan dollars, that they truly are actually getting into the hands of people that we have said that they would get to.

So excited to see these dollars continue.

to be prioritized and hope that we can move quickly to get them out the door.

I appreciate also the amendments in front of us that help us accomplish greater transparency in this effort.

So I'm going to move the amendments in front of us.

Colleagues, it's been moved already to consider Council Bill 120131. And in front of us, we have amendment number one.

Amendment number one, establishes the city acknowledges the effects of past racism and it's purposely setting forth to address the disproportionate effects of BIPOC communities.

The work of the equitable communities task force and the forthcoming participatory budgeting process is an effort for us to change the way that we as a city invest in BIPOC communities.

And I look forward to seeing those investments changing material conditions for people's lives.

in order to see that, I move amendment, I move to amend council bill 120131 as presented on amendment number one.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, it's been moved and seconded.

Are there any additional comments?

Hearing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on amendment number one?

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Morales.

Yes.

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

Thank you very much.

Amendment one carries.

We now have in front of us amendment number two.

Colleagues, I move amendment number two.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you very much.

It's been moved and seconded to amend Council Bill 120131 with amendment number two.

I'll provide a few comments.

I do want to note that unfortunately the legacy of Tim Eyman continues to carry on and we have to deal with things like initiative 200. Since we're dealing with the legal limitations on the way in which the city can disseminate money because of things like initiative 200. This amendment recognizes that the city must live within a legal constraints that it has as it moves forward with making these investments and that we are following all of the necessary recommendations to be consistent with all the legal applicable limitations.

Is there any additional questions or comments?

Hearing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on amendment number two?

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

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

Thank you so much.

Amendment number two carries.

Colleagues, we now have the amended bill with amendments number one and two in front of us.

Is there any additional closing comments that folks would like to make?

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

very quickly want to thank the equitable communities initiative task force members for their service over the last six months and their outreach to communities in their work to develop this series of recommendations.

I want to also thank our colleague Councilmember Juarez for serving as ex officio on the task force.

Well said.

Thank you very much, Vice Chair.

I also want to thank the individuals who came and presented in our committee and recognize the long list of community partners who've been part of the task force.

Really appreciate all of the leadership from the individual members in the community.

We know that this is additional work that they do in addition to their advocacy and day jobs.

So appreciate I'm very pleased to be here.

I'm very pleased to be here.

I'm pleased to be here.

I'm pleased to be here.

I'm pleased to be here.

I'm pleased to be here.

I'm pleased to be here.

I'm pleased to be here.

I'm pleased to be here.

I'm pleased to be here.

I'm pleased to be here.

I'm pleased to be here.

I'm pleased to be here.

I'm pleased to be here.

I'm pleased to be here.

I'm pleased to be here.

I'm pleased to be here.

Council Member Morales.

Yes.

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

Thank you very much.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation that the bill pass as amended will be sent to the August 9th Seattle City Council meeting for a final vote.

Thank you again, Vice Chair Humboldt, for flagging some possible areas of interest before that meeting, and along with Director Eder for your work on this presentation.

Okay, we're just a little bit behind for today, but let's keep moving and we will see how much we can get through with our full agenda for today.

The next item on the agenda is item number three.

Madam Clerk, will you please read item number three into the record?

Agenda item number three, Council Bill 120150, an ordinance related to the city's response to the COVID-19 crisis.

amending ordinance 126237, which adopted the 2021 budget, including the 2021 to 2026 Capital Improvement Program, for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

I want to welcome to the committee table here Allie Panucci from Central Staff, Emily Alvarado, the Director of Office of Housing, Julie Dingley with City Budgets Office, and Tracy Raskliff with Central Staff as well.

Thank you all for being here today.

As you will recall, this item was first part of our agenda for last month.

meeting and we had the chance to see the materials presented on the agenda and didn't get a chance to really walk through them in detail, but there's some really great opportunities to, as I'm calling this, address some trailer bills from the federal government that allow for us to make some really important investments into Seattle's community, specifically related to senior care, some very narrow transportation investments, and additional rental assistance that is much needed relief for both renters as tenants and for small landlords who rely on tenant rental payments to sustain themselves as well.

I'm excited about the opportunity today.

This is a follow-up to the Seattle Rescue Plan 1, which was Council Bill 120093, along with 120094. We passed those on June 21st, which authorized spending of about $128 million combined.

to provide emergency support services in response to COVID, invest in our city's revenue coffers, and authorize $25 million of general fund to provide direct cash assistance to households, among other important priorities like $8 million going into child care capital and child care assistance along with small business support.

I want to thank the members who are here today to present.

We're going to hear an overview of how this roughly $50 million is targeted aid for some of the most pressing issues that we continue to see in our communities, especially for seniors and renters.

So I'll turn it over to our team for the presentation and look forward to hearing any questions or comments you have.

I'm not aware of any amendments today.

So my hope, colleagues, is that after we hear this presentation, we could potentially entertain a motion to move this out of committee.

That's my hope today.

Okay, turn it over to you to walk us through.

Thank you, Director.

Thank you, Ali Panucci.

Good morning, committee members.

I'm Ali Panucci of your council's central staff, and I'll have the other presenters introduce themselves as we move through the slides, if that's okay, just to save some time here.

Today, we will be discussing Council Bill 120150, the Seattle Rescue Plan Number 2. I'll provide some very brief background information and then we will walk through the spending proposal in the bill.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time walking through the background on the Seattle Rescue Plan Number 1, as Sharon Mosqueda just described that in detail, but just briefly, The first package appropriated funds, primarily the direct aid received of coronavirus local fiscal recovery funds that provide flexible funding to governments and billions.

And then this bill is taking up some of the targeted aid that is proposed for specific purposes, such as emergency rental assistance.

So at the time the council was passing the Seattle Rescue Plan, One, this committee anticipated the second rescue package this summer to accept and authorize spending some of that targeted aid.

That's what's before you today.

And then we are anticipating that there may be some additional targeted aid that could be considered as part of the fall budget process, as well as consideration of the second tranche of the coronavirus local fiscal recovery funds.

So as Chair Mosqueda described, This bill would accept and authorize spending over $50 million in targeted aid for rental assistance programs, support for seniors, transportation projects and services, and accepts a grant for McCaw Hall.

This includes some funds that were authorized through the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 that was passed by Congress in December of 2020 for transportation spending.

The remaining funds are targeted aid that were included in ARPA.

So with that, I will now pass it over to Director Alvarado to provide some background information and describe the current proposal for allocating emergency rental assistance funds the city has received.

Thank you, Allie.

Hello, Chair Mosqueda, committee members.

Emily Alvarado, I'm the Director of the City's Office of Housing, and I will very briefly discuss how we've been implementing ERA 1, which was the first tranche of federal rental assistance spending and how we propose to continue these investments with ERA too.

So as you recall, the last investment of rental assistance was $22.7 million, and we took a four-part strategy of investing those resources.

First was to put 6.2 million into community-based organizations who are really working within their networks to provide rental assistance and supports for low-income renters.

Really, the emphasis with those community groups was to focus on organizations that have strong relationships with folks who are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 and disproportionately impacted by housing instability.

We invested $8 million in the United Way of King County that was leveraging investments made by King County in their individual tenant pool and also invested $7 million through our office to support tenants in publicly subsidized affordable housing with a priority on really supporting those with the lowest income in our city.

There was also a $1.5 million allocation from the ERA 1 to City Light for utility assistance.

To give a brief update on how we've been doing on investing those resources, and I'm sorry this is not consistent with the ordering of the last slide, but for the community based organizations, we have executed contracts with 14 community based organizations out of 16. We did do a formalized RFP process to select those organizations.

We're really proud of the groups that we're working with.

Over 90% of those funds are committed and awarded through contracts, and those community organizations are currently working with clients.

to deliver rent assistance and services.

In particular, I wanted to flag that because of the diversity of groups who we're partnering with, we're really able to target some specific populations.

For example, some of the groups have expertise serving households with children, and I know there's a lot of interest by council and all of us to ensure that we're stabilizing families prior to the school year.

Second, for the investment in the United Way of King County, we are really moving quickly at this point.

United Way has spent $3 million of the funds that they've received.

They are supporting around 300 households.

If you do the rough math, you will notice that That's significantly more than we thought we would be spending per household.

About $10,000 in rental assistance really demonstrates both the need and depth of need per household, and also shows why we need more resources so that we can serve more households.

United Way is currently working with an additional 500 households through the application process, and we anticipate that that will fully expend all of the resource that they have meaning that they will be out of the first allocation in the coming weeks and prepared for additional investment.

In the Office of Housing's portfolio, we have first did an initial process to demonstrate that the need was over 6 million.

We anticipate serving over 3,000 households.

Those households are already being entered into our data system, and we've begun payments initially first with the smallest landlords in the portfolio.

Over 30 different organizations are being worked with.

We're making payments first to the smallest and expect to make all of our payments by the end of August, meaning that We really will be prepared to start spending this next tranche of funds.

I do want to say two other things I should have mentioned.

The United Way of King County is serving primarily folks who are tenants in buildings of small landlords.

So they are primarily tenants in buildings that have four or fewer tenants.

And additionally, we're grateful to the United Way of King County who has created a separate system by which Small landlords in Seattle can reach out to them and get technical assistance and support and acting as an intermediary to get tenants to apply for the resource.

So thanks to United Way for doing that extra work.

Next slide, please.

Just a representation of the community organizations that we're working with.

As you can see there, we have a mix of groups who both have a long history and track record in providing rental assistance, and others for whom this is one of the first federal contracts that they're working on.

Just to name a few, you see Atlantic Street Center, Bird Bar Place, Chief Seattle Club, Choose 180, and we're excited about the work that they're doing.

We're hearing really positive stories from these organizations who are already working with clients.

So building off of that system that we've developed, we're proposing for this next $28.7 million of emergency rental assistance to be similarly administered through the three approaches.

One would put $9.6 million to continue investment in community-based organizations, which would likely include extended contracts with many of the groups that we already mentioned, and might include additional contracts if there are any populations or existing gaps that we would like to fill.

9.6 million to continue investment through United Way of King County.

As I mentioned, they'll be ready to start spending again in the next couple of weeks.

And 9.6 million to continue investment through the Office of Housing for publicly subsidized affordable housing.

Our data shows that there will be the need to absorb that in the portfolio since the last 6 million only helped support tenants through May of this year.

I should just finally say that the work the team has done to put out the rental assistance to date has been really incredible.

We also know that we hear anecdotally from King County that they have over 25,000 households who have indicated that they have a need for rental assistance.

So even combined with this resource, There's significant resource that's needed to meet the need, and we look forward to getting it out in the hands of tenants as quickly as possible to make sure that people remain stably housed as we move past the expiration of the eviction moratorium.

Thank you, Director Alvarado.

Chair Mosqueda, would you like us to just go through the entire proposal?

Okay, so I'll move on to the next piece of the Seattle Rescue Plan 2, which is funding to support seniors.

The city has received over $7 million of Older American Act funds that are sub-allocation from the state.

to the Human Services Department's Aging and Disability Services, which is the area agency on aging for all of King County.

These funds can be used for senior supportive services, congregate meals, home delivered meals, preventative health, family caregivers, vaccine access, and to address social isolation, which was an expanded eligible use of the funds as part of the COVID relief efforts at the federal government.

The city anticipates spending about $3.1 million in the first year and will spend remaining funds through 2024. The city is still awaiting final guidance from the state that will dictate what HSD can specifically use these funds for within those broader eligibility categories.

Because we're still awaiting that information, the proposed legislation includes intent language on use of the funds that is consistent with the eligibility described in ARPA.

and includes a proviso to ensure at least some funds in 2021 are specifically reserved for services to address the mental health impacts of senior isolation.

The proviso also requests that the human services department submits a more detailed spending plan to the council after receiving additional guidance from the state.

We're anticipating that this will be submitted this fall and that can inform the council's budget deliberations this fall and make any adjustments as needed.

If the guidance is not received in time for when the mayor is transmitting the proposed budget, we'll work with the department to get that information to council members as soon as it's available.

Not so much a question.

I want to, my thanks to you, Chair Mosqueda, for working with my office to ensure that the legislation through this proviso specifically addresses the mental health impacts of the pandemic on seniors.

I think folks are aware that this has long been a priority of mine.

Last summer, I added funds to the Human Services Department's budget to combat senior isolation and the mental health impacts of the pandemic on seniors, added this focus to the council's resolution 31999, which outlines the council's priorities for the ARPA funds.

And I have reached out to both the mayor's office and HSD to let them know that I'm really interested in working collaboratively on shaping the use of these funds to ensure that they are focused on mental health.

I understand from the budget office that these funds may be spent on the impacts of senior isolation, which is a new area of focus added due to the effects of COVID, and that we're still awaiting specific state guidance on how we can use these funds to address the impacts of senior isolation and ensure that that does include mental health.

The proviso is crafted in such a way I just want to say that we will not be able to do this on $200,000 of the funding unless we find out that the state guidance precludes that use.

action before us appropriates all $7.7 million in funding for seniors.

Only $3.1 million will be distributed in 2021. So that ensures that I will be continuing my inquiries into the plan for these funds in 2022 as well.

Thank you.

Thank you very much vice chair and will set appreciate your leadership and reminding folks about the shadow pandemic isolation abuse neglect.

Also want to thank the folks from the human services coalition who had sent a pretty lengthy list of requests that we are still hopeful will be included in the 2022 budget as transmitted to counsel.

We did have an opportunity to comb through that to see if there were any specific items requested in the human services coalition budget request that could be fulfilled by these federal dollars.

And given what Ali just said about the notice, excuse me, the upcoming I appreciate the sort of hold that we have here that is intent language that will help reference back to those priorities if we get to spend them that way.

Okay, Alex, let's go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Before turning it over to my colleague, Julie Dingley, for the next categories, I just want to highlight also the intent language.

After combing through the letter you just referenced, we did include a specific idea that was included in that letter around hybrid meal programs that provide, that allows for different models, both home delivery and in-person and that sort of thing.

So that is in there and we will look for more specific proposals in the 2022 proposed budget.

And with that, I'll now pass it over to Julie Dingley from the city budget office to describe some of the proposals for transportation services and projects and the McCall Hall grant.

Thank you, Allie.

Good morning, Chair Mosqueda and committee members.

Thanks for having me this morning.

Julie Dingley with the City Budget Office, as Allie mentioned.

So on transportation, we're expecting about $13.5 million to come from two different sources, ARPA, which we've talked about previously, from FTA, Federal Transportation Agency, and the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, passed in late December of 2020. So, we're going to be receiving about of the 13.5 about 10.9Million for the Madison street bus, rapid transit and to assist with local match.

So, this will find a 2.3 mile East West line along Madison street from downtown Seattle to the Madison Valley neighborhood in the East with connections in 1st Hill capital Hill in the central area.

On the next item, we're going to be receiving 785,000 for streetcar.

This is to backfill lost revenue and to support maintenance and operations overall.

And then we're going to be receiving 1.8Million for Seattle Center for monorail to backfill lost revenue and to support maintenance and operations.

And then we're also going to be receiving a grant to support McCaw Hall for $2.1 million.

This is coming from the Small Business Administration's Shuttered Venue Operators Grant.

This is something the city applied for and we were awarded.

So it's specifically for McCaw Hall.

It can be used for expenses such as payroll, utility payments, and other business expenses such as maintenance costs.

Thank you, Julie.

Unless there are questions on those categories, I'll just move on to wrapping us up.

I do want to note for my colleagues here on the previous two slides, on slides eight and nine regarding transportation investments and the McCall Hall funds on slide nine, this is very prescriptive funding.

So this is funding that the federal government has, that we are receiving as a pass-through basically from the city.

So I know there's a lot of needs that we have both for transportation infrastructure and for various businesses, not just downtown, but across the city.

I want to let folks know that on these two slides, this is very prescriptive.

The city is acting as a pass-through, if that's appropriate to say.

Yes, thank you.

Okay, thanks.

Just to orient us to the sort of limitations on where there could be flexibility on those dollars.

There's not.

Such a good point.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Chairman Skate.

I'll just note too on the shuttered venues grants, the funds from the Small Business Administration, there are other local venues that have applied directly and received awards.

We can download that list.

If that doesn't, they have to apply directly and that isn't something that would pass through the city, but if people are interested, I could distribute that.

that list.

But with that, that wraps up the description of the Seattle Rescue Plan number two that accepts about $52 million in targeted grants.

So the next steps, if the committee votes on this bill today, we would expect final action at full council on August 9th.

And as I noted previously, if additional target aid is received, we would expect that to be considered as part of the fall budget process.

Thank you.

Thank you all very much for the presentation.

I appreciate your time in walking us through this.

Colleagues, I think while you have the slides up, let's go back to the image of all of the logos for your community partners.

Slide five, thank you.

Just for the viewing public and for our council colleagues, I want folks to also take note that these community organizations They can do a screening and do an assessment.

If somebody needs more than just rental assistance and they need actual internet assistance or they need utility assistance, these organizations are equipped and empowered to decide how to help those individuals really keep a roof over their head.

So that's something really exciting to remember, and I just want to thank the community partners.

Again, one other thing that I think is important for this allotment in Seattle Rescue Plan 2, related to rental assistance dollars, is we are equally funding the three entities, Office of Housing, United Way, and Community Partners, so that there's greater parity in how we're applying those dollars.

Council Member Morales, please go ahead.

Question.

Yeah, thank you.

I really appreciate this slide and your explanation of how the funding will be divided.

I know we've been hearing a lot about how complex some of these processes are.

I'm glad to hear that United Way is starting with small landlords.

We're hearing a lot also about whether small landlords are getting the kind of support they need.

But I wonder if you can talk just a little bit about.

Well, first, I'm curious if there's information on how many months worth of support households are getting.

Is this one-time support or are they, I'm assuming people need more than one, but I would like to know a little bit more about how much, for how many months they're getting rental assistance.

And then would like to hear a little bit about the complexity of how people access this, whether it's technology barriers or you know, having to fill out a lot of documentation and paperwork.

If that's something that we are, folks here are experiencing, and if so, what are we doing to try to mitigate that and make the process a little bit smoother for folks to access?

Thank you for those questions Council Member Morales.

First of all, I'd be happy to follow up.

I don't have an average number of months that United Way is paying, but as I mentioned, they're paying approximately $10,000 per household, which, given what average market rate rents are, suggests that they are paying several months of rent.

Under ERA 1, the rules are that you can pay up to, I believe, a year of back rent and three months of prospective rent.

When you combine that with ERA 2, we can pay up to 18 months of combined back rent and prospective rent.

We do know anecdotally from the portfolio of publicly subsidized housing as well that for many folks, we will be paying support through all of looking backwards at 2021. And then we anticipate that some of those same households will then come in for ERA to pay the next few months.

So for many households, it has not been one or two months, but it has been more than that.

On the second question that you asked about access, access is something that we care a lot about.

Full transparency, this is a federal program.

which means there is documentation that's required.

There is self-certification, there's income documentation, and then, in fact, one of the other critical pieces is that a tenant must affirmatively say that they want this assistance, which happens through a signing of an application.

In order to limit those barriers that exist, we really think that the community-based organization approach helps people.

In fact, many of these providers are doing functionally case management to support tenants in applying for the program themselves.

And the ERA does allow up to 15% of administrative costs to be supported for those organizations so that they can help clients in that way.

I'd also say for the publicly subsidized housing, The affordable housing landlords are entering information on behalf of tenants and then tenants are signing an application, which helps to reduce barriers for those tenants.

And then for the United Way, tenants are entering United Way through the King County individual tenant pool.

There is documentation that happens there, but United Way works with community-based groups, too, to have a back and forth with tenants to ensure that they're able to get all of their documents in.

That takes time.

It does take several weeks to help make sure that tenants can collect all of their information, but we've tried to make it as low barrier as possible by working with trusted community-based organizations.

Can I follow up with one more question, Chair?

So I hear you saying that landlords are getting some technical assistance help, but are they able to apply directly themselves rather than relying on the tenants to do that?

And can they apply for, or is it really tied to the tenant?

Yeah, good question.

Under the federal, under the treasury guidance for these resources, the tenant must formally apply.

So the landlord can take some steps to facilitate application on behalf of their tenants, but ultimately the tenant needs to click and be the one who's submitting a formal application.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the things that we're doing to help mitigate any potential concerns on behalf of landlords that their tenants are not accessing the resource is that we've set up this program through United Way where concerned landlords can contact United Way and United Way staff is contacting tenants on behalf of their landlords and working with them to submit applications.

But it is true that ultimately the tenant must take some affirmative step in order to access the resource per federal guidelines.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Council Member Morales had some important comments during yesterday's morning briefing, reminding folks about the difference here in Seattle and our continuation of the eviction moratorium.

Along with that, we wanted to remind folks about the ongoing ability to get rental assistance, both as tenants and as small landlords.

Director Alvarado, if there's any information that your office has to help clarify for folks the ways in which Seattle's policy remains in place and the ways in which people can access rental assistance, that would be very helpful.

I think there's a lot of interest in sharing that information out.

Given the national coverage of the federal eviction moratorium going away, I don't want there to be any misunderstandings about the protections that folks have here, but also the assistance that we have for small landlords and renters.

Thank you.

Councilmember Herbold, go ahead.

We have been hearing, I don't believe this is some tenants are both not paying rent and appear not to be applying for assistance, so really appreciate your working with the United Way to set up this portal for landlords and this extra assistance in sort of facilitating those applications.

I would be very interested to know, though, how it's going.

And I understand you may not have that information now, but are landlords in this situation using the resources being provided?

And are tenants being responsive to the engagement and outreach to encourage them to apply?

Yeah, I can say Council Member Herbold, I do want to acknowledge, thank you for communications from your office, which did lead to helping to ensure that we set up this effective program at United Way.

They have been serving landlords.

I think in my last count, they served at least 30 landlords, but I will be happy to follow up with council members and give some more up-to-date data.

And anecdotally, what I had heard is that they were able to reach many of the tenants Or in fact, some of the tenants who the landlords were concerned had not been applying, had already applied under the King County program.

So I think it has been a good process of being able to provide that support, but I'll follow up with more data.

So both excellent questions.

Thank you very much, council members.

The other piece of information that I received when chatting with our friends at United Way was a lot of appreciation for the role that these community partners have played.

I think that there's a recognition that the trust that the community partners have in community is something that, you know, often maybe they don't have.

Maybe they don't have folks who are either bilingual, bicultural in specific communities and having that trusted partner is really important.

So I think that United Way saw The community partner investment is truly additive to trying to make sure everybody got access to rental assistance dollars.

So I appreciate their support there.

One of the things that was flagged was the possible need for a revolving fund for the community partners to be able to access.

Can you speak to that, Director Alvarado?

I think one of the concerns may have been whether or not these community organizations, which you displayed on the previous slide, had the ability to access funds in real time so that none of the community organizations were going into debt or using any of their existing funds waiting for reimbursement.

Can you speak to that and whether or not there's a need for a revolving fund?

Yeah, it's a good question, Councilmember Mosqueda, and we are really focused on making sure that community organizations can administer these funds in a sustainable way.

We have some limitations based on the federal guidance of the capacity that's needed in the organizations themselves in order to support these payments.

At this point, we have not proposed a revolving fund, but we have allowed for both additional administration support to go to the agencies through pass-through funds, through that 15%, as I've mentioned.

And also, we're doing regularly, the organizations are able to send us on a every few week cycle the reimbursement so that we can be really hyper responsive on the reimbursement, making sure that they're not sitting out there without that resource for some time.

So happy to entertain concepts of a revolving fund.

We have not proposed that at this time and are putting a lot of attention and energy into supporting these agencies to make sure that they can be successful and sustainable.

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Okay, carry over hand.

Great.

I am not seeing any additional hands and I don't see any additional comments or questions.

Allie, is there anything else you'd like to summarize?

Thank you, Chairman Skate.

I didn't have anything more to add.

Okay, excellent.

Well, I appreciate the discussion.

I appreciate all the work.

And I know this 50 plus million dollars is going to be much needed, especially in the rental assistance and senior care portion.

And then also appreciate the caveats and a narrow scope of the transportation dollars that we have in front of us.

So look forward to getting these dollars out the door and working with you all to address these questions that Council Members Morales and Herbold have brought up.

I'm not sure if there's anything for us to do in the 2022 budget or in tranche three.

Okay.

At this time, colleagues, I'd like to move the committee recommends passage of council bill 120150. Is there a second?

Anybody want a second?

It's been moved and seconded that the committee consider Council Bill 120150. This, again, is our Seattle Rescue Plan 2, the second of three acts to come this year.

Is there any additional comments or questions?

Hearing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the passage of the bill?

Madam Clerk?

Aye.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Morales.

Council Member Morales.

Yes.

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

Thank you very much.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the Seattle rescue plan 2 bill will be sent to the August 9th Seattle City Council meeting for a final vote.

I want to thank all of you for your presentation and your work on this.

And I know there's much more to come as we consider the Seattle rescue plan 3 in this year's fall budget.

Thanks again for your ongoing work to make sure that these dollars get out the door as soon as we can.

Okay, thank you very much.

As we have Director Alvarado up on the screen, I want to thank her and her team as well as Tracy Ratcliffe for your work on housing everything, and we do have MFTE on our agenda for today.

I'm having a feeling, Director Alvarado, that we're probably going to need the next hour plus for the next three bills.

So I want to ask folks to please read the materials from the MFTE report that is provided.

This is a helpful grounding report and summary presentation that will tee us up for action.

I'm going to say action on the 17th because we need to take action on MFTE before September to make sure that we can continue to move forward with the efforts to try to create additional housing and to make sure that we're not delaying any of that process.

So if there is not any objection, what I'd like to do is ask folks to read those materials on MFTE and be prepared for more actions to come on MFTE legislation to be introduced very soon.

We wanted to ground you though, so please do take a reading on that.

Emily, anything else before we say goodbye to you?

Okay.

that.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Let's move on, Madam Clerk, to the next item.

This is another item for a possible vote in front of us before we get to the two other items.

Excuse me, Madam Clerk, will you please read item number four into the record?

Item number four, council bill 120147, an ordinance relating to the financing of the general fund of $205 million for multiple city funds to the general funds as a bridge financing to be repaid from future tax proceeds and other anticipated revenues for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

I want to welcome to the table here Director Van Noble from the City Budget Office, Director Glenn Lee from the City Finance and Administrative Services Department, Ali Panucci and Tom Mikesell from Central Staff, and Thank you for the presentation that's attached to the agenda and the staff memo.

Colleagues, very briefly, we passed Jump Starts Seattle Progressive Revenue Payroll Tax last year.

We knew that this was going to begin accruing taxes before we had the mechanisms to collect the taxes.

So again, in 2020, we responded to the crisis that COVID presented.

In 2021, we continue to make sure that we're responding to the COVID crisis.

and that we were shoring up core and critical city services with the hopes that for 2022, when the 2021 revenues began flowing in, we would then be able to backfill those coffers with the expectation that the collected taxes would help set the course for future investments.

The 2022 spend plan going forward really makes those massive investments in affordable housing and acquisition, equitable development initiative, Green New Deal, and economic resilience.

But the plan here has always been that we would not begin collecting 2021, this year's jumpstart tax revenue, until the beginning of 2022. So in order for us to bridge the need for spending those dollars, and when we pay it back, we have an Interfund loan in front of us for consideration.

The bill in front of us is a typical budget bill that approves about $205 million from a loan from several city funds.

And per city policy, the city's Debt Management Policy Advisory Committee comprised of myself, Central Staff Director, Budget Director Ben Noble, Finance Director Glenn Lee, the Director of Public Utilities, Mami Hara, who we wish the best of luck in her next endeavor, and the Director of City Light, Deborah Smith, all voted two weeks ago to approve this loan.

We don't necessarily anticipate needing this full loan all the way through 2022. We can pay back the loan in advance at any time.

There's no penalty.

In fact, our expectation and assumption is that we may be able to pay this back by mid-year of 2022, but to ensure that we're giving ourselves ample time and at the request of FAS and CBO, we have authorized it through this legislation through the end of the year.

And as a reminder, this is the first year that Jumpstart revenues will be paid quarterly, and we have a desire to make sure that there's some flexibility as we work on receiving these new funds in 2022, again, for the 2021. I will turn it over to central staff and to our directors, Ben Noble and Glenn Lee for a more detailed walkthrough.

But this is another really great piece of follow-up legislation from the Jumpstart Progressive Payroll Tax to make sure that we're actualizing the receipt of these revenues and that we can then make sure that we are applying those to keep our budget absolutely in the black and invest in critical services.

And I see Director Ben Noble is off mute.

I just want to double check.

Tom, did you have any orientation comments to make for us from central staff to begin with?

Good morning, Madam Chair.

No, I believe you summarized it quite clearly, so I would have nothing to add.

I love it.

I've been living this, Bill.

I appreciate that affirmation.

I will turn it over to Director Ben Noble.

Thanks for joining us again.

Thank you, Chair Musqueda.

And I would echo the same.

Our speaking points, although we had not collaborated, are nearly identical.

So you've covered much of what I wanted to say.

Let me just a quick couple of high points, somewhat just to reaffirm what you had said.

As the mayor proposed and council approved, the 2021 budget relies on approximately $200 million in revenues from the payroll tax.

Because we're in the first year and working through the rulemaking, that ordinance that established the payroll tax was set up so that the first payments were not made until the first quarter of next year.

So we built the budget around those revenues for this year, the first payment comes next year, hence a cashflow problem.

But one, as you can see, that we have a specific proposal to manage.

And it's a proposal that calls for a loan of up to 200 million through 2022. And as you've described, we don't think we'll need a loan authority beyond that, because in the second year of the payroll tax, so again, starting next year, payments will be due quarterly.

And with that kind of payment schedule, given the way the city generally expends money, we think we'll be able to manage without this interfund loan.

We frequently do interfund loans for short periods, typically in anticipation of some particular payment of cash, either from in the past been a sale of a piece of property or some revenue stream that emerges.

The scale of, and we've done those not frequently, but not unusually, if you will.

What's different, if anything, about this one is the scale.

$200 million is a large sum of money, obviously.

Typically, when we've done inter-fund loans, we've identified a single fund that will have the resources to provide the near-term cash and authorize a loan from one fund to another very specifically.

In this case, given the scale of the loan, we think it makes more sense to give the executive, in particular Glenn Lee, who will speak in a moment, flexibility to identify the lending funds based upon their individual cash position at any given time.

That said, and if we advance to the next slide, you can see the list of funds that we have identified as potential donor or lending funds.

The thing to know about these funds is the group of them are associated with capitals.

So the REIT funds, REIT 1 and 2, and the Transportation Benefit District, and also MOVE Seattle, those are all funds that are typically investing their resources in capital projects.

The delay associated in making an allocation and spending the money on a capital project just due to the natural course of design and development and bidding It's not unusual for these funds to carry balances because of that delay.

So they were an actual place to look.

Some of the other levy funds, we build the spending plan for levies often such that in the initial years, we spend less knowing that the programs are going to expand.

And so we store up resources to expand at higher levels in later years.

So that's a reason that some of the operational levies have some resources.

And then a couple other funds have built up balances over time for a variety of reasons.

So the bottom line is giving FAS and Glenn Lee and his role as finance director the flexibility to identify the lending funds, I think the best approach to giving the resources, the cash resources we need and avoiding any impact.

And the legislation does specifically direct Director Lee to provide the lending funds in a way that does not constrain or restrict the underlying purposes for which the original funds were allocated.

So we'll do this without interrupting any of the policy intended work that these funds support.

So that's basically the, you have provided the big picture view.

This is a little more detail on where resources would come from.

I don't know if Glenn, you have anything you might want to add from a technical or other perspective as well.

Yes, we will monitor this literally daily to ensure that we can cover our general fund responsibilities, the borrowing fund, and not disrupt in any way the operations that are funded by any of these source funds.

In addition, these source funds will receive interest payments that would be equal to what we're earning in our portfolio.

So in other words, it'll be indifferent to the managers of these funds whether or not We borrow their resources for general fund expenses for short-term need, or we invest in our normal processes through the state.

Law gives us the ability to invest our cash proceeds on a short-term basis.

We do that under the law.

And so, again, the owners of these funds will not notice a difference in either their income or their operations.

And then just to follow up a technical point on that, It does mean that there will be interest payments due from the general fund, excuse me, as it borrows these resources.

We'll be budgeting those, expect them to be de minimis.

The interest rates here are in 1% range.

And we don't expect to carry the full $200 million balance for an extended period of time.

So low cost way to manage this cash flow issue.

Actually, probably the lowest cost way, to be clear.

Yes.

Any questions?

Excellent.

I will ask one question as other folks may be teeing up some questions regarding payback.

There was a hope and I again will reiterate hope and expectation potentially that we will pay it back before the end of the year.

Just want to confirm that there's no penalty or anything like that if we pay it back and if we see the ability for us to pay it back that we'll be acting on that as soon as we can.

Yes, and we do that with Interfund loans in general.

We have no prepayment penalties whatsoever.

And if we see that the borrowing fund actually can have a sustainable positive balance, we'll just end the loan program as we see fit.

And it's in the interest of everyone that we close these loans off as quickly as possible.

So if we determine that the borrowing fund, in this case, the general fund, can sustain itself under current city code, we will terminate the loan.

But right now, we're not sure exactly when that happens, so it's really prudent to give us through the end of the year 2022.

The analogies to personal finances don't work exactly by any means, but probably the best way or a way to think about these inter-fund loans is that they're like a home equity line of credit.

So we can borrow up to $200 million if we have that immediate need, but we're not on the hook for a $200 million loan the day this legislation is authorized.

Rather, Glenn will pull the resources as needed.

Again, it's a cashflow thing.

It can change depending on when payments come.

you know, on a, as Glenn described, a daily basis.

But we'll keep the amount of the loan to the minimum.

And again, there's no obligation to take the full amount.

And that'll help keep interest payments low as well.

Especially as you see rolling payments come in on a quarterly basis, correct?

Exactly.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thanks.

So confirming my understanding that the revenue intended to pay back this loan is the planned receipts from the payroll taxes.

Yes.

And I'm just, has there been any, I know we kind of check in periodically around what our projections are for the payroll tax receipts in 2022. Have we looked at that issue recently to see whether or not our past projections are aligning with our current projections?

That's my first question.

My second question is a little bit of a tangent, but just because we're talking about Interfund loans, I'm remembering Director Noble a couple years ago when we were, the council was seeking to increase the number of dollars that the Office of Housing could get out with its, I believe it was its 20, $29 million housing bond, and I remember you, Director Noble, saying the housing bond was great, but we don't need it.

We could do an interfund loan to pay that debt off, and I'm wondering, is that $29 million housing bond still out there waiting to be paid off, or have we use the Interfund loan to pay it off?

I need to research the answer to the second question.

It is a little blurry in my head.

Not a problem.

I just was taking advantage of the fact that you were here to ask it.

No, no, totally fair.

Part of what's conflating in my head is that I know we've issued some debt associated with a change in state law around, I think it was a portion of either sales or REIT, I forget, which again, I apologize.

Glenn may have a specific memory because he's directly involved in the bond issuances themselves.

Yeah, and I'm sorry, I'm with Ben.

There were several related adjustments that occurred.

And at this moment, I can't remember exactly what the bond issuance was.

We're more than happy to assemble the story.

I just don't recall off the top of my head.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

With regard to your first question, we did review as part of the April forecast update, did review forecast for payroll tax revenues.

And the team is currently working on the the update for the August revenue update, and we'll have those results shortly.

And this will be a focus there as well.

A little bit of a teaser, looking ahead, we're not anticipating significant change, at least at this stage, but that work's not complete yet.

I would highlight that in the context of a loan and risk, That is the abstract risk here, is that the revenues will not come in at the level that we had thought.

We're going to sort of get the answer all at once rather than sort of monthly or quarterly.

So we will have to respond accordingly if that's what happens.

It will be early in the budget year, 2022 budget year, so there would be opportunity to take a step back and figure out the best path forward.

I wouldn't want to anticipate what that might be.

So obviously an important question as of April steady on the forecast update to come shortly Confident enough to tell you that I think this this loan still makes sense and and it is an abstract risk.

Thank you Okay, great I'm not seeing any additional questions want to double-check for my colleagues Okay, so Director Lee, I want to thank you specifically for your ongoing work as well related to implementation.

I really appreciate the rulemaking that you've been engaged with some of the larger employers who will be paying this assessment.

And I think from those conversations, we had good discussion about how to make sure that we were creating ease for paying the owed taxes.

I'm happy to have made that update as well to the legislation earlier this year, as well as creating the Seattle Jumpstart Fund.

I'm going to go ahead and move the committee recommend passage of Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded.

Are there any additional comments on the legislation in front of us regarding the Interfund Loan?

Hearing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the passage of Council Bill 120147?

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

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

It's unanimous.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries.

The committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the August 9th Seattle City Council meeting for a final vote.

Thank you very much, Director Noble.

Thank you, Director Lee.

And thank you, as always, Tom Meisel from Central Staff for your research and work on this legislation.

Okay.

Thank you.

Looking forward to hearing more.

Yes, appreciate it.

Okay, Madam Clerk, I think at this time we are ready to move on to items number five and six.

Colleagues, I'd like to have these items read into the record together, but as a reminder, there is no scheduled vote for today's item, so we'll start with an orientation of the legislation in front of us and then have a chance to ask some detailed questions and walk through any breaking news and questions folks may have.

Madam Clerk, could you read item number five and six into the record?

Item number five, Council Bill 120111. And item number six, Council Bill 120112, an ordinance authorizing the 2021 acceptance of funding from non-city sources and an ordinance, amending ordinance 126237, which adopted the 2021 budget for briefing and discussion.

Okay, wonderful.

So we have our team from central staff with us, Ali Panucci and Tom Micell and we're also joined by Greg Doss this morning.

Colleagues, I do want to just remind us that we are reviewing both the grant acceptance and supplemental ordinance that we began discussing at last week's meeting.

We have a desire to make sure that we are using today's meeting to identify possible amendments, talk about any questions or issues that you'd like to identify with either the grant acceptance or the supplemental ordinance, and make sure that we have this time for us over the next about hour, 45 minutes to an hour, to discuss items that may be coming up for possible vote on the 17th.

If there are not amendments that you've already been contemplating, or if today's conversation spurs you to want to have an additional amendment that has not been yet submitted, again, our previous amendment deadline was last Tuesday, but given some of the information that's been shared since last Tuesday, we wanted to make sure that we had a chance to ask questions and fully understand the supplemental budget, both process and information in front of us today.

If there's additional amendments that you are contemplating, please do reach out to central staff and give them notification by tomorrow, that's Wednesday, August 4th, by noon, so that we can begin working as quickly as possible on any amendments.

My intention is to try to share those early with council members so that we can post an agenda early and have a conversation about those possible amendments at the August 17th meeting for discussion and vote.

A reminder that the supplemental budget should not reflect changing, excuse me, should reflect changing circumstances.

and policies that have developed throughout the year.

This is not a chance to redo this year's budget.

We'll have a chance to make major policy changes and investments in our calendar year budget, as we consider the 2022 budget, which will begin in just a few months.

In fact, the mayor's office is expected to send down their proposed budget next month, and that will initiate our budget process starting at the end of September and going into October.

We did have a preview of the proposed grant acceptance and supplemental budget two weeks ago in committee.

And since transmitting that supplemental, the mayor's office has also publicly announced last Thursday after amendments were due.

programs that they are interested in investing in.

Obviously, that's not a direct relation to the supplemental budget in the announcement that was made, but because it is a budget document that they are referencing, it did seem like it was an important opportunity for us to have central staff walk us through both the supplemental and the grant acceptance ordinance and also flag any potential questions that colleagues may have regarding any of the information that we've received over the last week and a half or so.

So with that, I think I'll turn it over to, is it Allie or Tom?

Allie, great, to walk us through just the grounding of the bills in front of us.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I will actually just turn it over to Tom to do a high level summary of the two bills that he walked through in a bit more detail and are described in more detail in his memo posted to the agenda.

And then as you mentioned, we have our colleague Greg Doss on the line to discuss the SPD budget memo that the council received last week and other central staff colleagues if other questions come up related to homelessness or other proposed investments.

So I will turn it to Tom.

Thank you, Allie.

OK, so just to in recognition of time and that we started the conversation at the last committee meeting, I'm just going to give a really high level overview of the two items.

Item five is Council Bill 120111. It's the first comprehensive grant acceptance legislation.

So the council is instilled with the authority to accept grants from external funding sources that we received during the year.

This particular bill would accept a total of $23.3 million from various external funding sources that are detailed in the staff memo attached to the agenda.

And then item six, Council Bill 120112, that is the second comprehensive supplemental budget legislation that has been transmitted by the executive in 2021. The bill proposes mid-year appropriations position and capital project changes to meet needs that are assumed to be unforeseeable when the budget, the original 2021 budget was adopted last fall.

Just in terms of high-level view, Council Bill 120112 would increase the revised budget by $15 million and would add 68 positions.

So as promised, that's a very high-level review of those two bills.

and I guess I'll go ahead and jump in next, Madam Chair, at your pleasure.

Good morning, members of the committee.

Good morning for two minutes still.

Greg, actually, do you mind just holding one second real quick?

I just, Council Member Herbold, thank you so much.

I saw you pop on the screen.

Thank you.

I wanted to flag for you the opportunity to jump in and also just pause real quick to see if there was any other questions on the supplemental or the grant acceptance.

So please go ahead, Vice Chair.

So, I may not be following the outline that you proposed for addressing these issues, but I am assuming that this is an okay pause to ask a question about the grant acceptance ordinance.

Is that okay?

Absolutely.

Please do.

Okay.

So, I notice that there is, doesn't seem to be at least, any grant acceptance funding for the Seattle Police Department included in this ordinance.

And I understand that that might be because of a misunderstanding on the part of the budget office on what the council was hoping for as it relates to SPD budget approvals moving forward.

And I'm just, I don't want to get us in a position where we are getting the SPD grant acceptance much later in the year.

And so I think that the budget office is doing them separately so that we can have a deeper dive into it, but I don't think that was really the, a deeper dive into the grant acceptance ordinance after.

the grants have been accepted.

I don't think is really what the council was intending last year when we talked about this.

I think we just, we wanted more of a in front of the application discussion and sort of just trying to get a sense from council members, which of the grants I just wanted to ask where we are likely to end up given that they don't seem to be covered in this ordinance.

And I don't think many of the grants have sort of the policy implications, but some might.

And again, I think the process that we all thought that the budget office was agreeing to was a process that allowed for that sort of to be able to have a front-end discussion first about the types of grants that might have policy implications.

that the executive will be transmitting standalone legislation related to SPD grant acceptance and potentially other budget actions related to SPD's budget.

You'll recall at the end of last year when we were dealing with the year-end grant acceptance ordinance, The policy discussions were focused primarily on a couple of the SPD grants.

And as you noted, not but not all of them.

So there were a couple and that was really the focus of the discussion on that grant acceptance ordinance.

And so at some point this year through multiple conversations.

It was understood that the executive would be transmitting really anything related to SPD's budget separate from other broader budget bills.

I also understand it was clear your intent was that those, that the Discussions were occurring prior to applying for grants.

The council's authority isn't actually accepting the grants.

And so we can continue to talk with the budget office to try to figure out a strategy that would be agreeable to have those conversations before they were transmitting legislation.

But as of right now, my understanding is they were just transmitting legislation to accept grants that they have already applied for and been awarded and asking the council to accept those.

I think the intent from you as the public safety chair was to make sure we had greater transparency on those dollars before we were put in a position to say this money is already coming and then receiving it if I'm remembering correctly.

So I appreciate what you're saying, Allie, that the intention is maybe not lining up with the timing of when we're getting the I know that Ali had signal to go to you as well.

a future SPD grant acceptance.

And it is the fact that we are segregating the SPD grant acceptance from all the other departmental grant acceptance.

I just think that that might create an atmosphere for greater controversy than is necessary, than if the budget office had actually worked with us to do the things that we'd asked them to do.

which would be to pull out a subset of the things that we wanted to have a bigger conversation about before the application of grants, and then keep everything else in the citywide budget supplement grant acceptance.

Rather than pulling out everything that we're doing for SPD, I think it, again, it creates an atmosphere of controversy where it is completely unnecessary.

And I'm just, again, I'm trying to, to the extent possible, the executive and identifying approaches where we can really focus on the things that have controversy and interest to the public rather than making everything controversial.

Well said.

And I see some nods from my other council members, so I appreciate the comments there.

Greg, did you have anything else to add?

I didn't.

The subject has been covered very well, and I was going to go into that at the end of my comments.

I will, but yeah, you all covered it very well.

Okay, great.

Well, before we move on, I want to welcome Councilmember Strauss.

Councilmember Strauss, appreciate you being here.

I know you had multiple conflicts, so thank you for joining us today, and we are just beginning our conversation about the supplemental bill as well as the grant acceptance ordinance.

Okay, so I want to make sure before we talk any more about SPD, because that is something that has been thrown into the public realm via press releases over the last five days or so, I want to have a chance to sort of dissect some of that information that we've received.

But before we do, any additional questions on the grounding and orientation of the supplemental budget in front of us or the grant acceptance ordinance?

Okay, not seeing any.

Greg, thank you for being here as well.

I know that you do have some comments, some of which you've already begun to share.

But given the information that has been shared about where there's potential underspend, and while it was referred to as a separate type of budget bill, I think given what we saw at the end of last year, the last thing we want to do is pass a budget bill just to then have to amend that same budget bill a week or two later.

If it does have implications for the supplemental budget, I would very much like to hear more about what has been shared in terms of an underspend and to go through the memo that you provided for us to see if there are any implications for the supplemental bill, then we have a chance to really ask questions and have a greater understanding in this meeting today.

So I'll turn it over to you, Greg, to share information from your memo with us.

I want to also acknowledge Councilmember Herbold.

I believe this is a memo that was already shared in the public safety committee.

So my hope is not to duplicate a conversation that you've already had, but to hopefully connect the dots between the public safety policy discussions that you've had and where there may be implications or a need for us to address items within the supplemental.

And Vice Chair Herbold, anything else to add on that before turning to Greg?

We had a version of this memo based on a February SPD analysis of potential salary savings and their identified and desired public safety investments.

This is definitely, I think, an updated version of that memo, but it covers a lot of the same area, but this particular memo I don't believe has been covered in my committee, but Greg, you can let me know if I'm confusing that.

I'll cover.

Best maybe if I just jump in and provide a high-level overview as there's been a heck of a lot going on over the last four or five days.

Just to provide some context here, I think as you all know, and we've just discussed, the supplemental budget as it was transmitted by the mayor does not in any way affect SPD.

However, as I just said several events have transpired in the last four or five days, and they would potentially interact with SPD and potentially interact with this bill depending on how the council would want to.

Treat the events.

First of all, some council members have submitted some amendments that would potentially affect SPD by making cuts to sworn officer salary savings.

I think committee members and the public are well aware that sworn officer separations at SPD are still increasing.

And the department has recently announced publicly that it may realize as much as $15 million in salary savings in 2021. And for those who are interested, I will be providing sort of a deep dive into SPD finances and staffing issues at next Tuesday's Public Safety and Human Services Committee.

Another reason for talking about SPD today is because the mayor's office recently announced a plan for spending that $15 million in salary savings.

And that plan is articulated in a letter that I forwarded to your offices last week.

That letter, Chair, is the memo that you're referring to, written by SPD, sent to Ali and me.

I forwarded it to all of your offices and it will be discussed in the Public Safety Committee meeting coming up this Tuesday.

That plan articulates how SPD would spend its salary savings.

At a high level, it says that SPD would reallocate within its own budget about 10.7 million of the savings and use it to fill civilian positions, make technology ads, and fund separation pay and deferred compensation costs for the officers who have left.

It would also use some of the savings to fund the staffing of events, which have increased since the vaccine was made more widely available last spring.

The mayor's package also as proposed in that letter funds a number of new policy ads such as triage one in the fire department community safety investments in HSD and hiring bonuses for SPD officers, there's a rather.

long list of things that the mayor would fund using SPD salary savings.

While that letter articulates a plan for the salary savings, that's all it is.

It's a plan.

The mayor will need to propose legislation to enact all of these programs.

The mayor has sent to the council one piece of legislation that would authorize the spending of salary savings for hiring bonuses and also remove council provisos so that the department could start spending internal resources on some of the things I mentioned earlier like separation pay and deferred compensation.

but that's a rather limited piece of legislation.

It's the case that to do many of the things that the mayor would like to do and that are articulated in that letter, the mayor would need to propose additional legislation.

There would need to be legislation that would create new civilian positions, such as a new squad of CSOs that are proposed in that letter.

There would need to be legislation that would make appropriations to other departments.

There would need to be an appropriation to the Seattle Fire Department, for instance, for triage one.

How that would make use of SPD salary savings would need to be determined, whether there would be a cut to SPD.

and then an appropriation to Seattle Fire or some other means of getting the money out of SPD and into Seattle Fire.

That's something that the mayor's office would need to determine and send the bill to council.

That has not occurred and there's not been a plan articulated for that yet.

And then finally, there's this need to address the grants acceptance and authorization.

That's something that needs to happen.

Allie and I have been told by CBO staff that there is a plan to send a bill sometime in late August that would at least address the grants, the acceptance of SPD grants and appropriation of grants.

And that bill could also serve as a vehicle for some of these issues that the mayor has put forward, such as appropriating the community public safety investments like triage one, or adding civilian positions to SPZ, or truing up some of SPD's budget so that they can spend it on some of these new programs.

That could serve as a vehicle for making some of these changes or you could use the supplemental budget that is before you now to make some of these changes that the mayor has suggested.

That is really a decision that is before the council right now.

Do you want to use the supplemental budget that is before you now to make some of these suggested changes or do you want to wait until the mayor sends legislation in two or three weeks and do it in sort of a comprehensive all-in-one SPD bill.

And so with that as sort of an overview, I am happy to go into a deep dive into what the mayor has proposed into sort of a line-by-line dive of the letter with all of the proposed changes in SPD, or I'm happy to do that later in the public safety meeting.

as planned next Tuesday.

Either way, at the chair's pleasure.

Vice Chair Herbold.

Thanks.

I just want to signal my interest in funding elements.

that do not require additional legislation, so I have expressed my interest in a down payment on the $2 million for cities' participation in the regional I'm a member of the peacekeepers collaborative.

I have signaled my interest in funding the purchase of the protocol system that is needed by the investment needs to be made as soon as possible in order to even begin to look at how more calls can be diverted to non-SPD, non-fire department responses, and that will lay the foundation for the future investment in the triage one program, which I understand may need some other legislative authority.

I have been working since earlier this year in the bill that I proposed in the spring that did not get funding to provide the funding to fill the existing positions for the community service officers and the crime prevention coordinators and some of the technology investments.

that the executive is seeking.

So I'm just wanting to express that I am interested in using this vehicle for some of those things.

I don't think we can wait for funding some of these items, and it's really important for me that we address some of them in the supplemental budget.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Hermold.

And while we have a quick pause as folks are teeing up possible amendments, I know that there's other amendments that people have also been looking at outside of SPD.

I want to respect Councilmember Strauss's duly managing two meetings right now and I just want to note for you, you are welcome to chime in with a quick heads up and overview of any of the amendment items that you have that are also outside of SPD, given that I don't want folks to think that the supplemental is just related to SPD.

This is obviously big information and breaking news.

But we want to make sure that council members get a chance to highlight any additional amendments that they're working on.

And it's not necessary.

Some of them were discussed two weeks ago.

we have you and if you are able to, you can feel free to come off a mute and talk about those amendments as well to respect your time and the multiple meetings that you're in.

and we'll give you a quick second to get situated.

Again, council colleagues, for anybody else who is interested in flagging additional amendments before we get into the weeds of the SPD memo, feel free to do that.

Council Member Strauss, great to see you.

Thanks again for being with us today and for managing multiple meetings.

I know you're doing this on behalf of your constituents, so thank you for being where you're at and also in this committee meeting.

Thank you very much, Chair Mosqueda.

I come to you from the Ballard Avenue Design Shred where we are making permanent street cafes for Ballard and informing the decisions for citywide implementation of the policy.

The amendment that I have before you today that I know we won't be voting on today, I just want to provide some background.

The Green Lake Boathouse is a There are two boathouses in our city.

There's one at the Stan Sires Pits in South Seattle and ours in Green Lake.

These two boathouses serve the entirety of the city.

And so the Green Lake boathouse serves people from Pioneer Square all the way to Shoreline.

What we have is a redevelopment of this building to accommodate the uses that are needed.

If just by way of background, currently the workout room for people doing crew or canoeing is underneath the aqua theater steps.

So they're actually in a concrete bunker underneath the seating for the aqua theater at Green Lake.

This new building would accommodate community space, it would be a community center for boat enthusiasts from Pioneer Square to Shoreline.

They have been under a fundraising program for many years at this point.

They are now $1.25 million away from finalizing their budget and they're permit ready, shovel ready.

I'm just excited to bring this amendment forward to be able to get them across the hurdle.

I will flag that we have asked Parks Department and we've asked other levels of government for their assistance in finding these dollars.

So if I get more information between now, I guess what I'm saying is I will present more information between now and the next time we meet.

It is just critical for me that we see this project fully funded.

because it's shovel ready and I'm excited to get that new boathouse so that we've got both of the boathouses in Seattle fully completed.

Thank you, Chair.

That's the report on my amendment.

Thank you so much.

Any council members have any questions?

I do want to flag for folks, we're going to try to make sure that all the amendments that are being proposed are self-balancing.

So there's that.

And Council Member Strauss, while I have you, I don't want to put you on the spot, but if you did have a chance to read the domestic workers response letter, we took a roll call earlier and we are going to be sending that out after committee.

So just want to make sure if you, since I had you on the line, if you're interested in adding your name to that from our committee, it was unanimous sign on, we'd be happy to have you.

Thank you for that additional opportunity.

Happy and honored and privileged to sign off.

I'm going to go ahead and close the meeting.

safety and communication center.

I also have proposals for amendments that would fund public disclosure requests being handled by the Office of police accountability and Seattle IT to deal with the very large backlog of PDR complaints or PDR requests to SPD.

I also have a funding proposal.

that would fund FAS to rent space for evidence storage, as identified as a urgent need by the Office of the Inspector General, because the city is running out of space to store evidence.

And then lastly, I want to just signal interest in a support for piloting a community responder program that would address some of the needs identified in the Nick Jr. report.

The Nick Jr.

Report identified that the percentage of calls that could be handled by a non-police response, and there's a lot of back and forth about what the right number is.

The police department and the executive actually agree that 12% of the calls that 911 takes can be handled by a non-police officer response, but yet the triage one program only proposes to handle a small portion of that 12 percent.

And I think it would be really exciting to explore funding a community response, a crisis response that a community-based crisis response program.

I know that the executive reported to my committee that there were no applications to HSDs, capacity building, public safety, RFP.

And I understand that there was actually, and maybe HSD was not considering it because this was a geographically focused pilot rather than a citywide proposal, but there is a proposed pilot for the Lake City area for a 24 hour a day, seven day a week community response, community-based crisis response.

program that did not receive funding under the HSD capacity building RFP, but that would be a really interesting way to take a step forward in this area.

Thank you very much.

for potential amendments prior to sort of some of the information that was out there that may influence the supplemental.

So appreciate the opportunity to hear where council members were and are thinking about making some possible changes to the supplemental.

And then, Greg, I think we're going to go into the summary that you articulated to go line by line so people can ask questions about what the executive is potentially proposing.

Councilmember Lewis, I see you off mute.

Thanks again for working with us and central staff on your amendment.

Would you like to add anything about the amendments you're considering?

Thank you, Councilmember Mesquita.

I spoke briefly to the amendments at our last hearing two weeks ago.

I guess just to briefly reiterate, I will be bringing an amendment to reprioritize The underspend associated with the delay in standing up the tiny house villages.

As we know from the Select Committee on Homelessness meeting last week, there is considerable underspend.

The council fully funded three tiny house villages to begin operation as early as January of 2021. It's anticipated those villages will open for the most part in October of this year.

So there's considerable underspend from the operations that we didn't have to pay for because those villages haven't been built.

The repurposing of those funds would be to assist organizations that are experiencing unanticipated costs and overruns for the completion of the city of Seattle.

We have a number of permanent supportive housing projects.

Particularly chief Seattle club has indicated an interest for some level of support in some of the housing that they are currently trying to complete the pioneer The goal would be to make sure that it is a one-time priority, because we are going to have these villages up and running.

We want to be able to fully fund them for 2022. So it would just be to do this course correction mid-year of one-time money based on these unique savings because of the delay in standing up these tiny house villages.

and that amendment has been circulated.

I'm happy to entertain any questions one-on-one from colleagues over the course of the next couple of weeks as we consider those amendments and discuss them.

Thank you very much Councilmember Herbold, excuse me, Councilmember Lewis, appreciate that.

And I will flag two amendments and then let's move on if there's no other amendments that people want to flag.

Two that I was considering, one would dovetail nicely with what Councilmember Lewis We are trying to allocate around $200,000 to an entity like sound solutions northwest that helps build the tiny houses we need.

We know they rely on volunteer labor and donations which is greatly appreciated.

In an effort to make sure those doing work on behalf of the city get paid for it.

we have a lot of work to do.

to 24 months or seeing if there was additional investments that were not funded through HSD's community safety response systems that would need additional support and looking to provide assistance in the realm of $1 to $2 million there.

So those are some of the ideas that were already underway in addition to supporting the call for entities like Just Care to have support.

I think there's a lot of support on this council for that.

And support for REACH to do the outreach.

I think the bigger questions that we have been looking into over the last two weeks is the capacity for both REACH and entities like Just Care to be stood up.

And I'm looking forward to a broad budget proposal that would allow for us to have more organizations funded and trained in the Just Cares Like model.

So that there is a place for those outreach contacts to go to.

So again, as we think about alternatives to just incarceration or policing and wanting to make sure that those who are showing up actually get connected to human service organizations and housing services, wanting to make sure that we're investing in that upstream solution is something I'm continuing to look into.

I don't see Councilmember Sawant on the line.

She was with us last time.

I will just note for her as well, broad support, I think, at least from my perspective, from my purview here for the $500,000 that is going into creating the need that we heard about during public testimony.

That would allow for the pre-development dollars to go into supporting the Garfield Superblock Project.

I'm not seeing additional hands at this point.

Let's hear how some of those items overlap with what the mayor has proposed or maybe are new items that are being put in front of the to see how that proposal is either in alignment or is not in alignment with what we are currently considering for the supplemental budget in front of us.

Greg, I think you're on mute.

OK, ask Allie to please put up the list that she put together.

And first off, I will say that with the exception of A couple of the things that Councilmember Herbold said, really nothing, nothing in this list is being proposed in the supplemental budget.

There are some things that Councilmember Herbold has been advocating for since the beginning of the year on behalf of the department.

that they have requested that are in this list.

And specifically, right off the top, the civilian support item, the 1.154 million item.

This is an item that the council has or that the department at the beginning of the year said that they would like to use their salary savings on.

And this particular item is made up of a number of different civilian positions that were defunded due to the COVID revenue crisis.

SPD had to defund a number of vacant civilian positions and hold those positions vacant.

Positions such as community service officers and crime prevention coordinators, positions that worked with the community.

And as sworn salary savings became available, the department had interest in using the salary savings to fill some of these civilian positions.

Council Member Herbold, in the crafting of her amendments for Council Bill 119981, would have funded with sworn salary savings these positions, specifically the Crime Prevention Coordinator, the Community Service Officers, some of the administrative assistants that would be doing public disclosure work and the senior management system and analysts that the department had promoted to do some data work.

As it is, the department in this particular list had added some more civilians into the mix.

They have now added into this mix another unit of CSOs that they would propose to fill and use sworn salary savings to fund.

As I said in my opening comments, they don't actually have position authority for an additional unit of CSO.

So this is another thing that's hanging out there that the council would need to somehow fix.

Either in this particular vehicle you have before you, you would need to add positions for these CSOs, or you could do it in the legislation that they're planning on sending in September.

So they've also added a CID public safety liaison and a bias crimes coordinator.

Those are new positions.

They've added a training coordinator position.

That's a new one since the beginning of the year.

and some additional staff assistance for public disclosure work.

So all of those positions, I guess, are covered in the first two lines.

Those are the civilian positions that they would fund with the sworn savings.

The next line is technology investments.

Thank you for pausing.

Vice Chair Herbold.

Just really quickly, given that this bill is before us now, if the rest of the committee agrees, I think it would make sense to take the action that would not require a title change and a reintroduction.

So again, funding those existing vacant unfunded positions and taking that action within this bill and considering an action to add positions in future legislation is just If you're kind of polling the interest of the council right now, I think that might be a good way to go so that we can both act quickly on the supplemental and not delay any further, but also reserve time to consider the requests that require additional position authority at a later date.

Okay, thank you.

And Greg, I understand that the sheet in front of us on the screen is a reorientation of the spreadsheet in your memo on pages seven and eight.

Is there a way that we can cross-reference that with what Councilmember Herbold has just noted, which are the items that would not require a reintroduction?

That would be helpful.

It doesn't have to happen right now, but I would appreciate it.

It's actually SPD's memo and it's on pages three and four.

And I believe that SPD has put an asterisk next to the new positions.

Those would be the ones that would require new authority.

So anything that doesn't have an asterisk next to it could be funded with salary savings and wouldn't need a new position.

Thank you.

Councilmember Morales, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I apologize, my internet cut out for a bit, so I had to call in and I may have missed something, but if I'm understanding this list correctly and some of the comments that Councilmember Herbold just made, revisiting the conversation that we had about filling CSO and crime prevention coordinator positions.

And I believe we already voted on that and rejected it.

So I just wanna make sure that we're talking about the same thing because if that is what we're talking about, that's not something that I feel like I could support in this package.

And just to be clear, I was only talking about process, not trying to gauge support for any amendment or other amendment.

I was just sort of talking about, and I totally prepared to bring an amendment that is not incorporated into a substitute to put those things forward.

But it sounds to me like one of the questions on on the table right now is whether or not there's an agreement to at least consider amendments that meet some criteria while recognizing that others should not be considered now.

Because in order to even consider them, we would have to include passage of additional legislation or a substitute that would require a title change.

And if I could jump in on two things.

First, I hope I'm speaking correctly.

It's possible that as I reread this memo, when it talks about new positions that were not included in the January memo are marked with an asterisk.

When they say new positions, I don't know if that means that they don't have authority for them or if that means that it's a position that they have authority for that they just didn't include in the January memo.

So staff needs to do a little more.

I need to do a little more digging.

And I don't know if that is necessarily the cut council member that you want to make.

You may just want to make the cut of what was in the January memo versus what's not in the January memo.

And then second, Allie had some things that she wants to add.

Thanks, Greg.

I just wanted to clarify a couple of things.

This table, as Chair Mosqueda and Greg described, is just our reformatted version of the table that's included in SPD's memo.

Greg and I have sort of separated, on our initial review, what we see as proposed spending that would remain within SPD, so sort of what they are proposing to do with salary savings within SPD, and then Other proposed spending for using the salary savings that we anticipate would require moving funds from SPD's budget to other departments.

So that is the, I just wanted to orient people to the table in terms of the positions and that type of thing.

I think one of the questions before the committee in terms of reviewing SPD's budget proposal and whether or not you want to take action in the supplemental mid-year supplemental budget ordinance is whether or not you agree with their proposed approach for repurposing some of these salary savings.

And if you do not, actions you may need to take to restrict spending in certain ways because there are some actions they can do already within their existing appropriation authority.

As Greg mentioned they may already have position positions that are vacant and could be filled as well as the the budget office has some authority to establish emergency positions if needed and so the council may need to take a proactive step in affirmatively saying they You cannot use funds for certain things if you disagree with any of these proposed spending areas as well as considering what your priorities are for some of the use of the salary savings.

So I think in part, this is why we're here today to have this conversation because it's difficult to make these decisions individually as one decision for use of salary savings will affect future discussions on use of those funds.

Okay, I'll turn it back to you.

Okay, so thank you Ali and this is this is a helpful reminder folks.

I just want to make sure that folks have an understanding of what our goal is over the next.

You know, 20 minutes that we've been trying to discuss for the last hour.

This is really our opportunity to flag potential amendments that you'd like to see.

We don't have to make any decisions today about where we draw the line.

This is really an opportunity for us to dig into.

The new information about the salary savings, the underspend, and how that potentially affects the supplemental budget overall, given that there was already some interest, as noted, for how some of those underspend dollars could be used.

I think it is, you know, we're in a frustrating place.

I would like to have a better understanding of what is going on in the mayor's office since some of these conversations began prior to last Thursday when the press releases were shared.

I think part of what I would like to have a better understanding of before we leave today is where there is Councilmember interest and possible policy ideas which you have begun to flag.

Thank you.

We don't have to make a decision today about yes or no on any of I would also like to make sure that I understand as you are There has been any indication that spending is already occurring, especially without authorization from this council.

That would be very problematic for me.

I know many of the council members here in our committee have also expressed concern about dollars being spent before authorization has been given.

And so if you can help me identify as we go through if there's areas that are already creeping into that category, that would be helpful to know.

I'm not sure if that makes sense in terms of orienting us to sort of the issue identification in front of us today as we seek to understand more about the implications for the possible implications for the supplemental budget and to make sure that we have a more solid understanding of what is being proposed and or what is already being done.

Councilmember Morales, I just wanted to double check, is that hand a leftover hand from your previous comment or do you have another comment?

No problem.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

And Greg, please go ahead.

Thank you, Council Member.

I need to get back to you on that.

you're hitting it on the mark.

If it was, you and Council Member Herbold both are, if it was a position that was already in the existing budget, the 2021 budget, and it was vacant and defunded as part of the COVID revenue adjustments, then that is something that the department, that is a position that the department is already using salary savings to fill.

If it is a new position and probably the clearest example would be the new CSO squad for which they don't have position authority, then that is something that they should not be filling and they should not be using salary savings to fund.

So between now and Tuesday, I will sort out with the department I will segregate the positions that they are currently funding and the positions that they are not funding and what they need pockets for.

Okay, and I think that that was a new hand.

Council Member Morales, is that a new hand?

Yes, thank you.

Greg, that was kind of where I was going, was a request to sort of separate the things for which there would need to be new authority and the things for which we really, there is no point in us engaging in the conversation because the department already has the authority to do.

And I think that speaks to the point Council Member Herbold was making earlier, which is if there are things that really are restricted, you know, separation pay, for example, it would be helpful just to have those things delineated because it really muddies the conversation, especially when, you know, community is, very interested in what the council can and can't do.

So that that would kind of distinction would be very helpful too.

And then lastly I would just as long as we're on civilian positions reiterate what Allie said and that is that It would also be a good idea for the council to take a proactive step and say, if they did not want the department to move forward with hiring some of these positions, that they enact a proviso to make sure that that didn't happen, because there are administrative ways that the executive can move forward.

But that's a discussion that can be had over the next couple of weeks as a deeper dive occurs into this list.

Thank you, Greg.

I think I do have one additional clarifying question from Vice Chair Herbold.

Is that correct, Council Member Herbold?

I may have...

misunderstood.

So Council Member Herbold, if you are listening in, if you do have a clarifying question, feel free to jump in any time.

But Greg, let's go ahead and keep walking through this.

Okay, so the technology investments item is one where the department is replacing or upgrading its data analytics platform and its early intervention system and capacity planning tool.

That is the I'm not going to go too deep into this, but it's it's a system that they use to comply with the consent decree and track all the data.

that the department uses to measure everything from use of force to training.

The work schedule timekeeping project is a project that they have been trying to get off the ground for quite a while.

replacing a system that they have now where they are literally scheduling officers by hand.

They've got a whiteboard and cards that they use and They turn in the cards and someone in payroll literally goes through them and documents them.

So that would automate that system.

The National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform Contract, you may be familiar that in the last couple public safety meetings, the topic has been police reform and alternative response to 911 calls.

The department has come in with an analysis that was conducted by the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform.

That contract was $50,000.

That's already spent.

The next item, $150,000, is part of a contract, a multi-year contract that SPD has entered into that would provide mental health services for officers.

This is just part of a hiring, retention, and wellness program that the department would put into place.

Contracting background services, the next one for $110,000.

One of the sticking points for the hiring process for the department has always been backgrounding.

They have a limited number of detectives that are available to conduct the backgrounding for recruits and new hires.

that process.

By employing a private sector contract background service, they can speed up that process and hopefully get folks in through the door quicker.

Obviously, that is important right now with what is going on with the officer shortage.

Separation and shortfall.

If I could I'm going to take this opportunity to thank you offer a clarifying point and now that I was trying before I also have a little bit of additional information I'd like to provide about one of the items that Greg just mentioned and I'm going to do that first.

So Greg mentioned the the project the technology project the work in timekeeping I think it's called project.

And I want to highlight that many of the city auditor's recommendations as it relates specifically to tracking overtime use as well as off-duty use is really tied to the implementation of this particular technology investment.

So I just want to flag that for folks here now.

And then earlier when we were talking about the civilian positions and we were trying to sort of make a distinction between civilian positions that would need additional position authority and civilian positions that do not need additional authority and a recognition that SPD is likely going is likely seeking to fund them with salary savings.

I want to sorry hold on a second.

I'm in transit here.

I want to highlight that one of my objective priorities for this legislation

is to end the practice of the department paying for and funding actions that the council has not yet authorized.

And whereas there may be the existing positions already for the CSOs, the vacant CSOs, existing positions, the vacant crime prevention coordinator existing positions, The funding currently is in a different budget control level.

And so there does still need to be some authorization from the council for SPD to use those funds or else we are going to continue the cycle of SPD paying for what they want to pay for and coming to us after the fact and asking permission for what they've already done.

So one of my high priorities for this bill is to figure out what things the council supports the use of salary savings for, and give that intent to the department before they start spending those dollars.

Okay, thank you very much, Council Member Herbold.

Please continue, Grace.

Okay, so some of these items these next few are pretty easy the separation pay shortfall this is just the simply the payout of vacation and sick time when an officer leaves had a lot of officers leave and so this is this is funding that or costs that are not covered in the budget for The next item is deferred compensation.

There is a requirement in the contract that the city matches deferred compensation.

That also needs to be paid out.

When the 2021 adopted budget was written by the council, when the proposed budget was submitted by the mayor and it was written by the council, both the mayor and the council made cuts to event overtime.

And the cuts were made with the assumption that the COVID situation would would continue potentially longer than it has.

I think the vaccine becoming widely available in the spring happened sooner than I think almost anyone thought it would.

And so that leaves the department in a situation where now it is going to have to staff events a lot sooner than it thought it would, and it's going to have subsequently a shortfall in overtime funding that it will need for those events.

And so they are currently estimating that that shortfall would be about $3 million.

Does Council Member Herbold have a question?

No, thank you.

Okay.

Paid parental leave.

This item for $200,000 is only one component of a larger item.

The total amount for paid parental leave is $1.8 million.

There is $1.6 million that is sitting in finance general in reserve for SPD.

that will be transferred at the end of the year to SPD, but it's not enough.

And so SPD is holding in reserve here another 200,000.

And so those two items together will cover the total cost of paid parental leave.

Potential COVID-related compensation adjustments.

This is a placeholder for some labor issues that are currently under negotiation.

And then the last one is hiring and retention incentives.

This particular item would provide all of the lateral transfers in 2021 with a $15,000 hiring bonus and all of the recruits in 2021 with a $7,500 hiring bonus.

This requires legislation that has been transmitted to the council.

And it's my understanding that that same legislation would also lift council provisos that would allow for much of the spending in the items that I have covered above.

And so, going, finishing out the list, so let me actually hit the subtotal.

That's $13.7 million, and this is all, these are all items that SPD would fund, mostly related to SPD.

Then there are these items that I'm about to go into now, which are some new public safety initiatives.

The triage one proposal for $700,000.

The 911 dispatch protocol system for the CSCC and the regional community safety and the peacekeepers initiative for 500,000.

As I mentioned earlier, funding for these initiatives if they are somehow has to get out of SPD and into the places that it needs to be, if triage one winds up being in the fire department, then somehow it needs to get into the fire department, whether that is through this particular vehicle or whether the mayor submits legislation in September.

along with the grants acceptance or some of these other items I mentioned, that's up to the council to consider how they move forward with that.

But these are items that would somehow or another have to be addressed.

And so with all of these items together, they add to $15.2 million in spending.

The salary savings estimate as of the end of June is $15.3 million.

And so it leaves somewhere around $64,000.

But again, these are very high-level estimates based on staffing at this point in time.

I know that this is the first time that some folks have had the chance to really walk through this memo and the information that was put out in the press.

On Thursday, are there questions that people would like to ask?

Please go ahead, Council Member.

Thank you.

And I apologize for the background noise.

Like I said, I am in transit here on foot.

So I just also want to, I didn't mention this earlier when you were asking for people's interest in amendments I am interested in raising two of the budget proviso, one related to Harbor Patrol because the conditions of that proviso have been fulfilled, and the other related to the out-of-order layoff because the conditions for that proviso cannot be fulfilled.

So I just want to signal my interest in including that as an amendment moving forward.

Thank you.

Thank you for flagging that, Councilmember.

Additional comments or questions?

I'm trying to look at my multiple screens here for possible hands.

I guess I have a question about this incentive pay.

We've heard repeatedly, especially in Councilmember Lewis's committee meeting regarding homeless services, that there is a severe shortage of We've heard a lot of concerns about the lack of human service personnel, both at the department in terms of how we can allocate the funding that has been appropriated by this council and signed into law by the mayor for homeless services, and a lot of concern about the resistance to standing up the tiny house villages and safe within HSI.

We also know that COVID has dramatically affected the folks who've been already on the front line and underpaid within our human services contracted organizations.

So I guess I'm wondering, has there been a conversation that's more broadly being applied to areas where we need frontline personnel to respond to the crisis that COVID has presented and worsened?

For example, in HSI, in HSD, our human service contracts.

We aware of any of those incentive pay conversations happening there?

Chair Mesquite, are you referring to the COVID related compensation line?

No.

I'm talking about incentive pay.

If the mayor is talking about $10,000 per person, is there a similar conversation that's being applied to other personnel that work for the city as well?

I am not aware of any other proposals to provide hiring bonuses or incentive pay for other city functions or offices or other types of services the city provides.

I'm only aware of this proposal and the legislation that was transmitted by the mayor to authorize this, but I have not heard of any other.

Okay, thank you so much for that.

Are there any additional questions that folks have?

Okay.

Are there any questions or comments on the entire package here?

Okay.

I want to thank council members for your involvement in this discussion today.

Obviously there's a lot of questions that are still to be answered and I appreciate council member Herbold is having a similar conversation to try to get into the policy details here.

I believe in front of us next Tuesday.

Is that right, Greg?

Yes.

Okay, so I will be tuning in if not asking for a request to join the meeting as well to potentially hear more.

Because as this either is going to be taken up in September or has implications for the supplemental budget, I would like to make sure that I have a full understanding of what is being proposed in front of us.

I also want to just touch base on the triage one I think there's a lot of interest in a triage system.

This is part of the reason why we at council tripled the amount of investments going into the health one van so that we had alternatives to police showing up for well checks.

And for example, recently, here in the North Delridge area saw both fire and police responding to an individual twice in one morning who was needing a well check.

And I can absolutely understand the need to make sure that we're having folks other than those first responders coming out to do a well check and hopefully having them as I can see how that would be both the cost savings and how it would be reducing the interaction with individuals who are showing up as armed officers when really we need case workers and social workers showing up to do the assessment.

I still have a question about where the handoff goes to, and that's why I'm continually interested in expanding those community safety grants that HSD has authorized And whether that's extending those or adding additional capacity to HSD, we have to have somewhere to refer folks off to.

So just flagging my ongoing interest in that.

I'm not seeing additional hands at this point.

Allie, Tom, Greg, any summary comments that you'd like to offer on this conversation with a caveat and note that it is to be continued next Tuesday.

Chair Mosqueda, I would just reiterate what you said at the beginning, which is any new ideas or different ideas, if council members could get us those proposals by Wednesday at noon.

I will be out of the office for a couple of weeks, but we are trying to get this all coordinated and get information distributed well in advance of the next committee discussion.

So there is time to fine tune any amendments or address questions.

and put the committee in a position where they are ready to potentially take action on the 17th.

So thank you for setting that early deadline.

Absolutely.

Okay, colleagues, I'm not seeing anybody else come off mute.

I wanna thank you for your generous time today.

It's three minutes after one o'clock when I promised that we'd get you out, but hey, we successfully moved out four items of our committee today.

It's a big agenda, appreciate your generous time.

At our next committee meeting, we will discuss the reappointments for the Community Roots Housing Board, the revenue forecast will be on our agenda.

We will bring back these two pieces of legislation, both the mid-year supplemental budget and the mid-year grant acceptance legislation, and consider possible amendments.

And we will follow up from the item that was on today's meeting, which is the MFTE extension legislation.

Please review the materials that were provided on today's agenda and let Tracy Ratliff or my office know through through Erin House if you have any questions.

Again, appreciate your time.

And as a reminder, we do have two more meetings in September, both on Fridays, September 10th and September 17th at 9.30.

That's our revised schedule for September.

And with that, we hope to see you at our next August 17th meeting for finance and housing starting at 9.30.

Thanks to all of central staff for being online with us today, as well as members of the mayor's team and our community partners.

We will see you all in two weeks and again reminder amendments due to alley and concept tomorrow at noon Thanks so much.

Have a great rest of the afternoon