Community Economic Development Committee 1/22/21

Good morning, everyone.

The January 22nd, 2021 special meeting of the Community Economic Development Committee will come to order.

It is 9.32 a.m.

I'm Tammy Morales, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Juarez?

Councilmember Lewis?

Councilmember Peterson?

Here.

Councilmember Sawant?

Here.

Chair Morales.

Here.

Three in attendance.

I should say I'm here.

Council Member Juarez is here.

Council Member Juarez, welcome.

Good morning, thank you.

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

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

I don't believe we have anyone signed up for public comments.

Sun, can you confirm that?

There are no public commenters.

Okay, so given that we have nobody signed up, we will move on to the next part of the agenda.

Before we begin, I do want to welcome my colleagues and the public back to the Community Economic Development Committee.

We had big plans for spending 2020 discussing ways that we would build community wealth, ways that we would bolster our race and social justice work in the city, and to support workforce development and small business development.

The universe had other plans for us last year and so we only convened this committee a few times.

I'm hopeful that we can pick up where we left off and that today, I'm excited that today we'll be hearing about an opportunity for preserving cultural space and really thinking creatively about land use tools and financing tools that can facilitate more community ownership in our city.

So we will be getting to that later in the agenda.

Before we do that, I'm excited to hear from the Office of Civil Rights and from many of our neighbors who are eager to lend their time and their talent to supporting the work of the city by volunteering on some of our city commissions.

So as we move on, will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Agenda item one, appointment 1772, the appointment of Nathaniel Higbee as member of the Seattle LGBTQ Commission for a term to April 30, 2022.

Thank you.

I am going to hand this over to Molly Brewer from the Office of Civil Rights to present me to the committee.

for Alice.

So I'm going to give a little introduction of Nate and then turn it over to him.

The past year, Nate Higby has been serving as a Get Engaged Commissioner for the Seattle LGBTQ Commission.

He graduated with a bachelor's degree in sociology from Whitman College in Washington, and currently works at the Virginia Mason Medical Center, where he does continuous improvement consulting and is an active member of the LGBTQ staff committee.

He is currently co-chair of the outreach committee for the commission and looks forward to continuing his work as a regular commission member.

So I will hand it over to Nate or to you Council Member Morales, however you wanna run it with questions and more introduction.

Nate, please go ahead.

Hi, thank you for having me.

So once again, my name is Nate, I use he, him pronouns.

I work at Virginia Mason, due process improvement work there.

And I've had the pleasure of serving on the LGBTQ Commission as a Get Engaged Commissioner up until recently.

And I've really enjoyed my experience.

I've really enjoyed being able to learn more about the city and the LGBT community here in the city.

And I'm really eager to kind of continue doing the work that we started.

So some of the highlights of working on the commission in the past year has been chairing the Community Outreach Committee and being able to lead that committee through our pandemic response and through responding to the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer.

being able to work with community organizations impacted by the issues that happened last year to see how we can support them.

I would say my favorite milestone has actually been working with Hannah from the Disabilities Commission on putting together a panel, a town hall panel featuring activists who are LGBTQ and who have disabilities, really speaking to life at the intersection of those two identities and as someone with a disability, this is also just a topic of interest of me that I'm hoping to, that we can continue to push on next year.

And so that was a really great highlight.

I really enjoyed working with Hannah.

So one of some of the reasons why I'm hoping to stay on the commission is I'm hoping that we can kind of increase transparency between our commission and the LGBTQ community.

We've gotten a lot of feedback from last year that they're really the transparency isn't there.

And a lot of people didn't really trust the work that we did or the thought process behind it.

So I'm hoping that we can kind of try to demystify some of that for our LGBT community.

I'm hoping to keep centering BIPOC experiences and perspectives in our decision-making process and kind of continue on our anti-racist journey.

And then also just trying personal interest of mine is healthcare specifically.

We're very lucky to be living in a LGBTQ friendly city.

A lot of great healthcare resources for them, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're help LGBTQ like competent.

So, trying to work on what does it mean to be competent in providing care, meaning you don't refer to a trans patient by their dead name.

So those type of things and working with community organizations to come up with standards that can be adopted by health care organizations as what does it mean to be competent in providing care, not just friendly.

So that's kind of some of the reasons why I'm hoping to stay on the commission and thank you for your time.

Thank you, Nate.

That's really, sorry, I'm having a little bit of a hairball here.

Really appreciate your perspective as bringing an intersectional lens to this work.

It's so important to be able to bring all your identities to this.

Excuse me.

I would be interested to hear, obviously you've spent a lot of time working on this commission already, as somebody who thinks a lot about how we support our young people better, can you talk a little bit about what you think the city could be doing better to support LGBTQ youth?

Yeah, so I think there are several things.

I think the first is just increasing transparency by leveraging either social media or other platforms that are utilized by our younger demographics, and really trying to foster a two-way dialogue through those platforms.

I think, so before joining the commission, it was hard to find information about the LGBTQ commission or just commission in general, different commissions in general.

And so I think one of the things that the city and the commission could be doing better is, again, leveraging those different platforms and trying to just communicate through those and soliciting feedback from people using Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.

Great.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any questions for Nate?

Okay, terrific.

Thank you very much.

Council members, I will move that the committee recommends confirmation of appointment 1772. Is there a second?

Second.

Great.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointment.

Are there any other comments?

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Juarez?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson?

Aye.

Council Member Sawant?

Yes.

Chair Morales?

Yes.

Four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the appointment be confirmed will be sent to the February 1st City Council meeting.

Thank you, Nate, very much.

Okay, will the clerk please read items two and three into the record?

Agenda items two and three.

Appointments 1618 and 1627. The appointments of Rebecca Bryant and Abriel Johnny as members of the Seattle Women's Commission for terms to July 1st, 2022.

Thank you very much.

I believe Marta Itawu is going to present these appointees.

Marta?

Yes, thank you.

This is Marta Itawu from the Seattle Office for Civil Rights.

The Seattle Women's Commission is composed of 21 accomplished individuals who come together as volunteers to research, analyze, and make recommendations by advising the mayor, the city council, and city departments on issues that face women in Seattle.

The Seattle Women's Commission meets monthly to address a broad range of issues, including economic opportunity for women, raising social justice, women's health and disparities in health outcomes for low income women and women of color, affordable housing and high quality of child care, women's roles as caregivers, violence against women, and the unique challenges immigrant and women face in our community.

We are in the process of starting a recruitment next month for the commissioners.

We are down seven seats, and I would like to note that the two appointees, Abigail Johnny and Rebecca Bryant, have been attending meetings and participating on committees.

and doing the work of the commission.

And we're happy to bring them forward today.

And I'll turn it back over to you, Council Member Morales, for any questions you might have for Abby or Rebecca.

Thank you so much.

Great.

Thank you.

Rebecca, why don't we start with you?

Nice to see you.

I know You've got a keen grasp on how government can help our communities, given your work with Congressman Smith.

I welcome you to say a few remarks, and if you could talk a little bit about what you hope to work on with the Women's Commission.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you, Council Member.

And definitely the work with Congressman Smith.

For those of you who are not familiar with his district, he represents the 9th Congressional District, so that spans from the East Side through South Seattle down to Tacoma.

And Tacoma was my first introduction to Washington State.

I grew up in Colorado, but came here for undergrad in 2006, and basically never looked back.

This is the only place I've lived and voted other than Washington, D.C., when I worked for the congressman there.

And I think, you know, there's so many opportunities that we have as a commission, and I hope to bring to it my recent experienced only with Congressman Smith, but after leaving his office, I went to work at Fred Hutch.

So I'm now the Community Relations Manager at Fred Hutch.

And when it comes to the commission, you know, Fred Hutch has an incredible history of working on women's health, just generally.

But more recently, actually, since I began serving as sort of an interim commissioner, I'm not sure what the phrase is, for the last year, Fred Hutch was one of the first organizations to come out and say, racism is a public health crisis.

I was so proud to work for an organization that was ready to say that, and I hope to bring that lens to the continued work on the commission.

I can talk to some of the work I've done while serving as an interim member, but happy to speak to whatever you think is most important.

Oh, that's great.

I really appreciate hearing what you were working on with the congressman and the role that you're playing now.

Colleagues, are there any questions for Rebecca?

Okay.

Thank you, Rebecca.

Let's go to Avriel.

Welcome.

If you can talk a little bit about your work.

In reading your application packet, I was really interested to see the real focus that you are talking about in creating gender safe communities.

So I'd love to hear a little bit from you about what that means and what you think the city needs to be doing to get us there.

Sure.

And I'll just provide a little bit about my background, because I would like to bring a holistic perspective to the commission.

So I have my bachelor's in law and policy from the University of Washington.

I have my master's in political management from George Washington University.

And I previously worked as an early childhood specialist for Unite Indian Childhood Foundation and served as a staffer Senator McCoy previously, as well as I currently work as a Tribal and Community Engagement Manager for Healthier Here, which is working on the Medicaid Transformation Waiver.

My focus is Tribal health with equity, as well as I'm the Board Chair for the United Indians All Tribes Foundation Board of Directors.

Some of the major issues that I put in my application were to focus on missing murdered indigenous women and the health crisis that that is providing for indigenous people, not only through social determinants of health, but the stress that provides the family.

Some of the work that I am doing in my professional space for Healthier Here is to address those health equities from a mental and emotional health focus and providing equitable access to culturally relevant care.

So those might not sound like they have direct impact to Missing and Murdering Indigenous Women or women's health or the work that the Women's Commission is doing, but mental and emotional health and the stress that social determinants provide disproportionately impact women in multiple ways from a multidynamic facet.

Being able to provide culturally relevant care, we invested in traditional medicines for indigenous organizations, which provides women and indigenous women more access to culturally relevant ceremonies, culturally relevant care, and not only physical health, emotional, mental, and spiritual health, kind of give that holistic perspective to ensure that our relatives don't go missing from potential emotional distress or mental distress and disproportionate impact on families and addressing historical trauma as well.

Thank you, Avril.

I really am excited to see you joining this commission and bringing so many different perspectives and experiences to what is a really, as you said, bringing that holistic understanding of how to treat a whole person, and especially somebody who has the kind of historic trauma that so many of our indigenous and BIPOC communities have is going to be a really important contribution to this work, so thank you.

Colleagues, are there other questions or comments for Abriel?

Yes, if I'm in, Madam Chair.

Yes.

I want to speak on behalf of Abriel.

It's so good to see her.

She's one of our best and brightest.

She's been part of our community.

And her father is an amazing man.

I've known him for years out at United Indians.

Watching Abriel grow up and now sit on the board and go to the UW and go to DC and then come home.

And Abriel, you're bearing the lead.

You're not telling everyone what a great designer you are.

clothes and jewelry.

Amazing.

So for me, I've been watching her grow and certainly personally and professionally and having her on the board and of course knowing her family makes me really proud to see this is what we strive for in Indian country.

You lead to leave.

You leave that space, and you know that this generation is going to learn what they've learned from their elders on how to treat people, how to behave, how to be good, how to be kind.

And we don't dwell on all the trauma.

What we dwell on is the resiliency, because that's who we are as a people, because we're still here.

So it makes me really happy to see Abriel today.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Juarez.

Very good.

Anyone else?

Okay, very good.

Thank you, Abriel and Rebecca.

Colleagues, I now move that the committee recommends confirmation of appointments 1618 and 1627. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation.

Are there any additional comments?

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Juarez?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson?

Aye.

Council Member Sawant?

Yes.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis.

OK, we're moving on.

Will the clerk please read items 4 through 10 into the record?

Items 4 through 10 appointments 1767 through 1771 and 1773 and 1774. The appointment of Ryan Bush as member for a term to October 31st, 2022. The appointments and reappointments of Stephen Prey, Emmanuel Vingas and Christopher M. Brown as members for terms to October 31st, 2021. The reappointment of LaTosha Corral as member to a term to April 30, 2021. And the appointments and reappointments of Brett Epelowski and Jessie Murray and as members for terms to April 30, 2021. 2022.

Very good.

Okay, I'm going to pass this to Molly to present the appointees.

And then we will hear from Ryan, Steven and Brett.

Alright, so thank you.

I will start with Ryan.

Ryan is seeking appointment on the LGBTQ commission.

He's currently serving as a senior manager of marketing and communications for the nonprofit organization, Commute Seattle.

He has over nine years of experience developing digital and traditional B2B, B2C marketing campaigns.

He's been attending a couple of meetings the last couple of months and the annual retreat.

So I will hand it over to him to speak a bit more.

Hi, everyone.

Thanks for having me today.

I'm Ryan Bush.

I live in the Northeast Seattle District 4 region.

And I'm very excited about this opportunity to serve on the commission.

I have a passion for connecting people to resources.

I've really had this passion for transportation and transportation access.

And so I think it's really important to have someone on the commission that keeps access to our community members top of mind.

I think Seattle is very fortunate to have such a great transportation options and unfortunately the pandemic has changed that quite a bit, but I think it's even now more important to speak to our community members about ways they can access transportation, the challenges they face, and being able to give a voice to people that most likely would never reach out.

I think it's very important to have members across the city of Seattle and being in the northeast side where areas aren't served by transit as much.

There's not as many LGBTQ members that are actively involved.

So finding ways to reach them and give them open lines of communication is really important to me.

And yeah.

Thank you, Ryan.

Colleagues, any questions?

I was gonna ask you why you wanna serve on this commission, but you've answered that question, so thank you.

I'm excited to have another advocate for sustainable transportation on board.

Any other questions, colleagues?

I don't see any.

Okay, thank you.

Let's move on to Steven.

Yeah, Stephen has been attending meetings regularly and also attended the retreat, so I will just hand it over to him to introduce himself.

Thank you.

Thank you, Molly.

My name is Stephen Prey and my pronouns are he, him, his.

I live in Capitol Hill off 10th and Union, so Councilmember Sawant is my Councilmember, I think, 3rd District.

I'm not 100% sure.

I was born and raised in Kent, Washington, which is a suburb in King County, south of Seattle, about 20 miles.

And I've lived in Seattle proper for about five and a half years now when I attended law school.

So I am an attorney now.

I want to serve on this commission because I've been at my job now as a union representative with Project 17. So I've worked with a couple of you guys before.

But I've been doing it long enough that I felt like I could branch out and take on a little bit more.

What better place to start than my own community?

Not a good place to end, but a good place to start.

So I saw the posting from Department of Neighborhoods and decided to go for it.

The biggest issues that I think that are facing the community, definitely transgender rights.

I think that when we talk about the LGBT community, you know, we still see a disproportionate amount of oppression on our transgender brothers and sisters.

And I truly believe that when we help, you know, the most oppressed, it rises the tides for everybody, whether you're cisgender, gay, straight, regardless of race.

So I'm for lifting everybody up.

Aside from that, I think that, you know, There's a lot of substance abuse issues within the LGBT community, if we're being honest.

It's not a fun subject to talk about, but it is prevalent and I think it needs to be addressed and often doesn't.

I mean, it goes kind of hand in hand with mental health.

Those, you know, it's kind of which came first, but both of those issues are pretty near and dear to my heart.

I'm relatively new, so I like to learn from my colleagues who've been doing this work for longer than I.

Rather than coming in with an agenda and how to do it, I plan on doing some listening and learning, and there's no need for me to reinvent the wheel.

So this kind of general plan I have is subject to change as I learn.

What I hope to accomplish, I guess as cliche as it sounds, if I could really even help one person, then it's worth it.

Hopefully we do more than that, but even one person makes it all worth it.

Yeah, that's why I want to be on the LGBT commission.

Thank you.

Thank you, Steven.

Colleagues, any questions for Steven?

I am not seeing any.

Council Member Sawant has something to say.

I'm sorry.

Yes.

I see you.

Thank you.

I'm speaking of you.

So thank you, Stephen, for what you were saying.

And yeah, Capitol Hill is indeed in District three.

And actually, It's really interesting that you mentioned capital, I mean, not only because you live there, but also because when you, as you correctly talked about the needs of the LGBTQ community as a whole, but specifically the need to fight against the oppression of the trans community.

And I think that that really coincides with the conversation about Capitol Hill and the core of the city as well.

And that this falls on, you know, it's very relevant to district three, but not just relevant to district three.

It's a citywide question.

But the point is that, you know, Capitol Hill used to be really the neighborhood where the LGBTQ community really came off its own as a rich history of activism in the 80s, especially the fight against AIDS, the fight to have research done on this really tragedy that was devouring our communities and really raising awareness on it.

That was not only a question of science.

It was a question of political activism, as we know.

And then, of course, after that, fighting for the referendum 74 and then Capitol Hill being this being the space where the first trans pride was organized.

And I and I'm really proud and honored that my office had has had the track record of being the only elected, I mean, only candidate at that time.

That was in 2013 when I was first running for office.

to have joined Trans Pride and since then, of course, it has really gained a lot of momentum, but also as your words highlighted, there's a long way to go.

I was just eager to hear about what you think, You know, in terms of your role and also the LGBTQ Commission's role as a whole, the LGBTQ Commission itself has a really proud history of having taken courageous even counter controversial positions and I think that is going to be more and more important.

as we go on and I think the advocacy of the commission around housing affordability and this is what I meant about Capitol Hill that you know the rents are so high that some of the people who made this community made this neighborhood they many I think some is an understatement many of them have just been pushed out of the neighbors entirely permanently not to mention the scourge of homelessness that is hitting so many of our neighbors.

And so I think the commission has a historic role to play now in the coming days, not only limiting itself to local issues, but really raising your voice on the need for Medicare for all.

I think that covers dental and gender health.

And I think this is a pivotal moment because we have a democratic administration in the White House.

We have the democratic control on both houses of Congress.

It would be a tragedy if we squandered this moment.

So I think activists like yourselves and the role you play will be crucial.

So I just wanted to hear your thoughts on what you think, how you think this role could really blossom.

Yeah, thank you, Council Member Sawant for the questions and the comments.

And, you know, first, thank you for your allyship.

I do know you have been there, you know, representing Capitol Hill and even before that fighting for LGBT rights.

In terms of housing affordability, I think you're right.

As somebody who rents in Capitol Hill, it's expensive.

Yes, we do have a big LGBT presence, but if you look into that a little further, we're not a monolith.

A lot of that presence is people who look a lot like me, who are white and male, and so that's also problematic.

what was kind of a safe haven and known as a neighborhood, for lack of a better term, has really been filled, like I said, with a lot of people who look like me.

And that has displaced a lot of people.

But I think that gets to your next question about what we can do.

And absolutely, I think we should look at this big picture.

I'm very fortunate to live in the city of Seattle and Capitol Hill.

I mean, if you were to throw a dart on a map of luckiest places to live as an LGBT person and hit Capitol Hill, I mean, you really got a lotto ticket.

So I understand that, you know, I'm really privileged to be where I am.

And I would love to use Seattle as an example for a lot of other cities that still have a lot of work to do.

I mean, we have work to do in our own backyard, but we have done a lot of really great work that we need to be proud of.

really be used as a model across the United States.

So, you know, we do have democratic majorities, not just in, you know, at the federal level, but the state level.

And I do think at the federal, federal level council members want, I mean, people voted and gave what I think was a mandate for a reason.

And there needs to be followed through on a whole host of issues.

And so, I mean, For the sake of brevity, I mean, there's a lot of things we could do at the federal level, but I am in solidarity with you that, you know, helping LGBT people everywhere is, you know, I think a chief aim for all of us.

And I do hope we can deliver both at the state and federal level.

And I'm a little newer to the commission, but I'm hopeful that we can work together to accomplish some of what you talked about.

Thank you, Stephen, and thank you for the question, Council Member Sawant.

Seattle's got a history of leading the charge on some really progressive things, and I think this is another example of a place where we have the platform and the ability to really make some movement.

So look forward to hearing back from all of you.

Okay, let's move on to Brett.

All right, yeah, Brett is seeking appointment on the LGBTQ Commission, and Brett has been attending meetings regularly, including our annual retreat.

So I'll hand it over to Brett.

Hi, good morning, everyone.

My name is Brett Kapowski.

Like Molly said, I used to live in Chicago, moved here about a year and a half ago to be close to some community organizations whose missions I really value.

And I'm a proud District 3 resident.

Academically, my background is in biology and research, but I have been working more in the teaching and social services region.

So I used to tutor and be a teaching aid at a public high school, and I have worked in some shelters and permit supportive housing right now.

I work with the Downtown Emergency Service Center.

I get people to their doctor's appointments, and I'm also on our internal public health anti-COVID team.

So, and in my out of work life, I've also been involved in a number of volunteer and community activities.

So, the reason I want to serve on the commission is because.

In my career, I've focused a little bit more on helping individuals.

And I've realized that I've started just propping up systems that are designed to fail or only work halfway.

And I would like to get away from propping up those systems and start redesigning those systems so that they work better and they don't have to have tutors and teaching aides and case managers because they work without those things.

And I would like to amplify my community's voices to inform representatives how they can affect those changes.

What I see as some of the biggest problems, not just in the LGBTQ community, but in marginalized communities or just really the entire United States is that People essentially have to earn the right to be alive.

Housing, food, and medical care are treated as luxuries and really they're just human rights.

Everyone should be able to access them, but they cannot.

So I would like to work on increasing access to that at the local level for now.

So increasing access to affordable housing, and preventing food deserts, and helping people get to food banks as needed, things like that.

And also increasing education and just general medical access for trans people especially, and queer and disabled people.

I think those are really important.

I want to hold people accountable.

I think that this past summer showed a lot of issues in the government where there were tons of community activists calling for the defunding of the police.

And that has kind of fallen through.

I mean, we made our demands very clear, and that has not happened to the extent that that needs to happen.

And that is true with other issues like taxing big businesses and increasing affordable housing.

So I'm here to remind people of community demands and amplify community voices, pass that on to officials and hold people accountable when they need to be.

And I expect that I will also be held accountable at the same time.

So those are the things I hope to accomplish.

Thank you for having me here.

Thank you so much, Brett.

It is shameful, and I think you're right, that in many cases people have to demonstrate that they have a right to be alive.

And that is part of the systems, all the systems that are oppressing people in so many ways are a part of what we are trying to begin to dismantle here.

And so thank you for your advocacy and your willingness to hold all of us accountable to keep moving in that direction.

Colleagues, any questions for PrEP?

Council Member Sawant?

Thank you, Chair Morales.

Not so much a question as just to register my appreciation for the comments that Brett made in especially highlighting the fact that especially you know that there may be a little bit of this may be a subjective question in in some elected officials minds and the roles of the commissions but I really appreciate Brett describing the role of the commissions as actually holding elected officials accountable.

I think that is the way we would see it also through my office, that that's your role.

And that is why, as I was mentioning in my earlier comment, that sometimes commissions have to take courageous and even controversial positions.

And that won't be easy.

But I think that would be the correct thing to do.

You would much rather do the correct thing to do the correct thing rather than the easy thing.

And so I really appreciated you mentioning that.

And I wanted you to know that my staff and I will always be a place where you can turn to in the sense that we have a track record of not shying away from the difficult things.

And we have not chosen the easy thing to do.

And I think the difficult things are the things to be done, especially as you were saying, Chair Morales, people are struggling and we need to it's our it's our job it's our political and moral duty to fight for them and i also appreciated you mentioning the the question of taxing big business because yes the council did the right thing last uh summer by passing the amazon tax but that is not going to be enough and in fact I think the question of a comprehensive COVID relief for households does come up now.

And if you look at the profits that some of these corporations have made, in fact, what we have, what we, what the city is now raising as a big business tax is not even going to be enough.

And the question, you know, it's a live question, in other words.

And so it's important that you mention that.

And I think it has to include the question of creating green jobs on a big scale.

And of course, I would echo what Stephen also said, which is that these questions are at the state level and at the federal level as well.

And the more we are able to win on the city level actually creates momentum and also pressure on elected officials at the state and federal level.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Any final comments, colleagues?

Okay.

I'm going to try to get us through these last few quickly.

Our presenters have a limited time for their presentation from the Arts Department.

So, Council Members, I now move that the committee recommends confirmation of appointments 1767 through 1771 and 1773 and 1774. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointments.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Juarez.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Council Member Sawant.

Yes.

Chair Morales.

Yes.

All in favor?

None opposed.

Sorry, will you call Council Member Peterson one more time?

We might have just Yes.

Council Member Peterson.

Okay.

Four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the appointments be confirmed will be sent to the February 1st City Council meeting.

Okay, let's move on.

Will the clerk please read items 11 through 14 into the record?

Agenda items 11 through 14. Appointments 1775 through 1778. The appointment of Hannah Wilson as member for a term to April 30, 2021. The reappointments of Inquita Adams and Daniel Cojita as members for a term to April 30, 2022. And the reappointment of Kaitlyn Skilton as member of the Seattle Commission for Peoples with Disabilities for a term to October 31st, 2022.

Very good.

Sorry, I just lost my place.

I'm going to pass it to Molly Brewer, I believe.

Yes, thank you.

So I'll just introduce Hannah.

Hannah is seeking an appointment on the Disability Commission.

Hannah's been a Get Engaged member for the past year.

And I will turn it over to Hannah to introduce herself.

Having me today.

My name is Hannah Wilson and I use she her pronouns and like Molly said, I've been on the commission for about a year now through the get engaged program outside of the commission.

I'm currently a farm manager at an urban farm called yes farm.

through the Black Farmers Collective here in Seattle.

So a lot of my work is centered around grassroots organizing and figuring out ways to address issues of food justice and striving for food sovereignty for BIPOC communities, while also centering identities of queerness, folks with disabilities, and people of color, and other marginalized identities as well.

I actually came to Seattle about five and a half years ago to study environmental science at the University of Washington.

And since then, my work has been very much centered around environmental justice and climate justice and the ways that marginalized communities are impacted first by issues of climate change.

And the reason why this work is really important to me is because I am a deaf, disabled, queer, black woman.

And this work has been like very healing for me.

And it's been very important to see the ways that I can bring sort of that intersectional lens to this work and make sure that everyone who has marginalized identities is represented in the work that I do.

and in the work that the City of Seattle does as well.

Like Nate said, we had a really great collaboration with the LGBT Commission to create a panel of queer disabled activists and elevate their wisdom and share that with the Seattle community with Town Hall.

And I want to continue doing that type of education work as a way to recruit more folks to the Disability Commission and elevate those voices, you know, because they're needed more than ever.

And the other thing that I want to do is also try and address the challenges with giving the unhoused community in Seattle more resources because a large portion of the unhoused community here in Seattle um, is disabled or represent another marginalized community.

Um, so I'm very curious about the ways that we can work with other commissions and the city to address that as well.

Um, so yeah, thank you for having me, um, to continue my work with the disability commission.

Thank you so much, Hannah.

As a planner, I will say that I'm thrilled to see another planner getting involved here, especially one who's focused on those issues, the intersections of public health and conservation and social justice.

So really appreciate your willingness to continue serving past your Get Engaged appointment.

Colleagues, are there any questions or comments for Hannah?

Very good.

Uh, colleagues, then I moved the committee recommend confirmation of appointment 1775 and 1778. Is there.

Oh, sorry.

I was trying to get, it's been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation.

Uh, will the clerk please call the roll?

Oh, this is where I am.

Hello.

There we are.

All right.

Council Member Flores.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Council Member Sawant.

Yes.

Chair Morales.

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that appointments be confirmed will be sent to our February 1st city council meeting.

Thank you everyone for your willingness to serve our city and make sure that you're holding us accountable.

And please do make sure that you're in touch with our offices as commissioners, as you're thinking about new policy ideas, as you're thinking about ways that we can serve our neighbors better.

We definitely want to be hearing from you.

So congratulations and we'll see you all February 1st.

Okay, let's move on to item 15. Will the clerk please read item 15 into the record?

The Office of Arts and Culture, a presentation on the Arts Public Development Authority.

Very good.

Thank you.

I am really excited, colleagues, to have Director Randy Engstrom here, Interim Director Calandra Childers, and Matthew Richter here as well.

As we think about ways to address the history of racial inequality in our city, about how to support community-driven development, and increase opportunity for business ownership and land ownership.

The project we're about to hear about really offers a compelling example of how we can do that and demonstrates that it is possible to center racial equity as we're making public investments that will create economic opportunity.

I want to hand it over to the folks at the Office of Arts and Culture to share their plans for the PDA and the Cultural Space Agency, and look forward to hearing your comments.

I'll hand it over to you guys.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Morales, and thank all of you on the Council for making some time for us today.

I'm Randy Engstrom.

For seven more days, I'm the Director of the Office of Arts and Culture for the City of Seattle.

And I really, I'm just gonna do three things quickly.

First, I'm gonna just say thank you to the council because I spent six years on the Seattle Arts Commission going back to 2005, eight and a half years in this job.

Council Member Rallis, I worked with you starting in the Youngstown days when I was an arts commissioner.

And Council Member Lewis, I am reminded of your visiting King Street Station shortly after you were elected on a first Thursday.

So like as book ends, The council has been such an incredible partner to me in this job, both as an advocate and volunteer commissioner and as a director.

So thank you for the work you do.

Thanks for holding your values.

And thanks for believing in arts and culture because your partnership made a lot of this possible.

The second thing I want to do is introduce Calandra Childers, who has been my deputy director for the last seven years, my absolute partner in crime in this work in every way, someone who I have the utmost confidence in.

She's brilliant and collaborative and trusted by both staff and community.

And I have all the faith in the world in her leadership to carry this office through the next year and whatever changes may come.

And finally, to introduce the host of the next 25 minutes or so, Mr. Matthew Richter, the Cultural Space Liaison for the City of Seattle, the only Cultural Space Liaison in a local arts agency in the United States, and the progenitor of our Cultural Space Program.

out of which the Cultural Space Agency was born.

When I was interviewing Matthew in my office with Diane Sigamora as a finalist for this role, First in the Nation of its Kind, he said that what he would try to do when he came into the job was throw about 30 ideas at the wall and see what stuck.

And then those 30 ideas would be the policies that we would use to advance affordability in our city.

Several years later, 2017, we published the CAP report, 30 Ideas for the Creation, Activation and Preservation of Cultural Space in Seattle.

And one of those ideas was so interesting that it warranted its own report.

And that was the idea of creating a public development authority specifically to act as a real estate intermediary, to build community wealth and to preserve cultural spaces throughout our city.

So with that, I hand it over to Mr. Matthew Richter, who will talk to you about the Cultural Space PDA.

Thank you, Randy.

Good morning, council members.

Good morning, everyone.

I'm going to share my screen and begin the PowerPoint presentation.

Some thumbs up if folks can see what we're looking at here, the first slide of the Cultural Space Agency presentation.

Thank you.

I want to start just by saying that clearly community needs around cultural space are so different this year than they were before COVID and that they will be after.

And I just want to acknowledge that elephant in this room.

Cultural communities have responded this year by building these experimental structures for belonging and connection while we're all sitting here staring at each other through these machines.

But as we recover and as we begin to venture out into the world and to gather and to celebrate together, it's these cultural spaces that are going to lead the way back to a functional civic life.

It was pointed out to me just last week that the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age, followed the 1918 pandemic, and it's our cultural communities who are going to drive that kind of exuberant return in the coming couple of years.

And what we're hoping to do here is to create a structure through which cultural communities of color can benefit in a literal way from the Renaissance that they create.

So first, why cultural space?

Why are we organizing this work around cultural space as a strategy for supporting community wealth building?

What we have found is that the presence of a cultural space and of cultural activity in neighborhoods drives these kind of vibrancy metrics, and I put giant air quotes around vibrancy metrics.

Acknowledging the word vibrancy is problematic and defining it is hard.

But what you see on this slide is that cultural spaces drive economic development.

They drive community cohesion and neighborhood identity.

These are numbers that compare a block in Seattle that has a cultural space on it with an equivalent block commercially zoned without a cultural space on it.

It's also, as we start, worth saying just a piece about how we define cultural space.

We bring a really broad definition to cultural space.

We're talking about the galleries, the theaters, the cinemas that you're familiar with, but also the generative spaces, the artist studios.

We're talking about community meeting spaces.

We're talking about small businesses.

We're talking about record shops and barber shops.

We're talking about cultural community centers.

We're talking about community-facing small businesses.

We try to be as inclusive in the definition of cultural space as we can be.

We tend to follow the Supreme Court's guidance around pornography, honestly, which is that while it's very hard to nail down a definition of cultural space, you know one when you see one.

We've also been doing this ongoing needs assessment around cultural space from the beginning of this work eight years ago.

And what you see here reflects, it's a list that's been developed through this series of regular touch points.

So we do an annual conference called Square Feet Seattle around cultural space issues.

We do regular surveys online that engage hundreds of people.

We've done three racial equity toolkits on the cultural space work, including one specifically on this project.

We do a space lab Northwest cultural asset mapping project we have the base cohort that build art space equitably certification cohort program for arts and cultural districts, a citywide chamber of culture, and it's one of the more interdepartmental bodies of work that I've come across honestly in the city of Seattle.

What is a public development authority?

The PDA mechanism was developed in Washington state as a mechanism to steward real property for a civic purpose.

So the eight existing PDAs are listed here at the bottom of the slide, and they're all mission organized around the creation of a type of space.

So either affordable housing or the preservation of historic landmarks or specific cultural communities or another civic priority.

And you'll also note I've included the dates of their founding.

The city of Seattle hasn't launched a new PDA in almost 40 years now.

So from one perspective, and this is the most interesting thing about the form, a PDA is a governmental agency.

In the words of one of our advisors in the law office, it's, quote, a wholly owned subsidiary of city government.

It's an agency of government.

It's subject to a lot of the same rules and restrictions, which means that you're able to transfer resources and property, quote, with or without consideration from the RCW.

So it's analogous to transfers within city government from one department to another.

And I'm oversimplifying that, to be sure, but the basic relationship is intended to be very close.

From another perspective though, these organizations have a ton of autonomy.

They have independent decision-making power.

They can really nimbly be responsive to community.

City council will approve the governing body known as the governing council.

But once they're approved, these bodies are independent.

There's an explicit liability shield even between the city and the PDA.

So it's really the best of both worlds we feel for this kind of work.

It's really important that this slide show up wherever we discuss the Cultural Space Agency, and it is literally the first page of the charter of the new organization.

It's foundational to the work.

These are the ideas and the ideals that don't just live internally in the organization.

The organization really wears them on its sleeve.

It presents them very publicly, consistently, and they were developed through conversations with community, and they're a reminder, a signal of our commitment back to community as well.

Who runs this thing?

I think I mentioned that for the last three years, we've been running the Build Artspace Equitably Certification Cohort.

So this is now a group of about 50 leaders, about 20 in each year's cohort, all from communities of color, and specifically from the worlds of commercial real estate, of arts and culture, of philanthropy, finance, et cetera.

This is a photo of the first year's cohort graduating and the second year's cohort onboarding.

The folks who graduate through this program are eligible to serve in what we call the constituency of the new organization.

And it's the constituency that's going to nominate all of the potential governing council members.

And that process has just begun this month.

It'll culminate at some point this spring.

When the constituency presents to the mayor and then the mayor presents to you a slate of governing council members for your approval.

City Council approves all of the PDA's governing council members, analogous to the commission's appointments that you were just doing earlier today.

Slide, I'll do that.

The constituency is also the ambassadors for property opportunities and for programming partnerships.

So they prioritize and they recommend properties and programming to the staff and the council of the Cultural Space Agency.

And what you see here on this slide is some of the types of spaces and some of the types of site control there on the left, and some of the types of potential programming partnerships on the right.

So these are the spaces where the organization shows up in the world, and it's the activities that show up in those spaces.

This whole project is centered on the idea that the cultural communities that drive the creation of value in our most desirable neighborhoods should take part in the growth of that value.

So as Cassie Chin, one of the advisors to this project has said, that while the measure of most real estate organizations is the growth of the balance sheet, the increase year over year in the number of square feet that it owns, The measure of this organization is going to be the speed with which it transfers that ownership, those square feet, out into community, into the communities that it serves.

And there are a lot of mechanisms for making that a reality, things like community investment trusts modeled in Portland, ownership partnerships of different kinds.

There are partners to engage and to leverage on behalf of those community owners, like social impact investors and the city's own portfolio of surplus properties.

And you see some of those ideas referenced on this slide as well.

The city's arts office has committed $500,000 a year for at least the next two years of the new organization to support startup operational costs.

We are also committing half of my time this coming year to supporting the constituency, supporting the new council, and supporting the incoming staff.

And we've explored the potential of bonding against a dedicated income stream already within the arts budget.

It's a funding program that has currently been paused due to COVID budget cuts, but we hope to be able to reopen that conversation at some point within the next couple of years.

And that was a large part of the community engagement that we did over the years was the value of that support.

And we are already developing partnerships and have been for years now with the Equitable Development Initiative pipeline projects and also the Office of Housing's pipeline of projects.

Before we close, I want to share some project types.

I want to lay down the caveat that these are completely hypothetical.

These don't have organizations or addresses connected to them yet.

These are here just to help paint a more sort of fully realized picture for you of what we're talking about.

So any resemblance to actual cultural spaces is purely coincidental, as they say.

The first is a film festival center so there are somewhere between a dozen and 17 itinerant film festivals in town that don't have permanent dedicated spaces, and they each year have to search for programming space for celebration space, education space admin space.

So what if there was a home base for all of these film festivals in town that every couple of weeks or every month was celebrating and centering a different cultural community in Seattle?

So we're talking about the Latino Film Festival, the Tazvir Film Festival, Jewish Film Festival, Queer Film Festival, Black Film Festival, Seattle Black Film Festival, etc.

Artists studio clusters is one of the most in demand types of space generative space meaning studio space rehearsal space recording space etc.

And also one of the most successful types of cultural space in Seattle.

Leading examples of this kind of space would be like Seed Arts in Hillman City or Equinox Studios down in sunny West Georgetown.

They both say that they have waiting lists three times longer than their actual capacity.

There's enormous demand and these spaces really build resilience in the cultural community just through the proximity of sharing walls with one another.

This slide talks about the model for cultural space ownership, what we call equitable equity in these properties, where the Cultural Space Agency would stand in as sort of bridge capital, as an intermediary owner that's mission-driven to cede shares in the property over time to community members, and also to value assets that are not purely financial, to value sweat equity, and to value other types of capital that cultural communities can bring to the table.

in exchange for literal ownership.

There is this issue in Seattle.

Can I ask a question?

Yeah, of course.

Can we go back to the other slide?

So I'm sorry if I wasn't.

Did I miss this?

I'm looking at your slide.

And what I don't understand is a model for culture.

What is the or a brand new bill to suit five over one?

Meaning entering into a development partnership.

So they're not just looking at structures that already exist.

Sorry, that's sort of written very casually, isn't it?

We're not just looking at structures that already exist.

A five over one is a building type in Seattle that's mixed use.

It's five stories of apartments typically over a single story on the ground of commercial space.

And so it's saying we could look at development partnerships.

We can look at raw land and partner with a housing developer to create a mixed use building, including cultural space on the ground floor.

Okay, thank you.

Where that, I'm sorry, and where that ground floor would be owned by the cultural organizations as commercial condo space.

So that would be not only, not just obviously low income, but mixed market rate, mixed use or mixed income.

It could be a variety of the conversations we've been having so far with affordable housing providers, but there's nothing that says that it has to be restricted there.

It could be a mix of of income level units, for sure.

We could work with a private developer doing MFTE units, for example.

Yeah, my greatest fear is that if you place all of this in areas where housing is more important than a quote-unquote cultural space for whatever, that you don't want to see empty spaces.

Yep, agreed.

That's my concern.

I've seen this.

I've seen this model when we went to Hamburg, Germany, where they did mixed-use, low-income cultural space at the bottom.

with all this fanfare and it ended up not ever being used.

I hate to be a downer, but the reason why it caught my eye is because we had to tour all these areas where they took over industrial land, put in mixed use, low income, mixed rate, you know, and it was great.

Everyone loved it 10 years ago.

And then we walked through and they said, this is probably one thing we didn't really realize that people are more concerned about having somewhere to live than a cultural space.

And therefore all of that space is just empty.

And you can't live in it because it wasn't made for someone to live in.

So I guess that's why I was looking at that, why that struck me.

And I've looked at that project.

I've looked at an online PowerPoint from that project.

Oh, good.

Seesaw.

There wasn't a centralized mission-driven organization that was tasked with filling those spaces.

It was left to the developers to allow the market to come and fill them in.

This is an organization that's specifically developing a portfolio of cultural partners through the constituency so that even if an organization were to go in and something weren't to work out in year two or year three or year one or whenever, there would be a roster of organizational partnerships so that the space is always activated.

It's on the space agency to consistently fill that space, which is a challenge.

I'm not saying that it's easy, but there's a full organization mission driven to make it happen.

You're not just waiting for the organizations to show up with market forces behind them.

Gala space is one of the last presentations I wanted to point to, which is this idea that when nonprofits throw fundraisers, typically the first, you know, anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 off the top of the take goes to the house, goes to the venue.

The competition for these spaces is weddings and corporate rollout events.

If you were to create a mission-driven space to celebrate these organizations.

It would be full 350 nights a year.

It'd be the best party in town.

This is one that actually does have a little bit of reality so far.

This is a project in motion around supporting a creative economy ecosystem.

It's a space that would combine the work of our office around creative industries around youth development, around equitable space control.

It's a blended footprint of youth-serving organizations and independent artists-serving organizations in a city-owned space, and we're happy to present more about that at a later date if that's of interest.

Here's a quick timeline.

So really we spent the last three years, four years exploring, authorizing, engaging with community and running our racial equity toolkit on the project.

The mayor chartered the new PDA in December, and this month we're forming up the constituency.

That constituency will deliver a slate of nominees for its governing council to the mayor who will hand them to you this spring.

This summer that governing council will engage in a hiring process and engage the 1st executive staff that again, we'll be supporting through our office.

And then the initial projects and partnerships should be announced in the fall of 21, which should allow us to cut some ribbons about a year later in the summer and fall of 22. And that ends the presentation.

I'm happy if anyone's got questions about a specific slide to run back through it, or I can stop the screen share and we can have more of a conversation, but that's the end of the monologue.

Thank you so much, Matthew.

That was very exciting.

I do have a couple of questions, and maybe we can go back to the finance slide.

So I used to work for Impact Capital, which is a LISC affiliate here, at least it was at the time, a financial intermediary just for projects like this or entities like this.

So working with community development corporations, SCIPTA was a The PDA that we worked with a PDA that we worked with a lot.

And that mission-driven piece that you're talking about is the critical piece that's missing in a lot of the, as Council Member Juarez was saying, the projects that lead to empty space on the ground floor.

And we've certainly seen a lot of it in my district with, you know, apartments above and then the street level being left blank.

And I do think that the critical piece there is being very intentional about designing that space or targeting a particular tenant, a particular kind of anchor tenant or other tenants to be in there, even if it's a small space for performance or production or for rehearsal.

Having the PDA offers the ability to hold land and those decisions would obviously be driven by communities' request for a particular space.

The real question here is how do we buy it?

And so, you know, you mentioned on a different slide, but the Community Investment Trust is one example that you gave as a financing mechanism for being able to do things like this.

And colleagues, we will be hearing later in the year from the folks in Portland, we have contracted with the Mercy Corps folks in Portland to do a feasibility study here in Seattle about whether or how we could also create a community investment trust to allow for our neighbors to buy shares into possible buildings like this.

But I wonder if you can talk a little bit about I'm sorry, I'm looking at the wrong slide.

It's the previous slide, the building community well slide.

If you all can talk a little bit about some of the different financing tools that could be used to support the interest from coming from community for spaces like this.

Yeah.

The Community Investment Trust, and we've been talking to the Mercy Corps folks as well in Portland, is a really fascinating model.

My sense is that it's not the model where you develop the financing, that the lion's share of the financing still comes from more institutional sources, that the Community Investment Trust is a mechanism for allowing minority share ownership in community, these small $1,000, $5,000 shares that individuals in a neighborhood can buy and be a part of the neighborhood growth.

I think SCIPTA, you mentioned working with them, is a great example of ground floor activation.

There are really, with the exception of the downturn in 2008-2009, the ground floor activations in the International District have remained consistently robust, I think very much thanks to SCIPTA.

We've been having conversations with CDFIs, community development finance institutions, like CRAP3 and others who've been represented in the base program directly.

With, you know, locally owned banks and credit unions as well and to look at financing options, and also with social impact investment groups like century capital, which is a social justice and racial equity centered investment trust.

I made mention of this in the finance slide as well.

One of the mechanisms that we looked at pre-COVID was using a fund within the Arts Office called the Cultural Facilities Fund and taking a portion of it and bonding against it, creating an immediate large pool of capital as an acquisition fund.

that the office would then pay down, you know, amortized over a couple of decades through bond debt service.

But creating an immediate pool of capital to start investing into these spaces.

And so there's a couple of different institutional streams to bring in large infusions of capital to acquire these properties off the bat.

Philanthropy also.

We've been having conversations with large philanthropies both locally and nationally.

and leveraging those three streams, city bonding potential, social impact investment, philanthropy, I guess, four streams because lending, traditional lending as well, on behalf of the community investment.

So all four of those streams are mission-driven to stand in as the immediate capital while community builds the capacity to buy those shares out from us.

No one is driven to make a profit off of that.

No one is driven to hold on to that asset.

As I mentioned, the Cassie Chin quote, we are mission driven to hand that equity stake, that ownership stake to community.

But the lion's share of the capital is not expected to come from community as the down payment cash.

I think that's just not realistic.

The goal is for that capital to show up over time and for the Cultural Space Agency to be the long-term partner to allow for that to happen sustainably.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you, Matthew.

Colleagues, are there any questions or comments?

Yes, Madam Chair, it's Council Member Juarez.

Please, Council Member Juarez.

I have two questions that I'm still, two of them, I just, one that comes to mind immediately is, what is this cultural space agency as a PDA, number one, would you be looking at or addressing existing cultural spaces?

Yeah.

I was gonna start naming vulnerable cultural spaces around Seattle, which would be easy to do, but I don't wanna put a spotlight on any particular space.

There are a series of vulnerable cultural spaces in Seattle that are very much at home in their current facilities, but don't have any ownership in that facility, are vulnerable to market forces in those facilities.

If we could step in and help some of these organizations acquire facilities that they're in, or more appropriate facilities, you know, the warehouse and Soto type of model, then we would for sure be looking at both of those models as well.

So this is a two part, if you don't mind me, Madam Chair.

So I'm going to make a statement first and then I'm going to ask you a question.

Right now, we're in the middle of a lawsuit where we're trying to save the Seattle Archives building.

Yeah.

And the archives building, as you know, is not as old as the Blue Moon.

but certainly older than the show box.

And the other concern I have about who decides what our cultural spaces is take, for example, daybreak star in which the city owns that property.

It's a cultural space.

It's in severe disrepair because we're always trying to get money in there and fusing it to fix it.

How has this organization, how has this PDA, which can, um, assume an issue debt, how is this organization going to help those cultural spaces that actually need this help right now?

When so much, I mean, when people are doing Save the Showbox, I remember thinking, gee, I wish they would come out this fervently when we have other cultural spaces and other things that demand just as much attention that nobody cares about because dominant, quote, society, they've determined what's a cultural space.

They determined what's worth preserving without recognizing that, as you all know, that there were deliberate attempts to erase and get rid of anything that represented either indigenous presence, an Asian presence, an African American presence.

I mean, it's just, I can go on and on and I won't, but there's some hypocrisy in that, and that's annoying.

And as former legal counsel on the Seattle Indian Service Commission, which is a PDA, like the Pike Place Market one was, is, that came out of the community block grants of the 70s, I'm having a hard time seeing how this is going to address, number one, the cultural spaces we have right now that need it, and number two, Um, how we're going to, how are you going to pay for this?

If you, I mean, I don't know if you can completely rely on when you keep saying that community will, you know, how does community build capital?

So there's community ownership.

We use community all the time and sometimes it just gets, you know, just, it just becomes like a catchphrase.

Maybe I'll take those in reverse order.

How does community build capital is a giant question.

And I think that where you've all been searching for that solution and tried to be parts of that solution since the beginning of this work, it's a slow process.

And I don't know that we can make that process much faster.

We can acknowledge that it's a slow process and we can acknowledge that it takes time.

And we can acknowledge that because it takes time, you need a long-term intermediary partner to step in in a mission-driven way to support the organizations and communities while they take a decade, two decades to raise that capital.

To not be subject to the whims of a market that owns your building in a private scenario that may, you know, have a different use for the building, may want to cash out of the building, may need to increase your rent because someone in the family needs braces, you know, whatever.

To have a mission-driven partner in the ownership is important.

How do we support existing spaces, I think, is wrapped up in that as well.

Can we stand in and create at least a mission-driven partner as an ownership entity instead of a market that does not have the community's interests in mind?

We already reached out, and I agree, the movement to those archives is designed as, well, I'm not gonna presume what it's designed as.

It's gonna have an impact of severely limiting the advocacy and the self-organizing that Indigenous communities are able to do in this region.

And we've already reached out to Indigenous leaders, including Colleen at Chief Seattle Club and Mike at United Indians of All Tribes.

to see if the Cultural Space Agency could be a partner in that conversation.

Is there a place for the agency, even in its nascent form, to support any of the advocacy there?

And tried to get into the call the other day that was full and that was hosted through the governor's office.

So that's very much on our radar.

And I absolutely agree with you that there are communities that typically don't get to shine in the spotlight of preservation in the way that, for example, the show box did several years ago when it became a hotspot of a spark point, maybe of preservation in this town.

So I know I moved backwards through those.

I'm not sure if I addressed each of the pieces of that, but yeah, I think to the central question of where does this capital come from?

What are we talking about when we say community capital?

What we're talking about is time, honestly.

We're talking about philanthropy that they have to raise.

We're talking about individuals and community they have to organize.

We're talking about different assets that are gonna come in over time.

And can we create an entity that will allow communities that time?

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Any other questions, colleagues?

I'm not seeing any hands or anyone come off mute.

Okay.

Very good.

Thank you very much to all of you.

Anything else?

Randy, Calandra, any other comments you all want to make?

Thanks for the time and thanks for whatever it was, 15 years of back and forth with the council.

Thank you.

Madam Chair, can I make a brief comment?

I'm sorry.

Yes, please.

Council Member Lewis.

I just want to take a moment, Director Engstrom, to just go back to your comments earlier when you were thanking all of us on the council for Our support, and I do very fondly remember back when we could have congregate gatherings and going to First Thursday and talking to you about a year ago, and had big plans back then for First Thursday to be a big part of my monthly routine on the council.

have fond memories of those hypothetical plans.

I just want to take a moment to relay back your kind words and say that you will be very much missed by myself and I'm sure by my colleagues as you go on to new challenges and that I have greatly appreciated your leadership.

not only as a council member, but someone who has known you for many years through the Washington bus and just a lot of your other civic activities.

So greatly appreciate your contributions.

I do appreciate too that I think all of us should aspire to age as gracefully in positions as leadership as you have.

You don't look a day older than when you took over the office.

And that will not be something I think I will be able to say for myself.

in my current position.

So I really appreciate that you've handled such a difficult job with grace and and you're leaving the department in such a great condition and you're going to be sorely missed and I hope that we can take advantage of your leadership in other ways here at the city as you go on to the new challenges.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

I want to echo Council Member Lewis's comments.

Randy, we will miss you and want to wish you all the best in your next move.

Enjoy Beacon Hill and look forward to working with you, Calandra, and I'm really excited to make sure that this work keeps moving forward, too.

Thanks, all of you.

Have a fabulous afternoon.

Thank you so much.

Okay, let's move on to item 16. Will the clerk please read item 16 into the record?

Agenda item 16, Council Bill 119982, an ordinance relating to the Seattle Commission for People with Disabilities, changing the name to the Seattle Disability Commission and requesting that the code revise or revise the Seattle Municipal Code accordingly.

Very good, thank you.

I will say that I served as a human rights commissioner several years ago.

And at that time, this conversation was going on.

So I am excited to hear that the commission has made their decision, happy to support it.

I will pass this on to Helen Gebber-Umluck to present the proposed change.

Great, thank you, Chair Morales and council members.

Like you said, Chairman Wallace, this conversation has been going on for quite some time, and the full commission voted unanimously in June to make that change.

And I'll just go over briefly, there's just a couple of main reasons for that change.

The first one, and the primary one, is to broaden inclusivity.

disability commissions or communities are very diverse, both culturally and politically, just like any other community.

And within that, there are a plethora of different self-identification preferences, And there are really 2 main camps that I'll talk about.

The 1st, 1 is known as person 1st language and that's reflected in the current construction of the commission's name that's commissioned for.

people with disabilities.

So other examples are, you know, a woman with schizophrenia, a farmer who is blind.

It's really language that aims to center the whole person while still acknowledging someone's disability.

And there's a lot of folks who prefer person first language.

But there are also a lot of folks who prefer identity first language.

And that's exactly what it sounds like.

That's saying disabled person, an autistic accountant, a deaf woman.

And there are certain cultural differences for that, such as like the deaf community and the autistic community, for instance.

There's a strong cultural preference for identity-first language.

There's also a whole host of other reasons why someone might prefer identity-first language.

So the commission decided to move away from either using person-first language or identity-first language and instead use a construction Seattle Disability Commission, which clearly states what the subject matter of the commission is, the communities that the commission represents without necessarily excluding any parts of those communities who may have either preference.

And then secondly, this also puts the commission's name in line with the other community-centered city commissions, like the Seattle Women's Commission, the Seattle LGBTQ Commission, So like I said, the commission voted unanimously in June, just in order to get that name change reflected in the code, it requires council action and that's what this bill does.

I'm happy to answer any questions if you have any.

Thank you.

Thank you for explaining that.

I have held that tension myself trying to understand what the appropriate, which of those person first, disability first is appropriate, and it sounds like it depends on who you're talking to.

So I'm glad that the commission has reached consent.

I will ask if colleagues have any questions for Helen.

Okay, very good.

Thank you so much, Helen.

Council members, I move then that the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 119982. Is there a second?

Thank you, it's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill.

Any final comments, colleagues?

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on committee recommendation that the bill pass.

Council Member Juarez.

Aye.

Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Council Member Sawant.

Yes.

Chair Morales.

Yes.

Four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the February 1st City Council meeting.

Colleagues, any other questions good of the order?

No.

All right.

In that case, this concludes the January 22nd, 2021 special meeting of the Community Economic Development Committee.

Thanks for attending everybody.

We are adjourned.