Seattle City Council Public Safety & Human Services Committee 5/24/22

Good morning.

It is 9.32 AM.

The May 24th, 2022 meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee will come to order.

I am Lisa Herbold, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Nelson.

I'm sorry, excuse me, Council Member Mosqueda.

Present.

And Chair Herbold.

Here.

That's for present.

Thank you so much, and when Council Member Lewis is here, I will be sure to recognize him.

So on today's agenda, we will be hearing three items.

First, we'll hear an unintroduced draft bill to establish a new process for investigating complaints named thief of police.

This is a gap in the 2027 accountability ordinance that we are seeking to address with this legislation.

Secondly, we'll be hearing information by members of this district, specifically our business improvement area directors about safety investments that they are proposing.

And we'll also be hearing from the mayor's office about the approach that they have been piloting in some specific neighborhood business districts that they're hoping to be able to replicate.

Thirdly, we'll be discussing and voting on amendments for bill 1202-94, also known as PEP.

We have 14 amendments for consideration today.

I want to note that Council Member Lewis has joined the meeting.

Welcome and good morning, Council Member Lewis.

Moving into approval of the agenda, we will now our agenda for our committee meeting.

And if there is no objection, today's agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

At this time, we'll transition into public comment.

and I will endeavor to moderate the public comment in the following manner.

Because of the number of speakers that we have signed up to testify this morning, each speaker will be given one minute to speak.

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

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

going to the council's website.

This link is also listed on today's agenda.

Once I call a speaker's name, you'll hear a prompt, and once you've heard the prompt, you need to hit star six to unmute yourself.

You can begin by stating your name and the item which you are addressing, and speakers will hear a time when we ask that you continue to mute your microphone after 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

Once the speaker hears the chime, we ask that you begin to wrap up your public comments, and if speakers do not end their public comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's mic will be muted after 10 seconds to allow us to hear from the next speaker.

Once you've completed your public comment, please disconnect from the line, and if you plan to continue listed on the agenda.

We've got 50 people signed up for public comment this morning.

And again, I will be reading names into the record two at a time.

Please listen for the names.

Our first speaker is Howard Gale, and Howard will be followed by Anna Powell.

Howard.

Good morning.

Howard Gale, commenting on our failed police accountability system.

The first item on your agenda this morning is proposed legislation that starts out by proclaiming that our current police accountability system, quote, has strength not found in other models of oversight and addresses systemic weaknesses with which other systems have struggled, unquote.

As a psychologist, we often see boasts like this as a highly dysfunctional defense mechanism to hide severe failures.

Failures such as the reality that the SPD has killed more people in the decade after the consent decree than during the decade prior, determining that every SBD killing was, quote, lawful and proper, unquote, including the 17 people experiencing a severe behavioral crisis.

Failures like the reality of the continuing racial disparity in the SBD use of force and in SBD stops and detentions.

Failures like the 2020 unconstitutional and egregiously violent SBD action against demonstrators with virtually all the officers exonerated, save for a very few cases where complaints were upheld, resulting in only reprimands.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Anna Powell and Anna will be followed by Von Gearhart.

Anna.

Hi, my name is Anna Powell and I represent DoorDash.

We are here today opposed to the payoff ordinance.

DoorDash has supported minimum earning standards before, but the payoff proposal calculated at 200% of Seattle's minimum wage before tips for an average delivery is just too hot.

It would raise costs on customers by up to $5, reduce orders for merchants, and shrink earning opportunities for dashers, who currently earn $28 an hour on average.

We are disappointed to see erroneous claims about dashers in Seattle, and we believe it is important to set the record straight.

A recent report from Working Washington is based on data from just 400 deliveries across multiple platforms.

that can't possibly summarize the experience of the other 38,000 DASHers in Seattle.

Finally, DASHers, you're heard from more than 15,000 of your constituents who have submitted letters asking you to halt the payout proposal and study its impacts before passing it.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Dawn Gerhardt, and I will be followed by Beth Haines.

Welcome, Dawn.

Good afternoon or good morning members of the committee and Chair Herbold.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

My name is Dawn Gerhart.

I'm the Gig Economy Organizing Director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance.

And I'm here to comment on 120294, specifically amendments two and three.

We urge the council to pass the ordinance with the exception of amendments two and three, which redefine marketplace companies and exclude thousands, potentially more, domestic workers from the basic protections enshrined in this ordinance.

Companies are attempting to exclude some of the most disadvantaged workers in the gig economy in order to maintain control while keeping their costs low.

The National Domestic Workers Alliance is the nation's leading voice for the 2.5 million domestic workers who make all of their jobs possible many of whom live in Seattle.

We strongly urge the council members to oppose amendments 2 and 3 in order to maintain the integrity of this legislation.

The attempts to redefine marketplace companies are part of the standard playbook for these companies.

And this is a strategy that's been attempted around the country.

And even older strategy being employed to exclude domestic workers from laws that may Thank you, Don.

Great to hear from you.

Next, we have David Haynes and David will be followed by Magnolia Klee, David.

All right, not seeing David present.

We'll go down to Magnolia Clee and Magnolia Clee will be followed by Allison Ford.

Magnolia.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak.

My name is Magnolia and I'm addressing the amendments to CB 120294. I've been cleaning homes with through TaskRabbit since 2020 and I strongly urge you to vote no on amendment three to CB 120294. the city of Pasadena.

It is a marketplace app.

Excluding marketplace companies from this legislation would only hurt workers like me, workers providing real and necessary services throughout the city.

It opens a loophole for gig work apps and sends the message that workers using these apps aren't deserving of the same rights and protections as anyone else.

TaskRabbit may be a marketplace app.

I am able to set my own rates, but TaskRabbit strongly suggests starting rates that are far below living wage and in an effort to compete with other taskers.

They have little motivation to ensure that we're charging our worth.

The lower we charge, the more attractive the app becomes to people seeking our services.

Expecting that these apps have profit margins is not a solution.

We need the city to show that they value our lives over the profits of these large companies.

We need this to be passed in as robust a condition as possible.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Allison Ford, and Allison will be followed by Fox Matthews.

Allison?

Allison, you're not showing us on mute, but we can't hear you if you're speaking.

Calling Allison?

I'm sorry.

I see you off mute, but we can't hear you.

I'm sorry, Allison, we're gonna have to go to the next speaker.

My apologies.

Fox Matthews will be followed by Wei Lin.

Fox?

Hello, my name is Fox Matthews and I am here to comment on the pay up proposal.

I am a Dasher in the Seattle area.

I'm also a local artist and a brand new father as of four months ago.

And it's because of those two reasons I mentioned.

I really appreciate and value the gig work such as DoorDash.

It provides me the opportunity to reach my financial goals.

It gives me the freedom to manage and create my own schedule and the flexibility to spend time with my family and pursue other endeavors.

School is on the horizon and I know DoorDash will be an excellent tool to help me meet my goals.

I'm also here today because I'm concerned about the pay-up proposal.

I ask the city council to take time to understand the potential consequences this pay-up proposal will have on many Dashers, including myself.

Thanks for your time.

Thank you, Fox.

Our next speaker is Wei Lin, and Wei will be followed by Gary Tyson.

Wei?

Hi, everyone.

Greetings.

My name is Wei, and I work for GoPAP as your partner since 2020. And I don't need a paid-up policy for my understanding.

I strongly oppose any amendment that would allow a company to exclude payment for engaged time spent on offers that we complete.

Partners like us who are still willing to work during pandemic are hard workers that don't want to lose our job to any income by trying to defraud the company.

We want to do a good job and complete the job as fast as we can, as little as we can, as safely as we can.

We hope that if we do our best, we'll be rewarded.

But if the company are worried about fraud, they can address it by penalizing or determining a worker from commit frauds.

This is what GoPuff does already.

GoPuff tracks the miles and time of drivers by driving on GPS.

And the driver apps always force us to turn tracking locations.

They know how long the order and how long it usually takes to drive.

If I take too long order and they think I'm stretching time on purpose, they can take action.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Gary Tyson.

Gary will be followed by Sage Wilson.

Gary.

Gary, I see you're still on mute.

Can you hit star six, please?

Still seeing you on mute.

Can you try again to hit star six?

And this is a call for Gary Tyson.

There you go.

I'm Bishop Gary Tyson.

As the leader of the General Baptist Convention of the Northwest, we express our concerns with the pay up proposal before the city, Seattle City Council.

We believe this legislation must be certified to do the work of better understanding its impact to our communities that we work to connect and empower.

For example, in 2017, prior to passing the sugar sweetened beverage tax, The city took the time to create a sweetened beverage tax racial equity toolkit.

The same should be done to assess the impacts of the policy on ethnic business powers, app-based workers and community members before rushing to pass it.

The payout policy doesn't take into account the complexities of app-based work and the negative unintended consequences that could come from rushed policy like the payout.

We believe there is a great opportunity to take this through the election.

Thank you for this opportunity.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Sage Wilson.

Sage will be followed by Justin Heyer.

Sage?

Hi.

Sage Wilson with Working Washington here in support of the payout policy after more than a year of hearings and work and in sharp opposition to the Marketplace loophole amendments number two and three.

Amendment two would vastly expand the definition of Marketplace to companies like Rover, TaskRabbit and Handy would be able to offer on-demand jobs and track workers but not have to pay accordingly, just because they may primarily do other things.

And note that TaskRabbit already offers delivery at sub-minimum rates.

Amendment 3 would entirely exempt these companies from the policy so they can continue using their control over access to jobs to drive down pay.

Together, this would create a massive loophole that every other gig company would try to squeeze through, which is why PAF has always covered these workers, who have been making the case at every hearing and included in every version of the policy before Council since last year.

These companies have not made any public case why their workers should not have rights, because they can't.

Whether we're talking about domestic workers or farm workers or good workers, there's no good argument to be made about excluding anyone from basic protections like minimum wage.

These last-minute loophole amendments are bad policy, unpopular, and should be rejected.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Justin Heyer, and Justin will be followed by Felicia Herold.

Justin.

My name is Justin Hire.

I'm the Director of Government Affairs for the Delivery Platform SHIPS.

I'm calling to respectfully express our concerns with the Council Bill 120294, as drafted the Ordinance Risks Economic Uncertainty for the Local Sharing Economy, which is a crucial source of earning opportunities for thousands right here in Seattle.

This measure is being considered without and prior to any effort from the city to study the impacts, including the possibility that it diminishes the flexible earning opportunities available to app-based workers, as well as the number of delivery hours.

Flexibility is at the core of our effort-based approach at SHIPS.

Many SHIPS shoppers use our platform as a way to earn sighted time to pursue the things they value in life.

To this end, 75% of our shoppers choose to work less than 10 hours a week for SHIPS.

Those who choose to work more than 40 hours a week earn on average more than 67,000 a year.

Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to respectfully express our concerns with the ordinance.

I would ask that you please heed the concerns brought up by companies as you consider this measure.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Talisha Herald, and Talisha will be followed by Tiffany Alvidrez.

Talisha.

Good morning.

My name is Talisha.

I'm a shopper on the Instacart app.

I'm here to ask you to vote for the payout policy and against the amendment to hide tips on offers.

If gig apps are allowed to hide tips, it'll further their practice of stealing tips to pay a fair wage to workers.

Tips are not wages.

Workers are already in the dark, about how Instacart determines how much a job will be paid.

Hiding tips will turn the lights off completely.

Here's the deal.

Instacart is not paying minimum wage on a consistent basis.

60 percent of shopper earnings is tips.

Knowing tip amount helps us know if Instacart's paying a fair wage.

Tips are such a large portion of our total compensation that we decide what jobs to accept based on it.

Every restaurant in Seattle is required to pay the minimum wage to workers before tips.

These gig companies must be held to the same standard.

It is the right of workers to receive fair pay before tip and to know the tip amount.

Tips are not wages.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Tiffany Alvidrez, and Tiffany will be followed by Carmen Figueroa.

Tiffany.

Good morning, Chair Herbold and members of the committee.

My name is Tiffany Alvidrez, and I'm the Western Region Policy Manager for Instacart.

I'm here today to address CB 120294 pay up legislation.

Instacart is committed to providing shoppers with opportunities to earn how they want, when they want, all based on their individual goals and built around their schedules.

But in order for those earning opportunities to exist, there must be sufficient customer demand, and any attempt to legislate their working conditions needs to factor that in.

We appreciate the amendments that have been introduced, but we think several important adjustments still need to be made.

An impact study is still needed to truly determine the effects this bill will have on businesses, workers, and the community.

The proposal remains extremely problematic for Instacart customers, shoppers, and retail partners.

Members of this committee should be aware that we fully anticipate a decrease in demand for the services offered on delivery network company platforms, which will, in turn, lead to a decrease in earning opportunities for workers and an increase in cost for consumers.

Instacart looks forward to further discussing as we continue to work

Thank you so much, Tiffany.

Our next speaker is Carmen Figueroa, and Carmen will be followed by Richard Columber.

Carmen?

Carmen, you're showing us- Hello, my name is Carmen Figueroa.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes, thank you.

Hello, hey, my name's Carmen Figueroa, and I ask that the committee not allow companies to withhold any amount of payment for completed orders to prevent fraud.

Even if the policy required companies to exclude time only if they have evidence of fraud, we all know how they operate.

They would just use it as an excuse to pay drivers less, keeping more of the profit for themselves.

No other company is allowed to stop your pay because they think you're working too slow.

Completing orders late is not an indicator of fraud.

There are countless reasons an order is completed late, but I would like to give you the top three.

When an app is behind the processing and offering orders to drivers, drivers will often receive orders after the order is due.

The app calculates time and mileage as crow flies.

The app calculates the driver's arrival at a restaurant to coincide when an order is ready for pickup.

This is a best guess.

Thank you, Carmen.

Our next speaker is Richard Columber, and Richard will be followed by Shelby Hanson.

Hi, I'm calling about, yep, hi, can you hear me?

Thank you.

Again, okay.

Okay, hi, council members, my name is Richard, and I live in Arbor Heights, which is Council Member Arbold's district.

I'm a personal chef, and my partner and I both work from home.

We love dogs and have used Rover since 2018 to manage our pet sitting business, which we operate on the side.

I'm very worried that this proposal was created with only certain kinds of delivery services in mind and without significant amendments could hurt other types of service providers like me.

Pet sitting and food delivery are very different.

I provide a safe environment for pets over the course of days, not minutes or hours.

And unlike delivery services, I have full control over what rates I charge when I advertise my services on Rover.

The problem that the council is trying to solve are problems that I do not have as a pet sitter, and applying this proposal to Rover would not help us.

I ask that you please vote to amend this bill and protect the freedoms that pet sitters using Rover have to build our businesses without- Thank you, Richard.

Our next speaker is Shelby Hansen, and Shelby will be followed by Ashley Sutton.

Shelby?

Good morning, I think the proposed amendment to food market class 8. Marketplace up from the path policy after fighting for payout.

It's so disappointing considering including thousands of workers.

It doesn't make sense to disenfranchise a group of workers well to rely on big work, especially protection and they rover Walker I'm allowed to set my own rates but highly encouraged to keep them low in order to compete and be chosen before other workers, creating a dog eat dog world for workers.

Rover takes 20% of each.

We take on a lot of responsibilities and liabilities that aren't realized as we are not just dog walkers.

Not only do we care for your four legged family member, we become their nurses when we give them medicine if they are sick, we are your security guards when we stay overnight, and we make sure and the butter butts of the world are cared for.

We do meat and grease that we are always paid for, especially since we need to make sure we are.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Ashley Sutton, and Ashley will be followed by Ma Hernandez.

Ashley.

Actually, we see you're unmuted, but we can't hear you.

You're muted.

Hit star six, please.

Good morning, Chair Herbold and members of the committee.

My name is Ashley Sutton, and I'm the executive director at TechNet representing Washington and Northwest.

We thank you for the opportunity to weigh in, but respectfully oppose the PF proposal.

App-based services have enabled affordable and efficient deliveries for the elderly and immunocompromised and helped restaurants stay afloat during the pandemic.

We anticipate many of Seattle's most vulnerable community members will increasingly rely on the services our members offer as record inflation and gas prices continue to surge, which is why the council must get this policy right to avoid harming the community it seeks to safeguard.

To date, the council has yet to commission a study to vet the policy and determine the impact on community.

Price hikes for every aspect of the app-based economy lead to fewer earning opportunities for drivers and orders from businesses that utilize the advantage of app-based platforms.

We respectfully ask the council to pause and thoroughly study the proposal before moving forward.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is M.A.

Hernandez and followed by Jackson.

Ayer, un cliente inició DoorDash para tomar represalias contra la campaña PIA.

Esta fue...

...para...

...justo y equitativo, transparencia y flexibilidad.

No es mucho pedir, especialmente a cambio del uso de mi automóvil y mis gastos.

Quiero invitarlos a ustedes, miembros del consejo, a que me acompañen en un viaje y vean lo que realmente es este tipo de trabajo.

Un trabajo que estas mismas empresas dicen que dinero.

Sin embargo, estamos endeudados.

Las empresas han sido atrapadas apropiándose de las propinas de los clientes que los clientes dan generosamente.

¿Y ahora quieren hacernos quedar como los malos?

Las geek companies han demostrado un crecimiento de ganancias por más de 347 mil millones de dólares.

Eso no se puede decir de un trabajador como yo.

Necesitamos que la política se apruebe.

Ahora no podemos esperar.

Yesterday, a customer showed me the campaign the dashboard started in order to retaliate against the payoff campaign.

This was just proof of our value to DoorDash, something that decent, fair, equitable pay, transparency, and flexibility isn't too much to ask for, especially in exchange for the use of my car, phone, and expenses.

I want to invite you, council members, to join me on a ride along and see what it truly takes to do this type of work.

Companies have been caught appropriating tips that customers generously give, and now you want to make us look like the bad guys.

The companies have shown a profit growth of over $347 billion.

That can't be said the same for the average gig worker.

We need to pay a policy to pass now.

We can't wait.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

the interpretation as well.

Next, we have Beth Jackson and Beth will be followed by Danielle Eden.

Beth.

Hello.

Hello.

Hi, my name is Elizabeth Jackson.

I'm a dancer for DoorDash.

I'm out of Seattle.

I was a paramedic and I got liver cancer and I was told I couldn't work again.

DoorDash five years ago gave me the opportunity to support my family during this epidemic.

If I lose, I'm sorry, it's just, I'm emotional because this job has saved me and my family from being homeless.

I have to see doctors for my cancer.

constantly, but with DoorDash, I have the means to go see my doctor any minute.

I could take a break if my doctor said, there's a donor, let's go.

I don't have that opportunity with other jobs.

I mean, as all of us are going through this hard time right now, especially with this pandemic and the risings of gas and inflation, this job has done a lot for me.

And I just, I oppose against pay up.

I wish you guys would really consider evaluating it again.

Thank you.

We have reached the end of our public comment time.

I would really like get a few more speakers in if we can.

We did have a separate public hearing on May 5th, but we have a lot of folks who are still in a queue to speak on Council Bill 120294. I'm hoping that in order to let another speakers, we can suspend the rules to allow for an additional 10 minutes, giving us a total of 30 minutes of public comment.

If there are no objections, Hearing no objections, public comment has been extended for an additional 10 minutes.

Next, we have Danielle Eden, and Danielle Eden will be followed by Kimberly Wolf.

Danielle?

Danielle, your showing is muted.

Can you hit star six, please?

One more call, Danielle, if you could hit star six, that will unmute, and we will be able to hear you speak.

I'm sorry, Danielle, we're going to have to move on to the next person.

Our next person, Kimberly Wolf, is showing as not present, so we'll move down to Abby.

Let's see here, I'm looking to see if Abby is in the queue.

Abby is also not present.

Okay, thank you.

Moving down to Faisal Reyna.

Faisal Reyna followed by Leah Radke.

Faisal?

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, thank you.

Hi, my name is Basil, and is it okay to go ahead and share?

Go ahead.

I think.

Okay, cool.

All right.

So I just wanted to talk about my experience as a gig economy worker in Seattle.

I've had a couple of different issues, but I'd like to stick to the ones that are relevant to the topics today.

One big issue that I've had is that I haven't been able to get support to be transparent or for them to be able to listen to my feedback.

And the platforms that I've been using are Uber Eats and Postmates.

One of the big issues that I had was just with the West Seattle Bridge.

I remember I would get so many rides where I would, it just wouldn't be a very high payout because it would calculate it.

As if the bridge was open.

And when I finally did the delivery.

It only be like nine or 10 or 12 bucks and it'd be like a huge amount of distance, and I understand that maps or you might be not might not be mapped out the route but my issue.

Thank you so much.

I've heard that story about binge and app-based burgers.

Please do feel free to send on your testimony.

Sorry for cutting you off there.

Next, we have Leah Radecki, and Leah will be followed by Dean Prelis.

Leah?

Hello.

My name is Leah Radecki.

I live in Seattle and use delivery apps often as a person with severe asthma that is at risk due to the pandemic.

All workers deserve to be paid a fair wage, including delivery drivers and gig workers whose work involves wear and tear on their personal vehicle.

I support the pay up policy and think you should prioritize strengthening the rights of gig workers.

Tips are not wages.

Companies should pay their workers at least minimum wage without exception.

Charge me more fees.

I don't care.

I want my community members to be paid fairly.

But I think it's entirely reasonable for these companies to dip into record pandemic profits to do the right thing.

I support pay up without amendments that help corporate interests.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Jean Ellis.

And Jean will be followed by Stacey Campos.

Hello, my name is Jean Callis.

I'm a member of the payout campaign, a voter in District 4, and a driver for Grubhub.

I'm here today to speak in favor of the payout policies before amendments and demand that council take action on it this year.

I started working for Grubhub full-time at the beginning of 2022 after leaving my job due to a combination of burnout and developing chronic migraines.

The flexibility offered by Gateworks seemed ideal at the time.

However, with inflation rising the cost of necessities as well as gas prices and vehicle maintenance, pay as it stands is no longer enough.

On top of these expenses, we are responsible for paying federal taxes as both employee and employer, and that's doubling the tax on our income.

I've heard the argument that if drivers simply worked enough hours, they would make enough to survive.

I work between 40 and 50 hours a week, so what are enough hours if working full-time is not sufficient?

We are not asking for outrageous wealth or making untenable demands of these companies.

We are asking to make enough to cover our basic needs, to keep our vehicles running, to continue to enjoy the flexibility promised and to know exactly what we are agreeing to.

We are asking for the ability to continue to do this work.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Jean Campos.

Jean is showing as not present.

Jean is also, sorry, Stacy Campos.

Stacy is showing as not present.

And Stacy Campos is followed by Teresa Herstad, who is also showing as not present.

We'll go down to Becky Stanley, and Becky Stanley will be followed by Michelle Balzer.

Becky?

Hi.

Can you hear me?

We can.

Hello?

Hi.

My name is Becky Stanley, and I live in the 98118 zip code.

I'm here to support pay up, but not the loophole.

I'm a customer with a disability and a compromised immune system, and having Instacart is really helpful to me.

But I'm not confident that people are being paid fairly.

And I used to be a waiter back when minimum wage was, they had a special waiter minimum wage, and our paychecks ended up being like $35.

But we can't count tips as wages.

Not everybody tips.

I don't feel like I can use these services because there isn't transparency.

I'm confused.

I don't know who is getting paid properly.

If I'm part of the problem, I don't want to be part of the problem.

Pay up helps.

Transparency.

Thanks.

Thank you, Becky.

Next speaker is Michelle Balzer and Michelle will be followed by Marie Lutezzi.

Michelle?

Hello?

Hello.

Okay.

Hi.

Um, I am obviously calling in about the gig app and, you know, independent contractors, which we are, have the right to know the terms of a job prior to accepting, um, hiding tips kind of violates that.

Instacart also has a long reputation for misappropriating tips.

They promise paid transparency after legal action was taken.

And in the last year, I have literally watched that slowly go away.

They have stopped showing the breakdown of shopper's pay.

There is no beneficial reason for hiding tips or pay.

and it can result in returning to the using customer tips to subsidize pay.

The idea of whether or not workers are going to cherry pick orders or pad time is an absolute farce and unfounded.

It is now that orders are being cherry picked because they need the tips to subsidize their pay.

Passing TIP will ensure all orders are accepted promptly since orders will be accepted with confidence that the order isn't costing the worker any money, which is consistently a risk currently.

The fraud amendment, unacceptable.

We need to be paid for all of our active time.

Unforeseen circumstances happen.

We shouldn't be.

Thank you, Michelle.

Our next speaker is Mary Lichese, and Mary will be our last speaker, having extended public comment and having heard from folks for, I think, more than 30 minutes at this point.

So Mary, take it away.

Thank you.

Hi.

I'm Mary.

I'm calling through a sign language interpreter, and I work for Instacart.

I just wanted to share my experience.

I know there's a lot of workers that work for Instacart, and they're hiring a lot of new workers who accept the new wages.

When I started working for Instacart, it was good pay, but I've seen the pay get less and less over the years, and it's harder to pay my bills and allocate my money to what I need it to.

I hope that the council thinks and researches the payout bill and thinks about us workers.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate your time with us here today as well as everybody else who has taken time out in their day to share thoughts about the items on our agenda.

Board of Clerk, please read in agenda item number 1.

Committee agenda item number one in ordinance relating to civilian and community oversight of the police establishing a process for investigating complaints naming the chief of police, adding a new sub chapter five for two chapter, three dot 29 of the Seattle municipal code and amending section 49 of ordinance 1-2-5-3-1-5 to renumber the existing subchapter 5 of chapter 3.29 and sections 3.29-500 and 3.29-510 of the Seattle Municipal Code for briefing and discussion.

Thank you so much.

We are joined as well by Senior Deputy Mayor Harrell and Inspector General Judge, as well as Anne Gorman of Council Central Staff.

Thank you all for being with us.

The bill before us is a draft bill.

It has not yet been introduced.

It addresses a technical issue from the 2027 Accountability Ordinance, which did not address how complaints that name the Chief of Police addressed that led to a lack of clarity about how to proceed with some previous complaints.

I became aware of this issue earlier this year.

I reached out to the Mayor's Office, the Inspector General, and OPA to discuss this and establish a clear, fair process with as much consensus as possible.

Again, the draft bill is not yet introduced, though we would like to introduce it in order to hear it before our committee meeting on June And before I hand it over to Council Central staff, I wanna thank Senior Deputy Mayor Harrell and Inspector General Judge for collaboration on this legislation.

Just wanna, before we get into the Central staff description of the bill, wanna hand it over to both of you for your comments.

Senior Deputy Mayor Harrell.

Thank you so much, Council Member Herbold.

I just, I wanna thank you and your leadership in allowing for me to join you today, but also for your leadership on this particular bill.

This really has been done in the spirit of working together.

The draft ordinance that we're gonna be discussing and reviewing today is a result of collaboration between council and the mayor's office and our accountability entities.

And that's what I think makes it a really good basis for us to begin from.

The legislation today strikes the right balance between the autonomy of the authority of the OPA director with the oversight responsibilities of the OIG for public safety.

This bill improves and amplifies existing oversight processes and increases transparency, which I know we all really, really care very deeply about.

because public trust in our police department and any sworn officer from a rookie on their first day all the way up to the chief is really important.

We should have those complaints properly investigated.

And this gives us a pathway to knowing what we do if there are complaints at the top.

So I really, really appreciate council member Herbold's ongoing engagement and support around these issues.

as she moves the proposal forward, and we look forward to continuing this work together.

So thank you again, Council Member.

Thank you.

Inspector General Judge.

Good morning.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

Thank you, Council Members.

I know that we're already over time, so I don't want to take a lot of time, but I would echo the Senior Deputy Mayor's comments about collaboration and my appreciation for including stakeholders in this process to get to a place where we can close that gap, make sure that we have a process that makes sense with OIG as the appropriate backstop.

And thank you.

Thank you for your leadership and collaboration.

Thanks for working with us.

You want to take it away and walk us through the contents of the bill.

Sure.

Good morning.

Anne Gorman, Council Central staff.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Council Members.

As Council Member Herbold has described, this draft bill addresses a circumstance that was not specifically described in the City's Police Accountability Ordinance, which is the treatment of complaints that come into the Office of Police Accountability, OPA, that name the Chief of Police and the OPA has found to be warranted, thus worthy of an investigation.

It's important to create a discrete process for these complaints because under current practice, all complaints to OPA ultimately roll up to the chief and the chief makes the final decisions on investigative findings and the imposition of any discipline.

The draft bill creates a role in these decisions for the Office of the Inspector General or OIG, which is independent from OPA.

The proposed new role for OIG also addresses a potentially perceived conflict of interest that is inherent in the fact that OPA is administratively housed within the Seattle Police Department.

I will give an example of OIG's specific role in the draft bill for complaints that name the chief.

Typically, when OPA receives a complaint about an SPD employee, OPA staff perform a complaint intake and preliminary investigation, then classify the complaint and determine whether a more complete investigation is warranted.

For a complaint that names the chief of police, The draft bill would have OIG review OPA's classification decision and have the opportunity to disagree with it.

And if OPA and OIG disagree about that classification, then OIG's determination will stand.

And this participation by OIG is consistent with its current oversight role in the police accountability ordinance.

That ordinance also does not currently require that elected officials and accountability stakeholders are kept apprised of investigations that name the Chief of Police.

This group includes the Council President, the Chair of the Council Public Safety Committee, City Attorney, and the Executive Director and Co-Chairs of the Community Police Commission, or CPC.

The draft bill creates new notification requirements for these elected and stakeholders.

Most significantly, either OPA or OIG must notify them when an investigation against the chief will be conducted, and the mayor must provide them with a statement on a completed investigation, excuse me, the findings of a completed investigation and whether he or she will impose disciplinary actions.

Bill also provides a framework for the conduct of an investigation of the chief, either by city staff, where appropriate, or by an independent third party.

And it creates a new role for the Seattle Department of Human Resources Investigations Unit.

That role is created where a complaint alleges violations of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act.

which these complaints could concern harassment or discrimination, as an example.

OPA does not have a staff member with the specialized training to investigate such complaints.

And typically, when those complaints come in to OPA, OPA consults with SPD Human Resources, who does have such a staff member.

In the draft bill, complaints that allege a violation of Equal Employment Opportunity Act that named the chief of police may be investigated either by the SDHR Investigations Unit or by a third party.

This draft bill is pending final legal review by subject matter experts in the law department, although we have discussed previous versions of the bill with them.

Thank you, Anne.

Any additional comments from Senior Deputy Mayor Harrell or Inspector General Judge before I ask my colleagues, council members, whether or not they have comments or questions?

Seeing none.

Nothing from me, thank you.

All right, thank you.

Councilmembers, do you have questions or comments?

Again, we've been working on this bill for quite some time, but we are definitely slow rolling it.

I wanted to bring it to you all before it was introduced and wanted As I often do with legislation I'm proposing.

And just if you have any early thoughts about the bill, I'm happy to hear them now.

Otherwise, we can flag them after the meeting.

I'm seeing some folks come off camera.

Council Member Peterson, I see your hand up.

Thank you, Chair Herbold, and thank you, Deputy Mayor Harrell and Inspector General Judge and central staff and Gorman.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Herbold, for bringing this to us early.

My only comment is we just got a letter this morning from the Community Police Commission.

I just want to make sure that is taken into account as we as we consider the bill.

Thank you.

Other other questions?

All right, well, this was intended to, oh, Council Member Nelson, did you have something?

I didn't see your hand up, but I see.

I'm sorry if I missed it, but when do you think that this will be coming before the committee?

When did you say it might be introduced?

My hope is that we'll be able to hear an introduced version of the bill on June 14th.

Thank you.

All right.

It's my birthday, for anybody who cares.

All right, great.

Thank you, everybody.

Again, appreciate this initial light touch and more conversations to come.

Thank you.

Will the clerk please read into the agenda the next item?

Committee agenda item number two, neighborhood business districts public safety presentation for briefing and discussion.

Thank you so much.

We are joined by a number of presenters today.

Before beginning, I'd like to ask that you each introduce yourself, starting with the mayor's office lead, and then each of the neighborhood district representatives.

Just a little bit of background.

Earlier this year, Council Member Nelson hosted a briefing in her Economic Development Technology and City Light Committee with neighborhood district representatives.

Some of the leaders of those districts have developed We have invited them to share with the committee today.

The presentation is linked to the agenda.

At the same time, the mayor's office has begun some great work to address issues in neighborhood business districts, issues related to the public safety challenges that are dealing with and trying to design something that's tailored to the individual experiences of public safety challenges.

So far, I've also invited the mayor's office, or contacts, I've invited the mayor's office to provide an update to the committee on the work that they are doing.

Before moving to the business district presentation, and thank you to Director of Public Safety Meyerberg and the lead program for coming to present today.

And with that, let's pause and we'll do a quick round of introductions and then I'll hand it back over to Director Meyerberg.

Any questions?

Thank you.

Sure.

Good morning.

Erin Goodman, the Executive Director of Soto Business Improvement Area.

Great.

I'm Don Blakely, Executive Director of the U District Partnership.

Thank you for having us this morning.

Thank you.

Lisa Howard, I'm the Executive Director of the Alliance for Pioneer Spark.

Good morning.

I'm Anisha Singh, Executive Director of the Chinatown International District Business Improvement Area.

And hi, good morning.

Quinn Pham, I'm the Executive Director for the Friends of Little Saigon.

Sam?

Sorry, on my phone.

My name is Sam Wolf.

I'm a project manager for the LEAD program.

Great.

And I see that it looks like Public Safety Director Meyerberg is not on the screen.

So I don't know if he's having some difficulties getting in.

But perhaps Sam, do you, I know this wasn't as we had planned, I think we had planned to have Director Meyerberg talk about the work that the mayor's office together with LEAD are doing, but are you prepared to pinch hit and do the whole thing?

Sure, would you like me to start now or did we want to do that slide show first?

Um, I think we want to hear about what is already going on before hearing from the business, uh, district representatives about what more they would like to see done.

Sure.

Sure.

Okay.

Um, yeah.

So, um, again, my name is Sam.

I'm a project manager for the lead program.

Um, we've been working with Andrew Meyerberg, um, in the U district, um, doing some case conferencing about some, uh, public safety issues that the U district partnership is flagged.

Um, Basically, LEAD is a framework for kind of exactly this, figuring out what needs to be done in any given situation.

We do this sort of case conferencing on a regular basis in what we call operational work groups.

At these operational work groups, it's primarily our case managers coming together with our prosecutorial liaisons.

and they're able to have a conversation and kind of coordinate between clients' care plans.

And then on the prosecutor's side, their legal obligations.

And we can kind of work on both of those things at the same time and make sure that we're kind of in sync.

These operational work groups also can include law enforcement, other service providers, and other community members.

And the basic theory of the case conferencing is to bring more partners to the table And to align all of our efforts in complimentary ways in order to achieve long term change for both our clients and the communities that they live in.

Now in this this you district project that we've been working on with Andrew we have some additional partners at the table that allows the this case conferencing to address more needs.

We've got the U-District partnership.

They, with their outreach and their neighborhood connections, have been able to create a list flagging these are situations and individuals that the neighborhood is seeing a lot or are causing some public safety issues for the community.

Now, with that information, LEAD is able to kind of more accurately target its very limited resources and caseloads to work with individuals for whom our work would have the most positive impact on the community.

And so for anyone that's not familiar with LEAD, LEAD works specifically with people who are committing law violations due to unaddressed behavioral health issues, including substance use disorder, as well as extreme poverty.

And essentially we work with those folks to, they have a case manager, we work with them to address unmet needs, create kind of plans for stability, and subsequently achieve behavior change.

Now obtaining the resources needed for stability is kind of its own large task itself.

Things like getting housing, getting legal income, connecting people to like needed supports, especially because a lot of our clients are folks that have been without support or resources for many years.

And so this is where Andrew has stepped in.

Again, this, this project and the district is at a very early stage, but I think the process kind of speaks for itself where we get flag.

The community flags needs, we work with those individuals, and then Andrew and the city and this mayoral administration can help us to streamline that process of if somebody is ready to go inside.

like try to get that resource ready for them so that we can more effectively and efficiently resolve public safety concerns.

Yeah, I mean, I think we're pleased to have all of these additional partners involved in the process.

And I think in general, this type of case conferencing, it really works best when all the players at the table are really meaningfully engaged in this project and this dialogue.

So in that, this other sense, too, we've been extremely pleased to be working with Andrew and with this administration to build a framework that can allow us to do what needs to be done.

Again, very early stages, but hoping to replicate it elsewhere and Figure out what we need to do to make it work better.

So, thanks.

Hi Councilmember I'm sorry I'm trying to a little bit late but thank you Sam for kind of setting the table for this but just to provide a little bit more detail of kind of how this came to be and, and some of the, the, the wise as to why we're doing this and everything Sam said was totally right.

Where this came from was really early on.

And when I after I joined the administration, the Herald administration, we went to a walkthrough of the U district and I know Council Member Nelson was there, Council Member Peterson was there, Don and his team put this together.

And what was really clear was that there were significant public safety impacts, particularly on neighborhoods and business districts.

What we also saw was when we started to pull data and heat maps of crime, we saw that crime was correlating in those neighborhoods as well.

So whether it be U District, Pioneer Square, Soto, Little Saigon, CID, that's where crime is collecting and that's what the data shows.

The concept behind the work was to take a model that we thought was really productive, which was the operational work group model that LEED uses, but to move it again to a neighborhood focus as opposed to a precinct focus.

And one of the reasons why we wanted to do that was, I think simply stated, since 2020, I think our systems are out of practice.

I think we are stretched really, really thin.

the participation in these work groups is probably not as robust as it was in the past.

So was there a way to focus them on what are our biggest impacts and to get a community voice in the process to to hear directly from from the people on the ground, which is in a lot of these cases, these business associations, the businesses and the community members that they represent as to what the impacts are.

The U district was a really interesting place to start because A lot of what they were seeing in the district was crisis oriented.

And so there were crimes and certainly, you know, shoplifts and drug use, but a lot of it was subsistence crime as opposed to higher level assaults and violent crime.

Well, there certainly was that there.

That's what we were seeing in the district predominantly.

So we felt like this was a really good set of behaviors to bring lead to.

So the first step when we, well, let me just back up too.

I think what we also realized was that with our current resources, there just is no way to address these issues if you don't do it holistically.

I mean, simply stated, we don't have enough police officers, even if you wanted to, to make these arrests.

And arresting people for misdemeanor crimes, particularly very low level misdemeanor crimes and not repeat misdemeanor crimes I'm not sure that that's going to fix the underlying behavior.

So the question was, could we go in there and engage in this work with LEAD to get people into shelter, to get people services, to create case plans for all these individuals, and to thus try to eliminate the conditions that are causing criminal activity?

And not only would that remove people into shelter, but it would also allow law enforcement to focus its already limited resources on the people that are actually predatory and are, for example, drug dealers, retail theft operations, but are targeting people that are more vulnerable.

So again, that was the purpose of doing this work.

The first step when we rolled out the program was to work with our BIAs to help us develop the list of public safety impacts.

And I wanted to kick this over really quickly to Don, because Don and his team, which is really a multifaceted team, did a tremendous amount of work to develop the list.

And Don, if you could just spend maybe a minute or two just talking through how you did that and what the list kind of looked like and the size of the list, that would be really helpful.

Thank you, Andrew.

For the past few years, we've been fortunate to have city support for a homeless outreach individual who focuses just geographically on our neighborhood.

And that individual has been able to build relationships with people in our neighborhood who have been experiencing homelessness over the last few years.

We do a monthly census and watch the population and that has grown to 150 and it's shrunk to 50 over time, depending on what part of the year we're in.

But we also have safety ambassadors that we have in our neighborhood who are unarmed unsworn and they walk around and check in with businesses and provide a visual presence in the neighborhood they also tell people how to find the UW campus it's not too complicated but we they do help people along during the day.

And between those different entities, plus our stakeholders in general, we get a lot of information into us about things that are going on.

We hear from a small businesses that their windows have been broken three times in the past two months.

And they have some information about that they can share with us.

The ambassadors then also know a little bit of information and the outreach worker knows a little bit of information and is able to bring all that together.

And what we found is that there was no place to really reposit this information or put it forward.

As a community and so we started we started convening a small conversation, just internally with us about okay what are we seeing here, and we noticed that there were some individuals having a really, really large outsized impact in our community, but there was not really anybody kind of flagging that and saying hey why don't we dive in on this.

particular individual who's having behavioral health crisis or issues and and try to figure out in case managers and try to problem solve that's when we started talking with lead and started talking with the outreach program manager for under our organization that works for the reach program.

And we were able to take that information and just start problem solving.

And I know that I don't have a master's in social work, but the folks around the table that do were able to provide really interesting and creative solutions that were able to advance people into housing, into temporary housing, reconnect people with the host program.

There was a situation where we had someone who had severe mental health issues.

had lost track of their, had their case manager had lost track of them, we were able to reconnect them and get them back on a path and they ultimately got housing.

And it's that kind of problem solving that we found is kind of lacking and so what Andrew is describing is what's coming in and trying to grab some of these loose ends and put them together and connect the dots and the list that we're putting together is kind of these compounding issues that we're seeing from different corners of our community, and we're putting it on the table and trying to problem solve together about what, if this is the highest impact individual, what could be done?

Could we find this person better services?

Is this person just operating in a criminal enterprise that we have to bring in a law enforcement and city attorney and King County prosecutor on?

But it's that kind of troubleshooting and a better understanding that helps problem solve these really high impact issues.

So that's the background on the list there, Andrew.

So, I mean, the district was really a unique place for us to start just because of the, the, the, the kind of the institutionalization they had already of outreach workers and this work.

So, it definitely made our casework easier.

And so, once the lists were developed, we convene the groups.

So, right now we have 2 active groups ongoing.

We have the district and Soto are active.

We're working with.

Um, Ballard right now to finalize their list before starting up the meetings.

Um, and, uh, and then it was also setting the table who's going to be at these meetings.

Um, and for now it's in the mayor's office lead reach, um, SPD.

We've had representatives from the King County regional homeless authority, um, as well as from hope.

Um, so I think we're trying to still figure out what the balance is and, and for the city council to council member Strauss has been involved in, in the groups that have been going on at Ballard, but.

We're still trying to figure out the right balance of who should be there and what role do people play.

But again, that's part of SM Express.

That's part of this piloting process is figuring out what works and what doesn't.

And then during each meeting, we go through the list.

Realistically, between five and six people is the most we're going to get through.

And what we want to discuss is, you know, what are the impacts?

What are the needs of this person?

Are they already involved in services?

If so, what services?

Are they a lead client?

If not, are they lead eligible?

And then the idea would be to create a plan for each person that goes through.

And to be honest, sometimes this plan is long term.

It's like, well, You know, we need to create a dialogue with this individual and to try to get this person to seek drug treatment in order to get them into housing, you know, sometimes we have a shorter window plan where this person is eligible for a tiny home, can we move that request up the chain to try to get them in shelter.

But, you know, I think the reality is and something I've learned in the process is that this is not fast.

it's slow and it's slow because people need to want to accept services and need to want to be part of this in order to actually move out and change behavior.

So that's the work that we're doing.

If the person's not lead eligible, which is the case at times, then we discuss whether law enforcement intervention is needed.

And if so, what that is going to be.

So again, you know, obviously where ideally you would never have that situation, but as we all know, there are going to be some times where people are going to, going to be subject to arrest particularly the behavior is, you know, again targeting other folks and, and, and basically, the more vulnerable people so again we're in the district Soto and Ballard now we are looking at possibilities for next neighborhoods and we're working with some of those neighborhoods to start building out their lists.

on our list of potentials are West Seattle, the Junction, Columbia City, Mount Baker, Georgetown, and North Lake.

Those are all in the mix as next steps.

I know Council Member Lewis has his hand up, but I will say we have a couple of questions that have come out of this that I'm happy to go through that we still need to answer.

Council Member Lewis, do you want to pop in and then I can, oh, sorry.

Yeah, that's Lisa's decision, but yes.

Sorry about that.

All good, all good, we're all family here.

Really appreciate you describing the executive's approach right now and your willingness to replicate this model and recognizing that each neighborhood is different and has different challenges.

And just wanna, before I recognize Council Member Lewis, wanna thank you for your early discussions.

with Chris McKay at the West Seattle Chamber, I'm sorry, the Junction BIA, as well as conversations that you've had with our Southwest District Lead Coordinator.

Really, really appreciate those early conversations.

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold, and thank you, Director Meyerberg, for joining us today for this discussion.

definitely echo the chair's comments about appreciating the collaboration, the access, the problem solving that this administration has shown around these issues that has not always been the case historically.

So it's good to be here and really have that kind of collaboration.

I think just really centering what some of the bottleneck issues are, I mean, I know that you You didn't mean this in your comments just now about kind of building the rapport to get people in a place where they're ready to accept services.

I don't know that service resistance is the primary issue that we're facing.

I think it's more adequate capacity and supply of the places that we know people on a regular basis want to go to if that kind of thing can be offered.

And again, I know that you know that.

I'm not asking for clarification.

But as we have this discussion here with some great partners in the BIAs who have been working closely with folks like LEAD, like REACH, working closely, for example, with approaches like Just Care and other programs like that, it really occurs to me that part of this exercise for the city should really be how can we carve out dedicated, like many Just Cares in business districts throughout the city that have, you know, dedicated capacity for the people doing this work in those neighborhoods, you know, like having like a U District Just Care Hub, a Ballard Just Care Hub, a Columbia City Just Care Hub, so that, you know, in each of those places, you know, there can be this constant, you know, work and outreach that is connected to a place people can go.

I mean, every, you know, I think that we constantly have sort of a mindset that there'll be like an easy or cheaper or more expedient way to develop some novel new method of outreach that will solve a lot of these high acuity issues that we see on the street in the business districts.

The thing that has worked over the last two years that I've seen is when you have a well-resourced place, you can take somebody to get them off the street and get them the wraparound resources that they need.

That is the thing that fundamentally makes progress on the problems that we're facing.

So I think we need to own that, we need to embrace that, and we need to come together, be it through my committee or Council Member Herbold's committee, with a way to just figure out how to build that system to a way that it's adequate and meets our needs, and then work back from whatever that cost is, and be honest about that cost, and work together to make sacrifices to meet that cost so that we can get past what is, without a doubt, the biggest issue in the city, which is what we're talking about here.

I mean, it's high acuity individuals with public health crisis that the criminal legal system is incapable of solving the problems of, and shows that again and again and again.

And we know that there are effective public health interventions and outreach methods that do mitigate and solve that problem.

And we, you know, that's the conversation we need to be having.

And I know that we are having it, but we need to have it more online and here and bring along stakeholders with us.

Because, you know, we've spent a lot of time talking about police staffing, rightly so, we should.

Police staffing is necessary it's not sufficient for the public safety crisis we're facing.

And I think we need to make sure we're dedicating more bandwidth to these other things that we're all acknowledging here are important.

So, you know, there were probably some questions in there.

I think it was mostly statements and flagging my future interest in working with you and the people in this room on this.

But I really think we need to really take that on and with the urgency that everyone here is expecting because it's so detrimental to all of our quality of life.

So thank you.

Yeah, I think just really quickly, I mean, I completely concur with you that one thing that we see in this work is, and it's been particularly clear in the U-District work, is some of the systemic gaps.

Like, for example, we had a person the other day that has a TBI and has psychotic episodes, and there just simply isn't a, I'm sure there is, but we could not think of a shelter that we could place that individual in at this point to get them out of the U-District.

So those are some of the systemic gaps that we're seeing, so I agree with you.

And thank you for the other clarification.

What I will say is, you know, something that came up, for example, in our SOTA meeting yesterday is you do have individuals where, and I think it is a large part of like, they, there are not services that I think they, that they feel comfortable with, but, you know, lead does struggle at times and as does reach to pin people down, to try to find people, to get them to, to be part of the system.

So we, we, we, we see both problems and we're trying to work through both problems.

Thank you, Director Meyerberg, Councilmember Lewis.

Before I turn it over to Councilmember Nelson, I do want to say that my intent in setting the table this way was to, again, both hear about what we're doing now, but also hear from the folks that you're working with, Director Myerberg and Sam, and folks that you're not yet working with, to talk about what more can be done.

So it's a lot of appreciation for the work that you're doing, and again, recognition that you're doing it in a way that is, I think, more collaborative than we've seen before, in recent years and more focused on the underlying conditions that lead to the disorder that has quality of life impacts and the crime that has impacts on victims.

So really, really appreciate that.

Do wanna, after Council Member Nelson's questions or comments, wanna hand it over for the majority of the time though to hear from our neighborhood business district representatives.

Council Member Nelson.

Thank you very much.

So I can take this question offline, but for the people that are not lead eligible, are you working or will do you plan on working with the city attorney's office or the King County Prosecutor's Office to address those issues that fall beyond?

So, yeah, yeah, there's going to be some there'll be some connection between the high utilizer list and the people that we're seeing.

But our list is broader because You know, it's, it's, it's, it's not just high utilizers.

It's really everyone who's causing public safety impacts.

We're not everyone, but, but largely it's going to be a broader list of folks that are engaged in this behavior.

So there will be some spillover, but the, but the ideal situation is that we're not arresting any of these people.

That's ideal.

Right.

But, but yes, we will be collaborating with them.

And just before I stop talking, I just wanted to thank.

Again, thank you Councilmember Herbold for having us here and Councilmember Nelson I'm happy to talk about this offline with you too but, and I wanted to note something you said, you know, this work is only a tiny portion of what the U district, and the other bias that are here today.

been asking for and that's in their proposal.

And I just want to be clear about that, you know, we, we have not answered all their questions, and while this does address some of the concerns it doesn't address everything.

So, so again, you know, totally agree that it's important to hear those other concerns out and part of the work that we're doing is to understand you know, do we need more budget, for example, for the community hub coordinators?

Like, is there a business case to be made for these things?

And that's part of our process to figure that out.

So again, I'll cede over to them, but thank you again for having us, Suits.

Great to present this work.

conversation.

Thank you so much.

So who, who looks like Aaron's coming off mute.

So she's ready to go.

Aaron, take it away.

Good morning again, Aaron Goodman, Soto BIA.

Thank you so much for having us.

I wanted to start off with a little context kind of how we got here.

And then my partners will you know, give more information.

So we represent neighborhood business districts.

Some of us are BIAs.

Some of us are other types of organizations.

But at the heart of what we do is that we support businesses so that they can focus on running their businesses.

And whether that is through clean and safe activities or economic development, and really over the last few years, that support has increasingly been related to public safety issues.

then they have, which have also increasingly increased significantly since the pandemic.

The work we're presenting today had its beginning in the conversation with Councilmember Sarah Nelson, during which we outlined the intrinsic relationship between public safety and economic recovery.

When we told her the issues that our businesses were dealing with and the new roles that we had taken on to support them, sometimes we are detectives and case coordinators and victim support and more.

And she challenged us.

She said, you've highlighted these issues.

Now help us understand solutions from your that we're going to be able to work with them to figure out what is the best position on the ground working with this business is what.

Could come out of this that you think would be helpful.

And so we have, um, you know, put this work together.

We first presented it to council and council member Nelson's Economic Development Committee.

And where we were accompanied by business owners from across the city who shared their experiences, individual council members representatives from the mayor's office to discuss these proposals in details and through that conversations we've refined the proposal to address questions that were raised during these meetings and to further you know address sort of how this works in relation to the system we currently have.

It's important to state that we are absolutely supportive of and advocate for an appropriately staffed police department.

And the work we are presenting today is designed to complement the work of sworn officers and provide some civilian answers to the problems plaguing our districts.

With that, I will turn it over to Quinn.

Thanks, Aaron, for kicking us off.

Yes, thank you, and I really appreciate the time to be able to speak on our proposal today.

We actually came out with an op-ed just a couple months ago to highlight some of our work.

Aaron did talk about some of our issues that we're dealing with.

So, Dawn, are you controlling the slides?

We'll go to then.

So some of the major impacts on our neighborhoods, as you've heard throughout both conversations is threatening behaviors, vandalism, broken windows, violence, rape, arson, and just people suffering for many, many years in our neighborhoods, just to list a few.

Next slide.

And so, as mentioned earlier with Director Myerberg, how our safety issues are addressed in the neighborhood is currently at the precinct level, and this does not work for us.

It's not at an appropriate scale to address our issues.

This example right here highlights North Seattle where there are really diverse neighborhoods and needs from various neighborhoods from Ballard to North Aurora.

We in the CID also experienced this, Little Saigon, before recently we were part of the South Precinct.

We were just recently rolled into the West Precinct as part of the holistic CID.

In addition, these precincts have also been losing resources over time.

For example, we no longer have neighborhood foot patrols, community police teams, anti-crime teams, and precinct detectives.

So the focus should be on neighborhoods or urban villages and business districts instead of precincts.

And then this one really highlights all the proposed programs that we've been talking to you all about the past couple months.

We initially, so the first one is really a dedicated mayor's office role to oversee community safety.

This is with our current Director Myerberg.

Next is a team of dedicated community safety hub coordinators.

This was mentioned earlier.

Currently, the BIAs and some of our community partners are playing this role, and it's a huge burden on us because we're not able to do other work.

Even Director Myerberg is taking on some of this work.

And so we need to recognize that we need more capacity to be able to do this.

And then, of course, high visibility civilian staff foot patrol, a neighborhood crisis response, and neighborhood-based behavioral health outreach, all at the neighborhood or business district level, just as a quick run-through.

So I'll hand it over to Don.

Sorry, I couldn't figure out how to unmute.

Pardon the distraction.

So what we wanted to do is map out what this looks like in a given neighborhood.

So let's take a neighborhood like Little Saigon or the University District, where you're seeing kind of a concentration of the issues that Andrew Meyerberg was talking about earlier.

You have major vandalism, regular behavioral health disruptions, violence, or chronic theft.

And you're seeing that in one specific geographic area, which is usually a business district.

Currently today we have resources in those districts that are sometimes like a BIA sometimes we have.

Sometimes we have services that are located in that neighborhood but a lot of the stuff that usually comes together to problem solve or to triage issues that are bubbling up our city wide or precinct space as we were just discussing and so.

What we're proposing on this last slide comes in and you see the yellow circles here is what we're proposing is is kind of added to that mix to take the community out of that hub coordinating role which is a lot of work and put them as a partner at the table but have this city employee who's really connected to all these different agencies and entities to help pull together and connect the dots for these issues as they pop up in these geographic areas.

So you see the hub coordinator is at the center of this conversation.

They're working with the civilian foot patrol team who's out there talking to small businesses on a given day or residents, understanding what's going on in the neighborhood.

They're able to relay their knowledge to crisis response when that's necessary, you know non SPD response for people in crisis, or communicate on a regular basis with neighborhood based outreach.

So someone who understands the people who are experiencing homelessness or behavioral health issues in the district on the ground.

And then you also have that they can relate back to the victims or the businesses who have been impacted what's going on why this is happening and what may be a plan is at an appropriate level of information so that people understand that it's not, you know, in a vacuum but that there's actually community members coming together.

working to problem-solve on issues that are extremely impactful in the community.

Also, like we were talking about to answer Council Member Nelson's question, there's also folks who aren't on the behavioral health side, but perhaps more on the criminal enterprise side.

Working with King County prosecutor and city attorneys and the SPD to really troubleshoot and figure out how are those chronic issues and chronic criminal enterprises, how are they impacting the neighborhood and what can be done to get upstream from that?

You can see the role that this person would play, you know, they would convene like we were talking about this idea of an operational work group or a neighborhood safety task force, you know, to really engage with all these different entities.

They would provide that interagency coordination outside of those meetings, so linking between external and internal city resources.

They would help manage this high-impact list of folks who are having the largest impact on the neighborhood and take that information from different bodies, including the community, and help this workgroup kind of manage the strategies of kind of working through that list and finding solutions for folks.

And then also, they would do something that doesn't currently exist right now, which I think is extremely important, which is following up with stakeholders who've been impacted.

and helping them understand the context and what's being done about the situation.

Right now, you could be a small business and someone could come by and start harassing your customers.

You ask them to leave.

There's an animosity there.

They come back, they break your windows.

You're kind of a sitting target.

Having an understanding about that you're not the only one seeing this and that there's people working on this with you is really an important aspect and something that we've seen that is a really big need that's kind of not being fulfilled right now.

So I guess at a very high level if I was to step back and kind of describe this this apparatus or what we're talking about here.

It's about focusing on the areas of the city that are the highest impacted by kind of these crime or behavioral health issues.

So it's kind of these hubs.

And it's prioritizing and putting energy into resolving the issues that are having the greatest impact in those specific neighborhoods.

And then it's scaling the communication and problem solving at the neighborhood level instead of the precinct level so that folks can actually participate in that conversation and there's resources that are able to manage that discussion and problem solving over time.

This, this coordination and operational problem solving is a best practice, and, you know, currently, you know it's living kind of within the bias or the commercial district organizations and it's just not sustainable.

And we're really excited to be working with Director Meyer Berg on this too but having him manage each one of these conversations isn't sustainable either so we were excited to talk about what what operation could look like what kind of investment the city could make and in this kind of problem solving in our neighborhoods I would like to also acknowledge that these aren't the only solutions we've been talking about but this, it's kind of a really big part of what we think needs to happen in our communities but there's also a few other strategies we've been talking about and I wanted to ask Monisha maybe to talk a little bit about some of those other strategies that we've been looking at.

Thank you, Don.

So in addition, we have highlighted a few additional strategies to complement this.

The first being a broken window and damaged storefront fund.

So several of our neighborhoods are already experimenting with this type of fund, including the CID and Pioneer Square.

For particular in the CID, we're having significant issues around the cost of window repairs for historic buildings.

And so from amounts to $500 to $5,000 can go a long way for a small business.

In addition, we wanted to include that this could be expanded to include graffiti, especially in a historic district with historic masonry The cost of cover and clean up graffiti is significant, especially to our small businesses, which kind of leads into our second point around the small business insurance affordability and access studying, we've heard from several of our businesses that the insurance affordability.

And the ability to stay insured has been really significant.

Many of our businesses in the CIDs are underinsured.

And over the last couple of years with significant damage to their property, a lot of our businesses are having a hard time continuing to stay insured.

And third, we wanted to highlight new technology and systems to report non-emergency issues.

I've heard that Council Member Nelson and Mayor Harrell have supported this type of technology that could look something like a newer version of Find and Fix It, where folks could report online.

We have heard from our businesses, especially in the CID, who have language capacity issues or technology access issues that filing a report online is often hindering.

And then lastly, we wanted to highlight community capacity building.

I wanted to point out organizations like Friends of Little Saigon is not a business improvement area.

And so there are certain opportunities that, for example, the Office of Economic Development could support in organizations like that to support their business districts.

And I think that was it.

And I'll take it back to Dawn.

Thank you.

To me, I'm going to just take a minute and talk you know just sort of pull this all together is that you know when we are looking at these items we have really appreciated that we've had opportunities to bring them to you today to talk to people and we've also really appreciate the ongoing conversation with the mayor's office and it is our understanding that some of these items are in process or or you know some of the additional resources are being looked at for their feasibility.

So we do want to acknowledge that and appreciate that.

And then if we are ready, we're happy to take questions.

Thank you all.

Again, appreciate your highlighting the elements of our collaborative approach that are either missing or at capacity.

And appreciate the role that Director Meierberg is playing right now to keep this collaboration afloat.

Just curious before I see Council Member Lewis, you have your hand up.

Just curious, recognizing that resources will continue to be an issue even should we look at funding a community hub organizing approach, it's unlikely that we'll be able to do it to such a scale that we'll be able to have those engagements in every neighborhood that needs it.

simultaneously, there will have to be some prioritization, I think I heard you say.

And I'm just wondering how you propose that sort of neighborhood-by-neighborhood prioritization formula or analysis go.

We always hear from folks that they don't feel that Crime data alone is an adequate data source in order to determine where the greatest needs are.

So just would be really interested to hear from you what your thoughts are on that.

Happy to throw in a couple of thoughts.

Thanks.

That's a great question.

Obviously, resources are not abundant for new things.

But I would say that this is trying to be smart in where we put our energy and to places where we're seeing extreme impact.

And I think that impact that's been compounded after a recession where you see like, you know, especially commercial districts have been hit pretty hard by the by the pandemic.

And then you see public safety issues that come in after that also kind of compound that impact.

So looking at kind of the economic and safety metrics.

So I think crime stats are a great year over year thing to look at, but it's not always the complete indicator, like you suggested, what we want to measure the impact.

I think looking at economic impact, maybe there's some work that we could do with the Office of Economic to look at some of the impacts that we're seeing to our local economies to kind of establish the need for this type of work.

But I do think it's more than one team.

I think in the past what we've seen is as issues bubble over, the city becomes responsive and convenes what is technically an interdepartmental team, IDT, and they swoop in, and I think we saw this in Little Saigon where they came in, but it's not the norm, right?

We aren't set up to do that on a repeated basis, and so what I think we're trying to say here is that maybe there's, you know, five to ten of these kind of apparatuses that focus in on the places that are the hottest and figure out the solutions there and then hopefully are able to move on.

You know, I think in the U District we have about 25 folks that are having a pretty big impact.

I think Soto at six.

And so maybe once we get an idea and a plan to work with the handful of individuals in a neighborhood that's not as having as much of an impact, these groups can move on.

But I think you ask a really important question and we need to consider equity.

And I think what Quinn was talking about and Monisha about Little Saigon isn't a neighborhood BIA, they have limited capacity and funding.

So how do we prop up and support organizations who are trying to do that kind of work too?

Thank you, Don.

Lisa.

The one additional thing I want to add to Don's answer was part of the goal of a community hub coordinator would be to resolve issues.

You know, we have an individual on the street that's been kind of bouncing between Pioneer Square and Soto for over eight years.

The amount of resources that has already gone into that individual, whether it's a behavioral health crisis or or other need on the street is already pretty high.

And so part of this is if we're able to solve these chronic issues, there will be savings in the system as a whole, and we'll be working towards maybe that role changing over time because of those cost savings within that work area.

Thank you.

Council Member Lewis, then Council Member Nelson.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair, and thank you for that presentation.

I've had the opportunity to be briefed.

Eric Howard, PB – He, Him, His.: : individually on these recommendations as well, and I think they're they're creative and things that certainly warrant the consideration of the Council and the entire city family.

Eric Howard, PB – He, Him, His.: : One thing i'd like to re emphasize is I really appreciate within the four corners of this presentation.

Eric Howard, PB – He, Him, His.: : The support and advancement of some form of alternative response model to supplement our current first response options.

I guess one piece of feedback that I would maybe give going forward is if we can work together to really amplify that message and to really promote that publicly with the same level of enthusiasm that we typically see from the business community for police staffing, which again, as I've said, there's agreement on this committee as we are gonna demonstrate this afternoon and as we demonstrated two weeks ago to increase city efforts to meet the staffing crisis that we have with the police department.

I think what gets missed in the public narrative is this discussion about alternatives that isn't getting pushed forcefully enough.

I'm certainly not betraying a confidence to say, because he said this on Q13, that Mike Solon has made it a mission of his to say that these changes need to be bargained and there doesn't seem to be much enthusiasm.

And given the relationship from the police union for it, Given the relationship that people at this table have with law enforcement, with people who are concerned about public safety, I think your voice is really critical to this conversation.

And we would like to be partners with you in pushing this discussion on alternatives and building public support for it.

I mean, one thing I would leave folks with here too that I'd maybe like a response to from panel members and if they think this might be a place to look at.

Even something as simple as traffic direction.

So far this year, $700,000 of overtime hours for guns and badges to direct traffic.

That's 7,600 overtime service hours spent on that activity that doesn't require a gun and badge.

I would much rather have those 7,600 service hours walking to be in the business improvement area.

or doing burglary emphasis operations in these business improvement areas.

We're currently making a policy choice to have 7,600 staffing hours dedicated to directing traffic for no reason, given that parking enforcement officers are also qualified to do that work and do do that.

Listened to a great interview recently with Congresswoman Cori Bush, who represents St. Louis and Missouri, clinical program in that city took 800 calls just as a pilot clinical alternative program, freed up 2000 police service hours that they could spend dedicated to law enforcement and gun and badge activities.

So I guess what I would just like to emphasize, given that we're in a staffing crisis with the police that we're likely to be in a staffing crisis for a while, we are still making conscious policy choices have gun and badge jobs do things they do not need to be doing at the expense of things only they can do.

And this group here of great community leaders who do really effective work representing their ratepayers and making their communities safer, I would love to partner and work with you to drive that part of the conversation as well because it's essential, it's important, And, you know, just focusing on hiring is not going to get us through this.

We also need to focus on with the police resource we have, how are we deploying it to the greatest impact to make the community safer?

And I just wanted to highlight that that is emphasized in the presentation and just going forward, if we can emphasize that more too, and in our collaboration on driving some of these policies.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Nelson.

You know, Don, when you were describing the neighborhood coordinator, what popped into my mind was just the the Department of Neighborhoods district coordinators.

And, you know, they would fulfill different functions.

But there is a there there is a vacuum between what's going on in the neighborhood and what is and the decision makers of the city.

So I fully endorse this this model.

And I look forward to working with my colleagues.

And, you know, yes, taking the advice of the representatives of small businesses across the city and really putting in place something that they have thought about for a long time and think that would work.

I just wanted to give some feedback on that list of recommendations.

Just so my top priority, only because it seems like it might be the easiest, is the storefront restoration fund, because that's what I hear most about, broken windows, broken storefronts, et cetera.

So that continues to be a high priority for me and advocating that to the mayor's office.

The insurance study would make, I've spoken with the interim director of OED and it now we're down to an issue of resources and a resources for a study that will produce what I like to call kind of a gap analysis like what's going on with our insurance system here because small businesses.

It's difficult to get a policy.

or if they report crime, then if they have a claim, then their rates go up.

We know this is happening, and I think it's important to quantify that.

I am really focused on spending resources on things that will have an immediate impact, but I'm open to further exploring that.

And then finally, the technology improved, find it, fix it.

It's really important to be able to record incidents since this conversation.

I'm glad to see that still in the mix because people really do want an easy way to record what's happening and that would help the city respond better.

That's it.

Thank you so much.

And Council Member Nelson, I appreciate your leadership on the issues related to storefront restoration.

I do want to just note that prior to COVID, the Office of Economic Development did have a Neighborhood Business Stabilization Fund.

They sort of transferred that fund to be more of a COVID relief fund, but It was specifically designed to deal with mitigating business impacts either from unexpected activities like crime, but also impacts associated with city projects that may have an impact on.

reduced business activity.

So hope we can maybe look to your leadership working with OED to restore that fund in its original purpose.

There are some limitations with the public gift of funds as we know, but there are some ways to make it work.

So really appreciate you highlighting that.

Council Member Lewis.

Just as a quick point to also raise to Council Member Nelson's point, in the last budget, my office was able to get a victim compensation fund funded that we're still working on exactly what the size and scope of that fund is going to be.

Window repair and replacement could be something within that scope.

Feel free to reach out to my office to learn more about that process as it goes along as another potential resource for that.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

Just wanted to thank the leaders of the business improvement areas throughout the city.

You've really been unsung heroes during the pandemic and doing the real tangible work to keep our neighborhood business districts going and to try to keep them clean, to try to keep those businesses there so they're not displaced.

And here you've piloted this program, this holistic program and you're bringing it to us today.

And I really do hope that I really appreciate the Herald Administration coming out to the U District several months ago with me and Council Member Nelson and really taking to heart the fact that we need to now operationalize this on a scalable, sustainable level.

I really do hope we stand up that storefront or restore the storefront restoration fund, fully fund that.

And then in terms of the hub coordinator concept, I don't know if there's been any thought to whether, because if it's a function the city doesn't really do right now, what if the city were to, just as we supply or subsidize certain outreach workers through the BIAs, why not do that through the BIAs instead of creating a new city government employee classification?

I'm just worried about how long that might take to do.

In other words, to have it still done by the BIAs, but have the funding come from the city government.

So just want to see if that would be something that might be more streamlined, more efficient, effective, since you're already doing it.

You just need the funding to continue to do it and expand it.

But I look forward to working with Andrew Myberg and the Herald Administration on this so we can keep it going.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

You raise a really good challenge with funding a position that does not already exist and the complexity around that and the time it takes to create that employee classification and appreciate trying to brainstorm to address some of those hurdles.

Look forward to working with Director Meyerberg as they examine the business case for your proposal.

And given that we do have 2023 budget challenges ahead of us that we're also trying to prepare for in 2022, I wanna say that supporting this work, supporting your work in our neighborhood business districts is absolutely a priority of mine and I really appreciate everything that you've done through these incredibly difficult times and you've made our communities strong, you've upheld their resilience and the The impacts are self-evident.

The city is coming back, but we recognize that you definitely need some additional assistance from city government.

So look forward to bringing forward some of that assistance.

And again, appreciate everything that you've done and look forward to working more with you.

Thank you.

Move on to the final item on our agenda.

Please read in agenda item three.

Yes.

Apologize.

Let me pull up the agenda here.

Committee agenda item number three, council bill 120294, an ordinance relating to app-based worker labor standards, establishing a compensation scheme for app-based workers with minimum payment requirements and related standards for transparency and flexibility, amending sections 3.02.125, 3.15.000, and 6.208.020 for the Seattle Municipal Code, and adding a new title eight and chapter 8.37 to the Seattle Municipal Code for a briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you so much.

Before I turn it over to the council central staff to describe the process for us to move and discuss amendments, I wanna just provide a little bit of framing.

Really appreciate all of the work that has been done over the last year.

On June 9th, 2021, we held our first stakeholder meeting.

And since then we've held 12 large stakeholder meetings, including representatives from DoorDash, Uber Eats, TaskRabbit, Rover, Instacart, CoPuff, Shift, Seattle Restaurants, United, workers, worker advocacy groups such as Drive Forward, Working Washington, and the National Employment Law Project.

After the conclusion of those large-format meetings, we've continued to work with these stakeholders as this legislation has been developed, and the amendments that we see before us today are a direct result of those continued meetings.

We've also heard drafts of this legislation and heard progress reports on the stakeholder work in committee on numerous times.

This is, I think, the third time that we've heard Council Bill 120292, in committee but the sixth time we've discussed the policy package.

So three meetings on an introduced bill, sixth on the development of the bill plus the introduced bill.

I want to thank my colleagues for all the work that they've put into this legislation so far and Thank the co-sponsor of the legislation, Council Member Lewis.

At the 4-26, April 26th committee meeting, central staff presented an issue ID, including a very exhaustive list of amendments requested by stakeholders.

It was really important to me for us to sunlight, all of the different changes that are being requested before we decided which amendments we wanted to sponsor and bring forward.

And just really want to recognize everybody's really hard work on the development of this policy.

It's been a long time coming.

I appreciate the work on the amendments before us.

In many instances, even though we have app-based businesses that are not supporting the legislation in its current format, the amendments that we are putting forward are amendments that they have specifically asked for.

It may not get us to full support, but I think it is a demonstration of our commitment to working together to try to make this the best bill as possible.

And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to Council Central staff to describe the process we are going to engage in to discuss the amendments and how we will discuss and then vote on amendments immediately, individually.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

My name is Amy Gore with Council Central staff, and I will turn it over to Karina and Jasmine for their introductions.

Hello, I am Karina Bull, and I am also with Council Central staff.

Jasmine?

Hello, I'm Jasmine Marwaha, and I'm with Council Central staff.

Great, thank you.

Good morning, Council members.

As you know, this morning the committee will be voting on amendments to Council Bill 120294, which is a bill that establishes a minimum payment standard and related regulations for app-based workers.

We have 16 amendments to present.

Last night, I sent out a revised table of amendments with the amendment number, sponsor, title, and effect statement to guide this discussion, which I will share momentarily.

There are a few amendments that will be taken out of order, a few amendments that are conditional on passage of prior amendments, and a couple amendments that are mutually exclusive.

So we will be sure to highlight those when we get to them.

And I just wanted to check to see if there were any process questions before we jump in.

Okay, seeing none, I will go ahead and share my screen to show this table.

Can everybody see this table now?

Can you increase the Zoom percentage just a little bit?

Perfect, thank you.

Okay, the first amendment for your consideration is Amendment 1, Version 2, sponsored by Chair Herbold and Council Member Lewis.

This was distributed last evening.

It makes small technical changes and clarifications, including clarifying the definition of incentive, clarifying the definition of unsealed.

It requires tip disclosure if applicable.

before facilitation of the offer rather than before completion of the offer.

This is so the worker would have the information before deciding whether to accept the job or not.

And it also changes the review period for canceled offers from saying, quote, three days to, quote, 72 hours.

With that, I will turn it over to Chair Herbold, one of the co-sponsors of the amendment.

Thank you.

You did ask whether or not you had, there were any questions about process, and I didn't have any, but now the way that we are proceeding makes me second guess what I thought we were doing.

I thought we were, are we hearing the description of the amendment, sponsors talking to the amendment and voting on the amendment individually as we go, or Amy, are we going to go through the whole table and then come back to vote?

I was anticipating that it would be your first option.

That's what I thought, but in that case, I do need to get the bill before.

Oh, right.

I was just second-guessing myself there.

Apologies.

No, no, it's all good, all good.

That's why I have these notes.

So before moving into the amendments, so that we can begin the discussion on votes on amendments, as the co-sponsor of the bill, I move the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 12-0294.

Is there a second?

Second.

so much.

It has been moved and seconded.

Thank you, Amy, for your description of Amendment 1, Version 2. I don't have anything further to add.

It is a technical amendment to address drafting errors slash refine the intent of the definition.

So thank you for that.

And so with that...

Council Member Herbold, I see a couple of hands up from Council Member Nelson and Peterson.

Oh, I appreciate it, sorry.

I'm going back and forth between screens.

Both Council Member Nelson and Council Member Peterson.

Council Member Nelson, go ahead.

Yeah, I'm just verbally flagging per central staff suggestion that I'll be approving these technical corrections, but there is information in this one about tip info removal, or tip information, which does have something to do with Amendment 14. Perfect.

Thank you for flagging that.

Yes.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

In terms of the tips before facilitation of the offer, so if you're the consumer, you need to tip somebody before they provide the service?

Why would you do that before the service is provided?

Just want to understand that logic.

Thank you.

Oh, Alex, go ahead.

Go ahead first, Amy.

Some companies do allow a customer to put the tip amount before the offer is basically presented to the worker.

So it would just be that first amount or the first kind of passive information.

And so the current bill would require that if the customer provides that before the work is done, that the worker would be alerted to what that tip amount is.

So it's not- It does not have an additional tip at the end.

Yes.

Thank you.

Can I follow up to clarify?

Yeah, absolutely.

So then customers aren't required to, it's just if the customer chooses to disclose it up front, then that information will be provided to the worker.

But there's no requirement that they provide the tip up front.

And it doesn't, if prohibit them from tipping something later.

So if you're a customer, you could do zero up front.

Like, hey, why would I tip somebody if I haven't gotten service yet?

You put zero in for now, you get great service, you're excited, then you tip them at the end.

But if you do choose to tip something in advance, that information must be passed through to the worker before they accept the tip.

job.

Is that right?

That is my exact understanding of the intent.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

Alex, anything to add?

I would just add quickly that not all apps allow upfront tipping, and this does not require them one way or another.

It's just if the app does and if a customer chooses to do it upfront, then the worker would be – it may be required to view all of that upfront tip.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Are there any other comments or questions about Amendment 1?

Seeing none, please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment 1.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Vice Chair Lewis.

Yes.

Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you so much.

Will central staff please describe Amendment No. 2?

Yes.

The next amendment for your consideration is Amendment 2, Version 1. It is sponsored by Councilmember Peterson.

This amendment would change the definition of marketplace network companies.

The current bill would define marketplace network companies using two criteria.

First, the companies are exclusively engaged in facilitating pre-scheduled offers in which the customer and worker negotiate the offer scope and costs before the customer places the order and the worker accepts.

The second criteria is that marketplace network companies exclusively facilitate services without monitoring offers by geographic location, mileage, or time.

So Amendment 2 would change the definition of marketplace network company to have three criteria.

First, that a marketplace network company is primarily engaged in facilitating pre-scheduled offers in which the platform enables the customer and worker to exchange information on the offer scope and cost before the customer places the order and the worker accepts.

The second criteria is that the worker sets their own rates.

And the third criteria is that the network company does not monitor offers by mileage or time.

but removes the reference to geographic location that's currently in the bill.

The use of primarily engaged rather than exclusively engaged gives the marketplace companies more flexibility in their operations.

For example, while these companies typically offer pre-scheduled work, that is work that will begin where the worker will begin work within longer than two hours, Instead, this would allow them to sometimes do what we call on-demand work, which is within two hours.

The amendment would allow the Office of Labor Standards to define what primarily engaged would mean in this context and how it would apply.

With that, we'll turn it over to Councilmember Peterson.

Councilmember Peterson, yes.

Thank you.

I really want to thank central staff for their hard work on all these amendments.

especially these next two.

So just to provide some context for these two amendments, Amendment 2 and 3, it's my understanding that a single piece of legislation attempting to regulate so many different technology applications at one time has never been implemented in the nation.

So I want to make sure we're being very careful not to stifle innovation and flexibility benefits to consumers, workers and small local businesses.

I support a minimum wage for gig workers who have no say in their wages.

At the same time, marketplace network companies who provide their brand, their customer base, their computer application technology to workers who actually set their own compensation rates should be exempt from this experimental new law so that we limit unintended negative consequences.

I'm happy to answer any questions.

These two amendments will help to accomplish this goal regarding this far-reaching legislation.

I think Amy Gore described it well, why we would amend the definition in this way.

I thank you, Madam Chair, I actually have some questions for any gore.

This is a topic that I've been legitimately very undecided about over the course of our process of doing this work.

You know I got into this, this work with you on this area mostly because of the the massive inequities I was very familiar with, and how the delivery apps operate, and how those delivery apps have passed a lot of expenses on to the people who, and the market.

really aware of and have come to learn about them throughout this process.

So I have some questions for Amy, because my primary area of interest here is in the extent to which these amendments from Councilmember Peterson would undermine our work on the delivery apps and create potential loopholes where delivery apps could reconstitute themselves to be a marketplace app.

and exempt themselves from the protections that we are passing in this bill.

And I would just ask Amy on this, what would be the impact of the primarily engaged versus exclusively engaged in terms of potentially opening that loophole as far as that criteria interacts with prongs two and three?

Because those would have to all be read together, correct?

And can you talk about Like if you were DoorDash, for example, what would you have to do to become a marketplace app under this change definition?

Are we opening a risk to that?

Yes.

So to answer that question, I think first I just want to caveat that it is difficult to game out all of the scenarios that could happen with new legislation.

But for your specific example of a company like DoorDash or something, that does the on-demand delivery.

There is a, one of the sentences I did not read of the definition is that it specifies that on-demand network companies and companies that primarily provide delivery services are not marketplace network companies.

So I think no matter what criteria one, two, or one, two, and three are, it would be very difficult for a company like DoorDash that does that type of delivery work on demand to, somehow change their business model to be a marketplace network company.

So, for example, they would have to then primarily offer pre-scheduled offers, meaning that it would be outside of this two-hour on-demand window, which is not really compatible with their business model.

I think it would, again, allow, they would have to allow their workers to set their own prices rather than the current kind of way that they offer a payment for a job, as well as they would have to stop monitoring workers by mileage or time.

So I think that the three criteria plus that last sentence would make it more difficult for a company that currently does not operate in this way to change their business operation to meet this definition.

Thank you.

Thank you, Amy.

Councilman Mosqueda.

Thank you very much.

You know, I want to ask a follow up question to Councilmember Lewis's question regarding enforcement, the word exclusive in the underlying bill seems to create a brighter line for enforcement than primary.

So I'm wondering if OLS our Office of Labor Standards has weighed in.

on how this amendment would impact enforcement.

And then, Madam Chair, while I have the mic, another question for central staff is whether or not we know if workers get any guidance from these companies on rates or get pressure or incentives to lower rates.

One of the things that I heard about was while there might not be a direct engagement or dictating of rates, placement of workers on an app and prioritizing certain workers over others, depending on which gigs they accept or don't is still prevalent among various platforms.

So I'm wondering if you can answer both of those questions.

Yes, so your first question, we did receive feedback from OLS that they prefer the exclusively language or in terms of kind of a bright line of yes or no to help define what companies are marketplace network companies.

Your second question related to, I'm sorry I just blanked on your second question.

If I may Madam Chair, whether or not companies have certain strategies where they're maybe affecting whether or not a worker gets a gig or not based on the placement of that worker on an app or a platform.

Thank you.

I apologize about that.

We have heard from workers that they do, that the company does encourage them to set their rates at a certain level.

I am not aware of any companies that currently use their algorithm to promote particular workers based on their Based on their cost, it seems to be more about ratings or the number of jobs that they have completed.

However, you know, again, these are kind of algorithms or other technologies that could be changed to promote workers based on their rates fairly easily, I would assume.

So that is certainly an option for the companies.

Thank you.

A quick question I have before we move back over to Council Member Lewis.

This amendment and the changing of the definition of network companies, it doesn't only affect the minimum compensation requirements, correct?

It essentially, if you fall out of the, the definition of marketplace or company, there are other elements of the bill that would not be a regulation that a company has to adhere to.

Is that correct?

And can you just very quickly touch on that impact?

Sure.

So currently the bill as presented or as introduced It has a definition for marketplace network company, and then some regulations which are specialized related to marketplace network companies.

So for example, marketplace network companies, because they do not track by geography, would not have to pay for engaged miles because they do not track how many miles their workers are driving.

So, as the legislation is right now, changing this definition might put certain companies into or out of the marketplace network company definition, and then those specific marketplace network company regulations might apply to them.

However, what I think you're referring to is if Amendment 3 passes, where they are excluded from Chapter 830.37, that would exclude them from both the minimum payment standard, as well as the flexibility requirements and the transparency requirements that are also included in the bill.

And we can talk a little bit more about that under Amendment 3 as well, if you like.

Thank you.

Just a quick follow-up on that.

But if you neither meet the definition of a marketplace network company, nor a on-demand network company, what's...

You are...

Yes, the network company is an umbrella term, and there are two subsets, on-demand and marketplace network companies.

If you do not meet the definition of marketplace network company or on-demand company, you are still considered a network company if you meet that definition and are covered by this council bill.

That's helpful clarification.

Thank you.

Amy, you touched on that in the base bill here, the base proposal that marketplace network companies are not tracking their workers, geographically speaking.

But I believe this amendment alters that.

Yes.

So in general, what we have heard is that the most marketplace network companies do not track their workers by geography.

So for example, usually with like DoorDash or Instacart, they are tracking their workers as they do the offer.

However, that is not necessarily the case for all of the marketplace network companies.

There is one particular geographic functionality in the Rover app, which allows a pet walker to share a map of the route that was taken on, for example, like a dog walk with the customer after the walk is done.

And so, and that is placed on the, that is shared through the app.

So it's kind of a question of like, how do you define geographic monitoring?

But they requested that geographic, monitoring be removed from the definition in order to allow that functionality and not create any kind of like gray area as it relates to that particular functionality on the Rover app.

Thank you.

Councilmember Lewis?

My questions are getting answered by just that last response.

So thank you.

Very good.

Thank you.

Councilmember Mosqueda?

Thank you.

I'd like to understand a little bit more about the geographic monitoring by a marketplace company, is there a way to tailor, something like that so I can understand maybe why a consumer would be excited to know where their dog was walk, for example, but that doesn't seem to be.

pertinent information for a company to track necessarily.

If the job is getting done truly by an independent contractor, you think that that would be information shared between the client and the worker or the provider of the labor.

So is there some nuance in how that information could be provided to a purchaser of the labor versus having that information shared with the company?

Or is this amendment just envisioning that that information is also shared with the company?

My understanding is that the map, for example, is shared through the platform.

However, it's not necessarily monitored by the company.

They don't look at it.

I think they would have the ability to look at it, but their current practice is to not look at that to see kind of where the walker went or to dictate the routes that they take in any way.

So I hear your concern about the companies monitoring in that way.

I don't believe that is current practice, but certainly if that was something that you were concerned about, that is maybe something we could continue to work on as the legislation is considered.

Okay, from Skater.

Yeah, you have follow up.

Thanks so much.

And perhaps with the sponsor of the amendment and with central staff, I look forward to chatting more about that in the future.

Just Madam Chair, and for the sponsors knowledge, I just wanted to stick on my concerns with this amendment.

I'll be voting no due to the enforcement concerns, especially if OLS has opined on it and prefer a brighter line.

Thanks for all the work on this to central staff and to the sponsor, but I'll be voting no on this amendment today.

Thank you so much, Commissioner Mosqueda.

Just wanting to focus my comments on what we heard From the National Employment Law Project in their May 10th letter to council, they are also advocating not having a piecemeal approach, but really focusing on regulating workers who share the overarching common characteristic of receiving their tasks through a digital application.

This makes good sense.

Both the marketplace network platforms and network companies defined in the bill manage their businesses and their workforce through similar algorithmic-based technology, and that technology can be reprogrammed to comply with the bill.

The letter goes on to say that historically, exclusions from and limitations on bedrock protections have excluded too many workers, particularly too many Black and immigrant workers, and maintaining the broad coverage is consistent with Seattle's commitment to race equity, but also with the council's role recognized in the bill's preamble as a leader on wage, labor, and workforce practices that improves workers' lives and supports an economic security and contributes to a fair and healthy and vibrant economy.

I'm just, you know, again, I recognize the that we don't know what we don't know, but we have a hard time imagining how existing on-demand network companies could refigure their algorithms in a way to, or their models in a way to be defined as a marketplace.

I have concerns even without imagining a new business model.

I do have concerns as expressed by Councilmember Mosqueda and as expressed by both our Labor Standards Advisory Committee and the Office of Labor Standards about the ability to to enforce the concept of primarily versus exclusively.

So I just want to flag that I too am intending to vote against Amendment 2. Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

So I've spent a lot of time really assessing this.

I do ultimately disagree that this particular category of apps is so similar just by virtue of being an app.

I do think the business model similarly gives me this abiding concern that there could be unintended consequences in the other direction, that the current definition could be over inclusive and cause strange results.

I mean, I do think that the round of questioning we just had about how the geographic location language interfaces, for example, with Rover walking the dogs as an illustration of the fact that I just keep having the abiding sense that we are inserting a regulation of the marketplace apps into primarily what is a delivery regulation, on-demand delivery regulation bill.

That doesn't mean I'm opposed to doing something to regulate the conduct of the marketplace apps.

I think there are things that have been raised through our stakeholdering that could warrant attention and legislation from the city that is bespoke and tailored to the inequities with the marketplace apps.

I just have a concern that there are places throughout the bill, not just with the pay standard, but with some of the flexibility and transparency requirements that just don't neatly apply to this category of business model.

So I'm satisfied from the responses from central staff that the tightness of the definition is such that it would be difficult for the delivery apps to change their business model in order to undermine the application of this legislation to Instacart, DoorDash, Uber Eats.

Because I was still struggling with this, I drafted an amendment anticipating the possibility of supporting this route to have OLS throughout the next several months if they do sincerely think it's going to be impossible to do this without having loopholes that undermine this application to delivery apps to consider changing this.

There will be opportunities for the council to change this if something like that materializes.

But I just, you know, every time I look into this with more detail, I just have these concerns that we've developed a good bill to regulate an elephant and we're applying it to a whale to a certain extent.

So I'm inclined to vote for this amendment today.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis, and it occurs to me that, once again, I've gotten us a little bit out of order.

Be great, Councilmember Peterson, for you to move your amendment, and we'll get a second, and we'll have any other remaining comments before we vote.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

I move to amend the underlying bill with Amendment 2 as presented here on the table of amendments.

Thank you.

A second.

Council Member Nelson, thank you for the second.

Are there any other comments or questions about Amendment 2 before we call for the vote?

Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

So I just want to make sure that I understand if this amendment passes, what's potentially at stake or on the to do list for Office of Labor Standards.

And if this is a question for central staff, that's great.

Or if Labor Standards is watching and can get back to us, that would be helpful to know.

I guess my understanding from hearing the analysis from central staff and looking at this amendment is that it could vastly expand the definition of marketplace network company creating such a loophole that the ability to track on demand jobs.

The ability for Office of Labor Standards to understand whether and which type of jobs are supposed to be tracking could be nearly impossible.

It could be a barrier for enforcement requiring an assessment of the entirety of a company's offers before determining whether workers are being paid what they need.

Is, is there any sort of written analysis that Office of Labor Standards currently has in front of us that we could take a look to see if that assumption about whether or not this is creating a loophole, whether or not this is meaning that companies could offer workers on demand work monitor their locations while performing the work and track the time they stop and start work but not have to pay that is actually going to be a problem.

These are the type of questions that I think actually undermine the intent or the heart of the bill and perhaps I am not seeing the same things that OLS is or central staff or the co-sponsors.

I just want to make sure we have a full list of maybe what we're asking of OLS before final passage on this bill if this amendment is to hang.

Sure.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

I will work with OLS to get a more complete written response to you.

Again, I asked them about the definition, and they did express, again, that they prefer the exclusively rather than primarily.

The primarily language requires them to kind of do some looking at the companies to say, for example, how many of your offers are pre-scheduled versus on-demand.

before determining whether a company would be a marketplace network company.

In a similar way, we use the primarily engaged language in on-demand and the definition of on-demand companies.

And so, OLS will also be having to look at companies that are on-demand to ensure like how they will need to determine how much of that type of work means that they are, that a company is either on-demand or a marketplace network company.

So I will continue, I will work with OLS to get a written response to your question about exactly, you know, how much work they think that this would be compared to the existing definition.

Thank you, Amy.

Are there any other questions before we call the vote?

Seeing none.

Clerk, can you please call the roll on the vote?

Council Member Mosqueda.

No.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Vice Chair Lewis.

Yes.

Chair Herbold.

No.

That is three in favor, two opposed.

Thank you so much.

The amendment passes.

Will central staff please describe Amendment 3.

Of course, the next amendment for your consideration is a minute three version one.

It is sponsored by Councilmember Peterson Council chair her bold would it be better for me to pause here for you to have it moved or would you rather me go into the description first, if you could just.

I'll review description.

And then I'll ask Council Member Peterson if he has any additional comments, and then I'll ask Council Member Peterson to move it.

Okay, great.

This amendment would exclude marketplace network companies from the companies covered by Chapter 8.37.

This is the chapter that would establish the minimum network payment requirements, as well as the transparency and flexibility requirements of Council Bill 120294. Therefore, those requirements would not apply to marketplace network companies and their workers would not be covered by the legislation or its requirement.

It also removes any of the regulations in the bill that were specific to marketplace network companies.

And with that, I will turn it over to Councilmember Peterson.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you chair her ball and thank you, Amy Gore for that excellent overview, I, my comments at the beginning of amendment to are relevant to this amendment three.

So I don't need to repeat them here it's it's really just the issue that this is a.

This is a massive undertaking, never been done in the nation.

And so we're talking about a different technology business model here.

And so I would ask my colleagues to consider accepting them with this amendment.

So would you like me to try to move the amendment?

Let's just see if there's any clarifying questions first, just clarifying questions.

Then we'll move the amendment and then we'll hear from folks on how they feel about the amendment.

So any clarifying questions?

All right, not seeing any.

Councilor Peterson, would you like to move the bill?

I mean, move the amendment.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

Colleagues, I move to accept Amendment 3 as presented in Table 1 with our agenda today to exempt marketplace network companies.

Thank you.

Is there a second?

Second.

And now let's move to discussion.

If council colleagues have thoughts about this bill or this amendment, love to hear them.

Looking for raised hands, see a real hand.

Thanks so much.

Um, so perhaps this was a clarifying question for central staff.

Chapter 8.37 is in effect eliminating this entire category of workers from being covered by the minimum wage.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any other comments or questions?

I'll just keep with my, my hand up, Madam Chair, and just as a follow up to that, you know, along the lines of the comments that you received from the National Employment Law Project, obviously a national body that does research on the impact of labor standards and the disproportionate lack of labor standards, especially on black and brown workers.

I think that this is an amendment that would exclude thousands of workers in the on marketplace apps from these basic protections that we're seeking to apply here.

And notably, as notes, that could disproportionately fall on black and brown workers, immigrant and refugee workers.

And I'm also worried about some of the unintended consequences that I was asking OLS to potentially opine on before final passage, and the concern that this could incentivize other companies to tweak their business models and squeeze through that loophole, and thus pay workers less.

So again, I'll be voting no on this amendment today.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Any other comments from Council Member Nelson?

Go ahead.

Thank you.

I share the concerns about unintended consequences that were voiced by Council Member Peterson.

I was saying from the get go of this discussion months ago that I am concerned about the impacts on small businesses, on the customers and on the drivers of the potential impacts, decreased demand, higher fees for the end user, et cetera.

And I appreciate that the National Labor Law Center, I don't know if I'm getting that right, has weighed in on this.

But I also think it's very important to listen to people in our own community who have reached out to us and let their concerns be known, be heard from, Bishop Gary Tyson earlier in comments and they they wrote a letter representing how the his community is very concerned about some of these unintended consequences and calling for a study.

We've heard from Marcus one list, who is the president of the Latino Chamber of Commerce.

who was also NKUW talking about this, unintended consequences, concern for the small businesses in the Latino community.

We got a letter from Louis Rudd last night, founder and president of Ezel's Fried Chicken, also concerned about how this will impact his orders.

And just yesterday, a letter from Washington Build Back Black Alliance, et cetera.

So what I am saying is that we have a responsibility to listen to the concerns and they are expressing the same thing over and over again.

So that is why I will be voting in favor of this amendment.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

Other comments?

Just a few words myself here.

And similar to the concerns I expressed with Amendment 2, I just want to, again, explain that the development of this policy is to regulate an unregulated sector of our economy.

It's the largest growing sector.

We are intentionally not regulating specific business models.

because business models are constantly changing and evolving.

But we do recognize that the marketplace app regulation within the bill regulating multiple types of regulating this unregulated sector of our economy, that we do recognize that marketplace apps should have a different threshold to meet.

And for that reason, there are elements A payment basic payment elements that are required by the on demand network companies for their compensation model that aren't included in marketplace apps regulation.

So I just want to, you know, again, I.

really appreciate that marketplace apps have sincerely engaged since the beginning of our stakeholder process.

They have consistently requested to be exempted, but yet they've still engaged in the process in case we continued to ensure that the policy covered their model as well.

And we have included much of their input in the introduced legislation.

And understanding that it would rather be exempted, we have still worked to include their input to a piece of policy that maintains some regulation of this unregulated industry.

So for that reason, I'm really strongly supportive of maintaining that framework and not supporting this particular amendment.

So I do appreciate the work that was done on it.

Any other comments?

All right, hearing none, the clerk please call roll on amendment three.

Council Member Nelson, excuse me, Council Member Mosqueda.

No.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Vice Chair Lewis.

Yes.

Chair Herbold.

No.

Three in favor, two opposed.

the amendment passes.

Will central staff please describe amendment four?

Sure, thank you.

The next amendment is amendment for version one, and is sponsored by Councilmember Lewis.

This amendment would request that the Office of Labor Standards report back to council if they become aware of network companies changing their business models to meet the definition of marketplace network companies in order to be excluded from the requirements of chapter 8.37 As part of this report back, it requests that OLS recommend a definition of marketplace network company and appropriate regulations for that business model.

And with that, I will turn it over to Council Member Lewis.

Thank you.

Council Member Lewis, would you like to speak to the amendment?

Yes.

Thank you, Amy.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

This amendment is to give OLS the opportunity to interface with the committee In light of the amendments that we just passed to promulgate to us some additional steps if they recognize that the market places and is adapting or evolving or changing to exclude work that is envisioned by the ordinance by companies exploiting the definitions and amendment to an amendment three.

By formally putting in a report back as we go through the next several months of OLS grappling with implementing this, it gives us an opportunity to revisit it if it does undermine the scope and scale of the legislation and gives OLS an opportunity to be involved in that process.

So that is essentially the amendment.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Are there any clarifying questions about the amendment before we get it before us?

Not seeing any raised hands.

Council Member Lewis, would you like to move the amendment?

Yes, I move amendment four.

Okay.

Any second?

Any further discussion of it before we call the roll.

Councilmember Peterson.

Thank you, Chair.

I want to thank Councilmember Lewis for putting this forward I definitely support this I, you know, I've been thinking about how we're going to be evaluating actually the entire law if it goes into effect.

I know there was some discussion last month in the central staff memo, should we be studying this?

Perhaps we should be looking at it a year later.

So I support this study on this particular sliver of the ordinance and may want to talk about doing a bigger evaluation later just so we're aware of how it's being implemented and the impact on workers and customers and small businesses.

Thank you.

Thank you, Peterson.

Any other comments or questions?

All right.

Clerk, please call the roll on amendment number four.

I believe Council Member Mosqueda is raising her hand.

I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

I, um,

shortcut to unmute is actually closing my video down so I keep missing the chance to chime in.

Sorry about that.

Okay, so Let me just see if we can do a quick on the spot analysis here.

We are actively working on updating our fiscal notes to make them really reflective of the ongoing costs here.

I assume that an amendment like this would add to the cost.

And if Council Member Peterson, if I understood your comments as well, a more robust analysis would actually add further to the cost.

So do we have any assessment from Office of Labor Standards about how this would affect the current fiscal note?

I can answer that.

So the actual amendment does not require any particular additional work on behalf of OLS.

It asks that if they are seeing companies change their business model, Um, that they report that back to city to council.

Um, and really the expectation is that would not be a new body of work, but instead that that would be something that they might observe through their, their year long or more rulemaking process.

Um, I, it does request that if they are seeing that kind of change that they, um, work on a, um, a new definition of marketplace network company and appropriate regulations for that.

And it is anticipated that that work might entail additional resources for OLS and that they would come to council to request those resources for some sort of study or additional work.

That is my understanding of the sponsor's intent, but I will pass that back to council member Lewis to confirm that.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think that comports with, with my intent.

I mean, some of this, this work, OLS is sort of going to be doing just in the general implementation of this legislation anyway.

And it's just facilitating a report back on what they learn and how they're analyzing that as it goes forward.

I mean, it's designing an entirely new set of labor regulations and a report back on vulnerabilities is I imagine just going to be a component of that work.

I'm sure if I might.

Colleagues, I appreciate that there was a number of amendments.

We're all very interested in how they intertwine.

But with amendments number two and three hanging to this piece of legislation, this is, in fact, not what Office of Labor and Standards intended to analyze.

Right.

I think there's a whole host of unintended consequences if folks want to use that term.

about how this may affect existing company behavior within this industry.

And if Office of Labor Standards is now in the process of having to look to see if each company is shifting behavior for the type of workers that they have, I think it's a whole nother set of policies that we might have to consider, or let me rephrase that, a set of resources that we might want to consider so that OLS has the capacity to actually do that analysis to thus provide us recommendations.

Now I'm going to be voting yes on this amendment because I think it's important to get that data, but again I think with the fiscal notes continuing to be a document that we need to point back to, especially every year, but especially in years like now, we need to have a better understanding of what the impact would be on Office of Labor Standards.

So I would ask central staff to add this to their list.

And again, reiterate that without marketplace definitions, I am not sure that we have the underlying bill in its full intent in front of us.

to make sure that we are actually accomplishing those protections, especially for the most diverse workers, if we have a worry now that there's going to be shifting behavior within this industry.

Yes, I'd like to know more about what they see, but I would want to make sure to be really clear with Office of Labor Standards and amongst us in this committee, that this is not actually, I think, part of what Office of Labor Standards was going to do anyways because of the amendments two and three that were hung.

I'll be voting yes to get the information, but I think that we need to have a clear understanding of what the cost will be and what the scope of the need is for this department as well.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda and Madam Budget Chair.

Appreciate your focus on those fiscal impacts, really do.

There's no further comments or questions.

Will the clerk please call the roll on this amendment?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Yes.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Vice Chair Lewis.

Yes.

Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Five in favor.

Thank you.

The amendment four passes.

Will the, will special staff please move on to describe amendment five?

Hello, council members.

The next amendment is number five, version one.

And this amendment would reduce the associated cost, time, and mileage factors, which are components of the minimum payment calculation.

As a refresher, the minimum payment calculation is a per minute amount, which is multiplied for each engaged minute.

And then that is added to a per mile amount, which is a per mile amount times each engaged mile.

So within that permanent amount, there is an associated cost factor and time factor, which are the markups for the minimum wage equivalent rate.

And within the per mile amount, the associated mileage factor is the markup for the IRS standard mileage rate.

So this amendment would reduce all of those associated factors.

The amount of these reductions are in the middle of what is in the draft legislation and what is in the central staff memo in the list of amendments.

And specifically, the associated cost factor would be reduced from 1.13 to 1.12.

The associated time factor would be reduced from 1.21 to 1.17.

And the associated mileage factor would be reduced from 1.25 to 1.10.

The ultimate result is that the per-offer minimum amount for out-based workers would be less.

In 2022, the per-minute amount would be reduced from 39 cents per minute to 38 cents per minute.

And the per-mile amount would be reduced from 73 cents per mile to 64 cents per mile.

Thank you so much.

This is an amendment that is sponsored by myself and Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Lewis, would you like to speak to the amendment?

Yes, thank you, Council Member Herbold.

As we've discussed extensively, there's been lots and lots of diligent stakeholdering throughout this process between the platforms, Working Washington, Council Member Herbold's office, and my office.

This amendment is reflective of that outreach in forming a bespoke cost factors for Seattle and the city market here based on that stakeholdering.

It is something that all parties have found to be acceptable and we're bringing it forward for the consideration of the committee.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate that and just want to echo my appreciation for the stakeholders who worked together on the compromise and jointly came together to ask us to consider this change.

Any additional comments or questions on the amendment?

Not seeing any.

Commissioner Lewis, would you like to move the amendment?

I move amendment five.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any additional, again, comments or questions?

Seeing none.

Thank you.

Clerk, can you please call the roll on the passage of the amendment?

Council Member Mosqueda.

I second the motion and I vote aye.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Vice Chair Lewis.

Yes.

Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you so much.

We'll Council Central staff, please describe Amendment 6.

Yes, Amendment 6, Version 1. This amendment would change the Office of Labor Standards Director's discretion to adjust the associated cost factor and associated time factor from annually to every three years.

As a result, the associated cost factor and time factors would remain constant for at least three years.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Nelson, would you like to speak to this amendment as a sponsor?

Yes, basically, it took months and months of outreach and research and talking to stakeholders to come up with the calculations that we have before us.

And the discretion to revise and adjust every year seems like a lot of work for OLS to do on a continual basis.

And so basically, amendment simply gives three years instead of just one year for them to consider changes.

And it also helps the network companies because as the OLS director proposes or implements changes to the underlying calculations, they have got to change their algorithms perhaps even signage, et cetera, because ultimately the minimum pay standard will change.

So it helps those companies as well.

And then finally, it also provides for more certainty and predictability in the marketplace.

And that's good for the small businesses that rely on these app-based services and the networks themselves.

and end users and the drivers.

So that is why I put this forward and I did ask, we did touch base with OLS and they have no problem with this amendment.

Thank you so much, Council Member Nelson.

Any clarifying questions about the amendment before I ask the sponsor to make a motion?

Not seeing any clarifying questions.

Council Member Nelson, would you like to move the amendment?

I move amendment six.

Thank you for your second.

Thank you.

Just a couple of thoughts from me before I open it up.

I'm supportive of this amendment.

This legislation does not require the OLS Director to assess the associated costs and time factors.

It does allow it.

The amendment simply changes that discretion every three years.

I appreciate the amendment sponsor clarifying that it's not in conflict with OLS's hopes for administrating the legislation moving forward.

Any other comments or questions on the amendment?

Not seeing any.

Okay, nope, all right.

Please call the roll on the passage of the amendment.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Vice Chair Lewis.

Yes.

Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The amendment passes.

Will Council Staff please describe Amendment 7, Version 2.

Absolutely.

The next amendment for discussion is Amendment 7, Version 2. It is sponsored by Chair Herbold and Council Member Lewis.

As discussed in the previous two amendments, the legislation would give the Director of the Office of Labor Standards the authority to adjust the associated cost factor and the associated time factor.

However, it does not provide the Director with the authority to make adjustments to the associated mileage factor if conditions for workers change.

This amendment would grant that authority to the OLS director to adjust the associated mileage factor annually, and would provide guidance on factors to consider when making any adjustments.

I distributed version two of this last evening.

The only difference is that it corrects a drafting mistake that I made by leaving in an incorrect reference to associated time factor rather than associated mileage factor.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Um, let's see here.

Yes, this is an amendment that is proposed by Council member Lewis and I, um, and, um, I don't have much to add.

It's, um, as stated, correcting a drafting error, and, um, it does take into consideration the passage of the amendment that we just discussed, which lowered the associated mileage factor from 1.25 to 1.1.

And the next amendment that we have coming from Council Member Nelson will make changes that were made in the previous amendment should this amendment pass.

So any other...

clarifying questions before Council Member Peterson.

You explain the associated mileage factor, what that is exactly.

Amy, you want to take that?

So the associated mileage factor accounts for mileage that a, so the mileage that a worker drives while they are working on an offer is covered under the guaranteed minimum payment.

The mileage factor is kind of a multiplier to account for mileage that is driven before or after they begin their offers.

So for example, Um, maybe, um, a door dash driver, um, takes a order to a location that is far away from any restaurants.

And then after they have delivered that order and they are no longer being paid, they need to return back to an area where they will probably be doing the pickup.

So it is that kind of extra mileage that occurs before or after an offer.

Um, it's to cover that type of mileage.

Thank you.

All right, not seeing any additional clarifying questions.

I will move Amendment seven version two as presented on the distributed central staff memo and described here in.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Any additional comments from my colleagues before we call role on the vote for Nelson.

We know that in policymaking, the devil's often in the details.

And in my opinion, a lot of the details of this whole regulatory package too many are left to the OLS director's discretion outside of the scope of council approval.

So that's always been kind of a gripe of mine.

But the thing about the, I guess I just always assumed that the associated cost factor that's associated with the mileage rate of 0.58 would not change unless the IRS's rate changed.

My whole, I don't believe that it's necessary to give the director the discretion to change this.

After all, the, the mileage factor is set by by the IRS, and, you know, In my opinion, it is not reflective of the cars driven in this area and the costs associated with driving.

There was a study called the Beacon Study that was produced that looked at insurance rates and gas prices and depreciation rates and said that 0.30 or now 0.36 would be better because of rising gas prices.

But regardless, again, I'll be voting no just because I am trying to create some predictability and make sure that council retains its authority to weigh in on the underlying inputs and the things that drive the minimum pay standard.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

Any additional comments or discussion about this amendment?

Again, it does not require an adjustment.

It just gives the OLS director the authority to do so.

And, you know, to recognize that the Beacon Study was commissioned by Uber and DoorDash and reflects a small specific sedan model that may not be reflective of all vehicles used in this type of work.

So I'm thinking that that flexibility needs to be considered moving forward.

Also Council Member Herbold, I just want to clarify that the per mile amount is actually composed of two different numbers.

One is the standard mileage rate, which is set by the IRS.

and would change annually based on any adjustments that the IRS makes.

And then it's the associated mileage factor that would be adjusted by the OLS director, similar to the associated cost factor and the associated time factor.

So both of those are components of the per mile amount.

So just want to clarify that.

Appreciate that.

That's very, very helpful.

Council Member Nelson, I see your hand is still up.

Is that a holdover or is that a new one?

Okay, great, thank you.

Not seeing any other raised hands.

Let's see, do we have this amendment?

We have moved to this amendment.

Let's move towards calling the roll.

Please call the roll on the adoption of amendment seven.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Thank you.

Council Member Nelson.

Nay.

Council Member Peterson.

Abstain.

Council, or Vice Chair Lewis.

Yes.

Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Four, three in favor, one opposed, one abstention.

Thank you.

Amendment 7 passes.

We're moving over to Amendment 15.

Will central staff describe Amendment 15?

Yes.

And as you noted, we are skipping ahead to 15 because it relates topically to the previous amendment discussed.

So the next amendment for consideration is Amendment 15, Version 1. This amendment is not in the memo, but was distributed via email last night.

Similar to Amendment 6, it would change the frequency of permitted adjustments to the associated mileage factor from annually to every three years.

This would make these adjustments consistent with the adjustments of associated cost factor and associated time factor.

And with that, I will turn it over to the sponsor, who is Council Member Nelson.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

Would you like to speak to the amendment?

Thank you very much.

This is basically just making sure that any At the discretion of the director, any changes that are made are in sync.

It just seems a lot more simple that all three associated cost factors are evaluated at the same time.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

If there are no further clarifying questions, not seeing any, I will entertain a motion.

Council Member Nelson, would you like to move the amendment?

I move amendment 15. Thank you.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you so much.

I'm consistent with the other amendment that we voted on earlier, the intent and the work of the sponsor.

Are there other comments or questions from my colleagues?

Let's hear them now.

Madam Chair.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much.

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank the sponsor for her work on this, but specifically Kate Nolan from her office for working in advance with our office to understand the amendment in detail.

So I'll be voting yes.

Thank you so much.

Hearing anything further, seeing no further hands raised, will the clerk please call the roll on Amendment 15?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Thank you.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Vice Chair Lewis.

Yes.

Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Five in favor.

Thank you.

Amendment 15 passes.

Moving on to Amendment 8. Will central staff please describe Amendment 8.

Yes, hello.

Amendment eight would change the notice of rights section in three ways.

One, it would require OLS to produce a model notice of rights and translations where the current draft has it as permissive.

It would also require that the Notice of Rights have a description of whether the network company identifies as an on-demand network company, a marketplace network company, or neither, and what the implications are for engaged time and miles.

And it would also require the network company to file their Notice of Rights with OLS.

This amendment would ensure that a model notice of rights and accurate translations are available to the network companies and assist OLS with outreach and implementation by clarifying for app-based workers what type of network company they likely work for and therefore when to expect engage time and miles to apply.

I recognize that with the passage of Amendment 2 and 3, excluding marketplace network companies from coverage, we may need to adjust the language of the amendment, which we can do either now at the virtual table or we can kind of figure it out for full council.

But that's the underlying description.

Thank you, Jasmine.

Really appreciate it.

Do you speak to how we would go about doing that at the table and what your recommendation is?

My recommendation is that maybe we leave it in for now because I don't think it hurts since they're excluded from coverage and we can kind of adjust for full council, but we could technically amend it now and I would send a new version by email to everyone now, but it might just be a little bit of a delay.

Yeah, I think we're going to go with your recommendation.

Keep it in as is now.

Don't want to get anything wrong and have to do a fix later anyhow.

So this is my amendment.

This amendment was requested by the Office of Labor Standards, who prefers to be doing the work to produce that model notice of rights and translations themselves.

also removes the burden from the companies for having to pay for and providing this information.

And I understand that OLS and central staff have had conversations about the expenses associated with this amendment.

And there are no clarifying questions.

Not seeing any.

I will move amendment eight.

Second.

Thank you.

And so, Amendment 8 is moved and seconded.

Are there additional comments or questions before we call the roll?

Not seeing any comments or questions, although I can see Council Member Muscat has come off mute.

Maybe she's just getting ready to vote.

I'm ready to vote this time.

Thank you.

Will the clerk please call the roll on Amendment 8.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Vice Chair Lewis.

Yes.

Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Five in favor.

Thank you so much.

Amendment 8 passes.

Will central staff please describe Amendment Number 9.

Yes, amendment number nine amends that subsection on upfront disclosures in a number of ways to accommodate those network companies that make offers to workers that involve multiple online orders in a single offer, and where the company doesn't know in advance the details of each specific order.

The first is you're kind of scrolling down the amendment if you have in front of you I'll note that it contains a technical correction regarding tip disclosures that was included just in case amendment one didn't pass for some reason so that's what that's about.

That's taken care of because amendment one passed.

Then this amendment would require rules to be adopted clarifying the disclosure of unsealed contents of online orders so that OLS can work out the details on the manner and method of disclosure, which may need to, you know, may involve further details and stakeholdering, particularly with these type of companies where the online order is not known in advance of the offer.

And finally, this amendment would allow for additional information to be disclosed after an offer is already accepted instead of in advance of the offer.

And it would only apply to pre-scheduled offers or offers containing multiple online orders, such as an offer for a pre-scheduled block of deliveries, and only if the company lacks advance notice of that information.

So that, and that information would still need to be disclosed before a specific online order is assigned to a worker if it's reasonably ascertainable.

The information in question includes the number of engaged miles, any tips, and the names of businesses to be visited.

Then the underlying draft also applies to the physical labor required for the order and any unsealed contents.

Thank you so much.

This is an amendment again that is co-sponsored this is an amendment we worked with Amazon to craft, but I want to just hand it over to Councilmember Lewis as cosponsor to speak to the amendment.

Yeah, thank you Councilmember Herbold.

So this amendment really just reflects that there are certain network companies that we are asking to disclose information that based on how they do the delivery, they wouldn't have at the time the legislation originally envisions.

You know, so people sign up for a shift more in advance and they don't necessarily know what's gonna be, you know, like in the vehicle when they are ultimately delivering it.

So, you know, it's not really fair to, require that platform to divine and advance what's going to be in those packages or or it's unnecessary unnecessarily logistically burdensome so this just reflects that in some cases.

And I would also add different from like food delivery apps where there could be an allergy situation or something like that in.

In an order that could pose an issue to the driver.

So, you know, we're mostly talking about like sealed contents, you know, like Amazon Flex style deliveries here, just to reflect that we're requesting certain information that they wouldn't have at a given time based on their model.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

Any additional clarifying questions from Councilmembers before we move to get this amendment before us?

Council Member Mosqueda?

No.

Okay, good.

Council Member Lewis, would you like to move the amendment?

I move Amendment 9.

Second Amendment 9. Are there any comments or questions about Amendment 9 before we call the roll?

Not seeing any comments or questions.

Will the clerk please call the roll on Amendment 9?

Council Member Mosqueda?

Aye.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson?

Aye.

Vice Chair Lewis?

Yes.

Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Aye.

All in favor?

Thank you so much.

Will central staff please scribe Amendment 14?

Yes, Amendment 14 Version 1 is sponsored by Council Member Nelson.

This amendment would remove the tip amount from upfront disclosure requirements for each offer.

As a result, network companies would not be required to provide tip amounts when facilitating or presenting an offer.

To provide some more context for each offer, network companies are required in the introduced legislation to provide a range of information, including the best estimate of reasonable engaged time, reasonable engaged miles, guaranteed network company payment, tip amounts, and other information.

This amendment would remove the amount of tips that a customer may have indicated, although customers are not required to indicate tips, from the guaranteed minimum payment.

Due to the definition of how tips intersect with guaranteed minimum payment, companies would not be allowed, if this amendment passes, full tips into the minimum payment that is part of the offer.

So workers would not be surprised to find that they actually don't get a tip because it's already been included in the offer.

So I feel like that's important to distinguish.

And that is a summary.

Thank you so much, Karina.

Council Member Nelson, would you like to speak to your amendment before we move the amendment, get it before us?

Thank you.

So the whole policy rationale of this regulatory framework is to establish a predictable minimum wage that is a living wage for drivers.

And and if this passes, that is what we are, in fact, doing.

And so with the associated cost factors that we just approved by amendment, basically we're talking about if there are three trips that are 20 minutes long and five miles each in an hour.

That equals about thirty two dollars and fifty cents for 20 minute tips.

And the whole reason for doing this is that is so that workers don't have to rely on tips for the lion's share of their payment from from working for these app based companies.

So So that's what we're trying to do here.

And requiring that the tip amount be shown up front does create the possibility and what we've heard from some stakeholders, the likelihood that there will be cherry picking amongst drivers who will be only picking the trips that are highly tipped.

And this then does create a customer consumer protection issue, because that means it will be disproportionately impactful on low income people who can't afford tips are very high tips or people often the same folks who who order low priced things for delivery, you know, the fast food, for example, or whatever so.

So I do think that we have to take seriously the fact that this could negatively impact the consumers, the customers that are using these applications.

So in any way, aside from that, the way that tips are solicited and collected varies widely across the platforms and by different models.

So for example, many of these applications do not ask for People assign a tip after the delivery.

Shift, I believe, is one of those companies where that's the case.

And so with this variation and the difficulty perhaps of enforcing that kind of variation, I just believe that, you know, the requirement for tip disclosure prior to accepting an offer is redundant.

And so, for example, dashers will always see the full customer tip as a separate line item after every delivery in accordance with the transparency requirements in this proposal.

And that is the case for other companies as well.

So this amendment is being offered for the benefit of the customers who could be left waiting a long time for people to accept their delivery because there is no tip or the item is so low price that the tip ends up being very small.

Thank you Council Member Nelson.

Just looking for clarifying questions first and we'll do what we have to do to get the motion in front of us and then we'll hear what people's positions are to the extent that they want to share them.

Any clarifying questions?

I don't see everybody here but I'm not seeing anyone.

Thank you for the help.

I guess I'm confused by the lane that we're trying to occupy here.

This is really a piece of legislation broadly intended to provide additional clarification regulation for workers that are independent contractors.

Should not an independent contractor be able to choose the work they're doing?

Isn't that the goal for them to be able to set their own rates, especially if, you know, as amendment number three says, we're not even guaranteeing access to minimum wage for a subset of workers.

If the goal is for workers to be able to make an informed choice about whichever job they choose as an independent contractor, does this get into a murky area of trying to define wages and tips for these workers?

Or else we should just classify them as employees if we're going to go at this route.

I think it's a policy decision rather than a determination on whether this information would make a worker or whether providing tip information would make a comment on worker status.

I think inherently tips are discretionary by the customer.

So even if it is indicated in the beginning of an offer, it doesn't necessarily mean that the customer would actually end up paying that.

So that's one way to look at it.

So I think that there is an argument that, if a customer has indicated a tip, that the worker should know that information.

Because as an independent contractor, they can choose or not choose what work they would like to accept.

And that right is memorialized in the flexibility section.

On the other hand, it is discretion, it could, If this amendment were to pass, it would be discretionary, so it wouldn't prevent the companies from providing that information.

It would not require them to do so.

One could say that tips, again, aren't certain, so companies shouldn't be required to provide that information if there is uncertainty about it, and companies might decide not to provide that information in order to promote more equal access among customers.

So I think that it could go either way.

but certainly see and understand your concern about workers not having the full amount of information that is available to companies when making that decision.

Thank you for that.

Any other further clarifying questions before we get the amendment before us and debate the amendment?

Alex, do you have a clarifying question?

Just a clarifying comment about the base legislation and what it allows and requires, which is that tip policies need to be disclosed to the workers up front and companies can allow for tips to be removed.

Customers can remove tips and that has been an issue we've seen flagged.

But currently, the base legislation allows that to occur tips to be removed after an order is completed, even if they were given up front on the order, but it just needs to be disclosed within the policy that the company gives its workers.

That's very helpful information, Alex.

Thank you.

Councilor Mosqueda?

Thanks.

As a follow up to that, that's the base legislation.

So thank you for that clarification.

That's already there.

Central staff, can you remind me what New York did regarding this concept?

Also, my understanding is that New York's equivalent of the Office of Labor Standards is currently crafting their minimum payment policy right now, so we don't know what it is.

Correct me if I'm wrong on that, Amy or Jasmine, but I don't believe they've been given authority to develop a minimum payment policy, but they're in the process of developing that policy.

I do believe that I heard that there were some elements of that policy that went into place about a month ago, maybe a few weeks ago, but I'm not sure the status of the tip amount or the tip disclosure.

So we can certainly look at that, but I'm not aware if that is one of the pieces that went into effect already.

You're looking into that.

That is also my understanding is that a rule related to requirement to disclose full pay upfront it has recently passed in New York City.

Council Member Nelson, did you have a clarifying question?

I don't want to get into debating the amendment until we get it in front of us.

I'll get it in front of us and then I'll make a point.

Okay, would you like to make a motion?

I move this amendment, please.

Thank you.

Do we have a second?

Second.

Thank you.

Council Member Nelson, go ahead.

Well, this is just what I was trying to find in my when I was talking before.

But, you know, according to one of the presentations that was presented that well, the first one on since I've been in office on February 8th, twenty twenty two, the central staff presentation says on page four, the policy goal of of establishing a minimum payment, provide or ensure payment of minimum wage plus expenses with a per minute and per mile floor for the engaged time to perform each offer.

And I will simply say again that that is what we are doing.

So I believe this does not conflict with the overall rationale of this legislation before us.

Thank you.

This area of the policy, I think, fits more into the flexibility objectives of the policy to make sure that the app-based worker as the information necessary to be able to choose whether or not to take a gig.

And we can't do that without having full information about the remuneration for the gig.

I want to just flag that Council Member Lewis and I received an email from a DoorDash worker before this amendment was was developed and the DoorDash worker didn't know a lot, was not involved with the Working Washington campaign.

A DoorDash worker who sort of organically contacted us to say, there's a problem that I'm dealing with as a DoorDash worker and I sure hope your legislation deals with that.

And this constituent wrote, really concerned that DoorDash would continue to hide tips, noting that there's an incentive that DoorDash receives the same amount regardless of whether or not there's no tip or a very large one, and concerned that drivers without all the information are forced to accept and gamble whether or not the job will pay a fair wage.

So again, more generally speaking, there are independent contractors and a part of this work is being able to know up front before accepting a job, what all the variables are, and that transparency, allowing workers to exert flexibility that is associated with this type of work.

And so for that reason, I appreciate the sponsor bringing the amendment forward, but I will not be supporting this amendment.

I totally see the point of the person who emailed you and in current situations without knowing what the wage will be.

So, but that's what I'm saying is that this legislation in itself does provide certainty that the driver will earn a living wage.

Council Member Nelson, Council Member Mosqueda.

First let me highlight where I think there's maybe an area of common ground.

One is I think that we want to make sure that all wages that are paid actually compensate workers to have a true minimum wage and work towards an actual living wage.

I really applaud a lot of our restauranteurs and local breweries like Molly Moon's ice cream and Plum Bistro and Optimism Brewery, for example, that build in a higher minimum wage so that workers are never reliant on tips to actually know whether or not they're going to be able to put food on the table or pay their rent, for example.

So having conversations separate about one true wage is something I'm really excited about if there's interest in that among council members and separate those specific to this legislation and this amendment in front of us.

If there's going to be the ability to to add tips.

I want workers to know what those tip amounts are.

The amendment removes the tip amount from upfront disclosure requirement for each offer.

And just doing a quick analysis, quick search here, I did confirm with Council Member Herbold and our chair has said, which is that New York now requires tips to be disclosed in full to workers.

So companies will already be required to do this in other jurisdictions.

I think many of the concerns that we've heard from the companies is, how do we apply different policies across different places across the country?

Well, they're already going to be doing it in New York now.

I think keeping the language in statute as the bill originally envisions is really important.

to make sure that we have full transparency for the workers doing this work.

Tip stealing is still a very common practice, not just in this industry, but across the board.

And I want to make sure that tips are truly and transparently being displayed to the workers so that they know what is owed to them.

There is examples very recently in 2019 of Instacart paying back workers after tip stealing was exposed, DoorDash settled charges, with the Attorney General of D.C.

over a very similar issue.

Amazon Flex recently settled with the FTC over yet another tip stealing practice.

So given that these practices are prevalent across industries, again, notably, but specific to this industry, as I just explained through those three examples, there is good reason to have healthy skepticism about the handling of tips if they are not truly disclosed in advance so that workers know exactly what they should be receiving.

I believe this is an important component of the flexibility that Councilmember Herbold noted, but also for the full transparency that we're shooting for in this legislation.

I'll be voting no on this.

Again, if there's interest in one true wage conversation in the future, I'll be very excited about that discussion as well.

Thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda.

Any comments on that?

I was just going to reiterate, I think that Councilmember Mosqueda mentioned that The April, sorry, in April that in New York City, it did go into effect that if known the tip needs to be disclosed to the worker.

In addition, their requirements are that prior to soliciting a gratuity from a consumer, the company has to disclose to the consumer the proportion or fixed amount of each gratuity that will be distributed to the delivery worker.

And it also requires that the companies disclose to delivery workers how much each consumer paid as a gratuity.

So it definitely does address some of the questions that you guys are discussing.

Thank you, Amy.

Any additional, Councilor Peterson.

Just to ask central staff to circulate the New York program so that we can see, because I understood they're doing some other things that we might be interested in or not doing things that, you know, so it's helpful to have that comparison with New York.

And just to clarify on this issue of the tips, if the customer tips the worker after the service is provided, that has to be disclosed to the worker, right?

Correct, Councilmember Peterson, that's part of the worker electronic receipt and the weekly earning statement as well.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

There are no further questions or comments about this amendment.

Will the clerk please wait?

I just wanted to respond to Councilmember Mosqueda's point that this does not facilitate I believe tip stealing, the workers will know what they receive by tips, just not provided up front, you know, for the for the for the single mom who's got a couple of kids who just needs a box of wipes right now.

And so that's what I'm that is the essence of what I'm saying.

It's I'm not putting this forward to to create the conditions so that the worker does not know.

and therefore cannot track their tips.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson for that clarification.

Appreciate that response to Council Member Roscada.

Any other points of debate?

Sure, I'll take you up on that.

I mean, there was nothing to clarify there.

I was stating facts for the industry in terms of the experience that workers have had with tip stealing.

I'm not saying that this amendment is any way trying to promote tip stealing, I'm saying that it's important that we keep the underlying language so that workers know exactly what the tips are, so that they know how much to receive and that they can measure their final paycheck with what they believe their tips should be with what they've received.

So that is the fact that this is what's already occurring in the industry and in other industries.

And we need to work collectively to make sure that there's greater transparency for workers, if tips are still going to be part of the known practice, especially in underpaid industries.

So look forward again to having a conversation about One True Wage.

And for folks who aren't familiar with that campaign, looking forward to talking more about that.

But this is really a matter of transparency so that workers get the tips that have been committed.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Not seeing any other comments or further debate.

Clerk, please call the roll on the amendments, please.

Council Member Mosqueda.

No.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Council or Vice Chair Lewis.

No.

Chair Herbold.

No.

Two in favor, three opposed.

Thank you.

Amendment 14 does not pass.

Just got a couple more here to go, folks.

Thanks for sticking with us.

Will central staff please describe amendment number 10?

Yes, Amendment 10 would add a definition for cancellation without cause and clarify that a receipt is due to an app-based worker within 72 hours of a cancellation, whether it's with or without cause.