Seattle City Council Briefing 612020

meeting will now come to order.

The time is 9.37 a.m.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Morales?

Here.

Council Member McPherson?

We're having a hard time hearing you.

Council Member Peterson?

Here.

Council Member Sawant?

Jodi, we just cannot hear you.

Councilmember Sawant.

Here.

Jody.

Councilmember Sawant.

Here.

Jody, we are having a high level of inability to be able to hear you.

Can everybody else hear Jody?

You guys can hear Jody.

Okay.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Juarez.

Council Member Juarez.

Here.

Here.

Council Member Herbold.

Here.

Council Member Lewis.

Here.

Council President Gonzalez.

Here.

Nine present.

Thank you so much.

Council members, before we go ahead and start this morning's meeting, we need to address the issues related to suspension of the rules.

So the council rules are silent on allowing electronic participation at council briefing meetings.

To continue participating remotely, I'm going to move to suspend the council rules through June 17th, 2020, to allow this meeting to occur while participating through electronic means.

Is there any objection?

Okay, hearing no objection, the council rules are suspended and council briefing meetings will continue to be held with council members participating electronically through June 17th, 2020. If there is no objection, the minutes of May 26th, 2020 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

Colleagues, just really quickly before we begin today's substantive conversation of issues, I wanted to make sure that folks knew at the top of today's agenda that the original proclamation 20-28 related to the Open Public Meetings Act and portions of the Public Records Act as well, has been extended, but it has been extended only through June 17th of 2020. I want to express my gratitude to the governor's office and his team and to the Association of Washington Cities and others for chiming in on that conversation.

and consistent with the advocacy that we have been championing out of my office related to some flexibility on Proclamation 20-28, we were able to receive a new proclamation that was not only extended but revised to allow for a higher level of flexibility in allowing local agencies who are subject to the OPMA to consider additional matters that are not just so strictly within the construct of the COVID-19 response.

So we, through that Proclamation 20-28.4, are able now to consider that the city council would normally consider, but we are still required to do that by providing a remote tool like the ones we are using now.

So I just wanted to sort of read some of the language from that proclamation to make sure folks understood the parameters of that.

And the proclamation read, quote, we intend this order to be the superseding order on this topic.

We intended to allow the government's greater flexibility in the content.

of their OPM meetings by removing that limitation.

The deeper we get into this emergency, the harder it is for governments to tackle the business they need to address.

So at this juncture, we will continue through the middle of June to do remote meetings.

And I am really grateful that 20-28 was revised in a way that allows us to do our business as normal with the understanding that we're still required to provide the public with a means to view our public meetings.

And I'm really grateful that now this proclamation takes into account that this technological tool is sufficient for us to continue to move forward.

I'm happy to answer any questions about that particular piece if folks have any questions or want to make any comments.

Any questions or comments on that?

Okay.

Oh, Council Member Peterson, please.

I just wanted to say thank you for that advocacy effort with Olympia.

I really appreciate that.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

I wanted to also thank Councilmember Mosqueda, who was helping me through her role with the Association of Washington Cities, and to the folks over at OIR for continuing to represent our interests there.

Of course, we only have this proclamation in place for another two weeks, but I am confident that we'll continue to be able to figure out how our operations should roll out in the context of COVID-19 and the pandemic.

So I'm going to go ahead and move us through our meeting, colleagues.

I want to start off at the top of the agenda by just acknowledging that today we start this meeting with a rather heavy, heavy heart and heavy minds.

We know that that across the country and certainly here in Seattle, we saw a weekend of demonstrations and protests across the nation that were spurned by the latest loss of black life and that is the life of George Floyd.

Many of you I'm sure have seen the video in which Mr. Floyd uses his last breath to call for his mother.

It is a difficult moment for many of us, whether you're a mother or not.

And I know that many people in our city and across the country are feeling the loss as though it was their own.

And that has resulted in a lot of anger and a lot of frustration that is not new to our communities and particularly to communities of color.

The reality is, is that what we've seen out on the streets in Seattle are a product of that frustration.

It is a product of years of oppression, of being left out of economic systems, of being subjected to violence in our own communities, and having fear of the very thing that is supposed to be there to protect you.

And so when we have this conversation that I know we're gonna have here, On Zoom, as leaders of our city, I call on us to be respectful and compassionate of each other, to understand that what our community wants right now is unity.

And unity doesn't mean that we deny frustration.

It doesn't mean that we ignore the realities of the pain and the grief.

it does mean that we call upon each other as leaders and as members of our community to stand together to help our community grieve and to help chart forward a path of healing and understanding.

And that is not an easy task for anybody to do.

And I sit here thinking of the fact that My own personal life has been impacted by police violence.

I have lost family members to police violence.

I've been faced with the reality of having a younger brother who's called the police only to have a gun pulled out on him when he was calling for help.

And I'm grateful every day that he is still alive today in spite of that situation.

So this is personal to many of us.

And many of us are survivors of this system of oppression.

And what I saw this weekend was a manifestation of that frustration and that anger.

And it's up to us to figure out how we can express our frustration in a way that will have systemic change.

And there's a lot of different ways that that can look and a lot of different shapes that that can take.

And I just hope that we can encourage each other to hold each other in community, to not subject each other to additional acts of violence and trauma.

and to hold those who do engage in violence, especially if they have a badge, accountable for that violence.

And I believe we have a system in place in large part because of the leadership of many members in the community in place right now in the city of Seattle through our police accountability system that we passed in 2017 that was community driven.

And I have confidence in that system to be able to have an investigation and to dole out justice as appropriate in the context of Seattle.

And this massive experience that we're all going through here in our own city is going to be a stress test for that system, and I acknowledge that.

And it'll be up to us and, in particular, our Public Safety Chair, Councilmember Herbold, to lead us through what will be an extraordinary test of our system of accountability that is civilian-led.

I am grateful for all of the people who have worked tirelessly over the years and have been part of many civil rights movements to get us to where we're at now.

And I hope that we can all continue to work together to hold those in power accountable, and that includes us.

I want to end my remarks before I hand it over to the Public Safety Chair, Council Member Herbold, by acknowledging the pain and the grief that so many in our community are feeling.

And to say that we stand with those who continue to be subjected to police violence and to the loss of their children.

and their mothers and their sisters and their brothers as a result of something that is absolutely preventable.

And our challenge is to figure out every day how to prevent it from happening again.

And I am ready for that challenge.

And I'm ready to work with each of you and each member of our community to figure out how we rise to the occasion and to see how that looks.

So I want to thank you all for for the work that I know you all are going to commit to do for your tenacious advocacy in this space and most of all for your friendship and your collaboration.

As I know we're all struggling with this not just here in Seattle but across the nation.

So with that I'm going to hand it over to Council Member Herbold who is going to lead us through this conversation.

We do have to do reports of the work that is before us and that we have done.

But in reality, it almost feels hollow to go through our regular agenda this morning.

So I do want to acknowledge that for those of you who want to give reports of your committee work, you're absolutely allowed to do that.

But I do think it's important for us to acknowledge that we are in a unique space this morning, and for those who feel that they need to dispense with their committee reports, you're welcome to do so.

Council Member Herbold, I look to you now for your leadership and your guidance through this conversation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez.

Thank you for setting the context and setting the tone for the council's efforts and engagement moving forward.

You have done so with words of love and compassion and healing, with also recognizing that there's a lot of rage in our community right now, not just here in Seattle, but all throughout the country.

There are protests this weekend in over 70 cities across the nation.

In moving forward with more context around love and compassion and healing and rage, I was really proud to attend Not This Time's event at Westlake on Saturday at 3 p.m.

I thank Andre Taylor for his leadership and for his putting forward and leading and lifting the voices of impacted family members who have lost folks.

I appreciate the fact that clergy came out to participate.

And again, lifting the words of rage and sorrow does not does not mean that we cannot move forward with nonviolence.

I've been really inspired by Not This Time's use of love in the face of loss of life to successfully move policymakers in this space and in this state towards reform so black and brown people do not suffer from traumatizing experiences with law enforcement and ensuring that those officers that callously take precious life are held accountable.

Embracing nonviolence does not have to constrain our rights from expressing rage, sorrow, and heartbreak for the failures of this nation that black and brown people built.

Failures to deliver justice in law enforcement, deliver economic equality, and deliver educational equity.

This was the tone that was set at the event that I attended at 3 p.m.

at Westlake.

And again, I appreciate that the commitment to efforts that embrace nonviolence was really, again, embraced and integral to the coming together at Westlake.

just a block away.

It was a very, very, very different scene.

And I was traveling kind of back and forth from listening to speakers to trying to see what was happening on 6th and Pine throughout the afternoon.

And While I, when I was at the location, I was willing to believe that every time I heard a flash bomb or saw a release of tear gas, that maybe I just wasn't close enough to hear what was happening or see what was happening.

But in my conversations with people after the event, people confirmed for me that their experiences was that they were not receiving advance notice or receiving orders to disperse, which are required under city law.

I just wanna take a moment and read the requirements of the city in our legislation.

And this is legislation around crowd dispersal that resulted from the engagement recommendations of the Community Police Commission.

The section starts, upon determining that there are acts or conduct within a group of four or more persons that create a substantial risk of causing injury to any person or substantial harm to property, the incident commander may order that the crowd be dispersed.

Before ordering that the crowd be dispersed, the incident commander shall consider whether less restrictive means of crowd management are available.

Such means may include strategies, such as area denial and or seeking voluntary compliance.

Upon determining that dispersal is appropriate, the incident commander shall ensure that there is an avenue of egress sufficient to allow the crowd to depart.

The incident commander or designee will issue the order to disperse prior to instructing officers to disperse the crowd.

Upon determining that the crowd presents an intimate risk to public safety or that large-scale property destruction appears likely, the incident commander, as feasible, must consider placing officers at the rear of the crowd to verify that the order to disperse will actually be heard by all.

And they issue the following order.

I am, rank and name, of the Seattle Police Department.

I am now issuing a public safety order to disperse, and I command all of those assembled to immediately disperse, which means you must leave the area.

If you do not do so, you may be arrested or subject to other police action.

Other police action could include the use of chemical agents or less lethal munitions, which may infect significant plane or result in serious injury.

If you remain in the area, just describe regardless of your purpose, you will be in violation of city and state law.

So again, these are commands that are required to be issued before each and every order to disperse, or before each and every action to disperse a crowd.

This section goes on to say that a reasonable amount of time must be given for the crowd to disperse, and that amount of time must be stated.

And the order to disperse must be repeated before each action on the part.

of the department.

So we have a system of civilian-led police accountability, and we know that the OPA has already received countless numbers of complaints, and social media has generated a lot of video evidence.

And I want to also thank Councilmember Mosqueda for compiling a number of those videos and sending to the police chief this weekend, which I also forwarded on to Director Meyerberg.

opportunity that we are providing for the council to come together on Wednesday.

Our hope is to not only hear from the police chief and the fire chief and the executive on issues related to to injuries, the loss of weapons, in the instance that assault weapons were taken from a police car on at least two different occasions, hearing about the damage to to property downtown, but also to really have a conversation with members of the public and hear from them about their experiences.

So we've talked about assembling a panel.

before the meeting begins.

There will, of course, as always, as there always is, there will also be public comment at the beginning of the meeting that we will be having on Wednesday.

The time has not yet been identified.

We also want to include the Office of Police Accountability, the Office of the Inspector General, and the Community Police Commission.

And the Community Police Commission has a a meeting that morning, and we want to make sure that they're able to be present.

As mentioned, the Office of Police Accountability Director, Andrew Meyerberg, has acknowledged the work that they are going to be doing moving forward.

He has confirmed that incidents that Councilmember Mosqueda sent on, as well as scores of others, are under active investigation.

He has contacted us to say that the OPA is in the process of identifying the involved officers and are reviewing the significant amount of video that was recorded both before, during, and after the incidents.

Director Meyerberg says that he will be in a position to provide more information over the next few days and welcomes the opportunity to brief us.

He mentions that no determinations have been made by the OPA regarding the propriety of any of the use of force and findings will not be issued until after a full investigation has been conducted, which will include forensic video review and witnesses, complaint and officer review interviews.

I want to underscore the fact that the OPA, in doing its investigations, does consult with community members who have witnessed these events, and I think that's going to be a really significant part of the OPA's investigation is the time and effort necessary to interview the many, many, many people who have witnessed these events of the weekend.

Again, I think the last thing I want to close out with is just I want to again thank Council President I want to thank the mayor for her leadership in this area.

I want to mention as well that, I'm sorry, I'm losing track here.

I want to publicly mention that for folks who are listening who have complaints regarding officer misconduct, again, the city has a three-pronged at Seattle.gov.

And you could go and go to their website to read more about that process at http://www.seattle.gov/.opa/.complaints.

In addition, there's a phone number that you can use, 206-864-8797.

We understand that call volume is very high right now, and that's, of course, to be expected.

And I also just want to, again, I don't think I need to go through all of what I have seen over the weekend on social media.

But suffice it to say that there is a lot of video evidence out there that confirms that our city has work to do as it relates to properly handling I think it is a great opportunity for us to be able to engage in those types of interactions with members of the community, particularly at times like this.

And I really am looking forward to doing that work and to as I am and Council President Gonzalez is in rolling up our sleeves to hear from community and make sure that we're lifting their voices in making us a better city.

And so I think before moving on to other committee reports.

It might be good Council President Gonzalez to hear whether or not folks on the council have comments or questions.

Yeah, I think we should allow for an opportunity for questions, discussion.

comments and remarks here before we move along.

So I knew there was going to be a lot of interest by my colleagues on this space, which is why I asked Council Member Herbold before the meeting to agree to go first so that we can have enough time to address this issue.

So colleagues, now is the time to indicate to me that you are interested.

I saw Council Member Solan's hand go up.

I saw Councilmember Lewis also raise his hand.

And then we will hear from Councilmember Strauss.

Councilmember Solano.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments, Council Members.

George Floyd said, I can't breathe again and again, while his last breath of life was snatched away by the Minneapolis Police Department.

This is murder.

It is murder at the hands of the police and the racist state.

And it is commonplace in capitalist America, where we've just seen the racist killings of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, among others.

On Saturday, I was honored and proud to speak at the justice for George Floyd protest which was held in downtown Seattle and organized by not this time and community leaders as part of the nationwide movement against police violence and racist killings of black and brown people and of.

poor people and our homeless neighbors.

At that protest, I personally witnessed the unacceptable escalation of violence from the Seattle Police Department.

And we have had hundreds, if not thousands of accounts from ordinary people, community members of unacceptable conduct from the Seattle Police Department.

It is tragically ironic that we live in a society where a protest against police brutality and violence was met with police brutality and violence.

Seattle police officers indiscriminately used tear gas, mace, flashbang grenades, and other types of excessive use of force on the peaceful protests.

To give examples of what I mean by indiscriminate, one of those is hundreds of people reporting being enveloped in clouds of tear gas, repeated flashbang grenades, which I witnessed myself, Many of us have seen the video of a seven-year-old girl maced by police officers, and there are countless other examples.

Many protesters report that police officers had their badge identification covered up with black tape.

And whether or not police officers are legally required to identify themselves, it is clearly an attempt to prevent accountability when people who are, and when police who are violently suppressing protests are actively hiding their identity.

Astoundingly, there are also videos of an SPD officer kneeling on someone's neck during an arrest on Saturday.

It is unspeakable.

Instead of answering the demands of the community nationwide, the establishment in every city keeps escalating.

There are calls for the National Guard, declarations of curfew, and Durkin, Mayor Durkin, and other political establishment politicians who claim to be saddened by the murder of George Floyd have enabled the systematic racism and violence from the Seattle Police Department.

There hasn't been any accountability, actually.

As community members, they don't agree that there has been any accountability.

Where is the outrage from politicians over the killing of Charlene Elias?

Jay Taylor, Shawn Leifer, the 24-year-old just a few weeks ago, who was killed by the police, shot in the head while holding his baby in his arms.

And none of these killings at the hands of the police have been prosecuted or punished.

The outrage on the streets represents the deep community anger about police violence on top of the profound and longstanding suffering caused by the political establishment's failure to meet the basic needs of working people before and during the crisis.

The mayor said, I want to acknowledge, this is a quote, I want to acknowledge that much of the violence and destruction both here in Seattle and across the country has been instigated and perpetuated by white men.

These individuals experienced the height of privilege and are co-opting peaceful demonstrations that were organized by and meant to center people of color, particularly Black Americans." I'm sorry, this is an absolutely shameful application of responsibility for a stunningly violent police force. There were families with children, there are many families with children, with elderly community members there. As activist and community leader Nikita Oliver said, The good versus bad protester trope is a false dichotomy. It is intended to distract us from the real issue, violent police and police brutality. It is mass victim blaming and gaslighting," unquote.

Where was the curfew and militarized police presence, as Nikita says, when armed right-wingers were protesting to open the state against the virus?

I'm confused, as she says, on how y'all are interpreting the First Amendment and for whom.

Seattle doesn't need a curfew, pepper spray, doesn't need mace, tear gas, or flash bang grenades.

We need an end to racist police violence.

We need economic and housing security, including immediate COVID relief, housing, and jobs through the Amazon tax.

We need an end to inhumane homeless sweeps.

We need the cancellation of rents, mortgages, and utility payments for those who have lost income, who are predominantly working class and poor communities of color.

We need an elected Community Oversight Board with full powers over the police, including hiring and firing.

I'm glad that the City Council meeting is being organized for Wednesday, but I do not believe that real accountability will come without ordinary people building a mass fighting movement.

That is why we have launched a community petition as a first step, demanding that Mayor Durkin and the Seattle City Council immediately launch an independent community-led investigation into Seattle Police Department misconduct at the Justice for George Flight protests and discipline or fire all officers who engaged in excessive use of force, brutality against protesters, and other misconduct.

Nearly 2600 people have signed this petition and it was launched only at around 8.30 last night.

There is tremendous anger among community members and a demand that this is actually addressed finally.

And I will say in closing, that it is not enough to have words and rhetoric.

This city council has voted on a police contract that the community said, please vote no on this police contract.

It takes away accountability.

Unfortunately, I was the only no vote on it.

And unfortunately, sections of the labor leadership also were gung-ho about that contract.

I am so proud that over 40 rank-and-file union leaders and rank-and-file and union leaders stood with me supporting that no vote and stood with the black community because we understand an injury to one is an injury to all.

I will mention an honorable thing that has been done by members of the labor movement has been led by a member of Socialist Alternative Adam Birch in Minneapolis.

He's a bus driver and he's a member of ATU Local 1005 And he declared that he will not bus protesters to jail.

His fellow members in the union have joined him.

ATU International issued a statement following that.

Minneapolis nurses, Minneapolis teachers have also announced their support for protesters and declared that an injury to one is an injury to all.

That is the kind of community organizing we need led by members of the labor movement, members of the community.

And last but not least, we absolutely cannot accept the lifting of the consent decree for excessive police force because that consent decree is there for good reason.

I know Mayor Durkin and the political establishment are attempting to release the police force from that consent decree in one breath and then say that they are actually going to do something about accountability.

I don't think the two things are consistent.

We need to have the consent decree and we need an independent community led investigation into what happened on Saturday alongside discipline and firing of officers who were involved.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Council Member Hurdle, did you want an opportunity to respond to any of Council Member Sawant's comments, or would you like for everybody to comment before that?

I'm taking notes.

I can, if I could, just do some wrap-up comments at the end.

Great, we'll do so.

Okay, next up was Council Member Lewis, then we'll hear from Council Member Strauss, and then Council Member Mosqueda.

And Madam President, there's a very loud noise outside my window.

If I could maybe let Councilmember Strauss go first and then I'll go after him.

Great, yeah.

Councilmember Strauss, are you ready to go now?

Yes, thank you.

All right, there you go.

Laura Georgeson, I'll head back to Councilmember Lewis and then Councilmember Mosqueda.

Yeah, thank you, Council President.

What I saw this weekend was pain.

I saw the accumulation of over 400 years of injustice and violence perpetuated against African Americans coming to a head.

I saw the appropriation of their pain by white people, mostly men, to cause destruction.

I am a white man.

I fully acknowledge that I will never truly understand the pain of my black and brown neighbors, and this doesn't mean that I don't understand.

What I can do is listen and use my power and privilege to disrupt the cycle of oppression in housing, in education, in the criminal justice system, and in healthcare.

To my fellow white folks, we must believe people when they tell us about their experiences with racism, and we must confront racism, subtle or overt.

Otherwise, we are complicit in perpetuating these racist systems and actions.

I don't want to take up any more space here and now.

To my black and brown neighbors, please know I see you, I hear you, and I will fight with you.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

Next up, we'll head back over to Councilmember Lewis, please.

Thank you so much, Madam President.

And, you know, I want to thank all my colleagues who have spoken so far on their really important words this morning after a weekend that had so much power in it.

You know, and I strongly join, I think I can speak for everyone on this council, in condemning the callous and horrific killing of George Floyd by an officer of the Minneapolis Police Department, which is why it was so greatly inspiring to see hundreds of demonstrators assemble under the leadership of Not This Time at Westlake Park in the heart of District 7 on Saturday.

And I want to thank the brave journalists nationally and locally who in some cases a great peril to themselves, have covered these demonstrations for the entire world to see.

Our community is benefiting from the massive and righteous airing of the extreme inequality and the extreme systemic racism that underpins our criminal legal system in the United States.

And it's important because we can't let the actions of a few people who engaged in looting distract from the core message of those millions of people who took to America's streets to demonstrate.

Of course, we all flatly condemn looting, but today that can't be the narrative, and that can't be what we're talking about.

What we have to be talking about is that racial bias in policing is real, that it's ongoing, and that it frequently results in the tragic loss of life in this country.

And we can't abandon, like the president has, our role in this historic moment as leaders with a unique opportunity to demand change as a city council.

Because we as a city council have immense power to continue to reform American policing.

And the recommendations of our own oversight agencies that we recorded in February in letters attached to resolution 31930 provide the framework for paths towards more accountable policing that we can work towards as a council.

And a couple of those highlights, broad subpoena power for the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of the Inspector General, a preponderance standard for findings of misconduct, an extension of the 180-day timeline for investigations of misconduct, prohibiting de novo review by arbitrators of the police chief's disciplinary actions.

These measures and many others demand the full attention of this council, and I look forward to working on these issues with all of my colleagues, as does Underpinning all this, the need for the support, the protection, and the expansion of the hard fought accountability agencies that Madam President, you worked so extensively on in your career on this council, the Office of Police Accountability, and the Inspector General during difficult budget discussions that we're going to have this year.

And Council Member Herbold, I look forward to the committee meeting this Wednesday.

I will certainly come prepared with my questions.

And we cannot forget that at the core this weekend, what we witnessed was history.

And as leaders, we bear responsibility to rise to this challenge and take on the hard work of reform.

I look forward to digging into that work with all of you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis, for those remarks.

We're going to go ahead and move over to Council Member Mosqueda, and then we will hear from Council Member Morales.

Council Member Mosqueda, please.

Did you have any coffee?

You asked me to make coffee.

Council Member Herbold, can you mute, please?

Now we can hear Council Member Mosqueda.

Please.

Thank you, Council President.

I want to talk about a few of the videos that Council Member Herbold mentioned that I shared with the Director Meyerberg and the Chief.

These are videos and reports that many of you have already seen.

Council Member Sawant mentioned them and Council Member Herbold and Council President Gonzalez referenced them as well.

A nine-year-old pepper sprayed in the face and screaming in terror, holding for her dad while milk was poured over her face, a thumb amputated by a flashbang device, and the medical crew among the demonstrators had to tend to this person.

Multiple reports that audible warnings were not given to a diverse crowd, including children, elderly, and people with disabilities.

Tear gas fired just a block away, a hundred yards away was reported online from the main rally, pushing people into the main rally instead of separating those who may be using diverse protesting tactics.

gas canistered, fired into the crowd, hitting people, hitting bodies, hitting faces, instead of going up into the air.

We heard stories from people at the protests that there were parents running down the street holding their toddlers under their arm.

And I saw TV reporters echoing the same sentiment, people running away because they didn't have enough time to get out of harm's way from the police and their dispersal tactics.

Tear gas, noise devices, using bikes.

I saw a couple who appeared to be shocked and covered in red mace or spray from the pepper spray in their face, reaching for each other because they couldn't see each other.

They were on the sidewalk.

They had been pushed to that sidewalk by the same police using those bikes.

I've been in those situations.

You all have been in the situations.

We expect to hear a notice for dispersal and those who are using diverse protesting tactics because all tactics are sometimes needed to call attention to issues if it is an effort to draw attention and use a sit-in strategy or to block a street, diverse taxes are often used.

But in that situation where people were standing on the street, not causing harm, not assaulting officers, not harming property, in those videos that we saw, there was no dispersal warning.

People were actively harmed by the strategies used.

I'm not talking about Minneapolis, or New York, or Los Angeles, or Austin, or all of the cities that we saw a extreme use of force.

I'm talking about right here in our city, right here in our own backyard, right here in the same streets where we've been proud of our efforts to try to reform strategies and use de-escalation tactics.

None of those tactics appear to be used.

And it was a united strategy, apparently, across each of the cities because it is inherent and embedded in systems that need reform, more than the reforms that we've imposed in the past.

The very thing that everybody was protesting, excessive police force, was met by a militarized response.

A militarized response.

Yes, it was stoked by the president, and yes, it was stoked by others, but it was carried out right in our city.

And as the president of Minneapolis City Council said, as many of you know her, Lisa Bender, a leader within local progress, she said online, two years ago, the city created an office of violence prevention, which leads many of the efforts to reimagine public safety through the lens of public health.

And she went on to say, it is clear to me that our attempts to Incrementally reform our policing have failed.

We need deep structural change.

It is not only possible, it is imperative, and we have laid the groundwork for it.

I think Seattle is in the same place.

We have laid the groundwork, but much more structural change is needed.

So I'm very anxious to get to the accountability elements of this.

As you heard, I emailed the police chief and have been in conversations, thanks to Council Member Herbold, with Andrew Meyerberg.

the director to make sure that the videos, the only, the few videos that I've actually been able to compile, and I know that there's other people looking at hours and hours of videos.

But as we, as we know that there will be a process, we cannot wait.

We cannot lose sight of the reason behind the thousands in the street in this country, the outrage, the fear, the grief at the senseless and violent killings of unarmed black Americans every day.

Yes, here in Seattle as well.

And the militarized response only fuels more unrest and more distrust, and it endangers our unarmed community members who are justified in being in the streets.

Abundant and excessive force only brings greater anger and further silences the voice of those who are already upset that their voice continues to be silenced and ignored.

Protests take many forms.

They take many forms, and we in Seattle have showed what it means to have civil disobedience of very different kinds.

So yes, let's not get into the rhetoric of the good protester and the bad protester.

As one Minneapolis organizer, main organizer, who's been trying to work within the system to change and reform the system said, You know, they spent many hours sitting down with the governor and the mayor and their city councils.

And he said, I don't condone destruction, but I understand it.

So colleagues, I hope we're all saying we understand why that destruction happened and we understand why people are upset.

After centuries of oppression, slavery, senseless killings, it is no wonder that there is anger and there is outrage.

here and across the country.

But being mad, as Chief Best said, seeing vitriol towards the police, seeing people be angry is not illegal.

It is not illegal to be angry.

It is not illegal to be upset with the police.

And it does not warrant the type of response that we saw that escalated by the police actions in the streets.

And to have those individuals, hundreds, thousands of people who emailed me and then also were reported on in the Seattle Times and other outlets over the weekends, say that their experience was not actually what the experience was.

People are reporting in the Seattle Times, they felt gaslighted.

They felt gaslighted that their experience of being in the street was not actually reflected in the way in which the leadership in the city was responding to the concerns out there.

People had children with them, their parents with them, their families with them, and that is the type of response that they faced.

So I want to express how important it is that we follow through on these accountability conversations.

I thank the council president and the chair for having the meeting on Wednesday.

I also want to make sure that we don't forget to underscore the bravery and the solidarity and the camaraderie that we saw amongst the protesters in Seattle.

you know, no matter what your tactics were, we saw people coming out and showing solidarity across the city for folks who saw the response across the nation.

We know that it is imperative to interrupt business as usual to get attention.

And we cannot allow ourselves to fall into respectability politics when this demands action and attention.

I want to thank everybody who stood in the streets, who demanded justice, who shared their stories online if they were not able to go out this weekend, and who are interested in making sure that we act to this call to action so that there's not another name in another two weeks, in another city, or even in another two hours.

And I stand in solidarity with the comments that have been made already by this council, and more importantly, the community leaders who led the actions over the weekend.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Next up, we will hear from Council Member Morales.

And if there are any others who are interested in speaking, please do let me know.

Council Member Morales.

You are on mute, Council Member.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez and Council Member Herbold for all the work you've been doing over the weekend.

We know that the last couple of weeks have really brought into relief the depths of the structural racism in our society.

We were already talking about that in the context of COVID and the disproportionate impacts that that is having on black and brown community members.

And then to see the callous demeanor of a police officer as he kneels on a man's neck and listens to him plead for his life for eight minutes and kills him.

Or the confidence of a white woman weaponizing her tears to set up an innocent black man.

Or even the events that we've seen unfold in our own city.

These blatant expressions of racism operate within all systems of our society and the way it's structured.

And it has unleashed a fury of our Black neighbors across this country and here in Seattle.

And it's a fury that we should all share.

I was down there this weekend at Westlake, as many of you were, and I've been hearing all weekend from constituents, clergy who went to bear witness, people who went to serve as allies, And what everybody reports is that they were engaged in peaceful demonstration and things were fine until the SWAT team arrived, until the bike patrol arrived.

And the feeling of the folks who were down there is that there was an expectation that was just waiting on the part of the police department to be provoked.

And there just didn't seem to be a preparation for deescalating anything.

Instead, there was the kind of reaction that we saw this weekend.

I was also down in the CID yesterday and I want to say that I was happy to see community members coming out to help repair windows, to clean graffiti off of the walls.

And I feel for those small businesses.

And I'm happy to see that people are willing to help do those repairs.

And I'm extremely thankful that nobody was injured there.

But what I don't want to hear is for our constituents to be told to be civil, not to be reactionary, to be told that looting doesn't solve anything, And it does make me wonder and ask the question why looting bothers people so much more than knowing that across the country, black men and women are dying every day and far too often at the hands of those who are sworn to protect and serve.

Yesterday's headline in the New York Times was facing protests over use of force, police respond with more force.

It didn't just happen here or in Minneapolis.

It happened in every city across the country.

So it's true that we need transformative change at the national level, but that's not entirely in our control.

What is in our control is how we act here in Seattle as local elected officials.

And here's how we lean into our anti-racist values as the mayor suggested yesterday.

We withdraw the motion to terminate the consent decree.

We restore the police accountability measures that community fought so hard for.

We reallocate our budget to improve community conditions that can close the opportunity gap and repair the harm done to our black and brown communities.

We invest in economic development and prosperity for our black and brown communities in a credible and thoughtful way.

We dismantle generational land ownership through community ownership.

We fully fund the Office of Civil Rights and the RSGI program.

We can't keep tokenizing this program.

The work of those city employees is critical to the way the city operates and the policies and principles embedded in the Race and Social Justice Initiative need to actually show up in the critical decisions that we make about the police force.

No one should be surprised by this uprising.

We all know the brutal history of oppression in this country.

We have an entire lexicon of protest songs that go back generations.

Just in my lifetime, I listed some that came to mind immediately this morning.

A change is gonna come.

Get up, stand up.

Taking it to the streets.

Know your rights.

Fight the power.

Talking about a revolution.

People have the power.

This is not new in this country, but it is time to do something about it.

My constituents are tired.

My staff is tired.

And as an ally, I will continue to check in with the communities that I represent, the communities most impacted by this, and will leverage my position in office to call for real change and real accountability because our Black neighbors have carried the burden of this emotional trauma for too long.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Morales for those remarks.

And I want to thank everybody who has spoken thus far for your remarks.

Do you want to offer another opportunity to any of my colleagues?

Council Member Peterson, please.

Thank you, colleagues.

I couldn't have said it better than all of you who have spoken before me.

And I just want to let you know I stand in partnership with my council colleagues on this.

I pledge to be a genuine ally and to help ensure we center the voices of those harmed by police officers acting inappropriately and to ensure accountability with our oversight and our policymaking powers as a city council.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Colleagues, any other comments before we allow Councilmember Herbold to have the last word?

I know we all process grief and trauma differently, and so I want to be respectful of those folks who haven't spoken up yet.

I think we've got to understand that we're all processing this in a different way.

Councilmember Silva?

Councilmember Silva's hand go up again.

We will go ahead and hear from Councilmember Silva.

If there are no other comments we will go ahead and hear from Councilmember Silva.

political officials are serious about actually getting accountability, then we have to look at the facts as well.

And one of the facts is the stunning press conference and comments by Mayor Durkin and Chief Best.

It is extremely unfortunate, the comments that they have made.

And I've already shared one of the comments about The whole bad protester versus good protester that Mayor Durkin is this is this is the line that her administration is putting forward.

But there's another aspect to it as well.

In our message about George Floyd's killing, Seattle Police Chief Best said, quote, because of the Seattle Police Department's high level of training, our commitment to de-escalation, and our track record of limiting the use of force, I have confidence that something like this would not occur in our city, unquote.

I am stunned by this.

Is Chief Best being serious?

This is the police department with a long and notorious track record of systematic violence against communities of color, poor people, homeless neighbors, and people facing mental illness.

This is the same police department that has been under a U.S.

Justice Department consent decree since 2012. Chief Best says that something like George Floyd would not occur in our city.

Well, anybody with a modicum of honesty will know and admit that it has happened and continues to happen in our city.

And not one single SPD officer has been prosecuted because the political establishment and the city's bureaucracy are hand in glove with the Seattle Police Officers Guild, which has been a big component of obstruction to police accountability.

The other point is that George Floyd's murder is a chilling preview of the state's response nationwide during a deepening economic crisis that has already resulted in nearly 40 million people becoming unemployed.

And it is not a coincidence that this brutal suppression of protests was presided over and has been presided over by the same administrations in city after city that are going to be carrying out or are already carrying out austerity rather than agreeing to raise progressive revenues to fund social programs.

Throughout history, the greater the inequality in our society, the more resources used to militarize the police to enforce that inequality.

That is why in Seattle, We absolutely need to fight for an avenue that is an alternative to austerity that is already being declared by Mayor Durkan.

And we need to immediately act on passing progressive revenues to invest in housing, jobs, and immediate relief for workers.

But most immediately, of course, we need a community-led and independent investigation of what happened on Saturday to make sure that there is real accountability.

Thank you.

≫ Thank you.

≫ Thank you, Councilmember Sawant.

We're going to wrap up our conversation here by hearing lastly from Councilmember Herbold.

I do, before you make your that I appreciate you tracking on our behalf as our public safety chair here.

But I am hearing the potential that the mayor is considering renewing her executive order around the curfew.

Of course, we know that that expired at 5 a.m.

this morning.

I just want to flag my ongoing concern about the efficacy of a curfew renewal.

So I want to make sure that we as a council are communicating back to the mayor a collective position on that, particularly since an emergency order that is going to be ongoing related to a curfew or any other issues could be taken up by the city council.

So again, I think the focus here should be on making sure that the police department is is responding to the needs of protesters who want to demonstrate in the streets as opposed to issuing additional emergency orders at this point.

I think that I have seen over the last 48 hours that it doesn't appear to be as effective as I think she had hoped.

And so I just wanna sort of put that on I don't know for sure if that extension will occur or not, but to the extent that there is thinking around that, I think it's important for us to communicate early with the executive on our collective perspective on that issue.

Councilmember Herbold?

Thank you.

One of the items that I did want to touch upon before closing out does relate to not a curfew moving forward, but the way the curfew was put into place on Saturday.

But I do, as it relates to potential curfews moving forward, I do want to highlight that from from the executives position the utility of the curfew as as Described by by the mayor is to allow them to focus on people The focus there, the police department's activities on people who stay behind when a curfew has been called.

But when you call a curfew and you have a city full of people who are committed to peaceful, direct action and civil disobedience, I don't think that the utility of the curfew It creates the results of, again, having this sort of good protester, bad protester separation, because lots of good, well-meaning people who are driven to be in the streets because of their compassion and their love and their desire for change uh...

stay behind even when the curfew was called and so if that is uh...

some sort of uh...

uh...

you know i'm sorry for for lack of a better word uh...

campus to attempt to separate uh...

out uh...

good protesters from back protesters i don't think it's going to have same utility that said i mean i do understand having you know and down there uh...

on on Saturday, and I do understand why the curfew was called.

I do also believe that many of the circumstances that led to the calling of the curfew could have been differently executed by the police department.

There could have been more de-escalation.

The thing I want to mention about the curfew, I got the call at 457 I believe from the mayor's office that there was going to be a curfew at five o'clock And I spent the the next half hour 45 minutes walking up to every single person that would receive me, you know, after trying to make eye contact through my mask to other people wearing masks, went up to every single black person that I could reach to notify folks that this curfew had been announced.

And two, person, every single person, um, received that information, uh, in, in a way that was appreciated.

Um, and every single person, uh, expressed a wish that that information had been conveyed with more advanced information.

If the, uh, the tactics of the, uh, the police department in our city are intended to, um, to, change behavior, manage crowds, they have to be delivered in a way that people can actually respond to them.

Much like I shared at the beginning of my remarks, the city's law and the police department's policy for the crowd dispersal efforts that are required, verbal commands in advance of taking actions like to be made.

If the city wants people to take an action such as responding to a curfew, advance notice really needs to be made.

And the other issue that I heard from a lot of people about, and I know all councilmembers is the fact that there was no coordination with Sound Transit.

And so many people who were responding favorably to the order, the curfew order, and seeking to leave downtown and go home had no way of doing so because Sound Transit operations had ceased downtown.

I also want to flag another issue that I've heard a lot from folks about, and that is the observation, the morning band observation of police officers who have a strip of black tape on their badges, in the center of their badges that covers the badge number.

And the response from the police department from Chief Best was a recognition that morning bans are are permitted under police policy.

I also was reminded this weekend by former council member Peter Steinbrook that the council has passed a law that requires that officers not cover their names.

And this law itself does not opine over the covering of badge numbers on the police badges itself, but it requires that names not be obscured.

I think there is a way and that we should explore a way because I think the public is right to expect To not just see officers names, but also to be able to record their badge numbers I think we need to to to work to to amend the city law that relates only to people's names, to also require that badge numbers not be obscured while allowing the tradition that the police department has here in the city and all across the nation of allowing for morning bands.

I don't think there needs to be a conflict, and I think the public is right to expect to be able to record badge numbers, particularly in light of the fact that use of cell phones is such an effective way of collecting evidence about police activity.

I think that really highlights all the more the fact that being able to positively identify an officer is really important when we have so many people in our communities who take their responsibility as civilian bystanders.

and they take that responsibility and the risk associated with bearing witness to these interactions.

So I just wanted to flag those two additional, what I see is really policy issues around how curfews are delivered and what our expectations are for police identification.

And then finally, I just wanna respond to the request for a community-led investigation.

As we all know, the council, unanimously voted on a three-legged accountability system that is civilian-led.

The OPA director is a civilian.

The Office of the inspector general is led by a civilian and of course we have the community police commission which is a civilian led organization.

I do agree though that we do need a way to put members of the public at the center of the work that we expect our accountability system to do.

And as I mentioned before, creating a process by which we are ensuring that the OPA is talking to as many individual members of the public who have first-hand witness accounts of the activities.

I think figuring out a way to bolster that role would be appropriate at this time, particularly considering that, again, there are so many people who have these first-hand experiences And I'm looking forward to talking more with members of the public about how we can lift the voices of the public with these experiences.

And while respecting the fact that we have an accountability system and an investigation process that is led by civilians, but really committing to centering the voices of impacted communities in those investigations.

And with that, I just want to wrap up my committee report kind of returning to our normally scheduled emergency.

Just want to note that we learned last week that there will be a proposal or that there has been a proposal from the Seattle Fire Department to the Seattle Parks Department to use Alki Playfield and Walt Hunley Playfield as emergency helipads.

to transport emergency care patients to Harborview.

In the event of an emergency during the West Seattle Bridge closure, the fire department will be conducting practice runs in early June from those two locations.

Again, that's Alki Playfield and Walt Hundley Playfield.

Just want to make note of the Human Services Department's work in the COVID-19 crisis.

As we all know, the Human Services Department has pivoted to working on food access, understanding that many households have lost access to their usual food programs, and many more might require assistance as their workplaces have shut down.

Many, many congregate meal sites have changed their model and now food delivered to homes to ensure that community members have access to nutritious food.

Those congregate meal sites in the month of May prepared almost 46,000 meals.

That's an increase in 12,000 meals over the typical number of meals provided.

I've had opportunity to volunteer both at the South Park Senior Center and the West Seattle Food Bank, one of the congregate meal sites with which HSD partners.

And I just, as I did last week, I just want to, again, express my appreciation for the Human Services Department staff who have participated in the Talent Redeployment Hub, and that I've had the pleasure and the honor of working side by side with making bags of food for these centers to deliver to people in need.

Also want to appreciate the work that HSD did over the weekend to provide shelter for people experiencing homelessness.

As I think most of us know, the Seattle Hall shelter, after the area was damaged, They worked to find a new location for people who showed up there.

21 individuals were referred to the Seattle Center's Fisher Pavilion.

No one was turned away.

Salvation Army provided transportation to individuals who came to City Hall to alternative shelter operations.

And then lastly, I just want to mention we've received some information that the city will be announcing two new on-demand outside testing sites in Soto and North Seattle, North Seattle at the old vehicle emissions test sites.

This will increase daily testing capacity by about an additional 1,600 people a day.

I understand that they are looking for sites in my district in West Seattle as well.

And given the difficulties of transportation due to the bridge closure, that would be welcome news for folks who are residents here in West Seattle.

Public Health just released a new data dashboard that tracks key indicators related to COVID and King County's progress towards meeting goals around COVID activity, testing capacity, and health system readiness.

There are some of the metrics that state and local officials will use to determine the steps that the county can take.

And I appreciate their transparency and reliance on data and science to guide our plan.

You can find the dashboard at kingcounty.gov forward slash COVID and then use the menu on the left to click on data dashboards and key indicators.

That's all I have for today.

Thank you.

Thank you Councilmember Herbold and for I want to make sure that also it was pretty explicit that even though this conversation is going to happen in Councilmember Herbold's Public Safety and Human Services Committee that there will be an in accordance with the council rules, there'll be an invitation to all council members to attend the hearing so that folks have an opportunity to participate in that conversation.

I wasn't sure if we explicitly said that, but wanted to make sure that we did so that folks understand that you all are welcome to attend that meeting at the invitation of the chair, correct?

all councilmembers are invited.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez for flagging that.

Not quite used to working under these new rules, having worked for 22 years under the rules where anybody could attend a committee meeting.

But yes, please, I do extend an invitation and welcome for all to attend.

And my staff, as I speak, are working with your offices to identify a time on Wednesday.

As I mentioned, the CPC meets in the morning.

There's also a Councilmember Morales' committee that meets on Wednesday.

And we obviously are seeking the participation of the police and fire chiefs and the executive, as well as CPC.

we have a lot of coordination to do, but I hope we can land on time that will maximize participation

Thank you so much, Councilmember Herbold.

Some more to come on that, hoping to be able to pull that together.

I know that there's also a strong interest and intent on inviting folks who may have been out protesting and who can provide us that perspective.

So there's going to be a lot of moving pieces, and hopefully they will all come I will have an opportunity to have a conversation about a part two meeting potential if that is identified as a need by the chair.

I thank you all for engaging in that conversation.

I really appreciate the opportunity for us to talk about this really important issue.

Thank you very much.

We are going to move on now to provide a preview of their city Council actions, Council and regional committee work.

And we will do that in the order of today's roll call rotation.

So that will be Councilmember Morales followed by Mosqueda, Peterson, Sawant, Strauss, Juarez, Lewis and then I will conclude today's report.

There are no items from the community economic development.

Committee on today's full agenda.

As has already been noted, we do have the.

Committee scheduled for Wednesday for the BIA reauthorization.

You district BIA reauthorization and vote.

We will be in touch about whether that time needs to change or not.

I think we all want to make sure that we're able to hear from the mayor and from our police chief if that opportunity is confirmed.

I do want to address the encampment removal bill from last week.

seems like ages ago, but last Wednesday did have a five and a half hour meeting to discuss encampment removals during the COVID pandemic.

We did not hear either deputy mayor address our legislation directly.

We also didn't hear an answer to the question about how they ensure that referrals are happening to appropriate shelter space.

And we really didn't hear an answer to the question of what criteria we should be using for removing an encampment during COVID.

So we are continuing conversation.

I feel like we didn't get to the deep issues about city policies that cause our homeless neighbors, our neighbors to experience homelessness.

So we still need to discuss the parameters of the bill.

We can focus on how to increase capacity through tiny home villages or more enhanced shelter or sanctioned encampments that include services.

But this conversation isn't over.

We need to also talk about how to support the NAV team in making referrals that are more appropriate and therefore more likely to be accepted.

So we know that the real issue is that there simply are not enough places for unsheltered neighbors to go.

And we also know that merely moving them from one side of the street to another is not a real solution.

So I've asked the mayor and Council Member Lewis to schedule the meeting that Deputy Mayor Fong offered last week, because we need to get busy.

So I'm looking forward to that conversation.

Um, as you all know, June is Pride Month in Seattle.

We usually have lots of celebration downtown on Capitol Hill.

I often attend Dyke March, um, and we spend the month of June, um, celebrating the history of, um, what began, uh, a movement that began in, in, with a riot, uh, with the Stonewall riots and with the, um, fury at that time of black and brown, transgender, uh, community members who were tired of being victimized by the police.

Um, so, uh, we did have a flag raising scheduled for this afternoon.

Uh, I understand, uh, just got noticed that the flag raising has been canceled, but we do have a proclamation, uh, that I will be bringing to our two o'clock meeting and asking for council members to sign on.

So I look forward to sharing that with you all this afternoon.

You should have all received notice already that that was coming and we will discuss it this afternoon.

That's all I have.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Any questions or comments on that report?

Okay, hearing and seeing none, I will go ahead and move along now to Council Member Mosqueda, please.

Thank you, Council President, and I want to thank you as the leader of our City Council and the Chair of Budget, I'm sorry, and the Chair of Public Safety, Council Member Herbold.

I want to thank both of you for the opportunity to have that discussion this morning.

I think that was a very productive beginning of our discussion, so I just want to echo my appreciation for the time that you offered.

Councilmember Herbold, thank you for calling out the items that you have on your list for follow-up, including the mourning badges.

One of the things that I'd love to tee up for that discussion is to ask a question about who are we mourning?

I think we are all mourning in various ways.

We want to make sure that we're addressing this correctly.

And I think what you saw on the streets was people mourning as the folks who are mourning a fallen officer We'd love to know who it is that we're mourning.

As I look at the Seattle City website that we manage, the last fallen officer appears to have been listed in 2009. Perhaps the website's not updated.

So I just want to make sure that we do know if there's been a fallen officer.

Thankfully, the website does not list any other individuals, and I'm hoping that that is the case, but it would be helpful to know more about who it is that we're mourning.

I also want to thank the Council President for teeing up the conversation about the curfew.

I agree with the concerns that the Council President has raised and perhaps the impact that that has had in our community needs to be addressed by City Council.

So thank you for teeing that up.

I really appreciate the opportunity to have those discussions and look forward to more discussion on Wednesday.

Council colleagues, for the Finance and Housing and Select Budget Committee, there is nothing on today, I'm sorry, there are items for consideration on today's full council agenda.

We do have from the Finance and Housing, I'm sorry, let me say this again.

Because we have not had our committee meetings, we have taken a piece of legislation directly to full council, and that is the sick and safe leave ordinance for gig workers during the time of COVID.

That did not come through the Finance and Housing Committee, and it didn't come through the Select Budget Committee.

It came directly to all of you.

You asked for an extra week, which I want to thank you for your time and your review and your feedback.

We have a great piece of legislation for your consideration today that will, I think, make a tremendous impact on the lives of folks who are working in the economy, delivering goods and services, driving folks around, delivering our groceries.

It is imperative that, especially in the time of COVID, we are offering folks the opportunity to take a sick day and to make sure that their time is paid.

You have seen numerous emails and heard public testimony over the last two weeks from individuals who have had to make the impossible decision to go to work because they could not afford to take the day off.

Working as delivery drivers or drivers for Lyft and Uber, folks who are handling our groceries, we want those folks to be able to stay home when they're sick.

So thanks to all of the feedback that we've received from both app industry folks and from worker advocates and from people who receive goods and services.

We have a great piece of legislation in front of you today.

There will be a potential vote on Council Bill 119793. This is the ordinance establishing labor standards required for paid sick and safe leave for gig workers in Seattle.

And I want to note that I earlier today sent you an email.

This includes feedback from the mayor's office and from the Office of Labor Standards.

The Office of Labor Standards had some really important suggestions, and we included a few of their final suggestions in the legislation that went over.

We want to thank folks for their due diligence over the weekend to catch a few items.

We have reviewed this last piece of legislation with law, so it is ready for your consideration.

And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me, to Sejal Parikh, to Karina Bull, happy to answer any of those questions that was sent around to you.

I want to confirm that the clerk's office has confirmed that because we sent it early this morning, it will be updated for the substitute to be considered for today.

And I also want to note the Seattle Times coverage, which I linked to in the email I sent you this morning.

It says the sick days bill sponsored by Mosqueda would resemble the existing Seattle law that allows for conventional employees to take paid sick and safe leave In other circumstances, drivers in Seattle would be eligible and would get some sick days up front before curing more at a rate of one sick day for every 30 days work.

The sick day pay would be based on drivers' daily average on their top earning month since October.

The idea is to ensure drivers can choose to stay home.

Some drivers work sick because they can't afford to go without income.

And the quote from one of the drivers from Postmates is, I want to take a day off when I'm sick, but I've got to eat.

So thank you, Council colleagues, for all of your feedback and for the work that has been put into this piece of legislation in front of us today.

Again, thanks to Sejal Parikh from my office, Chief of Staff, and Karina Bull from Central Staff for their immense amount of time on this, and for all of you for your feedback.

Looking forward to that discussion today.

As far as the Budget Committee goes, I want to thank the Council President for her

Before you move on, we do have and, you know, I tried to establish a clear policy that if we ask council central staff to be on the line that we give them an opportunity to make their presentation.

So, Carina Bull is on the line, and so I want to make sure that Carina has an opportunity to weigh in on the substitute bill that will be before the city council this afternoon.

I know you've already touched on it somewhat, but we did ask Carina to take out time out of the morning to be with us today.

I do want to let folks know, if you could sort of let us know if there's any additional changes that should be highlighted that will be, that have been included in the substitute bill for our consideration this afternoon, that would be the time to do that.

And then before you move on with your report, Council Member Esqueda, I do want to allow folks an opportunity to ask any questions that they might have about that particular legislative action

Hi there, thank you.

Again, Karina Bull with Council Central staff and things to know about the substitute bill that is draft 5A that was recently circulated among council members and was recently posted to the agenda is that it is a merging of amendments to the bill that were included in the substitute bill for that was loaded to the agenda on Friday.

And then over the weekend, as Council Member Mosqueda noted, there were some additional changes due to feedback from Office of Labor Standards and the executive.

And so if you're wondering what these changes are, it would be a merging of the changes in the memo that you received on Friday, or that was loaded to the agenda on Friday, along with the chart that accompanies this Substitute Bill 5A as well.

I think that the majority of these amendments reflect requests from Office of Labor Standards to be able to immediately implement this law in such a way that doesn't require them to do rulemaking and so you'll see some additional definitions and you'll see some incorporation of these existing rules for employees right now for paid sick and safe time incorporated directly into this legislation rather than something that would need to be an additional rulemaking process.

There are some There's pieces in here that also would support hiring entities and making this legislation hit the ground easier.

There's an addition that would permit them to do some front loading so they could give the paid sick and safe time in advance of when it would accrue.

a new provision that would allow them to mitigate the cost of paid sick and safe time that accrued prior to the ordinance by subtracting the amount of other paid leave that they've already provided for paid sick time or paid safe time purposes from that retroactively accrued paid sick and safe time.

There are some Let's see, there are some requirements for notice to workers that clarify that that notice needs to be given to them in a way that is very accessible via their smartphone in languages other than English, if that is something that would be needed.

And then the most recent changes from Office of Labor Standards over the weekend would lay out some specific requirements for when workers are paid for their paid sick and safe time.

And again, this is, it's modeled on current requirements for employees.

And it would be that they are paid with the hiring entities choice of 14 calendar days after their requested date of use or the next regularly scheduled date of compensation.

And there's also the clarification that workers can request consecutive days of use at a single time.

So again, a variety of changes that aren't radically shifting the legislation, but are giving hiring entities some more options and are reflecting requests from office of labor standards to reduce the burden of drafting rules.

So embedding those items right into the legislation.

Thank you, Karina, for that.

Really appreciate it.

Any questions for Karina, colleagues?

No questions.

I'm not seeing anybody with any questions.

So, Karina, thank you so much for your work on this.

Oh, wait, I see Council Member Stress just raised his hand.

Oh, no, he's giving me a thumbs up.

He's giving me a thumbs up.

Okay, so, Karina, thank you so much for your work on this issue.

Really appreciate you being with us this morning.

I know we had you sitting on the line for an hour, a little over an hour, so I appreciate your willingness, your patience.

and your report out of the changes.

I find that to be very, very helpful and informative.

So thank you so much, Karina.

And if there's no other questions for Karina or comments, we can go ahead and let her go about her day.

So it looks like there aren't.

So thanks so much, Karina, for being with us.

Council Member Mosqueda, we'll now head back over to you for the rest of your report, please.

Thank you, Council President, and thank you for making sure we had Karina have the opportunity to speak.

I want to just again echo my appreciation for her work.

She was definitely burning the midnight oil over the last few weeks along with Sejal.

So thank you.

Thank you guys for allowing time for that.

I want to note for the Select Budget Committee, thanks as well to the Council President for her words at the beginning of this meeting.

Thank the Governor for the extension of the proclamation, but for really hearing the concerns from cities, not just in Seattle, but across the state, who are needing to get to the process of governing and to make sure that we have the tools in our tool belt to make sure that we can have these meetings.

It's really important.

So a huge thank you to the governor and to his chief of staff and to the Office of Intergovernmental Relations and AWC and the president's office for their work on this.

My hope had been to do at least two meetings in the first part of June.

I think we are going to continue working with the council president's office and make sure that we can coordinate those with the new information that's been shared.

We also know that there's going to be an opportunity for us to take a look at the mayor's proposed supplemental budget, I think beginning as early as next week, so I think it will be very important to have a conversation with our council colleagues about those proposed items as well as we consider the various proposals that Councilmember Sawant and Morales have provided for our review.

and to look at strategies to identify, to do issue identification and to continue that conversation that's been stalled.

So we will be following up with the folks in your office to make sure that we get those meetings on your calendars as soon as we get some clarification on when those meetings can happen.

in the next two weeks here.

We also have received information as I mentioned from the executive that by Tuesday June 9th we will see what they're proposing as the revised 2020 budget and we want to make sure that you get that information in real time so we'll be sending out the proposal as well as a summary of how we will as a council be reviewing that proposed budget We are working with central staff and with the council president's office and we expect to have somewhere between three to five meetings and perhaps more based on the conversation and we will be circulating a proposed draft for you all to put some holds on your calendar as well related to the 2020 revised budget.

We have two items, two very important items, and we will have two calendars for you to consider as we look at the strategy to consider both actions over the next month or so.

And I want to also note that today marks the beginning of API Heritage Month.

We know that many in our community who are from the Asian Pacific Islander community, folks who've been reeling from the disproportionate targeting of racial bias among our community that is Asian have been experiencing not only the hardship of the economic crisis but also the hardship of the public health crisis being directed at them and we will be doing some various efforts to lift up the voice of the API community and efforts and investments that we all want to make in this critical time to make sure that our API community is respected and invested in as we think about who we're honoring.

this month.

Lastly, Council President, just a very quick note for folks who remember Emojean Williams.

She was an activist who came to Council many times calling for social justice issues.

Sadly, she passed away.

Her family had reached out over the weekend.

We have a family friend in common, and I just wanted to say thank you to her for all of her ongoing advocacy in the City of Seattle.

Emo, we're thinking of you.

I thank you, Council Member Mosqueda, for that report.

Our condolences to Imogene's family.

She was no stranger to public comment and activism.

She will be missed and certainly sending our condolences to her family and friends and loved ones.

Colleagues, I just want to be really clear on Council Member Mosqueda's report.

What you're hearing from her is that we will have a need to have a formal summer budget session.

We are working through with her office on a timeline for us to consider a rebalancing package for the 2020 budget, given the forecasted revenue deficits.

So we have not yet had an opportunity to finalize what that could look like.

But I also, as council president, want to make sure that folks understand that this is a formal request for a summer budget session, which is I am grateful for the modifications to Proclamation 2028 because I think it will allow us to be a lot more nimble in those conversations and thinking about not only some difficult decisions we might have to make around reappropriating dollars, but also around identifying potential new revenue sources that might be available to continue to meet the basic needs of our constituents.

In the course of that we will like we always do with budget sessions we will Suspend all other legislative actions that are unrelated to the budget While we are focused on the budget part of part of that is first and foremost to allow our council central staff to focus on the needs around the budget and be available and responsive to us and our needs around the budget process.

And so you can expect to receive a communication from my office later today or later this week around what can still be considered during the summer budget session.

So this is just sort of in-line practice that's in line with what we ordinarily do during an intense budget season.

So every budget season that we have, We will, you know, suspend other non-budget related legislative action with few exceptions to allow us to focus our resources, our limited human resources on issues related to the budget process.

So more to come on that.

Happy to answer any questions.

I'm looking forward to continuing my conversations with Councilmember Mosqueda and her office around that timeline and making sure that we are all prepared to roll up our sleeves and squarely focus on the rebalancing package and any other pre-fall budget season issues that might arise during that process.

Okay, that being said, we'll go ahead and move on.

I'm sorry, are there any questions or comments on Council Member Mosqueda's report?

Okay, seeing and hearing none, we'll go ahead and move to Council Member Peterson, please.

Thank you, Council President.

On Saturday morning, I joined hundreds of my neighbors in Northeast Seattle in a peaceful march and caravan organized by the passionate students of Nathan Hale High School.

We came together to grieve the wrongful and tragic death of George Floyd, to protest our nation's history of institutional and structural racism, and to reinforce our commitment to the cause of justice and police accountability here in Seattle.

As I said earlier, I look forward to working in partnership with City Council colleagues on these urgent matters, and I appreciate the leadership of Council President Gonzalez and Public Safety Chair Herbold.

There are no items from the Transportation Utilities Committee on today's agenda.

There was a news article on Sunday in the Seattle Times, excellent article by Heidi Gruber about bridges throughout Seattle.

and the sad state of our bridges throughout Seattle.

And I look forward to discussing how to refocus our transportation dollars on the most compelling safety and infrastructure needs of our city.

As has been mentioned earlier, we continue to focus on the West Seattle Bridge.

There is now a technical advisory panel with structural engineers, as well as a community task force led by former Mayor Greg Nichols and others.

Regarding the Seattle Transportation Benefit District, I'd like to go on record again, stating that I continue to support the renewal of the Seattle Transportation Benefit District, which is expiring this year.

I believe the city council can complete work on a reasonable renewal measure.

Let me fix my camera.

I believe that my...

I was querying whether I should tell you that you were sideways, but hoping you'd figure it out.

Yeah, so the Seattle Transportation Benefit District, it's expiring this year.

I believe we should renew it.

I believe we can complete work on a reasonable renewal measure in July so that Seattle voters can decide in November.

I'm confident transit ridership will be a vital lift for commuters and workers of all incomes as we restart our regional economy.

and transit is fully operational.

Until then, the funding for STBD can be used for key infrastructure projects, such as the urgent bridge maintenance that we're hearing so much about.

Regarding utilities, I was disappointed by the 6-3 vote by the King County Council that followed the recommendation of the King County Executive to raise rates on hundreds of thousands of Seattleites by going ahead with the pre-COVID 4.5% increase for wastewater treatment.

These rates from King County are unfortunately passed directly on to consumers, customers of Seattle Public Utilities.

I'd like to thank County Councilmember Dombowski for his leadership in trying to postpone those rate increases in order to deal with the realities during COVID and our city's overall affordability crisis.

I want to thank the mayor and the head of Seattle Public Utilities, Mami Hara, for their commitment to keeping water and recycling rates to a minimum at this time.

In District 4, I heard from many small businesses in my district who were disappointed King County was not ready to move to Phase 2 of the Governor's plan to reopen our state's economy.

I'm pleased that our King County Executive is applying to the state for a modified Phase 1, which is essentially a partial Phase 2 to safely reopen some businesses in a cautious and safe manner.

Speaking of small businesses, I want to thank Chair Morales for leadership of the Community Economic Development Committee.

We had another productive committee meeting last week, which included the required public hearing for the reauthorization of the business improvement area.

I have amendments.

The purpose of my amendments is to make sure we achieve our goal of giving small neighborhood businesses a greater voice and making sure there's a competitive process for awarding what's essentially a $1 million contract to the program manager that administers the BIA.

I look forward to more discussion this Wednesday if we can accommodate that.

People can continue to email their comments to udistrictbia at Seattle.gov.

I held my office hours again last week by Skype and telephone.

I encourage District 4 constituents to sign up on my website, which you can get to at Seattle.gov forward slash council.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson for that report.

Any questions or comments on that report?

Okay.

Council President, I think you may be frozen.

Sorry, folks, I had a little bit of Internet issues and got disconnected.

My apologies.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson, for that report.

Are there any follow-up questions or comments?

Council Member Herbold?

Thank you.

I just want to thank Councilmember Peterson for his statement related to his commitment to look at efforts to renew the Transportation Benefit District this year.

Again, I wholeheartedly agree that we need to use transit as a way to to address many of the impacts of COVID-19.

And of course, there's the obvious need in District 1 for not just reliance on transit, but enhancement on transit during the closure.

of the West Seattle Bridge.

So I really look forward to working with Councilmember Peterson and other councilmembers in making sure that we have a commitment from the mayor's office to bring forward this ballot measure this year.

I do think it would be a mistake to wait, and I do think the public is committed to supporting transit, particularly in this time.

I also want to echo Councilmember Peterson's thanks of Councilmember Dabowski as it relates to the changes at King County.

on wastewater rates.

I worked with members of the regional water quality committee on sending a letter from not all but many members of that committee to the executive earlier this year, expressing our hopes for more engagement with the Regional Water Quality Committee on the assumptions underlying the proposed rate increases.

That body, which represents many of the suburban cities that are impacted by these rate changes, feels very strongly that, and this is an ongoing issue that sort of predates this particular set of rate changes, really feels that It does not have a meaningful role of input to the decisions that are sort of, the decisions that lead to the argument that we need to increase rates, particularly around capital projects planning.

The Regional Water Quality Committee really wanted to have a conversation about the capital budget Um, because many of the decisions again around, uh, rates, um, derived from assumptions, um, around the capital projects.

One of the things that we did when I was the chair of the committee with oversight of Seattle Public Utilities was to assume a project completion rate that is something other than 100% because our capital departments do not complete 100% of the projects on time.

And so we assumed a 98% completion rate and that is what made it possible for us to bring rates down.

And that is the sort of thing that I would really hope that the county did.

So again, thank you to Councilmember Peterson for lifting up the efforts of King County member Rod Dabowski in this area.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Any other questions or comments for Councilmember Peterson on his report?

Okay, seeing and hearing none, Council Member Peterson, I want to thank you for continuing to remind us of the need to take the sound, excuse me, STVD, Seattle Transportation Benefit District, too many acronyms in our lives, and really lifting up that conversation.

Obviously, public transit is and continues to be an absolute critical part of our public infrastructure.

and look forward to working with you in making sure that we have a process in place to advance that conversation with enough time to meet any related ballot timelines or election timelines.

So looking forward to continuing to work with you on those issues.

Okay, next up, we will hear from Council Member Swat.

Please, floor is yours.

Thank you.

There are no items on today's city council agenda.

There is one item from my office on today's city council agenda to extend the zoning protections to prevent the destruction of Seattle's remaining mobile home parks.

Thank you to Councilmember Juarez for co-sponsoring this legislation and to Ketil Freeman from City Council Central staff for preparing it.

The residents of the Halcyon Mobile Home Park have requested that the City Council extend the temporary zoning restrictions that have protected them from displacement over the last couple of years.

Councilmembers who were around the last few years will remember their moving public testimony because mobile home parks are an almost extinct affordable home ownership avenue for working class people.

In majority, And the majority of the residents at Halcyon are working class retirees, several of them former union members.

City council passed temporary zoning protections to provide time for the mayor's office to do the work required to make those protections permanent, but that work hasn't actually gone ahead as planned.

And so this legislation will extend that protection, temporary protection, and it will require a public hearing, which will be held during today's city council meeting.

And I will reserve other comments for when we discuss that this afternoon.

As council members have mentioned, on Friday evening, Governor Ainslie amended emergency proclamation 2028, removing any limits on the topics that the city council can take up.

Essentially, the governor and the political establishment have had to concede that the governor could not legally stop the city council debate on the Amazon tax legislation.

And any pretext for delaying the tax Amazon legislation votes is now gone.

And the city council must now proceed urgently with debating and voting on the legislation.

Labor attorney Dimitri Glitzen, who joined me at a May 15 press conference to criticize the delay tactics, noted that the governor's revised proclamation, quote, does precisely what we proposed on May 15 as an alternative, which was to have the governor use his emergency powers to clarify that for the duration of the pandemic, all virtual meetings are a perfectly acceptable way for public agencies to meet and legislate.

The governor's new proclamation makes clear, as we said on May 15th, that the governor's March 24th proclamation was an ill-thought-out and unlawful effort by him to micromanage the exercise by cities and counties of the powers vested in them by the Washington state constitution.

This improper action had the effect of preventing cities and counties throughout the state from fulfilling their constitutionally mandated obligations to the people they represent for fully nine weeks, an enormous amount of time in the context of the challenges posed by the pandemic." That was by Dimitri Glitzen. For the past three weeks, in what I would describe as a shameful delay maneuver, the political establishment has sought to divert attention from the real question under debate. Who will pay for this crisis? Big business or working people? And is it going to be austerity or raising progressive revenues to fund social needs? During that time, several council members heavily publicized the formation of the Third Door Coalition, which, despite a great deal of branding, is something that has been dusted off the shelves from a year ago and has still not identified a single dollar of funding for the affordable housing everyone claims to want. I would be happy if Third Door actually agrees to tax big business to fund affordable social housing, but our movement cannot stop. and will not confuse empty words about what is needed for actual big business taxes that can actually fund housing, jobs, and a Green New Deal. In the meantime, Mayor Durkan is rolling out austerity budgeting, including a hiring freeze, and the Seattle Times editorial board is demanding state budget cuts. This places the cost of the recession on the shoulders of working people who are already overburdened with massive joblessness, loss of income, and an ever-worsening housing and climate crisis. For the last three weeks, establishment council members have disingenuously claimed they could not meet and honor the obligations and meet people's needs because of the governor's restrictions. That excuse is now gone. It's time to vote on this emergency legislation. And unless council members claim that the governor told them that they could also not think about our movement's tax Amazon legislation. Certainly council members have had an extra three weeks to prepare for the vote and everybody should be more than ready. So I look forward to the budget committee meetings being held as soon as possible. Thanking Council Member Mosqueda for your comments and the tax Amazon legislation voted on in the next week or two so that we have no more delays. The delays so far have already had terrible consequences. Just a month's delay in the effective date of the legislation results in $40 million of big business taxes that the city of Seattle will never collect, $40 million of COVID relief that is now not available to our most marginalized households, or $40 million of affordable housing that is now unfunded. This is almost as much as Seattle's annual budget for affordable housing. There should be no more delays and I hope council members will join me in passing this as soon as possible. On the legislation to restrict the ineffective and inhumane sweeps of homeless neighbors during the pandemic, I wanted to note from last week that the responses from the mayor's office at the committee last week were tone deaf and devoid of factual evidence for why the sweeps are advisable, especially during the pandemic. It was really unfortunate that a five and a half hour meeting did not have even one person on the panel who has actually experienced the sweeps to hear from them whether homeless people even want the sweeps and I have not heard a single homeless person say the sweep helped them. I have cosponsored this bill as it is a continuation of the relentless work from my office and the grassroots movement in ending sweeps and I also think that if council members want to put actions to their words they will need to vote yes on this modest legislation limiting homeless sweeps during the pandemic at the very least. Last but not least, it was my honor to publicly recognize Imogene Williams at my Tax Amazon Committee several days ago, right after she suffered a debilitating fracture and a few days before we lost her. Many community members will know Imogene as a longtime fighter for working people, for social justice, and someone who was older than most of us in age and yet put many of us younger people to shame by her energy and her courage. Socialist Alternative and I are deeply saddened by her loss, but we are thankful that she was surrounded by her loving family and her loved ones in her last moments. While so many might have given up, gotten demoralized, or even sold out in the face of the obstacles from the political establishment and this hostile system, Imogene Williams was one of those rare leaders who never lost her courage or her integrity. Her love for her fellow beings never dulled, and she never stopped fighting. She was a fierce proponent of the Amazon tax, among many other issues. And when she spoke in City Hall against the shameful repeal of the 2018 Amazon tax, she sent fire coursing through my veins. Our love and solidarity to Imogene's family and to Imogene, rest in power. It has been an honor to fight alongside you. Our movement will continue the struggle. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant, especially for that recognition of Imogen, very well-placed recognition.

Thank you so much for taking a moment to do that.

Colleagues, any questions or comments on that report?

Okay, hearing none, we'll go ahead and hand it over now to Council Member Strauss.

Please, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Council President, there are no items on from the land use and neighborhoods committee today on today's agenda introduction and referral calendar.

or on full council.

The land use and neighborhoods committee has currently planned to resume a meeting on June 24th and will be in touch with your office council president to discuss what the options are to move forward with the child care near you and land use omnibus bill which had been scheduled for a hearing.

Last week I continued to hold off weekly office hours to speak directly to constituents and we spoke with constituents about public safety navigation team helping a resident navigate Seattle Public Utilities and how community members can assist with COVID-19 testing and contact tracing efforts.

Again, any resident in the in District six and across the city I've spoken to a number of folks who aren't residents of District six, feel free to sign up on my web page or email my office.

This coming Wednesday my team will be joining the bicycle advisory board to discuss proposed changes to parking requirements that are included in the land use omnibus bill.

and I'll continue to have resident meetings as well.

From last week, I am glad to hear that an arrest has been made in the hate crimes that happened in Ballard last week.

The suspect was apprehended and booked into King County Jail.

Again, I want to say that the acts of violence and aggression towards Asian and Pacific Islander neighbors and community members in Ballard are not acceptable and will not be tolerated.

Ignoring this will not make it go away.

We are seeing a trend here in our city around the region and nationwide and it needs to be confronted and taken seriously.

I stand in solidarity with the members of the API community and opposing hateful acts which traumatize and alienate our friends, neighbors, small business owners, colleagues in the city and across our region.

We as Seattleites must unite against anyone who targets Asian Pacific Islanders, anyone else, or anyone who engages in any racially biased behavior.

I just want to take a moment for that.

In other work, My office continues working on bringing Cafe Street pilot program to be online and ready for phase two.

My office also continues to advise small businesses on a daily basis.

This last week, we were in touch with restaurants and salons and inquiring about phase two.

Tenants and landlords seeking guidance regarding eviction moratoriums and repayment plans and sole proprietors navigating the state unemployment system.

Last week, I also attended the Fremont Arts Council board meeting, which was fantastic and amazing.

To follow up on the accommodations, the city has already provided them with regards to utilities and rent.

and how to discuss how to help them as an organization moving forward.

They're a dedicated group of leaders in the local art community.

I'm proud to be working with them.

We did discuss the troll, which has been discussed here before, which is not an official art piece of the city because when it was originally installed, the city arts and culture department organization at that time did not see the troll as being a worthy piece of art.

And so it was a rogue, renegade art installation.

And there's a lot of history there.

So we are continuing to support the Fremont Arts Council in their privately owned art installation, which is the troll that Council Member Peterson and I split jurisdiction on.

So once again, really great group, and they are doing a lot of really wonderful work despite the Fremont Solstice Parade not going forward this year.

I'm also happy to announce that the mayor and Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation reopened the saltwater boat ramps, Don Armati and Golden Gardens this last Saturday at 7 a.m.

Parks is continuing to work to get the freshwater sites open soon, and a huge thank you to the Parks Department for getting that done and providing people with the recreation access that they so desperately need.

Also, thank you to Councilmember Peterson for your work with the Harbor Patrol and Dr. Fisher and everyone at Seattle Police Department for being attentive to the concerns about being able to call our Harbor Patrol directly.

Lastly, I just want to thank everyone working in the city of Seattle to be responsive to a consistently changing environment with this layering of crises and changing environments.

We are at a pivotal moment in our history, and it is incredibly important to be kind, helpful, and responsive to our community.

Thank you, Council President, and thank you, colleagues.

Thank you so much, Council Member Strauss, for that report.

Any comments or questions for Council Member Strauss?

Okay, hearing and seeing none, we'll go ahead and move on now to Council Member Juarez.

Please, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez, and particularly thank you for your leadership during this difficult and painful time for all of us.

I appreciate everybody's words this morning.

The Public Assets and Native Communities Committee scheduled for June 2nd is canceled.

There are items of the committee on this afternoon's agenda.

I want to thank Council Members Sawant, for the work that we've done together in the past couple of years regarding Halcyon, the manufactured mobile home park, which is located in district five.

And the work that we did with former council member Johnson and SCCI to protect these type of communities in where we can with particular type of zoning legislation.

In regards to parks, COVID-19 programmatic updates and park usage will be emailed to you.

I believe all of my colleagues have been getting these once a week.

A big thank you to Superintendent Aguirre and my staff, McGean, that we get daily reports about usage, foot traffic, which parks are open, which parks are closed.

Second, Parks and Rec, as Council Member Straus stated, the two salt water boat ramps did reopen this weekend.

The social distancing rules, that was the Don Armini, correct me if I said that wrong, near Alki in West Seattle and the Eddie Vine boat ramp at Golden Gardens.

The boat ramp staff were ready to go and signs at the sites have been posted.

The rest remain closed and are being evaluated for near future opening depending on public health guidelines.

So as of this date, two are open.

So hopefully we'll have more at the end of the week.

Continue to update the hygiene shower program will remain open except at the Miller Community Center.

More details later.

Secondly, the ADA-only parking spaces for persons with disabilities are now available at the Washington Park Arboretum at the Graham Visitors Central parking lot.

I should note that Seattle Parks and Rec is exploring different strategies to support social distancing guidelines that will be in place in phase two of the reopening.

This past week, Parks and Environment staff moved Circle and checkerboard patterns into the grass at Cal Anderson Park as a social distancing measure.

I think some of you probably read in the media about the circles that were made.

That was parks, not aliens.

Let's see, last Friday, May 29th, Yale Parks helped World Vision distribute boxes of food at Bailey-Gatzert Elementary School.

Each box contained enough food to feed a family of five for one week.

The boxes also included hand sanitizer, toilet paper, school supplies, and board games.

Native communities.

A big thank you to Senator Claudia Kaufman and Iris Friday, the Native Action Network.

Employees at the Seattle Indian Health Board, Chief Seattle Club in Cowlitz, Tribe in Tukwila received a catered lunch provided by the Native Action Network, as I shared, led by Claudia and Iris.

to thank them for their continued service to Native populations during the pandemic.

Big shout-out to our friend, Esa Lacerro at Saline Health Board.

I've been meeting with her at least once a week.

And Colleen Echo-Hawk at the Chief Seattle Club, and Liz Tale at the Talus Tribe, mobilizing and responding to the homelessness, getting food out there, working with tribes, and hearing from tribal leadership.

For those of you that don't know, Native Action Network is a nonprofit organization to promote Native women's full representation participation and leadership in local, state, tribal, and national affairs.

I was one of the founding members probably 15 years ago.

In regards to District 5, the Northgate bike pedestrian bridge update, work on the I-5 median near the northbound I-5 express lane off ramp at 1st Avenue and 103rd will continue this month into early June.

As you know, this pedestrian bike has been going on since 2014-15.

So we're finally almost there.

Nighttime work will take place between 9 p.m.

and 5 a.m.

During this time, crews will install an underground drill shaft and will conduct quality assurance testing following construction.

We've been working with the Northgate community as well as North Seattle College on this for many years.

Also, I want to thank, as Councilmember Peterson shared, the Nathan Hale High School the racial equity team, their anti-racism car and bike parade through Lake City.

The group started at 10 and worked their way up Lake City Way.

I'm very, very proud of our high school students, faculty, and family for showing up and standing in solidarity with victims of racial injustice.

In regards to Sound Transit, Council Member Herbold, I just want to respond briefly and then I have some other notes.

We did get a flurry of emails from Mr. Rogoff, the CEO of Sound Transit.

They started about Saturday about 7.50 in the evening regarding Westlake and then again Saturday at 10 o'clock at night with the closures and their consultation with the city.

On Sunday, May 31st at about 5, we got another We had an email blast about the city and Sound Transit working together in coordination with the city at Westlake and Nordstrom and the other access points that they were closing.

And finally, Sunday at about 8 o'clock, we were apprised of the public safety zone and the reopening.

I should add, one point I do want to share here is from the email that I received on Saturday, May 30th at about 7.50 from Mr. Rogoff.

Since so much of the volatile activity in downtown Seattle was immediately adjacent to Westlake Station, we had to close a major entrance to the station at the Nordstrom store as well as two elevator entrances.

Upon receiving word that the City of Seattle anticipated requesting the full closure of Westlake Station, we activated the protocol that was established following the SeaTac airport protest in 2017. Consistent with that protocol, both King County Metro General manager Rob Gannon and I, that would be Mr. Rogoff, incurred that an immediate safety danger did exist at the station.

In the end, the city did not submit the request, but we at Sound Transit independently decided to close the station while maintaining access and egress to the area of our stations at University Street and Capitol Hill.

So this was sent Saturday at 7.50, but as you all know, we start looking at more closures, but I wanted to just let Councilor Herbold know that Mr. Rogoff and the Sound Transit staff were sending these emails to the board, and I will certainly forward all four of them to my colleagues after today's meeting.

I apologize that this wasn't made public, and I'll make sure that you get it.

In regards to Sound Transit, the board itself and the meetings, I attended the board of directors meeting last Thursday.

Sound Transit staff and its CEO, Mr. Roboff, are working on setting a foundation for the process and timeline of, quote, program realignment.

That is now the official term used to describe COVID-19 impacts on the Sound Transit system.

I'll be joining a workshop this Wednesday with my board colleagues to discuss and learn from each other's county city priorities.

Sound Transit entered this process about 10 years ago during a recession.

And it's my understanding that Mr. Rogoff and Board Chair Keele will facilitate a similar process this year to assess the fiscal constraints and which projects must be kept unchanged, delayed, or suspended indefinitely.

So there will be more to follow.

I want to add on a personal note, I thank all of my colleagues for all of their good words and thoughts this morning.

I usually don't say much because a lot of people say a lot, and a lot has already been said.

I do want to share that five tribes in the coastal Salish area sent me wonderful emails to send to city council and to our mayor and to Chief Best, sending much love and support.

And I want to quote one leader saying that they were sending us the strength of our ancestors.

It's been very difficult and I want to thank Council President Gonzalez for talking to me offline about what our thoughts were and our feelings and our emotions.

I believe I'm the oldest person on this council.

I've been around long enough to see people arrested on the Puyallup River and the Nisqually River, watching my elders and my family being beaten by police officers and fish and wildlife officers, watching them be jailed, going to courthouses, taking over buildings.

I'm not smarter, just older.

But in light of all of that, I know that good leaders make changes, that's what real power is, and that's bravery, and that's vision, and that's without anger or malice.

And I believe, and it may not seem like that now, that I do see some hope and some light.

This COVID-19, I think, made us look within and look at ourselves and our humanity as a nation, if we could overcome this.

And the death of George Floyd made us aware how the world sees us.

Sometimes there's a very violent, racist, people.

And that is one dimension of us, but that's not us.

I'm hoping that I got a wonderful text from Councilmember Herbold, thank you, that we can all move forward, that we don't repeat the mistakes, that we make that change, that we continue to embrace our humanity, and that we do have this trauma in our DNA.

We do know how this country was founded.

My people certainly know the ravages of genocide and racism.

But I stand here today as a 60-year-old Native American Latina knowing we got this.

I'm not afraid.

I have my moments of anger, but I have more moments of compassion and empathy.

So I just want to leave with, it's an honor to work with all of you, and I hope we can all go forward, as Councilmember Herbold said, in a positive way.

Thank you.

Thank you Councilmember Juarez for those words and for your report.

Are there any questions or comments for Councilmember Juarez?

Okay hearing none we'll go ahead and move over to Councilmember Lewis.

The floor is yours.

Thank you so much Madam President.

I do just want to start briefly by Thanking Council Member Juarez for her comments just now.

I feel so profoundly fortunate to have Council Member Juarez as a mentor and a colleague here and really appreciate everything that she just said.

So thank you so much.

I don't have very much to add in terms of an update today.

I do just want to thank everybody for their patience and their contributions.

to the hearing in the Select Committee on Homelessness Strategies and Investments last week, which was an airing of a lot of issues beyond the four corners of Councilmember Morales' bill.

And I want to thank Councilmember Morales for really starting that conversation that is so necessary and so needed.

And I do just want to update the council, just let everybody know that I am working closely with Council Member Morales to accept the offer of having a conversation about some of the underlying issues around the problems and inequities that we see in the policies around encampment removals and work collaboratively to make progress as was offered And that is an ongoing conversation and I am in close contact with Vice Chair Herbold as well as Council Member Morales to make sure that we can have a framework for going forward on that important and critical conversation.

I do just want to address as well, speaking of Council Member Herbold, the bill on premium pay for workers in the gig economy.

We are holding that bill for one more week to continue to have conversations with stakeholders and council colleagues about potential amendments.

So that vote will not be this afternoon.

We will be waiting one more week to make sure that the proposal is fully vetted and that everybody can have their say in shaping it.

So do please not hesitate to reach out to have that conversation.

about potential amendments or concerns or comments on that legislation.

So with that, I don't have anything else to add to my comments earlier, and I look forward to another week here at the city council.

Thank you so much, Council Member Lewis.

Any questions or comments for Council Member Lewis?

Council Member Herbold, please.

I just want to add in addition to Councilmember Lewis's comments around the the gig workers hazard pay legislation that Councilmember Lewis and I are developing a substitute bill that includes some some amendments that we've already identified working with stakeholders and to the extent that council members who have amendments are willing to share them with us as the sponsors of the legislation, the sponsors of a upcoming substitute.

It would be great to have the opportunity to do that because we could then, assuming that there is consensus between the sponsors of amendments and the sponsors of the legislation, we could roll them into the substitute bill.

And I I know that that really helps central staff in streamlining things in this compressed timeline that we have of working through legislation.

So just putting that out there, if you have amendments and you're willing to share them with us, please do let us know.

an opportunity to review the substitute.

We'll let you know what the substitute contains currently.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Any other questions or comments?

Okay, we'll go ahead and move along to my report.

It'll be brief.

I just want to thank you all again for the conversation at the top of our meeting today.

I really appreciate each of you and your respective humanity and really look forward to continuing to work with all of you as leaders in our great city to move our city forward.

A couple of quick things that I wanted to mention is one, I had an opportunity to attend the Puget Sound Regional Council executive board meeting on behalf of the city of Seattle last week.

Councilmember Lewis was also on the line and Mayor Durkan was also present.

In that meeting, we had an opportunity to persuade our fellow executive board members to allow us some additional flexibility with regards to some 2020 transportation infrastructure funding.

So the proposed project list for 2020 funds included a $3.5 million appropriation for Seattle's One Center City Contingency List Project.

And we sought an approval of an exemption to be able to use those funds flexibly in order to support the city's planning efforts around the West Seattle Bridge.

So the funds would be split to support the planning study for the West Seattle Bridge, and then also still be allowed to provide us some flexibility for dollars for transportation demand management activities in West Seattle and downtown to help address the reality of the traffic impacts resulting from the West Seattle Bridge closure.

So this was obviously a high priority on our list in terms of representatives at the Puget Sound Regional Council Executive Board meeting.

we were successful in that request and did receive, in fact, approval to have this flexibility that we requested.

It's not additional money that was appropriated to us through that process, but it is much-needed flexibility that we needed in order to be able to use the funds in a way that met this emerging need.

So that's really great news for us as a city.

Really want to say thank you to the Puget Sound Regional Council staff and to the other members of the executive board who asked tough questions, but also signaled their strong support for it.

And we were able to receive unanimous support for that particular funding request.

So that is welcome news, not just for district one representative, I'm sure, but for our entire city.

because we know that the West Seattle Bridge is just so critical to our moving traffic through and people through our region.

So it's not just a West Seattle issue, it's a region wide issue and these dollars are going to be hugely helpful in our endeavor to to plan accordingly so that we can mitigate impacts as we look at next steps related to the West Seattle Bridge.

So I wanted to make sure that I had an opportunity to report to you all on that.

I also had an opportunity to, not last week, but the prior week, attend, along with Council Member Lewis, the King County Regional Homeless Authority Governing Committee meeting.

This was our first meeting of the year since the council approved the interlocal agreement.

We were not able to identify co-chairs, but I did want to make sure that colleagues, you were aware that I identified and supported the need to continue to work out on some of the issues that were left over last year related to voting and evidence-based practices and that those things need to be addressed through the bylaws.

I want to extend an offer to each of you that if you continue to have concerns about the structure of the King County Regional Homeless Authority that you reach out to my office as soon as possible to signaled to me what you'd like to see negotiated in the bylaws process.

I'm looking forward to being able to communicate proactively what those needs are later this week.

And then I also wanted to let you all know that we are in the midst of considering who will be the co-chairs.

There was a motion to advance three elected officials to be co-chairs.

There was a counter motion to have one of the three co-chairs, if there were going to be three co-chairs, be a person with lived experience.

I supported that motion and look forward to continuing to support that kind of a model where somebody with lived experience is elevated to a position of leadership amongst the governing committee.

Even if it is for a short-lived period of time, I do think it's important for us to make sure that we are truly centering the experiences of we will risk the realities of having an entity that is overly politicized and that has too much power centered in elected officials.

I'm looking forward to continuing to work through those issues on behalf of the City Council.

Again, I'm available to each of you as I'm sure Councilmember Lewis is as we are faithfully representing the interests of the city council as a whole in those rooms and in those conversations.

So other than that, I have nothing on this afternoon's agenda.

Looking forward to making sure that we have a successful public hearing.

for the general public.

It is now 12.05 p.m.

Public comment pre-registration is now open and available to those members of the public who would like to provide public comment this afternoon at 2 o'clock, including on the land use bill referenced by Councilmember Sawant and Councilmember Juarez related to the Halcyon Mobile Home Park.

So with that being said, I don't have anything else to report.

Happy to take any questions or comments from my colleagues on my report.

Any questions or comments?

Okay, anything else for the good of the order?

Council Member Herbold, please.

Thank you so much.

I also really thought it was important to take a moment today to recognize the loss of longtime community activist Tony Orange.

The Seattle medium in their in their reporting on Wednesday, reminded us of Tony's friendship to so many in the community and his commitment to justice and to a shared access and opportunity to wealth and equality in our city.

Tony Horns served as the executive director of the Central Area Motivation Program, He worked for seven years as executive director of the Washington State Commission on African-American Affairs.

And during his time in Seattle, he served on more than 20 boards and commissions.

I just want to share the words of former city council member Larry Gossett in recognizing Tony Orange's passing.

Larry Gossett said, a longtime friend and colleague, Tony Orange was one of the truly great activist leaders Seattle produced during the Black Power and social justice movement during the past 50 years in Seattle and beyond.

Tony's attitude and commitment to the people was always on and about being involved.

Studying the issues affecting Black and other oppressed people in Seattle was on display in everything he allowed himself in during his illustrative career in the Pacific Northwest.

It was exemplified beautifully during the period he served as the Executive Director of the Washington State African American Commission.

His articulation of some of the finer points of issues hurting and disadvantaging the Black community was admired by all, lucky enough to hear his clear explanation.

The killing of affirmative action was one such issue he worked on, And he did a great job of mobilizing the people to resist those trying to kill it.

Tony could always break down complex issues so that every day people could understand what they were fighting for.

and we really appreciated that about him.

I hope that we can, as a council, take some time to observe the legacy of Tony Orange.

I know that he was a friend and mentor to many on this council, as well as many in the community, and I look forward to working with folks in the development of some sort of appropriate and significant recognition of his contributions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold, and thank you for recognizing that additional loss to our community.

May he rest in power, and we send our condolences to his family as well.

Colleagues, any other comments for the good of the order?

Okay, seeing and hearing none, that is the last item of business on our agenda.

Colleagues, we will see each other again in two very short hours at 2 p.m.

this afternoon and look forward to our meeting this afternoon.

Thank you so much.

We are adjourned.