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Seattle City Council Briefing 4/27/2020

Publish Date: 4/27/2020
Description: In-person attendance is currently prohibited per the Washington Governor's Proclamation No. 20-28.1 until May 4, 2020. Meeting participation is limited to access by telephone conference line and Seattle Channel online. Agenda: President's Report; Presentation on Small Business Support and Workforce Development; Presentation on the use of Federal and State Grants for COVID-19 Emergency Response; Preview of Today's City Council Actions, Council and Regional Committees. Advance to a specific part: Presentation on Small Business Support and Workforce Development - 1:43 Presentation on the use of Federal and State Grants for COVID-19 Emergency Response - 1:00:00 Preview of Today’s City Council Actions, Council and Regional Committees - 1:40:29
SPEAKER_10

and I'm Lorena Gonzalez, the president of the council.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Peterson?

SPEAKER_18

Here.

SPEAKER_06

Councilmember Sawant?

Here.

Councilmember Strauss?

Present.

Councilmember Herbold?

SPEAKER_11

Here.

SPEAKER_06

Councilmember Juarez?

SPEAKER_99

Here.

SPEAKER_06

Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Here.

Council President Gonzalez.

SPEAKER_07

Here.

SPEAKER_06

Eight present.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02

Madam Clerk, I'm sorry.

I just logged in a few minutes late.

This is Council Member Lewis.

I'm here.

SPEAKER_10

If there is no objection, the minutes of April 20th, 2020 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

President's report, we have a very, very, very full agenda this morning, so I'm going to dispense with the president's report in the interest of time and have us transition straight into the first presentation.

of today's council briefing.

Again, we have a lot on the agenda today, so I'm going to be keeping time accordingly.

So our first presentation will be a presentation on small business support and workforce development, which Council Member Morales is going to introduce and make some introductory comments about.

This presentation is scheduled to go from 9.35 a.m.

until 10.15 a.m., so I'll give folks about a five-minute warning when we're approaching that 10.15 mark so that we can wrap it up and then hear our second presentation.

So Council Member Morales, good morning, and the floor is yours.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you so much.

Good morning, colleagues.

As you know, the Community Economic Development Committee has not been meeting during this crisis.

Nevertheless, I've been meeting regularly with community-based organizations and small businesses to continue our discussion about how we build community wealth in Seattle.

And this is even more important now that we're facing a recession and a a very long economic recovery.

So it's really important that we begin to think strategically about how we rebuild our communities in a way that ensures the resilience of our neighbors, that ensures worker protections and small business sustainability, and the rights for our low-income neighbors and our black and brown communities to stay rooted in their neighborhoods.

We know that our current economic system doesn't serve us all equitably, and my hope is that we, as we think about what the next system looks like, that our decisions are rooted in how we take care of one another.

So, you know, we have the opportunity to put in place systems that will prevent disaster gentrification, prevent the displacement of our community members, and we need solutions that ensure everyone gets to benefit from the city's recovery strategies and programs.

And that includes facilitating public investment to stave off massive unemployment, ensuring community ownership of land, and building wealth for our neighbors.

So I've asked OED to share with us the results of their first round of the business stabilization funding, their approach for the second round, and also some lessons learned for how to reach businesses most impacted by the current situation.

And then I've also asked Beto Yarce of Ventures and Marie Carose of the Workforce Development Council.

to brief us today on what challenges they see and what the council should be thinking about as we plan for a more just future where we broaden economic opportunities for everyone.

So I will turn it over.

Are we hearing from Director Lee first?

SPEAKER_16

Sure, if that's okay.

All right, I'll get started.

Well, thank you so much for this opportunity for OED to present on our work around Small Business Stabilization Fund.

I'll just be really brief because I know you have a full agenda.

And then if there are questions, then we can dive into more of the details.

But as all of you know, excuse me, in the United States, Seattle region was the first to face this historic pandemic.

And by the time the federal government and the nation started to pay attention, many of our Seattle small businesses were already laying off their employees.

And in just a few weeks, unemployment insurance claims shot up over tenfold.

And as a result, we had to move quickly.

And the pandemic is also having disproportionate impact to small businesses owned by people of color and immigrant and refugees.

And many are still on their own, hoping for SBA and unemployment insurance programs to finally scale up.

And with Washington's constitution relating to give the public funds requirement, Federal dollars, CDBG dollars, was the only fund available at that time.

But the CDBG fund was also limited, enough for only 250 small businesses, and it comes with federal requirements.

At this time, before I turn it over to Pedro, I would like to also thank other city departments, OPCD, DON, ARTS, FAS, HSD, OCR, OIRA, SDOT, Waterfront, and others for redeploying their own staff to help us with this project.

We had additional 20 staff that was reassigned to help OED, and many worked late nights and over the weekends to complete this project.

With that, I'll turn it over to Pedro Gomez, who is the project sponsor for the Small Business Stabilization Fund Program, and has worked tirelessly to make this project a success.

With that, I'll turn it over to Pedro.

SPEAKER_19

Thank you Director Lee.

I'm going to go ahead and share my screen here so I can go over the presentation.

Okay.

It's my first time presenting on Zoom so can everyone see my can folks see my screen.

Is that working.

Yes we can see it.

Okay, perfect.

It's also my first time presenting to city council, so very interesting that I'm doing it via Zoom, but good morning, everyone, and thank you for the invitation to present on the Stabilization Fund.

It's a project that I think was, I'm not only speaking for myself, but for the many, many staff that worked on it.

It was a motion to bring Probably the most emotionally draining I've ever had to work on in my time at OEB.

Not only because of the many, many hours that were spent on this, but because of the difficult conversations we've had to have with business owners.

I'm talking in the hundreds of emails and phone calls.

So with that, I'll just jump right in here.

So the Small Business Stabilization Fund, this was an expansion of a program that we, a pilot program we launched last year.

And it was an emergency fund that provides working capital to small businesses and the amounts of $10,000.

The fund is, it's funded by CDBT dollars, Community Development Block Grants.

We initially started with 2.5 million earlier this year, and now the mayor's proposing adding another 1.5.

The mayor directed us to make sure we were focusing the outreach on historically underserved One of the things we knew what was going to happen, and now it's proven to have happened, is that the SBA loans and the programs being offered by our federal government were not going to reach all communities the same way, right, equitably.

So we wanted to make sure that we made this as big of an effort to reach all communities, particularly those that are underserved.

And I think we did that.

Additionally, in order to help with that, because we were weighing out what's going to be better.

Is it first come, first serve or something else?

And first come, first serve just wasn't going to work for those communities because given access to resources and other information, sometimes folks in our community are just not going to be the first ones to apply.

So we decided to go with a lottery process to ensure that grants were awarded to businesses in high-definition areas.

And with that lottery process, we resulted in nearly 80% of the grants going to businesses that identify as people of color.

On the right here, you'll see a map of the folks that received the grant.

The dots in blue are businesses that are located in high displacement areas.

The dots in orange are low displacement areas.

After about, I think it was 10 or I think it was like 12 days that we left the application process open.

We received 9,000 applications from business owners, nearly 9,000 applications from business owners.

A lot of those were not located in Seattle.

We actually got applications from as far as Miami and New York and other places, right?

So we had to get those out.

After we removed those businesses, we were left with approximately 6,000.

of which 252 received a $10,000 grant.

Outreach was conducted in collaboration with our neighborhood district partners.

So local merchants associations, small chambers, other community groups like Ventures.

I see Beto on here.

They were super helpful as well to get the word out.

Social media, of course, was used.

And we also posted regular updates on our website and through our weekly webinar that we conduct every Wednesday, which, by the way, is attracting anywhere from 150 to 200 business owners every Wednesday in partner.

So that's also been a great outlet.

And then in addition to that, our triage team, that's the team in our office that's focused on responding to phone calls and emails.

they were responding to over a hundred stabilization fund specific emails and phone calls.

And this team used to be just one person right at the front desk that would work on these emails, but because of the stabilization fund and because of the number of calls and emails we were getting, they played a key role and we ended up expanding that team to six or seven folks that spent hours and hours responding to emails and calls.

And by the way, This particular effort has proven to be very meaningful to small businesses because I can't tell you how many business owners are just happy to be able to talk to someone.

During these times, a lot of people are not picking up their phones, not responding to their emails, and OED was.

And so that proved to be a huge success.

So here's one family that received the stabilization fund at a restaurant called Villa Escondida in Belltown.

The owner, Jose Perez, who's up on the left side, he employs his parents, and he employs his brother.

And not in the picture is also his wife.

It's a family-owned restaurant.

And because they're located in Belltown, they depend a ton on the workers from Amazon and others in South Lake Union.

And since everyone started working from home, their business dipped.

80%.

The last time I talked to him, this last week when I called the checkup on him, it was about 3, 4 o'clock and they had only made 80 bucks.

And so it's been a tough, tough time that they've been dealing with.

But this stabilization fund is going to help them at least remain in there a couple more months.

Because the other thing we were able to do at OED is reach out to their landlord, which is a great partner of ours, Plymouth Housing.

And Plymouth Housing has pushed back rent for all of their small business tenants for a couple of months.

And that's been super helpful to the folks like Villa Escondida.

Here's a couple other examples of business owners that received the fund.

Zane Cafe in South Lake Union and Chef Tariq.

He's the owner of DJ and the Cook.

And if you just Google these folks, you'll see they both have amazing stories and are doing great work in the community.

For the next steps, the mayor is proposing an additional $1.5 million to be added to the Comprehensive Stabilization Fund.

This will allow us to provide another 150 business owners with $10,000 grants to help them during this crisis.

The city has established a separate fund also to accept private donations to support employee retention for small businesses.

As he does say, the stabilization fund is funded by CDBG dollars, which is meant to reach a targeted group of business owners.

And a lot of them don't qualify.

So using private donations would allow us to support other businesses.

OED is also currently developing an equitable outreach framework for future funding projects and programs.

Because we, despite all the efforts that were done to move as quickly as possible and support all communities, we know that more can be done.

And so we want to make sure we're always applying an equitable equity lens to all of our projects.

And so we're building this framework that's going to help us with all future programs, not just the stabilization And then finally, another big lesson learned was, you know, we kind of have to, you know, last year the pilot only had 200,000, and now all of a sudden we have 2.5 million, and we have to scale very, very quickly.

And so for the future rounds or future grant programs, we're working with a firm to develop an application slash data management system, because even though we had a ton of human power, a ton of folks that were available to help us, There were a lot of things that could have been automated.

And that would have sped up the process and allowed us to get this money out the door a little quicker.

But those were a couple of the big lessons learned, I think.

And with that, are there any questions?

I was hoping to keep it under five minutes, because I know there's a pack.

schedule.

SPEAKER_10

Colleagues, any questions for Pedro?

Any comments?

All right.

Thank you, Pedro, so much for.

SPEAKER_02

Sorry, I just have one question for Lewis.

SPEAKER_10

The floor is yours.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

So thank you so much for this presentation.

And, you know, I've talked to a number of the businesses in District seven who have been recipients of the support.

And it is just so overwhelmingly appreciated.

the city has been able to act swiftly to get in there and provide this relief is incredible.

I wanted to ask, because one of the things that is sobering is just that we have 6,000 folks who have applied.

Even with the additional resources we're putting into this, we're only on track for about a 7% rate of providing businesses who qualify this relief.

I was wondering if there had been consideration, just because I've talked to a number of businesses that if they were to receive relief in the amount of like $5,000 or an amount less than $10,000, it would be enough for their specific needs in order to get through the crisis.

I wonder if there's potential scope for some of the new money to go to a reduced amount in order to stretch it out over a higher number of applicants potentially.

I wonder what possible limitations there would be there if it had been considered.

And I know that the solution should be getting more federal money so that we can honor all of these requests.

I think it's some of the best relief that we've been doing as a city.

But I did want to throw out and see if that has been a consideration, because I know that there are some businesses where a $5,000 grant could help them get through and it might be a way to stretch the resources a little further given the massive demand.

SPEAKER_19

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you, council member.

Uh that's a great question and a question that we receive many times.

You know, when we first launched this program, we uh we're trying to figure out what is that magic number or is there a magic number?

Can we instead just give folks what they apply for, right?

If they apply for three grand or ended up landing on $10,000 for several reasons.

But one of those big reasons is that for a lot of small businesses, when you think about the average rent in Seattle, rent is between $8,000 and $10,000.

And because we didn't know how long this pandemic was going to go for, a lot of people were saying, let's at least be able to provide small businesses with one month of rent.

And that's what we ended up sort of landing on was because of what the average rent in Seattle is for a small business.

We also wanted to give business owners an amount that would allow them to help with wages, right?

So for folks who have five employees or less to be able to also pay their employees.

And so for future rounds, we are considering that we didn't have necessarily the data to show us what the perfect amount is, but not that there is one, You know, I'm sure you'll hear later about the economic impact study that we've conducted, and I think that's going to tell us a lot more about the story and the need and will help shape future programs.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you, Pedro, for that additional information and Council Member Lewis for that question.

Are there any other additional questions or comments from my colleagues?

I see Council Member Herbold has raised her hand.

Please, the floor is yours.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

I really appreciate the efforts of the Office of Economic Development, particularly as it relates to this particular fund.

You know, the concern I'm hearing most from constituents who are small business owners is their frustration around the PPP program administered by the federal government.

And I'm just wondering, is the Office of Economic Development, I know it might feel like an exercise in futility given what we know now about that program, But I'm just wondering, is OED offering any technical assistance?

What best advice do you have for small business owners who are trying to access that fund, given that it, with last week's congressional action, has been replenished?

And then the last piece is, I'm wondering, part of the federal package was $60 billion for CDFIs and credit, I'm losing the, losing the term, not a bank, but a credit union.

And I'm wondering what you can tell me about how those dollars are going to be dispersed both to local credit unions and CDFIs and then out to businesses.

SPEAKER_16

Thank you.

Hi, this is Bobby Lee.

Can you all hear me?

SPEAKER_10

We can hear you.

SPEAKER_16

Okay, great.

Thank you.

I'll keep my comments short because I know you have a long agenda.

Number one is that at OED, we have a 15-person team that answers the phones from those who have questions about the SBA loan products and grant products.

We also have been working with OIRA and OCR to make sure that we have language access capacity as well.

So we have our team on standby right now to answer phone calls, but we have had that team up and running for a little while now.

And with the new vote by the Congress, we know that the phones are going to start ringing.

And so we have a team that's ready to go to provide technical assistance.

The second part is we also provide technical assistance to neighborhood economic development groups and business districts.

So through our Only in Seattle program, we also have a proactive team that's working to educate our partners around how to help small business around TA.

The last part around CDFI is that this is a really exciting time where we can now start to use our own CDFI agencies who specialize on SBA loan and grant products to get capital so they can provide the loans, particularly to our underserved communities.

And so this is a new endeavor that is backed by SBA, by the way.

So we will front some money hopefully at the city level, but eventually we will get paid back by the federal government.

So this is an area that we're looking into and we hope to have a program up and running pretty soon.

SPEAKER_10

That's great to hear.

That's great to hear.

Thank you, Director Lee.

So it is 955, and I definitely don't want to cut the next presenter short.

So we're going to move to Beto Yerce from Ventures, who is going to walk us through his presentation.

So buenos dias and welcome, Beto.

The floor is yours.

You're on mute still.

SPEAKER_12

There you go.

Buenos dias.

Thank you very much, everybody, for having me and presenting.

I'm going to share my screen.

Are you guys able to see my screen?

SPEAKER_11

Yes.

SPEAKER_12

Great.

So I will start with the mission.

You guys see that?

That's for mission.

So let me just see.

There you go.

So Ventures is an organization that has been in business for 25 years.

So we are a CDF-5 and we're a SBA micro lender.

I'm very excited to hear the presentation certainly from Pedro and Bobby and the great questions from Consul Manuel Harbaugh about how do we can do more work with CDF-5 and how do we can leverage this work because really the work that we've been doing for 25 years is empowering low-income entrepreneurs with limited resources but unlimited potential to basically help them to through micro-enterprise and micro-lending moving out of poverty.

So with community or five values are community, client success, empowerment, integrity, diversity, and innovation and that's exactly how we do things everyday at Ventures.

So these are a little bit of our numbers of who do we serve.

In that way, you guys have a better idea.

Many of you have worked and collaborated with Ventures over the years.

We previously were Washington Cash when we were founded in 1995. But when I take over in 2014 as a CEO, I rebrand and change everything through Ventures.

So we serve about 600 individuals a year.

average client support a family of $24,000.

We serve basically on the Puget Sound area.

We have expanded a little bit on the Snohomish now.

We just received a federal grant that allow us to expand into the Snohomish County.

We're very excited.

We're opening an office right now.

Even with COVID-19, we are moving forward and we're expanding to Snohomish County.

So 75% of our clients are women.

65% are people of color, 35% are immigrants and refugees, and 30% are Spanish speakers.

So this is a part that I'm very proud.

I'm the founder of the Latinx program.

So that's how I start working with ventures when I have my own businesses at the Piper's Market and in Redmond Town Center and in Capitol Hill.

So that's my background.

I have a lot of small business entrepreneurship in my blood.

So I decided to found this program from English to Spanish to serve the Latinx community.

And we've been serving for more than 10 years and we have served more than a thousand entrepreneurs in the Latinx community in our region, which I'm very proud.

So yes, we do everything in English and we also do everything in Espanol.

So all our programs are in English and in Spanish, culturally appropriate.

So this is a little bit of our model.

I want to show you, and I'm trying to just go as fast as possible, just to be respectful of the time.

But this is exactly how our model works.

And the reason that our model is very successful in low-income individuals and underserved population is because we have created our own programs, our own curriculums.

We utilize a lot of the data, the things that they have been working hard on the same work.

how do we meet people where they are, especially when these people have been underserved and they have never been in community opportunity.

So that's something that bring me a lot of joy to kind of like how with the privilege that I have.

I always share a little bit of, I learned breakeven point in business.

Breakeven point is a huge component.

So I learned that when I was eight because my mom taught me that with a box of chocolate.

So I always share that because that's privilege.

I learned that when I was a young kid.

and with my first business was selling candy at my parents' garage in Mexico, in Guadalajara.

So I always share that because since that, that changed the way that I think.

So many of the populations that we serve, they don't have that.

So that's why we create this model.

We start with a business-based course that you see in the center, which is an eight-week program where we cope with financials, marketing, and operations.

And basically, you complete a business plan.

After that, you have access to the whole network, which is courses, coaching, capital incubation.

And then you see it is like it's non-stopping.

It's always ongoing.

So these communities need this.

And then if you see capital on the bottom, capital is what we have done in the 25 years.

We are SBA lender.

We are CDFI.

But that's not the only thing that is important for all these businesses.

They need the ongoing support and the coaching.

So I always make funny that we always hear like, oh, access to capital is the solution, but it's not really, it's technical assistance, especially if you don't know how to run a business.

Our impact, in two years of graduation of the BBC, the business basic course, people move out of poverty.

40% of our entrepreneurs exist public assistance and 75% move out of poverty.

All this data is keep track and it's transparency because We have to provide all this to the CDBG funds that we receive, federal grants, CED, CDFI.

So this money has to be proof.

So the transparency of our data has to be existing.

So we have an audit every year.

We need to make sure that all this information is It's true.

80% of businesses are still in operation and business revenue increased by 28%, so about $500 per month.

Businesses create jobs in their community.

That's another thing.

A lot of people think microenterprise don't generate jobs, and they do.

And I always like to talk about how many of the populations that we serve are generating jobs.

And then right now with COVID-19, it's a big crisis because microenterprise definitely employ a lot of individuals.

Micro small businesses, I always like to talk about micro small business.

We always generalize a small business, but this is the land that we are an expert on.

Ventures is from one to five employees generating 50,000 to 500. and they are the most vulnerable.

They are facing store closures, going out of businesses and even homelessness.

So we have had businesses in our history that people who have been homeless, they come to our programs and they move out of the homelessness.

And right now I'm very worried about so many of our clients that they are facing challenges because they're also workers.

Some of them, they have full-time jobs and they're also facing the challenge of losing their business.

I will talk a little bit more about that.

The need distributes with urgency and efficiency that to those looking liquidity and financial crisis.

So we need to move as fast as possible.

I send a blog and I don't know if you have the opportunity to read the blog.

I really encourage you to read the blog that is on the bottom of this presentation.

Because that's the way that we're responding.

In a week, we were able to distribute more than 60 grants because we do have relationships with our clients.

And that was something that our clients were very excited about.

So something that we always think about the solution is money, strategy, technical assistance, coaching, access to markets, and network of people impacting the community.

So again, we need to create the whole entire strategy.

Pablo Su?

rez Hern?

ndez-Sandoval?

npe?

npe?

They are not working.

And I just want to be very general, like the money is not being distributed equitably.

We know that.

The money was distributed to big banks first.

It was a lot of confusion, not enough funding.

Commercials were not prepared to support communities like the population the ventures serve.

Lack of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the distribution, we know all that.

So with the ventures experience and all the work that we've been doing as the SBA lender, we could deploy the money faster.

And that's what I'm excited with this second round, because we're exploring and working on that.

So we get our own PP program as an organization.

And the reason that we get it is because we work with a small bank, and also because we know how to navigate the system.

My associate director, Laura Fletcher, is amazing, and she knows how to do it.

And also one of my board members, it's a VP at Columbia Bank.

So we have the information.

We have access to information very quickly as an organization.

So another question is, what are the major issues for micro-small business in the next 12 months?

So I call it creative capital, a combination of grants and emergency loans with low or non-interest.

Small business need financial support to be able to recover from the crisis.

So this is not that we are asking just for free money or grants.

This is investing in our community, especially of people of color, immigrants, refugees, the most underserved.

If not, they're going to be erased, and all this work that we've been doing for 25 years is going to be erased, and we're going to have to start over again.

And I'm not exaggerating.

I'm just seeing that it's happening.

Reduce or eliminate cost of business license, permit, and taxes.

And I just put for a limited time.

Again, I know the city is facing a lot of challenges and crisis and budgets, but we need to figure out how do we create a reduction of this to make sure our businesses are able to open again.

Access to technical assistance, ongoing support to help business get back to normal.

I hear that from OED, and I'm part of the SBAC, and I know that they're doing a lot of the work on that.

Business coaching and mentorship to help the business owners create a strategy to recover pivoting business, embrace the crisis with mind of opportunity.

The small business owners are entrepreneurial, and some will figure it on their own.

But think about the ones that don't have economic opportunities.

We need to step up for them.

And so.

I feel like this is a question that is like, how do we are going to be able to help our workers?

As an organization, we are already being impacted.

We have a store at Piper's Market that's part of our incubation.

We have it for 10 years.

It's called the Ventures Marketplace.

In the first week of COVID-19, we have to lay off six individuals who are our retail associates.

It was very, very hard.

We helped them to navigate the system on unemployment.

It was very challenging.

So we see that, and that's what I see with a lot of small business in this most business community.

So I hear employees frustration, hard to navigate the systems, it was not enough technical assistance, people don't know how to apply for unemployment, they apply and they do it wrong, they don't receive their money.

So how do we really help these individuals to do that?

And then I will end with some of our clients have their lost their jobs with also experienced reduced business sales, putting them in the several financial crisis.

So one of the grants, the grants that we're giving is only $500 per grant.

That was our magic number, but $500 helped many of our clients to complete the rent of the month.

They also were buying groceries.

So we were a little bit more open at this time.

Basically when we do grants or funds, We only encourage our clients to use the money for business.

But in this case, we were more flexible because we see the emergency urgency.

So I will end with that.

I want to be respectful of the time.

I really encourage you to read the blog if you have.

In that way, you can see how we're responding to this as an organization.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you, Beto, for that presentation.

But more importantly, thank you for all the work that you have done, both in the past and now in this period of time, I think organizations like Ventures are absolutely critical to helping the smallest of small businesses navigate this tricky environment right now.

And so really appreciate all of the good work that you are continuing to do.

And I know that you continue to offer yourself to be accessible to any of us as council members.

We will continue to do that as we continue to work through how to best serve this part of our constituencies across the city.

Thank you for all of the work that you are doing.

Any questions or comments for Beto from my colleagues before we move to our final see you, so you might need to speak up.

I'm scrolling really quickly to see if I see anybody raising their hands.

OK, I'm not seeing anybody.

OK, so we are going to go ahead and move.

Thank you, Bethel, for that presentation.

We're going to go ahead and move.

Oh, you don't have a question.

You were just saying hello.

Got it.

OK, so we're going to go ahead and move to our final presenter in this first presentation.

which is to hear from Marie Carose, who is from the Workforce Development Council of Seattle and King County, who's going to talk to us about the very important issue of workforce development.

So I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to, oh, Beto, you have a quick question or comment?

SPEAKER_12

Yeah, before we move forward, I just want to say thank you to Council Member Tommy Morales to reach out and for the work that you're doing to be the voice of the community that you serve.

I don't want to forget that.

So thank you and thank you everybody for listening to my presentation.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you.

Thank you, Beto, for that recognition of Councilmember Morales's tireless work so far on this particular issue.

And Beto, you're welcome to stay with us throughout the presentation, but if you've got to go because you've got other things to do, totally understand that as well.

So let's go ahead and move to the last presenter for this section.

Marie, are you on the line?

I see that you are on the line.

I will go ahead and hand it over to you, Marie.

SPEAKER_01

Good morning.

Good morning.

Thank you.

So I'm Marie Croce, fairly new to the Workforce Development Council, joined about nine months ago as the CEO to lead the organization to really transform.

I'm supposed to start my video, I guess.

SPEAKER_11

I don't know.

SPEAKER_01

There's no video to start.

Anyways, so as I was, my focus was really on how do we look at kind of building an inclusive workforce, focusing on scaling up career pathways, especially on looking at the racial disparities in work.

The last two months have been flipping kind of our focus, but still in terms of the issues around racial disparities, it's even more important that we do that.

And so I've tried to provide some information and as all of you know that this has been unprecedented, it's been just like a tsunami coming into this, and especially in the workforce development and business field, trying to just track and keep up with all the constant change.

And oh, I forgot I'm supposed to.

This is my first time actually doing the presentation myself, so

SPEAKER_10

No worries, you're doing great.

We have all appreciated the need to be patient with each other as we're all figuring out and experiencing our own learning curve with how to do this remotely.

So no worries.

SPEAKER_01

So as you all know, this has just been unprecedented.

The last few months have been just really wild in our communities, the workers, our businesses.

And this is also very different.

I mean, it's multi-faceted in terms of our response.

We have to like stretch outside of our just narrow kind of focus oftentimes and really think about the related ecosystem and the impacts.

And of course, you know, we're seeing the disproportionate impact.

I think if ever this has been really the racial and economic inequities have been amplified in this.

The depth and duration, we just don't know.

I mean, there's a lot of uncertainty.

So it's overview.

So just to give you a visual of kind of what this pace and scale has been, put together, this is in just one month time, you'll see our unemployment rate went from 2.4% to 5.4% and it continues to rise.

You look down compared to, kind of other years, this has been unprecedented.

Also, you'll see that the new unemployment claims just from beginning in March through April 18th, you see the spike.

And you'll see how it started early on with kind of March with the social distancing kind of mandates.

And the next slide, you will see the impact I'll talk a little bit more about kind of what sectors are being impacted.

So overall, we have seen that every sector pretty much is being impacted, although the vulnerability and economic impact will vary.

For many sectors that are laying off their, you know, many of their workers are still able to telecommute.

I always tell my staff, we are fortunate that we're able to telecommute in this environment.

Many people don't have that benefit.

We also have seen that The retail, hospitality, restaurant sectors have been disproportionately impacted.

And within those sectors, we have a large percentage of low-wage workers, people of color, immigrants, and refugees.

And some of the data also shows, and we don't have the...

exact data yet, but some of this is based on some, you know, other analysis that small business in these sectors represents in King County, 86% of the businesses in these sectors.

But we're also seeing, as many of you know, there's this huge demand, you know, for essential jobs, workers, grocery stores, delivery, healthcare, and just want to also say, but going into those jobs, how do we do that with his eye to personal safety and ensuring personal safety.

Early on, the Chamber of Commerce had produced a report and they had done an analysis that really showed and estimated the numbers of workers that are at risk in King County.

And they showed that the immediate risk being 419, but the immediate and shorter term You know, over 600,000 workers in King County could be at risk.

And most of those occupations are those lower paying occupations.

So this screen just really shows kind of while there's been some broad impact.

And I only pulled up the sectors that had 5,000 or more UI applicants.

you'll see that accommodations and food services, healthcare and social assistance and retail are some of the top.

Others that you see, the manufacturing, some of those jobs, as you know, will be coming back.

It's just temporary, but the primary sectors that have been, and have had the longest shutdown in duration have been in the accommodation, food services, and retail.

So this graphic, and Council Member Morales had asked for some really specific information on kind of impact on the city.

I have requested from the state, the state has all of the unemployment data, insurance data.

I've been requesting additional data just in terms of demographics by industry, but also by geography.

Not yet received that, however, Urban Institute has done some analysis based on census and some of the UI's unemployment and labor standards data.

And so the projections they have made and they've shown for neighborhoods that are hardest hit by COVID-19 in terms of workers and low-income jobs, you'll see here this graphic.

And in Southeast Seattle is, you know, that's one of the highest impact of communities.

So the darker blue or the darker the blue, the highest impact.

We will have, I was told that I would get the data on zip code last week.

I'm hearing now it's gonna be this week.

So I'll provide of a better sense of what that data is and I'll provide some updates when we receive it.

And as you know, as many of you know, that this minority owned businesses, women in minority owned businesses are amongst the highest hardest hit just because of the prevalence in these industries, but also, you know, focusing on some of the preexisting inequities, lack of access to capital, you have less capital to cushion, you know, the ongoing operations and in terms of small employees of these small businesses, because these businesses don't have that capital, they're unable to continue to pay wages or benefits for those employees.

So I'm just going to quickly just go into kind of recovery, and we know This is unlike any recession or economic recession that we've seen before.

I think it's really important for us not to jump to kind of a conclusion, but to really be thoughtful and coordinate and communicate and look at data.

We're kind of developing a recovery response, but in terms of short-term priorities.

Although the Workforce Development Council operates the network of work source centers, which brings a lot of different workforce partners together, our biggest demand has really been around unemployment insurance.

People having questions about not being able to access unemployment insurance.

That is a function of the state, actually by law, and so we have been really working advocating with the state to get partner with us in our community agencies.

First of all, to translate the materials in multiple languages.

I only got their agreement to do that last week for some of the main documents.

We also have gotten approval and some of our community partners, Asian counseling referral services, neighborhood health and others.

They are translating some of the documents on how to apply for unemployment and they are getting training and some of them have been able to now answer some of the lines.

They cannot actually do the eligibility, but they're answering some of the help lines now.

So we have brought a team of multilingual case managers from our communities to get trained and so they'll be answering the phone starting this week, I believe.

So that's been kind of top priority, because that's been the need.

But it's also looking at how do we make sure that we're improving access to all of the other supports.

Technology is a huge gap.

It's looking at strengthening the safety net, both the public benefits as well as kind of the other philanthropic and other efforts going on.

Right now, there's a lot of chaos.

And as people are, I think that Strength of our community is a lot of people are ready to help.

The challenge is for people in the community that are trying to access a variety of supports, it's very chaotic in finding a place to go.

So we're really working across sectors to try and support community navigators that are working to help, you know, workers, impacted workers and other community members with kind of the range of supports needed.

And again, being asked to help employers fill those jobs for the essential jobs, I think it's important that we, as we are helping connect workers to those jobs, we are also working to make sure that those employers are implementing some safety standards for the workers.

And we continue to advocate for and leverage kind of local, state, and federal funding.

while decisions are being made like fast and furious pace, oftentimes the voices of those that are actually being impacted are not included.

So I think it's important for us and I really appreciate Council Member Morales bringing multiple voices to the table because some of these applications have been like gotten three days notice and with very, very little input.

It's important for us to look at that data so that we can really understand and target resources to those and prioritize those resources.

And also recognizing that a lot of the federal programs have limited or excluded many of the immigrant workers.

As we start moving towards recovery, It's really making sure, going back to that data, making sure that we are targeting our assistance and supporting those that are most vulnerable.

And as we're moving to prepare workers and businesses for success, one of the issues that pre-COVID, businesses were, there was this labor shortage and they were having problems finding workers with the skills.

I think it's important for us to start building in opportunities build the skills of low-wage workers, but also improve job quality as we move forward, and looking at opportunities to leverage some of the federal dollars, subsidized wages for some of the small businesses to bring back their workers, but also support some of the upskilling.

And then in the future, we learn from the recession that post-recession disparities widen.

I think there's an opportunity for us to think about our recovery in a way that we focus on job quality and inclusion.

Let's move forward.

And then also just really saying that we need to help our workers get through this and return to work and reduce this duration of unemployment before it gets too deep.

I think that's about it.

I will bring additional data.

I think that data is really important.

Hopefully in the next week.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you, Marie, for that presentation, really rich with information, certainly painting a sober picture for Seattle King County as it relates to this particular issue, and appreciate you being with us this morning.

Any questions or comments, folks, for Marie or for any of the other presenters as we close out this portion of the presentation?

So Council Member Morales, I know that you have raised your hand, but I'd love to have you close us out if that's okay.

Okay, so I'm gonna go over to Council Member Mosqueda who raised her hand.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you, Council President, and thanks so much for the presentation from the Workforce Development Council.

You know, this is something that we've been thinking about a lot.

You mentioned the lessons learned from the past recession, and I'd like to draw that out a little bit more.

I think one thing that's important for us to remember from the last recession was that the number of manufacturing jobs lost.

was never recovered and many of those jobs went to the service sector.

Now when we look at your chart in terms of who's affected and we see it disproportionately affecting folks in the service sector and we know those to be mostly women.

and people of color, and let's not forget these essential workers are making a minimum wage, if not just slightly more, which is not a living wage in Seattle.

I guess I'd love to hear a little bit more about what type of strategies Workforce Development Council is thinking about, either locally or nationally.

We've been involved in a handful of conversations with folks at the national level about the need to sort of rethink what workforce development actually means.

In the past, when I worked at the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, I think one of our biggest criticisms was that often workforce development was thought of how do we channel individuals or workers into whatever industry sort of was the loudest and most demanding, and that wasn't necessarily high quality jobs.

And that meant not thinking about how do you prepare workers for self-determination and stability, but instead how do we train X number of people because you know, fill-in-the-blank industry has asked for 100 or 300 people.

So you mentioned lessons learned and you mentioned quality jobs and returning to work, but it just doesn't seem like we are going to, or we shouldn't return to the status quo.

Can you talk a little bit more about what it means to train workers in a post-COVID world where we see essential work being defined so, so, you know, explicitly around the very folks that have been put into the lowest wage workers and putting into context, you know, Trump saying, hey, we're gonna reduce wages for farm workers as that's some sort of way to show how essential that work is.

So anything you can tell us about how we're trying to rethink what workforce development actually is in a post-COVID world would be excellent.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you.

Yeah, and it is, you know, it's not kind of the common thinking of workforce development, you're right.

So we are thinking out of the box, working with some of our labor partners and some of the national partners to really identify opportunities to bring in job quality.

One of the keys is we are seeing all now seeing the importance of these essential critical workers.

And looking at, you know, there have been some great negotiations in terms of supporting the value, recognizing the value of these workers who, you're right, are disproportionately people of color and women, and finding ways to look at workforce policies and kind of social access to healthcare and wages as being critical.

We're fortunate compared to other countries, other They sound like other countries in some ways, but in terms of the progressive policies that we've enacted around, you know, livable wages and minimum wages, I think we have to build on that and look at access to benefits, but also find ways to, especially for some of the smaller businesses, find ways to make that affordable so that they can support they can't pay health care and other benefits.

Because what we've seen is a direct, I mean, the people that have been most impacted are losing their access to health care.

They're the ones that are, you know, because they're living kind of most vulnerable financially at risk, we're seeing that there's huge challenges.

So part of it's gonna be around advocacy, but it's also looking at how we don't just try and stick people back in jobs but we really look at providing opportunities for skill upskilling, really working on with employers on career pathways.

You know, some of those career pathways that were operating in the past, I would say like the airport used to have built in career pathways.

Then as jobs started getting privatized, people then got stuck in some of the lower wage jobs.

So how do we start rebuilding some of those pathways and take advantage of employers' needs for upskill and new skills.

I think there's just gonna be, there's a lot of work to do.

There's no like clear answers, but I think there've been some examples of things that have worked nationally and really bringing, it's important that we bring worker organizations, community, industry, and public policy to the table, because it's really ecosystem needs to change.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you, Marie, for that.

Colleagues, we are running a little long already, about 15 minutes long.

So I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to Council Member Morales, who can provide us with any sort of last questions and closing remarks on this presentation.

SPEAKER_03

Sure, thank you.

Well, I want to thank everybody, Bobby and Pedro, Beto, and Marie.

Thank you all for being here and helping us understand these issues a little bit better.

I think it is a really important reality check on who is suffering.

I mean, we're all struggling here, but the recovery is really hitting women and communities of color particularly hard and we need to make sure that we are when we're talking about how we support small business understand that it is not just you know the 500 or fewer employees small business we're talking about mom-and-pop shops who are really relying on these these businesses for their livelihood and for the livelihood of their employees.

and that we think about the next system.

You know, this current system is not serving all of us.

Whatever we do to come out and prepare ourselves for recovery, we need to make sure that we are rooted in taking care of people, taking care of one another, and that we are centering racial equity, and as Council Member Mosqueda said, you know, real, the dignity that comes with self-determination as we make policy decisions that will have very acute impacts on our neighbors.

So I want to thank the presenters for sharing your expertise with us and we welcome any information that you want to share down the road as well.

Thanks.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you for those words and for offering to organize this presentation for Council briefing today.

I think it's certainly timely, particularly as we go ahead and transition into our fourth agenda item, which is a presentation on the use of federal and state grants for COVID-19 emergency response.

We are joined by several individuals from the executive.

So I'm going to go ahead and thank all of our presenters who were on the line here for the for the first presentation.

Again, you're all welcome to stay on the line or go on with your day, however you wish.

And I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Council Member Mosqueda, who is going to introduce this panel and make some introductory comments.

Again, colleagues, we are running about 15 minutes long already this morning.

So if we can keep our comments concise and tight, we have enough time for the presentations and any questions, I would surely appreciate it.

So Council Member Mosqueda, the floor is yours.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you, Council President.

I'm going to take your advice and be very succinct.

Today we have in front of us Director Ben Noble from the Budget Office and Adrienne Thompson from the Mayor's Office.

I think it's important for us to be as transparent and responsive to both council questions and community questions about how we're using and deploying federal and state grants for COVID emergency response.

And that's precisely why they're here for us here in front of us today to give us a preview on the legislation that we are looking forward to sponsoring and getting your feedback.

Director Noble, I think I'll leave it at that and turn it over to you and the mayor's office to walk us through the legislation.

SPEAKER_15

Thank you.

I'm going to actually turn it very quickly over to Adrienne Thompson.

We're going to She's going to provide you an initial overview.

I'm going to step in for some details on the kind of the budget side of this.

And then we also have Emily Alvarado from the Office of Housing and Julie Dingley, who's also on the CBO staff, to give you some more of the details about the specific legislation which we have sent down, which is a piece, would implement a piece of the overall strategy.

So with that, Adrienne?

SPEAKER_04

Yep.

Thank you.

Hopefully folks can see my screen.

Okay, so thank you all for this opportunity to walk through with you the federal and state funding, kind of the larger strategy and the big picture of what we know today.

And then also focus in a little bit on the legislation itself.

So where we want to start is just kind of we want to give you an overall of what our city activities up to date are.

Our reimbursement strategy, which is taking into consideration all the different funding streams, And then give you a real good overlay on how those funding and the funding streams and sources actually build up into a matrix that can help give you some sense about the strategy as moving forward.

And then we want to do a little deeper dive in the legislation that you've all seen.

So first, sorry, just closing my screens.

I can see.

Okay.

So first is, we've kind of broken it up into three different buckets.

So one is the stimulus funds themselves.

So our team has reviewed all of the stimulus packages at the federal level.

So one, two, three, and four.

what folks refer to as three and a half that was just passed last week.

The bulk of the funding that is a part of the stimulus dollars actually belongs in the CARES Act three.

And so that's the deeper dive we're gonna do today.

But the rest of it did not include direct funding necessarily to the city.

We are, as the third package has been released, we've been seeking the funds that become available.

Not all of them are available.

We're still waiting for guidance from the feds on some of the funds.

And then we're also identifying gaps where there's some significant areas missing, especially around community needs, around rental assistance, small business.

You saw what passed last week to help support business community, as well as food.

Food has been a significant issue throughout the country.

So we're trying to identify those gaps for another package.

The next set of funding streams is FEMA assistance dollars.

These are not tied to the stimulus funds.

These are their own separate bucket of funds.

And this is tied to any type of natural disaster that would normally occur.

And in this case, it's considered a disaster.

And so we have submitted for pre-approval for reimbursements and are now submitting for reimbursements themselves.

And I'll do a deeper dive about what those individual items are.

And then the third stream that we're also looking at is kind of the response, reopen and recovery plan.

So with that, we're still in what you would consider the response phase where we are still dealing with lack of testing, not a significant contact tracing at this point.

So until there's certain things that can be met, we still are in the phase of the stay home, stay healthy order under the governor, as well as just the general response of the city needs to have to do.

We are also in the process of trying to determine what the reopen plan looks like.

We know that some states have started to go through that phase.

We are concerned with the lack of testing and contact tracing.

It is very difficult for us to reopen immediately.

So we're gonna have to look at that through phases.

And then we have the recovery plan itself, which will last, you know, a couple years.

So right now we're trying to identify capital projects for future stimulus dollars, continue our response efforts, and then develop reopen and recovery framework.

So overall, our reimbursement strategy is we want to pursue FEMA reimbursement where possible.

This is the first item we should go after.

This is where the most amount of dollars are.

Then our second strategy is to allocate the Restricted Cares Act funding.

And that's the legislation that's before you all today.

And then the third strategy is there is a part of the stimulus $3 there was a hundred and thirty one and a half million coronavirus relief funds and we want to we just got direction very late last week on how we can use that.

So we are now researching what we can and can't use that on right now.

And then we'd like to come back to you on what the strategy would be associated with those particular funds.

And then we also have the $13 million from the State Department of Commerce that had some level of flexibility.

And so we wouldn't want to use those dollars as the last dollars to fill in some of the gaps where the CARES Act and the Coronavirus Relief Fund are unable to meet some of the needs.

So I'm gonna go through the first stream line of funding, which is a FEMA public assistance.

So what we do know is the feds will reimburse us on FEMA assistance dollars at 75%.

It is an unlimited amount of money, meaning there's no cap on the amount of dollars, but they will only reimburse at a 75% level.

There was some initial guidance by the state that they would make up the difference of the 25%.

We just learned last week that they may not, and that's still an open discussion that we're having with the state right now.

The categories that we can provide towards FEMA that we understand based on kind of pre-approval and guidance that FEMA has already provided is the PPE cleaning, staffing, administrative costs, cleaning, and food.

What we've requested pre-approval for and what we've started to seek funding for directly is the bottom half, which is the non-congregate sheltering, the congregate sheltering, hygiene, logistics supply warehouse, and then we're in coordination with the state right now to figure out how do we help support our food and food delivery and food banks.

The four, the non-congregate sheltering, congregate sheltering, hygiene, and logistics supply warehouse, we've had some challenges with FEMA.

They had, a couple weeks ago, had released an expedited worksheet, which was about a five-page worksheet document We had filled those out, submitted it through our portal.

It was then asked to provide some additional information.

We provided the additional information, and then FEMA just last week came out with a new expedited worksheet.

So now we are having to fill out a different worksheet to submit, and it has now gone from five pages to 30 pages.

So we are working through those processes right now.

And then as I mentioned on the food side, FEMA, if FEMA sees that a local jurisdiction has other access to funding, they may not be reimbursing us for this.

Because the state has some lines of funding coming directly to the state for food, we have to work very close coordination with the state to make sure that what we submit in food will actually be covered and not rejected because the state has already covered some of it.

So that's the FEMA side.

SPEAKER_15

Just a couple of quick notes.

One is that as labeled, this is reimbursement.

So actually we're spending these dollars out front and then expecting to get, and reasonably so, expecting to get payment from the feds.

That's why the work is getting the pre-approval, knowing what the pre-approved category is on it and getting approval ahead of time for those that aren't in that pre-approved category is important so that we understand what's coming back to us.

And then the last point that Adrian was making as well is also important.

FEMA's goal is to fill in whether or not other funding sources, so although they will pay for food, if above and beyond what's otherwise being paid for, for instance, if there are resources that are eligible for food, we may have to use those first before we can get this FEMA reimbursement, and we'll sort of describe some more of that as we go forward here.

Thanks, Adrian.

SPEAKER_04

The next bucket is the federal dollars and at the very bottom is the state funding.

The legislation that's before you is the top four, which is a federal stimulus funds legislation.

particular area.

So this includes Community Development Block Grants, also known as CDBG, the Emergency Solution Grants, ESG, Housing Opportunity for Persons with AIDS, referred to as HOPWA, and then the Older Americans Act Funding for Area Agency on Aging.

So we know in these four different categories the exact allocation that the City of Seattle is receiving.

Both the CDBG and the ESG are a formula that's developed at the federal level.

We've received these fundings in the past and will continue to receive them.

In the CARES Act number three, this was the initial allotment.

We will be receiving a second allotment towards the end of this month.

We do not know how much yet.

We're still waiting for guidance on that, but they will be relooking at how to do the formula allocation, so it will not be the same.

The next set of funding is future funding.

So this is the Coronavirus Relief Fund.

So this is the $131.5 million I had referred to earlier.

As I had mentioned, we just received guidance on this, and we still need to seek some potentially additional clarity on it.

Once we have figured out the strategy around that, we'd like to come back to you all and talk about what that allocation could look like.

Um, other funding we're due to receive, not quite yet, have received is the FTA formula funds for transit.

This is for the streetcar and monorails.

We'll receive $2.3 million.

Um, the state and local law enforcement assistant burn JAG grants, uh, we're gonna receive $1.34 million.

That is in the application process right now.

Uh, the funds have been released in the sense where we've gotten direction from the agency to submit for those funds, so we are in the process of doing that now.

There's also the Community Service Block Grants.

It's unclear whether we're going to receive those.

We believe we will, so we're working on that.

It will be less than $200,000.

The Firefighter Assistance Grants for PPE and related supplies just came out as far as guidance, so we're right now researching what we can submit for in that particular grant.

It is still unclear about the economic development assistance programs and the education and outreach related to fair housing and COVID.

We are still waiting for federal guidance on these.

So it's unclear whether we are directly able to apply yet or not.

But I just wanted to highlight that those are other options that may exist for us under the stimulus three.

And then the last is the state funding, which is the Department of Commerce Emergency Housing Grant, which we've received $13 million, will receive $13 million for.

And that is mainly to deal with some of the homelessness.

But we believe this should be a last dollar in because it provides more flexibility than a lot of these other grants do.

So I'm going to turn this over to Ben for the next section.

SPEAKER_15

So this next graphic, I don't actually expect you to be able to read, and we will move in the next couple of slides to zoom in on pieces of it.

What I wanted to capture with this and describe to you is the work that the Budget Office is doing in consultation and partnership with the Office of Urgency Management and the Office of Intergovernmental Relations and also key departments.

And what's represented here is the mapping that we're doing between the city's COVID-related expenses, which are essentially the categories along the first column on the left.

So PPE costs, city staff that have been redirected to the work, homelessness, you can read down the list.

So those are the things that we know we need to be spending money on investing in.

across the top are the various funding sources.

And what the color coding here does is indicate which funding sources can be used for which purposes.

And so, for instance, there's a big green swath down the middle of the chart, which is the corona virus relief fund of 131 plus million dollars.

Based on the recent direction we've gotten, we think that it's more flexible than we had initially thought.

So you can see it's an eligible source to cover almost all of our expenses.

I would note, just as part of this, that the one place where it doesn't work, and in fact where we don't have any existing funding source, is under general, the city revenue backfill.

The question of whether the Coronavirus Relief Fund would provide just basic financial assistance to local and state governments, the short answer is no.

There is now some debate in D.C.

about another source there.

But in general, I mean, you can read data columns or read across from a need to see what sources are eligible.

As we are looking to make recommendations to you about what resources to spend where, this is what's informing those recommendations.

So if we have a source that's particularly restricted, we'll use that first.

apply it to the restricted uses that it's allowed, thus making more money available in some of these flexible pots to meet other needs.

Why don't you go ahead, Adrian, show the next slide.

So this is just, again, same chart, but drilling in essentially at the top half, looking at the first three categories, the personal protection equipment, city staff, and then kind of general expenses.

And then again, you can just see, for instance, if you look down the FEMA category, it pays, for personal protection equipment, some limited amount of city staff time, essentially incremental city staff time, so overtime or contract costs, but it won't cover base salaries.

On the other hand, under some circumstances, we think the Coronavirus Relief Fund would cover those expenses.

So this is trying to just give you a general feel for the mapping that we've been doing and the analysis that we have been doing.

One more, Adrian.

ties into the rest of that chart, again, looks at homelessness.

For instance, shelter redistribution, that first line.

So as you know, we've been working to de-densify the shelters to create more room and less proximity.

And there are a number of sources that can be used there, as you can see.

And as we bring forward recommendations, we'll be informed by those eligibilities.

Again, to follow through on this, FEMA, for instance, in general, should be an eligible source.

As I was describing previously, FEMA generally wants to fill in after other resources have been used and are eligible.

So we might wanna just hold all of that and just have FEMA pay for it, but they may require that we invest some of the other federal dollars in that space first, if you will.

So again, that's part of this analysis.

So this is the work, again, that CBO in consultation with OIR, with Office of Emergency Management, with individual departments.

You'll hear this morning from Emily Alvarado at Office of Housing is just one example.

You've already heard from Bobby Lee at OED.

He's also been a partner in this work.

So it's a pretty complicated story, but we're being careful and methodical about it.

And we're prepared to bring forward a piece of legislation to cover the first allocation of resources, but there'll be more to follow.

With that, I think Julie Dingley at CPO Budget Office is up next to give you more information on the specific legislation that we have sent forward.

SPEAKER_14

Good morning, Council Members.

Thank you, Ben.

As you heard from Adrienne, the legislation you're considering today includes several grants that were included in the Federal CARES Act.

Seattle has received direct allocations for some of these grants, totaling about $14 million.

So we'll go into specifics for each of the grants in the following slides, but wanted to provide you with a high-level look at our overall allocation strategy.

For housing opportunities for people, for persons with AIDS or HOPWA, Older Americans Act, and the Medicaid Title 19 funds, these are the most restrictive, and there was no need to reinvent the wheel.

The fastest way to get these dollars out the door was to leverage existing programs in HSD.

Now for the Emergency Solutions Grant and the Community Development Block Grant, there was a little bit more work to do.

So as you saw in the red and green chart that Director Noble walked you through, we identified areas of eligibility from each of the particular funding sources and then matched those to lines of effort and community need.

We then looked for gaps or areas where certain lines of effort had the fewest alternatives for funding.

So based on our assessment and our current experience with providers in the field, Those gaps are in rental assistance, small business support, and food access and delivery.

So now we'll go into specifics of each of the grants.

For Hapua, the city's set to receive about $425,000.

The plan is to provide funding to HSD contracts to support both housing options and program services.

For housing options, they're for low-income persons diagnosed with HIV AIDS and their families to maintain or acquire permanent affordable housing.

And for services, it can be used for a variety of services, including short-term rent, mortgage utility assistance, housing placement, rental assistance, as well as the programs include housing case management and are designed to increase participants' capability to maintain housing and to facilitate progress toward stable, long-term, self-sufficient living.

So next, we'll move to the ADS funding.

So as you know, the Human Services Department's Aging and Disability Services Division is the area agency on aging for King County.

In that capacity, they administer funding for the Older Americans Act, from which, from the CARES Act, we're going to receive $5 million from the Older Americans Act.

HSD will use this funding to expand existing food delivery programs in a shift in program model from senior congregate meals to home delivery to facilitate appropriate social distancing for this population at a higher risk for serious impacts from COVID-19.

In addition, they're going to receive 150,000 from Medicaid.

HSD is going to add capacity for expedited Medicaid long-term services and supports initial assessments, which assist hospital patients transition to to another care setting.

In addition, funding will provide for care transition services to non-Medicaid eligible individuals and ongoing community-based support.

Moving to the Emergency Solutions Grant, the city is set to receive about 2.83 million.

This funding can be used for homelessness outreach, improving emergency shelter availability and delivery, shelter operations, rapid rehousing and homelessness prevention.

So in particular, when we looked at that green and red chart, the areas that jumped out the most, again, were rental assistance, economic development, and food access and delivery.

So in this category, we're using 750,000 to provide an alternate funding source for a 2020 council add to prevent homelessness for individuals transferring from essential needs or aged, blind, and disabled programs into SSI or SSDI.

Due to the general fund revenue forecast revision that you heard from Director Noble last Wednesday, this provides a more reliable funding mechanism for 2020. We are also going to be using $2.08 million for shelter meals.

So HSD is going to use funds for the added cost of delivering homelessness services at existing shelters during the outbreak.

And what we've heard the most from them is the increased cost of moving from that congregate meal setting to the meal delivery is one of the biggest cost drivers.

So then I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Emily, who's going to cover CDBG.

SPEAKER_08

Good morning.

Good morning, Council.

Thank you for having me to talk about the mayor's proposed recommendation of $4.1 million in rental assistance with CDBG and then the $1.5 million to the Office of Economic Development Small Business Assistance.

So I first want to cover the three bullets on this slide and provide a little bit of background information about rent assistance and then move into why we are proposing a three-part approach to distributing rent assistance.

So clearly, as you all know, we have more than half of Seattle's residents who are renters.

severely or are housing cost burdened.

We know that many people are struggling financially to pay their rent at this time.

And regardless of Governor Inslee's eviction moratorium, renters need to pay their rent in order to ensure long-term housing stability.

So because of that reason, in early April, we announced our partnership with United Way of King County to support an expanded home-based program, which provides rent assistance to households at 50% AMI or below who showed economic impact from COVID and who did not pay their April rent.

We, that program, we contributed $1 million to that program, which leveraged additional King County and private philanthropic dollars.

The phone line and application process was kept open for several days.

And I believe that the response is really evidenced of the need for more rental assistance.

United Way received 6,841 applications.

2,570 were from the city of Seattle.

Over 70% of the applicants were people of color.

1,866 applications were completed by folks who then requested follow-up in another language.

And over 3,600 of the applicants have children under the age of 18. So moving forward, based on the information we understand from United Way, we really want to allocate new federal resources for rent assistance in a way that ensures three key objectives, one around equity, around accessibility, and around serving as many households as we can.

On accessibility, I will say there are some benefits to having a place that we can direct people to call, one easy spot for people to know about, but accessibility is also about having appropriate language access so we can serve diverse communities.

On equity, we want to make sure we're distributing resources in a way that serves vulnerable and underserved households, including those households who are not connected to mainstream services.

And we seek to use our community-based partners as a way to do that.

And then around efficiency or serving the most households, we really want to make sure that we're getting as much direct assistance directly to households as we possibly can.

So for that reason, we have recommended this three-part approach to rental assistance.

The first one you see there is $1.5 million for HSD's Homelessness Prevention Program.

As you know, HSD already administers rent assistance from the housing levy to vulnerable households.

And this expands that approach by leveraging many community-based organizations who do that direct assistance so that we can have reach into various diverse cultural communities.

Those organizations already have a track record of providing financial assistance in a way that meets the individualized needs of households.

And the community organizations who do that work include El Centro de la Raza, Interim, Muslim Housing Services, Neighborhood House, Seattle Indian Health Board, just to name a few.

So we recommend some rent assistance through that means for folks who are below 50% AMI and COVID impacted because we can reach diverse community-based organizations.

The second proposal is to provide an additional $1.5 million to the United Ways Home-Based Rent Assistance Program.

We've made a very public announcement about that program already.

there is a met need in that program and directing more resources can make sure that we're able to continue to keep people moving to that source who may already know about it but feel they were unable to get their rent assistance needs met.

And then third, the proposal is to put $1.14 million to our office to administer to nonprofit organizations city-funded affordable housing.

And the idea here is that I, look, I meet almost every week with the executive directors of our city funded affordable housing.

And what I hear from them is that they're working hard to serve their clients in this moment.

And one of the challenges they're facing is that they're seeing a real precipitous increase in the amount of unpaid rent from March to April.

It's worth pointing out that we have, of the affordable housing we have funded, around 3,100 of those units have no operating subsidy, which means that they rely only on tenant-based rent in order to get the rent paid.

In those buildings, for example, a majority of those units are owned by Bellwether Housing and Bellwether saw a 15% increase in unpaid rent from March to April.

Property managers report that many of those households are working in restaurants, retails, or are sold business proprietors.

So what we're able to do is to provide direct assistance to our city-funded housing providers who don't have an operating subsidy and then cover the rent for non-paid rent in those buildings.

The benefits there are that the the nonprofit housing providers already have documentation about income eligibility on hand and in addition by providing that rent assistance you serve the individual household and the building and the nonprofit so that sums up a proposal to contribute 4.14 million in rent assistance in a three-part way that really hits a lot of our key city objectives.

And I'll turn it over to Julie to talk more about small business.

SPEAKER_14

Thanks so much, Emily.

As you heard this morning from OED in their presentation, the Small Business Stabilization Fund had an incredible number of applications that the city has been unable to fulfill at this point.

So the proposal here is to take an additional $1.5 million and provide it for OED's Small Business Stabilization Fund to support those smallest businesses facing the severe financial challenges as a result of this crisis.

So then, and we only have, I think, two more slides, so we'll go through this quickly.

I know that we're approaching time.

Wanted to point out a couple of nuances with CDBG.

It is, in the traditional non-COVID world, we think of CDBG as quite restrictive and it's, Kind of funny for someone like me to consider this as a very flexible source in this environment, but alas, here we are.

So it's important to note that the CARES Act has waived the public services cap for 2019 and 2020 CDBG.

This is typically capped at about 15%.

And that means those are services that are provided like in our homelessness shelters, for example, that typically that's a limited amount, but now it's been opened up a little bit more broadly.

Specifically for rental assistance, important to note that CDBG is capped at three months of support, and it must be provided to the landlord.

It can't go to individuals.

So that's why we've shaped this proposal in the way that we have.

And then for small business support, they are using what's called the Urgent Need National Objective.

And this allows OED to process applications more quickly.

Now, importantly, that Urgent Need National Objective is capped at 30% of our three-year cumulative total that we spend under that category, which we estimate to be between 7 and 8 million.

So this legislation in front of you today would take our running total in that three-year window under that objective to about 4 million.

And then finally, as Adrian mentioned at the top, this is our initial allocation from the CARES Act.

We anticipate this being the largest allocation we're going to receive of CDBG and ESG.

Um, we don't yet know when the second formula is going to come and it's, it is going to be a slightly different formula.

I believe it's going to be administered by the state and it's going to be based on COVID-19 prevalence factors.

Um, we don't have the specifics just yet, but anticipate those coming very soon.

And we would bring that back to the council for additional consideration.

SPEAKER_10

Great.

Thank you so much for that presentation.

Obviously, a lot of information contained there and, you know, some stuff that we know and some stuff that we are still waiting to get more details about, but certainly appreciate your all's interest in being with us this morning and to talk to us about what we can expect to see in terms of this afternoon's legislation.

So I know that Council Member Mosqueda has a question and she'll want to make some closing remarks.

Before she makes closing remarks, though, if you have a question on this presentation, please, please do let me know by either raising your hand with your camera on or shooting me a quick message to let me know that you have a question and I'll put you into the queue.

for now, just pending that invitation, I'll go ahead and yield the floor over to Councilmember Mosqueda.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you very much, Council President, and thank you all for the presentation and the walkthrough today.

Just two questions because I know we're running short on time.

Number one, on the issue around dedensification of shelters, Can you tell us a little bit more about how and whether that de-densification funding could be used for hotel rooms?

As you noted, congregate shelter settings are increasingly clear that they're dangerous and allowing for the spread of COVID.

As we shift to different models, it's important for us to know if we're able to use those de-densification dollars for hotel rooms, working in partnership with Unite here at Local 8. and our labor partners to keep folks safe.

I believe that the Executive Dow Constantine is working on raising $57 million that will in part be used for hotel rooms.

So I'm wondering if we're doing anything along the same lines to scale up our funding for decreasing congregate shelters settings by moving folks into hotels.

I see you, Ben, probably teed up to answer that.

But then I'll throw out the second question so you guys can possibly answer it together.

It was noted that we're going to use the 13 million from the state as a possible way to fill the budget holes because the flexibility.

I understand the desire to make sure that we're.

leveraging our other funds in every possible way.

Could you give us a better timeline on how we plan, how long we plan on waiting, how soon we will know what those budget holes are so that we can quickly get that $13 million out and not sit on that $13 million for too long.

Thanks for the timeline on that.

SPEAKER_15

Just real quick, on that first question, the second question first, if you will.

And I failed to make this point when I was giving kind of the overview.

Urgency is clearly in our heads, right?

I mean, getting these dollars out the door, they are meant for relief.

And that is what we intend to do with them.

We only just last Wednesday night got direction on the 130. So I would say in the next couple of weeks, we should be able to come back to you with the overall strategy on the 130. And then from that follows the strategy on the on the grant from commerce.

So we are close to being there, but this information from the feds that we got last week was a critical piece that we really didn't have before.

Julie may have some more also to say on the non-congregate.

What I can't say at a high level is that we've been coordinating with the county a good deal on sort of taking up different responsibilities for this overall.

So the county has led considerably, but not exclusively, on the de-densifying effort in terms of finding facilities and moving folks there.

We perhaps have spent more time on the services associated with some of that, and then actually our own shelters themselves, the ones that we had operating before.

There are two things going on here.

We're both de-densifying the shelters, and we are trying to provide new sheltering opportunities for those who are otherwise had been outside of our systems and also living homeless.

I don't know, Julie, if you have more to add there, or Emily.

SPEAKER_14

Yeah, Ben, you're absolutely correct.

The county has taken the lead on isolation and quarantine rooms, and then the city has been focused mostly on trying to provide additional spacing for our existing shelters.

So that's opening up community centers and our large facilities that aren't in use right now at Seattle Center, for example.

Your specific question was what funding source we could use for hotels and whether that's under consideration.

And I believe the county has pursued FEMA pre-approval for that.

We have not yet for that specific item, but I do believe it would be FEMA eligible.

It could also be a use of the commerce grant if for whatever reason we ran into trouble with FEMA.

So that is a strategy that's on the table and that we are considering.

SPEAKER_10

Okay, thank you so much.

We have one other person who's indicated to me that they have a question and that's Council Member Herbold.

So I will go ahead and yield the floor to her.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

I'm just wondering whether or not the hygiene line in the projected spending assumes additional facilities will be stood up, or if that just covers the cost that we've already expended.

SPEAKER_15

I think it's the cost that we've already expended.

And as you know, we've been deploying sanitation facilities, handwashing facilities, and we're now also looking to open, and I actually just don't know the absolute timing of this, open several libraries, the restroom and sanitation facilities there.

So those costs could increase.

Again, in part because of a public health order that has identified that providing those services is a priority that should all be FEMA eligible at the 75%.

And then again, we're getting some clarity on whether the state will cover the last 25 or whether we should be reserving a component of the $130 million relief fund dollars as potentially our local match.

SPEAKER_10

Great, thank you.

Any other questions or comments from my colleagues?

Okay, Council Member Mosqueda, any closing comments on this presentation?

SPEAKER_05

You know, thanks again to the folks at CBO.

I want to acknowledge how fast you are working to try to identify the federal dollars, the state dollars, any local resources that we're able to identify as well.

I think we'll be looking to get more information from you all about the details on dedensification, what the plan is, where the money's coming from, and what the recommendations are to be in harmony with the county effort to make sure there's a better understanding of how we're shifting to this different model, hopefully using the hotel rooms in partnership with Unite Here, hopefully not just for first responders, but also for our homeless population and those who are serving the homeless population.

I'll also just note for our colleagues and for the general public, this is really the first set of federal funding on COVID response and what we do and how we engage I think helps set the tone for our priorities in the recovery and response period here.

Let's not sugar coat that we don't know how long we're going to be in the response period until we get to recovery.

So appreciate you being very transparent with us, the detailed slides that you've articulated.

I do want to make sure that we have a Clear timeline for the public, though, so that they know it's not just within the next few weeks that we have a calendar that we're working on in a transparent way to make sure people know at which points they'll get more information and how they can engage.

I think there's real sense of urgency.

So I appreciate the quickness in which you're working and also there's a strong desire to make sure that the public can still weigh in on how we're spending the dollars and where the greatest need is.

Specifically because we've seen how COVID has exacerbated those inequities, especially for communities of color, low-wage workers, immigrants, women.

that we've already talked about today and in the past few weeks.

So that's why it's extremely important for us to both have these details and ensure that we're sharing it and getting feedback from the public.

I thank you for this first presentation.

I assume it will be one of many to come.

So thanks in advance for your time and thank you, Council President.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda.

And I don't see anyone else with any questions or comments.

And that was the last closing comment.

So I want to also thank the city budget office and the mayor's office and the office of housing for being with us this morning and on this really important presentation.

And of course, really want to thank you all on the work that you continue to do to make sure that we have readily available, accurate information so we can get out to the public and do the hard work that is ahead of us.

So that is it for this presentation.

You all are free to go ahead and hang up.

Really, thank you for being with us again.

We're going to move into our last item of business on this morning's agenda, which is a preview of today's City Council Actions Council and Regional Committee work.

I'll call on Councilmembers as established by the rotated roll call for City Council meetings.

And so this week's roll call rotation will begin with Councilmember Peterson, then we'll hear from Councilmembers Sawant, Straus, Herbold, Juarez, Lewis, Morales, Mosqueva, and then I will conclude the agenda discussion.

So we'll go ahead.

And I will also note that Petal Freeman and Lish Whitson from Council Central staff have joined the meeting and will be able to address questions about Council Bill 119769 and any potential amendments.

Again, I ask that you hold on any comments you might have about Council Bill 119769, which is a land use bill until Councilmember Strauss has given his report so that we can consolidate the conversation around that particular bill.

So again, Petal and Lish are on the line and will be able to provide us with additional information about that bill and any potential amendments that we will consider this afternoon.

So that being said, I am going to call on the first council member for their report, and that is Councilmember Peterson.

SPEAKER_18

Good morning, colleagues.

There is one appointment on today's full City Council agenda related to our Transportation and Utilities Committee.

That's the appointment to fill the financial analyst vacancy on the Seattle City Light Review Panel.

We've got a highly qualified candidate, Scott Haskins.

As you know, the Seattle City Light Review Panel was created by city law conducting oversight of the utilities, planning and rate setting recommendations for us.

There are nine positions, five nominated by the mayor, four by the council.

This one is a council nominee position.

Again, it's to fill a specific financial analyst position.

I look forward to Scott Haskins because he's got a very deep history and resume, which is online.

If you have any questions, please reach out to my office.

Last week, I announced the City Auditor would be doing an audit of the major bridges in Seattle.

Looking forward to seeing what the City Auditor's Office reports in the next few months on the status of bridges, so the physical conditions as well as the maintenance policies.

Today on the Introduction and Referral Calendar, you'll find three pieces of legislation related to the reauthorization of the University District Business Improvement Area, BIA, That was approved for a five-year term in April 2015, so it's expiring next month.

The two resolutions that we're considering today simply kick off the process of reauthorizing the BIA.

The real meat of the legislation is the council bill, which we will have over a month to discuss.

This legislation is deemed routine and necessary because it's expiring and we It's co-sponsored by the chair of our community and economic development committee, Councilmember Morales, and by me, because the U District is in District 4. Again, we're just voting on the resolutions to kick off the process, and we'll be hearing more in Councilmember Morales' committee on May 20th, and then a public hearing on May 27th.

Councilmember Morales, did you want to add anything at this point before I continue?

SPEAKER_03

No, go ahead.

I'll save my short comments for my turn.

SPEAKER_18

Okay.

And the Central Staff Analyst, who is the lead on this legislative package, is available throughout today and also could attend the full City Council meeting if there's, if we deem that there's a need to do that.

I want to thank Seattle Channel, Brian Caledon, for hosting me and Council Member Morales last week.

We talked about a number of hot topics going on with the City Council, and that episode should be available later today online.

In District 4, last week for Earth Day, I went to the Wallingford Transfer Station, which is in District 4, thanking the essential workers there with Seattle Public Utilities who work through the garbage and recycling and compost.

It was really great to see all of them and thank them for their hard work at SPU.

And that's the news from District 4.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

Any questions or comments on that report, colleagues?

Okay, hearing none, we're going to move on to the next council member, who is Council Member Sawant.

The floor is yours.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you, President Gonzalez.

Good morning, everyone.

There are no items on today's City Council agenda from the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee.

The committee meeting regularly scheduled for this Tuesday has been canceled in alignment with the Council's Social Distancing Committee calendar.

As I mentioned last week, we are currently accepting applications for the Green New Deal Oversight Board.

There is an application form on my council office blog, or you can email my office with your resume and a short statement of interest.

Last Wednesday, as you all know, we as a city council participated in the first meeting on the tax Amazon legislation that council member Morales and I have put forward.

And that was in the city council's budget committee chaired by council member Mosqueda.

And the next meeting is upcoming on this Wednesday, April 29th at 10 a.m.

I know Council Member Squiera solicited questions from Council Members, and as a sponsor of the bill, I look forward to looking at those questions and answering them.

And also, I really welcome all Council Members and your staff to reach out to my office directly in case of questions, both on the technical aspects of the bill and also the policy aspects of the bills.

I would be happy to answer those questions, and I look forward to the discussion on Wednesday.

On Saturday, my office organized a virtual town hall to discuss the nationwide rent strike movement and this was our second town hall on this topic and this movement.

nationwide is demanding a suspension of rent, mortgage, and utility payments during the emergency and also a rent freeze for the rest of 2020 after the emergency is lifted.

And I just want to explain, when we say rent, mortgage, and utility payment suspension, we mean canceling those payments, meaning you don't owe those payments after the emergency orders are lifted and it should not cause any damage to your credit rating.

You don't owe any back payments.

And we are making sure that rent and mortgage and utility are tied together because we want to make sure that the small landlords who are also struggling don't become victim to this and that they join our movement to make sure that we cancel all those payments.

The big landlords, the big banks, the big mortgage holders, they are going to be able to weather this crisis, and they need to absorb the cost of this pandemic, not working people, not struggling small businesses, and not small landlords.

At the town halls, both on Saturday and the one that we held on April 16th, we heard from renters who are organizing in their buildings when their corporate landlords or their property management corporations, which are also big corporations, have so far refused to work with the renters even after the renters have, as a group, as a collective, approached the landlords or the property management corporations with very reasonable requests for adjustments in their rent because they actually can't pay.

These are working people who have lost their jobs and they're not able to pay rent.

And in particular, we heard from The tenants who are organizing in what's called the Ben Lamont building that is on Capitol Hill and that is owned by a billionaire couple, but is managed by a big corporation called Cornell and Associates, which in the greater Seattle area owns over 5,500 residential apartments.

They also own many commercial properties, own or manage commercial properties.

And this morning, the Seattle Times, who were apparently listening in on our town hall, published a really excellent article about the struggle and about what tenants are doing.

And just to give you a sense of where the struggle is, 37 out of the 40 tenants in the building have signed on to a collective letter to Cornell and Associates demanding that they address the immediate crisis.

Many of the tenants are line cooks, servers, baristas, tech workers, health care workers.

Many of them are struggling to get by like health care workers, but many have been totally laid off with no prospect of work in any in the near future.

And despite them making reasonable requests, the Cornell and Associates actually responded to them, which is stunning, by telling them that they need to pay their rent and they should ask their parents for money, they should use their savings, or take on credit card debt.

This is absolutely unacceptable and unconscionable, and the tenants have built their own struggle What we did in the town hall through my council office is brought their voice forward.

I have sent a letter to Cornell and associates saying that it's only reasonable that they should accept these demands from the tenants because they are not going to be able to deal with this crisis, whereas a big corporation like Cornell can.

So far, Cornell has not responded to my letter or to the tenants in their demands, but we will keep this struggle up.

And in fact, through the town hall and through community input, Cornell should have received now over 150 letters from community members saying that they should accept what the tenants are asking for and that they should find a reasonable agreement with the tenants.

What happened to the town hall also is that Many other tenants who are living in other buildings managed by Cornell and Associates also spoke through the livestream feed and now they are also going to start organizing.

And I just wanted to also report that Cornell, rather than responding to the tenants and responding to my office, they've shut down their website.

And they gave a very sort of hateful comment to the Seattle Times saying, well, the tenants can't get this for free.

So we will be building that structure.

SPEAKER_10

Great, thank you so much for that report.

Council Member Salant, any questions or comments on that report?

Council Member Herbold, the floor is yours.

You are on mute.

Sorry about that.

SPEAKER_09

So it's my understanding, although Council Member Gonzalez, you of course have legislation that we'll be taking up later this month, but it's my understanding that the mayor's eviction order, eviction moratorium order, is an enforceable order by the city attorney, as all emergency orders are actually enforceable by the city attorney.

And there is actually language within the eviction moratorium I'm wondering as it relates to the particular instance that you the existing emergency order.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you councilmember Herbold for that question.

I absolutely agree.

And we are actually, I mean, this all happened just over the weekend.

So we are going to be reaching out to the city attorney's office.

I totally agree with you.

And in fact, it's quite disturbing that even though there is language, as you just stated, that they are, those orders are actually not being complied with by many of the landlords.

In fact, we heard from the attorney general's office, not me personally, but we heard in the news from the attorney general's office, that they actually received nearly 300 complaints from various tenants across the state that the eviction moratorium and the rent freeze orders were not being complied with.

I'm also routinely hearing from tenants on Capitol Hill and other neighborhoods that they are receiving rent increase notices even though the state order says that there shouldn't be any such thing at least until June 4th and maybe that will be extended.

So I really agree that we should make sure that we do whatever enforcement is possible from the city council's perspective and I hope to have something positive to report from that.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you, Councilmember Sawant and Councilmember Herbold.

You know, of course, I have a couple of bills that could help with this particular area as well, and so we'll be interested in I think we've been able to strike the right balance, and I think the scenario that you're describing I want to make sure that we're hitting that nail on the head as well.

So thanks a lot for highlighting that important set of facts that is happening in real time and is exactly the reason why we needed the executive order, why we need the attorney general's office doing enforcement, why we need our city attorney's office doing enforcement, and why I think the bills that I'm advancing are absolutely complementary to the work that is happening.

I think that is a great idea.

Any other questions or comments?

Hearing none, we will move over to Councilmember Strauss.

The floor is yours.

SPEAKER_17

Good morning.

We have about a half an hour left in the morning.

Good morning to everyone.

I will start with my general updates first and then move into the Council bill.

I believe that is where most people will have comments and construction, which was delayed and is now back on schedule amid this crisis.

I want to compliment Estat for remaining on schedule during this process.

The Fremont Arts Council, we are currently working with Fremont Arts Council to ensure that they are not displaced from their space that they rent from City Light.

As many have probably heard, The Fremont Solstice Parade has been canceled like so many other amazing events this year.

And we wanna make sure that they are able to stay in place this year as that's their one event.

It's their largest event, not only event.

My office does continue to work with small, directly work with small businesses in our district and nonprofits.

As you may have seen, my office circulated a small business letter that we intend to send to our state and federal delegations.

Thank you, Councilmember Morales, for your quick feedback.

I know that as we generate ideas that come from our communities, oftentimes there is already work underway to directly tackle the issues that people are facing.

I continue to coordinate with city departments to address the situation in and around Ballard Commons Park.

Last week, the Ballard Library Branch The bathrooms were opened there, as well as 95 new units of 24-7 enhanced shelter opened up in the city.

That is for the entire city.

So I will be interested to hear more about what we're doing to open more beds.

And again, I call for urgency regarding this matter.

I will now jump into the one land use neighborhoods We are going to move on to the next item on the agenda.

during the COVID-19 emergency.

There are two new amendments to the proposed legislation.

I have asked council members to not to include additional amendments that we have not discussed.

And one of those fits that criteria.

The two amendments, one is from Council Member Morales, which is very similar to the amendment she brought forward last week.

This clarifies the language in important ways and also fixes drafting errors.

There was a lot going on last week, a lot of moving pieces, and I appreciate Council Member Morales' ability to come back and review this amendment in great detail.

This amendment proposes to reinstate authority for administrative approvals of minor decisions in the International Special Review District and removes the ability for the ISRD board to meet virtually for the next 60 days in response to community concerns.

That is the Councilmember Morales' amendment.

It is different than the one proposed last week and clarifies some of the differences that was proposed last week as compared to this week.

Councilmember Lewis is also bringing an amendment that proposes to remove projects participating in the Living Building Challenge from the exemption from full design review.

At this time, I would really prefer to only take up new amendments that have been discussed at prior council meetings.

Last week, I laid out the urgency of adopting this legislation quickly so as not to worsen the housing and economic crisis we are experiencing.

And again, central staff is here on this call to answer any questions about the legislation.

Finally, there are no items from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on the introduction and referral calendar.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

Are there any comments or questions or additional information related to Councilmember Strauss's report?

Okay, are there any questions for Ketel or Lish from Council Central staff as it relates to Council Bill 119769?

I think I got that number right.

11 something, 769.

SPEAKER_17

119769. You got it.

SPEAKER_10

All right.

I haven't memorized at this point.

I've been dreaming about it lately.

So, um, any, any questions for council central staff on what we are going to consider this afternoon?

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_17

It's like council member Mosqueda.

SPEAKER_10

Council member Mosqueda.

Did I see you raise your hand?

Go for it.

SPEAKER_05

Your floor is yours.

Thank you, Council President.

I want to thank Council Member Strauss for his diligent work to help get this over the finish line today, and the Council President's willingness to continue to add it to the agenda.

So, fingers crossed.

Appreciate all your work.

Is this the appropriate time, Council President, to ask central staff questions about the amendments that we heard, or should we hold those for this afternoon?

SPEAKER_10

No, Council Central staff will not be available this afternoon.

Council, they are available and council members now and in the interim, but I will not be suspending the rules to allow either Lish, Ketel, or any other council central staff to answer any questions.

So for colleagues, if you have any questions at all related to any part of the legislation we're going to consider this afternoon that would be most appropriately answered by either Ketel or Lish, now is the time to pose those questions if you want to do so on the record.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you, Council President.

So just very brief question for central staff, and I appreciate the walkthrough of Council Member Morales' amendment.

I intend to fully support that.

Thank you, Council Member Morales, for your work as well to finalize that language and looking forward to to that inclusion in the underlying bill.

Councilmember Lewis, I just do have a few questions for central staff.

I believe that would probably be most appropriate.

I have a number of concerns with the language as I see it.

And just for the council's knowledge and for my understanding, if central staff could walk us through what a living building is, by definition, I think that that would be a helpful reminder for folks.

SPEAKER_20

Sure.

So, Ketel Freeman here.

So, the code contemplates as a pilot program, the living building challenge pilot.

And under that pilot, buildings that have almost zero emissions can qualify for extra floor area and extra height.

As a matter of code, those buildings are required to go through a full design review.

I believe Council Member Lewis's amendment, and you can speak to, I developed two versions for him, and I think the one on the agenda today is the one I'll describe, and Council Member Lewis can affirm whether or not this is the one he may offer.

The version on the agenda today would exclude from the ability to elect administrative design review projects that are in the Living Building Challenge that have gone through early design guidance and applied for a master use permit.

So those are projects that have had board review already and are some ways down the road towards getting their master use permit.

There are about 15 total projects that are in the living building pilot now.

About five are probably in some stage of design review at this point.

It's likely that Council Member Lewis's amendment would affect three of those five projects.

SPEAKER_10

Any follow-up, Council Member Mosqueda?

SPEAKER_05

No, thank you very much, Council President.

SPEAKER_10

Councilmember Lewis, did you want to address your amendatory language before I call on Councilmember Herbold, who I see has raised her hand?

SPEAKER_02

Sure, I was going to maybe reserve mentioning it until my presentation later, but I can just jump in really quickly now.

So as Ketel just shared, of the 15 projects that are under the Living Building Challenge, and to be clear, I'm a very strong supporter of that pilot, and I'm really excited that we have 15 projects that are in that pilot and taking advantage of it.

that we're talking about, we're talking about three of those projects would be impacted by this amendment.

the basis for pursuing the amendment is under the living building project, a considerable density and height bonus is allowed to buildings, which is good.

it's a good incentive for people to participate in the project.

In the case of projects that haven't started their design review yet, and so they would go through the administrative process, I don't think it's as big of a deal because that would be how the entire process would be conducted for those buildings.

But for the buildings that have already started their design review process and had their initial presentations to the board, a lot of great progress made at that initial board hearing is going to get lost between the initial hearing and then the final one for the final board approval.

So for that reason, I think it's reasonable, given that these are particularly bigger buildings than a lot of the other buildings that we face as a city, to go through the master use permit process, and that we have three of these projects that are midstream, so they've had their initial design review board process from an in-person board, and they need to come back for approval from the same folks that heard the initial presentation.

It's reasonable to expect that those projects that are midstream and halfway through that process should be expected to go back and finish it the way that those projects started.

So that's the amendment that I put forward.

I'm happy to answer any questions now during my presentation or at this afternoon's council meeting.

And that's what that amendment deals with.

SPEAKER_10

Councilmember Lewis, I think what I would like to do is request that councilmembers not reserve their comments about anything related to this bill until their report.

something related to this council bill.

I'm asking council members to address those issues, questions, comments, concerns related to anything on this bill now during council member Strauss's report.

So I appreciate your willingness to talk about it now.

Ketel, Ehrlich, anything to add for us to consider as it relates to Councilmember Lewis's amendment, which is listed on our agenda for later on this afternoon.

SPEAKER_20

Nothing from me.

SPEAKER_10

Okay.

Councilmember Strauss, did you want to address this amendment as proposed by Councilmember Lewis?

SPEAKER_17

Yes, I would just say that I think that this is a well-thought-out amendment that is narrowly defined.

I do echo the comments that I made just a few minutes ago that new and emerging issues that have been identified since our meeting last week, I would prefer to keep the bill narrowly tailored to get it across the finish line today rather than bring up and address new issues.

I appreciate Councilmember Lewis bringing the amendment, and I would prefer to keep the bill as limited as possible.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_10

So Councilmember Strauss, I'm not following what you are trying to signal to me, so I'd rather not read or interpret subtext to your comments.

So are you, as the prime sponsor of the bill, have you identified Councilmember Lewis's amendment to version 2 as a new issue and therefore not supporting it?

SPEAKER_17

I will not be voting for the amendment, and I have discussed this with Councilmember Lewis, and I welcomed him bringing the amendment forward despite not voting for it.

SPEAKER_10

Okay, and I guess I'm trying to get a sense from you of whether you as the prime sponsor of this bill believe that this amendment is what you've characterized in your opening remarks to be as a, that it's fairly characterized as a new issue.

SPEAKER_17

That is how I would characterize it as.

I want to compliment Councilmember Lewis on his ability to work with his community and for convincing me of the necessity of bringing this forward.

I don't want to...

I want to commend his good work, however, I will not be supporting the amendment.

SPEAKER_10

Okay.

Any other questions or comments on Councilmember Lewis's amendment?

Councilmember Mosqueda, the floor is yours.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you so much.

And Councilmember Lewis, I think that what the chair or what the sponsor is saying is that he appreciates how much you dig into the details and try to find a path forward.

And I'll commit I want to be explicit with our colleagues here and the public.

I will also not be supporting this amendment.

I think it is really important that we lift up projects like these that we just heard from central staff are exactly the type of projects we want to see go forward.

And the importance of having buildings that are showing that our living building pilot is going to be successful.

include a design that is not just thinking about setbacks or green roofs, but are truly living buildings.

And these are the examples that we want to set forward and show how successful this pilot can be.

I also think, and it's important for us to reiterate this later this afternoon, that we don't We are not going to fold into a false narrative that this takes away the community's ability to engage in this process with the administrative element.

We are going to be also including community feedback, and we're also going to be working with the departments to, as fast as possible, stand up other ways for the community to stay engaged.

give us the opportunity to move forward in this time.

And I don't want us to do anything that could unintentionally cause any of those developers to say, you know, if there's going to be the possibility of delay, then I'm going to abandon the living building element of this and just move forward with a building as normal.

So for me, this is really about making sure that those living buildings move forward and that there's not an unintended consequence of somebody deciding to abandon those elements because we want these living buildings to be successful.

And I just want to make sure, and I'll talk about it later today, that folks know that there will be opportunities for folks to engage through the administrative process and beyond very soon.

But this is not about taking away community voices.

This is about making sure that we're integrating it in ways that have been allowed by law and that we are I think it is important for us to think about how we are encouraging the creation of these living buildings and not unintentionally having folks default into a nonliving building construction.

Thank you for working with the sponsor to try to narrow

SPEAKER_10

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

I want to see if there are any other comments on Council Member Lewis's proposed amendment, and if there are none, then I'm going to move over to Council Member Herbold, who is still in the queue.

Okay, Council Member Herbold, the floor is yours.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

I just want to highlight why I'm not bringing back my amendment that would strike the section of the bill that allows affordable housing projects to be exempt from the streamlined administrative design process that they are already entitled to participate in.

I'm not bringing this amendment forward because of a requirement of our parliamentary procedures that does not allow the non-prevailing party, as it relates to an amendment, to bring back the same amendment.

We thought about whether or not there was a way to make a change to the amendment.

The amendment itself, as it was drafted, included striking the recital as well as striking the action portion.

within the bill itself.

I thought about striking, not including the striking of the recital and just moving forward with the removal of the exemption, but did not feel that that would I'm going to pass sort of the smell test of you, my colleagues on the council, because as I understand it from the city clerk, it is the body, the city council, the body who decides whether or not the amendment is the same question.

And I felt if I was in your shoes and I was considering an amendment that was identical except for the recital section, but still had the same impact, that I would decide that that was not a different question.

So that's the reason why I'm not bringing this amendment forward again.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold for that explanation.

I think it's super important to, again, utilize our council briefings in a way that will promote as much transparency to the work that we're doing on council since we don't have the benefit of having our ordinary committee schedule.

So really appreciate your all's willingness to have these conversations and council briefing.

I know it adds to the length of our council briefings.

But again, I think it's really an important part of how we are doing our work to within the context of this pandemic.

to make sure that we are still fulfilling the obligation to share as much information around our work in a public setting.

I really appreciate it.

Any questions or comments Okay, hearing none, I'm gonna move over to Council Member Morales, who has an amendment and wanna provide her an opportunity to address that amendment briefly.

And then I'll ask Lish and Ketel to add any additional details for the council to consider.

And then we'll have a quick little conversation on that and hopefully be able to wrap up this report.

Council Member Morales, the floor is yours.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you.

So as Councilmember Strauss mentioned this afternoon, I'll be sponsoring an amendment that would allow the administrative approval of certificates of approval in the International Special Review District, but would prohibit virtual meetings of the ISRD board.

and as Councilmember Strauss mentioned, we have been having lots of conversations with folks in the CID and the real crux of the matter for them is this deep desire not to move to virtual meetings when so many people in the community lack access to technology and we can't be sure about we will be able to put the language interpretation services necessary in place, and so that's what we will be proposing this afternoon.

SPEAKER_10

Great.

Thank you, Councilmember Morales.

I want to thank you for your ongoing work and representation of your district in particular, but of course we know that these bills have a citywide impact, not just a district specific impact, and really do appreciate your willingness to continue to work with a primary sponsor around finding a appropriate path forward that is sort of catered enough to address your concerns, which I think are really important.

I think it is a great way to support the city while still allowing for the bill to move forward on a citywide basis.

I really appreciate that.

Councilmember Strauss, do you have any information to add as it relates to Councilmember Morales' amendment before I ask Hedelin Lisch to weigh in?

Great, thank you so much.

Ketel and Lish, anything to add for our consideration?

SPEAKER_02

No, I think the Council Member did a great job summarizing.

SPEAKER_10

Great.

Any questions for Lish, Ketel, or Council Member Morales on this particular amendment?

All right, seeing and hearing none, I am going to go ahead and move us along.

Thank you to Lish and Ketel for being on the line with us this morning.

Really appreciate your work and looking forward to the reconsideration of this council bill this afternoon.

Okay, Council Member Strauss, are you done with your report?

SPEAKER_17

Thank you, Council President.

I am done.

I have completed my report and everything to report out.

Thank you for your time.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

We're going to move over now to Council Member Herbold.

The floor is yours.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you so much.

The Public Safety Human Services Committee is canceled for this week.

This committee has no items on the full council agenda today.

Just an update on upcoming work that I'll be doing.

I am chairing the Watershed Resource Management Area 9 meeting on Thursday, and I will be having my office hours coming this Wednesday from 2 to 6 p.m.

They're going to be virtual office hours, and please connect Alex Clardy to set those up.

And as far as major events last week, We had an incredible town hall on the West Seattle Bridge co-hosted with Councilmember Peterson and Estotte.

We had 3,300 RSVPs, that's 3,300 RSVPs and 1,000 questions submitted.

There were 4,600 views on YouTube broadcasted.

And it was just really an incredible testament to the interest and concern that West Seattle residents have about this transportation crisis that we have before us.

I also, after that meeting, participated in a Highland Park Action Committee briefing with SDOT on the same topic.

And then the following day, the West Seattle Transportation Coalition hosted a lot of interest, a lot of concern, a lot of desire on the part of my constituents to see plans that can be translated into actions to address not just the long-term need to either repair or replace the bridge, but also to address the needs related to traffic management that folks are dealing with right now and the need for the impending need for expanded access to transit options.

I want to just mention a couple things that are coming up on today's agenda.

One thing coming up on today's agenda is that we do have a proclamation to sign today, and this is the recognition of Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

This weekend, my office circulated this proclamation declaring April to be Sexual Assault Awareness at this afternoon's council meeting.

We'll hear from representatives from the Seattle Women's Commission, API Chaya, and the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence, who will receive virtually the signed proclamation, as well as sharing their thoughts.

Many thanks, especially to Ida Belfast.

of the Seattle Women's Commission for leading on this effort.

And just a couple of facts to highlight.

Sexual Assault Awareness Month was first observed by the United States in April 2001 to raise awareness about sexual assault, ways to prevent sexual violence, and to support survivors.

One in four and one in six men will be affected by sexual assault in their lifetime, and among specific communities that figure is much higher.

Over the course of the Stay Home, Stay Healthy emergency order, more people are calling sexual assault hotlines regarding the distress that they are experiencing related to COVID-19.

As chair of the committee that oversees human services and public safety, I'm very grateful for the opportunity to support the important message that even during this public health crisis, In fact, especially during this public health crisis, critical services and programs are still open and available to survivors.

We will be instructed at full council for how to to sign the proclamation, and we'll ask each person to affirm whether or not they would like their signature attached to the proclamation.

For those who affirm, the clerk will digitally affix your signature, and the proclamation will be ready for signatures this afternoon.

Actually, the process that I just described, I believe we do this now in anticipation for full council on Tuesday.

Perhaps the city clerk can confirm that.

SPEAKER_10

Anyone from the city clerk able to answer Council Member Herbold's question?

SPEAKER_09

I can be Ron.

Oh yeah, good.

SPEAKER_07

Hi, yes, if you wouldn't mind, yes, if you would, we could just call the roll and ask for council members who would like to be added to the proclamation.

And then once that is completed, then we can go ahead and fix your signature.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you.

Great, thank you so much.

Council Member Hurdle, anything else to add to your report?

SPEAKER_09

If you'd like me to continue with the report, I can do that.

Yes, absolutely.

Just two more items.

One, I want to highlight some work that my office has been doing with the Seattle Fire Department.

We have been working with them to expand the use of their testing pilot that originally was focused on First responders was later expanded to health care workers, but based on the request of some frontline shelter workers, the fire department has agreed to expand it to that population of worker as well.

Shelters that that serve people experiencing homelessness are seeing increased cases of COVID-19 among staff and residents now.

One of the challenges they have is that the length of time for staff to get results had previously averaged four to five days.

So during that time, employees with suspected COVID-19 could not report to work, leaving shelters short-staffed during this crucial period.

So my office worked with the fire department to help shelter staff access their quick turnaround testing site.

Now employees at two major shelters can get tested at the fire department's own testing site and get their results within a day.

This will help keep everyone safe and healthy and allow the shelters to properly staff their shelters.

And I really want to express the sincere gratitude that I have to Chief Scoggins and his staff for making this additional testing capacity available to this crucial group of frontline workers.

Then the last item that I wanted to share relates specifically to some COVID-19 actions that the Parks Department was taking along Alki.

This past Friday, parks began placing boards on benches in Alki so that they would not be used, as well as closing all picnic tables and shelters.

Several constituents reached out to me.

I inquired with Parks about this and told it was in response to crowds continuing to congregate at Alki the weekend before, despite the mayor's keep it moving guidance.

In fact, the data collected by Parks shows of all the people they encountered at 15 different parks that Sunday, fully one third were at Alki.

No other parks reported usage this high or so much crowding.

So I can certainly understand parks inclination to try to find more strategies to limit this crowding.

But I started hearing from constituents immediately about the boarded up benches.

My constituents were concerned about seniors and people with disabilities or injuries being able to get out and get their exercise if they couldn't stop and rest on a bench along the way.

Parks assured my office that some benches were left open for exactly that purpose.

And we had asked for more detail about how many benches were still available for seniors and mobility impaired individuals and the spacing between benches to accommodate that use.

We are waiting to hear back from Parks about that additional data.

when I was informed that the Parks Department was reconsidering the policy and Friday night they were out removing the boards, blocking the benches.

I really appreciate the Parks Department communicating promptly with my office about their intentions with the policy and I thank my constituents who reached out with their concerns.

Parks indicated that they would continue to monitor usage at Alki this weekend.

I'm definitely going to follow up to see what they learn because although I shared the concerns that my constituents had about the boarding of benches, I really do support the overall efforts of the Parks Department and the keep it moving guidance to ensure that there is not the level of crowding that we've seen at Alki Beach in the past.

And that's all for me today.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you so much, Councilmember Herbold.

Really appreciate that report.

Any questions or comments for Councilmember Herbold?

All right, hearing none, we're going to go ahead and move along through these reports.

Councilmember Juarez, the floor is yours.

SPEAKER_13

Thank you.

There are no items from the Public Asset and Native Communities Committee for this afternoon.

I've canceled our May 5th regularly scheduled meeting.

I would like to, this is actually a good segue into Parks and Rec to follow up with what Council Member Herbold has just shared.

As you know, through SDOT, they announced this week they're opening another six miles of roadways for recreation.

So now we have eight safe streets, and that comes out to about, obviously, six miles.

And those neighborhoods are Greenwood, Othello, Beacon Hill, Rainier Beach, Central District, West Seattle, High Point, and Green Lake.

Why is that important?

Because the more streets we can open, it relieves pressure and crowding that we're seeing in our favorite and most busiest parks.

Going into park usage, I want a big shout out to Superintendent Agare and his staff and working with my staff, Nageen, at all hours letting us know what's going on.

And I'm glad to hear they responded to Council Member Herbold immediately.

Starting on Thursday, April 9th, Seattle Parks and Recreation implemented a Social Distancing Ambassador Program where up to 70 ambassadors to help encourage compliance with social distancing guidelines in 15 of the most popular regional parks and high use areas.

The data taken from the Social Distancing Ambassador Program shows overall compliance since Easter weekend.

While PARCS works to enhance accuracy of data collection and reporting, we understand the information we have is the best, if you will, ballpark for identifying compliance.

We know that the sunny weather and the weekends bring people outside.

I wanted to share this last week, but now I'm actually excited that we can get this to you.

This morning, you will receive additional information follow-up from my office with the data snapshot from April 16th to April 22nd that will cover park overall usage, park overall compliance, and intervention compliance.

I should add, and we'll have more information later, that I believe one of my colleagues mentioned this, I think Council Member Strauss, that indeed five libraries have opened for, we can use the restrooms, and that's Ballard, Beacon Hill, University, Capitol Hill, and the Central Library.

We are going to continue to monitor the programs that are, I have five and four in front of me very briefly, with parks starting with the shelter program.

I'm happy to report that from April 15th to the 21st, we accommodated on an average between 22 and 32 people at the Miller Community Center and between 34 and 45 at the Garfield Community Center.

With the Indoor Shower Program, from April 15th through the 21st, we served about 330 users with a cumulative total of over 1,700 people that have been served since the start of the program.

Emergency Child Care, this is really important.

Two of the three sites for the Emergency Child Care Program that were scheduled to be open this week did open.

Alki and Bitter Lake Community Centers are open.

Ballard, Meadowbrook, and Queen Anne will open on Monday, April 27th, that's today.

And this program serves families of essential workers such as first responders, medical workers, and grocery workers.

So I really do want to say Superintendent Agada and their staff have been phenomenal in working with us and keeping us informed of what's been going on.

The emergency food program, the collaboration with the World Vision and Together Washington continues.

Last Friday, we distributed 100 boxes of food targeting families that received Seattle Park Rec childcare subsidies at a 70 and 90% level.

The next distribution is planned for next Friday, a location to be determined.

And so we're excited that this urgency food program has been moving forward.

It's just been good to hear that we've been able to work with parks, and they've been getting back to us on the data.

And all of you will have this in your inbox by the end of the day.

Let's see, I want to end with, oh, our mobile testing station.

University of Washington and Harborview Medical Center have already started a mobile COVID-19 testing station at the Atlantic Street boat ramp in the Rainier Beach neighborhood.

It started last Friday.

Actually, Wednesday, I'm sorry.

It started last Wednesday on the 22nd, and it was open on Saturday, April 25th.

So the UW reported that 67 people were tested on Wednesday, and all the tests came back negative.

Yay.

Testing is available for those with virus symptoms who don't have a doctor or access to testing, are pregnant, or over 60, or have chronic health conditions.

So again, the testing station is open on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and that's at the Atlantic Street boat ramp for drive-through and walk-up testing.

Let's see.

That's all I have for parks.

And briefly, I attended the Sound Transit board meeting last Thursday.

That provided a possible COVID-19 impact on capital projects.

and they frame possible agency responses while using lessons learned from the last two recessions.

Some of you remember the 2002 dot-com bubble and, of course, the 2008 Great Recession.

What we know now is ridership on Sound Transit is down by 86% and Sound Transit did receive some money out of the CARES Act.

I think the CARES Act was around $520 million.

Sound Transit received $156 million of that.

Right now, construction on voter-approved projects is moving forward without disruption.

Now, that may change, but that's where we're at right now.

In regards to Seattle Center, the armory is closed, but the Seattle Center campus is still open for pedestrians to walk through.

There are two shelters staffed by the Salvation Army and Seattle Center.

That's Fisher Pavilion and the Exhibition Hall.

So, oh, Friday, great day Friday.

I participated in the Native Action Network.

It's a mentorship program for young Native American women in leadership positions in their community and outside of their community.

I helped create this program with Senator Claudia Kaufman about 15 years ago and with Iris Friday.

We continue to work with the Seattle Indian Health Board and the Urban Indian Health Institute.

Hopefully we're going to get an update from them on COVID and people of color, particularly the Native American population in those communities that we serve here in King County and the city of Seattle.

And last but not least, up in District 5, last week, the mayor announced the opening of a 24-7 enhanced shelter in the Bitter Lake neighborhood.

And we've been working on this for well over, I think, second week in March, I think, actually first week in March.

So it is now called the Lakefront Community House.

It's located at 600 North 130th Street in North Seattle.

The shelter building is owned and operated by Lehigh.

It has 28 units and can support up to 50 people.

There are shared restrooms and showers on each floor.

There's common areas, a kitchen, a cafeteria, a laundry, and outdoor space.

And so with that, my report is complete.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you so much, Council Member Juarez, for that report.

Any questions or comments on Council Member Juarez's report?

Okay, hearing none, we'll go ahead and move on to Council Member Lewis.

The floor is yours.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you so much, Madam President.

So jumping into it, there's no items on this afternoon's calendar from the Select Committee on Homelessness Strategies and Investments.

My office has circulated a couple letters, and I will touch on them very briefly.

First, my office is circulating the letter that has been sent on from the Martin Luther King County Labor Council that was composed by the Labor Council along with County Executive Dow Constantine calling on Amazon to reinstate the workers that have been fired.

for advocating for better public health conditions in Amazon facilities, further calling on Amazon to improve warehouse safety and improve warehouse compatibility with the public health guidelines that authorities have promulgated.

I'm allowing workers to act collectively and organize without this ongoing retaliation that workers have been experiencing nationally.

From Amazon, a number of folks on the council have already signed on to this letter, including myself.

I have circulated that letter.

would encourage members of the Council to sign on to it and perhaps send a version from us on our letterhead to folks.

And if there's changes people want to see, to please be in touch with my office and hopefully we can circulate an updated letter by this afternoon or on a timeline that the Council President deems appropriate.

The second letter being distributed is a letter supporting the organizing of the fellows in residence at the University of Washington Medical School who are currently in collective bargaining.

and also on the front lines of this public health response.

Similarly, Catherine Sims from my staff has circulated the most recent letter.

I definitely encourage feedback from council colleagues to look toward perhaps sending a and sending that letter this afternoon based on feedback and edits and recommendations that other folks may have.

Finally, third letter, working closely with some of the arts and nonprofit folks in my district, this is a very specific ask for a federal delegation, and I have shared this letter with the Office of Intergovernmental Relations as well for their feedback.

But this is a very simple ask.

It's to raise the unemployment insurance reimbursement rate.

A lot of these nonprofits pay a significant amount into their unemployment insurance and have to pay out of unemployment insurance at a higher rate due to the nature and structure of how they are insured.

the request is to have the feds increase the reimbursement from currently where it stands at 50 percent under the last cares act to 100 percent just given the unprecedented nature of COVID-19 and that these are unique layoffs in that they're these non-profits are putting people on unemployment not because of you know, the anticipated fluctuations in the business cycle or giving or what have you, but because a COVID pandemic uniquely obliterates their ability to do anything within the model of how those organizations are organized, particularly around live performances.

that letter would be addressed to our federal delegation, and like I said, I've shared it with OIR to get feedback from them, distributed it to council colleagues, and any feedback folks have on that would appreciate receiving it.

Moving on to some of the other matters that are on this afternoon, the group of appointments for the auditing I am excited about the number of people that have been put forward who will be serving on this group to come up with some impactful ways to the city, if folks have time to read their backgrounds.

I can speak more to that this afternoon than now, but it's all posted, and it's an impressive group of folks with a lot of expertise, history in the community, and it's hopefully going to produce some really good ideas and recommendations heading into the fall.

With that, I don't have any additional comments.

Oh, wait, no, sorry, one more shout out.

I just want to give one shout out to a great organization in my district.

I had the great privilege of watching a performance of Romeo and Juliet by Seattle Shakespeare Company on Saturday night, all on Zoom.

It's just a really great example of how some groups in the city are really adapting in a really powerful way.

It by far puts our Zoom meetings to shame to watch a full Shakespeare play on Zoom as the medium, and I was really impressed by it.

I understand they will probably be doing future performances, just would encourage members of the public and council colleagues to make sure they're tuning in and supporting Seattle Shakespeare Company and encourage other groups to provide similar adaptations to their way of providing services and performances to make sure that the damage to a sector that's been hit especially hard can be somehow mitigated.

So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you councilmember Lewis for that report.

I just want to let folks know that there's a chance that before we conclude today I'll circle back to some of these letters and proclamations to sort of go through a roll call process and just to get those squared away during council briefings.

So I'm waiting to get some clarification from the clerk via email before I venture down that path.

But let's go ahead and continue for now through reports.

Any questions or comments on Council Member Lewis's report?

Okay, hearing none, we're gonna go ahead and move through the list.

Next up is Council Member Morales.

The floor is yours.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you, Council colleagues.

As Councilmember Peterson mentioned, we have the legislation regarding the BIA coming up this afternoon.

Councilmember Peterson is sponsoring these bills as the BIA is in his district.

And I just want to let colleagues know that if you have a BIA coming up for reauthorization in your district, My plan is to invite you to sponsor the legislation and to invite you to present it in the community economic development committee.

So you will be able to sort of lead that conversation through committee and full council, even if you can't vote on it in committee.

I think that is a way for us to be able to manage with our new council rules and still allow members to lead the conversation about BIAs in their own district.

We have the amendment this afternoon, as we mentioned already.

Last week was pretty busy for our office.

On Tuesday, we participated in a tenant town hall.

We heard from renters.

We heard from grocery workers who are organizing for better workplace safety.

And as we all know, lots of folks just advocating for as much assistance and relief as they can get.

We also convened an economic recovery work group of community businesses, community lenders, equitable development advocates to talk about what a just recovery should look like.

On Thursday, we participated with Africatown in a discussion about predatory buying.

We all know that community members, particularly people of color, elders, our seniors are getting approached to buy, to sell their properties, and we want to make sure that we're not sort of greasing the wheels for disaster gentrification.

and then on saturday I did visit the drive-through test site of rainier beach that councilmember juarez mentioned.

when I was there there were already about 30 cars waiting so I'm happy that that is an option for folks and we really are trying to target that location in particular to folks who are undocumented, who are experiencing other challenges where they might not be able to participate.

So we really want to support communities of color in getting access, especially if they don't have health coverage and don't have another way to access services.

Tomorrow we'll be having a press conference with elected officials from across the state on the mortgage and eviction moratorium.

I've mentioned a couple of times that we're organizing with elected officials from across the country, and we'll be eager to make sure that we are rolling that call up to our congressional delegation to get some relief, not just for renters, but also for our small business property owners, and our mortgage holders in the city.

I think that is all I have for today.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you, Council Member Morales, for that report.

Any questions or comments on that report?

Seeing and hearing none, we're going to go ahead and move along to Council Member Mosqueda.

The floor is yours.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you, Council President.

Good afternoon, colleagues.

I want to first thank Council Member Lewis for the letters that he's put forward, specifically the letter that is in support of the Amazon workers.

On Friday last week, I had the chance to join an international sick out webinar where we heard from individuals like Council are like Congresswoman Jayapal, Amy Goodman, a reporter from Democracy Now!

, workers in Germany and France and from across the United States who are concerned about the conditions that they are facing in Amazon warehouses, and also tech workers who are interested in making sure that the company does its job in stepping up and recognizing its contribution to climate injustice.

And those workers who had spoken up right here in Seattle were fired.

I want to make sure that we don't miss the opportunity to talk about the importance of their contribution.

They had been fired for speaking up about the concerns that they had for Amazon's contribution to global warming, and I think in direct retribution for that, were fired.

So Maren and Emily, who many of you have met before, they hosted this international conversation, and I think it was a great example of workers of the world uniting, and we want to make sure that their cause is not forgotten, even though they don't currently have their current jobs, and they really highlighted the role that workers have in uniting causes, both climate justice and worker justice.

I'm happy to sign on.

I know we will call that roll later.

We are sending them directly to full council.

The timing is really important.

The community advisory board is about to go into a deliberative decision-making process about 2021 recommendations.

They would like to have as many of their board members as possible available to vote and fully participate in the meeting.

Thank you for considering support for items 10 and 11. I also want to call your attention to two bills on the introduction and referral calendar today.

The first is item number seven, which is the ordinance relating to funding for housing and community development programs.

Each year, the housing and urban development board requires us to adopt a plan detailing how the city will spend for federal grants.

Those include the community development block grants, housing opportunities for people with emergency solutions grants, ESG, and the home investment partnerships program, the home fund.

The annual action plan is a two-step process.

The city first would walk us through a draft of the plan with public hearing and submit that plan to HUD.

We have our first public hearing, we had our first public hearing on December 12th.

2019 and submitted the draft plan shortly thereafter.

After the entitlements under the plan are determined by Congress, we will need to have a second public hearing before we send the plan back to HUD.

The second public hearing for the annual action plan will be next Monday, May 5th at 2 p.m.

I am then looking for a vote, if we can, to possibly be brought to full council on May 11th.

In most years, there are few, if any, changes between the draft plan and the final plan.

However, due to the COVID-19 crisis, the mayor has shifted some of the CBDG funds to spend on small business stabilization.

So I expect there to be a robust conversation around this plan this year.

We will have a staff memo from central staff on this drafted very soon.

Thanks to Amy Gore for her work on this.

And please feel free to reach out to my office or Amy Gore on central staff, or Sajil Parikh on my team with any questions that you have.

The second item on the introduction and referral council that I want to draw your attention to is item number five, and this we had a preview of this morning from the CBO office.

This relates to the city's response to the 2020 COVID crisis.

I want to again reiterate that the CBO's emergency supplemental bill accepting and appropriating federal relief funding related to COVID-19 response is urgent, and also we do want there to be robust engagement from community and council colleagues.

We had the presentation walk through this morning and we hope that there will be the opportunity to have a vote on this next Monday, May 5th at full council.

Again, please feel free to contact my office or central staff, Tracy Raskliff or Amy Gore on central staff if there's any follow-up questions.

We do have a handful As you heard, and we will be sending those back to CEO and we will be happy to share those with the full council as well.

So, you know, the details that we're asking for, but this is really important that we get those dollars in hand and get them distributed very quickly.

As you heard.

The schedule may 5th finance and housing committee has been canceled.

and the full committee of the Select Committee on the Budget is scheduled for this Wednesday at 10 a.m.

on April 29th.

We will continue our conversations about the revenue proposal sponsored by Councilmember Sawant and Councilmember Morales.

If there's questions about the bills, please send them to my office and to Central Staff's Director, Kirsten Aristad, as soon as possible, as folks may have seen from our email last week, those questions were due at noon on Friday.

I did not see any questions sent in, but if you did send them directly to Central Staff, that's totally fine.

We just want to make sure that there's a robust list of questions that the Central Staff are able to address in advance.

We will also be joined by several stakeholders from a community this week after we have public testimony.

As you all saw, there's a lot of people who wanna testify.

We're gonna get through as many as possible, but we wanna make sure that we get into a detailed conversation about the two remaining bills.

So please be prepared for us to focus on the tax and inter-fund loan bills on this week's Select Committee on the Budget presentation.

As council colleagues know, we will then have a week to hear back from you, any questions, possible amendments, other strategies that you'd like to discuss in our committee.

And then we will be having our third meeting on May 3rd, where we will continue our conversation and possibly have a vote on any of the legislation or possible amendments and continue to engage in progress and momentum as we discuss the need for revenue and hands at the local level.

Before moving on to- I am going to pass it over to you.

making public comment available and for your work with those teams to make it possible.

I think that the last two times that we've had public comment, it went relatively smoothly.

We did get feedback that the timer I was using was echoing, so we will make some accommodations to make sure that doesn't happen.

But thanks to everybody for engaging in public comment.

You can sign up for public comment again this week at seattle.gov.

backslash council, backslash committees, backslash public comment, public hyphen comment.

And if you're not able to provide public comment, you can always email us at councilatseattle.gov.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

That serves as a good reminder for me to remind folks that public comment preregistration for this afternoon's full council at two o'clock is now open, and it has been open since 12 o'clock noon today.

So once again, if you want to register to give public comment, you have to pre-register and you can go online and do that now.

And of course you can always email us at council at Seattle.gov.

Any questions or comments?

Council Member Morales.

SPEAKER_03

Sorry, I just want to clarify, Council Member Mosqueda, you said that the final meeting was May 3rd.

May 13th.

May 13th.

Okay.

I just want to make sure we're on the same page.

Okay.

Yes.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_10

Okay.

Any other questions or comments on that report?

Okay, hearing none, I will go ahead and try to quickly get through my report here.

So there is no scheduled meetings for the Governance and Education Committee for the rest of the month.

We will see what May brings us in terms of being able to have additional committee hearings or not.

I really quickly just wanted to make sure folks were aware that the governor's proclamation around open public meetings and engaging only in business that is COVID related or routine and necessary has been extended to May 4th.

So we will continue to hold off on having other types of business come before the council until at least May 4th.

I am currently working with the law department and the clerk's office on identifying what occurs if the proclamation related to the Open Public Meeting Act is not extended beyond May 4th, but the governor's stay home, stay healthy order is extended beyond May 4th and sort of what happens in that period of time when we don't have an extension of a proclamation.

I'm not saying that I know that it's not going to be renewed, but I want us to be prepared in terms of our operations in the event that that does occur.

As I mentioned last week, the governor's proclamation around providing cities like the city of Seattle some relief from Open Public Meetings Act in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, that is a bipartisan approved decision and requires all the majority and minority leaders of the state legislature to agree to an extension of that proclamation to the proclamation itself.

We will continue to engage with the governor's office to identify what we can anticipate happening.

on May 4th.

Hopefully we'll know more before then, because that is exactly seven days from today.

So there you have it.

Next, I want to, I have one item on this afternoon's introduction referral calendar, that's Council Bill 119784, relating to renter assistance legislation that I introduced and have previously discussed.

This legislation is accompanied by Council Bill 119783, related to creating a defense to evictions that occur within six months after the termination of the eviction moratorium issued by the mayor.

So we are reintroducing Council Bill 119784 in light of Governor Inslee's recent executive order on this topic.

So we made some, I think, minor modifications to that bill.

And so my hope is that we'll be able to call those two bills to a vote Council next next Monday during our council meeting which is May 5th.

I am also have another item on this afternoon's agenda, item number nine, that is appointment 1583, which is the appointment of our very own Councilmember Lewis as chair of the workgroup for the performance auditing group.

I suspect that this appointment is going to sail right through, but I just wanted to make sure that folks were aware that I have asked lead that work group and really have appreciated his engagement with me in my office in January about the interest in this body of work and appreciate his willingness to, again, lead that body of work to its conclusion.

So looking forward.

to that.

Next, I wanted to, that's it on the formal agenda.

I wanted to provide folks a heads up that I will be walking on a resolution this afternoon to ratify the mayor's most recent executive order related to capping delivery service fees that are being sort of passed on to many of our local restaurants.

As we know, many of our beloved Main Street restaurants are just reeling from this economic crisis, and exorbitant delivery service charges are further threatening their ability to weather this pandemic-induced economic storm.

Restaurant owners across Seattle have adapted their business models to delivery- or take-out-only service, resulting in the unemployment of thousands of service industry workers.

and even thinner margins for these important small businesses.

With tight margins, every dollar paid to an app-based delivery service is quite literally a dollar taken away from our local restaurants, economy, and our workforce.

We know some of these corporations are imposing inflated fees.

In some cases, those fees can be as high as 42% and these businesses are directly profiting from this crisis on the backs of our main street businesses.

We cannot allow that to happen and this executive order will provide much needed relief and establish a system that is more fair and equitable to our restaurants who do not have the tools or positional power to negotiate these contracts with these behemoth corporations like Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Caviar.

So this afternoon, I'll be walking on a resolution to ratify the emergency order issued by Mayor Durkan on Friday capping restaurant delivery and pickup fees.

It was circulated on Friday afternoon by Ali Panucci in accordance with council rules for consideration this afternoon, and it's been reviewed and found to not infringe on any residence of liberties, and that the mayor does indeed have the authority to issue this order as currently drafted.

So I have also received some correspondence from our friends in the labor and worker advocates arena about wanting to see if there's an opportunity to also protect workers, many, many folks who rely on these delivery service apps to be able to make their livelihood, are nervous and anxious that this cap will impact them.

One of the critical parts of the executive order that was really important to me was to make sure that the executive order included language that it would be prohibited and unlawful for any of these commissions or caps to impact the the earnings of delivery workers.

And so the bulk of that language is, I believe, on page four of the executive order, which provides that it shall be unlawful for a third-party app-based food delivery platform to reduce the compensation rates paid to the delivery service driver or garnish gratuities as a result of this order going into effect during the duration of this order.

As a council member who has been here since 2015, who's literally worked on some type of a labor standard or led on some type of a labor standard every year that I've been in office, it is obviously extremely important to me to make sure that anything related to this executive order isn't going to have the unintended consequence of negatively impacting folks who are currently doing these delivery services and and that's a really important principle to me.

So I will continue to work with those advocates and our labor allies in that space to see if there is an opportunity, a related opportunity for us to either have an emergency type of legislation that is related to any impacts to this segment of the worker population as it relates to the COVID-19 crisis, and or look at some additional language for this executive order for us to consider this afternoon that would make sure that we're not allowing these companies to, for example, cut off parts of the city to delivery drivers in order to maximize their own profits.

So again, the principle for me is to make sure that we are I'm going to continue to support folks who are working in this gig economy context, and my hope is that we'll be able to identify either some additional language between now and 2 p.m.

to include in the executive order that would be appropriate to do so under executive authority, and if it's not appropriate to do so under executive authority, certainly having a conversation with you all and others about how we can have a standalone body of work that would meet the needs of this particular segment of workers in our city who are also seeing huge impacts from the COVID-19 crisis.

would be something that I am committed to and interested in doing.

So that is what I would like to say about the executive order for this afternoon.

I want to thank Mayor Durkan for her willingness to engage with me on this issue.

took great interest in this particular issue after having a conversation with the owner of a coffee shop in West Seattle that I go to.

It's a rather new coffee shop, Lula, and is owned by two badass women who have been working really hard to bring this community-centered coffee shop into the junction.

And when she told me that they get charged 30% of the price of a cup of coffee to be delivered, that was atrocious to me.

And then shortly after that conversation, I saw that the mayor of San Francisco issued her executive order around this.

and we quickly engaged the mayor about two, two and a half weeks ago around the possibility of also doing the same here and have really appreciated her partnership and her willingness to use her executive authority in this manner.

And I also want to thank Councilmember Herbold, who has been a partner on this effort as well, who has, I believe, some some additional words to add to this resolution that we'll be considering this afternoon and the executive order as a whole.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you so much.

I want to just first start off with thanks to the West Seattle Chamber of Commerce, who very much liked the experience that you had, Councilmember Gonzales, Council President Gonzales, with the owners of Lulu.

Very quickly, upon hearing about the action in San Francisco, reached out to me. and asking why not Seattle as well?

We should move forward with a cap on these commissions that are really, these commission charges that are really just taking advantage of the state of emergency that we're all in and our reliance on these food delivery apps.

So thank you to the West Seattle Chamber.

Thank you as well Council President Gonzalez for your fast action on this.

But by the time I had reached out to you, you had already talked to the mayor about that.

So my message to the mayor was just reinforcing the interest, and I really thank you for getting the wheels moving.

And I also want to thank you for your commitment here to address some of the labor standards issues associated with these apps, specifically the request from workers to look at a hazard pay surcharge for deliveries or a parallel commission cap on the share of delivery fees and service charges that an app can take from the worker providing the service.

I think one or both of those avenues are very worthy of discussion and appreciate your commitment to do so here.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_10

And I couldn't agree more.

I think those are reasonable paths to pursue.

And for just sort of transparency's sake in terms of how we're structuring the executive order, I wanted this executive order to be clean and narrowly focused on the third party fees being charged directly to restaurants, while also thinking that there would be an opportunity to address the labor standards issues as you have articulated.

on a different path.

And I believe and I hope we can do so fairly quickly, as I think all of us have that sense of urgency around making sure that we are providing the appropriate protections, not just for restauranteurs, but also for the people who are the connectors, which are the gig economy workers who are relying on business from these delivery apps to be able to continue to survive.

I am certainly interested in working on that.

I also want to give a quick little shout out to Jeannie Chun from the Seattle Restaurants United.

This is an organization that is sort of organically formed over the last few weeks.

It's an organization made up of independently owned local restaurants and bars here in the city of Seattle.

They have over 200 people who have signed up, 200 entities who have signed up to be Part of the coalition, everyone from Bacabac to Paroshki on 3rd, Harry's Fine Foods, Harry's Beach House, Good Bar, Matt's in the Market, the Corson Building, Hood Famous Bake Shop, the Cafe M Bar as well, Bakers, the Corson Building, Rachel's Ginger Beer.

Gracia, MescalerĂ­a Oaxaca, Taylor Shellfish, Cupcake Real, Fobac Soup Shop, and more are all just some examples of the folks who are part of that coalition who have sent us an email as of this morning at 5.40 a.m.

saying that they are appreciative of this executive order, are excited to see quick action, and want to send us a thank you and a letter of support.

They've also indicated that they recognize the impacts to third-party delivery drivers, particularly as it relates to accessing restrooms as they're doing deliveries.

and have publicly made a commitment to allow third party delivery drivers to access their restrooms in their establishments to ensure public health and safety.

So they are eager to get to work with us and the coalition members to figure out how to meet that particular need, which was surfaced up in some of our conversations.

with folks like working Washington.

So again, I think there's a lot of work that can be done on that labor standards piece.

I'm committed to do that work.

And I think it's not a, I hope folks don't see this as an either or option, but as sort of a holistic approach that we can take here with this executive order going through first and the second one if it's an executive order or standalone emergency legislation coming very quickly next.

So that is all I have on my report.

Happy to answer any questions or hear any comments.

All right, well, thank you all.

I do want to circle back, as promised, to the open question about whether we need to do roll call on proclamations and or letters.

My understanding is that the letter was just circulated at about 12, 15 p.m., so I don't want to jam folks around the letter, so we'll save the Amazon retaliation letter sign-on to full counsel.

We'll handle that in the other business section.

We do, however, according to the clerk, have to do a roll call on Councilmember Herbold's proposed proclamation now, since it will be presented at full council later this afternoon.

So I will, with that being said, ask the clerk to please call the roll on the Sexual Assault Awareness Month proclamation as described by Councilmember Herbold.

SPEAKER_06

Councilmember Peterson.

SPEAKER_17

Aye.

SPEAKER_06

Councilmember Sawant?

Aye.

Councilmember Strauss?

Aye.

Councilmember Herbold?

SPEAKER_11

Aye.

SPEAKER_06

Councilmember Juarez?

Aye.

Councilmember Lewis?

SPEAKER_11

Aye.

SPEAKER_06

Councilmember Morales?

Aye.

Councilmember Mosqueda?

Aye.

Council President Gonzalez?

SPEAKER_04

Aye.

SPEAKER_06

9 in favor, none opposed.

SPEAKER_10

Thank you so much.

So Council Member Herbold, that is your vote count and the signatures may be affixed accordingly to the proclamation for presentation at this afternoon's full council.

Colleagues, that is the last item of business on our very full and packed council briefing agenda.

I once again want to thank you for your patience and your flexibility and your willingness to slug it through during council briefing.

I know that these are long.

And we will endeavor in the future to try to figure out how to trim down a little bit.

But it's becoming a little harder to do that, given the varying pressing needs that all of us have as a council.

So again, thank you so much for your work.

And I look forward to seeing you all at 2 o'clock.

We are adjourned.

Thank you.