Seattle City Council Public Safety & Human Services Committee 6/27/23

Thank you so much.

Good morning, and welcome to the June 27th meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee.

It is 9.33 a.m.

I'm Lisa Herbold, chair of the committee.

Committee will come to order.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Mosqueda?

Present.

Council Member Nelson?

Present.

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Vice Chair Lewis.

Present.

Chair Herbold.

Here.

Vice President.

Thank you so much.

On today's agenda, we are scheduled to hear three items.

The first item today will be an update from the executive team on the dual dispatch, the alternate 911 response that we've all been working on for quite some time.

I'm excited to hear that update.

We, secondly, will be hearing for discussion and possible vote, Council Bill 120580, which is an ordinance related to app-based worker labor standards, establishing labor standards on deactivation protections for app-based workers in Seattle.

We will only be hearing and voting on amendments today.

We have quite a few of them to get through.

And then, lastly, we'll be hearing a briefing on age-friendly Seattle, addressing social isolation, and promoting ageism.

We will now approve our agenda for today's committee meeting.

If there is no objection, today's committee agenda will be adopted.

Seeing and hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

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

I will moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

So far, we have nine people signed up in person to speak and 24 people signed up online.

And so let's see, I would like to, in order to accommodate all the folks signed up, there are no objections.

I would like to expand our 20 minute comment period to 35 minutes.

And in doing so, we will expand the amount of time on the agenda from 20 minutes to 35 minutes for public comment.

Is there any objection?

seeing and hearing no objection, public comment is expanded to 35 minutes from 20 minutes.

And each speaker will be given one minute to speak so we can accommodate as many folks as are signed up.

I will alternate between virtual and in-person public commenters.

I will call on each speaker by name and in the order which they are registered on the website and the in-person sign-in form.

If you've not registered to speak, but you'd like to do so, you can sign up before the end of the public comment session.

Once I call a speaker's name, if you're using the virtual option, you will hear a prompt.

Once you've heard that prompt, we need you to please press star six to unmute yourself.

We ask that everyone begin speaking by stating their name and the item which you are addressing on the agenda.

And speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

Once the speaker hears that chime, we ask that you please begin to wrap up your comments.

If speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's mic will be muted automatically 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 following this meeting, we ask that you do so via Seattle Channel or the listening options on the agenda.

Again, we've got 32, I think I said 33 before, but we have 32 people signed up for public comment, 23 virtual and nine in person.

So starting with the virtual public comment signup sheet, we'll start with Jenna White and Jenna will be followed by Howard Gale.

Jenna, if you're with us.

And I'm the Vice President and General Manager of Trust Safety and Operations at Rover, a proud Seattle-based company headquartered in District 7. I appreciate the opportunity today to share a comment about CB 120580, which Rover believes would create unjustifiable risks for our community, pets, and to public safety.

Rover's Trust and Safety team provides 24-7 support for all of our users, including assistance when problems arise.

People who provide pet care on Rover do so unmonitored, often within a pet parent's home and can have custody of the pets for days and weeks at a time.

They also develop direct ongoing relationships with pet parents that extend beyond a single service.

Rover takes seriously our role in protecting our users and has comprehensive measures in place to promote safety.

This includes deactivating accounts of pet sitters or pet parents when we believe their behavior creates risk.

These decisions are not lightly or by an algorithm.

Every investigation is 100% human led.

and involves input from all affected parties, as well as relevant documentation, such as veterinary records.

Given these risks, we respectfully ask that the committee protect and remove our model from this ordinance and enable platforms like ours to continue to protect the safety and reputation of their community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker will be Howard Gale.

Howard will be followed by Siobhan Gordon.

Good morning.

Howard Gale with seattlestop.org.

Two weeks ago, a group of us were at the Public Safety Committee meeting to comment in person and provide irrefutable documentation of the outrageous behavior by the Community Police Commission the week prior.

In May and June, public employees and commissioners of the CPC engaged in suppressing First Amendment rights and threatening police violence, knowing that one member of our group already experienced the worst police violence, the murder of a family member by the SPD.

Yet not a single council member has made a public statement or raised any questions at council meetings.

In the coming weeks, this committee is prepared to allow the CPC, remaining completely unaccountable and unaudited for over a decade, to rewrite the city rules that govern it and to pay the very co-chairs that have attacked and threatened community members a total of $54,000 a year to continue this abusive and unaccountable behavior.

You must demand an independent audit of the CPC along with a public hearing before making any changes to legislation or providing any increase in funding.

Again, there must be an independent audit of the CPC.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Siobhan Gordon, and Siobhan will be followed by Courtney Gillespie.

Siobhan Gordon, are you with us?

And I think you need to hit star six.

I see you're still on mute.

Siobhan Gordon.

Siobhan, if you can hear me, I do need you to hit star six so we can hear you.

There.

There you go.

Perfect.

Good.

Sorry.

Thank you.

First time doing this.

My name is Siobhan Gordon, and I live in District 7. And I just lost my thing here.

And I wanted to, I'm a pet service sitter on Rover, and I wanted to share today about CB12580.

I've worked hard to develop trusting relationships with my clients who allow me into their homes to care for their pets while they're away.

For many, I'm sure that this trusting new pet sitter comes with some natural and easiness for active steps that Rover has in place to promote safety, such as running background checks to ensure pet sitters do not have a record of animal abuse, for example, give them comfort when taking chance on new pet sitters like me.

I am alarmed that this proposal would put limits on some of the proactive steps that Rover would take, such as background checks, which would provide important assurances for pet parents and are a selling point for me.

It also seems irresponsible to require a platform like Rover to hand over detailed records to users who are removed from the platform, even though it's deactivated for Miss Tonda.

Handing over these user complaints would create an unnecessary risk of physical or online confrontation while also making users hesitant to report safety concerns.

CB12580 would hurt pet sitters by undermining the pet owner's trust in providers like me who work hard to create exceptional and safe experiences for our clients.

And I ask you to please shield these pet sitters and our clients.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is Courtney Gillespie.

And Courtney will be followed by Sam Bartlett.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Courtney Gillespie, and I'm the Director of Government Affairs at TaskRabbit.

I'm here today to share our perspective on the deactivations ordinance.

Before I begin, I want to thank the committee members for the stakeholder engagement to date on this bill and for the opportunity to provide comment today.

For background, TaskRabbit is a two-sided marketplace that connects people who need help with small tasks around the home to self-employed independent contractors or taskers who offer their services through our website and app.

These services include furniture assembly, wall mounting, home organization, and yard work.

While deactivations are rare, TaskRabbit and its users, perhaps uniquely, value the ability to remove a user from the platform in the interest of user safety.

The average duration of a task is two hours and can reach up to six hours, which means a tasker and a client interact for a significantly longer period of time than, for example, a food delivery driver and a client.

Further, taskers and clients communicate directly with each other through the app.

And this direct communication raises real concerns about the risk of online harassment.

So while we agree with the values and intent of the deactivations ordinance, we're concerned that CB12580 raises unique safety concerns for Marketplace Network companies.

We simply don't believe we belong in this bill.

However, if we are included, there are several amendments proposed today which address some, though not all of our concerns.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Sam Bartlett and Sam will be followed by Laura Curtis.

Good morning, my name is Sam Bartlett, I live in District 7 and I'll be speaking today about CB 120580. I use Rover to find pet sitters for my three pets and Lila and Ellie when I travel for work or just for traveling.

I am especially alarmed about this bill, because I think it puts limits on the use of background checks, which are very important for me when I'm trying to find pet sitters when I need them, especially on short-term notice.

For pet owners like me, we hire pet sitters for house-sitting services, because we like our pets to stay in our homes, and that means that someone, a stranger, is coming into the house and staying with them for extended periods of time, up to two weeks personally.

It's important for me that whoever has the ability to leverage comprehensive background checks to ensure that the people that we hired through their habit have do not have any relevant criminal history, like annual abuse.

Putting limits on these platforms could only lead to increased risk for pet owners, their families and their pets.

I really don't want to have to worry about additional danger from ordinances like this.

Please can you consider excluding pet platforms from your bill?

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is Laura Curtis and Laura will be followed by Gary Tyson.

Morning Councilmember Herbold and members of the committee.

My name is Laura Curtis and I'm on the government relations team for DoorDash speaking on item 120580. We take deactivation seriously and work to ensure any Dasher who is deactivated has an opportunity to appeal that decision.

Our full deactivation policy can be found on our website.

Though well-intentioned, we want to ensure this overly broad bill does not limit our ability to act quickly in rare instances of harmful behaviors, where an immediate deactivation is appropriate or necessary to protect merchants and customers.

We appreciate the council's work on the bill thus far, but request additional changes to capture all situations where immediate deactivation is warranted.

We also continue to have concerns about the bill's extensive disclosure requirements, which mandate all evidence, including reports from merchants, consumers or other workers be turned over to a deactivated worker.

Even if redacted, this is often enough to potentially spur unsafe escalations or retaliation.

Further, a party knowing that their report will eventually be shared with the subject will likely create a chilling effect and leave instances of misconduct unreported.

We hope to continue to work to help shape this policy to keep platforms like ours safe.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is Gary Tyson and Gary will be followed by Ashley Sutton.

Gary, can you please hit star six so we can hear you?

Perfect.

I'm Bishop Gary Tyson and I serve as the president of the General Baptist Convention Northwest.

Lead pastor also at the Goodwill Missionary Baptist Church, Seattle.

I work with local food banks and community programs that serve our most vulnerable residents.

There are a few things more important to me, my family, my community, than safety.

The legislation before you, while well-intentioned, doesn't allow for immediate action in some instances of aggressive behavior and could lead to retaliation by one bad actor.

This problem is rare, but must be taken seriously when a delivery worker demonstrates certain unsafe or threatening behavior including using racially charged and aggressive language.

The public deserves the peace of mind knowing they will be removed from the platform immediately.

This proposal would put a two-week delay on that action in some instances, where deactivation do occur, the requirement to share information about the specific complaint, a worker could result in retaliation.

Please set aside this legislation and continue to work on a policy that puts public safety first.

I beg you, please.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is Ashley Sutton.

And after Ashley, we'll hear from Rebecca Springer.

For the record, my name is Ashley Sutton, Executive Director of TechNet for Washington and Northwest.

Thank you for the opportunity to weigh in today.

Unfortunately, I'm testifying in opposition to CB120580, which would create significant privacy concerns for businesses and customers and should not advance in its current form.

Throughout the pandemic, app-based workers played a crucial role in supporting Seattle businesses by providing essential services and helping keep consumers safe.

App-based workers are rarely deactivated, but when they are, businesses must retain the ability to act quickly to address safety concerns.

We believe this proposal would jeopardize the safety and privacy of businesses and consumers across the city while creating a separate set of standards for gig workers compared to Seattle's app employees.

We strongly encourage the council to implement policies that align with Seattle's values of equity by treating all industries fairly and prioritizing the safety of consumers and businesses.

We urge you to reject this proposal.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is Rebecca Springer.

And after Rebecca, we will move in over to in-person public comment and hear a few of those speakers.

Rebecca.

Rebecca, we need you to hit star six if you can hear me.

There you go, thank you.

Thank you so much.

My name is Rebecca Springer and I'm the Director of Risk Trust and Payments at TaskRabbit.

As Courtney Gillespie mentioned a few minutes ago, we are a two-sided marketplace that connects people who need help with small tasks around the home to self-employed independent contractors or taskers as we like to call them.

Most tasks facilitated through this platform occur in residential homes and last for an average of two hours.

This extended duration increases the risk of potential conflict and harassment between users.

And as most services are provided in a home among personal belongings for our clients, the risk of damage or theft is higher than, for example, food delivery drop off.

Given the duration and inside of home nature of these services, trust and safety is paramount.

TaskRabbit rarely removes users, meaning both clients and taskers from the platform and does so only in the case of a violation of our terms of service.

Our trust and support team investigates every potential violation and makes decisions regarding deactivations.

Users are able to provide information throughout the process and appeal decisions.

We support the value and intent of the deactivations ordinance.

However, we are concerned that several of the requirements pose safety risks for our clients and taskers, and we hope the committee will consider removing network companies like ours from this bill.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Now moving over to hear some folks from the in-person public comment.

We'll hear first from Maelstrom Pullman, and Maelstrom will be followed by Maria Trinh.

And with Maria, I'm sorry, Maria Trinh Hernandez, and we will have an interpreter with Maria, and that is Hannah Sobio Howell.

But first, Maelstrom.

Thank you, Nelson prose mails from Pullman here I am going reference six a six c 67 a, and these parts were taking out, suggesting unbiased and neutral view effects collected proportionate penalty and listing the specific incentive file.

Deactivation exists.

These protections are necessary to protect our economy.

There's already widespread abuse of no faulty activations.

I have personal experience with how shady these companies can be.

Last week, DoorDash sent me an email telling us that the completion rate goes from 80 to 90 percent.

All cancellations are held against us.

This can affect our small businesses and our ability to participate in the economy.

Gig workers are not employees.

I'm requesting this committee consider the many short and long-term benefits we receive when you protect all of these workers by allowing these amendments to not go through and that will benefit workers and everyone in Seattle.

Thank you so much.

Our next speakers are Maria Trim Hernandez and Hannah Sabio-Hall, and we will allow an extra minute of time to accommodate interpretation services.

Thank you.

que no hemos sido claros o lo suficientemente convincentes sobre nuestro trabajo como se desarrolla y los inconvenientes a los que nos enfrentamos día con día.

Deberíamos estar incluidos todos los gig workers como estamos todos sancionados de igual manera.

También necesitamos que se incluya violaciones criminales y no solo los que no son criminales.

Porque no es lo mismo ser desactivado por un ticket de velocidad que por golpear a un cliente o dañar la propiedad del cliente.

¿Qué pasará si me desactivan por un ticket?

En mi familia no soy la única persona que usa mi auto.

Si alguien más recibe un ticket y el auto está a mi nombre, también esto contará para mi desactivación.

También como Geek Workers necesitamos información específica para saber qué geek se hace referencia a la noticia de desactivación.

Cuando yo estaba desactivada por DoorDash, no recibí los detalles que necesitaba para saber qué pasó y cómo podía resolver la situación.

Si esta política va a mantener la intención de tener un proceso de desafío, necesitamos estos detalles.

No necesitamos que estas nuevas enmiendas sean más en línea con la intención de la política y que no nos laceren a los trabajadores.

Gracias por votar para avanzar estas protecciones muy necesarias.

Gracias.

Good morning, everyone listening.

Thank you to Seattle City Council for this valuable time for us gig workers.

But reading the new amendments that have been released in recent weeks makes me sad and concerned that we have not been clear or convincing enough about our work, how it is carried out and the problems we face every day.

We need to include all gig workers in these protections as we are all penalized by the apps in the same way.

Also, we need criminal violations included and not non-criminal because it is not the same to get deactivated for a speeding ticket as it is for hitting a customer or damaging customer property.

What will happen if I get deactivated for a ticket?

In my family, I am not the only person who uses my car.

If someone else receives a ticket and the car is in my name, will this also count for my deactivation?

Also, as gig workers, we need specific information to know what gig is being referenced in the notice of deactivation.

When I was deactivated from DoorDash, I did not receive the details I needed to know what happened or how to resolve the situation.

If this policy is going to maintain the intention of having a challenge process, we need these details.

We need these new amendments to be clearer and not to hurt the workers.

Thank you for voting to advance these much needed protections.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is Carmen Figueroa, followed by Kimberly Wolf.

Hello, I am Carmen Figueroa and I am a volunteer working with Working Washington.

Working Washington spoke to gig workers from all industries to ascertain their needs.

They then used this information to propose to the council policies that prevent gig workers from being exploited.

These proposals were then discussed and debated at stakeholder meetings.

All stakeholders negotiated for their organizations and compromised agreements were made.

Most of the interested parties worked in good faith.

That's why I'm so very disappointed that this council has allowed some stakeholders to sidestep the stakeholder process, instead going straight to council members, offering amendments for items that have already been debated, negotiated, and agreed upon.

The amendments amend the bill or the ordinance into nothing, undoing hard-fought negotiated compromises and making a mockery of the stakeholder process.

Please continue to work with us in good faith and do not allow backdoor amendments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Kimberly Wolf and Kimberly will be followed by Lynn Reed.

Kimberly Wolfe, Kimberly Wolfe, gig worker.

Let me be clear that I do not support any of these amendments, but there's a couple I could live with.

I'll speak to a few well-meaning amendments, but the rest aren't worth the energy to rebut.

They either attempt to gut the spirit of the legislation or contradict themselves, or are the kind of political swill strongly influenced by exploiters of labor.

The amendments we're discussing are 1A, not needed, but no harm, it's fine.

2C, just not needed.

The law is written as both fair and robust in defining and subsequently dealing with egregious behavior.

2A, overall okay, but the word harassment should be changed to intentional harassment so as not to unduly deactivate a worker if it's nothing more than a communication difficulty or understanding, which is hardly egregious.

Amendment three, good intentions, but problematic.

I can't support it with the wording.

It's appropriate for criminal moving violations, but talking about non-criminal enlisting an extremely minimum number, if that's just a typo and it's corrected from non-criminal to criminal, then it's okay.

Otherwise it could potentially harm an innocent gig worker.

The rest of these are just hogwash and I had urged you all to be wise enough to vote no on them.

Thank you so much we'll move on to Lynn read as another person in who is present in chamber today and then we'll move back over to the online presenters speakers.

Good morning, Council.

Thank you for hearing us today.

Council Members Herbold and Lewis, thank you for supporting App-Based Workers' Rights proposing this Ordinance on Deactivations.

DriveForward urges the adoption of Amendment 3 as it provides clarity around deactivations for failed motor vehicle records checks and will assure App-Based Workers have full transparency.

While we would prefer all app-based workers to be covered as most of the amendments do that, we appreciate the unique needs of Marketplace Network companies like Rover and TaskRabbit.

DriveForward is ready to help craft separate legislation to cover these workers.

If Amendment 3 is adopted, DriveForward will stand in full support of this legislation.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Moving back to online testifiers, we've got Amanda Woolley, and Amanda will be followed by Jake Landry.

Hi, my name is Amanda Woolley, and I live in West Seattle.

I'm here to talk about the deactivation ordinance.

I use Rover to find pet sitters for my dogs, Gigi and Gus, whenever I am away.

As a single woman, safety is always top of mind for me.

I've used Rover for many years because I value the proactive measures the company takes to promote safe experiences.

I believe the committee may be failing to understand the second and third order safety implications of this bill on pet owners.

As drafted, if a pet sitter engaged in verbal harassment of me, this would not qualify as agarius misconduct and would require platforms to enable the user to maintain access to the platform and offer services to others for under two weeks after they were deactivated.

This alone seems outrageous.

This bill was clearly not designed for in-home services like pet care and put pet owners in an excusable risk.

I urge the committee to protect pet owners and their pets from this bill.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Jake Laundrie and Jake will be followed by Jason Renick.

Hello, my name is Jake laundry.

I've been a gig worker driver for many years, been testifying in front of council for many years in support of fair share stuff with the teamsters.

And I'm now here in support of this deactivation law, but joined my other, um, colleagues in saying that this bill is overdue.

We do not, um, support these amendments, which are just meant to delay and play into the corporation's really regressive demands on labor status.

Don't give also inches, these apps and council members and a class warfare tactics of demonizing a few bad egg workers in favor of more draconian, racist, and sexist workplace activated unfairly and without speedy or just recourse every day, hundreds of them.

I've tried to help them get back online.

It's a horrible process deepening and.

By just delaying this, it's going to deepen the franchise of our society's working class that is enabled by these apps and 99 backwards algorithms.

Don't further prop up the marketplace apps here.

Deny all these and listen to Herbold and Lewis's amendments as well.

Those need to be edited and forget Nelson's and all the other Peterson's.

Those are just absolutely corporate trash.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Jason Renick.

Thank you for taking the time to hear us this morning.

My name is Jason Renick.

I live in West Seattle, and I've been a full-time Instacart shopper for over three years.

I am highly opposed to this 14-day period after someone is deactivated.

Just take into consideration for a moment if a customer is buying extra items for themselves at the customer's expense.

That is something that they should be deactivated from immediately because that harms me as a worker as it deteriorates customer trust.

or if a shopper fails to return alcohol in a timely manner, violating state law, they should not be allowed to continue shopping and doing harm and taking advantage of the system.

I am 100% in favor of a better appeals process if someone is deactivated.

And I don't believe that someone should be deactivated for simply a non-criminal moving violation.

I just want to remind you again that in Washington, employers and employees, an employee can show up to work with an actual contract of employment and be sent home that day, escorted from the building.

We have no agreement.

We choose to work on this app.

We're gig workers.

We're not employees.

We're not independent contractors.

We're gig workers.

Please keep that in mind and please rethink this bill.

Thank you.

Thank you, our next speaker is Charmaine Rodriguez and Charmaine Rodriguez will be followed by Catherine Holm.

Hello, my name is Charmaine Rodriguez and I'm sharing a comment on CB120580.

I live in North Seattle and have been using Rover to offer pet care services since 2018. I find the record sharing requirement in the bill to be baffling and very poorly considered.

Providing pet care services often allows sitters access to pet owner schedules, their addresses, and how to gain entrance into their private homes.

If the activated sitters are given detailed reports of misconduct made about them as this bill requires, the person could move to confront the person who reported them.

How can this committee justify putting pet owners, their families, and their neighbors in that position?

As a pet sitter, this is not the type of protection I want, nor will it benefit my business.

I ask that you please protect pet sitters and clients from this proposal.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is Catherine Holm, and Catherine will be followed by Christopher Wilfong.

Good morning, Chair.

Chair Herbold and members of the committee.

My name is Catherine Holm and I am the Western Region Deputy Government Affairs Manager for Instacart.

We are here today to reiterate our concerns with the deactivation proposal.

And while we appreciate the opportunity to be part of the stakeholder process and meetings on the topic, we cannot support the current draft.

For Instacart, the safety of the shopper, customer and retailer is paramount.

Under the ordinance, Suspensions and deactivations are assumed to be the same, but they are not.

Deactivations and suspensions are different actions serving different purposes.

As such, we request a definition that differentiates between them and recognizes their different roles.

Moreover, that this ordinance requires notice before deactivation is dangerous for families across the city.

This unnecessary and lengthy notice period could undermine our ability to quickly remove bad actors.

We remain committed to being a trusted partner in Seattle Forest Shoppers, customers, and retail partners.

Thank you.

much.

Our next speaker, Christopher Wolfong, is showing as not present.

So we'll move down to our next online speaker showing as present, and that is Tammy Hetrick.

And Tammy will be followed by Lisa Foster.

Tammy Hetrick, please.

Sorry I'm having some phone issues here.

We can hear you.

OK.

My name is Tammy Hedrick.

I'm the president and CEO for the Washington Food Industry Association here in opposition to the DEVAC activation bill.

I did provide testimony last week mainly just addressing our concerns with not being able to deactivate a worker who comes into our store that is showing signs of violence and risk to our customers.

And we would like to be able to continue to have the ability to stop that before it occurs.

I will keep this short and just ask that if you have any questions, you please reach out to me, but please do not restrict our ability to protect our customers.

Many times those deliveries are to vulnerable adults who cannot make it to the store.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Lisa Foster and Lisa will be followed by James Thomas.

Hi, my name is Lisa Foster.

I live in District 1 and I'm a pet owner that uses Rover.

I am sharing a comment today because I am alarmed about how CB120580 would impact pet owners in Seattle.

As drafted, I believe this bill would undercut the ability of platforms to protect their users even when misconduct occurs.

In particular, the narrow definition of egregious misconduct means that only pet sitters who harm the physical safety of customers would be subject to immediate deactivation.

What about those who physically harm pets or those whose actions cause emotional harm, such as through aggressive or threatening messages or stalking?

I would imagine that if a city Seattle City Council staff member reported such behavior by another employee, the city would not wait 14 days to take action.

So why would you impose these inadequate protections for pet owners?

I ask that you please protect pet owners from this bill.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is James Thomas.

And James will be followed by Talisha Herald.

James, can you please hit star six?

Perfect.

James Thomas, supporting deactivation protections for gig workers.

I've done Uber Eats, Postmates, and DoorDash.

I was a five-star platinum level driver with over 9,000 trips, rated in the top 1% of drivers worldwide.

I was still deactivated multiple times throughout any investigation, The same thing happens every day to delivery drivers and gig workers, other gig workers.

I was able to rectify a couple of situations that included a cyclist who said they were a customer, but they were never in my car.

When a couple I picked up at the ferry dock in Mucklefield asked me to wait while they bail on a friend at the company lockup in Everett, I said, no, no need, order another Uber.

Because of fabricated stories by them and no investigations, I was deactivated again.

These types of customer complaints are often unreliable sources of information in all types of gig work, leading me to challenge them.

I was penalized and deactivated in 2019 while working for Uber Eats for a final time.

While you are considering definitions of egregious misconduct, it is only fair and anti-systemic to allow folks who have been incarcerated to show that they are on the path to rehabilitation and would like to earn an honest living while working in the gig industry.

don't make people who are honestly trying become another statistic or part of the incorrigible individuals that add more muck and mire to our once construction crazed capital of the world.

As the city council votes to continue to encourage incorrigible individuals that piss all over Seattle, how can you not defend and protect those

Thank you so much.

If you have additional comments, you can please consider sending them into council members.

Our next speaker showing present online is Talisha Herald.

Talisha will be followed by Valerie Schleret.

Hello.

Hi, can you hear me?

We can, thank you.

Hi, this is Kalisha Harold and I am an Instacart shopper.

We are independent contractors, as you know, and we have very little rights and the app is able to treat us as expendable.

They have no accountability.

I urge you to vote yes for unfair deactivation protection.

And I emphasize unfair, and I really believe, you know, the difference.

Please continue to protect our community from the unsafe individuals on the app.

Of course, nobody's asking for that not to happen.

and also hold the apps accountable for clearly defining and publishing the deactivation policies.

If the people of Seattle want these services to continue we app workers need just as much protection from unfair deactivation.

We need an adequate appeals process that's handled in a timely manner because the quality workers are leaving these apps and Seattle will will be left with the inexperienced and potentially unsafe.

Honestly, the whole vibe just reads as very little care for workers, which is a symptom of such a bigger issue.

We need protection now.

The working class needs protection now.

Please vote yes to support and protect the valuable workers on these apps.

Yes, remove bad actors, and vote to provide protection to the humans that daily bring quality service.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Valerie Chourette, and Valerie will be followed by Justin Heyer.

Good morning.

At the last meeting of this committee, you received public comment from five people, including me, describing how we were slandered and threatened by co-chairs of the Community Police Commission for non-violently exercising our right to free speech.

You were each given a letter with links to videos showing our non-violent silent protest at a CPC meeting and attempt at reasonable dialogue after the meeting with CPC staff and its executive.

Those videos at tinyurl.com CPC abuse make it clear that statements by CPC co-chairs about that protest and about us are lies.

Lies that were carefully scripted to justify their threat of calling the police.

The CPC is abusing its position, office and $1 million budget.

Abuse should not be enabled by inaction.

instigate an independent audit of the CPC, vote against its request to alter the legislation, and definitely vote against paying CPC co-chairs increased monthly stipends for chilling free speech.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Justin Heyer and Justin will be followed by Mary Johnson.

Good morning, my name is Justin higher and I'm the director of government affairs for ships.

Thank you for providing me with time to address some concerns regarding CB 1205 80. For a brief overview of our platform, we are a retail tech company that connects consumers to delivery.

At Shift, we value the effort shoppers using our platform put into establishing connections with both customers and retailers.

While we're committed to providing access to work opportunities for those utilizing our platform, we must always prioritize both safety and security.

Customers put an incredible amount of trust in shoppers to deliver personal items like groceries, home goods, and more to their homes and places of business.

It is paramount that experiences on the platform don't risk the safety of our other users, including customers and the retail partners we work with.

At Shipt, our relationship with shoppers are taken very seriously.

Deactivating any account is a course of last resort.

This process includes an internal review by our team, as it is not a decision we take lightly.

The proposed policy before you today may have good intentions, but it may also limit the availability of platforms to ensure the services customers receive meet the highest standards of safety and quality.

I appreciate your time.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

Mary Johnson is showing is not present, so we'll move on to Barbara Finney.

And after Barbara Finney, we'll move on to the last four people in person, which we'll start with James Lockhart.

Barbara?

Hi, I'm Barbara Finney, a retired RN member of Puget Sound Alliance for Retiree Action, PSARA, and a delegate to the MLK Labor Council for AFGE 3197, speaking in a personal capacity.

Regarding age-friendly Seattle, real public safety for residents over 65 and frankly all people in need would be budgeting for publicly operated 24-hour open and staffed cooling shelters throughout the city adequate to hold all people needing to get out of the heat just to survive during an event like the Heat Dome of 2021. On another note, an independent audit of the Community Police Commission is way overdue.

CPC co-chairs threatened to call SPD on some attendees of the CPC meeting two weeks ago.

Attendees using their voices to call for justice for families and victims of police violence.

Such behavior from CPC is unacceptable and shows the CPC's perverse dysfunction.

An independent audit of CPC is overdue.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

Our next speaker moving back to in-person public comment is James Lockhart followed by Kay Knoth.

Good morning.

Thank you for this opportunity.

My name is James Lockhart.

I'm with Drive Forward.

I'm the chair.

I have over 23,000 trips, been doing this for six and a half years.

And I enjoy doing it because I don't follow rules too well.

So companies don't hire me anymore.

Just kidding.

But anyhow, what I want to know is this deactivation is important that everyone knows why they're being deactivated and you know the swifter.

way to resolve the issue is what we're looking for.

We at Drive Forward support the amendment of number three.

We're hoping that, you know, you step out of the batter's box for a minute and revisit this, because for me, it seems like this is moving too fast and we're not getting all the ducks in a row as far as dotting our i's and crossing our t's.

Thank you.

And just to clarify, we're not voting the bill out of committee today.

We're only voting on amendments.

Our next speaker is Gray Knoth, followed by Joelle Craft.

Kay?

Is there a Kay?

I'm sorry, did I say Jay?

Kay, please.

Thank you so much.

My name is Kay net.

I'm the lead director of government affairs at Rover, I appreciate the committee's work on this bill and the opportunity to provide public comment today on CB 120580. Rover is a Seattle-headquartered company in District 7, where I also live.

We provide a website and app for pet lovers to offer or find neighborhood pet care, such as PetSitting.

As a marketplace network company whose platform must, by definition under the law, foster a variety of independent services, as well as extensive one-on-one communication between users, and as a company that cares about pets and supports pet care, Rover has unique safety responsibilities when serving pets, as well as the community of people who use our website and app.

Rover must promote safety for all users, many of whom are meeting each other for the first time online and inviting each other and pets into their homes.

We share the concerns of others you've heard today that this bill will unintentionally interfere with Rovers ability to stop individuals from using our platform, even if they have harmed or neglected a pet or someone in person or online or otherwise engaged in unsafe or harmful conduct.

We know this isn't the intent of this legislation.

We appreciate the stakeholder process and we at Rover share the values that

Thanks so much.

Our next speaker is Joelle Craft.

And Joelle will be followed by Terry Harstead.

Good morning, council.

My name is Joelle Craft.

I have been a rover, actually, pet sitter for many, many years.

I've been pet sitting and on the farm.

That's me accidentally signing up again on the farm since I was a little kid.

The problem that I have with all of these amendments is that there aren't safety protections for me.

A Rover client can go onto the site, put an email address, and then hire me and get contact information and get stuff on me.

I do not get any safeties.

I've got my background check.

Rover went through all this stuff, goes through everything and has all that, but they do nothing to background the clients.

I've had hundreds and hundreds of clients over the years, and only one of them agreed to meet me in public.

One, because all the rest were like, well, you're coming into my home anyways.

So this bill, although they said they wanted the safe practices for the clients, they only are asking about this now that we're asking for safety.

They didn't come up with this earlier.

They didn't come up with this last year.

So thank you so much for your time.

And please vote these amendments out.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker and our last person signed up for in-person public comment is Terry Harstad.

Sorry, I'm short.

First of all, I'd like to thank the Seattle City Council for this opportunity.

It's a pleasure to meet you in person instead of over Zoom like I normally am.

The first thing I'm gonna say is some of us are not paid to be here.

The gig economy and contractors that you are hearing from today want fair, responsible, and reasonable deactivations.

We are not asking for keeping our job if we have a DUI or keeping our job if we do something wrong.

We are asking for reasonable oversight.

regarding these because we have too many case examples of research not being done by these companies over and over again.

These companies have not provided us with transparency.

And therefore we need your assistance in passing this ordinance.

And if Jesus Christ can make Seattle under protest, the city council can vote for this.

Thank you so much.

That is our last public speaker to testify that is showing in the room as well as that is showing as present online.

Thank you everyone for joining us today to speak to the items on today's agenda.

Moving on, closing public comment and moving on to agenda item one.

Will the clerk please read in agenda item number one.

Agenda item one is update on dual dispatch.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much.

Really excited about this next presentation.

As our speakers are joining us at the table, I just want to say a couple of very quick words.

As I think many people know, in the adopted budgets for each 2021, 2022, and 2023, the Council has approved funding to support different elements to set up a pilot a pilot for an alternate response program, which would deploy behavioral health experts with police officer situational awareness and co-response as required to respond to calls with a behavioral health nexus.

This has been the project that has been in the works for several years now, beginning in the very early forms as conversations in response to the 2020 civil rights uprisings.

Most recently in February, the community safety and communication center shared with us technical updates towards this work as they implemented council funding for new 911 protocol softwares that are necessary.

to set up the alternate response program.

Today we've got representatives from each, the mayor's office, the CSCC, and folks to join us to give what is promised to be a very comprehensive update on the work towards launching this pilot program later this year.

I will turn it to our presenters to introduce themselves and begin their presentation.

Council members, I've reached out to each one of you to assure you that Council Central staff will be available to take any questions that you may have to be answered after this meeting.

In the interest of time, we're just wanting to really hear primarily for the executive in the session.

Thank you.

Thank you so much chair, her bold, we are grateful to be here today.

And this is an opportunity for us to daylight for both Council and the public, the work that's been done to date.

My name is when she heard on the senior deputy mayor, and I am here.

to introduce to all of you, you may have met on the background, but really introduce to the public our director, Reba Gonzalez, who is overseeing CSCC right now, and our deputy director, Amy Smith, who is overseeing our third department launch, both of whom I have a tremendous amount of trust and respect for.

They have been doing just an outstanding job since starting this work, and have really moved this work forward at such a great clip.

We are excited for the launch later this year, and I'm going to turn it over to Amy to be able to begin our presentation.

Thank you.

Good morning.

I'm really happy to be here with you.

I'm Amy Smith, Deputy Director.

I'm focused on alternative response and also community relations and external affairs.

I am a native Washingtonian.

I have lived and worked and studied in a lot of different places, which has only further convinced me that Seattle is the best.

Today, I'm going to take a few minutes to share the work that's happened, the work that is going on right now and what we can look forward to this fall.

And then I'll be happy to engage any conversation, answer any questions I can.

Before I proceed further, I want to acknowledge with some reverence the work of folks in this meeting, of people in this room to advance a healthier, a safer community.

Especially want to acknowledge city council and central staff, this mayor's office, departments across the city and across King County.

I am an academic, so I feel really lucky to partner with experts at Seattle University, experts at the University of Washington, Council Members Herbold and Lewis, I acknowledge your leadership and I thank you.

And finally, I want to extend really deep gratitude to Seattle Police Department, to Seattle Fire Department and EMS, and to my teammates at 911 Dispatch.

The work of first response is relentless.

I could speak for hours about the heroics I have already observed in the field.

I'm going to launch into really hasty updates about operations and communications and evaluations, but I want to anchor us in the reality that this work is so difficult that these professionals choose to spend their days in the space of perpetual crisis and pain.

And it is our job to show up for the community, but it is also our job to make things easier for these first responders.

I am really consumed by the potential that we have to provide a better system of support and structural change to benefit these people who are showing up every day.

So this is referencing the 2022 term sheet.

Our team is working to make sure that the objectives and the intentions here are realized.

I believe that you acknowledge through this work and the past that we must really improve cultural responsiveness.

that we need to understand as a society, we simply do not have enough workers.

We don't have enough first responders.

We don't have enough social workers.

We don't have enough mental health professionals.

I have colleagues nationally who are working on those structural changes.

But in the meantime, we need to be as coordinated as we can in our efforts.

We need to reduce duplication.

We want to leverage technology.

We need to share resources.

We must work together.

The language that's here, this priority three and priority four calls, this refers to non-criminal, non-health emergency call types.

And these are the kinds that we continue to struggle to respond to, especially during the very busy times.

The way that I conceptualize this new team of behavioral health responders is that our first responders are currently positioned and resourced to respond on an acuity continuum.

So you can see police already have a fantastic crisis response team, where a highly skilled, highly trained officer and a highly skilled, highly trained mental health professional respond together during a call that requires both disciplines.

On the other end of the acuity spectrum, we have Seattle Fire with HealthONE, they can respond to co-occurring physical and behavioral health crisis.

But the 911 data locally and nationally shows that crisis is more like a bell curve.

The majority of calls fall in the middle, low acuity and what we might not consider emergency.

Many have a mental or behavioral health aspect.

And so it's in this middle space, the low acuity space where we need to really develop and to evaluate and continue to iterate.

There are currently about 75 active pilots in this country.

The vast majority are in very nascent stages.

They have been developed since 2020 and we are part of a national growing community of practice folks trying to figure out how best to respond to identify leading indicators of what might be working and under what circumstances.

And so now out of the macro and into the minutiae, I take you.

I'm very happy to report that virtually all the capital investment and equipment needed to stand up this program is in hand already or is about to be.

On the staffing front, we're in the final round of interviews for a communications officer.

Do you mind going back and going through a couple of those?

We're pressed for time, but this is a level of detail towards implementation that's really important.

Great.

If you're interested in this level of detail, I will share it with you.

Yeah.

So a lot of the equipment has been secured just through partnership with other city departments.

It really is an expansion of services.

We're not inventing something new.

We're expanding the range of service we currently have.

So that middle section, the equipment, that is all in hand.

The Municipal Tower Suite 500 has been identified for a workspace for the six mental health professionals.

Dispatch will still happen on the floor in 911. And then we have one Port Explorer, which has been repurposed and is procured, and there are two other in process.

In reality, our teams will have three teams of two.

Two will be working at one time.

Staffing is well underway.

I exist.

We have a new executive assistant.

We are hiring a communication professional.

I've been describing that role as at least half educator.

It's really important that we frame up for the public what we're trying to do, what their role is in supporting it.

And from a 911 lens, simply who to call, especially as 988 comes online.

We anticipate hiring six behavioral health responders and a clinical supervisor.

Those positions are drafted.

They're going through the city approval process.

It's my anticipation that we have really great candidates already working for the city who will have interest in joining this team.

And we're working to compare and coordinate language across the three public safety departments.

This is sort of simple and logical, but it's going to make a critical difference.

It's interesting the variance in language across different teams responding to crisis.

My operations teammates have been hard at work articulating protocols.

They're functionally thinking through common scenarios.

We have learned a lot from other alternative response programs, especially Albuquerque, Denver, Durham.

Just about every conversation I have features the question, what do you wish you had known when you started?

or what did you get wrong and invariably people have a list for us and I know that regardless we will have our own list.

We will understand things incorrectly or we will guess wrong and we will be ready to share everything that we're learning with the public and with our colleagues in the field.

In the 911 dispatch center, we are updating call takers and dispatchers on progress at weekly roll call meetings.

I've developed a little strategy where I just talk about this incessantly in the halls and in the break room and people can't really avoid the conversation.

So I really believe in co-creating this response and I espouse the principles of improvement science that say folks on the front lines are the ones who probably understand the problem best and can recommend the best solutions.

New protocols are being created in CAD, in computer-aided dispatch, and I'm challenging the team to identify subsets of the identified call types.

So you had identified welfare check and person down.

Those are really broad.

And we want to be able to test the efficacy of our approach.

And as you might know, or you might guess, in research, you really want to be able to compare like with like.

You want only a few variables because if over the first 90 days every scenario is dramatically different, it will be hard to ascertain what is working.

So as you've gathered, evaluation is very important to me.

Continual improvement is a high priority.

We are working to identify which measures will really be the most meaningful.

I tend to be a critic of common metrics, not because they're wrong, but because I perceive them to be incomplete.

So for example, we can track response time, but we need to understand if it was the best response.

We will look not just at efficiency, but we really want to look at effectiveness.

Was this the best first response?

Was a person connected to the care that they need?

I was just sharing with a colleague yesterday, I get very excited anytime I can make a strong economic case for an initiative and a strong ethical case as well.

So we are positioned to really use scarce resources and a more effective and strategic way we are positioned to drive and advance equity through community-driven design principles.

In visiting different municipalities, I've observed that some of these programs are branded so beautifully.

They're positioned well, there's logos, and yet folks in the community do not know about the programs.

My career has taught me again and again that often the people who need the resources the most do not know about them.

And I know that true learning requires practice and engagement.

It requires a two-way conversation and an ongoing dialogue.

You will see that dialogue priority reflected in what's next.

This fall, we are absolutely on track to stand up this program.

We are experiencing excellent support and a lot of momentum.

I am comfortable with multiple trains running at the same time.

It would be really lovely to just continue to research and sort of ideate over a couple years to develop nice press kit and logo and talking points and engage in a lateral change strategy.

But we don't have the luxury.

People are really suffering.

And we know enough to help right now.

So as quickly as we can responsibly get more folks in the field in response, we absolutely will.

I again applaud your commitment to this effort.

I love working alongside you in it and very happy now to take any questions you might have.

Senior Deputy Mayor Harrell or Director Gonzalez, any additions?

to that wonderful presentation.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold and other members here.

I just can't emphasize enough how important this program is.

And we recognize that we have a very unique situation in Seattle in that this third public safety department that we're standing up is associated or affiliated with the 911 call center.

And so that has been a hurdle in other cities in terms of the coordination and in terms of the confidence building on the types of responses that these programs end up responding to.

And also I appreciate that we're being very pragmatic in our process.

And sure we see the light at the end of the tunnel and we have vision a year out, two years out, but we also learn from other departments, other programs that being pragmatic is better for everyone because of the co-response opportunity that we have and our partnerships.

And so we're, we're, we're taking that very seriously.

But again, thank you for your support.

And I just, I'd like to add that we recognize that Seattle has a unique set of circumstances that this is a conversation happening across the country, and that there are many different jurisdictions that have different relationships.

We learned a lot from our most recent trip to Albuquerque.

We were not only visiting with their community safety department, which is what they call it there, ACS, Albuquerque Community Safety, but we learned about their partnership in working with other departments.

We brought a pretty broad group to be able to understand the relationship.

between their police department, their fire department, their other services, their budget office, and this new department.

And so we feel really well prepared to be able to integrate this department seamlessly and these new functions seamlessly into the rest of what we're doing.

The one thing that I think Amy touched on that I just want to highlight a little bit, which is having this great service and this great feature, we're not going to be able to service the entire city at the same time, right?

This is not going to start out a 24-7 service with coverage for all 84 square miles of the city.

But what we have learned is that even as Albuquerque, for example's program has grown, that still the city, most of the city doesn't know it exists.

So the importance is how to get the program out to the people who need it first.

And most importantly, they're some of their best partners key partners are truly those from law enforcement, because their officers will get to a scene where they may recognize they don't have the time or bandwidth to truly handle a situation.

through to its end, and it's not a criminal scene, and it's not an acute medical scene, and that their ACS team is actually the best to respond.

So they get a lot of referrals from their police officers.

They get a lot of referrals actually from those who are responding, who have calls stacked up in other areas that they need to meet, and who it is helping to train their 911 response to say, actually, this should have never been a police call, this should have never been a fire call, this should have gone here to start, should have gone to ACS to start.

And so we're learning some of those lessons now.

And I think it's really important for the ecosystem to realize that this is a hole that's been missing.

And this will help to free up resources for those calls that are criminal in nature, or medical with acute high need.

What we have seen from the ride-alongs, what we have seen from talking to other departments is truly what the potential is to expand city services to meet the needs of those people before they become that 911 call that requires police and fire because it's grown to that.

It's a situation that has grown to Now the need of it could have been handled at a lower level early.

And now we are responding to an emergency.

So this really is a strong preventative measure from situations that could get worse if we didn't have this in place.

And I'm truly grateful to council for your continued support and allowing us to develop this in a way that is both strong for the city, but also sustainable and really ensuring that we have a sustainable system that will live past live past many of our tenures.

So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Just want to say in closing, I want to recognize Anne Gorman from Council Central staff is here with us.

If council members have questions that she can follow up on after this meeting, we'll facilitate those questions getting to her.

I want to recognize that Sarah Smith is in the office, is in the audience as well.

She's been a great partner on the executive side and Sonny Nguyen in my office thanking them for their diligence in helping us work together to move this forward.

And finally, Senior Deputy Mayor Harrell, I know you'll be leaving us in the fall, but I really hope that you'll be staying on at least through the final stages of launch and really I'm so appreciative of your guidance and your tenacity, and you're helping us together steer the ship towards this shared outcome.

Really encouraged by today's presentation, as well as appreciate the work group meetings that we've been participating in, in between public presentations.

And just want to recognize the fact that we all know that there is a lot of triaging that's been going on within the police department.

Chief Diaz has in past years moved officers to meet the need.

Everything from moving officers from special units to priority 1911 response in 2021. or more recently, moving officers from special units to address increases in homicide today with the new task force that's been formed.

We know that SPD has also moved more calls to online and telephone reporting.

We may also be considering using other civilian staff to conduct limited case reporting, all of this to free up officers for higher priorities.

But there's only so much triage that can be done.

We have seen the unintended consequences of triage, such as, for instance, when the move of officers and specialty units to 911 response resulted in a shortage.

in the sexual assault unit.

We all know that we need a more robust alternative to SPD response now.

And just again, really appreciate that the mayor's office and CSCC are moving forward to implement our shared goals for an alternate response program.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

All right.

Council Member Lewis.

Yeah, thank you so much.

This is a really great presentation today I'm very excited to be getting this report that we are really close and on the cusp of really a legacy.

directing update unprecedented in what we're going to do to really revamp our public safety system.

You know, a contribution that has a really significant potential to provide a lot of essential help and assistance to people on the streets right now who all of us know need to have some assistance from the city, but we aren't necessarily in a position to be able to provide that.

And I really just want to profoundly thank the entire executive team who's here in chambers today for their work on delivering on a quick timeline.

And while at certain points it looked like things were maybe two steps forward and one step back, this is hard work.

And everyone here has been doing the work and putting it in.

And, you know, even if all of us would have liked to get this done faster.

We're on the cusp of getting this done right.

And I really, really look forward to this fall when we get to launch this.

I love the substantive updates today on hiring and the very clear enumeration of what the hiring and operational plan is gonna be.

This is gonna make a really huge difference and I think is tantamount to the shared commitment that this council and this mayoral team has on really fundamentally moving forward.

on comprehensive community safety for this city.

And when we launched this in the fall, I think that that is putting, we're no longer gonna have task forces where we're talking about stuff, right?

We're gonna be doing stuff.

And I just look forward to that so much.

So I don't have any questions.

I just wanna lift up the work of the people in this room.

I'm super excited to continue working with this team and really, really looking forward to seeing this change on the ground, physically making a difference in our community.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Council Member Lewis.

Seeing no additional comments or questions.

Thank you, everybody.

We will move on to the next item on the agenda.

Mr. Clerk, can you please read in Agenda Item 2.

Agenda Item 2, Council Bill 120580, an ordinance relating to app-based worker labor standards, establishing labor standards on deactivation protections for out-based workers working in Seattle, amending section 3.02.125 of the Seattle Municipal Code, and adding a new chapter 8.40 to the Seattle Municipal Code.

Thank you so much.

Before handing it over to Council Central staff to introduce themselves, and begin our process.

Just a couple introductory remarks, as well as an explanation of what our process will be moving forward.

Today, we're hearing proposed amendments to a second bill in the pay up suite of protections for app-based workers.

Both pieces of legislation, including this one, have been co-sponsored by Council Member Lewis and myself.

These bills have spoke to the issues faced by workers in one of the fastest growing economies of our city, an economy that is largely unregulated with labor protections.

Many folks have had their access to income revoked with no notice or no opportunity to appeal the decisions made by algorithms, often with little to no human review.

We have a whole lot of amendments to go through.

Appreciate everybody's engagement in the policy.

And for viewers in the audience, if you want to watch the May 23rd committee meeting, you can get a full presentation of the discussion of the draft legislation.

We're joined by Council Central Staff's Jasmine Maraja and Karina Bull, who can answer questions.

We'll both be presenting the amendments and answering questions, but just as it relates specifically to the process, there is a substitute version for which Council Central Staff will explain the contents.

There are several amendments, some of which are mutually exclusive amendments.

The steps we will take is first I'm going to move the main bill, then the substitute version, after which the committee can then consider the amendments in the order they are listed on the agenda.

We'll pause before moving to the amendments to give Council Central staff the opportunity to explain what is in the substitute after I move the substitute.

Then as it relates specifically to the mutually exclusive amendments, each of the amendments will be briefly presented by council central staff.

The sponsor or sponsors can speak to the amendment.

I'll then request a motion and a second.

After we have the motion and second, I will allow for additional speakers to identify questions or comments about the motion and after questions or comments are complete we will proceed with the votes.

Agenda items 2, 5, and 8 each have mutually exclusive amendments And I understand that sponsors of Amendment 2A, Councilmember Lewis and myself, and 2B, Councilmember Nelson, will not be moving forward with those amendments.

So that leaves Agenda Items 5 and 8 as being the two agenda items left that have mutually exclusive amendments.

For amendments that are not mutually exclusive, I'll request a motion and if there is a second, the amendment will be presented and the sponsor can speak to it.

Again, after the sponsor speak to the amendment, I will ask other council members if they have questions or comments.

After votes on amendments, Central Staff, not just after votes on amendments, but after this meeting, Central Staff will prepare an amended substitute for consideration at the July 11th meeting.

As long as that process is understood, I'm gonna get us started with just pausing to make sure we're all good there.

I'm gonna get us started by moving the main bill to place it before the committee.

I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120549. Is there a second?

Madam Chair, I think Council Member Nelson is looking to be recognized.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Nelson.

Did you say that I was not going to, that I was dropping my version of Amendment 2?

That was my understanding.

My understanding was that we had discussed amendment 2C.

But if that is not the case, I am happy to roll with your preference.

I would like to, since this is in the public record, I would simply like to explain why some of those items are in there just for.

Absolutely.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's not at all trying to minimize speaking to amendments that have been withdrawn, just clarifying the amendments that we are likely to be voting on.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Jasmine.

Hello.

Hi.

For the record, Jasmine Marwaha, Council Central staff.

I believe Council Member Herbold, Chair Herbold, that the bill is 120580. I used the wrong number, huh?

120580?

Thank you.

Let's do that again.

Take two.

So I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120580. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

The committee recommendation that Council Bill 1, 2, 5, 8, 0 has been moved and seconded.

Now we can move the consideration of the substitute bill.

I will move and seek a second, and then we'll let Council Central staff speak to the differences in the substitute bill.

So the, I move the substitute version to Council Bill 12050 as presented on the agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you so much.

Council Central staff, explain the substitute, please.

Yes.

So this substitute clarifies OLS's enforcement scope and expectations, including an updated effective date of January 2025 for most provisions.

and with agency enforcement of the pre-deactivation requirements for the individual deactivations to be in effect starting June 1st, 2027. This would allow for roughly two and a half years where OLS is enforcing the procedural requirements regarding notice, records, and the challenge procedure, but not determining specifically whether individual deactivations were warranted or not.

This substitute also includes a non-codified section requesting a report back from OLS by September 2026 on the implementation of the ordinance with the intention of providing lessons learned in gearing up for full enforcement in 2027.

Thank you so much.

Are there any questions on the substitute?

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you chair herbal wanted a little bit more explanation of the policy intent for this why wasn't done in the original bill what what is it.

I understand semantically what it does, but what is the what is the real reason for this change.

And I don't know if that would be from the sponsors or from central staff.

Council Special Staff?

So the bill, as introduced, had certain sections removed from the enforcement scope for the agency and not an expectation that there would be enforcement by the agency of those certain provisions, those individual deactivation reviews.

And so this substitute bill reflects, I believe, conversations with the executive an OLS to amend that to have enforcement of those individualized deactivations come at a later date from the procedural enforcement.

We've been talking throughout this process that the focus is going to be on enforcement of the procedural violations, not whether or not somebody has deactivated a bill, but this has been deactivated in a way that is consistent with policy or the bill.

But this substitute, as I understand it, allows OLS to consider more in-depth investigations towards the basis of a deactivation at a later date, but that the focus at this time, I think for the next year and a half, two and a half years, two and a half years is only consistent with the agreements with OLS and what we've discussed in the stakeholder process.

The focus for enforcement is only on the procedural elements of the bill.

May I follow up?

Of course.

So if I, if I understand correctly, you're giving, so Office of Labor Standards would have even more power than in the original version, but it would be, but it would be triggered at a later date.

Is that?

That's correct.

Okay.

And then do we have confirmation from the Harrell administration that this is something that they want?

or is that something we could get between now and full council?

I think we can work on that.

As Jasmine said, this is an OLS request to change, and given that OLS is an executive department of the mayor, I believe that everything is in alignment there.

Right.

It's reflective of conversations, but we don't have an official statement.

Okay.

Thank you for this context.

Thank you.

Council Member Nelson, your hand is up.

Yeah, I had questions along the lines of Council Member Peterson.

I didn't understand the rationale for this, and I wanted to know if stakeholders were spoken with.

I understand the caveats about what this enforces.

However, whatever the director does will hopefully involve the input of stakeholders.

And then finally, why was not this an amendment instead of a whole substitute?

And I did go back and forth, I did pose these questions to central staff over the weekend and I'm just wanting to know why the decision was made from the chair not to have this as an amendment and to just, it's only two changes in a whole substitute and this seems from going from not enforcing to enforcing is a fairly big change that I'm just wondering why there wasn't an opportunity to discuss.

Well, we're discussing it now.

It is only one change.

And so we're discussing it within the context of a substitute.

The development of the substitute was on my direction because I knew we would be discussing the contents.

But also, it is consistent.

with the direction that we have been discussing for several months, that the enforcement of this legislation be only focused on the procedural elements of the bill.

OLS wanted assurances that their future expansion to enforce other elements of the bill, depending on the availability of resources in the future, would not be constrained.

And so, again, That was the thinking for using this as a substitute measure.

Well, your mention of resources is precisely 1 of the reasons why I was concerned because this is already going to cost a 1M dollars and there is no caveat that says per the availability of resources.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

Our legislation typically is accompanied with fiscal analysis and we have the fiscal analysis associated with the near term enforcement of the ordinance.

And I would expect that if the enforcement of the ordinance were to change in two years, dependent on OLS's direction, that we would have a fiscal analysis of that change because by Seattle Municipal Code, the Office of Labor Standards, different from many other departments of the city, is empowered to make recommendations straight to the council without going through the executive about their resource needs prior to the beginning of budget process.

That ensures that any resources necessary to enforce in the future provisions other than procedural requirements in the bill, that those resources will definitely be identified by OLS in advance.

I told central staff I really don't like making floor amendments, but would you consider saying may have the power to enforce given, you know, depending on available resources instead of shall, because obviously if it says shall in the law, they'll come back and say, well, we need more FTEs.

Understood.

The decision, the funding decisions are always left at a last resort with the council.

The OLS is empowered, as I mentioned, to make recommendations directly to council about their enforcement needs.

And so I think the fact that the council ultimately decides what funding to provide might address this concern, but given that you have the concern, I do not have any objections to the striking of the words shall in favor of the word may.

Would you like to make that motion?

I move that the word shall be struck and replaced with the word may.

I second that motion.

Thank you.

Okay.

And so now we're working on an amendment to the amendment.

And so the amendment to the amendment, we call the vote on that first.

Mr. Chair, can you please call the roll?

Let me just make sure I'm on the right language here.

Call the roll to the amendment to the substitute version of Council Bill 120580. Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Vice Chair Lewis.

Yes.

Chair Herbal.

Yes.

Five yes.

Thank you so much.

So, Moving to the underlying vote on the substitute version as amended to Council Bill 12-0580.

We have a motion and a second.

Can you, Mr. Clerk, please call the roll on the motion on the amended substitute version to Council Bill 12-0580?

Council Member Mosqueda?

Aye.

Council Member Nielsen.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Vice Chair Lewis.

Yes.

Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Five yes.

Thank you so much.

The amended bill is now before the committee.

We're moving to the consideration of amendments next.

First up is amendment number one.

Again, we'll get the amendment in front of us and then turn it over to the sponsors to speak to it and offer the amendment to council central staff to describe it as well.

So is there a motion on amendment number one?

I move amendment one to the underlying bill.

Thank you.

I second it.

Council Central staff, can you please describe amendment number one, which I believe is sponsored by Council Member Lewis and I.

Yes, and I'll also note for the record that this amendment actually does have an alternative as well.

Amendment 1B that was circulated last night, which I will also speak to and share.

So first up, we do have Amendment 1. This amendment would revise the definition of deactivation to allow for temporary suspensions due to reasons unrelated to the app-based worker's actions.

This would include when the platform is unavailable due to technological or maintenance issues or inclement weather endangering the safety of an app-based worker in performing services in Seattle.

In these instances, a network company would not be required to follow the deactivation requirements in the bill, such as advanced notice and provision of records and the internal challenge procedure until they were until they were formally deactivated.

Amendment 1B that is sponsored by Council Member Nelson would include the same provisions, but also include an allowance for a 48-hour temporary suspension to determine whether the app-based worker has committed egregious misconduct.

Thank you so much for the description of both amendments.

And with that, I will ask for speakers to speak to first to amendment one Councilmember Lewis, would you like to speak to amendment number one.

Thank you so much, Chair Herbold.

This amendment just clarifies that in certain circumstances, a deactivation can occur if there are acts out of, you know, anyone's control, a natural disaster, an extreme weather event, other such circumstances that would warrant temporarily, for a brief period of time, deactivating those app-based services.

Thank you so much, Council Member Lewis.

This amendment was drafted in response to feedback that we received from some of the app-based platforms.

It allows for platforms to temporarily suspend accounts for up to 48 hours at a time for reasons like network outages, inclement weather, and routine maintenance of the platforms.

Council Member Nelson, I think this might be a good time for you to speak to Amendment I-1B.

I believe that this is one of the amendments that you had indicated that you were pulling early on, but that you still want to speak.

Yeah, I went back and forth and then anyway, I want to make clear 1st of all that I do not see these as mutually exclusive.

I plan to support 1 a and and 1 B.

I just feel like this is more of a an additional.

It's additional information, not necessarily in opposition.

So the main difference between, and there are three differences, the main difference between this amendment and 1A is that this one allows for a temporary suspension up to 48 hours to verify the basis of alleged misconduct, usually from a customer, but also from, it could be from a restaurant or store owner, a coworker, or someone in management at the network company itself.

And this benefits the worker who, in cases of alleged misconduct, would otherwise be deactivated immediately.

And this is important because sometimes a complaint is exaggerated or false, and suspensions give companies the time to quickly check the basic facts and also enables the worker to provide contextual information, receipts, and other evidence which proves that there was no malicious intent or that the misconduct didn't occur at all.

And I can give an example, but in the In the interest of time, I'll just basically say that this is standard practice amongst employers in most workplaces, because the HR person doesn't immediately just proceed with the termination without trying to verify the charges, because they don't want to act on rumor.

or they recognize there are two sides to every story.

And so I just don't understand why the advocates wouldn't want to spare workers from getting deactivated or being barred from the platform for longer than is absolutely necessary to check some basic facts.

If you know, let me know.

The only thing I can think of is maybe there's some interest in obtaining the records that are produced during the deactivation phase, or if there's a challenge, a deactivation challenge.

But I do believe that this makes sense and it benefits the worker by, by not barring access to the platform for longer than it's absolutely necessary.

Thank you.

Oh, go ahead.

Oh, the 2nd word, the 2nd change, the 2nd amendment to the base legislation that is included in my amendment is intentionally and that was requested as you noted by the stakeholders and recognition that things can go wrong with the app that are not in the control of the network company or not based on the conduct of the worker that is already covered in yours.

And and then finally, the last.

The last anyway.

I'll stop there.

Go ahead.

I want to give you a chance to ask a question.

Sure.

On Sunday, I understood from your communication with Council Central staff that was also intended for my consumption as well, according to your email.

You had said that you heard from Rover and TaskRabbit that they were I am moving one B.

Please.

I guess I would refer to, I would go back to refer to Council Central staff to determine.

I understand that there's an additional element in 1B that is not in 1A, but I do believe as drafted, they are currently mutually exclusive because of how they're drafted.

Is that correct?

Are you asking me or central staff at central staff?

Yeah, I'm just taking a moment to clear to think about how I'm going to respond.

I think that.

That 1, a 1, B has additional elements.

to 1A that are not directly conflicting.

So there are two alternatives.

And so it's possible that you could vote on 1A and vote on 1B that would layer on top of 1A.

Thank you, that's very helpful.

And then just one other question for Council Central staff about the content of Amendment 1B.

To respond to Council Member Nelson's question of wouldn't this give more certainty to deactivated workers if there was an ability to to pause for conduct.

Isn't that what the 14-day timeline is for that's in the requirement for deactivation?

Isn't that already embedded in the ordinance?

Um, so the what's in the, in the bill currently is, if there is egregious misconduct alleged the company can deactivate immediately but would have to provide a notice of deactivation that explains the reasons for deactivation.

and the substantiation for it and allows for the worker to, to undergo the challenge procedure.

And this temporary suspension to my, my understanding is that the temporary suspension would not trigger those requirements.

So it depends on how you would distinguish suspension from deactivation.

Meaning it would have a different effect depending on whether or not the deactivation was based on an egregious violation or another type of deactivation.

And also this would, if there is egregious misconduct suspected and 1B were to go into effect, there would be a 48 hour temporary suspension.

If the company did determine there was egregious misconduct, there would still be that 14 day.

There'd still be the ability for the worker to appeal after that 14 days and also currently 10 days to complete the investigation after the 48 hours.

So it kind of layers an additional timeline at the front end.

Very good.

Thank you.

Council Member Nelson, did you have additional comments on 1B?

Yeah, so there is another change, which is the last sentence, and it says something about in the language stating that deactivations cannot be reversed by the worker, because how could they be?

I didn't I'm just noticing a an email exchange and I would like to strike that from my amendment.

So essentially the the the temporary suspension of 48 hours does protect the the worker that has been accused of egregious misconduct.

It allows them to work for the for the time in which there is a challenge and And if the deactivation is finally resolved, so that makes sense.

And so yours already identifies intentional.

So I will maintain that in mind in case people would like to vote for both.

But I am removing the part about the last sentence, which reads, let's see.

Central staff, could you please read that final, the third change in the amendment?

Yes, Council Member, are you referring to the addition of, and cannot be reversed at the discretion of the app-based worker, that we wouldn't, that your amendment would not include that addition?

Yes, because that is superfluous.

Because obviously, I don't know how the software works in these platforms, but basically, it does seem as though I don't know what the mechanics would be for a worker to reverse a deactivation without the agreement of the network company.

That is a technical issue that I do not fully understand.

And so I would like to remove that.

And it is not as important as the 48-hour suspension.

Council Member Nelson.

Council Central staff contacted me last night to respectfully request that we not do amendments on the fly here in committee.

So I would prefer and defer to Council Central staff's request that we vote on the amendment as distributed and we can talk about if the amendment succeeds, We can talk about how to adjust it later after this meeting.

And so with that, thank you.

If there are no further questions, we have amendment number one before us.

We have a motion and a second.

Will the clerk please call the roll on a- Chair.

Excuse me, Chair.

Yes.

I'm sorry.

Are we voting?

Are we going to vote on amendment 1B?

We are.

Yes, we are.

We've already done the motion the second.

We've had the conversation about amendment one.

We've also had conversation about an alternate amendment being that is not in internally inconsistent.

So we'll hear amendment be afterwards.

But right now we're going to move forward on the amendment on the floor right now.

Council Member Nelson.

Wait a minute.

Please clarify.

Are we voting on 1A or 1B at this point?

We are.

I think it's noted as 1 because we thought that your second version of this amendment was withdrawn.

But for purposes of all of our understanding, this is Amendment 1A.

Let's just say that.

Sponsored by Council Member Lewis and myself.

Thank you.

Aye.

Council Member Mosqueda.

That was confusing me.

Aye.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Vice Chair Lewis.

Yes.

Council Member Herbold.

Yes.

Five yes.

Thank you so much.

And now Council Member Nelson, if you'd like to get 1B in front of us.

I move amendment 1B.

Thank you.

Is there a 2nd 2nd?

Is there any further discussion on amendment 1?

B. Simply just a real life example could be if you, if you own a house painting company, and 1 of your clients posts on next door or something like that, that a member of your company's crew and gives the name of John stole a piece of jewelry during a job.

You know, it's highly unlikely that you're going to go out and try to to fire John.

What you're going to do is you're going to you're going to verify that John was actually working in the neighborhood.

That is that this person is posting from and ask some questions to the.

client, if they're in your client list, about what was the object, et cetera.

Did you file a police report?

That takes some time.

And you're also going to talk to the employee.

What times were you there, et cetera.

So this is just one example that could take a day and a half to get this information, but it will allow for the conflict to be resolved, hopefully, rather than later.

Oftentimes, the charge ends up going away.

This customer, for example, could call up and say, wait, I found the ring.

So that is just just wanted to provide some context for why a temporary suspension would be preferable than just deactivating.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate understanding the intent of this amendment, but just wanting to emphasize that there's nothing that requires a platform to exercise their rights to a deactivation for egregious misconduct on day one before collecting any information.

Well, it depends on the seriousness of the misconduct.

understood, but there's not an obligation to act on the seriousness of this misconduct on day one.

They can, they're not required to though.

And so if they feel like there's a need for additional information, they can certainly collect that additional information before deciding whether or not to do a deactivation.

I'm just explaining my thinking for my position before we call the vote.

Thank you.

Is there any additional?

Madam Chair?

Council Member Lewis, yes.

Thank you.

I first wish I'd had a little bit more time with this amendment, but understand that we were getting a lot of stuff in under the wire, including some amendments from myself.

I'm, you know, inclined to maybe continue to think around this issue between now and the July 11th committee meeting.

I think for now, my initial reaction is that if there is, if there's suspicion of egregious misconduct, it could, under the ordinance just lead to a suspension or a deactivation.

I don't think that there needs to be a 48 hour kind of investigation period.

Cause I don't think the standard is not really that onerous if there are suspicion of egregious misconduct.

So my inclination is to vote no on this today, but to continue to think about it until the 11th.

I haven't discussed this particular issue with any stakeholders, but I do publicly encourage people in the platform community who are interested in this particular issue to contact me to talk about it a little bit more.

But given, Given that I've only had a few hours to kind of review this and haven't been able to broadly check in with folks, today I'm gonna vote no.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

If there are no comments or questions, will the clerk please call the roll?

One last thing, excuse me, I appreciate the council member Lewis's willingness to consider and perhaps we can talk about this and not talk about it, but maybe we can consider adding it later before the final vote.

I have learned that the workers are not do not lose access to the platform during the suspension.

when companies are, so according to Instacart and TaskRabbit.

So that allows them to keep working and making an income as well, instead of just getting blanket deactivated immediately for a charge of alleged misconduct, of egregious misconduct.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate the clarification and look forward to the ongoing conversation, Council Member Nelson.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment B. Councilor Mosqueda?

No.

Councilor Nelson?

Aye.

Councilor Peterson?

Yes.

Vice Chair Lewis?

No.

Chair Herbold?

No.

Two yes, three no.

Thank you, Mr. Clerk.

The motion carries.

The amendment is not adopted.

I'm sorry, the motion fails and the amendment is not adopted.

We'll move on to the next amendment.

We've got amendments 2A, 2B, and 2C.

Again, these are three mutually exclusive amendments listed on the agenda.

Amendment 2A and 2B and 2C.

The sponsors of Amendment 2A, Council Member Lewis and myself, are withdrawing the amendment.

is my understanding that Council Member Nelson wishes to still speak to Amendment 2B, but based on I think what we said at the start of this meeting, you're still not moving it forward, but we will definitely make some time to speak to it just after we get some of the procedural elements in front of us and taken care of.

So first, we're going to hear whether or not we have a motion for Amendment 2C.

Yes, Chair.

I'd like to move Amendment 2C to Council Bill 120580. Thanks so much.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

We now have Amendment 2C moved and seconded.

Could Council Central staff speak to this amendment?

And then we will, again, we'll make time to hear from Council Member Nelson about Amendment B.

≫ Good morning, councilmembers.

I am Karina Bull with central staff and I'm going to explain amendment 2C version 3 sponsored by councilmember Peterson.

This amendment would broaden the definition of egregious misconduct as follows.

It would add to the definition actions or behaviors that endanger the physical safety of the network company or an animal.

It would also add actions or behaviors that are threatening, harassing, or abusive to the customer, a third party, or the network company.

It would add specific criminal offenses, such as kidnapping, money laundering, and cyber crimes.

It would add racial slurs, animal cruelty, and as an umbrella, or a catch-all category, other conduct that would constitute a Class A felony under state law.

That's Title IX or 9A in the RCWs.

Thank you.

It continues, the amendment would also require a network company to prove that the conduct group directly relates to the app based workers fitness to provide services by preponderance of the evidence, which is a lower standard than what is in the introduced ordinance, clear and convincing.

In effect, the amendment would include significantly more types of conduct in the definition and would lower the evidentiary standard for showing that it relates to the app-based worker's ability to do the work.

Thank you so much, Council Central staff.

Pass it over to Council Member Peterson to speak to the amendment.

Then as mentioned, we'll create some space for Council Member Nelson to speak to Amendment 2B.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

Thank you to central staff for their work on this amendment.

It looks like a lot of us had a similar idea to expand the definition of what we're referring to in this legislation as egregious misconduct.

And so as central staff pointed out, there'll be several items inserted in here.

And so I don't need to repeat those.

But we did hear from many constituents who wanted to explain one of them, which is we've heard from many constituents who use pet care services for their dogs and cats and other pets.

And so this amendment would add I think that that was, I'm sure that was the intent, but we wanted to just get that into the language here.

Again, I believe this version incorporates the good work and good ideas from the amendments we saw before 1A and 1B, and that was published online previously.

So I ask for your support of this expanded definition of egregious misconduct.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Council Member Peterson.

Council Member Nelson?

Thank you very much.

Egregious misconduct is the, I recognize that emotional wellbeing is an imperfect and inexact and vague term, but it does capture conduct that is not captured in this, that does not relate to the physical safety, but does cause distress and also can cause reputational harm.

Because I can say that as a small business owner, customer service is extremely important.

So basically, I was aiming for alignment between the egregious misconduct for rideshare under the previously effective Seattle Human Rights Rule Chapter 200, which reads in part, egregious misconduct is defined as an abhorrent or wrong action or behavior that endangers the physical, emotional, or economic well-being or safety of a consumer, individuals affiliated with a business, a third person, or a network company.

I'm not trying to align with the abhorrent or wrong, however, but that is the That is the precedent or the alignment I just wanted to explain that I do support Councilmember Peterson's amendment because it does capture what I was meaning in emotional well being.

Thank you.

Fantastic.

It's great.

Great to hear.

As signaled in the published agenda, Councilmember Lewis and I had also submitted a similar amendment to Councilmember Peterson's 2C, but we decided to withdraw ours in support of his amendment, which we felt also encapsulated the mission of incorporating feedback from the network companies by expanding the definition of egregious misconduct that allows for immediate suspension of an account pending further investigation.

I will note that in all versions of Amendment 2, And in the original bill language, the examples listed are our examples, and the director of OLS may decide to include additional examples of egregious misconduct during rulemaking.

So the bill itself is not meant to contain a definite and final list, and that speaks to the importance of engagement during the rulemaking process.

Also, egregious misconduct is behavior that allows a bypass to the notice procedure of deactivation.

Many of the things that we heard during public comment of behaviors that should allow companies to deactivate a worker's account.

do allow companies to do so.

There is a very specific list of reasons deemed not to be reasonable policies.

And so the intent of the requirement to develop reasonable policies for general deactivation is very separate from the intent of this egregious deactivation policy, which is intended to be more limiting.

And given that there is a lot of collaboration on this particular amendment, I will vote in favor of this version of Councilmember Peterson's amendment.

Appreciate the collaboration as well with Councilmember Nelson.

And thank you, Councilmember Peterson, for working with our offices on finalizing an amendment together.

And so we are still on Amendment 2C.

Just pausing for a moment to see if there are any comments or questions on 2C.

If not, we are ready to vote on Amendment 2C.

We have a motion and a second.

Mr. Clerk, can you please call the roll?

Council Member Mosqueda?

No.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Vice Chair Lewis?

Yes.

Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Four yes, one no.

Thank you, the motion carries and the amendment is adopted.

We can move on to the next amendment, Amendment 3. Next up is Amendment 3. Is there a motion for Amendment 3?

I move Amendment 3.

Thank you so much.

I second Amendment 3. It has been moved and seconded to adopt Amendment 3. Could Council Central staff please describe the amendment?

Yes.

This amendment would clarify that a network company cannot determine that an app-based worker engaged in egregious misconduct for non-criminal moving violations unless the app-based worker has accumulated more than three at-fault accidents or non-criminal moving violations in the previous three years.

It also adds references to criminal moving violations as examples of egregious misconduct, replacing some of the specific references to the criminal moving violations listed.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Lewis, would you like to speak to Amendment 3?

Yes, so this amendment came out of our stakeholdering on the underlying legislation to make sure that we clarified the scope and type of moving violations that would be relevant, egregious misconduct that could warrant a deactivation.

We, you know, we wanted to make sure that that it wasn't a broad enough description that it might include fairly minor conduct like parking tickets or things that might not pertain to safety, health, and welfare of the community, but limited to a subset of moving violations that would be concerning, particularly for app-based work that is vehicle-directed.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis, and I just want to note for the for the record this was an amendment that was really important to the members of drive forward, and I also support this amendment, but we'll take a pause to determine whether or not there are any additional questions about this amendment.

not seeing any in-person or virtual raised hands.

The amendment number three has been moved and seconded.

Mr. Clerk, can you please call the roll on the adoption of amendment three sponsored by Council Member Lewis and myself.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Vice Chair Lewis.

Yes.

Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Five yes.

so much.

The motion carries.

The amendment is adopted and we're now going to move on to amendment number four.

Next up is amendment number four.

Is there a motion to support amendment number four?

Council Member Nelson.

I move amendment four, please.

Thank you.

Is there a second?

Second.

Very good.

We've got a motion and a second.

Could Council Central staff please describe the amendment?

Yes, Amendment 4 would increase the threshold for app-based worker coverage from 10% of completed offers or offers canceled in Seattle over the past 180 days to 50% of completed offers in Seattle over the past 180 days and exclude offers canceled with cause from the threshold calculation.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Nelson, would you like to speak to the amendment?

Yes, so some would argue that that are.

Our regulation should only cover people living and working in Seattle.

Some would say, well, it should be as.

A certain amount, 50% seems a good compromise, but I do not believe that.

You know, going for this piece of legislation, I decided that instead of picking something arbitrary, I wanted to look in at previous labor laws that we have, because 10% does seem arbitrary.

And when I asked central staff.

What was the basis for 10 percent?

I didn't get a good answer.

Perhaps, you know, but I didn't.

So I am going with I think that 50 percent is more supported by previous actions.

But let me just say how this for the viewing public, I just wanted to explain how this would this would actually play out in real life, because This basically says that a Bellevue-based worker who has completed, for example, 36 deliveries in Bellevue has been deactivated for conduct while on delivery in Bellevue, but has completed four deliveries working in Seattle.

they would be covered by this.

And so essentially we are creating employment law for workers in neighboring cities, which is likely unconstitutional as Seattle is not really authorized to regulate conduct outside city limits, except where incidental.

I want to caveat that by saying that I was not able to talk to Lauren.

There's been a lot of amendments and I have not gone dug into the legality of this, but however, so this, The jumpstart, I believe legislation does require that companies pay on behalf of workers who might live outside of Seattle, but perform their work at least 50% inside the city limits, for example, and there is another.

statute that already establishes 50% is the Fair Chance Employment Ordinance, which says an employee is covered by this chapter when the physical location of such services is in whole or in substantial part, at least 50% of the time within the geographic boundaries of the city.

Secure scheduling ordinance also says for the purposes of this chapter, covering employees under this chapter are limited to those who there are a bunch of others provide such employment services in a physical location that is within the geographic boundaries of the city at least 50% of the time in the in the interest of saving time.

I will just simply say that.

50% is a.

I believe more reasonable and supported by previous statute amount proportion of time that a worker should be delivering or working in in Seattle to be covered by this ordinance.

Thank you, Councilmember Nelson.

Before I open it up for comments and questions from other Councilmembers, I just want to sort of get my thinking on the record here.

I appreciate, Councilmember Nelson, that you've provided other examples where the eligibility threshold was higher.

We modeled this particular legislation in many ways on the transportation network company legislation, which has a 10% threshold.

And the reason is that I think these regulations are very different than some of the regulations that you referred to in your remarks.

Workers don't have any control over the jobs that are offered them.

That makes that makes it a very high threshold that is unfair and susceptible to abuse by the algorithms that keep workers below a threshold.

For example, by sending workers who may be approaching 50% to only jobs outside of Seattle.

So again we're.

We're trying to really recognize the good policy that was established in the TNC legislation.

And for policy-related reasons, I think keeping the threshold at 10% makes the best sense.

So I will not be voting in support of this amendment.

But definitely, again, really appreciate and value your engagement on these policies.

So, just looking for no.

Okay.

Just looking to what was the basis for the 10% because that was that was regulation that that passed before I was here.

Um.

I think the basis was just what I mentioned.

There's a high susceptibility in this work model for abuse by the algorithms to keep folks below a higher threshold.

When the threshold is so low, it makes it very difficult for the algorithms to only give people business outside of the city of Seattle, while also ensuring that they have an adequate workforce for the city of Seattle.

Well, I appreciate that, but we're not just talking about companies that use algorithms.

This does apply to all companies that may or may not, and that it's particularly concerning with marketplace network companies that are where work is performed in more, well, inside the home, let's just say.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

Are there any additional comments or questions on this amendment?

Seeing none, thank you.

Will the clerk please call the roll on amendment number four?

Council Member Mosqueda?

I need to have a reminder of which amendment this is.

This is amendment number four sponsored by Councilmember Nelson on expanding the threshold for eligibility from 10 to 50%.

Thank you know.

Councilmember Nelson.

I Councilmember Peterson.

Yes.

Vice Chair Lewis.

No.

Chair Herbold.

Yes.

I'm sorry.

No.

Two yes, three no.

Okay, great.

And just for everybody's awareness, I think we're going to, after this next amendment, close discussion on the amendments associated with this bill, and we'll figure out how to resume deliberations on the amendments, because we do want to hear from HSD, who's been waiting patiently in the audience.

Moving to amendments 5A and 5B.

These are two mutually exclusive amendments.

Central staff, again, will describe the two different amendments and then the sponsors can speak to the amendments in the order that they're listed on the agenda.

With that, Council Central staff, can you please present amendments A and B?

Amendment 5A would exclude the following types of network companies from coverage, marketplace network companies, and network companies presenting offers for unsupervised services with access to pets, children, or vulnerable adults, and services that primarily occur inside or around a customer's home.

Amendment 5B, which is sponsored by Councilmember Peterson, the previous one is sponsored by Councilmember Nelson, would exempt a narrower range of network companies and would only exclude companies that are primarily engaged in facilitating or presenting offers for pet care services from coverage.

So the 5B would exclude network companies that could be marketplace network companies and that could also be on-demand network companies as well.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Nelson, do you want to speak to the first version of this amendment?

Should I move it first or should we just talk?

Good point.

I would like to recognize Peterson because maybe he has the same question that I raised my hand about.

Go ahead.

I mean, I'm not.

It's your job to do that.

Maybe we'll have both sponsors speak to both of the amendments and then we'll decide whether or not we want to move both of them or one of them.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

I support Council Member Nelson's amendment 5A.

For me, the 5B is really a backup in case 5A doesn't pass, but I would strongly support 5A to make it consistent with the legislation we refer to often as pay up.

But, but I'll let customer Nelson speak to that just wanted to clarify that I'm more interested in passing five a but five be within, you know, be necessary if five a doesn't pass.

Thank you.

That's very helpful.

So, I think, given that intent will will decide via our votes, what happens with with five a if five a passes will then hear five be if it does not pass.

We will then move to 5B to hear that one.

Okay, great.

Council Member Nelson, do you want to get the amendment in front of us and then you can speak to it?

I move amendment 5A.

Second.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Nelson, you have the floor.

Thank you.

Just a second, scrolling down.

So, Let's just remind ourselves what marketplace network companies are.

These are companies that provide services oftentimes within the home of of their customers or or outside the home, but they that they have more much more intimate contact with the customer.

They have also already.

arrange a time and a place and a price, et cetera.

So this is a wholly different kind of company than the the delivery apps.

And it is my understanding.

Well, actually, I do understand that the mayor's office also supports this amendment, which would remove marketplace companies from from this legislation.

And anyone else can speak to that.

I understand that that was, I think, communicated to all council members.

So The city is consistently recognized that marketplace network companies are fundamentally different from other network companies and accordingly that marketplace network companies warrant separate consideration to avoid unintended harm to Seattleites.

Both the app-based worker minimum payment ordinance, which is Chapter 88.37 and the paid sick and safe time ordinance 8.39 establish a separate high standard for marketplace network companies.

And so.

This is in rovers words, we believe that council bill 1, 2, 0, 5, 8, 0 should be amended consistent by adding the same language to clarify that marketplace network companies are not subject to the ordinance if they satisfy the existing high standard for marketplace network companies that I've already noticed noted.

So.

Let's just get back to the more basic question about the safety of the customers that we're talking about.

We want to promote a safe community.

We do not want to stifle the ability of people to not take advantage of these companies.

I'm finding they're thinking, gosh, she's butchering this, but those.

We're talking about the health and safety and the privacy of the customers.

And this would simply push those customers who don't feel like their privacy and safety is recognized outside of the application or the platform.

And they would need to use other things like Craigslist or word of mouth to access those services.

Anyway.

It is clear that these are, um, that the, the communication and the, uh, the, the health and safety of.

The customer is paramount, and so these should be excluded.

Sorry.

No, that's great.

Thank you, Councilmember Nelson.

Is there any other, I have my thinking on both versions of this bill, but if there is any further comment, I will hold my thinking.

Councilmember Lewis, oh, and then Councilmember Peterson.

Thank you so much.

While when we were debating last year, the application of the pay standard legislation to app-based work, including marketplace apps, I thought then and continue to be of the opinion that the business model of the marketplace applications does warrant a different approach than on-demand delivery.

That the organization of the marketplace companies and the nature of how that work is delivered is more akin to the traditional independent contractor type of work, although, you know, somewhere in between, given the.

different ways that the app-based algorithms manage that work warrants a different approach in the case of the pay up standard.

I don't believe that when it comes to the deactivations of the access to this work and the ability to have continued access to it, while there are different circumstances that govern, that should govern in certain cases, exactly how the deactivations work.

I think the broadness of our egregious misconduct definition, along with some other protections, do provide for the nuance that is required to make sure that workers continue to have access to work on these platforms and have due process.

I would add that it's my understanding from being familiar with the processes and practices of the platform TaskRabbit, which does have, as I understand it, personal analysis and assessment of requests for deactivations and a process to to handle appeals and other types of conduct, it is possible for these apps to provide that kind of due process to govern the deactivations.

And for that reason, at least at this time, I'm of the impression that the ordinance that we are crafting and going through the amendment process on now and the feedback that we've incorporated warrants inclusion marketplace companies.

So for that reason, I'm not gonna be supporting either of these amendments today.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

Appreciate the discussion here today.

And, you know, in terms of the administration of this and keeping it consistent with the pay up legislation and just the practicality of doing that as we roll out yet another new policy here, I think it would be prudent to have it consistent with pay up.

So I'd actually like to add my name as a co-sponsor to this amendment if the The sponsor will have me on it.

But I really think that, you know, as we move through this process, we may hear more about the administrative need to have it consistent with the pay up legislation, at least for starters.

So I'll be voting in favor of 5A.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Peterson.

Just speaking to both amendments, really appreciate that the company did The companies that we're speaking to did request that they be exempt from the ordinance, but they also helped with some very useful suggestions for amendments as an alternate path to exemption.

I'm very interested in that alternate path.

To that end, we've included crimes of animal cruelty in the definition of egregious misconduct.

as well as any behavior that endangers the safety of a person or animal.

Really, we have heard time and time again from workers, and in particular workers that provide pet care, that workers associated with the marketplace apps are not immune to damages associated with unwarranted deactivations.

and so deserve these protections as much as anyone else.

Some of what I've heard from from pet owners seems to suggest that they believe that if somebody is not egregiously is not deactivated for an egregious violation or is not deactivated from the platform that somehow they have to work with an individual that they've worked with before that they don't want to work with in the future, that is absolutely not the case.

Anybody getting these home-based services can make personal choices about who they work with and who they don't work with.

The intent about this legislation is about a deactivation, depriving somebody of a worker from accessing the platform altogether.

Again, customers using these services for pet services or in-home services can choose to not work with somebody that they've worked with before that they don't want to work with in the future.

So just really want to make that clarity based on some of the comments I've heard from many of the folks using these marketplace platforms, suggesting that there might be a misunderstanding about the intent of the legislation.

And so with that, there are no further comments or questions.

That's.

Yes, I do see some hands still up.

Council Member Peterson, did you have another question or is that a holdover?

No, I'll stand by in case I need to speak to 5B later.

Got it.

Council Member Nelson, you wanted to speak to the amendment before us?

Yes, we're talking a lot about Rover and TaskRabbit, but let's remind ourselves that we are also talking about all the other companies that that we had interaction with when we were discussing pay up.

So it's not just we're talking about.

people that are coming into your home to care for an elderly relative, people that are coming into your home to care for your children, and the list goes on and on and on.

So it's not just Rover and TaskRabbit, although Rover is a local company and therefore deserving of more attention.

But this is a whole range of services that are provided, house cleaning, et cetera.

So I just wanna make sure that everybody is recognizing that the regulations, and especially when it comes to privacy and safety, apply to a lot more than just these two companies.

Now, I do want to give justice to the comments that were sent to me, and I will quote the following.

Marketplace network companies believe the deactivation of an account must only be considered in rare circumstances based on individualized human review.

They have fair processes in place when any deactivation is considered, which apply to all users, both people's offering services and their clients alike.

Multi marketplace network companies like Rover and TaskRabbit must be able to respond quickly to the variety of heightened safety risks and circumstances that can occur when people regularly offer highly personal long duration services in the home or directly communicate or otherwise interact 1 on 1 online or in person.

A marketplace network company must have relevant trust and safety policies in place to guard against inherently different and more serious safety and privacy risks to protect the platform community.

Those policies are also important to protect the reputation of the platform and community members using the platform to offer services.

Trust is key to draw potential clients to people offering services on a marketplace network company platform.

Failure to protect the safety and privacy of customers and taskers, pet care workers, et cetera, would simply push the workers and customers to other available alternatives.

I've already mentioned that, however, in not so eloquent a way.

And then, by definition, the types of services booked using marketplace network companies platform include a range of services other than delivery, And the broad scope of independent services and communications that marketplace network companies by definition must support are associated with a wide range of risks and that these companies must respond to.

They are of a completely different nature.

Then then delivery services, and so I do, I just wanted to emphasize that.

I would like that recognized and remind people that we have had communication from the mayor's office.

They do support removing marketplace network companies from this from coverage in this legislation.

Thank you so much, Council Member Nelson.

And Council Member Peterson, you're gonna hold your comments for the next amendment if this one doesn't pass.

Okay, sounds great.

So Mr. Clerk, can you please call the roll on the amendment?

Council Member Mosqueda.

No.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Vice Chair Lewis.

No.

Chair Herbold.

No.

Two yes, three no.

Thank you so much.

And so this is the last amendment that we're going to deal with today.

That's the Amendment 5B.

Council Member Peterson, would you like to speak to Amendment 5B?

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

I think with this legislation before us that's moving forward, we'll have deactivation protections in for app based workers.

So the big picture is that there's a movement forward on this.

I think there I really think we should be doing Certain things incrementally making that progress, but then about reevaluating it as we go along, which is why I supported that first amendment to exempt marketplace network companies.

This amendment is really focused in on something we've heard a lot about from constituents who use pet care services for their dogs and cats and other pets.

This amendment would would just exempt pet care services believe caring for pets is a unique business operation, animals and pets do not have the ability to speak for themselves and as a pet guardian myself it's our responsibility to provide the safest outcome for our furry friends, especially when they are in someone else's hands and homes through app-based services.

It's something that we could look at later to include them, but for now I think it would be prudent to exempt them from this new law until we find out what all the consequences and outcomes are.

Seattle continues to be among the top dog-friendly cities in the country.

I'm sure We all know somebody who has pets needs them cared for.

It's more this environment for pet care services is a more vulnerable environment than, say, a food delivery, for example.

So I think it provides there's a reason to have this additional care.

The egregious misconduct definition that was expanded, I mean, that applies to all animals, whether or not their pet care service is involved.

So that's why this amendment is still needed so that we can exempt pet care services at this time.

We can always look at including them later.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Is there any additional comment associated with this amendment?

Not seeing any hands raised.

Mr. Clerk, can you please call the roll on Amendment 5B?

Council Member Mosqueda?

No.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Vice Chair Lewis?

No.

Chair Herbold?

No.

Two yes, three no.

Right.

Thank you so much for everybody's work getting through these first five amendments.

We've got, I think, about seven or eight more to go, and I think one of them is a multi-section amendment.

We're going to have to put our heads together and figure out how to address next steps on these amendments in consideration of some vacation schedules that I know are coming up that might make that a little challenging, but I'm confident that we'll figure it all out.

And with that, we'll move on to the next item on the agenda.

Mr. Clerk, can you please read in the agenda item?

Agenda item three, Age-Friendly Seattle, Addressing Social Isolation and Promoting Anti-Ageism.

Thank you so much, Mr. Clerk.

And while we have folks joining us at the table, this is a presentation by the Human Services Department on Age-Friendly Seattle.

We have folks with us here today from HSD.

Thank you all for staying with us through this really long committee meeting.

And we'll hand it over to you for introductions.

Please, presenters, introduce yourself.

Thank you, Chair Herbold and committee members for the opportunity to speak and provide an update on Age-Friendly Seattle.

For the record, my name is Annie Lee.

I'm the Interim Deputy Director at the Human Services Department, and we'll go down the line and introduce our other panelists.

Good morning.

For the record, Dinah Stevens, the Age-Friendly Seattle Program Manager.

Good morning, for the record, Mary Mitchell, the Director for Aging and Disability Services Division.

Meg Wolfe, Program Coordinator for Age-Friendly Seattle.

Eldad McCrea, Program Coordinator for Age-Friendly Seattle.

Thank you so much.

Again, the proposed presentation is to highlight the work of Age-Friendly Seattle.

The Human Services Department's Aging and Disability Services Division supports older adults with disabilities and caregivers throughout the city and King County to ensure that older adults experience stable health and can age in place.

I'm glad to have the opportunity to shine a spotlight on this work.

this afternoon.

And again, thank you all for joining us.

Please go ahead.

Thank you again, Chair Herbold.

So as you all know, Seattle's Human Services Department houses three divisions, as we'll hear today from our Aging and Disability Services team, which promotes healthy aging and supports services for older adults, people with disabilities and caregivers.

One important thing to know about the Aging and Disability Services unit is that this division also functions as the area aging on aging.

area agency on aging and is responsible for administering federal older Americans act funds across all of King County.

This unit houses, the age friendly Seattle initiative as a graphic shows.

The age-friendly team works both within HSD as well as in partnership with departments across the city.

This is also by design.

We're proud that Seattle has recognized the need to apply an age-friendly lens to all the work we do because older adults are impacted by the full range of issues our city addresses.

I'll now hand it off to Mary Mitchell, the Director of Aging and Disability Services, and the rest of the age-friendly team to share more about their current projects.

Thank you, Annie.

So around the world, populations are aging, and this is being referred to as the silver tsunami.

In response to this trend, the United Nations has declared this the decade of aging, and the World Health Organization has called on communities to become more age-friendly.

Seattle joined this mission by launching our own age-friendly initiative in 2017. Passed by city resolution, Age Friendly Seattle is a citywide initiative and represents an evolution of how our city supports older adults.

Some of you might remember the Mayor's Office of Senior Citizens, also known as MOSC.

The city has shifted away from the MOSC approach, which requires older adults to come to a physical location to receive resources, towards an age-friendly Seattle approach, which aims to meet people where they are in community.

Through a racial equity lens, Age-Friendly Seattle works to understand and elevate the culturally specific needs of older adults from accessible housing and transportation to emergency planning to healthcare service coordination.

Since the initiative inception, the team has now wrapped up our first five-year action plan and launched our second five-year strategic framework.

We're here today to talk specifically about our efforts to address social isolation and reduce ageism, two topics that go hand in hand.

For that, I will turn it over to the age-friendly team.

So as Mary just mentioned, our second five-year strategic framework was launched in 2022, and we're primarily focusing on helping older adults retain three key resources, economic security, health and well-being, and social connectivity.

So we'll dive into social connectivity today, but as you can see, there's a lot of overlap between these issues.

Just to give you a little more context about Age-Friendly Seattle in general, I think of us as advocacy shop within the city, really charged with understanding and communicating the needs of older adults across all city plans and policies.

So we work as conveners and connectors to bring together different stakeholders to talk about and address the needs of older adults, find solutions to people's challenges, We function as educators.

This training that we'll talk about today is a great example of that.

Again, we see ourselves as advocates and helping other departments to support the needs of older adults.

And we're also doers in that we do administer a couple of our own programs, which you'll hear about today.

So as we talk about aging and growing older, I think it's helpful to be mindful of the demographic changes that we are experiencing and will continue to experience.

Mary mentioned that around the world we're aging.

Last week, the New York Times had a headline, U.S. population older than it's ever been before.

This is true also locally here in King County.

not only are we growing in terms of the number of older adults aging, but we're living longer.

Thanks to modern medicine and public health measures, our lifespans are extended.

And what this means is that not only will we have a growing number of older adults, but we'll have a growing number of what's called very old adults, those who are 85 and above.

So this chart shows you the projections between 2010 and 2040 And as you can see, there's really exponential growth in those who are 85 and above.

And this really invites us to think about how we're creating a city where folks can thrive in their later years, because there will be more and more of us there.

Here in Seattle, about 12% of our population is over 65. And because we're talking about social isolation today, I think it's helpful to remember that a lot of folks are living alone.

And this isn't a bad thing.

And a lot of people would love to stay in the homes and the communities that they know and love.

It's a big part of staying socially connected, but it does invite us to think about what does our housing look like and how accessible is it for someone to age safely in their own home?

Seems like a no-brainer, but with age often comes disability.

So lots of folks are aging with or into disabilities.

In King County, you can see around 15% of folks who are 18 to 24 identify as having one or more disabilities, but that increases to about 45% of those who are 75 and older.

I think it's also important to just think about the inverse of this 55% of people 75 and older do not have disabilities.

So we're really trying to reframe our thoughts around aging here.

But it is important to think about how we create a community where people of all abilities can thrive in their later years.

You might have seen that the Surgeon General just released an advisory last month.

And this is really a call to American public around a urgent public health issue, which is loneliness and isolation.

The Surgeon General has put together a lot of data that has been amassed over the last decades, showing that social connection is essentially as vital to us as air and water and food.

We are social creatures and without connectivity, our mortality actually suffers.

Social isolation has similar impacts on our mortality as other common risk factors like smoking or high blood pressure.

So 50% is the percentage by which our social connection increases our odds of survival.

Another 50% number that I want to call your attention to is that percentage by which chronic loneliness and social isolation can increase the risk of developing dementia in older adults.

So when we talk about wanting to create a community that's inclusive of folks who are experiencing dementia, as well as their caregivers, wanting to create spaces that promote brain health, social connectivity is a big piece of that puzzle.

And I realize this is a bold statement, that social isolation is killing us.

And I think the Surgeon General made that claim in his recent advisory.

But I'll also offer that ageism is also reducing our lifespan.

And these things go hand in hand, not just because they're both harming our health and reducing our number of years lived, but they function in similar ways.

through psychological, behavioral, and physiological pathways.

So you can think of this as an example.

When we're socially isolated, we tend to lose our sense of meaning and sense of purpose in life.

Similarly, when we are told our entire lives that aging is something to avoid and we may become useless in our later years, that internalized ageism can promote feelings of a loss of purpose and meaning as well.

And when we don't believe that we're worth investing in, we stop behaving in ways that are beneficial to our health.

We stop connecting with our friends and family, which in turn creates more isolation and a vicious cycle.

We stop exercising, eating well.

We even stop adhering to our medication and treatment plans.

So these things really are, you can see them as a public health issue.

Many factors address social connectivity, and as a citywide initiative age friendly Seattle is really well positioned to engage on a lot of these spaces so earlier this last year, we held a forum to convene various stakeholders and community members to talk about housing and aging in place.

We sit in a lot of transportation spaces because a lot of older adults stop driving and transportation becomes vital to their ability to move around the city and engage and just perform life's daily tasks.

Workplaces are a big place where social connectivity happens and community.

So earlier last year, again, we helped the parks team relaunch their walking program for older adults, for example.

And this fall, we hope to convene a learning network of folks in different disciplines to talk about social connectivity and what we can do collectively as a city and as a community to increase our connectivity.

So I mentioned we do offer a few programs ourselves, including our Civic Coffee Hours, which are held monthly in community.

And Council Member Herbold is familiar with this.

So I'm going to hand it over to my colleague, Eldad, to briefly tell us about these events.

Thanks, Dinah.

And I'd also like to thank Council Member Herbold to being part of our April Civic Coffee and being part of our panel.

Civic Coffee been around for about 15 years.

It's been housed in different parts of the city.

For the past four years, Age Friendly Seattle has hosted Civic Coffee in partnership with the Seattle Public Library.

This event serves as really a platform for older adults, their families, and caregivers to engage in meaningful conversations and discussions with government leaders, community leaders, and community members.

The Civic Coffee Hour are held monthly.

And for the past year, we have started collaborating with senior centers and community centers to bring the event to them instead of asking them to come to us.

And we have moved it around the city.

We started our year at the Lake City Senior Center, and we're ending it at the Southeast Senior Center.

So we're just all over the place.

not only do we collaborate with these locations, senior centers and community centers for location, but we also ask them, what are some topics that are important to your older adults?

What are some resources they would like to get?

And we tailored those discussions based off the feedbacks and suggestions they give us.

We've had a range of discussions, housing, access to care, public safety, brain health are a few of the examples of subjects that we've discussed with the community.

I would also like to highlight a very essential part of our civic coffee hour is our live interpretation.

We really believe that language should not be a barrier to participation.

We ask the community that we bring these events to, what are some languages that you need live interpretation on?

And we provide those interpreters on the spot.

That way we are really creating a space where older adults and their families can fully engage in these discussions and their native languages or English if they prefer.

This commitment to language access really underlines our dedication to amplifying the voices of all older adults in our community.

These gatherings are valuable opportunities for older adults to learn about current initiatives and for government officials to hear their unique perspective.

So I do invite you guys to join our future civic coffees if you like.

Thank you.

Pass it back to Dinah.

And I'll just briefly mention one other program we have before letting Meg close us out with the training, which is we administer a discount program for older adults.

So anyone 60 and above can qualify for this as well as any adult with a disability.

We recruit businesses all around Seattle to voluntarily join this discount directory.

And we recently did a survey of folks who are using the discount directory, older adults, asking them, what value does this program bring you?

And 87% of them told us that this program increases their social connectivity.

So we look forward to continuing to expand and invest in this program.

And now I'm going to hand it over to Meg to close us out with a preview of the age-friendly anti-ageism training.

And I mentioned some of this earlier on, but just to draw your attention to a couple more statistics, why do an anti-ageism training?

It's because ageism costs our society billions of dollars in healthcare costs every year.

There's studies have shown that it reduces our longevity.

And I think one of the most insidious things about ageism is that it robs us all of our ability to look forward to growing older.

And it prevents us from really having fully intergenerational communities.

Meg, I'll hand it to you.

Thank you, Dinah.

So we intended this to be a multi-faced project.

So phase one, we're examining our own selves first, basically starting with a critical view.

of our own mindsets and thinking around ageism as City of Seattle employees.

And then based on the lessons learned from our internal rollout, phase two will adapt the training offerings for external audiences and for community.

Next slide.

So with regard to timeline, the idea for this training sparked originally back when Seattle originally became an age-friendly city.

And then in late 2021, we convened thought partners to determine the content and the topics that we might address.

Late 2022, we hired a vendor who specialized in curriculum development and began production.

And then early 2023, we invited input from key partners, and those include our AAA Advisory Council, the Mayor's Council on African American Elders, our own HSD Change Team, and other aging and disability professionals here at HSD.

And then in June and July, we are in the final stages of completing these trainings and loading them onto our learning management system, as well as getting them onto Cornerstone.

And then this summer, we're excited to begin the rollout across for city employees.

So with regard to content, we leaned on our curriculum development partner to provide a progression where we started inviting us to explore our own biases, the what and the why of both aging and ageism.

We wanted to recognize the compounding ageism impacts when they combine with other isms such as racism and ableism.

And then the fun part, we invited colleagues across departments to share their own families or their own aging stories and personal stories about aging and we got a wide range of contributions and we were so overwhelmed and excited about capturing these stories of older adults.

Then we want to be sure there are tips and strategies so that both our professional and personal lives, we might consider how to be anti-ageist and definitely we wanted to include resources.

And so we have a curated list of those at the end of the training as well for supporting further learning and discovery.

So with regard to the rollout, we wanted to think intentionally, not just hope for the best.

And since it's a non-mandatory training for a city of Seattle employees, we wanted to build engagement with the launch.

So with that, a companion discussion guide would allow for units to both discuss and debrief together and think about how these insights might influence their work.

We want to make ourselves available.

and help facilitate the application of these concepts through the small group chats.

And then finally, as we look ahead to another iteration of training for community, we wanted to keep that feedback loop going and keep lessons learned in mind.

So we were hoping to grab a little clip to share and I think I'm really excited about this clip because I think it gives a personal face to the importance of social isolation that we've discussed as well as how our own ageist thinking can actually be internalized.

So I think this is a good example of that.

It's just 40 seconds.

A mini clip.

Oh.

All you may not be working here.

So maybe while we're.

While you're working on that.

Yeah.

I'm just gonna say a few words about my appreciation for your work.

I wanna just lift up the fact that a lot of folks don't know how much work this division did during the pandemic.

14,000 seniors were individually called in April of 2020 to check on their health and welfare and triage.

special needs.

During that same period of time, digital tablets were distributed to elders to foster social connectivity.

There was information pushed out about hotlines for seniors, a statewide service called Washington Listen, and the civic coffees were continued online.

I really appreciate and acknowledge the importance of that work.

I want to also thank my fellow council members for approving additional investments to address senior isolation during the pandemic, a total of $1.5 million, including $500,000 for integrated behavioral health services.

Partially targeted to seniors over 55. Convening senior centers, senior housing and stakeholders to develop a plan to safely reopen.

Funding to expand the stay connected program, the pilot partnership between the four senior centers.

And again, funding for Wi-Fi hotspots at 30 locations around the city.

This is all very critically important work and I really appreciate the fact that my colleagues also support this effort.

The reference to the resolution earlier, Just want to recognize the leadership of former Councilmember Bagshaw in getting the age-friendly resolution passed several years ago.

And just want to flag that I understand the approach being used, but I do also know a lot of people missed The mayor's office on senior citizens, because the perception is that that was a focused place where people could go for for advocacy on sort of problem solving dealing with barriers that people have accessing either city services or external city services.

And my office has recently met with a group of seniors who are struggling with the fact that there is no longer an office of seniors and actually is advocating for an older person's resident commission.

And so I'm hoping that maybe we can talk about how we can connect this group of seniors to your work in the advisory council.

Because there is an advisory council that I think is very robust and useful, but I think there remains to be some connections for folks in the community.

So just wanted to lift that up.

Training clip.

We may need to follow up, use this as an excuse to follow up with all of you.

I will preface it, it's a very adorable clip, so do enjoy it when you receive it.

Excuse me, this is Eric from IT.

I could try running it from my computer for you guys.

Would you like to do that?

Thank you.

Okay, give me a second here.

Yeah, if people do, that would be great.

Thank you.

I was experiencing balance issues and struggled with using a walker when out and about because I don't want to look or feel like a little old lady.

I started getting out less and less because of this combination of factors until a friend suggested a creative solution, trying hiking poles instead.

I got a hot pink pair, which I call my flamingo legs, and now go out for daily walks again using them.

This has improved my stamina and mental health and given me a new way to connect with neighbors as they comment on and ask about my cute fluorescent mobility aids.

Thank you so much, and we'll look at other ways to help push this out.

We all have have newsletters and understand that this is more an internal training, but I also understand that there is interest in making an external to the city as well.

I'm also really interested.

I know that you mentioned this is a voluntary internal training.

Um, and no, generally speaking that trainings that are mandatory, there are some requirements to talk to our coalition of city labor unions, but I'm interested to know from a management perspective when when you decide it is useful.

to have a mandatory training that then will trigger the need to discuss that with our labor unions and whether or not the conditions that led to the decision to have an anti-agentism training might also be conditions that make it worthy of consideration for a mandatory program.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you very much.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Sticking around.

Thank you.

Council members also for sticking around with Councilmember Peterson and Councilmember Nelson.

Stay in the duration.

We're able to maintain quorum through the end of the meeting.

It is 1230 PM and we are adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.