Well, good morning and welcome.
I'm Deanna Robinson-Sloat, Communication Director of the Seattle City Council, and I'll serve as your moderator for this morning's press conference.
Before we get started, I want to ensure everybody on the call is familiar with our ground rules.
First, following Council Member Muscata's presentation and her remarks, we'll take a few questions by email or potentially by text or chat.
Second, if you haven't done so already and you're not speaking at this moment, please go about muting your microphones.
And without any further ado, I'll turn the program over to Council Member Mosqueda.
Council Member, the floor is yours.
Well, good morning, and thank you so much for being here today.
I'm Teresa Mosqueda, Seattle City Council Member citywide.
Over the past few months, my incredible team in the office and I have been working with hundreds of Seattleites and organizations across our city to craft the proposal we are launching today to jumpstart our economy.
to stimulate equitable growth.
to provide immediate COVID relief.
We worked with our community, our community of color-led organizations, large businesses, small businesses, laborers, labor members, immigrant rights organizations, housing advocates, homelessness advocates, transportation and environmental justice advocates to provide this proposal for our city's consideration to respond to the COVID crisis and to really re-energize our community and invest in our local economy.
Everybody that we've spoken to over the last few months has come to the same conclusion.
Our community is hurting.
Our economy is tanking.
We cannot wait for the feds or the state to step in.
We have to act now to help Seattle.
Together, this large coalition of stakeholders built this proposal to promote health, create jobs, and reignite our economy in a more equitable way.
We realized that COVID did not cause this economic crisis alone.
It nearly ignited an already fragile economy and we saw epic amounts of harm caused by the amount of layoffs that have taken place.
Thousands of people were already left behind in our previous economy.
And now we've seen the consequence of a fragile economy that left far too many behind while promoting only a few.
Prior to this public health emergency, we already had a state of emergency.
We had a declared state of emergency on homelessness, where over 11,000 individuals in King County were experiencing homelessness, and over 70% of those folks were living unsheltered right here in Seattle.
We do not have enough housing.
Report after report has said we need more affordable housing and housing all types across our city and region.
COVID had just exposed the cracks that were already there in an unequitable economy.
But we can jumpstart our economy.
We can jumpstart Seattle and do it in an equitable way and an inclusive way that ensures that everyone who lives here can participate and share in our growth.
This ultimately leads to healthier, more resilient economies, a better city that supports our businesses as well.
The proposal that we are announcing today helps respond to the needs due to the COVID crisis this year.
It maintains essential services so that the city and our working families can have services like childcares, parks, safe streets, libraries, core investments that make our communities run.
It invests deeply in solving our affordable housing and homelessness crisis in the out years, and it rebuilds our economy by making sure it works for all Seattleites.
We really just don't have the option to wait.
We are in the midst of a pandemic.
And in the midst of a pandemic, housing and food insecurity is not just a moral crisis, it is a public health crisis.
We are in the midst of a crisis of consciousness as more people demand action from us, as they see the consequences of institutionalized racism.
And we have to acknowledge that black and brown folks are getting hit with higher rates of COVID, hospitalizations and deaths.
Coronavirus layoffs disproportionately hurt Black and Latino workers, where nine in 10 Black-owned businesses who applied for the federal support through PPP were denied.
They didn't get it because of the long history of racist lending policies.
And thousands of undocumented workers, families in Seattle who were laid off, were intentionally excluded from the CARES Act.
Throughout Seattle, small businesses have told me they are really wanting to open their doors.
But without flexible dollars, because the federal dollars have so many requirements tied to them, without flexible dollars to pay for staff, to put in the needed protections for their workers, to pay vendors from March because there was no April, May, or June revenue, they need dollars in hand now so we can kickstart our economy.
These are the issues that we have come together to address.
The proposal to jumpstart Seattle would promote health create jobs and save our economy.
And in this moment, everyone that I've talked to over the last two months is asking what they can do.
How can they help?
How can they take action and be part of the solution?
For our largest companies in the city, this is one way we can address the crisis and reinvest in our community.
And the return on investment is huge.
We know that when individuals have housing and food and jobs, they then have cash in hand and can make investments in our local economy.
By and large, these largest companies that we're talking about through this assessment don't have brick and mortar storefronts.
They have continued to operate near full capacity, been able to generate profits, and I'm hoping that we can all step up and have individuals contribute to our recovery together.
These are the values in the proposals.
We can expand nutrition assistance to help families.
We can provide cash assistance to small businesses and working families.
We can support local business who are on the brink of not being able to come back without assistance.
And we can invest in critical infrastructure that keeps people working and creates good union jobs.
No matter your political leanings, every Seattleite I've talked to has agreed on a few things.
We need immediate relief.
for the COVID crisis, we need to help people get housed and off the street.
We need more affordable housing throughout the city, and we need a significant amount of revenue to make meaningful change so that people have trust that when we step up, we can solve problems.
This is a sensible tax.
It helps get us there.
It's focused on urgent needs, long-term solutions to create more stable and equitable economy.
And that's why you see this large group of individuals that will be coming together through a longer list, but the diverse group of individuals that we have here in the press conference today to talk about what they would like to see as we move forward.
as we invest in our community to make sure that folks are housed, small businesses are supported, and that our entire economy is regenerated in a more equitable way.
So let's turn it over to our panelists who are here to talk about their lived experience, what they have seen throughout this COVID crisis, and quite frankly, what they have been hoping for in terms of action even before COVID hit.
our first three speakers come from the Community Needs Panel.
We will first hear from Marty Koistra, Executive Director from the Housing Development Consortium.
Marty, thank you so much for being with us.
Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda, and my appreciation for your willingness to explore alternative paths for how we move forward.
Prior to the blunt emergence of the pandemic, we were a conflicted city, living on one hand with the glorious optimism of a coveted, vibrant economy.
While hardly in the shadows, we knew that so many were struggling on the periphery without a home or were housing insecure.
Now this facade, as you have said, has crumbled.
We cannot ignore what is important, what's necessary, and what is just.
Over the last 10 years, we in King County had a net loss of 112,000 homes attainable to low-income households.
They did not physically disappear.
No, this is the result of years of immense job and population growth without adequate, truly affordable housing production, which drove rents way out of range.
We live in the one state out of all 50 that gets to claim the position of being the most regressive in how we collect taxes.
This, by the way, is not something innovative or to be proud of.
The implications of this are straightforward.
Elected officials like yourself are left with property taxes and sales taxes as the tools to produce the revenue.
So they're exacerbating the inequities you have talked about throughout our region.
It's estimated that an additional 30,000 people will be added to those who will pay more than 50% of their income for housing in Washington State starting this fall due to the pandemic.
If evictions and foreclosures are not shunted, so many more people will experience homelessness.
Sure, we can continue to fight for additional federal funding now and change the state's revenue model tomorrow.
And while we look out and up, we must also lead here in Seattle.
Why?
Because the social justice bank account is so far overdrawn and the need for support for physical and mental health and housing are critical aspects of how we honor and respect all people.
Housing is essential.
Housing is recovery, and housing is justice.
Thank you, Marty.
Next, we will hear from Teresa Garcia, representative from One America.
Teresa.
Sorry, you're on mute, Teresa.
I'm sorry.
Perfect.
Thank you for letting me share my story.
I am a leader with one American Washington state.
I am an undocumented mother.
I have lived in Washington state for eight years and 20 years in the United States of America.
Undocumented people work hard and we are resilient.
We care about our families and communities.
We are always faced with inequities, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, we are experiencing a different level of oppression.
Like many undocumented families, my family has been impacted by the coronavirus, and we do not have enough work hours or no work at all.
Due to this loss of income, we could not fully pay April's rents or bills.
And May's situation was even more difficult because past and recent bills must be paid.
We do not have money to cover our responsibilities.
undocumented families are trying to survive during the pandemic.
And it is frustrating, sad, and unfair that one more time we are not supported by the government, even we pay taxes every single year.
I have two children with DACA.
We are worried and waiting for the Supreme Court to decide the future of DACA.
One of my children is a senior at the university, and I want to celebrate his success, but I right now do not have even money to buy his cap and gown.
He's extremely worried about his future after he graduates with a sociology degree.
My other child lives with his wife.
He's the one who is supporting us financially right now.
My health has been affected during this pandemic because of the level of stress that I am experiencing?
And how can I go to the doctor if I don't have money to pay one more bill?
We need our allies to raise their voices and share with others that undocumented people are making real contribution to our communities.
We deserve to be supported.
We are on the front lines of this pandemic.
And Jump Start Seattle is an important proposal, and it should be approved by the council.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Teresa.
And the last person in the community partners panel is Sarah Rankin, Director of Homelessness Rights Advocacy Project and Associate Professor at Seattle University.
Thank you, council member, and I just also wanted to say thank you to Teresa for sharing her story.
I really admire and appreciate your, your courage and your insights.
Thank you.
I also appreciated Marty's comments.
I think they're helpful in terms of laying out the overall affordable housing crisis.
There has been projections, some estimates, most recent estimates suggest that the pandemic is projected to cause up to a 45% increase in homelessness throughout the country.
And so what that means is that more and more of us are standing at the precipice of job loss, housing insecurity, and homelessness.
Because I direct the Homeless Rights Advocacy Project, I wanted to just spend a moment trying to explain why Councilmember Mosqueda's proposal is such an important focus.
From the perspective of the impact that this proposal could have on people experiencing homelessness, which as I indicated is going to be increasingly more of us, people experiencing homelessness are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19.
Recent studies have shown that people experiencing homelessness are twice as likely to be hospitalized when they're infected, two to four times more likely to require critical care, and two to three times more likely to die than members of the general population who are infected with COVID.
Moreover, congregate shelters are really not solutions because they don't afford people the ability to self-isolate.
They've been referred to in a number of reports that I've read as time bombs waiting to go off.
We see daily reports showing high rates of infection, including asymptomatic infection, alarming outbreaks in shelters in major urban cities throughout the country, suggesting rapid rates of transmission if people don't have housing, not shelter, The most recent estimate I saw was that about 40% of our country's homeless population could be infected at the population's viral peak, which is later than that, it's timing later than the viral peak for the rest of the housed population.
And a significant percentage of those folks are gonna need hospitalization.
So what all this means is that COVID's impact on our homeless population represents a persistent risk to those who live on the street and for those of us who live off of the street.
So if we want our region to recover, we have to recognize that housing is healthcare, not only for our unsheltered neighbors, but for all of us.
Housing is essential to our collective public health and our regional recovery.
So I'd like to Thank Councilmember Mosqueda for crafting a proposal, especially with the limited tools, as Marty indicated, that are available to the Council that recognizes that in a crisis, we have to triage and focus on these critical connections between housing and economic recovery.
And I'll stop there.
I'm happy to speak more about supportive housing since that's such a significant component.
of the proposal, but I do thank the Councilmember for including that as a major priority.
Thank you very much, Sarah, and thanks for all of your work and research.
Next, we will hear from our business partners on the economic revitalization components of the legislation.
Again, thank you to these partners for being here with us today.
First, we'll turn it over to Richard DeSemlarzo, Government Affairs Director for Expedia.
Richard, thank you.
Richard, you may be on mute as well.
It's still early.
Good morning, Councilmember.
Thanks for having me.
I'm Richard DeSanwezor, Northwest Government Affairs Manager at Expedia Group.
Last year, we were proud to open the doors to our new global headquarters on Elliott Bay.
Seattle is a vibrant, diverse, innovative city that we're proud to call home.
We're part of this community, and that's why we invested millions of dollars into the Elliott Bay Trail, creating acres of new public space and improving scenery and safety on this important commute corridor.
It's why we're proud to co-chair Mayor Durkin's Innovation Advisory Council to lend our technology talent to city agencies, and why we helped pilot the Opportunity Promise Internship Program to help develop the next generation of Seattle's innovation workforce.
And it's why we're here today.
Expedia Group is committed to partnerships that seek to address our hometown's biggest challenges.
We're so grateful that Council Member Mosqueda welcomed our input into the work to tackle interwoven challenges of economic recovery, housing affordability, and homelessness in Seattle.
While we are concerned about any new city tax in this period of economic uncertainty, this is a necessary conversation until progress can be made on state and regional solutions to Olivia.
So on behalf of Expedia Group, thank you, Council Member Mosqueda, for your leadership and for inviting us to be part of this work.
Thank you so much, Richard.
I really appreciate your words, and we will keep working on that state-level solution as embedded in this legislation as well.
Thank you.
Steve Hopper from Ethan Stoll.
He's the president of Ethan Stoll Restaurants.
Steve, thank you so much for all of your contributions and for being here with us today.
Thank you, Council Member.
It's an honor to be here and an honor to have worked with you and your team throughout the last several weeks and months in crafting this.
Obviously, through COVID, the world has fallen into a ditch.
And the only way we are going to get out of this is together.
I truly believe that.
Government, nonprofit, private sectors all have a role to play in what we're trying to rebuild.
And I think this proposal moves a long way towards that.
And while I do understand a lot of my friends in the business community are concerned about the timing of this new tax, I have to believe that rebuilding together in a more equitable way is a just and altruistic goal for which we could all contribute a little something.
As a co-chair of this year's United Way annual campaign with my partner Ethan, as well as being a member of Executive Constantine's One Table initiative, it has become increasingly clear to me that the funding for structural changes necessary to address long-term solutions for homelessness and many of the things that the community partners highlighted has to come from government with support from business, labor, and the other communities.
I thank those people for speaking earlier to those needs.
And to my friends of the Third Door Coalition, I'm excited to see the implementation of some of your plan, which was both thoughtful, wise, and regionally based.
I appreciate the inclusiveness of this process and it was truly taking multiple perspectives and stitching them together for my part and our company's part.
The greatest concern we had was that the payroll tax should not be impacting the jobs of the very lowest wage workers and those whose employment is already going to be so difficult coming back from this crisis.
I think that's a really good point.
I think that's a really good point.
I think that's a really good point.
I think that's a really good point.
I think that's a really good point.
I think that's a really good point.
I think that's a really good point.
I think that's a really good point.
I think that's a really good point.
I think that's a really good point.
I think that's a really good point.
I think that's a really good point.
I think that's a really good point.
I think that's a really good point.
is a wise inclusion that will spur action at the county and state levels.
And I look forward to continue to working through that process as well.
I truly hope what happened here for this process and what has been undertaken can be a model for the long-term collaboration across government, business, labor, and the nonprofit sectors.
The process should be proof that if we stop pounding the table and actually start listening to each other, we have a real chance to address some of the most intractable issues in society.
Thank you for your time, and I look forward to continuing the collaboration.
Thank you very much, Steve.
Really appreciate you highlighting those pieces and in all of the ways you've stepped up.
It's been a pleasure to work with both of you, Richard and Steve.
Thanks again for being here today.
Our last presenters come from our labor partners.
It's truly been an honor of mine to be able to work with these folks over the last and our first speaker is Chris McLean, business manager at Ironworkers Local 86. Chris, please take it away.
Good morning, everybody.
As you said, my name is Chris McLean.
I'm the manager of Ironworkers Local 86. I'll start by saying that, simply, we support this proposed legislation.
There's clearly a need for supportive services in and around Seattle for our more vulnerable community members.
which includes workers and small businesses.
The legislation that's being proposed would go to great lengths because it has broad and considerate assistance ranging from housing stability and mental health to small business support and economic revitalization.
So I think it was Mahatma Gandhi who said a nation's greatness can be measured by how it treats its weakest members.
With that being said, this legislation or legislation similar to this has been negotiated and supported by the larger business community and the iron workers in the recent past in the form of House Bill 2907, which unfortunately was unsuccessful in passing the legislature.
We now have an opportunity in this proposal to pick up where they left off.
As the manager of a private construction union, one of my roles is to negotiate with employers that are signatory to our contract.
We find that the best method to gain improvement for our membership community is through negotiation.
Similar to most life experiences, you aim for the stars and land in the clouds.
We support fair negotiations in good faith because the outcomes are often longer lasting with greater effect and reduce the possibility of those end goals being subject to the tides of emotional swings.
Seattle is a very diverse city ranging from the very affluent to the extremely impoverished.
Good legislation such as Councilmember Mosquito's proposal is what helps to blend those extremes so that we are truly together when it comes to continue making this great city vibrant, diverse, and considerate for all walks of life.
Thank you.
Chris, thank you for your words and for your leadership.
really appreciate all the work that you do and for helping to thread that needle for the economic recovery that our community needs and that your members need to rebuild our local economy.
The next presenter is Jeanette Randall from United Food and Commercial Workers Local 21, a grocery worker at Safeway.
Jeanette, thank you for being with us today.
Thank you so much.
Councilmember Mosqueda said, my name is Jeanette Randall.
I've worked in the grocery industry for nearly 20 years.
I'm also a democratically elected executive vice president of UCW Local 21. We strongly support Councilmember Mosqueda's revenue proposal.
As a grocery worker, I have witnessed the inequity in our city grow.
Food insecurity and housing stability are both serious problems that our city faced even before COVID-19.
I fear the pandemic will only cause this inequity to grow, and we will see more families struggling to keep a roof over their head and food on the table.
Every day, many customers come through my line and to my store.
I see some people who are able to buy all the food that they need for their family, and too many more who must ring up their groceries one by one to see if they can afford their whole cart.
Now more than ever, we must reinvest in our community.
We are in the midst of a public health crisis.
People must be healthy and housed to survive.
For our most vulnerable, our city must step up to ensure that they get food assistance, housing, and other support they need.
This proposal will help boost our economy, uplift small business, and help support our immigrant, refugee, and elderly communities.
My customers are my neighbors.
They deserve to be invested in because when we uplift them, it supports our city as a whole.
UFCW Local 21 understands the need for this revenue and we support a long-term solution for housing and economic stimulation, which will help address this urgent health crisis that COVID-19 has exposed and amplified.
Thank you.
Jeanette, thank you so much and thanks for being out there on the front line.
You truly are essential and we need to say, not just say that, but invest in essential workers and pay them and respect them that way too.
So thank you for representing UFCW 21 today representing the clients that you see every day.
Our last speaker is President Sterling Henders, Sterling Harters from SEIU 775, a friend and a longtime labor advocate.
Thank you, Sterling, for being with us today.
Thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda.
SEIU 775 represents 45,000 long-term care workers across the state, including thousands of caregivers here in Seattle.
And our members have really been on the front lines dealing with this pandemic because they are working in nursing homes and taking care of vulnerable residents in their own homes.
And we've seen the impact of this pandemic on low-income residents.
Caregivers have lost their jobs.
Their hours have been cut.
They've lost income.
Their family members have lost jobs and income.
But their expenses aren't going down.
Their rent isn't going down.
The cost of food isn't going down.
The cost of utilities isn't going down.
That story that Jeanette just shared about folks having to ring up their groceries one by one to make sure that they could afford them, That is what my members are facing.
We're facing a massive budget deficit at every level, city, state, and the public investments, public services that working people rely on now more than ever are at risk and budget cuts are only going to make things worse and push us deeper into a recession.
So what we need is real investments that support low income folks who are the hardest hit.
We need to fix our upside down tax code and make sure that the wealthy and large corporations, folks that can afford to pay more, do pay more.
And finally, I just want to appreciate how much effort Council Member Mosqueda has put into this proposal.
I know you and your team met with a huge number of stakeholders, nonprofits, businesses.
You guys really did the work.
And so I want to appreciate the thoughtfulness of this proposal.
We look forward to working with the Council and the Mayor to find new revenue, to support critical investments, to help low-income communities, and help revitalize our economy.
Thank you.
Thank you, President Harters.
And thank you all for all of the information that you have shared today on the why.
Why we are here standing together as a broad coalition.
President Harters mentioned the number of individuals we've met with.
I think we counted over 100 organizations, countless Zoom meetings.
The proposal in front of you is data driven.
It is solution oriented.
and boost our local economy by investing in our most vulnerable, our smallest businesses, so that we can help all in our economy, not just survive, but be more resilient as we come out of this COVID crisis.
I will turn it over to Dana to facilitate questions from the press.
We do hope to answer your questions.
The press members of the media did receive a technical briefing earlier.
And if you do have some of those technical questions, if I can't answer them in the moment, I will make sure to follow up with you, but really would encourage you to direct your questions to our community partners as well.
Their names and organizations are listed on the slide in case you need that for reference as well.
Thanks, Dana.
This is Joseph from Council Communications, and we asked people to submit, reporters to submit questions via email, and we're going to go ahead and take those questions in the order in which they were received and allow the reporters themselves to ask them.
If you are someone who has not emailed a question, please go ahead and raise your hand in the Zoom app.
After we go through the queue of email questions, we'll call on you in the order in which you raise your hand.
So the first three reporters who sent in questions are Erica Barnett from the CS Crank.
Then we have Natalie Graham from the Stranger, followed by Dan Beekman from the Seattle Times.
So we're going to start with Erica.
Go ahead, Erica.
Oh, hi.
This is kind of a technical question.
I just had a question about the compensation.
The $150,000 and up, does that include benefits and things like that?
Or is that purely salary?
Thank you, Erica.
We will get back to you on the specific details.
But we made sure in the text of the legislation, if you don't have it already, we can share that with you.
It does not include things like health care.
So it's truly just intended to be salary.
and the financial benefits that a worker may receive from their employer.
We wanted to do this intentionally, recognizing you cannot pay rent with health care.
We bargained a lot to make sure that our health care benefits are robust.
And we also want to apply the same concept to this assessment and really just assess on the true salary.
Next up.
Go ahead, Joseph.
And Erica, if I didn't answer your question, I'm happy to follow up with you.
But it does not include benefits.
Great.
Thank you.
And next up, we have Natalie Graham from The Stranger.
Hi, Natalie.
Hi.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
OK, great.
So can you talk about the choice to go with what has been described by reporters as a high earners tax instead of the blanket tax on payrolls above $7 million?
Why go this route?
And will it raise enough money to do what the tax seeks to accomplish?
Does it move the needle enough?
So I want to lift up some of the conversation that you heard from Richard from Expedia and Steve from Ethan Still Restaurants.
There is a big difference right now between companies who are mostly service sector and retail, who've had to board up their brick and mortar shops, who haven't had any revenue or very little revenue with online deliveries.
We know that those who were potentially considered large six months ago might not even be in existence six months from now.
And we really wanted to try to emphasize that those who have had the ability to continue to generate revenue, those who have been able to have their employees working from home for the most part, those who have been able to see profits continue, that we think that those companies, if this proposal is successful, they will be able to reinvest into our local economy.
But a lot of folks who are making less than $150,000 are more likely to be in the service sector.
It was important for us to recognize the difference between that type of employment versus employment that for most part, would allow people to mostly stay at home.
So it was a post-COVID analysis that we did on which companies we thought could potentially absorb and help contribute to this cost.
I don't know if Steve or Richard have anything else to say about sort of the difference between those companies that have been just waiting to open up and those who've been able to continue.
Steve, I saw you come online, if you have anything.
Yeah, I'll say something quickly.
I appreciate that, Teresa.
The analysis that we did in the very early part of the conversation with Council Member Mosqueda's staff was that the lowest wage earners would be disproportionately impacted in the ability to get their jobs back.
And the companies that employ them would be disproportionately impacted by alternative proposals in front of the council today.
And we engaged in this process where we, as Teresa said, we were a large business that would have been caught in that last year.
Who knows what this year will hold for us.
But we felt that we will be paying a component of this ourselves.
But the bulk of our workers, we want to just get them back to work.
That's our number one goal as a company.
And if we can do that, and this proposal allows us to continue scaling back to where we were, we look forward to contributing more over time.
Thank you, Steve.
And I'll just also add, you know, this also builds on the concept that you saw in the House legislation that Representative Macri introduced, House Bill 2907, where the conversation did start with an analysis of assessing those salaries or that payroll over $150,000.
I appreciate the really hard work that went into that piece of legislation.
We know that it was a conglomeration of businesses and labor and We've tried to build off of those concepts here.
Again, this is the starting point for our conversation here at the city, but we really did try to build on that goodwill and that hard work at the state level as well.
Thank you.
Next up, we have Dan Beekman from the Seattle Times.
Thanks a lot.
I just wanted to ask, it's my understanding that The way to get the money out the door to help people right now who are dealing with the effects of the pandemic is through going into the city's emergency reserves.
And I just want to make sure I understand, you know, how much there is there, how much would need to be taken and I think that there have been some conversations about using that money to close the budget gap and I'm wondering if those uses might be in conflict.
Thank you, Dan.
I will try to answer your question and then we can make sure the central staff follows up with any technical pieces that you need in addition.
So as you saw from the proposal, years one and two are different in terms of spend than the out years 2022 and beyond.
And that's because the assessment does not actually begin getting paid to the city until 2022 based on 2021 payroll expenses.
So in years one and two, or this year, 2020 and 2021, year one, we would spend about 50% of the anticipated revenue from the 2021 tax.
This money is going to be spent out of existing cash reserves, as you heard from central staff this morning, that includes funding from the emergency emergency reserves in rainy day, and we will begin paying it back in 2021. Specifically into the details, it's about $67 million that we have in those reserves, and there is a number of unspent dollars in previous budgets that we can pull from.
We know at least there's $13 million from last year that is underspent right now.
I think it is a fair question that you asked about how those dollars are potentially being used by the mayor's ongoing budget analysis right now, and we'll have to reconcile that.
We were hopeful that we would have received that proposal last week, but we will continue to work on those proposals and make sure that every dollar is accounted for, because right now we have the opportunity to use emergency reserves funds.
If there was ever an emergency, it is a global public health pandemic that is deadly.
It is a recession that rivals a depression, and it is the opportunity for us to invest in the unprecedented number of folks who are unemployed and our small businesses who without this assistance may not recover at all.
So as we think about sort of the values there, I think we'll all be working over the next few weeks to reconcile any differences, but the dollars are available and we can pay those dollars back once the revenue starts coming in in 2022.
Thank you.
Next up, we have Natalie Swabie from King 5, followed by Kevin Schofield of SCC Insight.
Go ahead, Natalie.
Oh, Natalie, I can't hear you if you're on mute.
Unmute, can you hear me?
Yeah, now I can hear you.
Awesome, sorry about that.
So when proposals like this have come up in the past, we have heard people raise concerns that could this cause wages to go down.
I want to hear what you think about that.
And then also, it's obvious that you've engaged with a lot of stakeholders here, and we're hearing from some of those today.
What are some of the concerns that have been raised from stakeholders, and how have you answered those, some of the biggest ones?
Okay, well, first, I think that we need to realize that Seattle is a highly competitive, very prosperous place to have a business.
And when we think about an assessment of over 7 million in Seattle payroll, and just assessing those at over $150,000 in salary, and then a higher tier at over half a million in salary, I think we have to realize that the type of assessment that we're talking about on those specific companies is probably not gonna have a detrimental impact, and I think that the data bears out that it's not going to impact wages.
We've seen reports from that in the past, but let me give you a specific example so you can see the magnitude of the tax that we're talking about.
If we have a company that has a total payroll of about $7.5 million, for example, and they have 50 employees, and let's just say for the sake of argument, all 50 of those employees make $150,000 a year.
the obligation under this proposal would be $52,500.
And that's on a community that has a Seattle payroll of over $7 million.
So I think that that magnitude of the company's overall worth or investment compared to $52,000 shows that this is a small portion of dollars that we are hoping can be reinvested and combined with these other to really invest into our local economies to spur economic development.
You asked about the large or the breadth of the coalition and how those conversations have gone.
Can you repeat that last part of the question?
I'm sorry.
Yeah, no, I think you said you've reached out to 100 stakeholders.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
But just we're hearing some positive comments from companies like Expedia, but have you heard any pushback and how are you answering those concerns?
So as we've talked to small businesses, medium businesses, immigrant rights advocates, housing advocates, labor friends, large businesses, universally, people have said, I really just wish we could do a state-level income tax.
And I think we are in the same position.
We actually have shared agreement that there needs to be true progressive revenue reform at the state level.
As President Harder said, we need to right-size up our upside-down tax system.
all of us are united in wanting there to be progressive revenue at the state level.
So when we've heard some of those concerns or a desire to do income tax instead, the first thing we did was to say whether or not we could do, the first thing we did was analyze whether or not we could do an income tax at the city level.
And without the ability to have a progressive income tax and just to have it flat rate, without the ability to have a rebate of some sort immediately, I think we all can agree it's not possible or unconscionable to ask lower wage workers and families to pay the city a tax at this point when they can't even put food on the table or pay their rent.
So without the ability to do that, and also the possible legal challenges for us to do a local income tax, really the tool at our disposal, the very limited tools as Marty Koester talked about and Sarah Rankin is to do a payroll tax.
But as we recognize there's harmony among those who are a little uncomfortable or nervous about a local tax, we have put into the legislation language that says that if there is progressive revenue at the county or the state level, we would assess and our intent is to basically sunset our tax if there's true progressive substantial revenue that we can bank.
And I think that element really helps people be heard when they say, let's all work towards the same boat.
And I know that Richard mentioned this in his comments, too.
I know he had to leave a little early in case he's still here.
If you want to comment on that, Richard, I'm looking for him in the line up here.
He may have had to leave a little early.
But I hope that's helpful in answering your question.
There are some people who are going to be supportive of this proposal because they also recognize it could potentially be short-term in nature as we work towards a longer-term solution at the state or regional level.
Thank you.
And our final question comes from Kevin Schofield of SCC Insight.
Go ahead, Kevin.
OK, I'm going to apologize.
I'm going to ask two questions, a long one and a short one here.
The long one is, maybe it's a short answer, in the 2020 spending plan, Is it all new spending, or is some of it backfilling revenue support for existing spending?
And then the second question is following up from Natalie Swapey's question.
Have you actually talked to Amazon about this proposal?
And if you did, what did they say?
Sorry, I was on.
I was on mute there.
I'll take the last question first.
There are folks that I have worked with over the years that do interact with folks at Amazon.
And we are interested in hearing their feedback, just like I'm interested in hearing anybody's feedback on this proposal.
That's always been my policy, including years ago, two years ago, when we were working on various revenue strategies.
My door is going to be open to hearing feedback.
We have shared the pillars or the framework of the legislation with a number of business partners, and that includes some folks who tangentially do work with the folks over at Amazon, but this is also, I think I want to I want to repeat something that's important from the earlier presentation from central staff and what you've heard from the folks here.
This is not about one company.
This is not about one sort of targeted effort.
This is about a universal approach to really reinvest in our local economy.
And so I am interested in hearing from all community members, including large businesses, our smallest businesses who we've talked to quite a bit, and ongoing conversations with labor and community partners.
In terms of whether or not the money for the 2020 spend is new, my chief of staff, Sejal Parikh, is on the line too if you have more detailed questions, but it is new.
So we're talking about identifying funding for immigrants and refugees to have the ability to have cash assistance very similar to what Austin City Council has authorized.
We're talking about asking small businesses what they needed and they've told us they needed flexible dollars and they also need childcare support.
So we've built in a plan to work with local childcare providers to make sure that folks have childcare so people can go back to work.
We have enhanced some of the dollars around food vouchers and food assistance.
And Kevin, maybe just before I finish answering that question, I'll double check.
Are you asking if these are completely new programs or if we're adding two programs?
I am asking if if you're adding to program in particular because it looks like one of the funds you're tapping from is a rainy day fund, which is supposed to be sort of revenue replacement for when there's a revenue downturn like we have right now.
rather, the expectation when it was set up was that it's replacing revenues rather than for new spending, but it looks like you're going to be using it for new spending.
So I just wanted to clarify, you know, what the intended use is, whether it was new spending or revenue replacement.
Great.
I'm just going to double check to see if Sejal from my office is interested in talking about that or if we should follow up.
We can follow up with you.
That's fine.
From central staff as well, but I think, let me give you one example of where I think it's adding to existing strategies, but with the new revenue, it's going to actually make an impact.
We saw small businesses who applied for the Small Business Assistance Program at the city level, total upwards of 9,000 small businesses who were seeking support.
We were only able to give a handful of those individuals additional assistance.
We also saw from the home-based program at the county when they opened their doors for rental assistance and housing assistance dollars to make sure that people could stay stably housed.
Within three days, they got thousands of applications and they are not able to meet the need that's out there.
So the intent is to really augment or add to some of the programs that we've seen have not sufficient revenue at the moment and really make meaningful impact.
And we'll follow up with you to make sure that you get the details on where each of those dollars are going, because it's going to be key for our spend plan details.
Colleagues, sorry, yes, colleagues, friends from the media, we also will be sending you a narrative document that corresponds with the two tables that you should have seen that correspond with the pieces of legislation out there so that it's an explainer document.
Thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda, and thank you, participants, today.
That's all the time we have, but again, additional questions can be sent to me.
My email address is dana.robinsonsloat at seattle.gov, and as promised, we'll email out the information and details discussed on today's call at the end of this call, and we'll do our best to respond to your questions in a timely fashion.
Thanks again.
Thanks for everybody for joining us for today, and the panelists, I really appreciate you.
Thanks to members of the media.
Our central staff team in my office, Sejal Parikh, Aaron House, Freddy de Cuevas, and Aretha Basu have been incredible.
So huge amount of appreciation.
Thanks for joining us.