Seattle City Council Briefing 8/17/2020

Good morning, everyone.

The August 17th, 2020 Council briefing meeting will come to order.

The time is 9.31 a.m.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Lewis.

Sorry.

Present.

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Council Member Peterson.

Here.

Council Member Herbold.

Here.

Council President Gonzalez.

Here.

Six present.

Thank you so much, Madam Clerk.

If there is no objection, the minutes of August 10th, 2020 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

President's report, just want to make sure that folks are reminded that consistent with the summer recess schedule established with the council rules, there will be no council briefing or city council meetings.

from Monday, August 24th through Monday, September 7th.

So there will be no council briefing or city council meetings or any committee meetings during that established summer recess schedule.

So the council will resume its regular meetings, including council briefing and city council meetings on Tuesday, September 8th, which is the day after Labor Day.

Okay, so we're gonna go ahead and that's it for me in terms of the President's report.

Happy to answer any questions if folks have questions.

Hearing none, we'll go ahead and move into the presentation on the Transportation Network Company Minimum Compensation Proposal.

We are scheduled to have this presentation until 10.05 a.m., at which time we will transition into Councilmember Reports.

Um, for for later this afternoon and the remainder of the week, so I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to the mayor's office to begin the process of walking us through that presentation.

And I believe deputy mayor, you are going to.

kick us off.

So why don't we go ahead and do a quick round of introductions by our guests, starting with Deputy Mayor Ranganathan, and then we will go down the line, and then we will circle back to the Deputy Mayor to lead us through this presentation.

Good morning, Council Members.

I am Shefali Ranganathan, Deputy Mayor, and I will be kicking off this presentation on the Fair Share Plan.

Good morning, Karen Levitas at the Office of Labor Standards.

I'm the policy lead for the development of the minimum compensation standard.

Good morning, Michael Wright from UC Berkeley, one of the authors of the report that led to this meeting.

Thank you so much.

Rachel?

Hi, Rachel Cicero.

I'm in the innovation and performance team, civic designer, and help to lead the TNC driver outreach.

Thank you so much.

All right, Deputy Mayor, the floor is yours.

Please walk us through this presentation.

Thank you, Council Members.

Good morning once again.

I am very pleased to be at the table, the virtual table, to to begin the conversation about Part 2 of the Mayor Durkin's Fair Share Plan.

As you all may recall, last year, Mayor Durkin, in partnership with the Council, developed the Fair Share Plan, which had two specific components.

Component 1 was a per-ride tax that was implemented in a unanimous vote by Council last year on each transportation network company ride.

And then the second component was the proposal that we're going to be discussing today which is to develop a minimum compensation standard for drivers in who drive for transportation network companies.

Next slide please.

So basically we spent the the the little over a year of working with and you'll hear from the study authors a developing a study to develop a proposal and legislation that will be transmitted to council in the next few weeks on developing a minimum compensation standard.

Rachel will walk you through the outreach and engagement we did with thousands of transportation network company drivers who shared with us their experiences driving for these companies as well as kind of, we also were able to collect a large amount of data on wages that sort of tell a story of what it is to work for transportation network companies and what that means in terms of a wage standard.

So, you know, just in terms of a quick contextual piece, the nature of work is changing and long-term jobs, you know, regular shift jobs are giving way to gig work.

We're seeing it in terms of not just Uber and Lyft, but also with the pandemic, we've seen delivery for food and for groceries and other types of tasks that are being performed by workers who tend to be classified as independent contractors.

So what that means is these drivers, even though their work is controlled in many ways by the companies, they're not subject to minimum wage standards that we have for large employers in the city of Seattle, which is currently a minimum wage, a requirement of $16.39.

And what we've seen through both sort of real world analysis of data that we, drivers shared with us, that after maintenance, insurance, and gas, many Uber and Lyft drivers are not earning the minimum wage.

and they don't receive standard worker protections like workers' compensation or sick leave or health insurance.

And as a result, what we're seeing, next slide please, is that these drivers are really have no understanding of what they will make when they drive for these companies.

And I'll talk a little bit more about the impacts of COVID, but what we're also seeing is the uncertainty around their ability to earn a reliable wage has been exacerbated by COVID.

So just some top lines and we'll go through this proposal in detail in the subsequent slides.

The legislation that will be sent down in a couple of weeks from now will mandate a minimum compensation floor.

So basically what this means is that no driver will be paid less than $16.39 per hour plus reasonable expenses.

As a reminder, in order to work for these companies, these drivers are required to have, obviously, a car that they are able to use to pick up and drop off passengers.

These cars clearly have expenses associated with them, including gas maintenance, cleaning, and other types of expenses.

And so currently, those expenses are not reimbursed by Uber and Lyft.

So essentially, drivers have to dig into their own earnings in order to bear these expenses.

The second component is that drivers will be paid for all their time on the app.

So what that means is that basically when drivers are around circling, so when you pull up your app and you see these little cars on your app moving around, those are drivers waiting to accept a ride.

Currently, those drivers are not paid for that time that they spend circling.

And then finally, the expenses component, which will be embedded into the ordinance will include expenses that are incurred while they operate their car.

And again, as a reminder, they can't work without being able to drive.

And so those obviously those expenses are something that currently are not reimbursed by Uber and Lyft and per this legislation will be required to be reimbursed.

Next slide, please.

Councilmember Strauss, I see that you do have your hand up.

If we can hold questions till the end of the presentation so that we can get through the whole presentation, that'd be great.

Go ahead, Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

All right.

And so just thinking about sort of Even pre-COVID, we had heard from drivers around uncertainty, around the wage they made, and also challenges around their certainty to be able to drive for these companies.

As Council knows, you established a driver resolution center as part of the legislation last year that will help address issues of unfair deactivations.

What we've seen in COVID is demand has significantly dropped.

So for example, in New York, rides have dropped by as much as 84%.

So what that means is that these drivers who already had uncertainty in their ability to make a living wage have seen that further eroded during COVID.

We have seen similar declines in the city of Seattle.

Again, these drivers are frontline workers.

They are operating at risk to themselves.

They are currently helping to transport essential workers in many cases to their jobs.

And they are in situations where they have to be out on the road in their cars in order to do their job.

And currently they don't have access to any protections that other workers have been afforded during COVID-19, including the ability to afford health insurance.

and especially being able to take time off so that they can care for themselves or a loved one because currently right now that would be unpaid time off.

So moving to the next slide.

So it's really important given kind of the circumstances that we've seen with COVID, but as well as just the longer term policy to be able to set a wage floor for these drivers so that they make a living wage.

We wanted to help create a policy that was informed by research and a policy that has the ability to adapt over time and also creates incentives for the companies to to have their drivers spend less time circling and more time with the passenger in the car.

So let's talk a little bit about drive time.

Right now, we have three phases of drive time, phase one, phase two, and phase three.

Phase one is essentially the circling time.

So this is when you open up your app to look for an Uber or Lyft.

You will see drivers circling.

And that time is called P1 time.

So they are logged into the platform.

They're awaiting a passenger.

Currently, drivers are not paid for any of P1 time.

The second phase is P2.

This is the dispatch time.

So basically, once you request a ride and a driver accepts that trip, and they're on their way to come pick you up, that time is known as P2 time.

In the case of, in very few cases and rare exceptions, drivers are not compensated for this time.

So despite the fact that they are driving to pick up a passenger, that time is not paid for by the companies.

The only rare exception is if a customer cancels a trip, there are some instances where the driver is compensated for that time.

And then the final time is the P3 time.

Now, this is when passengers in the car, they are picked up from their location and dropped off at their destination.

And this is the P3 time.

And this is the time that the current compensation structure that are employed by Uber and Lyft compensate drivers for this time.

So now I'm going to hand it over to Karim Levitas with the office of labor standards who's going to talk a little bit about sort of how this policy was developed including the research and the study that was developed to help inform the policy that will be down in council in the next few weeks.

Yeah thank you Deputy Mayor and just One additional point I wanted to add on this slide is that in addition to understanding the phases of time, it's important to sort of keep in mind that a driver cannot be in P3 transporting a passenger, sort of the side of the business that as passengers is most visible.

They cannot do that work without first being in P1 and P2.

It's a necessary component simply to do the job and provide the service that many folks in Seattle and around the country enjoy.

And that's really why we wanted to center providing compensation for all three phases of work in the policy development.

And similarly, the companies themselves both compete and provide their service to customers by ensuring that drivers are available, are able to respond to a ride.

And so if that's sort of a central component of their business and how they provide service to customers, we also felt it was important to ensure that that time was compensated fully.

So with that said, Let me see if I can switch slides and talk at the same time.

I just want to provide a little background on the work that we did.

So as council members will remember, council passed an ordinance last year that set up the study that you'll hear about today.

It required that the city conduct an independent study to do two core things, propose a fair pay standard that includes compensation for expenses and pays drivers for all their time.

So the way that we went about that work is we retained two outside experts, Professor Michael Reich, who's here today, and Professor James Parrott.

Professor Reich is at UC Berkeley and Professor Parrott is at the New School in New York.

And they'll say more about how they conducted their work in just a minute.

And we also took another step.

We knew that in addition to sort of the academic and scientific aspect to looking at this work, it was important to reach out to drivers and talk to them directly to get sort of their direct experience and perspective on the policy development.

And so Rachel Cicero from the Office of Innovation and Performance will say more about that.

Two other just kind of baseline level-setting things I want to lay out for folks is the pay standard that you'll hear proposed today is a four.

It's a minimum guarantee so that drivers don't fall below a certain level.

But drivers can always earn more.

So that's always a possibility.

And then the second thing is that the pay standard, I believe, and our office believes, sort of threads the needle between providing that minimum guarantee and maintaining driver flexibility.

So for example, it does not mandate employment status for drivers, as you've seen in some jurisdictions, notably California.

The TNCs can continue to classify their drivers as they wish.

And there's no restriction on the number of drivers who can become a TNC driver or on their work hours.

So just wanted to sort of level set those core principles.

And with that, I just want to turn it over to Professor Reich to talk a little bit about how he and Professor Parent engaged in their work.

Yeah, thank you, Karen, and it's an honor to be addressing you all.

So our study drew on four different data sets.

They're listed in the slide, but I'll go over them, I guess, in a different order.

First of all, the city data that gave us a picture of trends, the number of drivers, the number of vehicles, the number of trips.

We drew from Census Bureau, U.S. Census Bureau to conduct the American Community Survey, which has enough of a sample in Seattle to identify drivers for whom driving, the way the ACS is set up, it's for looking at people's primary occupation.

not casual drivers, but still told us quite a bit about the demographics of the drivers.

And then we conducted a survey.

We got quite a very high response rate.

And the survey went out to all the drivers in the city's database.

We asked demographic questions, expense questions, what kind of vehicles they had, how long they had been drivers, and the earnings they got from their apps.

I should mention that their hours worked and earnings data don't come from their memory, but from actually consulting companies' apps on the records that were on their smartphones.

And these were all for reference week in early December of 2019, so obviously pre-COVID.

We also had some limited data from the TNCs, a little bit more from Uber, but really they were not very responsive to the request for data.

What we found very briefly, the drivers are more likely to be people of color and immigrants, 47% of them are in households that are below 200% of the federal poverty level.

Over half are either on Medicaid or uninsured.

The other group is getting insurance mainly through spouses.

Half of the drivers work for both companies.

and about half have been driving for over two years, so they're very attached to this job.

One third of the drivers work 32 hours or more, and those drivers provide 55% of the trips.

So although there's a common picture that most of the drivers are casual drivers who are doing this as a kind of side hustle, in fact, most of the work is being done by people who either work full-time, 32 hours or more, or intermediate time, like 20 hours to 32 hours.

A large majority of these drivers rely on driving as their sole source of income.

It's not just a side hustle.

And 83% of the full-time drivers, 75% of the intermediate drivers purchase vehicles primarily to drive for the companies.

So that provides you a picture which I think is a more rounded picture than we have in some of the other publicity about the big drivers.

Next slide, please.

So as Deputy Mayor mentioned, it's really important to understand the expenses the drivers have, that they're not fully paid.

Reimbursed for those expenses now.

And we broke down the expenses into the categories you see on the slide.

acquisition costs, the operating costs, licensing and registration, payroll taxes that have to be paid by independent contractors.

And we went into some detail in here, which I think it's important to know whether the, not just fuel, but insurance, having a cell phone, cleaning the vehicle, on a regular basis.

We provided small but still meaningful allowances for each of those.

And we determined that the average expenses are $11.80 per hour.

That's based on a full-time driver.

And these expenses were calculated for full-time drivers, or rather for drivers who drive 35,000 miles a year, which are certainly full-time drivers.

And then we use that hourly rate as estimated expenses for the part-time and casual drivers as well, since they incur real costs, wear and tear costs on their vehicles, not just fuel costs, even if they're driving 10 hours a week.

The earnings are measured relative to total driver working time, not just the P3 time.

And our result is that drivers gross an average of $21.53 an hour before expenses.

That is to say, that's their gross pay.

If you take out the $11.80 of their average expenses, you get to a little bit below ten dollars as their net pay, well below the city's minimum wage standard.

And of course there are lots of inequalities within the driver workforce.

Some drivers get paid more than average, some get paid less than average, and we find that part-time drivers in particular get paid less than average per hour.

Okay, does that go back to

Eric Komppa, MD OBM, he or hesitates to comment.

So as we know, time not driving equals money not being made for these drivers.

Therefore, we wanted to ensure we created equitable access to opportunities to engage with us during this research.

The five methods you see here are focused on gathering qualitative data to center driver voice and give context or meaning to the more numerical or quantitative data captured in the economic survey.

The first thing we did was intercept interviews, which allowed us to meet drivers where they are.

So how we did this was we actually utilized the community liaison program through the city's Department of Neighborhoods so that community liaisons could meet drivers in language.

These interviews were conducted in eight languages that you see here.

We also conducted roundtables discussions, which provided stakeholder or driver stakeholder organizations to organize their own drivers so that they could share their own unique perspectives of the organization.

Next, we did focus groups, which enabled us to speak to more drivers at once with the ability to follow a line of discussion through a neutral facilitator.

And also a telephone town hall, an emphasis on the telephone because we want, again, did not want to disrupt drivers and wanted them to have an opportunity to engage with us, even if they were maybe taking a break or done for the day.

And lastly, we did an online survey, which was really just to cast a larger net towards the end of our outreach to both validate or invalidate things that we had heard through other methods.

I want to point out that we had heard over 10,400 responses, though these are not unique because drivers had an opportunity to participate in more than one method.

Out of the 33,000 drivers, we think that was a pretty great target for this outreach.

Next slide, please.

So the key findings that we heard throughout the outreach, so the themes that emerged in responses to all methods, the first we heard that overwhelmingly drivers need higher, fairer pay.

So drivers express the ability to earn greater, more consistent pay as being highly desirable.

Factors which we spoke to a little bit in the economic survey as well that contribute to this inadequacy are the high driving costs and expenses, Uncompensated travel times to and from rides, as we spoke to in the different P phases of driving time.

Personal financial pressures, such as housing costs or personal health insurance, also contribute to that.

Second, we heard driver pay is inconsistent and unpredictable.

So driver's ability to operate more flexibly, as is perceived, is severely hindered by the lack of transparencies from TNCs.

As a result, drivers are unable to do things like anticipate earnings in advance, understand the breakdown of a fare for any given ride, have a say in fare or commission structures taken from the TNCs, and also understanding behind the reasoning for often unwarranted deactivations.

And lastly, we heard that drivers really need a safety net.

Due to the high risk of being deactivated from the platform, often suddenly, and the risk of injury from being on the road more often, and sometimes in unsafe conditions, drivers desire some level of protection for those times when they are unable to drive or enforce unemployment.

Drivers spoke to benefits such as paid sick leave, unemployment benefits, or workers' compensation, as they thought that those would help guarantee some access to income during times that they cannot work.

And though legislation may not address these exact benefits, the hope is that the increase in pay standard will help to make building a safety net such as this a more viable option.

Thank you.

Michael, do you want to say a few words about the different components of the pay standard, or should I?

I think I already covered most of that, so it's time.

Let's move on.

I'll just introduce how the proposal is structured.

There's two components to how the mayor's proposal would guarantee a minimum compensation standard for drivers.

One is a time component, so a per minute requirement that drivers must be paid on during trips, and a mileage component, so a per mile component.

And the numbers that you'll see on the next screen are based on the factors that you see on this slide.

So the time is simply the Seattle Schedule 1 minimum wage, the large employer minimum wage.

And the mileage components are all of the elements that Professor Reich, Professor Parrott analyzed and developed a per mile cost number for.

So everything you see on the screen, the cost of acquiring and financing a vehicle, gas, maintenance, and one thing I want to call out in particular is it does include a component for health insurance.

Their report also has a number of additional cost elements, which council asked us to analyze.

So that's available for council to look at in your own policy process.

Those additional items are not in the mayor's proposal, but they are there for analysis.

So, Let me move on to how the minimum pay standard is structured.

As I mentioned, there's a time and a mileage component.

It requires a per minute rate of 56 cents and a per mile rate of $1.17.

These requirements only apply to time and miles traveled during P3 when a driver has a passenger in the car.

Now, we spent quite a bit of time on the front end saying how important it was to pay drivers for all of their time.

So the P3 number is actually increased by the percentage of time when a driver does not have a passenger in the car to make sure they are paid for all of their time.

So to try to explain that a little bit more, if you take the minimum wage rate of $16.39 and divide it by 60 to get a permanent rate, it's not $0.56, it's actually $0.27.

But the pay center then increases that amount to cover the amount of time they don't have a passenger.

It's roughly a factor of two to ensure that they're paid for all of their time.

The same principle applies for the mileage number with slightly different numbers.

And there's a few reasons we do it that way, but the primary one is that drivers are currently paid only for P3.

So we wanted to maintain a similar pay structure so as to avoid confusion for drivers.

And we would hope it would also be a little easier for the TNCs to implement as well.

So that's the core components of how pay should be structured under the mayor's proposal.

I want to spend just a minute talking about what this means in real world terms.

This chart has a number of trips, typical trips that we modeled and indicates the current pay drivers receive and what they should receive for that same trip under the proposed minimum compensation standard.

Just one nuance is that current pay drivers actually make a range depending on their tenure with the company.

Newer drivers make less and legacy drivers make a little more.

We use the legacy numbers, sort of the highest possible pay in this chart.

And I'm not going to run through every item here, but just the top two, Capitol Hill to downtown, we modeled it during pre-COVID rush hour, 12 minutes and 1.4 miles.

Currently, they make about $5.18.

That should go up to about $8.36.

Downtown to the airport, that is done just at an average time, 25 minutes, 14.8 miles.

Current pays about $25.59.

It should go up to $31.31.

Two more trips also modeled at rush hour times, intro downtown trip, and then...

So, with that, Michael, I think you were going to say a couple more words about the impact on driver pay more generally.

You're still on.

Here I am.

Can you hear me now?

Yeah.

So, Very quickly, because I know we're short on time, we estimate that with this pay standard, driver gross pay will increase 30% from about $21.50 an hour to $28.20 an hour.

That means that net pay after expenses will actually go up 60%.

We calculate the gross pay because that's the reflects the increased cost of companies and we wanted to see how much that will affect their business.

But let me before I turn to that let me say that 84 percent of the drivers will receive pay increases.

That is to say that 16 percent are already making over this standard but a very very large majority would see pay increases.

So the The question of what is the effect on the industry?

Well, the important thing to note here is that the companies take about 30% off the top for their commissions.

This is a very high percentage for multi-platform technologies.

it could easily go down to 15% as it already has for delivery companies in Seattle, in New York City, in Los Angeles, San Francisco, in other cities.

And if the companies, which if they neither would want to do this on their own, but if they're both mandated to pay higher pay, they might decide, well, it's better to reduce commission levels.

The commission increase or rather commission decrease to 15 percent would mean that driver I'm sorry passenger fares would go up about five percent and that would have maybe one to two percent at most effect on demand for rides and of course this is all pre-COVID figures so it would really not affect the demand for rides or the the drivers would still be better off.

We estimate that their overall pay would go up about $100 million for the city of Seattle.

And then just to finish, there is another study that a lot of you have heard about that was commissioned by the TNCs.

And I want to emphasize not the differences between ours and theirs, but the similarities.

Both studies indicate that a lot of drivers are being paid less than the pay standard.

And so the pay standard is necessary.

That's the most important conclusion I've been finding in both studies.

and also the other the TNC commission study finds the drivers uh or rather that there is there it doesn't really matter in each of the studies whether you count the full-time drivers a little bit more or the part-time drivers a little more because we find the part-time drivers are paid less than full-time drivers so the TNCs kind of claim that we're spending too much emphasis on the full-time drivers it doesn't really have any impact on what the overall level of driver pay is.

If we had weighted the part-time drivers more, we would actually find a lower current level of pay.

Okay, that's it.

Okay, I know we're very short on time, so I'll just make the last slide very brief.

These are just some additional provisions that we will include in the proposed legislation.

Protection for tips, and no tip credit permitted towards the minimum compensation requirements.

Detailed transparency provisions, so drivers and passengers know what is happening for rides.

And a proposed effective date of January 1st.

we have a lot of work to do.

I will leave it at that.

There is time for any questions.

Thank you so much, folks, for that thorough presentation.

Colleagues, we are short three Councilmembers this morning.

I think that gives us a little bit of a cushion to allow time for some raise your hand or send me a message to let me know if you have a question for our presenters today.

I know that Council Member Strauss had a question.

He's in the queue.

So we'll start off with Council Member Strauss.

And then again, colleagues, if any of you have additional questions, please let me know.

And I see Council Member Lewis has his hand up now as well.

Great.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, President Gonzales.

Thank you to Deputy Mayor Ringanathan, Kareem, Dr. Reich, Thank you for your hard work on this complicated process policy.

We understand that you're transmitting this legislation this month and that Council Member Mosqueda and the president's office is working to find some dates in September with the goal of passing this legislation before the 2021 budget session.

Is that understanding still correct?

That's the plan.

Great, thank you.

And on slide four, I don't know, we don't necessarily need to go back, but I was taking notes as we were going through it as per the Council President's request.

On slide four, mentioning about, there we go.

Thank you, Cree.

Exactly.

Do you know how much more drivers are paying for COVID-related costs at this point, like car cleaning, masks, health care, et cetera?

Or is this a variable that we're still investigating?

We don't.

We know that there is some support from the TNCs related to this, but, you know, Obviously, there are drivers who are doing above and beyond to protect themselves and protect passengers.

And so I don't know if Professor Reich has any insight from New York or if Karen wants anything to add, but we haven't specifically tracked those numbers in the city of Seattle.

Yeah, the, you know, the expense analysis was done pre-COVID.

The only thing I'd add is that we have done driver engagement after, you know, the release of the study and just anecdotally that, you know, drivers have said, you know, that, you know, I'm spending an additional amount on hand sanitizer and gloves and, you know, wiping down the surfaces and that sort of thing.

So there are additional costs.

I can't answer as to sort of, you know, a quantified number that would apply across the board.

I appreciate both of those answers, and I understand this to be a complex piece of policy that we're navigating during uncertain times.

Do you know if we'll be able to have a ballpark figure by September, or is this something that we'll have to continue to adjust and take back the envelope estimates?

Yeah, I don't think we have the capacity to do another sort of research effort that would give us a really clear number, but I think we could do individual driver engagement to try to get just sort of individual driver experience with that and relay that to council members.

That would be possible.

Thank you.

And so this leads right into my only other question, which is on slides nine and 10. Speaking to the stakeholdering that you have done after your proposal was developed, could you share a little bit more about, I just want to clarify, was this outreach done before the development of the proposal or after both?

And will there be any outreach done between now and end of September?

Rachel do you want to talk about the outreach that was done prior and I can follow up on the next piece.

Yes.

So most of the engagements here happened December through March.

So December 2019 through March of this year.

And a lot of it I mean it did go to speaking to the to the policy if that was your question.

Do you mind clarifying for me?

Yeah, so sorry for any confusion there.

I oftentimes find that outreach is done before a policy is developed and sometimes it isn't done once that policy is developed circling back.

I was just hoping to clarify that once that there were, I understand that there was initial outreach and was that outreach then done a second time once the policy draft was completed?

Yeah, I didn't speak to that unless Deputy Mayor, you want to say something, but.

Well, we've done a significant amount of engagement.

We've circled back with both of the two largest TNC companies, Lyft and Uber.

And there's three primary driver groups in Seattle.

And we've engaged with each of them on the contours of the policy proposal.

And we anticipate that that will continue on sort of the technical aspects going forward as well.

Thank you.

Appreciate all of your hard work.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

Just a couple of follow-ups on that before I hand it over to Councilmember Lewis for additional questions.

One of the questions that Councilmember Strauss asked or a line of questioning that he had was with regard to COVID-19 related expenses, specifically to PPE that is now sort of inherent to the business model of Uber and Lyft and other rideshare companies.

So I want to be really clear in my understanding about what's going to be included in the mayor's proposal and what is not going to be included in the mayor's proposal.

So based on, Karim, your answer, it sounds like COVID-19 expenses related to PPE and sort of, you know, dealing with the realities of being in a shared space with other folks outside of your household, that those expenses are not going to be included as part of the mayor's proposal as it's currently structured and will be transmitted to the city council without that component.

I'm not ascribing any sort of ill intent.

I just want to get clear that that's not going to be in there because I have sort of a line of another follow-up question if it isn't going to be included.

So, Council Member, I think your point is exactly, you know, it's fair.

You know, the work that happened was sort of pre-COVID, and we don't have a good estimator of sort of per mile costs on PPE, because as I alluded earlier, you know, it also varies amongst the drivers themselves, right?

There are drivers who are really taking a lot of additional precautions to protect themselves and their passengers.

And so I think that's fair.

We tried to capture, there is a component in the unexpensed side around cleaning, but again, that's the general cleaning of the vehicle.

So it's less about the additional costs associated with PPE.

I appreciate that and my sense is from your responses to Councilmember Strauss's question is that the reason it's not included is because there wasn't sufficient time to do the research and obviously the research period is described by Rachel.

predated by many months the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic.

And so I just want to make sure that we're clear as we're evaluating your proposal that we understand what's not included and that PPE is one of those things that's not included and the motivation as to why it wasn't included.

What I'd like to avoid is heading down a path where we develop some misunderstanding about the motivation of why it wasn't included in the first place.

Which leads me to my next follow-up question, which is, is there willingness amongst the mayor to have ongoing conversations as the city council considers this policy proposal to develop some solution that would address the realities of PPE needs for so long as COVID-19 exists.

If there is, I would be interested in having those conversations with you folks about sort of thinking through what some potential solutions might be, and it would be helpful to me just to hear from you all offline, unless you're ready to describe now, what considerations you considered but weren't prepared to propose at this juncture.

So I can say at a high level, yes.

I think we'll have to sort through, as Karim alluded, there were some capacity constraints, but I also think we need to understand What role, if any, the companies are playing in providing their drivers with PPE, that's not clear.

So we can circle back to your office with some options for consideration.

That's great.

And I was thinking of that initially as sort of some companies have begun the process of providing PPE to their drivers and other employees.

And so I was just hoping to be able to queue up a conversation with you all about what that might look like in terms of baking in a solution to this policy.

Thank you for that opportunity to continue to have conversations around that particular issue, which I think is a shared concern amongst all of us.

I really appreciate that.

Hand it over now to Councilmember Lewis.

There you are.

I see you now.

And then colleagues, if any of you have any questions, please shoot me a message or raise your hand and I'm happy to call on you.

Councilmember Lewis, please.

Thank you so much, Madam President.

So, you know, I think this is all great.

I'm really glad that we're jumping into setting this really critical floor to make this a more equitable corner of our economy that has really been extremely challenging for a lot of the drivers doing this work for a very long time and this is all really great work and I look forward to it.

So much so that my question is about looking forward to continuing this work and extending it to other portions of the app-based economy that goes beyond the rideshare companies but extends to companies that are doing Deliveries and other forms of app based labor.

And I wonder, I think this is a question mostly for the academics on the panel.

Looking forward to taking on work in those segments of the economy, which have gotten even bigger during the COVID epidemic as people or pandemic as people are ordering more of these groceries and food and other things to try to maintain social distancing.

What do you envision from this work would be applicable to those sectors of the economy as well?

And where do you think there's additional questions that we would want to answer moving into set minimum pay standards and benefit standards in those other app-based sectors of the economy as well?

Yeah, shall I jump in on that?

It's an excellent question and a good point.

Uber Eats, its delivery division now generates more revenue for Uber than Uber driving, the TNC part of Uber does.

So clearly there's been an amazing reversal.

It's not easy to answer your question because we have very little data about DNC, meaning delivery network companies, my intuition is that like the TNCs, the demand fluctuates enormously over the course of the day.

Obviously dinner time for takeout is much more of a peak and earlier morning times or mid-afternoon are probably less needed.

I think on the whole There are more DNC companies and the drivers for those companies, at least in the past, drove less per week than they did for TNCs.

I would note that RubHub, which is I think the biggest such company, I'm sure it operates in Seattle, was just acquired by a European company that actually works on an employee model and that charges about 13 or 14% commission.

So I would think the minimum pay standard should work in the same way, more or less in the same way for the DNCs, but that's a guess, absent these kind of solid data.

It's a newer industry, you've got lots more turnover in it probably, and so, you know,

I think it is important for us to understand what that means and what it is like.

Thank you, Dr. Wright.

Go ahead.

If I can only quickly add to that, OLS has been doing some work more broadly around the gig economy, including delivery companies and obviously building on some of the work that counsel did earlier this year with both the premium pay as well as paid And our intention is, as Dr. Wright said, I think there's a lot of, there was a much stronger understanding of the TNC business model, and which is why we started there.

But I think there's opportunities to use this policy to then be a building block for other sectors of the gig economy, where we know that these workers are both independent contractors and are lacking basic worker protection.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor and Director for that additional information.

Any other questions from my colleagues?

Council Member Herbold, please.

You're working on that mute button.

I see you.

I see you working on it.

Thank you so much.

Multiple screens up.

Yes, in response to the question from Councilmember Lewis and the Deputy Mayor Reganathan's response, I just want to, and I'm happy to share it with folks.

I think it was in late 2017, the council passed Resolution 31863, and this specifically asked for a set of recommendations from OLS, as well as the Labor Standards Advisory Committee, specifically on gig employment.

And it was more focused on this question around misclassification, but the recommendations that came out last year, which is what I'm offering to share with folks, there is a report out of OLS where they deal with a lot of these issues, specifically around less about regulation around basic pay standards, but more around transparency, that people have a right to know what they're going to get paid.

They have a right to know what their tip and service charge policies are in the payment schedule.

They have a right to know the rate or rates of pay for the contractor, So it's a recommendation to require these employers to, in advance of employment, provide disclosure of the employee's rights.

And so I'd be happy to share that.

This is an area.

that I have long felt that the council needs to be more broadly engaged in instead of, I mean, I really appreciate and value our efforts sort of sector by sector, but I think there are some larger issues that cross all sectors in the gig economy, you know, outside of domestic workers, outside of TNC drivers.

So I look forward to working with the executive and OLS and the Labor Standards Advisory Council on that as well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Colleagues, any other questions about this anticipated proposal?

I am scanning the virtual room and it does not appear that council members have any additional questions.

I had one quick question and we don't need to pull the presentation back up since you just took it down.

Really quickly, there was a reference to and a lot of analysis in the presentation about the calculation of the per hour earnings, the hourly earnings that we saw.

And there was a constant reference to it was that dollar amount per hour minus expenses.

And I just want to, I think it's important for the public record to just define once again really quickly what was included in expenses.

that is deducted from that estimated average hourly wage?

And then if you could answer the second question, which is, is there anything besides those expenses that we know also comes out of that per hour average of earnings?

I think that's directed to me.

So the expenses are pretty well detailed on that slide that Karen just put up.

Thank you.

And then there's an even more detailed list in Appendix 2 of the report.

And it lists not only what the individual items are, but how much they are annually, weekly, and per mile.

And they include vehicle registration costs, motor vehicle excise tax, annual vehicle inspection, state business license, city business license, as well as the vehicle acquisition, gas, maintenance, insurance, cell phone, and cleaning.

And in each of those, we had to make some choices like, well, how often does a vehicle need to be cleaned and so forth?

And that's behind these numbers.

But they're all documented as well as we can.

I should say that one of the largest elements is vehicle acquisition.

And you can think of this as also that any driver, even if they already have a car, if they're adding miles to the car, they're going to have to replace the car sooner than they would if they weren't driving for TNC.

went around a lot of different ways to estimate what those costs are.

And we used financing.

You could use leasing costs.

You could use depreciation allowances in the Internal Revenue Service allowance, $0.57 a mile.

We came up to, I think, with $0.52 a mile.

And whichever, I think we went about it quite conservatively.

The expenses might be some more.

And of course, you could say that some of the really casual drivers might not even incur these expenses in a meaningful amount, but I still think it's worth allowing them to be reimbursed for their small expenses.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

I just contributed to that appendix, too, and to exhibit 28 in our report.

I appreciate that reference.

I wanted to make sure that we had an opportunity to hear you say it out loud because not many members of the public are going to go to the appendix and the footnotes to read these granular details.

We will on the council because we're policy nerds at heart.

But not uh, not every member of the public is gonna um, you know go into that level of granular detail in the report So I appreciate you taking the time to just walk us through through that and I think that the the the important takeaway for me as I reflect on your reiteration of those points is that the estimate that is included in the mayor's proposal is our Best estimate available to us right now based on the research that we have available to us.

I'm hearing from you that you took a conservative approach to come up with those hourly average hourly earning numbers, meaning that that, you know, we could have been a little bit more aggressive in terms of discounting associated expenses from that average, but we chose not to do that.

in this context.

And then lastly, that there may be categories of other expenses that we may have just not been able to capture because of the lack of available information and willingness of the ride-share companies to share more information with us, leaving us to doing the best we can capture information from enough drivers to be able to come up with our own conclusions.

And I highlight this because I think that that hourly number is obviously where the crux of the policy issues are, and I think it's important for us all to have a good understanding of how You all came up with some of those data points as the council prepares to, after recess, to dig into the granular details of the policy proposal being made by the mayor.

Did I misstate anything or does anything have to be clarified based on my takeaways?

I would just add that our questions about costs and our investigation were much more comprehensive than what TNCs list when they look at expenses.

The study that was commissioned by the TNCs is a much shorter list of what's included in expenses.

For example, I don't think they talk about cell phones and cell plans or vehicle cleaning and so forth.

So while I'd say ours is conservative, it's still, it is trying to capture all the costs.

And the list comes from talking to drivers.

and both in New York City where we first did this kind of cost modeling and hearing from Seattle drivers as well.

Great, thank you.

Appreciate that.

Any other comments from folks, from our guest presenters?

Deputy Mayor, I don't know if you want to make any closing remarks before we close out this portion of the agenda.

I just said we're looking forward to transmitting the proposal.

There is a lag simply because we have to resolve some technical elements related to the legislation itself.

So we're working on that.

And then Council Member, I just want to again, once again, acknowledge your point around PPE costs.

So we'll be circling back with your office and kind of how to be thinking about that and what additional work we need to do with the companies to get a better understanding of what they are, what they may potentially be covering as this policy is developed and transmitted.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate that follow-up.

Okay, colleagues, I think that concludes our presentation on the TNC proposed legislation that the Council will be receiving later this month before we begin our policy work on it.

I want to thank Deputy Mayor and the presenters, both Rachel and Karim and also Dr. Reich from for giving us this presentation this morning.

Really appreciate all of your hard work.

Obviously, there was a lot of hard work that went into play in this presentation before it got to us and in the underlying policy.

Look forward to, as I'm sure all of my colleagues do, look forward to digging into the details once we get the actual legislation and look forward to the legislative process that will unfold related to this particular issue.

So thank you all for being with us and really appreciate it.

We are going to move on through our agenda and you are all, of course, welcome to leave the meeting and go about your other city business.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Have a good day.

You too.

Okay, folks, we're going to go ahead and continue through our agenda for today.

We're going to move into presentation of council members preview of today's city council actions, council and regional committees.

I'll call on council members as established by the rotative roll call for city council meetings.

This week's roll call rotation begins with council member Strauss.

Then we'll hear from council members Herbold, I will turn it over to Lewis and Morales and then Peterson and then I will close out the meeting just as a reminder Councilmember Sawant and Mosqueda are excused both from Council briefing and City Council for today.

So first up is Councilmember Strauss.

Please take it away.

Thank you, Council President.

The Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee has five appointments all to the Seattle Design Commission on Introduction and Referral Calendar today.

There are also four items from the land use and neighborhoods committee on today's full Council agenda Council bills 119847848849 which are landmarks designations for the Canterbury court.

U-Dub's Engineering Annex and the Roy View Apartments.

Council Bill 119831, which is the Child Care Near You Ordinance, provides incentives and eases land use barriers for the development of child care facilities.

This is my first bill that I developed here at Council, which we started working on in January.

As you can tell, land use bills take a very long time because of the public notice and public input requirements.

And this bill simply changes the conditional permit aspect of childcare facilities.

So there remains a primary permitting process and state licensing to ensure that facilities are cited correctly and constructed and operate within our regulations to ensure that childcare is provided in a quality setting.

I will speak more to this bill at full Council and just to say that this is just one step in many different action items that we need to take to make child care affordable and accessible to Seattleites.

I want to thank Lish, Noah, Ketel, and Allie for all your help on this.

The next meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee is on September 9th starting at 930 a.m.

There are five items on the agenda, a briefing and public hearing on the comprehensive plan amendments, which were docketed last year, a briefing and public hearing on the resolution for the comprehensive plan, and a post-adoption public hearing on the floodplain regulation that we as council adopted last month.

There will also be a vote on CB 119827, which rezones a land in the Rainier Beach area for affordable housing, and a briefing from SDCI on legislation they will be And lastly, a briefing from SDCI on legislation they will be transmitting to extend the emergency changes we made this year to the design review process in regards to virtual meetings.

I did receive a report from them last week that they have started doing virtual meetings for the design review process.

It does take an additional staff member who runs the meeting behind everyone else who's already conducting their business, much like we have here.

We have our IT team.

Thank you, Bryn, Ian, Eric, Sun.

I'm hoping I didn't miss anyone just off the top of my head.

IT teams are important to ensure that people like Council President can continue running the meetings.

Next, I do want to just briefly speak to Chief Best.

Chief Best's retirement is a tremendous loss to our city.

Our actions here at City Council were not intended to be personal, and we absolutely value her work.

It's clear that the intent was not the impact that was felt.

And when the policy is viewed in a vacuum, we oftentimes miss the software variables, which are critical to this work.

Our actions were never intended to be personal, and my actions were never intended to be personal.

And I am sorry for that.

Next, here in District 6, we continue to have District 6 resident meetings.

With council recess beginning next week, we will put a pause on our resident meetings.

I have resident meetings every week, and district meetings will pick up again in September.

Last week, I spoke to District 6 residents about public safety at Ballard Commons, Leary Triangle, and the Everspring Hotel, and we are currently working on all three sites.

In regards to small businesses, I was working with small businesses on Ballard Avenue in the farmers market in regards to our cafe streets.

I believe we are very close to having consensus on how we as a neighborhood can move forward on this proposal.

I know that there are proposals occurring in other parts of our city already.

Lastly, on the scooters bill, I will be shepherding the mayor's scooter bill forward later this week.

I still have many concerns about how a scooters program can work in Seattle.

And I also understand that we've had an academic conversation about this for a very long time, I believe about 18 months.

We need to try this with a pilot to actually understand if scooters are appropriate in Seattle.

And we need to do this before the rain and darkness returns.

And this is why it's important that we move forward this week.

If we try this and it doesn't work, then we can pull it back and we can stop.

But we need to move forward with this now to answer the academic questions outside of the vacuum of policy and test the program in real life.

Thank you, Council President, that is my report.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Any comments or questions for Council Member Strauss?

hearing none, we will move down the roll call list to Council Member Herbold, please.

Thank you so much, and good morning, everybody.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss, for your remarks regarding the resignation of Chief Carmen Best.

I really appreciate your remarks this morning, as well as last week, and the fact that I believe every Councilmember issued a statement, either alone or in concert with other Councilmembers, is really a strong indication of the import of this decision that the Chief has made.

And shows the fact that we are, we are recognizing the fact that regardless of our intent.

to personalize our policy issues, that the reception of our recommendations may be different than our intent.

And again, I just want to say, I know that councilmembers feel different, but we all I think really understand the significance of this action and the significance to our communities, particularly our black and brown communities in the city.

As far as items on the full council agenda today, I have an appointment to the Community Police Commission.

The appointment is LaRon Baker.

This is a CPC appointment, meaning the CPC is the appointing authority.

And it is specifically to the position that is designated for public defense.

This is a specific category for the CPC to appoint in the accountability legislation adopted by the council in 2017. Just for background, the other positions that the CPC appoints to in addition to public defense, one is civil liberties, another is SPOG, and the other is SPMA, the Seattle Police Management Association.

LaRon's background and qualification to fill this public defense position are exceptional.

She works as special counsel for affirmative litigation and policy at the King County Department of Public Defense.

In this role, she spearheads DPD's inquest program and represents families who have lost loved ones to police violence in inquest proceedings.

She has 10 years of civil rights and civil liberties litigation and policy experience, having previously served in the General Civil Rights Unit of the State Attorney General's Office and the ACLU.

Also served as counsel in the landmark True Blood versus DSHS case, and has worked on successful voting rights and immigrant rights cases, religious accommodations, and cases related to religious accommodations for inmates.

I'm really excited that the Council will have the opportunity to confirm her as a new member of the Community Police Commission today.

Also, today's full Council meeting, we will be hearing and voting on Council Bill 119840. This is a bill co-sponsored with Council Member Morales, the MeChance Dunlap-Gittins Youth Rights Ordinance.

This ordinance prohibits law enforcement officers from questioning, except in limited circumstances, people who are 18 years of age or younger, where a Miranda warning is administered, unless they've spoken with the Department of Public Defense.

We've received letters of support as it relates to this ordinance from the Community Police Commission, the Seattle Office of Civil Rights on behalf of the Human Rights Commission, the elected district attorney, that's the prosecuting attorney of San Francisco, Chelsea Bowden.

Patricia Lee, who's the Managing Director for the Juvenile Division of the San Francisco Public Defender's Office.

And then we received a letter of support from community signed by a whole bunch of different organizations, including Creative Justice, Community Passageways, Choose 180, Decriminalize Seattle, Team Child.

the Northwest Community Bail Fund, the Washington Defender Association, the Urban League, Youth Care, ACLU of Washington, the Mockingbird Society, Columbia Legal Services, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and more.

King County Council is considering a similar bill, and that bill is before their full council this week after a July 22nd committee vote recommending passage of 4-1.

The council received from central staff over the weekend, or maybe it was Friday, a memo from the law department.

I just want to clarify first that, before responding to it, that my email last night responding to that memo from the law department may have inadvertently implied that central staff did not request the law department to review the latest version of the bill.

That was completely unintended.

I wrote that the law department memo included analysis on language in the 5-1 bill.

This is a reference to the analysis related to the private right of action that is not included in this bill before us today.

The CAO memo that was sent to us on Friday also didn't address a couple of the other additional changes in the bill before us today, so I just want to very quickly speak to them.

The CAO memo referenced the impact on prosecutions that could result in dismissal or exclusion of evidence.

Just want to clarify that we included a specific section G to the newest version of the ordinance that specifically clarifies that failure to comply with the ordinance does not at all affect the admissibility of any evidence in court.

So the ordinance itself has no bearing on what evidence can be admitted into court.

And so that particular change also impacts some of the questions around preemption of the Juvenile Justice Act of 1977, the clarification that the language around admissibility of evidence in court addresses some of the issues that there may have been some concern around the Juvenile Justice Act of 1977. And finally, again, the reference to the private right of action in the memo that we received over the weekend, this particular bill does not contemplate a specific designated enshrined right of private lawsuit for failure to to adhere to the law in this version of the bill.

The sponsors of the bill removed this section due to concerns that we had received from the city attorney's office.

Moving on to other items related to the Public Safety and Human Services Committee, I think folks are aware that on Friday, the Community Police Commission The Inspector General and the Office of Police Accountability all sent reports to the Council regarding the use of crowd control weapons as requested in the Council legislation adopted on June 15th.

District Court Judge Robart approved a temporary restraining order.

on implementation of the council's ordinance that was requested by the U.S.

Department of Justice due to the 2012 consent decree.

And this temporary restraining order was extended to September 18th.

And we, in our ordinance, we requested that these three accountability ordinances, accountability bodies, as mentioned, the CPC, the Inspector General, and OPA, would give us their input on the recommendations, but also that they would send that input to Judge Robart.

New information that folks may be interested to learn is that the council will be represented by separate outside counsel in the case before Judge Robart.

During the oral hearing a couple weeks ago, he raised significant concerns about conflicts in the city attorney's office participating both in the defense of the ordinance, given the city attorney's previous arguments.

So the court has laid out a process for the Department of Justice to file a motion for preliminary injunction by August 27th with a city response due to The court on September 8th with any Department of Justice reply due by September 11th.

This is intended to allow the court to address this before September 18th.

Also, keep in mind that completely separate from the city's ordinance, Black Lives Matter and the ACLU requested a temporary restraining order that the court approved back on June 13th that limits the use of crowd-controlled devices in protests.

The city agreed to extend a preliminary injunction limiting the use of crowd control devices through September 30th.

And a week ago, I agreed to expand this still further to limit the use of chemical irritants or projectiles, and specifically called out a prohibition on use against journalists, legal observers, and medics, and specified that declaring a riot does not exempt the city from its obligation under the order.

Going back to the recommendations of the three accountability bodies on our ordinance, it's important to recognize that their recommendations come from different perspectives in line with their responsibilities as accountability bodies.

The OPA recommendations partially come from the perspective of reviewing the complaints filed.

The Office of the Inspector General really focuses on the structural issues in the police department's policies as compared to other law enforcement agencies.

And the CPC's perspective focuses in part on the effect of policing policies on the community's trust.

The issues raised regarding the council's ordinance from these three accountability bodies include the use of these devices in situations where there are no issues of crowd control, as well as the use of these devices during crowd control.

All three bodies note support for allowing the use of some lethal The ordinance as written defines the use of irritants and projectiles as crowd control devices no matter how they are used.

There is a definitional issue with the construction of the ordinance itself.

It basically posits that all of these weapons are crowd So the thing to just keep in mind is that the OPA and the OIG both propose reauthorizing the limited use of crowd control devices during crowd control situations when violence is present.

The Office of the Inspector General indicates that any reauthorization should be accompanied by changes in policy and training to reduce risk of harm to nonviolent protesters.

And the OPA proposes conditions to minimize use.

According to the current timeline laid out by Judge Robar, we can expect to hear from the court by September 18th.

But again, given the late date of these recommendations, I believe we're going to be looking to get a little bit more time before we are required to submit our motion to the court.

Just a couple other items just want to share related to recommendations out of King County Public Health related to wearing masks during hot weather.

There are recommendations for preventing coronavirus during hot weather like we are experiencing.

Wearing a face covering, of course, is a key measure to prevent the spread of COVID.

But in hot weather, wearing one can also contribute to overheating.

So the recommendation is to avoid spending time in hot indoor and outdoor spaces where you also need to wear a face covering.

If you're in a public place and need to wear a face covering, take a safely distanced mask break.

if you're getting too hot and uncomfortable.

Make sure you go outside and are distanced from others by at least six feet when you're taking your mask break.

Remove your covering, your facial covering to breathe and cool down and put the mask back on before returning to the venue or activity where the mask is required.

Lastly, there is going to be a free mask distribution event coming up on Thursday, August 20th.

You can pick up free masks in the Rainier Beach neighborhood and that goes from 1 to 5 p.m.

This is for King County residents and it's a drive-through pickup event.

Interested King County residents can enter at the parking lot entrance and tell the staff person the number of individuals in the household and pick up some masks.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Really appreciate your report on that consent decree stuff.

I just wanted to clarify that a potential request for an extension would be related.

that we have been as a city council required to get new counsel and that counsel came to us literally last week on Wednesday.

Our legal counsel needs an opportunity to catch up in order to provide us with a fair opportunity to respond.

that colleagues understand what the motivation would be for asking for a potential extension in the event that you receive any inquiries from your constituents or other members of the public.

Is that a fair characterization, Council Member Hurbold?

Thank you very much for that clarification.

Very helpful.

Appreciate it.

OK, thank you.

And of course, we have the reports that came from OPA, CPC, and OIG.

We all have an opportunity to dig deeper into those reports and to reach out to each of the entities for questions, briefing, any other information we might need in the interim between now and the court proceedings to get clarification.

Colleagues, you are all welcome to reach out, too.

I would like to suggest that if you have questions about any three of the reports that we work in coordination with my office Catalog any questions that folks might have about the reports so that we can get those questions over to to the accountability entities Accordingly councilmember herbal.

Does that does that sound like an okay process for you?

I

Yeah, in the absence of being able to invite folks to do a briefing in briefings, given our recess and given the timing, I think having some sort of a coordinated process to collect and receive answers to questions that council members may have is wise.

Okay, thank you, I appreciate that.

And we'll look to you and your office to take the lead on getting us coordinated in that fashion.

And we'll also work to follow up with each of you in terms of next steps related to the court proceeding.

I do wanna say sort of setting aside the technical procedural items that I just finished discussing, I do wanna say that I appreciate the accountability partners hard work in this space and the production of their reports consistent with the court's order.

I also want to say that I believe that this is exactly how the accountability system was intended and designed to work.

And so I appreciate the fact that they are taking a hard look from their particular lens through their particular statutory obligation in the accountability ordinance and that they are providing voice about their concerns and their subject matter expertise is coming to bear through these reports and the conclusions that they've provided to us.

And I believe that the council will find that kind of feedback loop to be very, and to be effective in shaping how we move forward here next.

So really do appreciate all the hard work that the accountability entities, all three of them, did through the end of last week and look forward to continuing cooperation there.

Colleagues, any other questions or comments for Council Member Herbold on her report?

All righty.

Hearing none, we're going to go ahead and go down the line of the roll call.

We are going to hear from Council Member Lewis next.

Thank you, Madam President.

There are no items on this afternoon's busy agenda from the Select Committee on Homelessness Strategies and Investments.

I do want to flag that I had been talking to some folks on the floor about we are looking at potentially having a committee meeting this Wednesday to just do a little bit of communication with the public about some of the potential strategies with our the void of the navigation team leaving.

I believe some of those strategies were, well, I don't believe, I know, some of those strategies were mentioned very ably in an editorial in the Seattle Times recently by Allison Isinger and Chloe Grace discussing the work that Reach and others have been doing to provide outreach.

to our neighbors experiencing homelessness and living in unsanctioned encampments.

Instead of doing a committee meeting, just given that we're gearing up here to go on recess, I will be doing instead a town hall on Wednesday afternoon that will start at 3.30.

I can announce now that I will be joined by Colleen Echohawk, Sharon Lee, Allison Isinger and Chloe Grace to have a conversation about some of the strategies and partnerships we might look at developing in the fall to replace the outreach and other services that have been provided by the I will be having that town hall.

Members of the Council are certainly I really look forward to those exchanges and think that it'll be good opportunity to for members of the public to hear an extended discussion about how we might be able to change some of our outreach practices and how that can be.

I will send out details hopefully before the end of this morning on setting up that town hall.

Otherwise, I don't have any updates this morning.

Beyond that, certainly looking forward to having a little bit of time during recess to prepare for the fall budget we are going to finish some projects before we go off to recess.

Thank you so much.

related to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority and our interest in entering into the Association of Washington City's Employee Benefit Trust.

Is that a matter you intend to address this afternoon?

Oh, yes.

Thank you for reminding me of that.

Yes, I would just say more broadly, too, that looking forward this week, we do have one last King County Regional Homelessness Authority meeting before we go off on recess.

And I do look forward to taking up that resolution this afternoon, as well as attending that meeting this Thursday.

the board of health meeting this Thursday as well which I don't believe has been canceled so I look forward to that as well.

Thank you for reminding me of the opportunity to address those.

Okay, hearing none, I would say that I think the resolution this afternoon is pretty non-controversial.

It's just another step in moving us forward on this regionalized effort around addressing the systems issues related to our regional response to homelessness.

I look forward to supporting that resolution this afternoon.

Okay, next up is Council Member Morales, please.

Thank you, Council President.

Good morning, colleagues.

I will be brief.

There are no items from the Community Economic Development Committee on tonight's, this afternoon's agenda, but I do have two items on the calendar this afternoon.

Council Bill 119840, the My Chance Dunlap Gittens Bill that Council Member Herbold I do want to thank Councilmember Herboldt for co-sponsoring.

We also have Council President Gonzalez, Councilmember Lewis, and Councilmember Sawant is also co-sponsoring this, so thank you to everyone.

We'll discuss that more this afternoon.

The other item is Council Bill 119859, which would delay for one year the effective date of a heating oil tax that was adopted by Council in 2019. The intent of the original ordinance was to tax heating oil to accelerate the rate of conversion from oil heat to electric heat pump systems.

In response to community feedback about the impacts of the tax on low-income and middle-income households, particularly during COVID, the Office of Sustainability and the Environment is proposing that we delay implementation of that tax for one year.

So that's what we'll be talking about this afternoon.

There is also an amendment to the bill which would require some reporting about the impacts of the rulemaking process and its effect on low-income and middle-income communities, community members.

So I will talk a little bit more about that as well this afternoon.

Last week I participated in the Washington Low-Income Housing Alliance statewide call to discuss our amendment to end funding for the navigation team.

There were advocates on the call from across the state and many of them were looking for more information on how we do that as they are in their own communities looking to shift resources away from police departments and into service providers in their community who do street outreach and case management and shelter referrals.

So a lot of interest from folks around the state on that.

Similar to Councilmember Strauss, we are pausing our weekly constituent calls over the next two weeks during recess, and we will schedule those again beginning in September.

I think that is all I have for right now.

Thank you.

Great, thank you so much Council Member Morales.

Any questions or comments on that report?

Hearing none, we'll go ahead and hear from Council Member Peterson.

Council Member Peterson, please.

Thank you, Council President.

Good morning, colleagues.

On today's City Council agenda, I have several items related to the Transportation Utilities Committee.

As I mentioned last week, these are non-controversial items put directly onto the full Council agenda.

They're items four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14. While item 15 is also non-controversial, I'll be pulling it and referring it to the Tuck Committee so that Seattle City Light can be available to answer questions.

I also have item 25, which is a mayoral reappointment of economist Chris Mefford to the City Light Review Panel.

I support his appointment as well.

Central staffers provided three memos on the various non-controversial items.

I recirculated their memos on Friday, so please take a look at that email.

Contact Calvin Chow and Central staff if you have any final questions on this item so we can hopefully approve them today at full council.

At this afternoon's council meeting, we also can approve the resolution I mentioned a couple weeks ago to voice our support for the important national effort to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.

That's federal bill HR 7120, introduced by Congresswoman Karen Bass, Democrat from California, and supported by Seattle's congressional delegation, Pramila Jayapal and Adam Smith.

This federal bill addresses many concerns raised by protesters that are authorized by federal law, such as the need to restrict qualified immunity for police officers across the nation.

Our resolution 31963 was reviewed by our Office of Intergovernmental Relations.

I'd like to thank Malik Davis on my staff and Dan Eater on central staff for working on this resolution.

In addition, I'll be chairing a Transportation and Utilities Committee this Wednesday, August 19, at 9.30 AM, which will be fairly busy.

It will include SDOT legislation that Vice Chair Dan Strauss will be sponsoring to launch the electric scooter pilot project that you mentioned.

That is both Council Bill 119867 and Council Bill 119868. And that's all I have.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

I understand from my staff that you requested the presence of Council Central staff analyst Calvin Chow, who is on the line.

So I'd like for you to queue up that conversation.

Council Member Calvin Chow, Council Central staff, I was just available if there were any questions.

I don't have any prepared remarks.

Okay.

Council Member Peterson, anything else that you'd like Calvin Chowdhury to specifically address as it relates to the various items that you have listed on this afternoon's agenda?

No, we just wanted him available because there are so many items.

They've got very long titles, but a lot of them are just transferring small bits of property or easements to the city of Seattle.

But because there were so many items, just wanted him available in case there were questions.

Colleagues, any questions for Calvin on any one of the bills on the agenda?

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Council President.

I would ask, thank you, Chair Peterson for bringing, requesting Calvin to join us today.

I would ask our colleagues if folks do have concerns or questions about the scooters bill that might be addressed now or that we ensure that we get those questions into Calvin as soon as possible.

As I noted, we've been having this academic discussion for so long that we are at a point where going into council recess will be needing to make, the city will be needing to make some decisions.

And so ensuring that your questions are answered in a timely fashion is very important.

I think what I'm hearing is a call to council members for any questions specifically related to the bill about scooter mobility.

Are there any questions for Calvin related to that bill?

I'm not seeing or hearing any.

Colleagues, if you do have questions about that bill, I'm hearing from Council Member Strauss based on his remarks that it is his strong that those questions and concerns be lifted up with Calvin before our two o'clock meeting.

And since he has expressed some strong interest in that bill, I'm assuming he'd also like to encourage you all to reach out to him in the event that you do have concerns or questions about that bill.

And obviously the Chair of Transportation and Utilities Committee is also available.

Is that an accurate characterization of your interest, Council Member Strauss?

You focused my remarks in a very excellent way.

Thank you, Council President.

Exactly on the nail on the head.

I'm trying to make you all proud as your council president by getting to it.

So I appreciate it.

Any questions, colleagues?

OK, thank you so much, Calvin.

Thanks for being on the line.

You're welcome to hang up and go about your day.

And please do let council members Strauss or Peterson know if there are any questions or last-minute concerns that arise as a result of the scooter bill or any of the other legislative items related to the Transportation Utilities Committee.

Thanks for being with us this morning, really appreciate it.

Okay, any other comments or questions for Councilmember Peterson?

Hearing none, I'll go ahead and quickly go through my report.

Colleagues, of course, there's no Governance and Education Committee meeting for this month.

Our regularly scheduled Governance and Education Committee meeting would have occurred, I believe, during recess, so we will Not be doing that on today's introduction referral calendar.

We have a number of proposed new appointments and one reappointment.

I will address the reappointment that is related to the family's education, preschool and promise levy oversight.

Committee, and we also have on the introduction referral calendar materials for the reconfirmation of Dwayne Chappelle as the director of the Department of Education and Early Learning.

I want to thank all of you who submitted questions for The consideration of the reappointment and reconfirmation of Director Chappelle, those questions have been answered and are included in the appointment package that is now posted publicly in Legistar and available on the introduction and referral calendar in particular for this afternoon.

Again, my staff has shared those materials directly with members of the Governance and Education Committee, but for those of you who are not on the Governance and Education Committee, they are publicly accessible now.

And if you have any questions, any of you may reach out to Vy Nguyen in my office.

We hope to be able to take up the appointments for the Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy Oversight Committee and the reappointment of Director Chappelle.

We hope to be able to take all of those matters up after recess on Tuesday, September 8th.

So please do get us any questions or concerns.

about any of those education-related appointments and reappointments before then would really appreciate it.

For today's full council, I have two items from the Governance and Education Committee.

Both are appointments to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission.

One is a mayoral appointment, that is Judith Tobin, and the other is a city council appointment, that's Hardeep Singh Reki.

Judy and Hardeep both bring a lot of knowledge and expertise with them.

Hardeep is being listed as a new appointment only because he is being put forward by the city council.

He has been serving on the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission as a mayoral appointee, but we are switching him over to a council appointment at this juncture.

I will say more about both of these candidates this afternoon, but look forward to your support of these appointments to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission.

Also on this afternoon's agenda is a resolution that is brought forward by Councilmember Juarez regarding next steps on the LID assessments and appeals related to the waterfront.

I am required to say a whole bunch of legalese right now, which I know Councilmember Strauss can appreciate as the land use chair.

So I'm about to hit you with some quasi-judicial lingo.

So again, colleagues, City Council rules for quasi-judicial proceedings state that the matter of an appeal of an individual's final assessment for a local improvement district is pending when the hearing examiner has filed the recommendation on the final assessment rule.

with the city clerk.

In this instance, the council made the matter pending earlier than required in the rules in July 2018, coinciding with the first day of the public hearing on the formation of the Waterfront LAD.

It will remain a quasi-judicial matter until the final termination of all judicial appeals of the council decision on the final assessment role for the Waterfront LAD.

While this matter is pending as a quasi-judicial action before Council, no member of the City Council may engage in any ex parte communication.

This means that Council members may not have any direct or indirect communication with a proponent, opponent, or party of record about the merits of a particular assessment outside a Council hearing or meeting considering the Waterfront LID.

The Council may not approve the final assessment role for the Waterfront LID without reviewing and deciding upon appeals of the hearing examiner's recommendation on the final assessment role.

According to RCW 35.44.070 and Seattle Municipal Code 20.04.091, Both require the council to hear any appeals from the recommendation of the hearing examiner on the final assessment role for local improvement districts.

Council rules also state that the council may delegate the appeal review to a committee and the committee would then make a recommendation to the full council.

And the resolution that we are going to consider this afternoon related to the waterfront LID It provides that the council's intention to refer the appeals to the public, that the, excuse me, the resolution we are considering this afternoon will provide that the council intends to refer any appeals to the Public Assets and Native Communities Committee.

So the resolution we will be considering at this full council meeting this afternoon at two o'clock delegates temporary authority to the city clerk to meet the deadline to set the time and place for appeals in case the deadline occurs during summer recess from August 24th through September 7th.

Any appeals of this recommendation must be filed with the clerk within 14 days of the hearing examiner's filing.

And if a valid appeal is filed before the deadline, then the council's quasi-judicial rules state that the referred committee has 15 days from the receipt of the appeal to set the time and place for the hearing.

So very complicated stuff, having to carry the water here for Councilmember Juarez, our good colleague Councilmember Juarez, on this issue.

If you have any questions about this afternoon's resolution, which is largely designed to set out this process as I've just described it, so that we are meeting our quasi-judicial obligations and related deadlines, as it relates to the Waterfront LID, then I would request that you reach out directly to Eric McGonaghy on our Council Central staff, who is the point on all things related to this particular issue.

I want to thank Eric for making sure that I have that information accurate and available to me to share with all of you and members of the public.

Council Member Juarez will be available and members of her team will be available to each of you if you have any other questions related to how we are moving forward with the final assessment role issues that the hearing examiner is currently considering related to the Waterfront LID.

Mouthful.

Colleagues, any questions or comments on that resolution for consideration this afternoon?

All right, hearing none, is there anything else for the good of the order before we adjourn?

Okay, hearing and seeing none, I want to thank you all for your time and attention this morning.

We are going to go ahead and adjourn this morning's meeting as this concludes our agenda.

We will be seeing you all at 2 o'clock p.m.

this afternoon via Zoom for our regularly scheduled full council meeting.

So until then, have a good afternoon.

Bye-bye.

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