Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee 10219 Session II

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us again at our budget committee.

This is October 2nd, 2019. It's the afternoon session, our second session.

I'm Sally Bagshaw, chair of this committee.

And thank you, Councilmember Muscata, for being here with me.

And colleagues that may be running down the hall, please know that we've gotten started at 2.02.

This morning we heard from a very large group here that focused on the homelessness response from our city through multiple departments and I want to thank all those who were here this morning.

We did a deep dive and I felt it was a very effective time to learn more about what committees are doing and what departments are doing together.

So, this afternoon, after this presentation, we're going to have public comment, but in the meantime, we have a very full agenda that we're going to first hear about law enforcement-assisted diversion.

I have asked King County Prosecuting Attorney and my good buddy Dan Satterberg to be here, as well as our most recent recipient of the Genius Awards.

Congratulations, Lisa.

Why don't the two of you come right on up so we don't spend any more time in transition.

And then after the long dive, we're going to have a half an hour for Dan Satterberg, Lisa Dugard, and then we're going to dive into hearing from our departments that are also working on LEAD.

And I'm going to try to keep this on track because we also, after our second panel focused on LEAD, we're going to hear from the mayor's recommendation with TNC, our TNC, which is known as the Fair Share Plan.

And the Office of Sustainability and Environment, we have excused them this afternoon just because we know we're going to get into a lengthy session.

And if colleagues, if you have a desire to hear from OSC, you've been invited to call them and invite you to talk with them separately.

Council members, why don't you have a question?

Chair Bagshaw, just in terms of process, I know that many Uber and Lyft drivers are here, and I know that you want to do public comment towards the end, but I think it would be good if we do, if you accommodate public comment, if they want to, that is.

I'm not sure if they do want to.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Okay.

Yep, got your message.

Thank you.

All right, so at the table, I'm gonna start with Allison again.

If you will start introductions, and we'll just go around the table.

I'm Dan Satterberg, king county prosecuting attorney.

Brandy Flea, lead program manager for REACH.

Chloe Gail, the REACH program of Evergreen Treatment Services.

Great.

Thank you all for being here.

So Lisa or Greg, are you kicking this off?

I'll provide a little bit of context.

So the pre-arrest diversion program lead you're going to hear all about, so I'm not going to be going into it too much, but what I will say is that the program was funded in 2018 at $1.7 million, and the council added last year $462,000.

And the hope there was that the LEAD program that was not citywide could be spread citywide.

You're going to hear in a minute they've been challenged with a lot of new referrals.

So there'll be new information on that.

There was a, that 462 carried over into the 2020 budget, and there was a little added to it, about 288,000, and so now the entire program in the 2020 proposed budget would be funded at about 2.5 million.

So maybe the team is going to talk to us about this, but I thought last year we were expanding the program to other precincts and east, south, north.

That was the hope, that in 2019 the 462,000 that was added would be enough to expand into the south precinct and the southwest precinct.

And some of that has happened, and the program will talk more about that.

But then they also encountered quite a few more referrals from the police department.

So the entire citywide expansion hasn't happened yet.

Okay, very good.

Next, is that kicking it over to you?

That's all I have.

Okay, so to our King County Prosecuting Attorney, Dan Satterberg, you're up.

Good afternoon, and thank you.

It's an honor to be here before you today.

I wanted to give a little bit of context for the bigger picture of what we're trying to do here.

About a year ago, I announced that standards in my office have changed and we would no longer routinely file criminal charges against people who were found with tiny amounts of drugs.

We set that limit at one gram, although most of those cases involve much less than even a single gram.

And the reason that I made that decision, a couple reasons.

One is that our courts are not set up to help the people who go through the court system like that.

About 800 to 1,000 people a year would be prosecuted for tiny amounts of drugs.

Even though that's technically a felony for which they could go to prison, we put those cases into our district court and allowed a misdemeanor a plea to happen.

But the court was not set up to help people, and it still isn't.

And for the people who were going through that system, on average it would take a year between the time they were arrested and the time that the case resolved.

On average they would get one and a half warrants per case because they wouldn't show up for because the summons was sent to an address that they no longer lived in, average of 15 days of jail for each person, just long enough to lose any stability that they might have had in their life.

And so, for me, I look at substance use disorder and I think that we can all start with the premise that this is a disease, that people can get better, they can get helped, and criminalizing substance use disorder is harmful practice.

So I wanted to stop the harm.

The other reason is that a lot of people who were found with that small amount of drugs were getting help in the LEAD program, but it depended on what part of town they were being arrested in and what part of the county.

And so I stopped doing that in hopes that we could use that momentum to continue to build the other thing.

You see, it's not enough for me just to walk away from people who are suffering from substance use disorder.

We have to build that response.

And really, building alternatives is the essence of criminal justice reform.

See, these cases come to the courthouse and the jail not because we're the best option, but because we've already been built.

We have to build something else if we expect a different result.

You may have seen in August there was a New York Times Sunday article by Nicholas Kristof drew attention to that.

I think prematurely said that Seattle had figured this out.

We haven't figured this out.

But we do have a blueprint.

We know what works.

And today we're here to ask you to fund more of what works.

What Nicholas Kristof said was, as I see it, the problem is that while Seattle has done an outstanding job halting the war on drugs, it hasn't done well in financing the war on addiction.

It closed the law enforcement toolbox without fully opening the public health toolbox.

He goes on to say, we need a greater focus on service, mental health, housing, counseling, medication-assisted treatment, and more.

It should be a scandal, he says, that less than 20% of Americans with substance use disorder get treatment.

So I'm committed to continuing this effort, but I want your help.

I need your help if we're going to stop criminalizing drug addiction, if we're going to stop the war on drug users.

And that's what the war on drugs is, has always been, on the people who are most visible, most marginalized, disproportionately people in poverty and people of color, people who come to the attention of the police.

They're the ones who get put through the ringer of the criminal justice system, and they are also the people who respond the best to the kind of community-based health response that we're trying, that we've been doing with the LEAD program.

This isn't something we just thought of.

We've been doing this now eight, nine years, and we know what works.

And so I'm willing to do my part to end the war on drug users, but I need your help.

I'm just the prosecutor.

Lisa's just the genius.

We don't have budget authority to make these programs real and to make them work.

So together we can do it.

I think together that we can show the nation, and the nation is watching, that we can as a community shift the paradigm away from the criminalization of addiction to a harm reduction, service-oriented, community-based health response.

The LEAD program is our national model that was born here.

We're just asking you to understand today that it's under tremendous pressure.

And my fear is that we've taken the model, we've overloaded it.

The boat's starting to take on water, and it's going to sink if we don't help it.

And there'll be people around the country who say, well, that LEAD didn't work in Seattle.

It sank.

We know this program works.

We just have to take care of it.

and do so with a sense of urgency.

So I appreciate you inviting me over.

I'm happy to stay around and answer questions later.

Great.

Thank you for being here.

And one thing that you and I talked about some time ago is that the things we know that work are full.

And part of what you're talking about today is increasing the capacity.

Exactly.

Great, thank you.

All right.

Really, that's almost everything that we're talking about here today in the limited time that we have with you.

I want to just first acknowledge there are a number of geniuses at this table and even more in this room.

And this is an approach that really was born of the commendable openness and resolve of everyone, all the sectors in Seattle, from business to neighborhoods to civil rights groups to human services groups, from prosecutors to law enforcement.

to find a better way.

People's memories are short, but we were heavy utilizers of a court-based, jail-based intervention strategy for prolific offenders, people struggling with behavioral health conditions.

When I was a public defender in the mid-'90s all the way through the mid-2000s, and the verdict out on the street was that it was a terrible failure and that we needed to find another way.

So we start always with sort of due acknowledgement that there are many authors of this approach and many who have chosen to affiliate with it and lend it its support.

We wouldn't be here otherwise.

So let me, before I'm going to just steer us through the quick PowerPoint presentation, but let me just say for those not super familiar what LEAD is.

In simplest possible terms, LEAD is an arrangement in which individuals who commit law violations, commit crimes because of behavioral health conditions, substance abuse, substance use disorder, other mental health issues, or extreme poverty, And police know that, either because they have probable cause and they've made an arrest and they have someone in custody right now, or due to their community policing base and experience, they are aware that a person does chronically commit low-level crimes as a result of these conditions.

They have access to a wider range of strategies and responses than was traditionally the case, in particular, They can reach out to and make a warm handoff to what we call guerrilla social workers, people who are willing to do whatever it takes to form a connection with somebody who is often highly marginalized and difficult to engage.

sustain that connection and use known evidence-based, research-based techniques to grow that relationship so that people can strengthen and stabilize over time.

The goal of LEAD is to reduce crime.

That is its single goal.

We use strategies of human resources and social services to accomplish that goal.

Can I just stop you right there?

Yeah, sure.

I want you to say that again, because I think LEAD gets people confused with homelessness response.

And what you were just saying, I think, is the key to this.

So would you mind saying that sentence again?

It is one of my favorite sentences.

The single goal of LEAD is to reduce crime.

Because we know, I mean, that's a reasonable public expectation.

And there will be pressure on the police department and public officials to do that.

And fair enough, and that's legitimate.

But we should, when we attempt to accomplish that goal, use strategies that are known to be more effective than the over-incarceration that dominated my early adulthood and career as a public defender.

So let me run through this.

These are LEAD client outcomes from last year and this year, accomplished with a group that is highly, again, highly marginalized, rarely successfully engaged, and has enormous trust issues.

These are truly remarkable.

LEAD engagement happens within a harm reduction-based context, which means that case managers meet folks where they are.

and do not mandate or require any particular steps to remain in the service array.

That said, though people are not made to do so, they do participate in substance use disorder treatment to a remarkable degree, and those are the numbers that you see up here.

Folks are getting Permanent housing really because of the scale of the case managers whose leadership's sitting to my left.

This is despite the fact that this population is not prioritized within our homeless housing system to any degree and faces enormous challenges actually getting qualified for housing.

Substantial referrals to new mental health services as well.

I'm going to skip that slide because essentially everything else is summarized there.

This is our recent funding history.

You'll notice, I think, that this is a little different from the slide from the executive, and that's just because the executive slide includes funding that King County has allocated for LEED expansion outside of Seattle.

These are dollars solely directed to Seattle, and we're not allowed to use those additional dollars for Seattle-based referrals.

So...

The King County dollars you don't use for Seattle?

We do have, so the King County MID funding is divided into two streams, one for Seattle, one for outside of Seattle.

So we are limited to the funds shown here in orange for use for Seattle-based referrals.

There are three sources here.

The blue is City of Seattle funding.

The orange is MID2 funding that comes through King County.

And the gray is a grant from the Trueblood grant program that's administered by the court monitor under that case.

We can talk about that if you like.

Here's the crux of our problem.

We know from experience that LEAD works well.

And LEAD is an evidence-based intervention according to the state health authority, the Office of Justice Programs definition.

But it became that and was shown causally related to reduced recidivism and improved other outcomes under circumstances where case managers carried a caseload of about 25 clients.

It is not an evidence-based intervention when they carry roughly twice that, and we're nearing that point.

So in 2018, at 25 clients per case manager, REACH had 17 case managers and 17 caseloads.

So this is a healthy state program in 2018. In 2019, we proposed a greater budget increase projecting a referral increase than was ultimately funded.

And then referrals exceeded our projections even beyond what we had predicted.

And these are referrals by police and by social workers?

Primarily by police.

Because of the caseload pressures, we have virtually eliminated all referrals from non-police sources because we're fundamentally there to take who police, the people who come to the attention of the police and provide an alternate destination rather than jail and court.

It's great, it is healthy to provide other, a door for community referrals as well, because otherwise people call 911 and those referrals go to the police, but we don't have the capacity to staff those right now.

We presently only take the highest priority referrals from the business associations, identifying people who are serious problems in their neighborhood.

So we presently have 19 case managers funded at REACH, and we have caseloads for 33. So you have 19 people doing the work of 33. With essentially flat funding going into 2020, which is what we are looking at, we'll have 19 case managers funded at REACH.

And at projected current referral rates, and this is again calculated as conservatively as possible with us communicating to SPD that we can only take high priority referrals, those 19 case managers will be doing the work of 58 people.

This is a breakdown of how the LEAD budget gets spent, and you can see that the bulk of the expenditure is for direct services.

There is a city attorney liaison position, some costs for project management, and that is entirely paid by the King County funding source.

This is how the growth from 2018 to 2019 was allocated, so that 462,000 that I know, you know, folks were excited about the idea of trying to get to citywide coverage, and I'm looking at Councilmember Herbold.

So we did open some operations in the South Precinct.

We started and ended in Soto.

Soto was the locus of a crime spike, and there are more than enough people in Soto to consume all of the additional resources that we had.

We're trying very hard to deliver a noticeable improvement in the dynamics in SOTO, and so we've concentrated there.

We hope to be able to take a few referrals from the Southwest Precinct and Councilmember Herbold's district before the end of the year.

We're waiting.

until the Burien lead office is open so that the REACH case managers have a fairly nearby base of operations from which to reach those referrals.

So you can see three quarters of that growth was allocated directly to REACH staffing outreach and screening coordinator, supervisor, case manager, and some for salary increases that are necessary to recruit and retain staff to do this very difficult work.

This is the projected increase in referrals.

Again, this is based on our current experience with us really discouraging any non-priority referrals.

The orange line, the blue line, is the actual...

current referral rate, the orange line reflects the 300 priority referrals we've already received and had approved.

SPD has approved these and they have not been able to be assigned to case managers because of the extreme workload crunch.

And so what happens to those people?

They're just waiting.

And the fact that they have not yet been assigned has been a source of considerable frustration to the lieutenants and sergeants and officers we work with, particularly in the North Precinct.

So they're out.

They're not in jail.

They're on the street.

They are known to be committing crimes related to behavioral health conditions, and no one's doing anything about that other than sort of passively waiting for them.

for an officer to have probable cause and make an arrest.

If we had capacity, we'd be out proactively reducing and preventing crime by engagement with REACH case managers.

And that's why the police personnel who made these referrals are frustrated that we can't get to them.

Did you have a question, Council Member O'Brien?

I think I'll wait for two more slides.

I'm a little confused both by what the caseload and staffing slide shows and what I heard you say earlier about flat funding going into 2020.

My recollection of what happened in last year's budget cycle is the council added $462,000 for 2019 and then $750,000 for 2020. So that would be a $300,000 increase for 2020.

Councilmember Herbold, you are correct.

There was 462,000 added in 2019. That 462,000 carries over into 2020. And then there's 288,000 more that's added in 2020. So not flat.

moving into 2020, but I get the point that it doesn't meet the need.

It's effectively flat because of the salary adjustments that we're going to need to make.

We are losing the people who do the phenomenal work that has resulted in the outcomes that we've seen in LEAD.

and cannot recruit and retain the folks to do the work at current salaries.

So there is a projected scale increase.

And then we're also leasing neighborhood-based offices in the North Precinct at 105th and Aurora on Capitol Hill and in Soto.

And so those lease costs plus the scale increase completely absorbs that, yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Could you go back to the slide that has the parallel lines?

There we go.

I'm sorry.

I don't see a page number, but I think Lisa's comment is really important, and you said it so calmly, but I want to underscore it because I think it's a really important point.

If we are now retraining officers to make these referrals instead of make arrests, And the referrals that they're making go to positions that are not filled because of vacancies or inadequate funding, gaps in funding where we're not able to scale up the number of office or the number of case managers that we need or people are cycling out because of turnover due to the fact that you have high caseloads and I would say probably a desire to have more stability in the LEAD program.

I think we're going to lose trust with the public, and we're going to lose trust with our officers as well.

And this is a nationally recognized program.

And in terms of public health interventions and harm reduction strategies, this is the model.

So I just don't want the point that you made that there are individuals, and if I'm reading this correct, you should remind us the number of individuals who are waiting for assistance that are not getting assistance because we haven't scaled up LEAD adequately.

That is going to create a huge trust problem with the public and with our officers who've, I think, now begun to refer more and more, but they're not able to refer to somebody without us filling those positions.

I want to underscore that, and could you remind us of the gap that you're currently seeing?

Sure, I mean, this gap is people who were prioritized and cleared through, and we kind of have realized that there's nowhere to put them.

So now, of course, as you read in the crosscut piece this morning, what's happening is that the referrals aren't even being made, because it's kind of pointless to make a referral to nowhere.

So these people have names, they are on a wait list essentially for case management.

That line is, you can see it just maintains at 300 because we don't expect officers to continue in futile behavior.

That is going to fall off until we can offer a genuine response.

So they will be doing something else with those folks when they encounter them.

Right.

And I want to reiterate what you said twice already.

This program is designed to reduce crime.

And if we don't have places to put people or what we know works is already full, we got a problem that we can solve.

The last slide is just some observations that I am not sure are universally known about kind of the assets that LEAD uniquely has and can offer the city.

Number one, you know, everyone is fond of the concept of social workers sharing information with police and prosecutors, but the fact is that's an arrangement that we pioneered and that exists uniquely in LEAD and its sister program, Vital, that borrowed and sort of participates and has the same personnel.

And this is because of a release of information arrangement where clients, participants, authorize their case managers to share information as needed with police and prosecutors to strategize what should happen and to coordinate.

The case managers are not required to share the information and the participant is not required to share information with their case manager.

So to keep that information flowing, accurate, real-time information about the struggles people are having, their relapses, the kinds of crimes they're committing.

Everyone involved has to operate in an environment where that will not blow back on somebody.

And the prosecutors, the police, and the case managers in LEAD have evolved a really remarkable way of holding that trust so that prosecutors have good information, police have good information, But clients don't feel like they got burned by sharing that.

So it's really used to plan, coordinate, and strategize based on accurate information.

And this is unique.

So when we talk about, yeah, so that's just not a model that occurs sort of naturally and outside of this framework.

The lead database, this is a long sought and finally almost real creature.

Microsoft, with support from many of you, and particularly from Dan, made a contribution to fund this.

It will be live in the field in March if everything goes well.

This will allow every officer in SPD to when they encounter somebody in the field, know if they're in LEAD, and if they are, have an immediate action plan that is an alternative to arrest and booking, that is a warm handoff type of response, and could allow that officer to make a referral to LEAD through their records management system if that functionality gets turned on.

Super exciting, long sought.

It also will allow us to produce data reports at the push of a button, and all the governing partners, including yourselves, would be able to do that.

We have these leased field offices in three neighborhoods.

These have been important to case managers, but also to officers who want a place to be able to immediately bring people, refer people.

And there are folks who just won't go to the Reach Belltown office, which is also bursting at the seams.

We have a structured and agreed partnership between people who don't otherwise work together that works exceedingly well and where trust and communication have been established.

LEAD is a known quantity that has identified funding streams that potentially Seattle could add on to the local investment, not to fully solve our problems, but to augment what the city commits.

And then finally, it is an evidence-based intervention, and that is not something that rapidly can be achieved.

The Arnold Foundation funded that evaluation to the tune of half a million dollars.

We are committed to ongoing evaluation, and there is a plan to continuously update our recidivism evaluation to make sure that that crime reduction continues to be achieved.

So in order for us to reduce crime, as you've been talking about, and we see your numbers and what you believe the amount of resources you need in order to be successful to respond to the request for additional capacity across the city and the county.

What would you spend the money on that would be most effective?

I mean, overwhelmingly what is needed now is additional case management units.

So for every 25 active clients and potentially every 50 referrals, there needs to be a new case manager.

And at some point, the volume, I should let Chloe and Brandy address this, need to be supported by a training coordinator and some additional supervisory staff.

Is there also, Chloe, as you dive into this, is there a need for more places for you to divert?

So it's a divert to where?

So you have somebody that is being referred by a police officer, they get the case management that they need, but then what?

So that's if you don't mind responding to all of that, that system approach.

I will.

Brandy's going to speak a lot about our internal needs, but I will say in terms of community impact, we are actually incredibly resourceful in terms of accessing the homeless service system so that we have the ability to do appropriate referrals to all of our immediate shelters, the tiny home villages, and actually as Lisa's slide pointed out, We've been very successful at acquiring housing, even through coordinated entry and those opportunities.

As we know, all of those opportunities are still not to scale and not adequate to serve our folks, but we are resourceful in them.

The piece that we're going to add, and I contribute, I think, to the communities, is opening these three offices, which I sort of see in communities that are service deserts.

So one is way north on Aurora.

One is in Soto, which literally has no public restrooms in the whole neighborhood.

So we're going to create spaces that are accessible and bring people inside and allow them to engage.

Because we know that people when they're outside and they're completely distracted by their chaotic lives, it's a very challenging place to make a realistic decision and choice.

And so even just having spaces inside, those spaces will require staffing, they'll require resources, a warm cup of coffee, and then a human being who answers the door and helps do referrals every day.

So that just requires some resource there.

How many hours do you anticipate?

Is this an eight to five deal or are you going to try to expand the hours or do it three to midnight?

We don't know yet.

We're walking into that.

It really depends on our funds.

Right now, it would be skeletal.

I mean, those offices would probably not be staffed 24-7, but LEAD is a 24-7 response at this point.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

Ideally the current Belltown's office which is overwhelmed is 830 to 430 on most days and we probably have 60 people.

I welcome any of you to come down on any given moment.

All trying to come in and out of that space and access groups and therapy and mental health providers a low barrier buprenorphine program.

We have real opportunity also to create health spaces for people that are actively using and have mental health conditions where they access health services immediately.

I think that's a great point.

Thank you.

Great.

Brandi, did you want to add to that?

I'll just go ahead and start with mine.

So just, you know, our case managers are working with some of the most vulnerable people in the city.

Although all our clients are not homeless, a majority of our clients have been unhoused for more than two episodes in their life.

issues and just really they come from places where they have generational poverty, generational substance use.

On top of that, our elite participants of color have been negatively impacted by the war on drugs and have been dehumanized and criminalized.

And so by the time they even reach my case managers, they've already experienced, you know, mandatory drug sentencing, racial bias in housing, underserved mental health, medical health services.

And so for those participants and really all our participants, moving at the speed of trust is pivotal to our work and building those relationships to even make incremental change to get to their goals.

You asked some questions about just the caseloads and what happens to those folks that don't get connected to services.

And so when we talk about our, high caseloads, we really had to implement some emergent strategies to deal with those things.

And so some of our case managers, unfortunately, are across precincts, and they're working in two and three precincts to make that happen.

We're leveraging all of our resources that Chloe just talked about.

We're utilizing our screening and outreach coordinators to do some light case management.

until we could get them to a case manager.

It really impacts our street and our care coordination.

We meet people where they're at literally and figuratively, and so we're in green belts, under bridges, you know, storefront doorways, encampments, and our people welcome us into their environment so we can get to know them and build those relationships and try to figure out what's going to motivate them to move towards the goals that they want to reach.

And so having an adequate enough time to really do outreach, to really build relationships, to really do that care coordination is pivotal.

You can't do that when you have a caseload of over 40 people, especially people, especially our people that are suffering from severe and persistent mental illness, our true blood population.

Sometime we've had people be with them all day just to move them along the continuum, just to move them, into those things, and especially advocating for housing.

I mean, it's a full-time job to work through the coordinated entry system to get somebody housed.

The other impact on my staff that, you know, keeps me up at night, every night, is the impact of secondary trauma.

Many of our staff members come to this work because they love the work.

There's some connection to the work, why they're there, and they're committed, and they're beholden to making sure nobody falls through their cracks.

So on a daily basis, You know, they're working with people that are experiencing street violence, suicides, drug overdoses, sexual assaults, and still have to aggravate the system.

And that might be multiple times in a day.

And then to think that we don't have the team around them to support them in doing that work.

you know, definitely scares me.

And when we talk about systems change, I mean, we're all in this work to erode the system from the inside out, and it's slow.

You know, it's so slow, sometimes it's heartbreaking.

And so when case managers feel like nothing's happening, when our communities are overwhelmed with issues of homelessness and substance use, It feels like, I don't know if it's true, but it feels like we're moving more towards compliance models.

We're moving more away from harm reduction.

We are losing compassion for the people that are suffering the most in our communities, and our case managers carry those stories.

I mean, we kind of go with the model, and I know I might not have it correct, but Bryan Stevenson, we really believe wholeheartedly that our people are not the worst thing that they've ever done.

And sometimes for our clients, we're the only people advocating for them in partnership with law enforcement and prosecutors.

And so it's a heavy burden to carry when you know that there's folks out there that have been referred that we're not able to bring services to.

Right now, we work with the people that have the most legal involvement, who have the most vulnerabilities, that's who we go for first.

But those other folks still need help and still need services attached to them.

Thank you.

I'm going to call on I think Council Member Muscat, I've seen your hand.

Council Member O'Brien, I think Council Member Herbold, I think I saw your hand.

So before I run down the line, and I'm trying to keep track of time here a little bit better than I sometimes do.

My last question to you, and I'm going to have everybody else ask and then ask you to answer this, and this is for you, Dan and Lisa, is understanding that the goal of this program is to reduce crime through a harm reduction model.

I also would love to have your response of how do we build and retain the trust of the community that reads Danny Westneat, that sees the second part of Scott Lindsay's report yesterday and thinks, hey, everything's up in the air.

So I'm going to, that's going to be the last question.

I just want to give you time to think about it.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'm not sure which day it was, but last week we had a marathon presentation and one of the presentations included the judge from the Seattle Municipal Court.

Was that Friday?

Did you have a chance to catch the Seattle Municipal Court presentation?

Okay, great.

And we have two of our judges in the front row.

Excellent.

Good, good.

So one of the things, hello.

I don't recognize the faces, so I think it was different folks.

I heard you speak at the microphone, and then there was the other judge at the table.

One of the things that we talked about was the four pilot programs that the mayor has suggested could reduce recidivism, one she is calling enhanced probation.

And it was articulated that there needed to be A new program designed because, and I believe the phrase was these individuals, 168 individuals can't be helped by LEAD, couldn't be helped by LEAD, couldn't be reached by LEAD.

want to ask you if, given the chart that we just looked at before of the number of individuals who are on the wait list to be served by LEAD, do you think there is any crossover with these 168 individuals who potentially could absolutely be served by LEAD, had we had enough case management and resources directed to LEAD?

Yeah, I wasn't sure if we were doing all the questions at once.

No, that's good.

Thank you.

Really important question.

So when the first Scott Lindsey report came out this spring with that list of 100 people, the REACH team immediately did an analysis of the list and found that of the 400 people that we have actively worked with since 2011, almost all of whom at the point of referral were prolific offenders.

That is why they were referred.

Officers had known them for years, had arrested them scores of times.

Of that group of 400, only 2% were on the list.

Not because LEAD isn't a response to that group, because LEAD is an effective response to that group.

Because of the engagement, because of the coordination, we see over time a reduction in problematic behavior.

I will say, not for every single person.

On that list of 100, there was one person who was a long-term LEAD participant.

And honestly, no one has figured out an effective response to that one person, not just LEAD.

So LEAD is a container for almost any intervention.

People who are in LEAD do get arrested again.

They do get booked.

They do get prosecuted.

It doesn't preclude those other strategies.

That lady had been to prison.

She had been on a DOSA, Drug Offender Sentencing Alternative.

Basically, everybody had tried everything.

She's still doing what she does.

But she's the only one of those 400 people who is still sort of in that state showing up on that list.

Now, Scott did not look at all the prolific offenders, and there's a few more people like that on the lead caseload, but in general, this strategy essentially works with people who would have been on that prolific offender list and achieves a shift and transformation over time through both the incredible care and sort of therapeutic engagement by REACH, but also because it facilitates smart justice, if you will.

It facilitates prosecutors and police being able to talk about whether it makes sense to do a thing they have every legal authority to do, but that would inadvertently, in ordinary course of business, implode somebody's housing strategy or treatment strategy.

So it's really just all the pieces talking together about the rule of lead is, in all cases, do the thing you have the authority to do that makes the most sense under the circumstances and is the most likely to achieve behavior change.

So I would just say I think the evidence is very clear that LEAD is an effective intervention for that group.

And that is not to say that we have all of the pieces.

We do not have access to housing as is needed and appropriate.

There is no...

super effective intervention, treatment intervention for methamphetamine use, which we're increasingly seeing in this population.

So there are pieces that we are all pushing for outside of the core of case management.

But case management, this is what the UW evaluation saw, is that case management alone, plus this coordination, does remarkably better than the system as usual.

And that does not mean that we have reached the ceiling of how well we can do, but there's not much case for not using this piece.

Let me continue.

Thank you, Chair Beksha.

Not so much a question, but just sort of an observation.

I really appreciate everybody, you know, advocating passionately for the LEAD program, and I really appreciate all the points everybody has made, including Dan Satterberg and Brandy.

Your passion as a direct service provider is, you know, very clear.

Just to emphasize the point actually that actually Lisa you you made it already which is that there is no case to not have the LEAD program expanded even if it is simply just offering the bare minimum.

However in order for it to actually work in the way that it would be intended in the holistic way that it's intended we do need services and housing to be accessible to the case managers.

I mean, we need funding for the case managers.

That's like the first step.

But then if the case managers don't have anything to refer the people to, then also the program falls short.

So just wanted to add to the discussion how the data, which I'm sure you all being experts know about this, but just to share with everybody.

The two things, one is the most recent information that's come from the studies of the ceasefire policing program in Oakland and the rest of the Bay Area where they found, and it was a specific program targeted to reduce gun homicide, and they saw just stunning results, like 60% reduction or something like that.

in gun homicide and what's remarkable is that the best results actually were observed in the most disadvantaged communities, very low income, mostly minority and black neighborhoods and how impactful that was.

And the other thing I wanted to share also was, which again, I'm sure you all know, is this wages program that has been tried in Colorado, the Work and Gain Education and Employment Skills, which showed the early results of the program show that the recidivism rate of the wages program beneficiary is 2.5%.

I mean, it's incredibly low, clearly incredibly successful.

But again, just to draw the line on how the success of these programs has depended on the fact that they've actually had things to refer to, especially housing, but also jobs.

Council Member O'Brien.

I, first of all, thank you all for being here and for the work you've been doing and for the education that I've received over my 10 years here on what works and what doesn't work.

The collaboration that you've discussed, and I know that this has taken decades of a lot of people to get there, is really an amazing thing.

And I want to underscore, I think, the point you made a minute ago, Lisa, which is even without everything else and just using the existing system and just that level of collaboration and coordination, that alone makes a significant improvement over the existing system, which I know is not easy to do.

I have been hearing for some time, as we continue to put pressure, as we, the council, continue to push pressure on, we want more of this in more of our neighborhoods.

I want to see more opportunities for more referrals.

Been hearing that all the systems seem to be working towards that goal.

In particular, I want to give credit for the police department.

From the top to the bottom, where my understanding is that more and more officers are understanding the benefits of the system and are actively participating in a way that I imagine when the program started there was probably a little more reluctance, which is great to see.

And then I've also been hearing that some of the challenges we hear throughout our human service community you're also facing, which is it's really hard to find and retain quality people at the wages that you are funded to pay.

And that as the crisis continue, these various crises continue to get bigger, the system is starting to get overwhelmed.

And I've been living in fear of what does that mean.

And a lack of our able to mobilize the resources that I think are necessary to meet the demand have just been having my fingers crossed that I hope everyone can pick up a couple more people and work a little longer on the weekend, probably without pay.

And hopefully, we'll just all try a little harder and that'll work.

And I know to some extent that can work for a little bit.

And I've had the sense that we are getting to the point where that pressure is going to collapse the system.

Reading the piece in Crosscut today was so disturbing because I've been to a handful of events, whether they're fundraising or town halls.

career on the City Council to hear about what we should be doing about prostitution and who are the victims and who are the criminals in this.

And I have been educated to understand that the largely women on the street that are in the sex trade are victims in this system, not the criminals.

And it's amazing to know that our prosecutors, our cops, all understand that reality.

That is not an easy thing to pull off, I imagine, in other cities.

And then to read that, for lack of anything better to do, despite what everyone knows, we have now reverted to the old system.

And that is just crushing to me.

I look at, like, on that particular slice of the population we're working with, I see, like, three paths.

The worst path is to do what apparently we're starting to do again, which is we are going to arrest these victims, knowing that this is not going to solve a problem.

It may divert them from their activity for a week or two, but will not make a long-term solution.

We'll do all sorts of damage in the process.

And that's what it feels like we're heading towards.

The next worst thing, which I think is the dilemma that a lot of folks on the front line are in, is to do nothing.

That's to say, we're just gonna allow this behavior to go on because taking action when the only option I have is more harm, it doesn't feel appropriate either.

So we're just gonna do more harm, which is the reluctant place I have the sense people are in.

And if we only had those two options, I can understand where people in different positions than me might make different decisions.

I've ranked those one and two worse, and they might flip those around.

But we have a third option, which you've walked through, that everyone knows works.

And the only reason we can't do it is because in a city with the wealth that we have and a big budget, We have not figured out how to fund that.

And I think that as we work through these next four weeks of budget, it is critically important that we find ways to expand this system to meet that demand, because the alternatives are horrendous.

They're horrendous for the human lives, the reality of whether it's businesses or residents that are frustrated with crime.

They're horrendous, frankly, for the national and international response that if folks that want this to fail can point to and say it failed, not because the program doesn't work, but because we didn't actually fund it at the scale that was necessary to fund it.

We can take frankly one of the few tools, I will add permanent supportive housing on my list of things that I know works too, the few tools that we have clear evidence that solve the various crises that city council members and mayors around this country and around the world are facing right day and take it away from people would be devastating.

And I just want to look you all in the eye and say I will do whatever I can to find the resources necessary.

It's not going to be easy, because I can say we have a huge budget, and then I'll also tell you I don't know what to move around, because it's all going towards things that are good.

But we have to solve this.

If there's any more detail that I'm missing or nuance on the specifics about prostitution in North Seattle, please educate me.

I'm mostly just making a commitment to you all and a plea to my colleagues.

About as articulate a statement and conclusion as I could imagine.

Council Member O'Brien, we have one more question down here.

My question was asked by Council Member Mosqueda related to the contention the other day that there were large numbers of people on the prolific offenders list that would be ineligible for LEAD services.

So I appreciate Council Member Mosqueda asking that question and I think moving forward that's an issue that I think we have to weigh the likely benefits of more investment in serving people who are waiting for service, who are eligible for a program and who will succeed in this program versus funding a pilot project for folks without really any security of results and outcomes on that more narrow slice of the population.

Council Member, may I just say one thing very quickly?

When you're talking about Aurora and when we talk about challenge, I just want to say we are challenged in all the right ways.

We can't say enough what great partners, collaborative and Receptive and collaborative SPD has been.

They have changed their behavior operation by operation.

They understood that Reach has single parents and they have to rearrange child care to respond to operations, for example.

Last month, they gave us 44 referrals.

If you remember when we were talking about our estimate for North Precinct in 12 months, it was 50. That ended up being 250 for the first month.

When we say we cut down community referrals, we're talking about we have to say no to the scoff law mitigation team.

We have to say no to Aurora Commons, who's already identified dozens of individuals who may not have been on Aurora at this point.

We have to talk to other law enforcement base who are interacting with these populations.

We've been approached about navigating UW and some of the people there interacting on their campuses.

We're talking about parking enforcement, because they understand other RV people they aren't touching.

We're having to stop officers from further south interacting with community of color who are trying to sneak referrals in.

We are talking to people, stopping them on Southwest and trying to convince officers why they can't do referrals across the West Seattle Bridge.

So the demand that we are not even proposing in any of this is huge and real.

I just wanted to thank Council Member O'Brien for just shedding light on the issues of prostitution.

Just some more anecdotal information that for us it's really hard because the majority of those referrals were young women of color, primarily African-American under the age of 25, who they fell through every other system and now they're showing up here.

and for it to shift to prosecuting these victims, these children, in my eyes they're children, instead of providing them with services is disheartening.

It is hard to carry and those are the kind of things that impact my staff in terms of secondary trauma and really being able to stay in this work at the rate we're going now.

Brandy, your statement, too, about moving at the speed of trust, I think, is something for us to hold on to.

And I really respect what all of you have done.

So the question I had led the two of you to just conclude with, and Tara, thank you for your thoughtful response as well, which is, how do we retain and build the trust of communities so that we remind them that this program is one to reduce crime, that that's the purpose and the intention.

So I'm going to leave it to the two of you to conclude.

I'll take a shot of that chair back.

So I think the community trust is essential to this.

Right now, there's a lot of frustration.

You get it.

I get it from everywhere you go.

People are upset at the at the disorder that they see invisibly in some parts of town.

It didn't used to be like this and now it's worse than ever.

What people want and what they deserve is a response.

Now the response that we've traditionally had involves the jail and the police and the courts because those things have been funded.

This is a different response and one that we know works better but it's in the margins right now and it's in danger of being sunk.

So the quote, you know, we're talking about strategies and the mayor's work group had several strategies I don't I don't talk about solutions anymore I don't I think that's a little arrogant to say we can solve this But I think there are strategies that we can invest in and evaluate and decide what works better than others some of the strategies involve more probation in municipal court or a West wing of the jail the lead program is a strategy and it deserves also to be fully funded and fully evaluated stacked up against the others to say oh which one of these things works best.

So when people in a thoughtful moment say, well, do you think people are overreacting in Seattle to the social disorder?

I say, no, I think we're underreacting.

I think we're here right now asking for money because we have underreacted to the situation that we see in the streets.

There's no suggestion it's going to get better if we have flat funding.

In fact, flat funding endangers the community trust that we need to prove that this approach works.

I am really proud that when LEAD launched in 2011, standing behind Dan and then Chief Diaz and the others who were launching it were the Belltown Business Association, the Belltown Community Council.

This program has always from day one been rooted in a partnership of trust and transparency with the business and neighborhood groups that have to buy in or it's not going to work.

Because of REACH's approach and because of the approach of our project management team, I'm confident that those relationships are as strong today, almost nine years in, as they were when we first started, because we do regard those folks, you know, kind of are the ultimate litmus test.

It has to work for them, because we do hold those values dear, because we are about crime reduction, and we are about transparency and accountability.

You know, the Friends of the Waterfront is planning on trying to sort of secure their own lead case manager, no matter what happens with the budget as a whole, because they so believe as a neighborhood in the efficacy of this approach.

So we are 1,000% committed to partnership with the same business groups that brought you the system failure reports.

They are not wrong about the degree of the problem.

And we're just trying to be honest about the scale of a solution that fits that problem has to be right sized or this frustration will not end.

So we are a significant, we meaning the coordination and partnership between, that you see on the screen, here's Brandy.

This is not a picture Brandi expected to be in a few years back.

I just want to say this partnership, what it represents is the backbone, I think, of the way forward.

And it does not mean that people in LEAD don't show up before Judge Shadeed, he has a calendar to work with those folks, or Judge Gregory.

When they show up, though, the prosecutor in their court should know a lot more about the circumstances, the options, and the damage that they could do inadvertently if they didn't have that information than otherwise happens.

So this approach feeds all of the other pieces, jail discharge to what?

And I know you need us to give way.

I really, truly thank you for all your work.

And for having our King County prosecutor being one of the leads of LEAD, it speaks volumes.

So thank you for that.

Congratulations on the good article that you got from Nicholas Kristof, because not very often do we show up in the New York Times with being something very positive.

So well done on that.

All right, you're taking us home, and we're done on this.

I don't need to be convinced of the effects of LEAD.

participant and cheerleader since day one.

Great work.

And I love your concept of a strategy.

What's the bottom line?

What is the ask?

What's the additional expansion?

What dollars are we trying to achieve here?

Yeah, so here's, if you see 2019 total budget, this is Seattle lead approximately 4.5 million needed in 2020 at that conservative projected referral rate, 9.4 million.

So it's a little bit under a $5 million gap.

And we didn't style this as an ask because we're here to sort of be truth tellers and tell you what the situation is.

We all, you know, have the, we will be partners with the city in closing this gap.

If there are other resources, we will find them.

We have some ideas, but those other resources are not gonna come on board without a commitment by the city to get to scale and assume public responsibility for this over time.

So I think it's a matching situation if there is other help.

So President Harrell, I think we somehow we have to get from that second column to that third column.

And if there are other pieces of that solution, we will work hard to bring them to the table.

But we kind of need to know where we're going over the next, before the end of this budget process.

to know what 2020 will look like.

That might be that Ivy League education kicking in, but I didn't hear an answer out of that.

So what I'm going to talk about, what they taught us at the UW here.

So we got about a $9.3 million big ask.

The city may be 3,233-ish.

But what you're saying, Lisa, is, and I say those fondly, you're like my sister, so that we're just A third possibly, if the city could possibly come up with around a third, about a third, that's sort of, am I in the ballpark?

3.5 million, not to be rude, but just to dive into that.

So truly, yeah, truly this gap, we have to get there.

And city commitment to do that would be a big piece in leveraging anyone else who's going to help for sure.

And a plan to get to scale over a few years with complete public support, city and county, I think is the other ingredient from the other investors that might help us get to that number.

Am I in a ballpark though?

I think that would be viewed by anybody else who's going to help as a very serious commitment by the city.

Great.

What's that?

One more quick clarification.

Okay.

I appreciate Council President Harreld's line of questioning on the hard ask and the chair for wanting us to move on.

I do.

But I just want to make sure I understood.

You said this is a conservative estimate.

So an additional 4.58 million would be in a conservative number.

Is it more accurate to say you hope that the public investment from the city would be 4.58 million so that additional dollars could be leveraged by the private sector so that you could actually meet the need, the true need, not a conservative estimate?

Yes, right now we are unquestionably projecting to turn down many referrals of people who qualify for LEAD, commit crimes due to behavioral health issues, and would benefit from this intervention.

And obviously that's not optimal.

So yes, what you said is our sort of best case scenario.

And I just, Lisa, I apologize that I put you on the spot.

I just need to, this is going to be, the four weeks is going to go like this.

And we have a lot of requests.

I'm just trying to get an idea.

So I'm not trying to hold you to any numbers, just trying to get a feel of, but you helped me out.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate that.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you all for coming.

And I'd like to have the next group come up right away.

Thank you.

So for all of you who are here, thank you.

We had asked to have Dan Satterberg and Lisa Dugard and the providers at the table first so that they could present what they believed were the strongest arguments for why we should fund LEAD.

And now we've got folks from our budget office, mayor's office, from our police department.

to talk about the realities of what they're facing.

And I'm just going to turn it over and start with the new kids that just arrived.

How about, why don't we start down here, Ben, since you're used to introducing yourself.

Indeed.

Ben Noble, City Budget Director.

Thank you.

Tess Colby, Mayor's Office.

Mark Garth Green, Deputy Chief Seattle PD.

Chris Fisher, Seattle PD.

and Assistant City Attorney for the Seattle City Attorney's Office.

I'm the lead liaison prosecutor.

Thank you.

Very good.

All right, who's kicking this off?

I am, and I was going to do just, we just have one slide, so I was going to provide you some information on the funding that is provided in the 2020 budget, and actually, as you can see here, some history as well.

And then turn it over to others who are more expert in the area, and then I'll, to answer questions, and also provide some additional background.

So, again, you can see from the graphic here, which highlights funding provided for LEED from both King County and the City of Seattle, excuse me, since 2014. I should note that these numbers don't align exactly to the numbers you just saw from LEED itself.

This includes some of the funding on the public side that supports the work as well.

So it's a slightly higher number.

So there's staff on both the county and city side in different

Are they in the ballpark, though, as being close?

Yeah, yeah.

If you try to line them up exactly, they won't.

I just wanted you to understand why.

The pattern here of the growing investment and the growing partnership, which is really the point that I wanted to make here with this graph, is demonstrable.

So you can see from a relatively small initial investment of roughly a million dollars a year, overall program will grow to more than 6 million in 2020. The math on this is labeled incorrectly.

It says 605% growth.

It's actually 505% growth, only to say that we've obviously been developing and growing the partnership significantly over the past now six plus years.

A couple things to note here.

One of the things that we are looking forward to was already referenced is that the implementation of the database expects to come on in the spring.

One of the things that the executive is looking to do is to develop more specific performance metrics in this contract.

Given the scale of the level of investment, we think it's important to track, I mean, both issues about reduced crime, because again, agree that the primary goal here is about crime reduction.

But it was noted that a fair share of participants are, enter the program homeless, so understanding whether or not we are successful in finding them long-term stable housing.

And also the success we are having in both placing and then moving them through drug and mental health treatment services and other services as needed.

Those are all things that we think are important to track.

And we think that with the database we'll have that and we'll have in the structure of a contract opportunity to establish specific metrics around that.

Great.

And I'd just like to say thank you.

I think there's been some confusion over, well, over many of the years that LEAD has been in development is that there's a confusion about its purpose, which is really to be a criminal justice reform tool to reduce crime.

And it gets conflated with the fact that we have that many more people who are remaining without the 24-7 shelter that we're looking for.

And that I think LEAD has been judged sometimes on how effective has it been in terms of getting people housing.

And so I'd just like to keep those two separate as possible and that we can really dive into is the investment for LEAD and again a criminal justice reform effort supported by the executive and moving forward in a way that's really going to make an impact.

So just in terms of the finances, the 2020 proposed budget follows through with the endorsed level of funding that was approved by council.

And so we are continuing to grow the overall funding level.

Obviously, you've heard today about potential opportunity to expand that further.

I think some folks here at the table will be able to shed some more light and perspective on what that growth might look like and what could be driving it.

The other thing I do want to note, and again, this was also raised consistent with the presentation last Friday on some of the investments around the recommendations of the High Barrier Work Group.

And again, I am not a subject matter expertise, but the folks in the High Barrier Work Group are and were as they worked through that.

The Executive firmly believes that that for different folks we need different strategies, and that LEAP works for a good number of folks in important ways, but there are also folks for whom it does not work and has not worked.

And the pilots that are proposed in the context of the high barrier work group recommendations are designed to see what other strategies could work.

And I thought Prosecutor Satterberg made that point well.

today as well, that the lead is valuable, but that it is one of many strategies, and that trying some other ones that could be best for some other folks is also worthwhile.

And the budget reflects that notion that we need to be trying a variety of strategies for the wide range of folks who are encountering issues on the street.

Thank you very much.

So just a couple quick comments, really building on what Ben has just said.

Presently, the lead contract sits with HSD.

And as we talked about this morning, HSD has committed and really doubled down on performance-based contracting.

We recognize that there are potentially some issues with that.

We still think that data-driven investments and understanding really what the, value proposition is of everything that we're investing in is very important.

Prosecutor Satterberg made, I think, a really important observation, which is substance use is not a disease.

And for us to really understand the appropriate interventions and to be successful addressing substance use, We really need to know, as he said, who's getting help and who's getting better.

So that's a good example of the kind of metrics that we are working with Lisa and the LEAD team on.

We really appreciate her partnership in this work as we work through development of performance metrics that can give us a better sense, not just of what is working for the individuals and participants in LEAD, but as important, better understanding of the model.

and the replicability of the model.

Ben accurately stated that there are a variety of needs out there, that not every program works for everyone.

What, you know, what medical intervention for me might not work, works for me, might not work for somebody else.

This is true of almost everything in the world.

We are not all cookie cutter individuals.

And for that reason, it's truly important for us to understand more deeply how the model is working, who it's working for, and how we can make sure that those folks for whom it does work are getting into the program and how we can make sure that we're modeling programs that might not be as effective for some folks, where LEAD might not be as effective, making sure that we've got alternatives for other folks.

In the end, I think we're all on the same page in wanting to see LEAD succeed.

And we really want to continue our partnership to, again, develop those metrics.

We are extremely excited about the database that's coming on.

I've seen the data points in it.

It's very comprehensive what they are proposing.

And I have a lot of confidence that appropriate data analytics will really get us the kind of information we want so that we can all be successful together moving this forward.

Great.

Thank you.

Did you have a question?

I did.

Yeah, question, Tess.

Thanks for this breakdown.

And this chart's really fascinating to me.

I know that when the county expands lead to different cities, like I know last year they expanded to Burien, as I recall.

The way we look at it when a participant of lead is diverted from an arrest, it's the jurisdiction that they are sort of, I'll just use the term arrest because I don't know how else to explain it.

If they're arrested in Burien and diverted, that's a That doesn't affect our numbers.

But if there's someone in Seattle that's Seattle Police, do we track the data on where the people are from?

So for example, if we are arresting, again, I don't know how to term it, because they're not really arrested.

But if they're arrested a lot in Seattle, but they all reside in Renton or Federal Way, do we track that?

Because when we look at the analytics, I'm sort of curious as to who are the recipients of our services.

This model just sort of tells me what the county and the city are paying for, but I'm sort of curious as to the recipients of our services.

So when you say our services, are you referring to LEAD?

Yes.

So that's an excellent question, one that we would like to know the answer to as well, to the best of my knowledge.

We certainly haven't seen that level of information.

I suspect that the deputy chief may have information about what PD the police department tracks, but I've not seen that level of information out of LEAD.

And I'll tell you why my stream of thinking is, is that I know that in many cases, some violent crimes, as an example, in the youth area are young folks that don't live in Seattle, that some of them come.

And I read statistics and articles about them coming to Seattle, and there's some bad things in there.

go to a different jurisdiction.

And so I'm always curious about who we're spending particularly some of our softer services on.

I'm not making a judgment one way or the other, but when we do split funding on programs, county versus city, I'm sort of curious as to who we're spending it on.

Yeah.

That's a great question.

So I can respond to that for you, Councilwoman Merrill.

So if an officer does an arrest diversion, we still create paperwork, we still have a general offense report, so we do have access to that data.

I think a point of clarification on this, with the number of referrals, law enforcement assisted diversion lead was set up, so in lieu of booking.

So that we would find somebody with a minor amount of cocaine or prostitution, something along those lines, and divert them to the jail.

That still exists today.

But we also have a new portion of it which we call a social contact referral.

And those are people that we're coming in contact with sometimes when we're out dealing with the homeless.

other people who are not involved in that criminal aspect of what we're doing.

So roughly when you start to look at those numbers, right, in 2018 only about 18% of our referrals were actually for arrest diversion.

Roughly about 80% of those were actually social contact referrals.

So we don't capture that data on that because we're not generating a police report on that because there's no crime involved.

So I think that's an important distinction to make.

That evolution of the program is, again, one of the reasons we think that getting the performance metrics and getting the database up is really critical, because no reason to think this, but it could be that different aspects of the program are serving folks who are diverted that way or brought into the system that way versus the arrest.

It could be different.

We don't know.

But again, we'd have that opportunity going forward.

Chair, I think it would be useful for us to take a look at what LEAD is reporting to the county in building out our metrics because it's my understanding that they are reporting to that level of detail to King County.

So I think I would like the opportunity to learn from King County on what they're doing and the story it's able to tell about the performance of LEAD.

Do you think they're doing something differently than we are?

I think they're collecting the level of detail that we're talking about having interest in receiving here.

All right.

Do you know which department is doing that?

I believe it's the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, but I'm not 100 percent sure.

Okay.

Let's find out whether they are doing that.

Chloe is nods.

Yeah.

Chloe is saying yes.

Say it again.

Okay, yeah.

Thank you very much.

Not the Prosecuting Attorney's Office, but is that Leo's group?

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

Well, we'll...

It's not Leo.

Well, just a moment, please.

Do you have the answer to this?

I'm hearing that the answer is the Office of Behavioral Health.

I actually don't know who oversees it.

I know that it's not Leo because they oversee DBA.

So it's not Leo and it's not Dan.

So we'll keep looking.

But we will figure it out.

My research tells me that they're about 85% homeless.

I just heard that.

So it's artificial in terms of how many of them.

And that's because my research is just, I could hear.

Thank you.

All right.

We've got some work to do there to answer the question.

You've got a good one.

Council Member Mosqueda, I didn't even know you had your hand up.

I just figured you had a question about this one.

You are so good.

You're so good.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And I appreciate that you led the conversation as well with the folks from LEAD and the case managers and folks who've been experiencing the need on the ground.

And I know Council President Harreld didn't mean to put our friends on the spot, but I think the question that he asked was so important just in terms of how much do we need to scale up these programs.

Again, as we think about our effort to go region-wide with responding to the crisis that is homelessness, I think that the folks at LEAD provide a critical service.

And the reason that I think is important to see the nexus between the LEAD program and what we're trying to do with the regional level is we know that being homeless is not a crime.

And yet, the data that we keep pointing back to shows that more people are getting swept into the system because the underlying issue is they don't have a home or they're self-medicating because of the crisis and the trauma of being homeless.

So, I love that LEAD helped us underscore repeatedly that their overall goal is to reduce illegal activity.

and to reduce crime.

I think that's so important that we remember that.

The Crosscut article this morning talked about 120 people getting arrested, the vast majority being women, as Councilmember O'Brien talked about, and yet when they got into the LEAD program, they got housing.

They got case management, and they got employment services, and prevented future arrests.

That's exactly the type of services that we want to do.

So when I look at the need region-wide and recognize through this chart that LEAD is providing a regional approach, I think it's an important nexus for our future conversations about how funding could be better served for our regional efforts.

I also want to just take a quick second to challenge the narrative that started this panel, because what I heard from Director Noble and what I heard from representatives of the executive was that it's important for us to test additional strategies, for us to try new approaches to reach people that couldn't be reached, for us to pilot programs where other people haven't been served.

And none of those things could be true if individuals can't get into the system because LEAD doesn't have the funding it needs.

The chart that we saw from LEAD shows that people are failing to get into the case management they need because we haven't scaled up.

So I do think it's an unfair narrative that is again being put out there that somehow the 168 people, for example, or more, that we are trying to pilot or test or try new strategies to reach them is somehow needed.

doesn't actually hold water for me.

Because these individuals haven't been able to get into the system.

And had we had the resources to scale up LEAD, they would be getting in.

And I think what we heard is that of the 100 or so that got into the program, I'm sorry, of the 100 or so prolific offenders, I should put that in quotes, that were featured last year, only one had actually been in the LEAD program.

No, I don't believe that there is a narrative that we need to be trying testing or piloting new programs when it sounds to me like from the previous presentation They're not getting into the program in the first place because we haven't scaled it up I just think it's important to underscore that again because it's not that folks have failed out of the program They haven't been able to get in

Thank you.

So when we deal with complex situations like we have in Seattle, the intersection of mental health, substance abuse, homelessness, and property crimes as such, I don't believe that there is a one-size-fits-all solution.

that we have to have as many resources as we can to offer to folks.

And it's not through enforcement.

Enforcement is actually the last line, in my opinion, of this.

But to have those resources available to the officers to do that type of thing.

There's, I think, a little misinformation that the direction of change of enforcement in the North Precinct was not due to the inability to get people in to lead.

It was due to the fact that we did not believe, I did not believe the lead was a good solution for a lot of those folks up there.

We have a prostitution problem in the North Precinct.

No good deed goes unpunished.

And when law enforcement, together with the community, came together and shut down Backpage and Craigslist ads, they forced a lot of those women who were making their livelihood from the websites, from the phone books, out onto the streets as well.

We have people that are working the streets that aren't necessarily substance abuse.

They have homes.

Some of them choose to do what they're doing.

We need to have some type of intervention with them, whether it be LEAD or something else.

But we have to address these types of things.

To simply go about doing the same thing over and over again becomes problematic if it does work for some but not for others.

We've had two homicides in the North Precinct on Aurora directly related to prostitution activities.

I have to do something in order to make that population safe as well.

And so when we do it, I firmly, and I would like to say just one moment please ma'am, I firmly believe in LEAD.

I believe we should fund LEAD.

All I'm saying is I need a lot of resources to deal with the complex problems that we have out there.

Thank you for concluding that way, that you believe we ought to fund LEAD.

I think that for me, and I could just feel some of the hackles raising with some of my colleagues, the idea that we can conclude that women are prostituting themselves for a choice is something that is almost shocking to even say.

We consider it much more of a survival crime.

to the extent that we can help these people through investing a few million dollars more into the precincts so that you have those options.

I'm feeling very strongly up here that it's going to have that support.

And so Councilmember Muscata, did you?

Yeah, thank you Madam Chair.

And then Councilmember Sawant.

You're talking about people on Aurora making choices.

The only person making a choice in terms of prostitution are the Johns who are stopping to see if people are willing to get in their car.

Those folks who are working on the street are not making a daily choice to go out there.

They have in many cases, resorted to the last option to sustain.

If you read the articles repeatedly, you will see people are sustaining themselves, their families, their kiddos.

This is not a choice people are making as in they're housed and they have all access to health services and they feel economically stable.

People don't make this choice.

So to me, it underscores the question that you've been asking of these other programs.

Where is the data?

If you want these organizations to be held accountable to meeting some standard of data that you're trying to get people to prove their effectiveness and you're basing referrals for arrest instead of to lead based on your assumption or gut or sense that somehow it was better to arrest them than get them into lead, I want to see the data.

I'd also like to see data that shows that people are making this choice.

Because absolutely, in my 15 years of working on this issue, from human trafficking and labor trafficking and standing up for workers' rights, I have never been so shocked by such an ascertation.

And I appreciate that, Madam Councilwoman.

And that comes from my experience of actually working the street up there and talking to a young lady who specifically told me that she was there to make money and enjoyed it.

But beyond that, and I still believe that that young lady had some problems.

This is just not acceptable that you're speaking this way.

Did you just say that they're enjoying it?

I mean.

That's her words, not mine.

But what I'd like to say.

I don't think you should be speaking for women at all and much less women, much less in the context of the statistics, worldwide statistics that the people who get into sex work primarily get into it because of financial constraints imposed on them by the system.

That does not mean that we're going to sit and litigate every single woman's choice.

That is not the point here.

We're not going to question anybody's choice, but at the same time, we're not going to pretend that the overwhelming statistics don't exist, that overwhelmingly women and LGBTQ people get into this because of financial constraints.

I mean, can we at least keep reality in front of us?

So many of you come here and talk about data and data-driven and performance metric and it's all about data.

Well, you're not looking at the data at all and just the language you're using is just simply not acceptable.

And I also want to know how much interaction the police department has had with organizations like the Sex Workers Outreach Project, who will tell you a lot, because I think the police department needs to understand it.

Clearly, it's not about you individually, but what you are saying reflects, at the minimum, a deep ignorance about just the whole context of sex work.

But I wanted to connect this to a larger point also that you're making, I don't think is, again, accurate based on what we think the problems are.

I mean, you said that we can't have a one-size-fits-all approach.

Yes, we agree with that.

However, I don't agree with formula.

presenting the idea of LEAD as a one-size-fits-all.

That's just the whole point.

It's not a one-size-fits-all.

And LEAD is a model.

Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion is a model, meaning rather than have people go into jail or worse yet have a prison sentence, you actually give them social services.

But what their needs may be, differ based on what their situation is.

And yes, you're right, not everybody who gets involved in this is homeless, but they have other problems.

Some are facing housing issues.

So in other words, it is a myriad of issues that are being dealt with.

So it is not a one-size-fits-all, but I don't understand how you can use just the point about sex work in isolation to say that somehow LEAD is not working or create this that somehow LEAD is not meeting the needs of society and that's why, you know, sort of this, if you're not suggesting, you're certainly implying that it's not worthy of the full funding, which I think it is.

So if I may, I apologize for my words that they cause defense.

That was not the intent of it.

The intent was just to illustrate the fact that the complex nature of it, that I do firmly believe that the women out there are victims.

Most of them are being trafficked.

And we are committed to rescuing those victims.

My point was that we need multiple resources to deal with such a complex problem.

And that's where I stood.

So I do apologize if I offended.

That was not my intent in any way, shape, or form.

Further comments?

Heather?

Thank you.

I guess the point that I would like to try to make is as the prosecutor who's been the liaison for my office for the last two and a half years, the information that we get from lead case managers make us better prosecutors.

because we have the information that's necessary in order to create individualized recommendations that the clients can be successful with.

The ultimate goal is to reduce their criminal justice contacts with the information that we get from the case managers.

the prosecutors are able to do that.

I oversee all of the lead clients that are part of or that find themselves charged with crimes in Seattle Municipal Court.

When I first started two and a half years ago, there were 357 lead clients.

As we know from the previous slides presented today, that number is now 754. On average, there's about 20% that are involved in Seattle Municipal Court.

I oversee filing decisions and all substantive negotiations involving those cases pre and post disposition.

The only thing I don't do is I do not have the capacity to take cases to trial should that be the trajectory of the case.

To date, there have only been two cases that have gone to trial.

And there have been thousands of hearings, hundreds of cases, and hundreds of individuals each year that are matriculating through Seattle Municipal Court charged with crimes.

As a mainstream prosecutor, which I was for 15 years prior to taking on this role, you have the four corners of a police report and the four corners of a criminal history in order to try to figure out what is going to change that individual's behavior, what is going to effectively exit them from the criminal justice system, and that is why lead is such an important component, such an important partner for my office, because for some of these prolific offenders or for individuals who find themselves repeatedly in the system, we have the information and the tools that we need in order to, as I've already mentioned, create those individualized plans.

Without lead case managers partnering with us and providing that information, the only way we get information about the defendant is from the defense attorney.

And their job is to represent the client.

If the client is not authorizing the defense attorney to share information with the prosecution, we just don't have the necessary tools to create those individualized plans and really be successful in helping individuals exit the criminal justice system.

Seattle Municipal Court at the beginning of this year created a calendar that LEAD cases could go to, which has effectively created a space where LEAD clients have had some consistency with the resolution of their cases.

Judge Damon Sedid is in the courtroom.

He is the judge that currently oversees that court.

Also, in that courtroom, we're able to create a very different experience for the client.

And I think that that's invaluable.

A lot of these individuals have had multiple contacts with the criminal justice system where they've heard the same message from the prosecution.

You've done something wrong.

The judges said that you've done something wrong.

And this is what we're going to do to you.

It's not about the person.

Each Wednesday morning when we have this consolidated calendar, we are focusing on what the individuals are doing in between their court hearings, whether it's something as small as obtaining a Washington State ID, which is important to applying for benefits, applying for housing, all the goals that are intended to stabilize the individuals and, again, reduce their contacts with the criminal justice system.

And we're doing that to try, again, to change that messaging.

Come into the courtroom.

We will celebrate what it is that you are doing right.

We will address what you're doing wrong.

But we're going to try to do it in a way that's meaningful and deliberate.

And we spend a lot of time not always agreeing, but we Ultimately, for the city, there's a balance of victim and community safety with the decisions that are made.

And obviously, the court has its philosophies as well.

So I am here, perhaps I should have been on the first panel when it was a little bit more of a different conversation that was happening.

But I'm here to say that expanding case managers is necessary.

Case managers are constantly apologizing to me because they weren't able to get back to me in a timely fashion, or they couldn't get to see a client because they just don't have the capacity.

They shouldn't have to apologize to me.

So absolutely advocating for case managers to, for there to be more case managers.

I also can see on their faces, they have such a strong connection with their clients.

And to not be able to do the job the way they could if they just had fewer clients, you can see it's taking its toll.

So I am here to say that our office, the Seattle City Attorney's Office values the relationship that we have with LEAD, having the case managers in the courtroom to help us do our job.

do our job better and more effectively.

And I'm also here to say that when you have a jump from 357 clients to 754, it's getting a little bit more difficult for me to spend the time necessary to make sure that I have that opportunity to listen to the information and really make those educated decisions and make sure that I'm able to do my job as a prosecutor as well.

Heather, thank you very much for that.

Quick question, and you've talked about it, but I just want you to give me a statement.

Does the city attorney's office support this approach, and do you believe that it is a crime reduction strategy worthy of our investing, essentially doubling the case management, the numbers of case managers?

100 percent, yes.

Thank you.

Any other questions from colleagues?

Okay, any other statements from the board down here?

Good, okay.

I just had one statement just because there's one piece that I think it's important to add into the conversation is about the projection for the referrals.

I think we know from seeing the change in the nature from arrest diversions to social contact referrals and from talking to officers on the field, some question about the slope of that line.

From hearing from officers, a lot feeling that, especially in the north end where a lot of this sort of surge came from expansion to the north, a lot of the sergeants and officers feeling they may have tapped the population they would refer.

And so if they were going to focus on arrest diversions instead of social contact referrals and some sort of prioritization of referrals, that that slope may not be the same as the projection.

So the need may not be as great coming from police department referrals.

I think we need to scope out, is this primarily an arrest diversion model or a service referral model?

I think that's also a question in terms of the capacity of the program, because we're missing some of those data for the social contact referrals.

We don't know the extent to which there are criminal justice involved.

Is it as heavy as the initial rollout of the program where we saw heavy arrest aversion and we knew the histories from the evaluations that UW did?

I think as a data person, what I'm looking for.

is since 14, the last point of the data, when we did the evaluation with UW, who's in it now?

What's their history?

What's happening to them?

We know what happened from that 11 to 14 segment, thanks to those evaluations.

I'm mostly curious, and I know I've I totally agree with Lisa that an evaluation takes a long time and costs a lot of money to do a proper one that you would get peer reviewed.

But I think as a city and in partnership with LEAD, I sit on the evaluation working group.

When I first came to the city, I was working in a nonprofit where we helped LEAD figure out where would it expand with the city.

I think together as a team, we could figure out what's been happening since 14. I don't think we need a full force external review to get a sense of what's happening right here on the ground.

I think that's the sort of study you would do to continue to expand it to other places.

But I think what we're asking, at least me as a data person, is what's going on right now with the clients?

Who are they?

What's happening to them?

And I think that's the value of the database that's supposed to come online is getting some sense.

Right, and I believe that that database is underway, and I heard today from IT that an individual has been identified who will be actually functioning as the key contact.

And again, I want to acknowledge the work that Lisa and Dan have done to get that $300,000 grant from Microsoft when we were struggling.

to get that, and now we've got it.

We've got an IT person that is going to be dedicated to that.

So I hope within a very short period of time, you're going to start seeing what you're asking for, and all of us want to make sure that it's accountable and that it's saying, yes, this is worth investing in, but from everybody we've heard from today, from the city attorney to the providers to our prosecuting attorney to those people who have designed this program, it's very valuable to give the court the options.

Did you have a closing statement?

Closing statement is I'd said in an earlier hearing that I thought the chief should be here.

And I did get communications from her that she was, I think, back aged or in transit.

I accept your apology on what you said.

I'm not sure if your apology, if you're apologizing for what you said or that you said it.

It's a fundamental difference between those two.

But I will say that.

You're not standing alone for saying things you wish you could retract.

I have a history of doing that myself.

But I will share with you that one of my concerns with top leadership is really, do they get this work sometimes?

And when you're talking about a certain human being that is, in my opinion, is perhaps generational experiences of abuse, and drug issues and just experiences that perhaps, I don't know your personal story, Chief Garth Green, so I make no presumptions on how you were raised.

But being close to the streets most of my life, that I tend to not look at it that way, that these are choices people make.

That this is an investment strategy in saving lives.

And I hope from the top all the way down, that they really get why we are looking at this as an investment strategy.

My job is sort of simple at this point.

Well, it's not simple.

The task is simple to do, and that is we just have to find the money.

But I hope that you take very seriously why I think you offended a lot of people in that kind of, I say attitude or just words.

Because I don't look at it as choices when looking at the history of many of the people in this program.

Thank you, sir.

Council Member Herbold, do you want to?

OK.

Very good.

Thank you very much, all of you, for being here.

And our next item is the TNC Fair Share Plan.

And so I'd invite the next members of the panel to come up.

OK.

I think Shefali, I see that you're part of this.

And Kate, Office of Labor Standards, I think Ben, you're back.

Thank you very much.

Very good.

This is where the fun starts.

No kidding.

All right, can I ask for introductions?

And we will start, Amy.

We're Council Central staff.

Right on down the line.

Hi, good evening.

I'm Kate Garman with the Mayor's Office.

Karen Levitas, Office of Labor Standards.

Shefali Ranganathan, Deputy Mayor.

Thank you.

And who's kicking this off, Amy?

Yes.

Good afternoon.

Today we will hear a presentation from the Mayor's Office on their proposed tax on transportation network companies, which we call TNCs, and proposed protections for TNC drivers, including establishing minimum compensation for drivers and establishing a driver resolution center to address driver deactivations.

As Council is aware, over the past five years, there have been several Council actions to establish policies and regulations for this emerging industry, including Ordinance 124524 in 2014. We had, in 2015, Ordinance 124968. And most recently, Council passed Resolution 31808, establishing a work program to review the four-hire industry.

specifically looking at data sharing requirements, rates, a potential minimum wage for drivers, and better policy alignment and parity through the industry.

As you will hear, this proposal touches several issue areas and so will involve several council central staff members.

Karina Bull will be lead on the minimum compensation and driver resolution center legislation, and I will be lead on legislation related to fees, taxes, and spending.

And with that, I will turn it over to Deputy Mayor Ranganathan.

So first of all I want to thank you for the opportunity to be here this afternoon to talk about the fair share plan.

I want to specifically thank Council President Harrell, Council Member O'Brien and Council Member Mosqueda for your leadership on this issue.

You know it is your work over many years that has resulted in the point where we are.

where we continue to make progress on this issue.

And I'm excited to talk more about this.

Today in the presentation, we're going to spend a little bit of time talking about the specific ordinances and the details of those plans.

But I just want to spend a little bit of just a moment to context set for you all.

You know, we have seen rapid growth of transportation network companies in our city.

Last year, they accounted for about 24 million rides in the city of Seattle, more than half of those were in our center city.

So that's the zip codes of downtown Capitol Hill, Belltown, and South Lake Union.

And, you know, these companies, particularly Uber and Lyft, are now valued at billions.

And with that tremendous growth, we want to make sure there's shared prosperity for the drivers, as well as an opportunity to create a set of worker protections for them.

In addition, we believe that this modest 51-cent increase is going towards what you all will agree are Seattle's values related to investing in transit, affordable housing, and supporting the drivers.

So just to quickly talk about the main goals of this proposal, it is first and foremost to mandate that drivers who drive for Uber and Lyft make at least a minimum wage plus benefits and expenses, and I'll talk through the details of that.

It is to invest in transit and to fully fund the center city connector streetcar, which will run on First Avenue.

It is to invest in first of its kind, actually, in the nation protections for drivers.

And it is to build more affordable housing near transit.

So the nature of work is changing, and more and more with the use of your cell phone, you are able to get folks to do all kinds of work.

We call this the app-based gig work, and it is really starting to replace the traditional nine-to-five job.

Uber and Lyft drivers, like many gig workers, are considered to be independent contractors, which means they are not subject to the employment laws and requirements and standards that we set in Seattle, including the minimum wage, which is currently $16.

Further, Uber and Lyft drivers are currently not reimbursed for expenses associated with owning and operating these vehicles, which are necessary to provide the service.

So this includes gas, maintenance, you know, repairs, other types of expenses associated with cars.

And, you know, there are studies that have already shown that after those expenses, Uber and Lyft drivers, in many cases, not making a minimum wage.

and don't receive standard benefits and critical protections that other workers do.

In addition, there is uncertainty in that industry where drivers do face unwarranted deactivation, which is essentially, they can be essentially deactivated from the platform, limiting their ability to earn a wage.

Just a little bit to elaborate on the impact that Uber and Lyft has had on our city streets.

You know, they rely on our right of way and our curb space to be able to pick up and drop off.

As I said, 24 million rides last year.

We expect that that will continue to grow.

I want to just give a little bit of context to what 24 million rides is.

That's about 91,000 rides a day.

That is more than the entire light rail system is carrying right now.

So there's a significant impact, both in terms of emissions, our use of our right-of-way, and congestion.

And recently, in partnership with the University of Washington, there was a study that showed that, on average, Uber and Lyft counts to between 29 and 30, 39 percent of total volume of traffic in south lake union.

So there's definitely an impact there Uh, and as I said before we are anticipating continued growth Uh, and this is going to we are expecting this to continue to grow over time Thank you.

Can you just take a quick pause council member mosquito?

Thank you very much madam chair.

Um, uh deputy mayor i'm, sorry, uh to ask you to do this, but could you go back to um the slide number three I just wanted to spend one quick second on this slide madam chair I think it's really important to lift up the drivers who are in this situation that you just outlined and I think the mayor for working with drivers with the Transportation advocates and the housing advocates to come up with your full package I want to just pause here for a quick second because I know that a lot of folks on this council since 2015 2018 have been working on legislation to underscore how workers, how drivers in this sector are facing disparities in terms of how our labor standards are applied to traditional work sectors versus what's occurring, especially for TNC drivers.

And when I was in New York earlier this year, I had the chance to be invited to stand on the floor of the New York City Council that looks more like a Senate chamber.

And they really did take a minute to reflect on how these statistics are affecting actual drivers.

We paused before the beginning of the New York City Council chamber agenda and took a moment of silence to recognize the most recent Uber driver who had taken his own life.

an individual who had committed suicide in a series of suicides that had been experienced by individuals who were TNC drivers, also taxi drivers, because they weren't having enough funding to meet their needs.

They weren't able to earn enough of a wage to care for their families or to pay for their cars or to pay for the insurance given the situation that you've outlined here in the bullets in front of us.

So I just wanted to pause for a moment to put a face and underscore the importance of how this work, while some of it is on the horizon, to come related to wages.

but specifically around the arbitrary shutoffs of apps, how some of these processes have affected individual workers.

And I appreciate you having a slide to sort of set the groundwork on that.

So from this coast to the other coast, we know that this situation is something that many municipalities and policymakers are looking to address.

And in the meantime, we're losing lives.

Thank you, Council Member.

And I should just reiterate that some of the stories that you recounted are not unique to New York.

I was just in a driver roundtable earlier today where we heard stories of drivers with families who are basically in a struggle for survival.

and are having to now work longer and longer hours to sometimes 10, 12, 15 hours to make what they were making just a few years ago.

So this is really a story about how we, these are people who are falling through the cracks and this proposal is an effort to create that safety net for them because they are in the shadows as it comes to sort of worker classification.

So I want to talk a little bit about driver wages because, you know, as you all highlighted, this is something that is starting to become an issue not just here in Seattle but across the country.

Several studies last year, one by the Economic Policy Institute and the second one, which was a study by the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, show that on average, drivers are not earning a minimum wage.

So if you look at this slide, the Economic Policy Study looked at, Policy Institute looked at driver wages when compared to minimum wages of various cities across the country.

And on average, Uber and Lyft drivers were making about $10.87 an hour.

As you all know, the minimum wage here is far above that.

Even in the New York study, it was found that 85% of drivers were not making what the minimum wage equivalent for independent contractors was there, which was $17.22.

So I wanted to spend a little-

Deputy Mayor, can we go back to that slide?

I just want to make sure I understand it.

I don't fully understand it.

So on the red one up top says Uber wages and the red one down below says Uber discretionary.

So what's the difference between those two?

So essentially there are certain expenses that, you know, if you were a typical employee, your employer would cover.

those expenses.

So, for example, Social Security and Medicare taxes, on the independent contractor side, they pay both sides of the equation.

So, they play, they're an employee, but they're also an employer because they're independent contractors.

So, essentially, they pay a total of 15% in those taxes.

And so, when you start to sort of really pull apart that piece in terms of what they're actually making, you end up with 1087.

Okay, so on this chart, is this 1545, is this now or after the four pieces of legislation?

This slide, this should be updated actually because obviously the wage now in Seattle is $16.

And so this was taken from the study and so that it's sort of a snapshot in time.

I see, okay, thank you.

So I want to spend a little bit of time talking about minimum wage plus reasonable expenses because it's a fairly complex issue.

So minimum wage as we know it is typically applied to hours worked, right?

So for a regular worker, an employee, it is for, you know, you do the work, you get paid.

For app-based work with drivers, currently they are only compensated for the time that the passenger is in the car.

So they get paid a little bit of time to wait for the passenger, but the time that they're spent circling waiting for a passenger, or the time that they spend driving to pick up a passenger, currently they are not compensated for that work.

Mileage expenses, I talked about this, they don't get reimbursed for gas, maintenance, repair, insurance, and depreciation.

These are all expenses that you would associate with operation and maintenance of a car.

And obviously, you do need a car to actually be able to provide this service to customers.

And then in terms of non-mileage expenses and benefits, as a city, we set some standards in terms of what we expect of employers to provide.

Those include, you know, the employer side of payroll taxes, obviously that's federally mandated, providing paid sick and safe time, rest breaks, meal periods, paid family medical leave, unemployment insurance workers comp, and of course there are plenty of employers that also provide healthcare and retirement.

Currently, Uber and Lyft drivers get none of these protections or benefits.

So I want to spend a moment to talk about understanding sort of the various phases involved in driving.

In a typical situation, you have three phases in time.

So you have the P1 time.

This is the time that the driver is logged onto the app.

Sometimes they're logged onto multiple apps.

and they are waiting for a trip request from a passenger.

That could mean that they're circling or they're parked somewhere strategically waiting.

P2 time, this is when you pick up your phone and you summon an Uber or Lyft.

you will, the driver will accept the ride, and then they head to pick you up.

That time is considered the dispatch time, and it is, again, like I said, some amount of wait time is compensated, but the actual total amount of time that they spend traveling to pick you up is not.

Finally, there's the P3 time, which is the actual time that the passenger is picked up and taken to their destination.

That time is considered the P3 time, and that is the time that is currently compensated by the companies.

So I want to talk a little bit about P1 because this is time that is in sort of the gray area of sort of understanding how this business and compensation model works.

Basically, other studies, including one commissioned by Uber and Lyft, show that drivers spend some portion of each hour circling or waiting, right?

So that is the P1 time, and Uber and Lyft study commissioned and was released in August of this year, showed that, initially found that two-thirds of miles traveled, so two-thirds of the miles that drivers drove, they drove in P1.

Uber and Lyft then revised that estimate down to 40%.

So still, in terms of context, 40% of all miles driven are driven in that P1 time, which, to remind you, is not compensated.

So, and then this is again, New York City also looked at this and they found that of every hour, 25 minutes is idle time.

So, you're essentially getting, you're not getting paid for that 25 minutes of every hour you work.

Again, as a reminder, the core principle of this business model is that when you pick up your phone, you see those cars circling and you're able to get a car in a reasonable amount of time.

So, this requires drivers to be out on the street.

I'm sorry, can I ask a question?

I started being sort of in the weeds in this, and if people don't know the answer, that's fine, but on P1 time, so I assume that technology now allows Uber, Lyft, in this case, and the city, the ability to know if someone's in P1, that's when they activate the actor, there's something that triggers us to be able to time that, correct?

So the city does not have that information.

So the TNCs must have that ability to track.

I cannot speculate to that, but I would imagine they have some of this.

So where I'm heading with this is, well, apparently they have the ability because they're showing us how much time is in P1, so they track it somehow.

the compensation for p1 if So p2 is when they're actually transporting someone assume that's p2 It's a p3 is when they're transporting Sam p1 to p3 So we're just trying to figure out the duration for P1 to P3, and then try to come up with a minimum wage.

It's not as though we're saying you are paid the same for P1 as P3.

That's not the point.

The point is they're working from P1 to P3, and it's all part of the continuum of providing service.

But my question is, can the system be gamed at all?

So someone's on P1 all day, and they say, hey, I'm not picking up anyone.

They're not going to call it P1, of course.

But I'm on P1 for a couple of hours.

And then they turn down rides.

Is the technology there such that we can accurately predict what's P1, P2, P3 and are the safeguards in to prevent gaming of the system or do we know?

This is a really good question and this is why the mayor is proposing that we study this and understand this business better because I think there is sort of some questions on how do you How do we know what time is being spent as P1?

How do you make sure that is work time versus, you know, someone sitting on their couch with, you know, logged on to the app?

And I think this is what we're hoping to sort of really dig into in the study.

New York approached it slightly differently.

But ultimately, I think what we want to make sure that is that time worked in that those three phases is fairly compensated.

I support that 100%.

I'm sort of curious as to what the TNCs would say in terms of their ability to have accurate data by which we're making our policy decisions.

I just don't know.

One of the complications is you can be in P1 time on more than one platform at the same time.

So a driver can have both apps on.

So what's the appropriate compensation and how it would be shared between them?

You may or may not recall some years ago, I had very limited experience as part of a research project for council driving, and what I can tell you...

I remember that, Mr. Noble.

From that limited experience, I can tell you that if you don't respond to calls, to rides that are pinged your way, if you try to game the systems, they'll kick you off.

That's part of their discipline on their side.

I don't know what the current model is.

I'm not pretending that I do, but you can understand that basic incentive from their perspective.

And that concept is an acceptance rate, right?

That you need to have some minimum threshold of rights that you need to accept.

Council Member Sawant.

Thank you, Chair.

Actually, Dr. Noble said what I was going to say, and I do remember you engaging in that research project, but...

He got all two stars.

But just in terms of Council President Harrell's question, yeah, I just don't understand how drivers could game it because they...

Whether Uber gives the accurate information to the city or not, that's a separate question, as you said, Shefali, but as far as Uber itself is concerned or Lyft Corporation is concerned, they know what the drivers are doing.

And I just don't see, electronically, how it's possible for drivers to game the system where there's rides around where they are and they're not picking them up.

And again, I think you're exactly right, Council Member.

The whole concept here is that the driver should be available in a short amount of time.

to get to the passenger to be able to pick them up.

And so I think really what we're hoping with this study, both with independent research as well as we invite the companies to come share their data, is to understand those phases of work.

So I want to talk a little bit about the actual proposal.

So the worker standards, and this is the first ordinance, and these are not in any particular order, but this ordinance is essentially mandating that a minimum wage and reasonable expenses of drivers would be effective July 1st of 2020. So starting immediately and probably going through early spring of next year, we will conduct an independent study to determine what that fair compensation standard is.

It will include very extensive community engagement including a very robust survey of drivers to get data from drivers on their wage and compensation and understanding these different phases of work.

Again, I will reiterate, we will invite the companies to participate in this and provide information.

They have this information and it really is probably the most comprehensive way to approach this.

And we anticipate that we'll be done and we'll be sending down an actual ordinance which will specify the minimum compensation plus expenses to be considered in spring.

So to talk about this study a little bit, This study will be similar to the one that New York City did a few years ago, and it will look at, again, minutes and miles in the application, including all three phases.

It will look at average driver expenses that we talked about, non-mileage expenses and benefits that I talked about earlier, and also we want to understand this sort of the correlation and impact of this minimum wage and benefits on driver earnings, because one, Fear we have heard that the companies have basically told drivers that if this goes into effect, you will earn less.

So we need to understand how these factors all interplay with each other.

And again, we will conduct robust outreach to inform this study.

Just what councilmember Mosqueda and then councilmember Pacheco could we go back to slide 12?

As we talk about the study first the way I think I sort of think about p1 times is If you were a checker at a grocery store if you were sitting there waiting for your next customer to come up you're still waiting so I just I offer that as a frame of reference as we think about p1 times and I how that might comply with the folks that we might normally see at a register.

So I had a question about the study that's being offered for consideration.

A preview of the study that we are talking about here said that it's going to look at the average and mean mileage driven by TNC drivers in a TNC-endorsed vehicle for personal purposes.

Given that a lot of these folks are driving cars that they've purchased with their own money, this is, as I was saying earlier at a press conference, this is their office, this is their livelihood that they've purchased into, they may be using their car for personal purposes, taking kiddos to school after they're done working.

Are we making a distinction between the time that they are on the app using their time for work purposes versus what they're doing in their personal time?

I see nods over here.

I assume the answer is yes, because otherwise it would seem like an invasion of some of the driver's privacy.

I think this is really for us to understand the industry that there's a wide diversity of drivers.

There are some who do this one weekend a month.

There are drivers who drive full time.

And I think it is really to get a more comprehensive understanding of of how people are using their cars for the business purpose, which is to drive for Uber and Lyft, and sort of understand that relative to personal.

So it isn't sort of meant to make a policy judgment, but more to get a full, more comprehensive look at it.

Okay, very briefly, is the budget, does the budget as transmitted to council include funding for this study?

The study will be conducted with existing resources and Ben can elaborate.

There are existing resources at FAS in the context of their existing regulatory work of the taxi industry generally.

Please proceed.

Sorry, Council Member Pacheco, I'm sorry.

You're so quiet down there.

Real quickly, the study, do you already have someone or an organization in mind already to lead the study?

So that's a good question, I think.

So I should give you just a little bit of detail about the study.

There'll be two components.

One is the data collection component, which is actually going out and randomly surveying drivers so that it is academically rigorous.

So that we anticipate a different firm will conduct that work.

And then the study itself, we have to do some work to scope it.

And then based on the scope, you know, I'll be fairly I'll be transparent, this is a very niche area of work and so we anticipate that there will be a short list of people who are qualified and have the credibility to do this independent study.

Okay, please.

Great.

So the second component, which is a separate ordinance, is the establishment of the first of its kind driver resolution center.

Now, this is essentially an organization that will provide Uber and Lyft driver support through impartial arbitration and an appeals process for resolving claims.

Now just a little bit in terms of the current, what exists right now.

So currently Uber and Lyft are able to deactivate drivers.

for a variety of reasons.

And the current process is if a driver appeals that arbitration, it's fairly complicated, but also they go through a private arbitration process.

What this is doing is several different things.

One, it is creating a new worker right to be free of unwarranted deactivation.

And unwarranted deactivation will be defined in the rulemaking, but, you know, we've heard anecdotally stories of drivers who have been deactivated because, you know, the customer, the rider was drunk and gave them a poor rating, and they were thrown off the platform, or they were in a collision, which wasn't their fault, but it is still an accident on their record.

And so what we want to do is deactivation, removes the driver's ability to earn a wage.

And so what we want to do is to create a fair and transparent process with representation for the drivers should they need it to be able to appeal these unwarranted deactivations.

So there will be a neutral process with a neutral arbitrator.

There will be representations from the company as well as the drivers who can represent themselves or use this driver resolution center.

And the idea will be to be able to create a fairly transparent, neutral process that allows for drivers to be able to challenge any deactivations that they believe to be unwarranted.

This is the first of its kind in the country, so I think, you know, a lot of this will be defined in rulemaking.

And we, again, will invite partnership from the drivers and the companies to be able to help shape those rules.

Council Member Sawant, Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Chair Bakhshal.

Thank you for the information.

And yes, I totally agree that we need this kind of protection.

But, and I hear what you're saying about rulemaking.

However, I think this is something that it needs to come up front in the legislation itself, rather than rulemaking.

I mean, some aspects of it, just specifically a couple of concerns I have, and this reflects what we've heard a lot from drivers.

that my office has heard from drivers over, not just recently, but, you know, over the last three, four years.

And that is how will how will the city, and then you know empower the office of labor standards of course, how will the city ensure and how will the legislation ensure that the arbitration provisions are as strong as the arbitration clauses in a union contract?

And here's what I'm saying, I don't know if this belongs in rulemaking.

I think there has to be, there have to be strong provisions in the legislation itself because when a dispute goes into arbitration, the arbitrator must be empowered to make a final binding decision, which is how a union contract would deal with it.

So how will that be addressed?

And secondly, and I understand that these are initial days and that's fine, but I wanted to flag these as questions, but in a serious way, not to say that, okay, we agree, but then let's put it in rulemaking.

And then the other aspect is, and it's related to what I just said, which is how will the legislation make sure that that Uber and Lyft, which are, as everything you've said, I agree with, just in terms of the overwhelming power that they have, clout that they have, how will the city ensure that they don't keep moving the goalpost in terms of what constitutes a deactivation in their eyes?

And so sort of defining what is the universe of reasons for which Uber things or Lyft things that deactivation should happen.

And once we set that context, then there are fair guidelines for the drivers and the corporation and the arbitration process has a uniformity to it.

Yeah, I can speak to a couple of those points.

First, on the final and binding nature of the arbitration, that is specifically in the proposed legislation now that the, that any decision by an arbitrator would be final and binding upon the parties.

In terms of, I think what you're getting at, if I understood the question correctly, is, you know, how do we define unwarranted deactivation and make sure that that's not, you know, a moving goal post?

You're correct that that's not currently defined in the legislation.

We believe that something that nuanced needs to have input from drivers, from the companies as well to determine a workable standard.

So we have proposed, at least at this point, to have that deferred to a rulemaking process.

Okay.

If I may just follow up.

I totally agree with you that you need a lot of input from the drivers.

But I would like to follow up with you in terms of where this falls.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So just two questions I'll throw out there.

One is, can you speak a little bit to the deactivation process being voluntary or whether or not the TNC drivers have an absolute right to challenge the deactivation?

I just want to make sure there's consistency in the legislation as we were reading it.

And also, does the right to a dispute resolution process apply to both?

warranted and unwarranted deactivations.

And then the second question.

I figured this process out a little.

I'm going to sneak them in.

The second question is, Wondering about who bears the cost of the arbitration.

I know usually it's both parties or one party.

The legislation that we were looking at says if the worker is represented by the driver resolution center, each splits the cost of arbitration.

If the worker is self-represented, the TNC bears all the costs.

So can you speak to what the incentives would be so that we can get more of the TNC companies to engage in the process?

Sure.

And I'll just try to tick through the questions.

The first question was around the voluntary nature.

So the current system effectively is that drivers enter into a contract with TNCs when they sign up to provide TNC services.

those contracts have a private arbitration clause.

To avoid a conflict with those provisions, what we've done is created a process by which the parties can agree to take what I'll call the city process, the city resolution process.

And that is a voluntary, both parties need to agree in order to do that.

We believe there's significant incentive for TNCs to agree to do that.

They have an interest in resolving issues quickly just the way drivers do.

This provides additional clarity in terms of how the process is resolved.

And there's also, we believe, a financial incentive because this promises to be significantly less costly to TMCs as compared to the current private arbitration process where they bear the vast majority of the cost of their private arbitration process.

So the second question was about whether you have a...

I'm sorry.

I didn't fully understand your answer on the first one.

So I understand there's a contract between a driver and a TNC.

So are you saying that they can go either way?

They can use the city sanction process or proceed with the TNC so the driver has a choice?

Is that your answer?

Yeah, that's correct.

I had a misunderstanding of that.

I thought that we're creating one center, and that all disputes would go to the one center to get uniformity and consistency.

Yeah, so let me clarify a little.

What does the driver resolution center do, and what is the venue in which a driver pursues a remedy?

The driver resolution center can represent a driver at private arbitration or through the city process.

There's no restrictions on that.

The venue in which they pursue a remedy is where the sort of the two paths exist.

And in order to pursue the city path, which, you know, just as a colloquial term, the parties must agree to pursue that.

And that's structured in that way to avoid any issues related to the existing contracts these drivers have.

So if the city, if the driver says I want to go to CityPath and the TNC says nope, I don't want to go to CityPath, what happens?

They cannot proceed down the city path, and if the driver still wants to pursue a remedy, they could pursue private arbitration.

And they would have the option of having representation through the driver resource center.

So was there consideration in preparing the legislation to just make it mandatory that they go to the city path?

Yeah, there's consideration.

We thought the best path given the existence of the contracts that I mentioned was to make it a voluntary process.

And as I mentioned, we think that there is significant incentive for both parties to agree to pursue that path.

And what are those incentives?

And Council Member Herbold, I know you're in the queue.

My question's been answered.

Okay.

Yeah, so the incentives are effectively that it's going to be a quicker process.

There's greater clarity.

The TNCs also have an interest, we believe, in resolving these issues quickly, and there's also a financial incentive.

Private arbitration, as we've estimated, costs between $5,000 and $10,000 for the TNCs.

Under their contracts, they bear the, a vast majority of those costs.

In this process, the cost would be split.

And so their cost would be significantly less.

In addition, this would likely create a much quicker process where resolution would happen rather than over a one or two day period, could happen for multiple drivers in a single day potentially.

Yeah, I think that would be my objective.

And after having spoken to many drivers, both Uber and Lyft, who have been put off the system.

In one case, an individual told me that, and the way he described it, I mean, it was something that any of us would say, okay, you cannot have this behavior in the backseat of my car.

And he was put off for 14 days, and this was his sole financial income.

for his family, and it took that long for him to get a warm body to talk to him and reinstate him.

So I would hope that this was more than just an option, and maybe you tried to get it to be something that the parties would agree to, but an individual like this, I mean, just this way he described the story, it was like 14 days, which is, you know, half a month that he had no income, while they resolved it and said, yep, you're right, you're back on.

But, you know, no reimbursement for him.

So I just would hope that the incentives are good enough that the companies would say yes.

Council Member Pacheco, sorry, we'll let you back on in a minute.

Sorry, can you just describe the parameters that you're going to be, or the parameters if you already have them for selecting a nonprofit?

And in addition to that, just one of the things that I feel like I've heard consistently through various departments in terms of the presentation was just the need for more outreach and engagement, and specifically, more specifically, culturally competent engagement.

If you were ready to define what that's going to look like for the resolution center in kind of being proactive about that outreach.

Yeah, so I don't think there's a single sentence definition of what that means.

It's already in the proposed legislation that the driver resolution center should have.

the ability to provide culturally competent outreach and education services, and in addition, that their representation also includes that, you know, that competency.

Deb, did you want to?

Yeah, and then when, you know, we will be issuing a competitive RFP for this process, so when we scope that RFP, that will be a, one of the core components that we'll be looking for when we select an organization to provide those services.

Madam chair, I think I think there was a few more questions you were getting to if I remember correctly

Yeah, I think the next one was whether the driver would have the right to challenge both warranted and unwarranted deactivations.

They have a right to be free from unwarranted deactivations.

That will effectively be the issue at these arbitrations, whether or not the deactivation was warranted.

That would be effectively what is trying to be established at the hearings.

And sorry, did the council member have additional?

Just the last question on what's the incentive?

You spoke a little bit to it, but the timing, the less cost, those are sort of the assumptions that are built in.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

We think the cost of the arbitration will be significantly less for both parties.

First of all, it will be split.

The speed at which it can be handled will be quicker because we hope that there will be a a number of arbitrators who are versed in this and are able to handle them quicker, quickly.

And so those are the sort of the core incentives and advantages of this, of the system.

So I want to spend a few moments discussing the tax and investment proposal, and this will be its own ordinance.

So currently, as you are aware, we, the city charges TNCs and, well, basically, right, Chair, a 24 cent per ride.

That goes towards regulating the industries as well as to provide wheelchair accessible taxis.

The proposal under consideration is to increase that by 51 cents to result in a total per ride charge of 75 cents.

This will create revenue to fund the following, the driver resolution center that we've talked about, fund the completion of the center city connector streetcar, and allow the city to invest in more than 500 units of affordable housing.

near transit hubs.

In concert, FAS is working to basically reduce the current fee, which is at 14 cents.

You have an ordinance that we have sent down for your consideration to reduce that fee.

And I should flag that this tax component will only be will only be, there's a threshold for it.

So any TNC company that provides more than a million rides a quarter will be subject to the tax.

Currently that's Uber and Lyft, but if the market changes and other companies reach that threshold, they would also be subject to the tax.

That is different from the fees which everyone pays currently.

So I just want to compare why the $0.75, just so you have a sense of context.

The $0.75 is fairly comparable to other similar-sized markets.

In Chicago, Washington, D.C., all have comparable fees.

New York City has a $2.75 per ride charge.

And just in terms of why the number was set that way is we want to better understand what the minimum wage requirement is going to, how that's going to interact with the tax.

And so by setting it at what we think is a reasonable level, it allows us to make sure that we are ensuring that drivers continue to receive more wages.

I should also flag that in markets where they raise the taxes and fees, Chicago and New York in particular, they still saw an increase in ridership.

In Chicago, it was about 14% more after the tax went into place.

And in New York City, it was 18% more.

So as we understand this right now in terms of you perhaps have seen some emails from the companies on them and talking about how this will have a significant impact, the data proves otherwise in other cities.

So just quickly by the numbers, the first $126 million of this fund after administrative expenses will go towards the following $17.75 million for worker protections, $56 million to fully fund the Center City Connector, and about $52 million for housing near transit.

After a certain period of time, once we sort of front load the affordable housing investments, the proposal is seeking to invest the remaining revenues from the tax into transit, bicycle and pedestrian projects.

Great, thank you.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you.

On slide 17, just before we get to how the funding will be allocated, can we look at the tax one more time?

Sorry, what slide?

17. Thank you.

Great.

And 18 is great, too.

In the 2020 budget, do we see the implications of the fee and when will we begin anticipating the funding coming in?

When you look at the subsequent chart that you showed at the comparison between Seattle and other cities, do we know did they land on a dollar amount first or did they do a percentage?

And why did we decide to go with a dollar amount versus a percentage?

And then lastly you started mentioning about individuals with disabilities and folks who are using rideshare I know from our experience working for example with the I Was gonna say vice governor with Cyrus to be lieutenant governor.

He's talked a lot about how ride shares have helped him be more mobile.

I talked a little bit about that at a press conference today.

There's obvious opportunities that present themselves with ride share, where if folks are having a hard time walking to the bus, this has been a lifeline.

So is there any conversation around any exemptions for fees for individuals with limited mobility?

Has that come up in other municipalities?

So I think part there's a twofold I think you know as I mentioned in the 10 cents of the 24 cents that we already charge goes towards wheelchair accessible taxis and the goal is really to expand that currently there are only 50 in operation, which does not reflect the need.

And so working with the county because they issued the medallions, we want to accelerate that.

Secondly, I think the really we sort of think of this more comprehensively as investments in transit, pedestrian, bike and safety allow people more options.

But I do want to recognize that there are some folks who take TNCs because it is the most It is, in terms of their limited mobility, it offers the most convenient option.

And on the question of a- Council Member Bryan has a question.

I was going to answer the first question that was asked about a fixed fee versus a percentage.

We clearly have the authority to tax this activity.

The structure of that tax, however, is influenced by the taxing authority that's granted to us by the state of Washington.

And I can give you more detail on that, but it perhaps is best in an executive session.

Okay.

Now, Council Member O'Brien.

Thank you.

Quick question just on the math.

The $126 million, that's five years?

It's five potentially.

Here's the underlying reality.

It's a great deal of uncertainty here in projecting what the revenue stream is going to be.

Let me explain why.

We currently have good data on the number of rides because of the current regulatory structure.

What we are looking at going forward is a, the inherent growth in the business, which, you know, it has been growing very quickly.

How much, you know, how long can that growth continue?

We've made an assumption of relatively modest growth going forward.

This isn't an experience where I can tell you what the historic pattern of growth is or something.

It's really an unknown space.

In addition, when we move to the compensation model and we impose a minimum wage of some form, that's going to influence the price that we believe that users are charged, which will have some effect on the quantity.

And we don't know enough about that either.

So our best guess right now is it's in the five-and-a-half to six-year range.

So that's why we've been a little vague about that, because there is really uncertainty about that.

But we're making a very clear commitment about the first, you know, roughly $125 million of revenue and the priorities we have for it.

My quick math is if there's 24 million rides and we're adding another $0.50, that's $12 million a year, which straight line would be about 10 years for that to hit that amount.

So you must be assuming some pretty good growth.

Mayor, there's more detail on just some of the assumptions.

We can give you all the underlying estimates.

The initial revenue stream, for the first year, it's only about $9.50 a year.

It's a partial year.

Yes.

So we're thinking short of $20 initially, but then growing.

Again, this question of how much it grows, time will tell more than anything.

My policy question is, you cite South Lake Union as an example that, I forget, 40% of the trips in that neighborhood during rush hour From a congestion reduction, that is the time when we care most about it.

Why choose a flat rate as opposed to a variable rate that could have an added benefit of really influencing mode shifts during rush hour?

That's a good question.

I want to start with saying the mayor is committed to broad-based congestion pricing in the city.

As we looked at the complexity of doing a surcharge during certain periods of time, geofencing where there was potential where you would just pick up across the street to avoid the charge, just given our limited understanding of the data and how, you know, we get origin, destination, zip codes, and we get them in aggregate, right?

This felt like in terms of from a policy perspective, and quite frankly, I mean, The reality is half of those rides, no matter what time of the day they're happening, are happening in that core.

So ultimately it came down to a policy decision to do a, and they have, no matter whether they're in South Lake Union or in other parts of the city, they have impact on the right of way.

So it came down to, with our best available data and the complexity of doing that type of surcharge during certain times of the day, we ended up with a flat rate as a model.

As a follow-up to that?

Sure.

As a follow-up to Council Member O'Brien's question, I would love to know if we have the data, what percentage of downtown car trips that are TNC trips are during the peak hours?

I can speak to that, Council Member.

We don't actually have timestamps.

We only get origin, destination by quarter.

And so we really don't have any insight into when those rides are happening.

Council Member Sawant, I know that you've got to leave, so please.

Thank you, Chair Bakhsha.

And I apologize to the drivers also that I won't be here for the public testimony.

I have to rush to another meeting.

But I quickly wanted to ask a question and it is...

I don't imagine, I mean, if you had already had discussion about this, that's fantastic and I would be eager to hear, but if not, it's something I want to follow up with you on.

And that relates to the question of how, the issue of how many taxi cab drivers were basically their whole, wealth and lives were wiped out when Uber and Lyft came to town, and you alluded to that, Shefali, because many of them, and especially disproportionately of East African origin and South Asian origin, they took on a lot of debt to get the medallion, which is basically the license to drive the taxicab.

And then next thing you know, you know, the market is flooded with Uber and Lyft vehicles.

And then many of those drivers, taxicab drivers who went into debt getting the medallion in the first place then became Uber drivers.

And so there's sort of It became a downward spiral.

And Council Member Mosqueda's allusions to the suicide and the need for suicide prevention and all of that, that obviously relates to the desperation the families are feeling because of having gone into debt and now for nothing at all.

So my question is, in the fair share program that the mayor's office is developing with other entities, has there been some thought to how Uber and Lyft can be held accountable for the debt that so many of these drivers are incurring, and what, is there any conduit to address that in some way?

Because it seems like, I mean, everything you've talked about is extremely important, including insuring wages and so on, but this is a big part of what the driver population has suffered from.

It's a good point, Council Member.

Taxis are regulated, we regulate taxis in partnership with King County, and there is a parallel effort happening with King County to seek to sort of modernize and sort of really create a new set of of sort of a new structure for taxis that allow them to be more competitive.

One thing that we are doing right now through FAS is a smart meter pilot.

One thing we've heard from the taxi industry is the things that they want to see to be able to compete with Uber and Lyft are having that ability to have dynamic pricing.

So when demand is low, you charge lower rates, but when demand is high, you are able to adjust.

The other thing we've heard is just in terms of modernizing the meter technology.

And so that work is happening right now.

And Mayor Durkan remains committed to working with the county to look at the legacy industry and what are the opportunities to help lift up drivers and to continue to support that industry.

So I want to spend just a quick moment because I don't want to run out of time.

Council Member Pacheco has a question.

Just really quickly in your comparison of other set of other cities Did any of those other cities do additional fees?

that for rides to and from their downtown downtown core and

Yeah, so the city of Chicago has two locations that they actually have a $5 fee for pickups.

The Navy Pier is one of them.

And I can't remember the second location.

I believe that is the only city, to my knowledge, that has a geofenced area with a additional charge.

the city of New York, that 275 is in a geo-fenced area in a particular space in Manhattan only.

And also I'd like to mention that airports of many municipalities add on an extra fee, including SeaTac.

Can I follow up?

So if I'm hearing correctly, then it was a policy decision to not do any geo-fencing for the downtown core.

Not because we couldn't do it, it's just we just, in the proposal, we chose not to do it.

In terms of search pricing or it just correct to do an additional fee potentially for a downtown ride to and from if I'm hearing correctly it you said earlier you're making comments about how We don't get the data.

It's a little bit difficult.

It's tricky.

It's so it sounds like it's not impossible It's just even though it's difficult.

We just chose not to do it for various reasons.

There's a because of laws locally in our state we have very different insight as to these sort of things to other cities so it isn't exactly a comparison in terms of the ease of how we can understand it.

You know, our data is very limited, and despite our best efforts, we are unable to get more rich data that could allow for a more sophisticated policy around that.

Yeah, I understand.

I attended a lecture at the University of Washington once, and I asked just the random question of, is there any city that does this well in terms of getting the data from these companies?

And everybody there that was a national expert was like, nope.

So I get it, it's tricky, it's difficult, it's hard.

I was just kind of more, trying to be more inquisitive about why we made the decisions that we made in the proposal.

Thank you, please proceed.

Okay, so just, you know, I talked about the funding for the streetcar as a reminder, this will complete the system.

And, you know, I talked about half of the rides being in zip codes in Capitol Hill, South Lake Union.

and downtown.

It just so happens that the streetcar network also connects those neighborhoods, so it creates another opportunity.

We also know that many of the Uber and Lyft trips are short trips that could have otherwise been replaced by transit if we have good quality transit options.

In terms of the housing component, a reminder again, it's $52 million.

The proposal is to build about around 500 units of affordable housing.

We are proposing to target these units to individuals and families making between $15 and $25 an hour, you know, just in terms of frame of reference.

I mean, many of these are drivers themselves.

But it's also folks who are, you know, nursing assistants, retail workers, hotel workers, restaurant workers who have been priced out of the city.

We do a lot in the space of 0 to 30%.

This is in the, I would say the 40 to 60% AMI.

And this is an opportunity to complement our existing housing investments.

Do we have, do we assume that this is going to be ongoing?

So it's not just one time funding here.

Let's assume that this tax remains for five years.

Excuse me.

This will be where it's dedicated.

So the proposal is to do a, in the first five to six years, essentially sort of a surge to be able to do this type of investment in housing.

It is anticipated sort of in the out years of the tax.

that the investments will focus on operating of housing units, but also bulk of these investments will be in transportation, so bicycle, pedestrian, and transit investments.

Thank you.

And I know that I'm channeling Councilmember Mosqueda here when we say we are also looking for funding for zero to 30 percent AMI.

So, thank you for any opportunity that you can to help increase at that level.

And then I just want to talk briefly about the timeline.

So the ordinances are down for your consideration.

We will begin the independent study work in the next few weeks that we anticipate will go through the winter and early spring with anticipated recommendations March 30th of 2020. At that point, the council would consider an ordinance to sort of codify and make real that number, what the minimum wage is, at least the minimum wage and reasonable expenses, with the idea that the minimum compensation would go into effect July 1, 2020. We will also begin collecting the tax July 1 of 2020.

And I understand that there's four pieces of our four ordinances and one resolution that you're planning to send down.

And I think there's been some conversation about whether it was all going to go through budget or whether we were going to break that up into two pieces.

So we'll have further conversation about that what that looks like.

for sure we want this to be voted on before finally December 16th.

We know that for sure.

Great.

Council Member Muscata.

Thank you very much.

I have a handful of questions that might go more into the details than we have time for right now.

But I know we have a process of a three-day turnaround and all that.

So just sort of reading the audience up here, if it is more appropriate to send those questions out.

To get those details.

I'm happy to do that and we're always happy to come The one question I do have though is The ride tax goes into effect in July of 2020 and I think that they're collecting Quarterly, which means our first set of revenue from this comes in late 2020 If that's correct, how are we going to fund the dispute resolution Center?

Next July without this revenue.

Do we have a plan to front load some existing funding and then backfill it with?

with this new tax that's coming in?

The tax is approved and we have confidence that it will be implemented on July 1. We don't have a cash flow problem, so we'd be able to spend from general resources knowing that this revenue will start to flow on July 1 again, assuming there are no other hurdles to its implementation.

Okay, is that reflected in the budget somehow or would we need to reflect that in this 2020?

Totally fair question.

So the revenue, so we have a revenue forecast for 2020 for this particular tax of roughly nine and a half million dollars.

So that is actually shown in the budget as a just as we, you know, have a prediction for the sales tax and the property tax and everything else.

I mean, admittedly, as I've described, this one is more uncertain than those.

And actually, our funding strategy reflects some of that uncertainty.

So what we're proposing is about a million and a half dollars to get spent in 2020, so only a fraction of that nine, to get us set up and moving towards the full implementation.

Then we'll have the other resources available and we'll have, you know, September, October, we'll have a better sense of what this revenue stream looks like.

And as we develop budget for 21 and 22, more solid projections.

Although even then, I will tell you, as we bring you the budget, we'll have only seen a couple months worth of data.

As you, next fall, as you process the budget, you'll actually, we'll get a couple more months of data, assuming we've implemented and are rolling at that point.

Council President Harreld, did you want to bring up?

We're winding down now, correct?

We're wound down.

I'm going to wind you back up.

On the options, I just wanted to have a little open dialogue on that.

Amy, I appreciate your suggestion that perhaps we take three three pieces, the tax ordinance, the fee reduction piece, and the spending, and keep it at budget, and perhaps look at the get committee, the governance, equity, and technology committee for two pieces.

I sort of have actually a preference to keep it all on the budget committee, and I'll explain why at this point.

I could be convinced otherwise.

But at this point, I see all five pieces sort of working together, and I understand there needs to be more policy discussions in depth.

What's most important for me is to talk to the constituents.

And so what I'm trying to organize are meetings with many of the people in the audience and the stakeholders, if you will.

I don't find it particularly helpful to have a committee meeting and I have two hours of just testimony and two-minute shots because a lot of them are saying the same thing and I'm just hearing it over and over and over and over.

Good points, but that's just a waste of time.

So what I'm trying to look, trying to backchannel transparently, if you will, are meetings.

And I want as many as possible in the same room, if I can.

To hear their concerns about the legislation, but my preference is to try to this is this is this changes the landscape And I think this gives us a great opportunity to city And I think the mayor as I said at a press conference has done a phenomenal job of to the extent she and her team, casting that out there and got as many opinions as possible and really has presented us with a very well thought out proposal, I sort of wanted to keep the engagement of the full council.

So at this point, I would sort of support option one, no, option two, option two.

Why didn't you reverse the option?

So I could always say option one, but option two at this point, I'm talking to Council Member O'Brien about that as well, but I'm sort of leaning toward option two.

Okay.

Questions?

Any more questions up here?

So many.

Yeah.

But I will defer.

Councilmember, Council President Harreld, did I, did you, on option two, did you just outline a schedule for the Governance and Technology Committee to take up these?

See?

You guys weren't even paying attention.

I'm sorry.

Both of you are down there talking.

We were doing math.

And see?

Junior guy's down there.

He says he wants to keep it all in Budget Committee.

But let me explain.

But what's most important, what I said, and I'll say it again.

is that we have to meet with a lot of constituents, a lot of them.

And I don't find the get committee, just the testimony, two minute, two minute, two minute, I don't find that effective.

So what I'm trying to schedule now, and I'd love your participation in just some meetings with all of them in the same room, at least representative groups, have a lot of back channel conversations with them on their concerns, but try to keep it on the budget committee, keep the whole package together.

I sort of wanted to lean there.

This is huge, changes the landscape, and I wanted to keep us all engaged.

That helps me, because with the follow-up questions that I have, I was just thinking, would it be appropriate to ask those at Get Committee, but we'll go ahead and send these off, copy our council colleagues so folks know the type of details that we're looking for, and then recognizing the conversation will come back to either the group that you're convening or to this full budget discussion.

Yeah, I'd like to thank the mayor for presenting us right during budget.

So it but there's a it does raise a lot of issues, but we just got to roll up our sleeves and get through it So I don't think it's gonna be a big deal one way or the other But my preference is to keep it here and but but a lot of conversation to be had Okay, no further questions up here by this panel

Thank you so much, all of you, for coming.

It was a great introduction, and all of you who stayed through waiting for public comment period, love to have you here.

We've got about 21 speakers who have signed up.

Just so you know, we are also having a big public comment tomorrow night, starting at 530. Everybody there will get two minutes, so if you prefer to wait until tomorrow night, That's great.

If you want to speak now, I'm going to invite Joshua Welter, Chris Van Dyke, and Michael Wolfe to come up to the microphone.

Yeah.

I was going to ask you before Chris starts.

Yeah.

Is it possible for me to start off with this list first tomorrow?

If they don't, it must just be possible to tell them if they don't do that.

OK.

Can I, just before you get started.

Should I say it publicly?

Yeah, I think it's a good idea.

Here's what I just said to Council Member Bagshaw publicly.

that we lost a great majority of folks because of the lateness of the hour.

What I ask is, because we have our hearing tomorrow, if some of you want to speak now, that's fine, but if we could start off with this at the beginning of the hearing where we have a lot of bodies here.

For those that choose not to, you don't lose your cue, so we'll start off with this at the beginning of the hearing tomorrow.

and then go through the other people that come up for the other budget items.

So if you wanna pass today and be first in line tomorrow, and we have more than, that's three, four.

Three and a half, because Council Member Ware is.

No, she counts as one and a half.

So anyways, just to give you an option, so am I clear on what I'm suggesting?

That you can speak now, but you're gonna just be in queue tomorrow for however many people, but if you wanted to wait till tomorrow, We'll keep you in queue and start off with you tomorrow, okay?

Tomorrow is 5.30 hearing tomorrow.

5.30 here.

But I want, I know you have some important things to say and I wanted as many, since I'm trying to have this during the, this TNC legislation during the budget, I wanted as many council members to hear as possible.

They do listen to the tapes as I do when they're not here, so, but it just might be more effective if they're here tomorrow.

So anyway, they have questions on that.

I'm sorry, sir, I couldn't hear you.

Say it again.

I'll tell you right now.

We have 21 people right now.

21, three sheets, 21 people.

Maybe 23, 24.

Yeah, 2321. We'll keep the sheets for tomorrow.

Council Member Bankshaw, she's going to chair tomorrow.

So, well, let's get started.

If you want to speak now, please do.

You'll have two minutes.

If you want to wait till tomorrow night, as Council President Harrell is saying, we'll keep you at the top of the queue.

Okay.

Very good.

Joshua, Chris, and Michael.

Thank you so much, Council Chair Bankshaw and President Harrell and the rest of the Council, my name is Joshua Welter from Teamsters Local 117, and I won't take the full two minutes in the interest of time, but simply to commend that drivers have been speaking out for three priorities in terms of fair pay, due process around unfair deactivations, and having a voice.

And we commend this fair share proposal as a step forward in addressing those issues, as well as addressing community investments.

So thank you for taking this up, particularly in the context of budget.

We know that you're working hard on a lot of things, but this is a very, very important thing for the driver community, and we appreciate it.

Great, thank you very much, Joshua.

Chris, Michael, and then Katie.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm Chris Van Dyke.

I have for 12 years been the primary state lobbyist for the taxi cab industry.

And I want to extend appreciation to Teampers 117 and the great work they've done over the years and the advocacy that they've done.

I'm speaking tonight simply because I've sent you each an email over the last two months about this.

I've tried to reach out to the mayor's office.

We in the taxi industry have gotten no feedback, no comments back.

Okay so I appreciate staff reaching back to 2014 in the context in 2014 we predicted that if you opened up for hire transportation to unlimited ride share it would decimate taxi and for hire industries.

It has.

We predicted in 2015 or 16 with the collective bargaining bill that it would never see the outside of a courtroom.

It has not.

We predicted what has happened in the industry today and our frustration, the reason I won't wait till tomorrow, three most important people are here now.

You have a tool on the books that can address this problem with nothing more than a vote.

and it can be put in place in four weeks, five weeks, six weeks.

You have the authority under RCW 46.72.150 to set rate for four higher vehicles.

For five years now, you have refused to do it.

You have refused to do it for political reasons.

You could set the rate at $1.75 a mile plus wait time.

Everybody's gonna make money.

Taxi drivers do not drive now, cannot make money now, because corporate Uber sets a price at under $1.35 a mile, or taxi drivers are mandated by you at $2.60 a mile, okay?

This is not rocket science.

This doesn't take the most amazing Rube Goldberg political contraption I've seen in 50 years of doing politics.

This simply means you have to step up and set minimum rate.

Five years ago, you didn't want to do it because they would bring it.

I have gone to the United States Supreme Court with initiatives.

This is not subject to initiative.

Thank you, Chris.

Thank you.

Sorry to get passionate.

Glad you are.

Michael, thank you.

Five million dollars of these guys savings have been thrown out the window by the policies of the City of Seattle, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Michael, Katie, and I think it's Keiko.

Good evening.

For the record, my name is Michael Wolfe.

I'm the Executive Director of Drive Forward, a nonprofit organization of over 2,000 driver members.

I would like to relay to you today both the areas of support and concern our members have with this plan and the impacts it could have on drivers and other policy initiatives.

For some context, our members would support a plan that would focus on drivers, including an industry-leading driver minimum earnings guarantee of around $27.50 per hour, paid for by the companies.

Creation of an independent driver's association selected by a vote of all drivers after an open, fair, and unbiased application process.

And if that's us, great.

If it's Teamsters, great.

As long as it's open, fair, and a vote of all drivers.

In addition, we would support a discipline or deactivation review panel run by that selected association of drivers.

We have concerns about the increase in the fee charged per ride by 51 cents.

We, in a report issued by Solis Financial Forensics, which I believe I've shared with all of council, it does show that an increase of this amount would result in a loss of earnings for drivers over $12 million per year.

This report did account for increase in ridership, it did account for price changes, it did account for price elasticity, and a lot of other things that should be accounted for in these types of reports.

So, With all due respect to the Deputy Mayor, we do think that this would harm drivers.

The tax amount of $0.51 is not needed to fund the driver protections proposed.

A negligible amount of about $0.05 would probably be sufficient to achieve these policy goals.

Additionally, looking at this might make ongoing efforts at the state level to secure a statewide portable benefit system for independent contractors across all industries more difficult due to the need for the state to change to charge a fee to manage the portable benefit system.

So I wouldn't councilmember came to President Harrell has a question Mike I read your email to on the first idea you had I know you have four or five points that you've conveyed to us.

It's basically done.

Yeah the Association the driver association that you mentioned.

Why does the city need?

Why is your idea that the city should mandate that what's to stop that from occurring now that can you describe that?

organization again and Why do they need a city to sanction that?

Go ahead.

So I would think a driver's association would look much like the proposed driver resource center.

My concern is, you know, sort of past experience that the rulemaking process would result in the selection process that would bias towards any one particular organization.

And so we just want to make sure the driver's voices are heard and it's the drivers that are selecting the organization that represents them through a fair, open process.

That's it.

That's all we're asking for.

We do know that there is a need for a driver's association at this point.

We do also understand that unwarranted deactivations happened.

I just had a meeting with a member of the Somali community last week where a rider decided that he would quote, according to my driver, quote, get you deactivated because he didn't want to make an extra stop in that ride.

We'll have, we'll further, we'll follow up on some conversation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Michael.

In short, when you're talking about option one, option two, uh, President Harrell, um, we would encourage actually a split of the tax and the driver protections.

Thank you.

Uh, Katie, uh, Keiko and Bue, the next one.

Can you help me with this?

That is Mohammed's, the last name.

Looks like Thomas.

Looks like a.

Thomas.

Whose last name is Mohammed?

Mohammed is the last name.

Maybe he left.

Number six.

Thank you, council members.

Katie.

Budget Chair Begshar, I would like to defer my time to tomorrow.

I did just want to provide a point of clarification.

You can get your bites of the apple now.

Go ahead.

The point of clarification I wanted to provide is that Drive Forward is not, in fact, a real union.

It is a company-funded union that is not affiliated with MLK Labor or any other labor organizations.

OK.

Thank you.

We'll still give you tomorrow, Katie.

Keiko.

And then the name that is unreadable, number six.

We're going to say it's Tomat Mohamed.

And then, boy, another one.

Banu Sa.

Please.

I'd like to defer my time as well tomorrow, but can I clarify?

Can I group?

Can I defer my time to a group of us?

I'm getting in so much trouble here.

OK, one sentence.

See what you started, Katie?

OK.

All right.

I said, see what you started, Katie?

Yeah.

She wants to clarify something.

And speak tomorrow.

But it was just a, I'm sorry, Chair, it was just sort of a, We've never tried what we were suggesting so I was just having a little fun with it, but I think it's fine Just go ahead because you're just one sentence It's all you got one sentence if you want to if you want to speak first tomorrow night Yeah, good Three sentences now go ahead.

Yeah tomorrow cuz we're gonna Okay.

Okay.

We can't wait.

Right.

So is there somebody that looks like T-U-M-A-T?

Last name Muhammad.

Nope.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then the next one is B-A-M-O-U-S-S-A.

Can you just ask, is there anyone that wants to speak today?

Oh, OK, never mind.

We'll go back to that.

OK, that didn't work.

That didn't work.

OK, Abdul Yusuf.

Yes.

Hey, nice to see you.

And then we're going, it looks like Mohamed Mohamed, and then Ahmed Mumin.

Yes, I am Mumin.

OK, is Abdul here?

Right here.

OK, hey, nice to see you.

And then Mohamed Mohamed.

OK, and then you're three.

OK, please, nice to see you.

Good afternoon, council ladies, mostly, and councilmen.

My name is Abdul Yusuf.

I'm from Eastside for Hire and also from the East African community.

The debate that was going on earlier is totally something that everybody agrees on has been put on a show, but the reality of the bill that is in front of you has not been discussed fully.

What I would like to actually highlight is the fact that of the 51 cents that has been proposed, seven cents will go towards driver resolution center.

The 44 cents will go towards city general programs.

The deputy mayor indicated that retail workers, restaurant workers, and their apartments will be part of this thing and other streetcars.

Why is this industry, which is majority minority, is selected to do the work of every city, business, and individual should have to address?

Why do we have to, our customers and ourselves, to take the burden of solving the citywide problems?

I see it as a discriminatory and I want this bill that is in front of you to only reflect the interest of the industry.

And if it's to be for the citywide, we want that our share, it's called share right, but actually we want our share of our industry for the general citywide problems to be addressed.

This is a new issue to us.

Our community is not well informed.

all of our drivers on their backs, they will help the citywide problems when all the other industries are not helping and being participating.

I welcome the idea of the community stakeholders meetings, which we will discuss this thing at a further length.

And particularly Sally, who is very familiar with the general issues, we would like you to convene and hear from us.

Two minutes is not good enough, thank you.

Thank you.

I appreciate your coming.

Mohamed Mohamed?

No, I'm not Mohamed.

What's your name?

Yeah, I'm Mohamed Mumin.

Okay, wait just a moment.

I think we had a Mohamed Mohamed.

Was that you, sir?

Please.

Okay, come on up.

Okay, tomorrow.

All right.

I think you're on.

Yes, thank you, council members for taking.

My name is Mohamed Mumin.

I'm the founder of Seattle Rideshare Drivers Association.

We founded this association in 2013. 700 drivers came together and founded this association.

We came, there was a strike, and we were striking against Uber.

Unfortunately, the reason you've not heard of this association is because we don't have a lot of money, and most of us are drivers, and we don't have that much time like today.

We cannot come and sit six, seven hours and talk.

But one thing that we are suggesting is that If money is going to be collected on behalf of drivers, tax money, I think this money should go toward helping the drivers.

We have a lot of ideas.

We've collected a lot of signatures from drivers.

We want to talk to different members and explain how our ideas is going to be beneficial.

But one of our idea is that we are thinking of the well-being of the drivers, meaning that we have social problems.

as drivers.

I'm a driver for the last six years, made more than 11,000 trips on Uber.

This is my full-time job, and I'm doing it today.

This is my third Prius that I've used.

What I'm saying is that one of the The ideas that Council Member Shama Sawant explained was a lot of drivers were former cab drivers.

We've lost a lot of money on the medallions, heavy on debt, and on top of that, we are deep into poverty, and a lot of situations is going on with our lives.

Beside the issues of deactivation and raising the money, we also have social problems that we need to address that we want to get opportunity to talk with each of you in your offices and explain our proposal.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for coming.

Eric Palmer, Michael Adams, and then Liban Saeed.

And would you still give us your name, please?

Are you Eric?

Yeah, I'm Eric Palmer.

Very nice.

Good.

Please go ahead.

My name is Eric Palmer.

I originally created the IDA with a group of drivers here in Seattle in order to create benefits for drivers.

We also created the Uber Lyft break room, which is all Uber Lyft drivers only.

We get the feedback from a lot of drivers, and we know what's going on.

I'm a single father.

I'm handicapped.

I have to raise my family on my own.

With everything that's gone on, I've heard the talk of surge.

Uber and Lyft no longer pay the surge to the drivers.

They charge our passengers.

They do not pay it to the drivers.

Drive Forward is a company that has let out false information saying that the initiative, the taxes were gonna raise $17.5 million that was just to be a slush fund for Teamsters 117 in order to try and scare people away from that tax.

I've talked to passengers and probably about 400 passengers.

All of them say they don't have a problem paying 51 cents extra.

In fact, they would encourage the raising of rates in order to take and make sure that the drivers are able to feed their families and live and have benefits.

A benefit for an independent contractor has to go to a benefit portfolio.

So it has to be a percentage of that has to go to that for the drivers to choose what they want to keep them independent.

I encourage that.

I would encourage that of anybody.

And if Teamsters can walk in and do it, hey, great.

If it's another organization, if the city mandates it of every gig worker to have that, that's even better because there's Microsoft, Amazon, there's gig workers everywhere.

we're hurt, and these companies that are hiring the gig workers are hurting us.

Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony.

Michael, Levon, Saeed, and then Patience.

Michael's me.

So he darn near covered everything I was going to say.

The only thing I'm going to add is if you really want to get an idea of what it is we're going through, what it is, an idea of what can actually help us, you practically need to be out there doing it.

We can talk to you guys, we can give you a lot of information.

You do need to be careful about who you're getting this information from.

There has been some allegations laid out, as you've already heard.

They don't bear repeating.

But some of them are right, some of them are not.

A lot of the problem that we're facing right now is driver education.

So when drivers are talking to you, bear in mind that not all of them are as up to snuff on the rules and regulations as if they were laid out right before them.

Most of them are getting word of mouth, being told do this, do that, and this is how it rolls.

So sometimes their viewpoints and what you can do to help is going to be skewed.

So if you really want to get that core information, you almost practically have to have a driver profile.

And if you need that, I'm here.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Michael.

There's a gentleman back there.

Yeah.

What is your name?

Abdul Shaya.

Let me see.

Do you remember what number you are?

Oh, yeah.

You're number 20, so just wait your turn, please, and we'll probably get you faster than you can imagine.

Libon?

Saeed?

Not here?

Patients?

I don't see patients.

There's so many people out there.

Who else wants to speak to me?

Yeah.

Elizabeth James?

Walter Ellis?

Oh, defer till tomorrow, Mr. Ellis?

Okay.

You're going to be fourth tomorrow.

17 is Don Creary.

No, he's got to be here to say that.

But nice try.

He left when he was here.

I saw Don leave after I gave that option.

Great.

A lot of people left after I gave that option.

Well, that's not going to help.

Several of them left.

I know, but they have to at least tell us.

Otherwise, how do I know?

Okay, I'm going with you, Dusty.

Oh, boy.

Here's a phone number.

206-229-3533.

Okay, come on up.

And say your name so I know next time.

Of course it is just like I Really appreciate the mayor's office and the city council member to step in to further drivers and I just like to let you guys know and public need to know this thing the drivers DNC all the drivers have a no and sick leave, no paid vacation, no 401K, if car broke down, we out of luck.

And I started with the Uber in 2013, and my revenue dropped less than 50%.

Okay, so right now Uber and Lyft, they are reacting to 51 cents making a big deal.

They charge a surge price top of the fare, tap $5, $10, $15, $20, $30 even.

a lot more than sometimes, so that they can afford 51 cents.

They can afford two quarter and a penny.

That's what I like to see.

And even Uber is net worth 76 billion as whole world, no, whole universe, no.

And Lyft is 29 billion, B billion.

where they get that money, because the drivers.

If we get part of that, I think they will not lose much.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Next one is, it looks like Lata Ahmed.

Okay, please, come on.

Really?

Okay.

And Abdi, you're here.

Thank you.

I got him.

Thank you, Madam Chair, President of City Council, and member of City Council as well.

My name is Abdi Shire.

I'm the chairman of Seattle Rideshare Driver Association, which is an umbrella organization, has multiple association with the various entities or maybe communities like, you know, the East Africans or Latino, different ethnicities, our platform.

I would like to support the activation, the activation proposal also to have an independent body including the driver organization, ETC, et cetera, or either maybe the city, kind of like independent body which could, until being proven guilty or not guilty, that means drivers has to have their voice.

Also, the complaint also has to come to the, and somebody has to decide.

In addition to the taxi proposal and money collected, the ride share industry, It must be also a tour to the driver well-being.

As my earlier colleague, Mr. Momin, has mentioned that we, as Seattle Racial Driver Associations, just we have been well-being of the drivers.

That's what we are advocating.

And also we are asking the process to be transparent and accountability to all.

We understand there's various entities and stakeholders As like other colleague of mine has mentioned that most of the minority community and especially immigrant community has no voice in this platform.

So we're asking as a council members to have a better legislation and look into this process and thank you.

Thank you for coming and thank you for waiting.

All right, who out in the audience still wants to speak?

And what's your name please?

Oh, good.

And is there anybody else here that wants to speak?

Page, you're number 22. I can read your writing here.

Well, hello.

Nice to see you.

So, I think, Jonathan, I think you're next.

So, please, you're number 21. Page, you're 22. Anybody else that's on our list?

Marguerite Richard is last.

Paige, don't leave.

You're almost up.

Nice to see you, Jonathan.

Yeah, likewise.

Thank you.

I just had a couple updates for you guys on the Samaritan pilot and a couple statements that I wanted to read.

If you'll just give me a moment to pull them up.

I will.

So one of the latest things that has been happening with the Samaritan pilot, which again is these smart wallets that we've designed specifically for people experiencing homelessness to address critical needs to getting into housing and better health.

Harborview Emergency Rooms have signed a letter of intent to provide beacons as a resource for people who are homeless and in and out of the ER.

We have seen now over $100,000 transferred directly to the 500 pilot group with over 1,000 messages of encouragement sent to these individuals.

Of the 500, 274 of the treatment group have reported meeting either a major financial or relational need to getting into housing, and 50 of those have actually moved into housing, gotten employed, or moved into full-time treatment.

Noah Fay, the Director of Housing Programs from DESC, says that we hope to use Samaritan to empower clients and also equip the broader community to see the humanity of the people we serve.

Sharon Lee, the Executive Director of Lehigh, hopes to use Samaritan to build relationships of trust with clients, instill new hope, and ultimately navigate more people into housing.

And Mickey Jordan, the Director of Outreach at The Salvation Army, says that this would represent transformative access to the financial and social capital that the people we serve need.

We feel that this intervention drives behavioral change, which can lower costs to the city, generate new data, and make the city a better place for all to live.

Jason Johnson from HSD said that While HSD doesn't have funding for this that they want to replace an existing line item, if the City Council can find pilot funding for this, that he would be in support of that.

It would take $175K to give 750 more people access to a beacon in the next year.

and 225K to give 1,200 people, 1,250 people access to a beacon in the second year.

So I'd love to hear maybe more of what you guys have thought about.

get an update from you if this is something of interest.

Great.

Thank you, Jonathan.

Paige, you are second to the last and maybe last if we don't see Marguerite.

Please, thank you for waiting.

My name is Paige Mallott, and I'm a member of the Seattle Streetcar Coalition, and I'm here today to support the fair share plan for funding the streetcar.

Last year, over 24 million ride-hailing trips originated in the City of Seattle, a 16% increase year-over-year.

Over half of these trips took place in the downtown corridor, which will be served by the Center City Streetcar.

For the small amount for each ride-hailing trip, this tax would raise $56 million of investments over five years to complete the Center City Streetcar on First Avenue and also strengthen our opportunity for a $75 million grant from the federal government.

With 65% of the region's carbon emissions coming from transportation, a tax on ride hailing to fund a streetcar that's powered by 100% green energy is a step that we can take today towards climate action, addressing congestion, and becoming a more sustainable city.

Please support the fair share plan.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Marguerite Richard?

All right, I'm not seeing Marguerite, so that's the end of our public comment.

We'll see you all tomorrow night at 530, and appreciate you coming, and this meeting's adjourned.

Thank you.