Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee 10/31/19 Session II

Good afternoon, everyone.

This is still October 31st.

We're reconvening our meeting from this morning.

As you know, this morning we went through the first 30-some items and we're reconvening this afternoon, continue through Office of Housing and other items that all of us here on the council have recommended.

And I do want to give you an update that as of yesterday, that the total dollar amount from my colleagues included over six hundred and twenty million dollars so we're going to have to begin to do some significant uh...

work and scalpel uh...

efforts on the budget uh...

starting this weekend with council central staff and and uh...

that also includes uh...

very large proposal for a housing bond that is not

I just think it's important for the viewing public to recognize.

We're still going to have a balanced budget.

We certainly will as of Wednesday when I come back with something for you all to look at.

And then we'll start again with your taking a look at our recommendations and deciding.

But at that point, we're going to have to decide what we're cutting if we want to add.

So I will, as part of the objective that we've done for yesterday and today, and we will continue tomorrow, is to make sure that I have a really good understanding from all of you about our highest priorities.

And as I mentioned earlier this week, that my focus is truly to see if we can bring things together around housing and homelessness and the criminal justice reforms that include in my mind, lead, which is something that we all are talking about seeing as a very high priority.

So, we'll hear more about that this afternoon and tomorrow.

Thank you for Council Central staff, again, for being here with us.

So, with that, we left off at item number 33, and we're just picking up with criminal justice.

And, Amy, if you'll start introductions, and we'll just move forward.

Yes, Amy Gore from Council Central staff.

Carlos Lugo, Council Central Staff.

Asha Venkatraman, Council Central Staff.

And Tom Mikesell, Council Central Staff.

Very good.

So item number 34, if you will lay this out, Asha or Carlos, whichever is framing, and then we'll turn it over to Council Member Gonzalez.

Absolutely.

I just wanted to note for the criminal justice items, we'll be discussing LEAD tomorrow.

My colleague Greg will be discussing that.

So it's just not gonna come up during this current criminal justice discussion.

So statement of legislative intent, CJ1A1 requests the city auditor conduct a review of Seattle Municipal Court's probation program.

It's sponsored by Council Member Gonzalez.

I just note about this one, currently the Vera Institute is doing a study of the probation program at the court.

And so the intent of this slide would be for the auditor to come back and have a conversation about the scope of what the study on probation will be after the Vera Institute's results are released, which is anticipated for the end of this November.

So can you talk just a little bit more?

Maybe this is something you want to pitch to Councilmember Gonzalez.

What was the scope of work of the Institute's program?

So it's basically looking at whether probation is in line with national best practices.

And so they'll be looking at whether there are any racial or gender equity issues that come up after reviewing SMC's data, as well as anything that came up during the focus groups that they held with individuals about probation.

Thank you.

Council Member Gonzalez, do you want to talk about your ideas?

Yeah, so this would direct the City Auditor's Office to take a deep dive into the data surrounding the Seattle Municipal Courts Probation Program with an eye towards identifying the impacts of probation on people of color in particular.

you know, really sort of digging into identifying disproportionality.

So we've heard a lot from the municipal court that their program is aligned with best practices, but that doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't disproportionate impacts.

And when I ask questions of the judges of what are you looking at that allows you to evaluate whether or not your appropriation program is causing harm or not causing harm to people of color, they're unable to answer that question for me.

So I think it's really important for us as we continue to have a long-term conversation and discussion about probation and how the tool should or should not be utilized in comparison to things like pre-filing diversion and pre-trial diversion and other harm reduction programs and tools that we could be investing in.

I think it's really important for us to get a better understanding of this particular question, and this is an opportunity for us to build on the work that we're expecting to see come out of the report from the Vera Institute.

complementary and additive to what we're expecting to see in that report.

Great.

And another thing that I would like to raise, not that we're going to resolve this today, but I had a long talk with Lisa Dugard just in the last couple of days.

about calling for a roundtable after budget, not trying to do this during budget, but the roundtable would include not only the defenders and the people been working on LEAD, but also the providers, the judges, many court judges, and maybe a superior court judge recommendation.

include the city attorney in the prosecuting attorney's office with the goal of remedy remedying this institutional racism.

So I'll definitely support you on moving forward with this auditor, but I'm also going to ask to see what we can do to structure to bring this group together.

to help us look at the entire criminal justice system.

Thank you all for coming, and please sign up for public comment if you are interested in speaking.

And just to let you know, it'll probably be 3.30 or 4 o'clock before we're going to be entertaining the first speakers.

Okay, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I just wanted to add support for Council Member Gonzalez's efforts here.

I also want to take this opportunity to bring to everybody's attention a letter to the editor that you may have seen today from LaRon Baker with the King County Department of Public Defense.

This letter points to the outcomes that we've heard about from Seattle Municipal Court repeatedly that 77% of Seattle Municipal Court clients complete their probation obligations and 86% of those referred probation complete it without returning to jail.

And for myself, as somebody who doesn't have particular expertise in this area, that sounds great.

But then LaRon Baker goes on to explain that completing probation is actually not a good measure of success.

So the work that Council Member Gonzalez proposes that we do as relates to what the measures of success should be and measuring our probation programs on those measures I think is really good because I think there's a lot of throwing around the terms best practices.

And if the best practices are resulting in those outcomes, maybe those aren't the best practices that we should be looking at.

And I'm also, I agree with just what you said, Council Member Herbolda, and on top of that, I'm interested in knowing what recidivism rates are because if people end probation but then are falling right back into something because warrant has been issued, or whatever the problems might be.

And that's what I'm talking about with the roundtable, is to be able to identify what is it that we're looking for?

What are the outcomes we want?

Because nobody wants people, at least I should say it on this dais, none of us want to see people going to jail or making things worse for an individual.

And I think we'll

leave that there unless you've got some other uh comments council member gonzalez yeah i mean i was just gonna say that um i think i think for me the question goes beyond what you just articulated.

I think it includes those things.

But, you know, LaRon Baker's letter to the editor goes on to say that, you know, of course we need to make sure that some of the best indicators of success are to reduce recidivism.

But it's also about making sure that people who are interacting on a regular basis or just interacting, period, with the criminal justice system, are also not continuing to experience homelessness, and that they're able to improve their behavioral health, and that they're in the same vein strengthening their ties to the community, right?

So I think right now, the way that the information is being conveyed to us from the judges, it's primarily about recidivism and whether or not they were able to successfully tick the list, you know, through the list of like, yes, they showed up for this many meetings.

Yes, they showed up for this test.

Yes, they showed up for this counseling.

But are they actually better?

And I think that we'd like to believe that they are because of the numbers around.

recidivism, but I think it's hard for me to know whether that's actually the causation of that recidivism number as opposed to them going somewhere else or getting into the felony system and therefore no longer interacting with the Seattle Municipal Court.

So I think, you know, we have an opportunity to really dig into the data and give both the court and ourselves a better sense of how we are actually improving the lives of people.

as opposed to potentially perpetuating a model that creates additional harm.

Thank you.

I think that was well articulated.

I concur with you.

Next question is, is our auditor the best entity to do that?

I'm absolutely willing to go a direction that you're recommending.

I just don't know if our auditor has the expertise and the background to be able to give us that information you're seeking.

We have engaged with the auditor around their capacity and ability to do this.

They feel like they could do the work, and they also have said that they believe that they could have the work done by September 15th of 2020. So it's going to take them a while to do it, but they think that they can get it across the finish line.

Okay.

All right.

Any other comments on this?

Those who would like to add their name as a co-sponsor, raise your hand.

Does that count?

Thanks.

All right, let's move on to the next item.

Council Budget Action 2A1 would impose a proviso on Finance General Reserves for staffing of a case conferencing pilot.

As you all know, in the Finance General Reserves this year, there is $2.9 million for the four high barrier individual pilots.

Of that amount, about $150,000 is intended to support an assistant city prosecutor in the city attorney's office who would be dedicated to staffing this case conferencing pilot.

The proviso would restrict that spending until an analysis and detailed implementation plan is reported back to the council.

The intent is for that plan to be developed in conjunction with the city attorney's office and the criminal justice equity team, as well as communities most impacted by the criminal legal system.

And it's looking for a discussion of whether and how that pilot aligns with the reentry recommendations, a description of any unintended consequences and plans to mitigate them, as well as proposed metrics of success for the pilot, a racial equity analysis, and how the program will be taken to scale.

This is sponsored by Council Member Gonzalez.

Would you like to speak to this?

Yes, so I am advancing this proviso only because I think it's important for us to make sure that we have a clear sense of what the plan is for this concept of case conferencing.

You know, we continue to not have really any details other than the fact that we know it's going to fund an attorney.

And so I think it's really important for us, again, as we're going down this path of trying to figure out how to appropriately align our criminal justice system, given all the work that has been done in this space, that we don't sort of stack onto that by fully funding a program that doesn't have the planning process in place yet.

So this is not me categorically opposing this as a concept.

It is me signaling that I think it's really important for us to make sure that we are seeing from the executive a concrete, developed plan, and from the law department, before we agree to just give them the money.

So, I also want to come back to the roundtable that I was talking about.

I was thinking that this could be folded into that, and my hope is that we can get out of the box quickly, I mean, out of the starting blocks quickly, so that whatever is coming back to us so we could see that holistic response is done early in the quarter, not give somebody a proviso and say we're not releasing the money until you come back with a fully baked plan.

I'd really like to see these concepts out and coming back to this council fairly quickly.

So how can we, how can we, strike a balance on that.

I'm not willing to just give them the money and trust on faith that they're going to come up with a plan that is aligned with the overall criminal justice realignment work that we're doing.

As a policymaker, I feel like it's irresponsible for me to support that kind of financial strategy where we're just going to give them the money and on a hope and prayer believe that they're going to structure it appropriately.

If you want to put in a timeline by when this plan needs to be delivered, I'm perfectly fine with that.

I just want the work to get done.

And I don't want them spending the money hiring and, you know, passing go and collecting 200 bucks without us having a clear understanding of how this fits into the broader work we're doing in the criminal justice reform space.

I think we're we're in alignment on that.

What I'm hoping is that they can move at least the preliminary recommendations can get going and come back.

And I assume it's going to be coming to your committee or to one which you're serving.

Yeah, I guess I, Chair Baggio, I don't know what you mean when you say getting the preliminary recommendations so they can get going.

I see that as not in agreement with what I'm saying and inconsistent with what I'm saying.

So perhaps you can explain to me in a little bit more detail what that means.

Sure.

So I've been, as have you, been talking to people who are involved with LEAD, with the courts, with the defenders, with the service providers, and what I'm hearing over and over again is that there's a real interest in this case conferencing approach, which is somebody who is qualified to bring all the voices together to be able to articulate what is the process going to look like going forward, so that as we're putting more money in LEAD, we want LEAD to have whatever connections it needs with the city attorney, with the prosecuting attorney's office, with the judges, so that leads making decisions.

But ultimately that the courts are saying to me they want to be able to refer to a lead or a lead like process to where people are getting housing.

getting the mental health and behavioral health services that they need.

And that we could sit back and wait for somebody to come back with a perfect plan, or we could get a structure that says, this is what we're going to do, let's get moving on it so we can try it and amend it as we're going forward.

With the expectations, we're trying to reduce harm for individuals.

I don't want to just sit and do business as usual until somebody comes back with a plan in September as an example.

I'd really like to see us get the roundtable together, get the people that are going to put this together early in the first quarter.

And if you want to proviso something that says, let's come back to the council explaining what it is this is going to look like, that's what I'm hoping that we can reach.

So there was a lot you just said there and some of it is related to this and some of it is not.

So when you say, quote, this is what we are going to do, close quote, I literally sitting here have no idea what that is.

What is the case conferencing, what are the specific things that the case conferencing going to do.

Right and that's I can't tell you that but that's what I'm asking to come back to you but come back to it early you know don't wait until September.

I have not suggested September by the way I don't know where you're getting this.

I just I think it was the last thing the last item that we had talked about.

That's a separate item different budget action item that is not related to the case.

Okay do you can you give me and I really I I think we're much closer than it is making it sound right now in terms of our outcomes and objectives we're looking for.

Would you, in this item, as you were talking about a proviso, ask for something specific that you want the law department to come back to by a date certain?

I mean, I think I am specifically asking for, I think that this particular Form B does indicate what I want to see back and how I want that work to get done.

What it does not include is a date certain, and I am happy to, in the workup from here to the Form C, identify a date certain by when we would like to have this work done.

But I just want to be really clear.

I've not suggested that it would be September 2020 at all.

So I want to I don't I don't want words being put in my mouth in that context Because that's not what I'm suggesting.

I don't want to drag this out unnecessarily, but again, I think it is it is it's irresponsible for us to simply release the dollars to fund a pilot program which means we've never done it before and And I don't have any details of what this actual program is besides the fact that it is proposed to fund an assistant city prosecutor at the city attorney's office.

But I don't know what that person is doing and what the theory of change is going to be.

And I haven't heard anyone tell me the details of what that is.

I haven't heard the details from Council Central staff.

I haven't heard the details from other people who intend to do this work because it is admittedly a half-baked idea.

And I think if we are serious about meeting some of the public safety and and the harm reduction strategies that we have as a city, then we have to be serious about creating concrete plans with specific outcomes by date certain before we start funding these programs.

All that you just said makes sense to me.

Council Member Herbold.

I was just going to say this is very similar to the objective that we discussed in the AM session related to Council Member O'Brien's request that we do budget provisos on some of the mayor's spending from the Mercer block, the housing related programs that we didn't have a really good sense of of programmatically what the expectations were, what the outcomes were, what the actual program activities are.

So the Strategic Investment Fund, we took a very similar action, not out of opposition to the idea, but just out of a need that we feel as policy makers to know what we're approving and make sure that It's aligned with other objectives, housing objectives in that case.

In this case, public safety and criminal justice reform objectives.

Do we want to talk about a date now so that we can move on?

Yeah, I'd like to.

I'm just going to throw something out.

You guys can choose.

Go ahead.

March 31st, is that?

At the end of the first quarter, yeah.

So, what I'm, what I would recommend is that we actually go at least a month, at least a month backward to, you know, let's just say the 1st of March.

Because if, once we signal this and we pass the budget, we still have much of November, all of December for people to get going.

And I know in the past people have said to me.

It never happens.

I know it doesn't happen, but to the extent that we agree on the outcomes that we're looking for, I'd rather have people get going and say, have them come back and say, you know, we've been working on this for 90 days.

I'm going to, I'm just, I'm going to be on maternity leave for the first quarter of 2020, so.

So you don't mind if we wait until the end of March?

I would prefer that since this is a body of my work, but also because I think practically speaking, in my experience, January tends to be almost non-existent in terms of people actually doing work, and then that leaves February, and I'm not sure that we're going to be able to find enough time to have consensus built in 30 days.

So, I worry about that because I want us to be able to have a consensus approach.

Just to move on, let's put in a March 31st date.

Yeah.

Since I'm not going to be here and you'll be gone for the first three months.

Yeah.

And I don't know who the next public safety chair will be, but this will definitely be part of their work.

Fairness.

Okay.

Very good.

Sorry about the lengthy discussion.

Those who want to add their name as a co-sponsor to this item, raise your hand.

And we're going to add a March 31st.

time to that, and I'm also going to ask, the roundtable proposal that I've raised now a few times, that will be outside of budget, but I am going to be very interested in getting, calling a group together that includes all the people that we have identified ahead of time to help us get that moving.

And I would, Chair Bagshaw, really welcome an opportunity for us to have a conversation about what you envision that roundtable to be, particularly in the context of the criminal justice reform work we've been doing and this lie around the realignment which requires us to pull together some reimagined criminal justice coordinating committee.

So, again, I want to be careful about how many entities we're creating for what purpose.

And if we can, to the extent we can be efficient and streamlined, that would be super, as opposed to creating parallel processes that could lead to conflict down the road, that would be super helpful.

Good.

And that's what we've been trying to do, is to create a really clear system where people understand who's in charge, what they're going to be doing, and that the outcomes are improving for the individuals involved in the system.

Okay, let's move on to the next item, which is the finance general.

Yep, so Council Budget Action 3A1 would, similar to this last item, would impose a proviso on Finance General Reserves for the Rapid Reentry Connector pilot at the King County Jail.

So similar to the proviso on the case conferencing, this asks for an analysis and plan in conjunction with the jail and the criminal justice equity team, as well as communities most impacted by the criminal legal system, to discuss the pilot, any unintended consequences and how to mitigate them, metrics of success, a racial equity analysis, and an analysis of how to reduce jail populations that are being held in King County Jail for under 72 hours, and then how a program will be taken to scale.

And this is sponsored by Councilmember Gonzalez.

So, Chair Bagashaw, this is the same.

You and I had an opportunity to actually talk about some of the gaps in the reentry area.

So, what happens when folks go through the entire stream of the criminal justice process and then end up getting sentenced, end up being incarcerated, and then are now at a point where it's time for them to be released.

And, you know, in sort of the flow chart that we were looking at, there is an obvious hole of what is available, how we're connecting people, how we're coordinating folks.

in their attempt to re-enter into society after completing their sentence and jail time.

So this is, again, I'm not in opposition to obviously creating some sort of rapid re-entry connector pilot.

I think it's very much needed in light of the remarks I just made.

So, similar to the prior effort, I just want to make sure that we have a concrete plan in place that allows for this pilot to be as successful as possible for this particular population.

So, happy to tie this in with the same timeline on the previous SLI proviso that we just finished discussing for much of the same rationale.

Great.

Very good.

Those any other comments?

Those who'd like to add their name as a co-sponsor, raise your hand.

Okay, very good.

Okay, the next item is CJ4A1.

It would cut $170,000 from finance general reserves that is designated for the high barrier probation program and impose a proviso on the court operations budget summary level.

So this $170,000 is again part of the high barrier work groups pilot proposals and the $170,000 was intended to be to implement a high barrier probation pilot.

This is sponsored by Council Member Gonzalez.

So unlike the other three components of the mayor's proposed plans around addressing high-bearer individuals, I continue to not be supportive of the proposed enhanced probation project.

So this would not be a cut I want to say that again.

This is not a cut to the existing budget of the Seattle Municipal Courts Probation Department.

This is a cut to the mayor's proposed expansion of the probation department.

So, you know, before people start freaking out.

I am not proposing that we cut any existing probation services at the Seattle Municipal Court.

I am proposing and advancing this form B for purposes of modifying and amending the mayor's proposed budget to not include $170,000 to expand, further expand the Seattle Municipal Courts Probation Department.

I continue to believe that if the court is, and I believe that they've indicated that they are, truly committed to continuing to support harm reduction through their probation program, that perhaps the best place to test that out is within their existing resources by using existing probation counselors and officers to pilot the strategies and the stated goals that they have within sort of modifications to their probation program.

So there's nothing that would prevent them.

to, for example, using two of their existing probation counselors to test out some of the theories here once they are baked.

And I think that that is a more prudent and appropriate approach before we start going down a path of expanding the probation department.

And that is my proposal.

Very good.

Those who, oh, Council Member Swat.

I just want to say that I think it is important that we not further fund the probation program until we know how it works.

And we've seen, as Council Member Herbold was saying, we've seen how for those of us who don't have the expertise and the deep knowledge, sometimes the outcomes that they describe can seem great, but they may not actually be when we get the information from the experts.

So I think the very least we should do is not rush to fund the enhanced probation.

Other comments?

All right, those who want to add your name as a co-sponsor to this one, raise your hand.

The next item is Council Budget Action 5A1.

It would impose a proviso on $50,000 in the budget for the Office for Civil Rights for community-based organizations to respond to hate violence.

The idea is for this to apply to $15,000 that was originally in the 2018 budget but has not yet been spent.

It was It was carried over to HSD in 2019, and it's anticipated that those, that funds, those, excuse me, that funding will be moved back to the officer of civil rights in the 2019 fourth quarter supplemental ordinance.

This is sponsored by council member Herbold.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

So this is one of two items related to addressing hate crimes.

This particular item is specifically designed to address one of the recommendations of the City Auditor as it relates to making it possible for survivors or victims of hate crimes to be able to report those crimes.

One of the things that the city auditor found is that hate crimes are often underreported and they identified a need to engage with community-based organizations to supplement the information that the police department and SOCR receive through formal reporting.

We've, in previous years, done work with both SOCR and SPD to make it easier for reporting to occur.

And they have, there's some information sharing that SOCR and SPD are doing as far as a dashboard.

on the complaint side, but I think the city auditor's findings are that basically we can only expect so much as far as encouraging more reporting through traditional means.

And so we really need to work with folks who have deep roots in the community and support them as places where people can go to report to.

So this, the intent is that this would provide some small grant funding to organizations doing work so that we would can, support their efforts in creating mechanisms for reporting hate crimes and sharing data with the city and the police department.

Great.

Thank you.

Any further comments on that?

Council Member Pacheco.

Just going to highlight that District 4, the U District more specifically, has the third largest hate crime rates in the city and so I will be supporting this as well.

Very good.

Thank you.

Those who would like to add your name as a co-sponsor, raise your hand.

Good.

Thank you.

All right, 39 is another slide.

Yep, the next item is Statement of Legislative Intent, CJ6A1.

It requests that the Office for Civil Rights spend a portion of the million dollars that was in the 2020 endorsed budget on community-based organizations to create restorative justice approaches to individuals committing hate crimes.

Oh, sorry.

Preliminary research shows that there aren't a lot, if any, community-based programs, trainings, or community services that are rooted in a harm reduction and restorative justice.

And so using some of this funding is intended to fill that gap.

This is sponsored by Council Member Herbold.

This is also intended to help us do some problem solving around the pending hate crimes legislation that has moved out of the Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development, and Arts Committee that we have not brought back to full council because of concerns around layered disproportionality around hate crimes One of the things that I keep explaining is that these aren't going to result in the hate crimes legislation that the full council hasn't voted on yet, but that the committee has voted on.

It's not going to result in additional prosecutions because the city attorney is already prosecuting the underlying charge, so whether or not that's graffiti or assault.

other types of property damage, but the legislation that I've proposed allows an additional allegation on top of the charge that they're already pursuing.

Nevertheless, there is concern that the courts will use that as a way to to increase penalties.

And so what we're trying to do is we're trying to create a restorative justice program that would be used in the case of a finding of a special allegation of a hate crime.

And a restorative justice program theoretically is something that is useful and adds value to the lives of people involved in hate crimes, both the perpetrators and the victims and survivors.

And so I'm trying to work to fund and create this program so that we can move forward with passage of the legislation.

Great.

Do we still have a restorative justice office here or a program with individuals who are trained to do this work?

There are restorative justice programs run out of the King County Office of Public Defense, but there aren't, and there are also community-based restorative justice programs, but there is not one that's focused specifically on hate crimes.

Good, thank you.

Any further comments?

All right, those who'd like to add their name as a co-sponsor to item 39, raise your hand.

Okay, very good.

Thank you.

Move on to 40.

Okay, the next item is a statement of legislative intent, CJ7A1.

It requests that the Seattle Municipal Court report back to council on how it would implement a high barrier probation program.

It asks that the court partner with the criminal justice equity team to provide a report on the racial equity analysis that would identify racial equity outcomes for such a program, analyze existing evidence and data about high barrier probation and whether it increases or decreases involvement in the system in the long term.

the parameters, performance metrics, and desired outcomes for the individuals participating in the program, and whether as a whole the program reduces racial disproportionality.

The idea is for this report to be submitted to Council by July 1st, 2020. Sponsored by Councilmember Gonzalez.

Councilmember Gonzalez.

I think Asha's covered it all.

This is sort of, you know, if there is going to be the utilization of existing probation counselors to do an enhanced probation program for high barrier individuals, I think it's really important for us as policymakers to know exactly how they're going to do that and what the details and sort of theory of change would be around that kind of a model.

It is a little bit of a opening of the door to allow them to explore that potential model, but without the provision of additional bodies to do that work and test it.

Is this necessary if we

follow through with item number 37?

Or is the idea like if they want to do this in the future, we'd like them to just get this work out of the way to help?

Yeah, I think it's the latter if they're gonna do this work.

So for example, if they decide that they still wanna do a high barrier individual enhanced probation program by utilizing some of the probation counselors that they currently have, then I think it's still really important for us and the general public to have an understanding of what that program would be and how it would be implemented and how it would impact folks.

So it's more of a, I think, a cautionary approach, but that's what the intent is there.

Asha?

I just note that for item 37, the proviso on the court's operations budget, the lift is conditioned on both the auditor's report coming back that we had previously discussed, as well as the report that's requested in this item in 7A1.

So they could issue a report in response to this saying that they're not going to pursue a high-end probation high barrier probation program, and that would satisfy the request of the proviso and lift the proviso in item 37, 36?

Yes, it's CJ4A1, which is, yes, 37. Great.

So we talked about a March 31st date earlier.

I would love to see if these could be streamlined so that they could be reviewed at the same time, building on VERA, building on what we had just described, would you be open to that?

No objection.

Okay.

March 31st deadline.

Okay.

Very good.

Thank you.

Those who want to add your names as a co-sponsor to this, raise your hand.

Very good.

Thank you.

We'll move on to 41.

Thank you, Chair Baxhaw.

The next four budget items are sponsored by Councilmember Gonzalez and are statements of legislative intent related to recommendations made by the Seattle Reentry Work Group in its final report, which was released in October 2018. The first in the series is slide CJ21A1, and that requests that executive departments report on reentry recommendations regarding increasing economic opportunities.

Specifically, it asks that the Office of Economic Development and the Office for Civil Rights work with formerly incarcerated community members to develop a plan that supports small businesses owned by those with criminal histories.

It asks that the Seattle Department of Human Resources, Seattle Information Technology, and Office of Economic Development develop recommendations to increase hiring opportunities for those with criminal histories who have completed technological training from OED's tech hire partners.

It asks that OED and Finance and Administrative Services prepare a report on how the city can increase the number of requests for proposals, requests for qualifications, and public works projects awarded to businesses owned and led by formerly incarcerated individuals.

And lastly, it asks that SDHR and OED Workforce Equity Team develop a report on how the city can increase hiring opportunities for formerly incarcerated individuals.

And the report would be due back by July 1st, 2020.

would you like to speak to this?

That was a very thorough description.

This is my attempt to begin the process of implementing the recommendations of the reentry workgroup, which were the subject of much discussion last budget cycle.

So they've been sitting on a shelf now for a year, which There's nothing more than I hate than having recommendations sitting on a shelf, having nothing done with them.

I think that the reentry work is different than the other body of work related to criminal justice in the sense that we already have a set of recommendations.

There's consensus around those recommendations and it's just a matter of figuring out how to continue the momentum of implementing those.

And again, Chair Bagshaw and colleagues, I know you and I, Chair, had a conversation yesterday about that massive void in that reentry space.

So I think this is really important to filling that void and there is no reason for us to delay implementation of those recommendations.

So this is an opportunity for us to direct the departments to just implement them.

Let's get going.

Let's come up with sort of the plan for how we're actually going to put these recommendations into.

practice and into the field and hopefully be able to do that well in advance of the budget so that we can begin those conversations next year in the ramp up to a biennium budget as to what resources would be needed in order to make these potential programs successful.

And so this particular Form B is really focused on the workforce development, economic development, opportunities that could be available to folks who are about to be released from jail and back into community so that they have some economic opportunities and have a higher chance of not reoffending.

Great.

So, thank you for that.

My understanding here on this one is that you want to implement the recommendations that have been made and then just have a report back on how it's going?

This would be, we have a set of recommendations, but we don't, from the reentry work group, what we don't have is the implementation plan for those recommendations.

So this is, tell me how you're going to implement these recommendations.

Excellent.

That are all related to connecting current people who are currently in jail with feasible economic opportunities, jobs, training, et cetera, to make sure that when they do leave the jail facility, they have a set of skills and a plan in place, for example, to be able to reenter into our community.

Well done.

Do you want a date certain on this?

There is a date certain here.

It's July 1st of 2020. Do you want it to be there or do you want to move it back?

No, I think this is separate and apart from the other body of work that we've been talking about.

This is baked.

We have recommendations.

It's just a matter of tell me how we're going to actually put it into practice.

So I think July 1st is a good date.

All right.

Any other comments on that?

Those who want to add their name as a co-sponsor, raise your hand.

Great.

You're the sponsor.

I've still been raising my hand, just in case.

All right, very good.

42. Next item is a statement of legislative intent, CJ22A1.

It requests that the executive department study the feasibility of developing city master leasing options.

Again, this is in response to reentry work group recommendations.

Thank you.

And item 42, Council Member Gonzales, you want to continue on this?

Yeah, same theory as the previous one in terms of we have a set of recommendations from the reentry work group.

What we don't have is a concrete response from the city about how it's going to implement this recommendation.

This one is related to master leasing.

So we've been doing as a city some work around a master leasing program that focuses, I think, just generically on our population, this would sort of require an intentional thinking around how to address the housing stability needs of people who are exiting our jail system and reentering society.

So it's just more of a let's think about this population intentionally in terms of how we connect them to these master leasing options, as opposed to sort of creation of an entirely new program.

It would be baked within the existing work that the city is doing in that space.

Great.

Further comments?

Those who want to add your name as a co-sponsor, raise your hand.

Very good.

43.

Statement of legislative intent CJ 24a1 requests that the law department report on expanding pre-filing diversion opportunities to those over the age of 25 and the report would be due back May 15th of 2020.

Thank you, let's see, this is 24A1?

Is that where we're at?

24A1, yes.

24A1, okay.

So this would really be designed to build on much of the success that the city attorney's office has had with pre-filing diversion for the 18 to 24-year-old group.

And of course, we know that they've been using Choose 180 in that particular space.

And so I'm asking that we scope out and effectively determine how much it would cost for the city to expand those pre-filing diversion opportunities for people who are over the age of 25 and for potentially a wider range of charges that could be subject to pre-filing diversion.

So, again, this is part of a vision around making sure that when we do have a great model that we know is working like we do in the 18 to 24 space for pre-filing diversion, how can we effectively replicate those types of efforts in other parts of our criminal justice system for other demographic populations within the criminal justice system to hopefully see similar successful results.

Good.

Other comments?

Those who want to add your name as a co-sponsor, raise your hand.

Okay, excellent.

Item 44.

Item 44, Statement of Legislative Intents.

CJ26A1 requests that SPD, Seattle Police Department, develop a reporting mechanism that accurately captures race data.

Report would be due back July 1st, 2020.

Council Member Gonzalez.

It's me again.

So here I am, still here.

So one of the things that we have continued to hear, and I think Council Member Juarez really cued this conversation up in her resolution and her efforts around missing and murdered indigenous women as well.

You're really talking about how, as a practice, the Seattle Police Department needs a little bit of assistance and we need clear understanding of how they're tracking data related to race and ethnicity.

And the reason for that is because there are so many other parts of our city system that relies on that data that the Seattle Police Department collects.

And so one of the things that we have heard from the Seattle Municipal Court, for example, is that one of the major impediments they have in providing a clear picture of the impacts that the criminal justice system has from the court's perspective in terms of disproportionate impact on race, we've heard from them that it's incomplete, inaccurate, or based on faulty data because they rely on the data being collected by the Seattle Police Department as it relates to race.

And so, of course, When we're looking at the Seattle Police Department, we know that oftentimes Native people are misclassified as something else and the Latinx community is pretty much made invisible by virtue of being put into the category of white.

in large part because they're not required, the police department isn't required to track ethnicity.

So I think there's an opportunity here to improve some of the race and ethnicity based data that the police department is collecting in this slide would request that a slide, a report be completed by the police department to get clarity in that space.

I strongly support this slide.

Thank you for putting it together.

You may recall a few years ago we passed a law looking at the potential of racial profiling and trying to capture data on who's arrested, who's stopped.

whether it's a Terry stop or there's probable cause or not, we want to capture all this data and the police department are required to track it to the best that they could.

So I'm just hoping that this slide sort of feeds into that work as well.

So I'd ask central staff to sort of look at that component in the racial profiling bill that the city passed through Council Member Gonzalez's committee and see how that sort of ties into this work, because I think this is a very important body of work to get done.

And then, of course, we also have Council Member Juarez's resolution that has similar requirements.

And then we also had the City Council, I think, in 2015 pass, I think it was a resolution around disaggregation of data.

So I think this is an opportunity for us to maybe get all under the same umbrella and finally try to crack this nut, because it is really, I think, creating significant issues in other parts of our city family that really rely on the data being collected by the police department as we are taking a critical and deeper look into the impact of our criminal justice system on certain populations.

To feed in that point, what I don't want the Seattle Police Department to do is to look at this meaningful sly and look at the work we're trying to do and say oh another report, another If they can actually own this work and get on board through leadership and rank and file and say, this is important data for us to collect, I think they can help manage this process.

I'm not suggesting that they've been resistant to it, but it would be nice to get some feedback from them as we pass this slide and they look at how they're going to manage this work.

I'd love for their buy-in.

And quite candid, I'm not fully convinced that there's been the kind of buy-in we'd like to see, but let's see.

But that's, that'd be awesome to have the department really embrace this kind of data gathering.

Is there any specific, any language you'd like to add on that?

We could talk off light about it.

I'm certainly supporting this slide at this point.

But I just think central staff sort of realizes we have several, a expressed need, a well-articulated need for this kind of data gathering.

So, happy to work together as we make our way to a Form C. Great.

Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

First of all, I want to thank Council Member Gonzalez because we've had long discussions about this.

This has been going on since the days that I was a public defender in the late 80s.

So, what we're, what Council Member Gonzalez is doing, I think, is looking forward-looking And also, we're recognizing in the day and age of constitutional policing that the data is really critical, not just in who gets arrested, and I can never say that word, recidivism, but also in identifying, as we know, with missing, murdered Indigenous women and girls.

what services are being provided and what services are being denied.

So, starting with what we have the funded position for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Expertise Analysis Expertise Person we're going to put over SPD.

I'm looking forward to working with Council Member Gonzales and Council Member Harrell.

Wait, Council Member Harrell won't be here, but he'll be here in spirit.

I think we'll learn a lot from from our role in our work with SPD and King County who is now put together Missy Marie Indigenous Women and Girls Committee, which we're working with Abigail Elka Hawk.

So we are the first city in this country to do that.

So I look forward to sharing that and working with Councilmember Gonzalez on this particular point.

Thank you Councilmember Gonzalez.

Those who'd like to add your name as a co-sponsor to item 44 raise your hand.

Okay, very good.

Moving on to item 45.

Agenda item 45 is Council Budget Action CJ-61-A-1, which would add $124,000 of one-time general fund for a diversion program, specifically a class for sex industry workers, and it would impose a proviso to this effect.

It would go to the Mayor's Office of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault to contract with a provider to facilitate a class that would be pre-booking diversion options for people who are arrested doing sex work and would be consistent with the requirements in Seattle Municipal Code 12a.

Very good.

Council Member Gonzalez.

That was a really good description.

So really, this is designed as an opportunity.

I mean, in an ideal world, we wouldn't be arresting sex workers at all.

But we have seen recently that that is, in fact, not been the case.

And there has been an unfortunate interpretation of past practices and policies that has resulted in an uptick in the arrest of individuals in the sex trade space and so this is an opportunity for us at the request of the Organization for Prostitution Survivors to institute an opportunity for pre-diversion work and opportunity to be done for sex industry workers.

So this is really an upstream approach to allow folks who might be arrested for the crime of prostitution to be able to access appropriate resources to be able to make the choices that are appropriate for them should they choose to take advantage of them.

So it's a modest investment, it would be an allocation again to the mayor's office of domestic violence and sexual assault to fund a a organization that would facilitate those Opportunities for for a diversion and assistance and services to sex workers in in Seattle Comments those who want to add your name as a co-sponsor raise your hand.

I

Thank you.

Chair, before we move on, I would just like to say a couple words in general about the statements of legislative intent that we just moved on.

And this is not meant in frustration.

It's more just for the public record.

The reentry recommendations were recommendations that were made to my committee at the end of last year.

I'm sorry, I should say at the end of 2018. It was, this is work that was done and coordinated by a department that I have oversight of, the Office of Civil Rights.

And I have been telling stakeholders with that work that I wasn't moving forward on the recommendations because of the budget actions we took last year related to the criminal justice reform work that came out of Asha's paper about the need to align that work with departments and that the city's efforts around criminal justice reform have become very cumbersome and difficult for many city departments to prioritize.

And so I've been, you know, this is one of the reasons why I keep asking the question of where are we on the pulling together the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council again, working with the Criminal Justice Equity Team or a similar working group to align current and future policy investments and outcomes regarding the criminal legal system.

And we had talked about a resolution outlining the council's goals to engage with communities and individuals most impacted by the criminal legal system as a way of prioritizing our work.

So I really, I apologize that, to the public that this is the message I've been giving out of respect for my colleague on the left and her work in this area.

I'm excited that we're going to get going on it and I'm sorry for the misunderstanding.

I appreciate your words, and I am unclear on why you're apologizing, because you've been really clear about what you've been doing and why, so...

Well, I was making assumptions that we needed to wait until this other body of work was done, and I've been telling the members of the public who care really deeply about this issue that we needed to wait.

Okay, so...

And, you know, it's, you know...

I'm sorry that you were in that situation and I think we just finally had an opportunity.

I and Council Central staff finally had an opportunity to sit down and sort of hash out and in the course of those conversations that I had with Council Central staff, It kind of started becoming more clear to me that we didn't necessarily need to wait.

So I apologize for not communicating more clearly with you directly as somebody who was overseeing some of that reentry work.

But I do really see them now as, now that we have a clearer work plan around the criminal justice realignment work, I have a better handle on sort of what the two different bodies of work are and feel like waiting for the criminal justice realignment work to happen will create undue and unnecessary delay on implementation of the reentry work group recommendations.

I'm glad that you are supportive of moving forward and looking forward to continuing to work with you to make sure we stay on the same train schedule in the future.

Great.

Very good.

Thank you for bringing that up.

I appreciate the discussion.

Okay, we're now moving on to item 46. And we'll pitch it to Council Member Sawant when you're done.

Yes.

Item 46 is Council Budget Action CJ62-A-1, which adds $522,600 in ongoing general fund to HSD for youth diversion and education programs.

And it includes three overall, three larger buckets.

The first is an action that allocates $300,000 to HSD to contract with a community-based organization, such as Youth Consortium, to fund youth diversion programming.

The second bucket is $122,600 to contract with a community-based organization such as Creative Justice to fund an arts-based alternative to secure detention for young people.

The third item would, it's $100,000 to HSD for a contract supporting youth outreach services with a community-based organization such as the Rainier Beach Action Coalition's Corner Greeters Program, which is a non-arrest crime reduction safety project focusing on transforming spaces that are prevalent for youth crime.

Great.

Council Member Swan.

Thank you for that description.

Just to add to what was already described really well in terms of the breakdown that we're proposing, just wanted to make sure the council knows we The different buckets that we're allocating focus on different aspects of very positive diversion programs, but I just want to make sure council is aware that the groups that provide these services, the community organizations that provide these services really work together.

They work in solidarity with one another.

They don't separate, they don't work in separate silos.

Whatever funds we allocate to each of these programs, I think they are very well prepared in terms of how they work together in the grassroots to work with one another and make sure they enhance each other.

So, in other words, what I'm trying to say is that if we allocate 300,000, for example, to the youth consortium, my belief from having seen how well these programs work is that the value that the society will get out of those $300,000 is actually probably worth more than the $300,000 price tag just because of sort of the positive effects that we see.

And just a few things to highlight about some of these programs.

the youth consortium that includes community passageways.

One of the things they did this year, and I shared this with you, Chair Bakhshal, they organized a candidate forum, and obviously we are on council time, so I'm not gonna actually talk about the forum itself in terms of the candidates, but what I will say is that this was a forum, unlike most forums, organized by young people of color, many of them teenagers, many of them actually younger than voting age, And they had prepared the questions, they organized the format, and it was very direct and it was very dynamic and they actually held the candidates to account much better than in most forums.

So I was just really impressed at how well it was done and how deserving the program is.

On creative justice, just a thing to mention about that is youth referred to the creative justice program enroll in three to four month long sessions that meet twice weekly and each session project has a unique focus.

that is collaboratively directed by the youth and the mentor artist team and the goal is to create a community space to share stories, heal and amplify the voices of youth and communities most impacted by the school to prison to deportation pipeline.

So this is another really important aspect of creative justice.

It's bringing together black and brown youth and also immigrant black and brown youth and people who are facing either passageway to prison, passageway to deportation, and sometimes both.

Immigrant youth of color sometimes face both threats at the same time, and so it's very important that it brings all of them together, and each session concludes with a public arts action, and one of the goals of that action, and they organize it in such a way consciously to speak truth to power, prioritize and center youth voice, and solutions and build supportive organized community to dismantle the school to prison to deportation pipeline and to build a truly just and restorative system.

And then the last but not least is the Corner Greeter Program.

This is focusing on transforming spaces that are most prevalent for youth crime by employing youth from the neighborhood to create engaging events with sort of corner food, music and information.

locations, and this is especially beneficial in the Rainier Valley, in the Central District, where I think young people have been left bereft of their community with so much gentrification.

And so the corner greeters, I think, will fill a lot of the gaps in a very effective way at a very, very sort of in a shoestring budget style.

Please go ahead, Council President Harrell.

I just had a sort of a clarifying question.

The work that council members want sounds awesome and meaningful, so I don't question any of that.

Is this possible and are these organizations that for whatever reason are unable to get funding now or are these organizations funded now and we just want to expand the scope of the work that they're doing or maybe we don't know.

I'm trying to get a feel for which organizations have been funded, which ones for whatever reason couldn't get funded.

I'm a little unclear.

The short answer is both.

Some of the programs have had funds, but we also, because they were working so well, so just to give you a concrete example, community passageways, we did win funding for that in the last year's budget, but it was a sort of, I mean, these are also small chunks.

Let me be very clear about that.

These are not lavish chunks of money in any way, but previously, it was even smaller, and just seeing how much, how far they made that money go, that dollar amount go, we asked them, you know, what could you do Even bigger or could you do even bigger given your capacity and they have given us very Realistic amounts, you know, they haven't overstated what they can do in their program So it's that but it's also the other aspect that we wanted we want to take care of is We want the money to go to these programs Immediately rather than sort of spending a lot of time in the mayor's budget sort of sitting in some pot and then months later being allocated yesterday, we saw how The B-Seattle organization, which does a lot of tenants' rights, they got their money that we allocated in the budget last year only in September, only last month.

So we don't want that to happen.

I'm supportive of this ad and what we're trying to do.

I'm just simply trying to figure out which ones, because there are many organizations out there doing some phenomenal work.

And sometimes some of the same people are working with many organizations as well.

So I would agree that, in particular some of the ads that I've added, that $25,000 here, $50,000 here, while in a big budget seems like a lot, the impact on the community and these organizations are able to leverage it to get four or five times the value out of the modest investment.

So I do favor that approach.

Right, and if I just clarify to Councilman President Harrell's points, the way we came up with this funding was not to cherry-pick some isolated programs.

I mean, there are other programs also that do really good work.

This input we've got from the community groups on the basis of them all having had a broad discussion amongst themselves, including other programs that are not included here, And having arrived at a collective decision that actually augmenting the funds for these programs, these specific programs would actually help them go a long way.

And I don't believe Corner Greeters was funded originally.

And just to put this amount in perspective, this total amount for all these programs that we're talking about is substantially less than the total amount that the mayor is proposing for additional hiring bonuses for new police officers.

And given that these are youth diversion programs, it's good to sort of

Amy, do you know what is in the mayor's budget right now, how much we spend for youth diversion and education programs?

The youth diversion program is $1.8 million in the 2020 proposed budget.

This would raise it to $2.3 million.

I was going to mention, I do have some additional information on previous funding or existing funding for these organizations, and I'm happy to send that out.

It gets a little bit complex when you're talking about consortiums of different organizations, some of which are funded, some of which are not, some of which might not get funding.

for this particular type of programming, as well as there are also organizations that, again, are funded but not for this particular program.

And so I'll send out a list of all of that information.

Excellent.

And maybe you know, and I want to ask President Harrell and council members who want to weigh in on this, how is the money distributed?

Is it on an RFP basis?

Is it on a grant?

How do we do it?

At HSD, it is, they do, they distribute the money in a few ways.

One is through an RFP process.

So for example, this year there's a youth development RFP that will be issued and will fund organizations and programs based on a competitive process.

Occasionally they do sole source contracts, particularly if there's a council action that specifies a particular organization or program that they want funded.

They also sometimes, if they have additional funds available for a particular purpose, will add that money to existing contracts.

So if they have six organizations that are providing food and meals, for example, and they have 100,000 additional dollars, they will distribute that equitably amongst those organizations.

So it depends on the circumstances.

Go ahead.

I think I still have just some direction, at least to the department.

to establish a record that it's been my personal preference that for some of the smaller awards that I frown upon the practice where we do have some organizations competing against each other doing the same kind of work.

And while we try not to earmark and designate, my hope always has been, and we've been pretty successful doing this, is just sort of describing the scope of work But we sort of know who's best positioned to do that in many of these communities.

And so I just think the RFP process is fraught with a lot of issues, particularly those sometimes some large organizations are just better positioned to respond to the RFP.

So I'm comfortable supporting the RFP.

supporting this ad with the direction that is not my expectation of some of these small awards or this long, drawn-out RFP process.

We're trying to describe the work and the community, sort of community-driven, so to speak.

That's what we want to avoid.

And also, just to clarify, the organizations that we're talking about here are not actually large, established, bureaucratic organizations.

These are truly grassroots efforts, and they are truly youth-led efforts.

And I've seen this personally.

Okay.

Chair?

Yes, please.

So, because of the difficulties with the traditional RFP process, this council in the 2019 budget that, and I think it was actually, it's been carried, Asha, I'm looking at you.

I think it's been, it was carried over to 2020 because SOCR was not able to spend the funds that the council allocated for 2019 over a million dollars to do a collaborative grant making process to distribute funding to invest in alternatives to the criminal legal process and address the harms of the criminal legal process.

And the collaborative grant-making process, it's like the Social Justice Fund collaborative grant-making process, relies on community members to collectively develop the theory of change, align with the goals, what the investment outcomes are, and actually do the selection.

After there's an application, it's the community members that come together and select the grants that should receive the funding.

So, it seems like the SOCR alignment, I mean, granting process that they're working on with several organizations as well as the intent of the funds seem to be aligned with council member Sawant's recommendations.

So, I'm not sure why, All these organizations that I love, I mean, I'm a huge fan of Creative Justice, for instance.

I nominated them for a crosscut justice awards, a courage award last year, yes, which they won.

I'm not sure I understand why they're not going through that process that the council funded to the tune of upwards of a million dollars and that SOCR is working on doing.

So I just note that the million dollars was in the 2020 endorsed budget, so they didn't have to carry it over.

It's just included.

All right.

So the money's there for this year.

We allocated it last year.

There's no money for 2020 though, right?

No, the funds are for 2020. So if we pass this proposed budget, that million dollars will go towards the purpose it was indicated for in last year's budget.

I would still prefer sort of a straw poll on this because the hand vote is for the intent of funding these programs and I think that's important for the groups to have.

But in response to what Council Member Herbold is saying, yeah, we looked into this quite a bit.

And unfortunately, I mean, if Arsha knows better than I do, then I would welcome that information.

But our understanding, my staff and I, our understanding is that yes, money is allocated for these intentions, but these very small sort of ground level groups see very little of it.

If at all, they're made to jump through hoops to even get the smallest amount of funding.

It would my intent in bringing this budget amendment is to eliminate as much of that process as is as is possible and make it clear council's intent that we expect these programs to be funded immediately and that we don't put the put an onerous burden on these community groups to have to jump through lots of paperwork and delays to be able to fund it.

Thank you.

I appreciate with what you're saying and I'd love to find that sweet spot between making it easy for people to apply for and get the money quickly but have some accountability around what are the outcomes as well.

Who do you see is responsible for this?

Just to be clear, the accountability question is not on the side of the groups.

They are doing incredible work and you don't, it's not just my word, I mean it's actually, we can see the product, their work product.

The accountability is more on the side of the mayor's office.

Why are there such delays and such difficulties in these very, very small groups getting the funding that they need.

Well, again, I was corrected by central staff.

It wasn't a delay.

We allocated the funding in the 2019 budget for 2020, and SOCR is currently involved in a collaborative grant-making process to distribute the funding.

So they They are in 2019, even though the funding is not until 2020, they're working on creating the process for the organizations.

And so what I'd like to do is I'd like to make sure that these three organizations that we're talking about funding with your budget ad is whether or not they're involved in this collaborative grant making process.

And they definitely should be because there's again this is upwards of a million dollars that this council approved last year for these purposes.

SOCR from a response I just received a couple days ago, they like it says, already launched a collaborative grant-making process to distribute the funding, which was originally intended to invest in alternatives to the criminal legal process and address the harms of the criminal legal process.

It relies on community members to develop a theory of change, so community members and organizations are sitting down with OCR now to develop the theory of change.

develop the grant process, identify what the outcomes are, and then those community members are also going to be involved in selecting who gets the funds.

As far as I know, though, that they have had year-long delays, so I'm...

That's, again, we...

That's not what I'm hearing from the groups.

The money isn't available until 2020.

So they have a year for planning, which is 2019. And the funding was always intended to be distributed in 2020. That's correct.

But I'm not positive that all these programs are in it.

So can we, I mean, I'm not saying that we should have layered monies that unintentionally are going in like double counting to the programs.

But can I at least get an intent of funding these programs?

And then we can look into whether it's already covered or not.

I support the intent of funding these programs.

I think we can have a conversation about the source or the revenue source, which sounds like what we're talking about now is sort of, does it make sense to have it come out of the the additional general fund or does it make sense to make sure that we already have appropriated dollars that are intended for this purpose to be the revenue source?

From my perspective, I think it's really important for us to continue to invest in the space of youth diversion and education programs.

We know that these models are harm reduction approaches.

And I agree with Councilmember Sawant's perspective that in terms of the accountability pieces, there are several programs that we fund in this space that are considered promising practices.

So in other words, You know, they're showing great promise, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're subject to some longitudinal study where we're gonna get statistics out of it, right?

But I think we should be investing in the space of promising practices that really do meet the needs of this particular population in our city.

So hopefully we can do, as Council Member Sawant suggested, which is, see how many folks want to be co-sponsors on this particular issue, and then we can figure out how to wrestle with where the revenue comes from.

And I think that seems like a reasonable path forward.

Thank you for bringing that to that point.

Council Member Pacheco.

So just in general principle, I'm really strongly supportive of a lot of these youth programming.

But I'm just curious, and I don't know if I should ask this to central staff or Council Member Salant, But how does this build on deals are best, or I know last year Councilmember Juarez was able to secure funding for My Brother's Keeper initiative, and just for additional context for the viewing public, My Brother's Keeper has six milestones that they focus on as a program, which is getting a healthy start entering school ready to learn, reading at the grade level by third grade, graduating from high school ready for college and career, completing post-secondary education and training, successfully entering the workforce, and then keeping kids on track and giving them second chances.

So I'm just kind of curious, how are all of these programs, and again, I've seen it now with DEEL, with HSD, and some through the general fund, like how are we measuring it, how are we gathering it, like where the greatest need is, and Just how is it building on the collective success and collective desire of doing more for young kids?

I think that's a big question.

You know, certainly when you're talking about DEEL, for example, a lot of those policy choices were made by the council and by the voters when they were approving the levy.

And that was where that prioritization came from.

I think that there is overlap and some complementary activities between DEEL and HSD, particularly in the youth space.

And I think that they are working hard to make sure that they have a constellation of organizations and programs that they are funding that fill in as many gaps as there are.

And we know that there are a lot of gaps in terms of social services.

I know that in every program is a little bit different in terms of their exact program delivery or cultural competency, things like that.

And so I do think that both DEEL and HSD are doing their best to make sure that the suite of programs that they are funding are complementary and filling as many of those gaps as possible.

Great.

If I could just add a question too to Council Member Pacheco.

In all transparency, I've been very critical of the lack of, that we should know that as a council, what they're doing.

We've tried to invest into it.

We've tried to support it to the best we could.

But the milestones and the outcomes, just quite frankly, if they're there, we don't know they're there.

I don't think there's been the kind of traction I'd like to see in those outcomes.

I don't think that we're partnering as strongly with the district as we could, and I just think we've been dropping the ball in that regard.

So that's been my impression for the last couple of years, to be so frank.

In terms of the programs that he outlined?

Yes.

Council Member Pacheco?

Well, and this is just to further, I think, a bit of Council Member Sawant's point, because this is a broader community concern that I have heard myself, and I would like to see, and maybe perhaps our offices can work together in some of the language, about how to best improve the coordination, because I know this is going to be a conversation that's going to continue past November 26, and so maybe we can use this budget process in a way that would be most impactful and beneficial.

Great.

Thank you.

I would like to call for co-sponsors to raise your hand at this point if you're interested in adding your name to this.

Very good.

You've got an extra one here, Tom.

You've got a late add here.

But I'd also, Amy, I'd like to follow up with you on this because a number of issues have been raised.

The mayor has $1.8 million from her budget.

We've got $1 million.

that appeared to have been identified last year to go forward.

And if we can just continue this conversation, and we'll move on, because we still have 11 items to cover.

We've got an audience that is ready to offer public testimony.

And I do want to ask all of you to shorten your speeches.

I'm sure that you've come with two minutes.

Since we've well exceeded the 40 people, I'm going to ask you, when you get up to the microphone, for one minute so that we can move through.

Because after this is over, we still have meetings this evening.

So...

Chair Baggio?

Yes, please.

I just noticed that the sun is out now.

Maybe we can open up the back doors.

Nice, please.

Give us a little bit more light, if you don't mind.

Thank you for bringing that up.

No, love it.

Thank you so much.

So we can open those, and everybody's been fairly quiet outside.

It'd be great.

Thank you.

Can we move on to the Office of Economic Development?

Thank you, Amy, Asha, Carlos, for your help on that.

Okay, on to the Office of Economic Development, item 47 on the agenda.

I am Yolanda Ho, Council Central Staff.

Great, thank you.

So Council Budget Action OED1A1, sponsored by Councilmember O'Brien, would add $150,000 general fund one time to the Office of Economic Development to fund a consultant study of regional employment dependent on fossil fuels.

As a way of background, the Green New Deal for Seattle, Resolution 31895, passed by Council in August, established a goal to eliminate climate pollutants from Seattle by 2030 and committed the city to ensuring a just transition for workers whose jobs currently depend on the fossil fuel industry.

The city does not currently have this data of the number of workers employed either directly by the fossil fuel industries or in related fields and has not yet developed strategies to ensure that as the city takes action to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, workers whose employment depend on fossil fuels are supported through this transition.

So this study would analyze regional employment related to fossil fuels.

projections for job growth in clean energy and related sectors, and develop strategies for the city and its partners to support impacted workers through the transition from fossil fuels to cleaner energy so they can have family wage jobs, and would also identify steps to accelerate and expand job growth in the clean energy sector if those projections are not in alignment with the number of folks currently employed.

Thank you.

Council Member O'Brien.

Yolanda, that was it.

Colleagues, I'll add that this is a critical piece of information if we are going to both make that transition off fossil fuels and ensure that the transition is just.

We simply need good information on who's working in the fossil fuel industry to help inform how to make those transitions.

Okay, very good.

Those who want to add your name as a co-sponsor, raise your hand.

Very good.

I like the timing on that one.

48, request that OED create strategies to connect developers with small business and service providers.

So this is a statement of legislative intent, OED2A1, sponsored by Councilmember Mosqueda, and this would request that the Office of Economic Development work with the Office of Housing, Seattle Department of Construction Inspections, and the Office of Planning and Community Development to identify strategies and develop tools to connect building owners and developers with small businesses and service providers seeking commercial tenancies.

Examples of the tools may be creating a database of small businesses either at risk of displacement or that have been displaced, an inventory of available commercial space either existing or under development, potential funding opportunities such as the Equitable Development Initiative, Seattle Preschool Program, Child Care Facilities Program, and information regarding permitting and other regulatory requirements.

The Office of Housing and Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection should provide this information at pre-application meetings for mixed-use residential projects, both affordable and market rate, and this request would be due back to council on May 29th, 2020 for the materials and a status update.

Great, thank you.

Council Member O'Brien?

I have this one.

You have that one?

Okay, thank you.

On behalf of Council Member Mosqueda?

I have a copy too.

Oh my gosh, they are covering their bases, but I was told directly that I was the lead on this one, so I'm going to do it.

Yolanda did a great job outlining the specific components of the statement of legislative intent.

I would just layer on top of that, but I think it's important for us to create this coordination opportunity.

We continue to hear about the lack of affordable commercial space in particular, and so I think this is a really unique opportunity for us to create a work plan and concrete strategies around how to address some of those affordability and displacement issues that we continue to hear from small businesses in communities that are experiencing or are at high risk of displacement.

So I see this as a really smart way to move forward on ongoing strategies in this space.

Great.

Council Member Herbold?

I just want to add that this work is very aligned with two bodies of work that I've been shepherding through my committee, one being the legacy business work by identifying businesses that are at risk of redevelopment and identifying spaces where they could go.

That's one way of protecting businesses that have meaning to our communities because of their longevity.

and their importance to communities as a link to our history and culture in the city.

Similarly, on the art space side, art spaces are our businesses, and they are also at very, very high risk of redevelopment and loss of our cultural art spaces.

And so, again, Office of Arts and Culture has been doing a lot of work regarding something called the CAP report, and it's really focused on this particular issue of how we retain our valuable arts and culture spaces.

So I'm excited about this notion of kind of pulling it all together.

Great.

Any further comments?

Those who would like to add your name as a co-sponsor of this slide, raise your hand.

Okay.

Very good.

Thank you.

The next item is another Teresa Mosqueda item.

But can you frame a short frame?

Okay.

All right.

So, OAD 4A1, sponsored by Councilmember Mosqueda, would add $170,000 general fund ongoing to the Office of Economic Development for a contract with a nonprofit organization to support high road apprenticeships which are defined as those that provide living wages, full benefits, flexibility, participative management, career advancement opportunities, and a voice on a job.

Very good.

Council Member Pacheco, are you speaking to this one?

Yep.

Thank you.

So this budget ad would dedicate one FTE to an organization that focuses on workforce training to focus on high road employment In particular, an entity that works with youth, communities of color, and immigrant communities.

In moving this forward, we are looking forward to working with council members to ensure that we have language to dedicate this funding to organizations that share our values around communities of color and immigrants.

This person would ensure we work with high road employers to place people in living wage jobs so that people who work in the city can afford to live in the city.

Recent conversations around the Green New Deal are a great example of a changing workforce in the future of work.

As workers leave skilled jobs and we need workers with different skills, we must ensure that we aren't swapping living wage union jobs with benefits or for minimum wage jobs.

A high road apprenticeship coordinator would ensure that we retain highly skilled and adequately compensated workers and don't sacrifice workers and unions in broader conversations about changing workplaces and the environment.

And this, again, would be directed to the Office of Economic Development?

Correct.

Very good.

Any other additional comments?

Yes, please.

Just quickly, I support this and I think this also complements the work in a previous slide asking Office of Sustainability and Environment to work on high road standards for electric heating and cooling.

Alright.

Those who'd like to add your name as a co-sponsor, raise your hand.

Very good.

All right.

Let's go to the next item.

Excuse me.

Thank you.

Council Budget Action OED 5A1 would, sponsored by Council Member Swann, would add $50,000 general fund one time to the Office of Economic Development to fund a community-based organization to survey small businesses about the impacts of gentrification, displacement, and commercial rent increases and solicit recommendations for how the city can support small businesses, particularly those owned by historically marginalized people.

Okay, council members, one.

So this idea came, the genesis of it was from the Central Area Chamber of Commerce, which unlike your good old-fashioned Chamber of Commerce that represents big corporations, represents truly small businesses, and as Yolanda said, businesses that are in danger of being gentrified out and owned by people of color, immigrant community members.

and many self-employed people, you know, sometimes like a small makeup counter or something like that, where people really eke out a living, if at all.

And so we've been talking to the Central Area Chamber of Commerce in my office, and also recently we had a Central Area and a South End small business brunch.

And in fact, we had businesses from the North of Seattle also, North Seattle also come up, come to the brunch.

There we discussed what they want and if this would make sense to them.

Many policies related to struggling small business protection have come up, like commercial rent control or small business relocation.

In fact, New York City recently was considering something like this for the bodegas in the city that are very much in danger of being obliterated.

And so there are many such ideas, but it's difficult to understand which should be the priorities for the council and so on.

So having a survey like this would really be helpful.

And in fact, when we floated this idea, this budget, we're only thinking of the central area, but I just want to let you all know that there's also been tremendous interest from businesses in Columbia City, and in fact, there was a testimonial from the last budget public hearing from a business owner in Columbia City who says, small businesses are the fibers of our community.

We don't want to turn Main Street into a place that only big chains with deep pockets can afford.

There is really a tremendous interest and need.

It's not just an intellectual interest.

There's a need for this kind of survey.

And so we're proposing that city council carry out this survey to determine what are the issues, specific issues that are leading to displacement and what are the immediate solutions the council could work on.

Any further comment on this?

Okay.

Those who'd like to add your name as a co-sponsor, raise your hand.

Sorry.

It's okay.

All right.

Moving on to item number 51.

Yes.

This is a statement of legislative intent, OED 7A1, sponsored by Councilmember Pacheco.

This would request that the Office of Economic Development identify strategies and resources necessary to support workers during a recession.

Okay.

Very good.

Councilmember Pacheco.

Colleagues, for many the word recession is a very scary word and unfortunately may be very timely given that yesterday there was an article on The Stranger with the headline, the US's booming economy is in a recession.

Director Bobby Lee said during his presentation that during recessions the most marginalized communities are hurt first.

He also said that during the recession individuals also start businesses and go back to school.

I myself was no exception.

When the recession, the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009 happened, I decided to pursue graduate school.

So, That is why I think it is prudent for the city to prepare for economic shifts that will impact our citizens while we are in a strong economic position.

I would like to see an assessment of how a recession may impact employment in Seattle and what resources OED would need to support job training, education, and small business development in response to that impact.

I think this greatly aligns to the efforts that Councilmember Mosqueda had me speak on behalf of, and as well as many of the efforts that all of you are wishing to pursue as well.

Great, further comments on this one?

Okay, those who'd like to add your name as a co-sponsor, raise your hand.

Okay, very good.

Next one is item 52, adding $116 admission tax.

Yes, so Council Budget Action OED 8A1 would add $116,291 of admissions tax ongoing to the Office of Economic Development for one FTE special events program lead.

I will note that based on feedback we've received from the executive, this proposal will be changing to fund a film and music program lead, which is an eligible expenditure from the admissions tax.

And the intent of this position would be to manage film industry functions in the department.

Very good.

Council Member Herbold.

Yes.

So we have heard from folks within the film industry that There is a great need for somebody who does the special events permitting to focus on their industry.

The Office of Economic Development had put a request in for this position as part of its realignment of the Office of Film and Music to be a creative industries cluster and did not receive funding for that function.

I mentioned the industry as well as the department would find very valuable.

So, anybody like to add anything on this?

Those who'd like to add your name as a co-sponsor, raise your hand.

Okay, very good.

And the next one I think is a pair or a partner with this, so go ahead and key it up.

Council Budget Action OED9A1, sponsored by Councilmember Herbold, would impose a proviso on funding for the Creative Industry Policy Advisor position in the Office of Economic Development.

Very good.

Council Member Herbold.

So as part of the executive's realignment of the Office of Film and Music to what they're calling a creative industry cluster, they are turning the Office of Film and Music director to be a creative industry cluster director.

And there is going to be, there's proposed to be a policy advisor under that director.

That is the new position that has been added as part of this realignment.

The Office of Arts and Culture and OED have been doing some work in the community, some focus group work.

But folks in the film industry feel that they have not been adequately represented in those discussions.

And so what this proviso would do is it would require the executive.

very likely the creative industry cluster director because we are not proposing a proviso on that position.

But we would require the executive to work with stakeholders in the film and music industry to help develop this concept and develop the job description for this particular position.

And after that work was done, then we would look at lifting the proviso.

Is that more or less right?

Okay.

That's correct.

Great.

I'm without my speaking point, so I'm just winging it.

You did great.

So, we have a slide here.

Any other comments?

Those who want to add their name as co-sponsors, raise your hand, please.

Okay, very good.

And the next agenda item is a statement of legislative intent, OED10A1.

This would request that the Office of Economic Development provide recommendations regarding the creation of a film commission.

sponsored by Councilmember Herbold.

Nothing to add.

That's self-explanatory, I think.

It's a statement of legislative intent asking OED to, again, work with the industry and make recommendations on the wisdom of creating a film commission and what the structure of that commission would be.

One of the things that I've heard from folks in the film industry is that they really need something that is focused on the regulatory environment that they have to work within.

And so I think they envision a commission that looks perhaps a little bit different than other commissions, and we want to give them the opportunity to have those discussions.

Good.

Council President Harreld.

Just a comment.

I support this, what does this say?

Sly.

Sly.

On some of the groups that have come in here and advocated on some of the industry, I wasn't impressed with the diversity that I saw.

And I'm wondering if there's a way to try to achieve that in this commission, at least flag that issue in this slice.

I don't know if the proposer would be receptive to making, to calling that out.

And that could have just been who showed up, who's testifying, but it wasn't a very diverse commission.

Yeah, I mean, I think our expectations with commissions, they are that they be demographically diverse.

Racially, culturally, and ethnically as well.

That's right.

Well, when I say demographically, I mean across all of those categories.

Well, I'm being very specific and very intentional, and I'm hoping that we can achieve some intentional language in there.

Otherwise, it's just another that's not called out.

Anyway, it was just my impression.

I don't know if anyone shared that impression.

So we have, for our commissions, we have requirements that the executive reports on all of those categories, on gender and race, and that's our way of checking to make sure that we are fulfilling our obligation as an appointment authority of, because it really comes back on us, right?

We're the ones who are nominating and, and appointing, along with the mayor, commissioners.

And so by having that reporting mechanism, it's on the bottom of the clerk files that we receive, we reveal that information.

I want to also flag the fact that I think it's really important to speak to the fact that the Office of Economic Development is doing this realignment in the first place, which I am not opposed to, even though it's very controversial.

The reason why they're doing this realignment is because of the findings that came out of the the Creative Industries Report.

And the Creative Industries Report found that Seattle has one of the highest contributions to our GDP from creative industries.

I think it's $18 for every $100 is coming from creative industries.

The salaries are fairly high salaries, but not represented across all demographics of people.

the high-salary jobs within creative industries are going primarily to white, Caucasian men.

And so this realignment of not just having a film and music office, but now having a creative clusters division or, strategy is intended to address just that issue so that we are making sure that all of the jobs that are available in in Seattle the careers that are available in Seattle are are available to people of all races and genders and that we aren't focusing our economic development and our workforce development efforts on the ones that have the greatest bang for the buck and only some people are benefiting from.

Thank you for that explanation.

Thank you very much.

Council Member O'Brien.

Just quickly, Council President Harrell, I appreciate your comments because it struck me at our second public hearing, I believe it was, when there was a large group of folks representing, wanting to maintain, I think, the status quo a bit.

And that was a largely white group.

And then three or four individuals, all people of color, stood up supporting the new direction.

And it could be, like as Council President Harrell said, just that happened to be who showed up.

But it was fairly stark that there seemed to be a divide within the group.

And I think that's something that's upon all of us to...

I encourage the city to resolve if there are differences that do break down on racial lines, we really need to understand that and figure out how we're intentional.

Okay.

Those in favor of adding their name as a co-sponsor for this slide, number 54, raise your hands.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

Item number 55, $150,000 one time to OED to support small local manufacturers.

So Council Budget Action 08011A1, sponsored by Council Member Herbold, would, as the Chair said, add the $150,000 general fund one time to the Office of Economic Development to support local manufacturers and producers, also known as local makers.

So OED supports the Seattle's manufacturing industry generally.

It doesn't have a focus on small-scale manufacturers.

This is intended to connect small manufacturers with technical and financial resources, foster collaboration among businesses, and support a network for local makers from groups traditionally underrepresented in the small manufacturing industry, such as people of color.

members of immigrant and refugee communities, and provide opportunities in urban manufacturing and entrepreneurship to youth from these groups.

The funding is intended to cover the cost of program administration and communication materials for outreach and engagement with small manufacturers and local makers.

So, the way the budget action description reads right now is that it would, the money would be used to contract

with an organization.

And as we do, we don't fund the organization in the budget process, but we talk about what kind of organization we would like OED to fund and what that organization does.

And there happens to be an organization that fits this description, if you're interested.

It's called the Seattle Good Business Network.

OK, very good.

Any other comments on this one?

Thank you.

Those who want to add your name as a co-sponsor, raise your hand.

Thank you.

All right, item 56.

So this is Council Budget Action OED19A1 sponsored by Council President Harrell.

This would add $200,000 in general fund one time to the Office of Economic Development to provide funding to the Central District Community Preservation and Development Authority for costs associated with the redevelopment of the Seattle Vocational Institute building in the Central District.

Thank you council president Harrell and can you as you're speaking to it?

Will you also tell us how this ties in with the money that we dedicated there last year?

So it's it's it's a continuation.

We did about a hundred thousand dollars of Startup pre-developmental costs and just for those that aren't following the issue too closely This is the SVI building which is a gem in the central district a lot of historical Just great work that's been doing for communities to allow them to migrate into jobs And now as you well know the college system is allowing the community to drive a process To run it to own it to have tenants in there particularly for people that are being displaced, but to help them retool themselves.

And so we want to play in the space a little bit.

So this is a continuation of the $100,000 investment for, again, pre-development costs.

There is a consultant and a contractor and an architect that are doing all the work, scoping it out.

And again, I think on the right up, it talks about it's a $21 million capital construction project that will take place.

What we don't want to do is we don't want to lose this building to the open market.

and have it converted into market-raised condos or something like that.

So this is the work of developing a PDA, but a state-run PDA, and looking at working with all the potential tenants in the building and scoping it out.

So it's a continuation of that work.

The city of Seattle is putting a modest amount in compared to both the county and the state.

So that's what it is.

Great.

Thank you.

Further comments?

Those who want to add your name as a co-sponsor supporting President Harrell's effort here, raise your hand.

Great, thank you.

And the next item we have is 57,000 one time.

Correct, so Council Budget Action OED 20A1, sponsored by Council President Harrell, would add 50,000 general fund one time to the Office of Economic Development to fund a consultant to conduct outreach to businesses that have been investigated by the Office of Labor Standards to improve the office's investigative practices.

So in short, what we want in the line of sort of survey work is we want, particularly when there are small businesses, minority owned businesses, non-profits that have just good faith disputes as they try to pay and employ their employees.

that we would like to have the OLS get some information run by OED to see, number one, how's it going?

How can it be improved?

Where are there breakdowns?

Where do we drop the ball in terms of mediation?

How can we have a more effective process such that there are more win-wins?

I talked earlier, I shared with people earlier that the lack of a sort of a mandated mediation process where documents could flow between, again, these are good faith disputes.

These are not employers that are really stealing from or committing waste stuff, I'll say, in the traditional sense.

And so I think that as we continue to protect our employees that this kind of 360 feedback would be very helpful for a modest investment.

I think we could really improve the process.

I will support this.

You and I both have had some specific instances brought to our attention.

I think this is a good idea.

No further comments?

Council Member Gonzalez?

I'm going to oppose this one.

You know, having represented workers for a period of 10 years in my private practice before being elected to the City Council, I don't think If somebody did a survey of all of the employers I sued for what I believe to be egregious violations of labor and worker laws, I suspect that the results of that survey would resoundingly say that they hated me and that they thought that my clients' claims were frivolous.

So I think this is This is unfortunately a survey that is, in my view, designed to be a bit of a hit piece on the Office of Labor Standards, and I just can't support providing funding that is so lopsided to advance an interest that is, I think, the outcome is predetermined on this one, and can't support it for those reasons.

I respect that.

But it also tells me that you haven't had the experiences that I've had and a lot of the small businesses have had where while one is investigated and there could be honest mistakes given the fact that we've passed a lot of new laws as respect to workers' rights, that the Office of Labor Standards, they are not sharing the investigation or any parts of the investigation while the investigation occurs, they're extremely unprofessional in terms of how the investigations are going.

And the goal is not to denigrate that group or how they're going about it.

The goal is to simply understand how the process can be approved.

And if they are, they can just as easily interview OLS such that they can explain why they do what they do.

But again, we've heard horror stories both in public testimony and in real life about how sort of inadequate the process is.

I can give you real life examples that I've had experience working with organizations, but I will tell you the way it's actually being enforced in good faith disputes is not, I don't think, how the direction the council wanted to go.

And I would just say that that referring to the workers over at the Office of Labor Standards as unprofessional is denigrating.

And I don't appreciate that.

Can we talk about that now?

Excuse me.

If you could not interrupt me, I'd appreciate it.

So I think, again, in my experience in representing workers in labor disputes, This is not an issue, many of these claims don't require a proof of malice or malicious intent by one party or the other.

It's a matter of, did you violate our wage and hour laws, our labor standards that exist?

And a lot of times, including at the state, and this is true for the city, Intent only comes into play when making a determination about what the penalty will be, not whether or not there was a violation.

That is part and parcel a beauty of our labor and worker protection laws across the state, is that we have moved away from did you intend to do X and rather said you have an obligation as an employer who employs people in our city to comply with XYZ laws.

And if you need the resources to understand that, great.

We're funding business outreach to make sure that you understand what your new responsibilities are under this framework.

But if you violate those laws, intent does not play into that equation.

Again, I think if we open up the door to funding these surveys, we are going to be in a situation where we're simply creating Again, a hit piece on the Office of Labor Standards, because nobody likes to be held accountable and fined in the context of the situation.

It is an unpleasant experience.

And in my experience, I have been actually watching OLS put out reports and newsletters and pieces about how to correct your behavior, how to make sure that you are complying with the laws.

So I think this is a customer satisfaction poll.

I think it's going to be a predetermined outcome, and I can't support this request for those reasons.

Further comments?

The goal is not to have a predetermined outcome.

You take paid sick and safe time as an example.

There's just a large swath of employers out there that are violating that, not because they intend to, just because they haven't had the right training or the right education.

It's been my impression and my direct experience with clients out there, people of color, minority owned businesses, by the way, who just didn't realize that they could have been inadvertently violating the law.

And I would think that they'd have an opportunity, number one, to get trained, to get educated, to not be put out of business.

And with this information, there are minority-owned businesses that have literally been put out of business.

fined heavily without an understanding that they weren't trying to hurt their employees at all.

So it seemed to me that when you impose any types of laws, you want to be able to get the feedback.

I would strongly agree that you don't want a predetermined outcome.

That defeats the purpose.

But you do want to hear feedback on how you can improve the process.

And unless you talk to both the employers and the employees, you're not going to get that feedback.

Again, there have been a lot of small minority-owned businesses that have been devastated by what I'm calling a heavy-handed approach toward how we're enforcing these laws.

You're not the only one that's represented employees.

I've been doing that for decades.

So I'm not suggesting that we don't protect the rights of employees.

I voted for every piece of legislation that we've put forward.

I believe in workers' rights.

But I will tell you that the way the process actually unfolds, that we need to get feedback to make sure that we have a fair and effective process.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

You know, I think in the interest of recognizing that Council President Harrell has conversations with folks who have been impacted by the work of the Office of Labor Standards, which I strongly support the work and I support their efforts to educate business owners as well as workers, but also I do have concerns that we would not want to fund a department that exists as an advocacy department for businesses to do this work.

And maybe between now and the next round, we could talk about perhaps an independent review of the investigative practices, but both the businesses' experience as well as the workers' experience.

And perhaps this is something that we could do with the city auditor who is an independent office and will not be inclined to act as an advocate for businesses but will be really focused on the performance of the office for both workers and employers.

So if there's a way to improve the process, I'm all for that.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the process, but let's look.

But you're ignoring the Small Business Advisory Council.

We created, or at least the executive created, the Small Business Advisory Council, and you heard all four of these owners, I think almost all of them were I think three of the four leaders were people of color that had small businesses who said that the process needed to be improved.

And so I'm listening to that feedback and we had the Millionaire Club CEO sit here right here and talk about how it was unfair that he's trying to employ the hardest to reach, the hardest to employ employees, people that are registered sex offenders, people that have felonies, people that are hard to employ.

He's trying to employ them, people that are a step away from homeless, and he's saying this process is unfair.

So I don't know how we, if there's a way to get that feedback to see how we can have a fairer process for those, then I'm all for that.

The only tool that would seem to make sense to me is to have OAD try to talk to these businesses.

I fully agree that we don't want a predetermined hit piece on OLS.

That is not the intent.

And if that's the outcome, I don't even want that as an outcome.

But I do want as an outcome a way to improve the process such that we could have more mediations, more training, more education.

Thank you.

Council Member Swann, I'd like the final comment, and so we can take a vote on this.

Thank you.

I wasn't intending to speak at first, but I feel like Council President Harrell is doubling down on this point without really any data.

I mean, you say that many struggling small businesses have been devastated by the enforcement of labor law.

I mean, OK, I have anecdotal evidence.

I don't have statistical evidence, but I have talked to many, many, many struggling small business owners all the way from North Seattle to SeaTac and Taquilla.

Not one single business owner has said that they were devastated, especially immigrant struggling business owners have said that they were devastated or in any way adversely affected because of having to comply with labor law.

Sorry?

I've just started speaking, Chair Baxhaw, and I've just started weighing in.

I would appreciate it if you'd let me finish.

This is an important point.

I don't want there to be any ambiguity or confusion about this.

The suggestion that many struggling small business owners, especially immigrant business owners, have been devastated, and I'm quoting President Harreld, because of having to comply with labor law.

Please let me finish.

This is just, I mean, I have zero anecdotal evidence on this.

There's not, as I said, I have spoken to many dozens of business owners, and not one has said that I've been devastated because of this.

What they are telling you, and that's what you should be paying attention to, is they're being devastated by commercial rents.

Their rents are tripling because their buildings are being bought up by corporate developers.

They are being devastated by the fact that they don't have just cost protections, like Saba Ethiopian Cuisine.

She didn't say, the woman who owned this place, she didn't say that she was devastated because she had to pay her workers' fair wages.

She was devastated because the owner who bought the building economically evicted her.

And in fact, there's an outstanding civil rights complaint against that guy, Gabe Rosenshine, because he treated her badly.

And the Office of Civil Rights is investigating that as we speak.

And as far as So if you want to protect small businesses, we should be putting that forward.

And that's why I've put the other amendment forward for the Central Area Chamber of Commerce to carry out a study to have small businesses have their needs met.

And a very important point here that is, you know, it's an obfuscation here.

When you look at the statistics of who are the systematic violators of labor law, it is not your neighborhood coffee shop or restaurant.

big corporations that are systematic violators of labor law.

And so to suggest that the small businesses are the target of the Office of Labor Standards is completely contrary to the data.

And then last but not least, no business, big or small, has the right to exploit any workers.

I would like very much to move forward to ask my colleagues who wants to add their name as a sponsor to item number 57. Raise your hand.

Thank you.

Okay.

Item 58, Office of Labor Standards.

Hi, Karina Bull, Council Central staff.

This Council Budget Action OLS1A1 is a companion to Council President Harrell's Council Budget Action OED20A1 requesting a statement of legislative intent for Office of Labor Standards to use the information collected from the survey that Office of Economic Development would conduct to provide a report with recommendations for modifying their labor standards investigation process.

I think we made positions pretty clear in the last vote.

Would you like to speak to it?

I would.

So two things.

One is I certainly am not suggesting nor did I imply that OLS are targeting small or minority owned businesses.

That is not what I said.

And if that's what you heard, that is not what I said.

What I said is I've met with many minority-owned businesses who were devastated by this, and some of whom were put out of business.

What this slide does is simply say what we're trying to do.

And what we're trying to do is resolve and mediate good faith disputes between parties.

And by good faith, what I mean by that are disputes where the employer, again, it could be a violation of paid sick and save time, they didn't track it the right way.

nothing along the lines of wage theft or anything along those lines, but where they can resolve it quickly and efficiently.

and share information such that the process doesn't take as long as it takes.

And so hopefully this would inform the OLS on how to do it much more effectively and much more efficiently.

They've done some outstanding work, particularly in some of the larger organizations.

In fact, when OLS presented at the table, I commended them on some of the I think it was Jack in the Box and some other larger retailers that they did a deep dive.

I'm more concerned with some of those small minority-owned businesses or just small businesses that don't have the resources and just said, oh, I wasn't doing this.

How do we resolve it?

How do we get educated?

How do we move forward?

So this is a slide that talks about the OLS learning from it and then hopefully improving the process.

Council Member Herbold.

I would be open to supporting this sly if the proposer was willing to have to make some changes in the language that says that the survey be done by the auditor and that there be a survey both of employers about their experience with the investigations as well as workers and their experience with the investigations.

You know I think that's that's actually a smarter approach so I actually like that.

In fact, to the point about OED, we could have probably had the auditor replaced with the OED to assure some kind of objectivity in that process.

And so that is certainly intent.

So I welcome that and we could tweak that language.

And do you want to do the previous one as well?

Sure.

Sure.

All right.

So we could make changes to the previous one to suggest the auditor, not OED.

Because I do want objective feedback.

I want OLS to be better and more efficient.

And so same thing with the Slack.

Councilmember Pacheco, are you doing your stress ball, or are you wanting to add to this?

All right, very good.

All right.

All right, no further comments.

And with the change, that assumes that this will be reviewed by our internal auditor.

Those that want to add their name as a cosponsor, raise your hand.

Okay, very good.

Thank you.

So, one last item, 59.

Council Budget Action OLS 2A1.

This is sponsored by Councilmember Mosqueda, and it would add $1 million general fund ongoing to the Office of Labor Standards Outreach, specifically funding the Community Outreach and Education Fund, the Business Outreach and Education Fund, and the office's own outreach efforts.

Okay, so this comes from Teresa Mosqueda.

Do we have?

Council Member Gonzales.

We've talked about this before a couple of times, so I don't think I need to rehash all the points, but really this is an opportunity to add additional funding to allow the Office of Labor Standards to fulfill its mission to advance labor standards through thoughtful community and business engagement, strategic enforcement, and innovative policy development with a commitment to race in social justice.

So we know that the Office of Labor Standards to the chagrin of some, enforces the following labor standards, the paid sick and safe leave, fair chance employment, minimum wage, wage theft.

Soon, they'll be enforcing the Hotel Employees' Health and Safety Ordinances that we just passed, the Secure Scheduling Law, and of course, the newest addition, or one of the newer additions, the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights.

So this is an opportunity for us to add additional funding that would support the education of both businesses and community to be able to understand the rights and responsibilities.

And we haven't enhanced this fund since the addition of some of these new labor standards.

I think that this is a much more productive way of providing the Office of Labor Standards with the resources they need to make sure that they are resourced and well-equipped to provide meaningful community-based outreach all of our labor standards.

Other comments?

Council Member Herbold and Council Member Pacheco.

Thank you.

One concept I'd like to talk to council members and in particular the sponsor.

I have talked to her staff about this idea as well as central staff.

I've raised my concern sort of ad nauseum, people are sick of hearing about it, about the lack of resources for the Office of Civil Rights to do outreach and education about its laws.

I think one way that might be helpful, not just about getting the word out around SOCR's laws, but also in making the communication to workers less confusing, is if we had some sort of a memorandum of agreement or memorandum of understanding, specifically as it relates to SOCR's laws that affect the workplace.

Rather than having SOCR go out or fund an organization to go out to train workers around the prohibitions against discrimination and harassment in the workplace and have OLS fund an organization to do the same for the labor laws, it seems like it's about who you're talking to and who you're talking to are workers about their rights.

And so one, I think, thing that I would like to explore more is creating some sort of connection with the OLS funding for outreach and education on its labor laws with some of SOCR's laws, specifically the ones that deal with the workplace.

Council Member Worth.

Thank you.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

That's all right.

Oh, no, go ahead.

Council Member Pacheco will bring us home.

Last item.

Age before beauty.

Sorry, buddy.

So this is my spin on this.

I support this in the intent, but my concern is $1 million ongoing.

I don't know how we got to $1 million.

I don't know what the breakdown is or how the $1 million is to be spent.

I agree with a lot of what Councilmember Herboldt has shared and also in relationship to what Councilmember Harold and Gonzales were saying under numbers 57 and 58. So while I agree, I was going to ask the Chair if she wouldn't mind doing her Tier 1, Tier 2. issue on this one.

It's one of those where I agree completely with the five new laws, enforcement, education, workers, employers, employees.

But at the same time, I'm not comfortable for $1 million every year with no more questions asked about how we got there.

All right.

So before we vote, I just want to comment on this.

So ordinarily, I'm ready to double down on the training piece.

That's critical.

And the $1 million doesn't even scare me.

What does scare me is we've hired, and there's some great organizations we hired to do some of the training.

And some of those organizations are the ones that are saying that training is done inadequately.

They're saying that, or at least how OLSs are conducting investigations are done inadequately.

These are coming from trainers.

And so my point is that I think we need to first know how well the training is going.

before we make such a significant investment.

And again, I'm not trying to sell my other sly or add, but that's my point is that this training component, businesses are saying that they're not being trained.

And so do we just double down when we haven't done sort of a temperature check to see how well our previous investments have been made?

And I don't know if we're at that point.

Council Member Pacheco's next.

Well, first, I really look forward to your package next week, Chair Bagshaw.

You know that we, as I said earlier, the headline yesterday in The Stranger was the U.S. booming economy is in a recession.

We're gonna have to make some difficult choices in the coming weeks and now as well.

So I just hope that you can take in consideration because I do see 57, 58, 59 all Connected in terms of you know, there's areas for us to improve.

I'm gonna be supportive of that And be supportive of workers knowing their rights and businesses knowing their responsibilities.

So With that said chair, I look forward to your package next week.

Thank you.

Councilmember Gonzalez so on this journey that we find ourselves on that is apparently a about maligning the Office of Labor Standards, which I thought we were all supportive of at some point.

I just really wanna make clear that I think it is, this is not new programming.

It's not like this proposal is designed to say, hey, we have a bright idea today of making sure that there's community engagement and outreach and education.

of both workers and employers in this space.

So I'm a little confused as to where suddenly after five years of consistent funding of the Office of Labor Standards to do this work, suddenly we have concerns about it not working.

And so I just, I'm not understanding where that concern is rooted in terms of actual facts and information and data.

I've been seeing some of the dashboards coming out of the Office of Labor Standards talking about evaluation of knowledge and understanding of our labor standards law and compliance and compliance rates.

We are about to see a release around the secure scheduling law that we funded two years worth of consistent rigorous study analysis and evaluation that includes both gauging the understanding by employers and employees.

We've been seeing some really good results in terms of enforcement from the Office of Labor Standards in the space of secure scheduling.

We did the same thing for many of the newer laws that we've passed as well and for our minimum wage laws, always constantly requiring the Office of Labor Standards to undergo evaluation of the compliance issues and of enforcement issues.

All of our labor laws, as far as I'm aware, included a strategy that said that for the first year at a minimum, we were going to have an approach of compliance.

And in order to do that, we needed to make sure to have the Office of Labor Standards adequately funded in the space of making sure that people understood what their rights and responsibilities were.

And in fact, when we did do the studies on many of the new labor standard laws, one of the things that we found out when we evaluated baseline understanding, or lack thereof, of workers and employers was that there was a huge deficiency on understanding what the new rights and responsibilities were, thereby meriting the need to continue to fund this community outreach on both the worker side and the employer side.

to make sure that we were improving upon that baseline so that the next time we evaluated our work in this space, we could be able to confidently say people have an increased awareness and as a result are in fact complying with it.

I haven't seen any evidence to contradict that.

And if the council members who are opposing this or are not supportive of ongoing community outreach and education and business outreach and engagement fund, dollars have concrete data or evidence that they can point to that shows that this fund isn't working and therefore doesn't merit additional investment, I would welcome an opportunity to see that information.

Council Member Pacheco.

So I just want to clarify, I remain supportive of OLS personally.

And so rather what I'm trying to, and I'm going to vote in support of it, rather what I'm trying to do is lay the land for everybody that's here, as well as the viewing public.

But I'm also trying to make sure that I don't over-promise and under-deliver.

Because I think that, to me, is the part where, in trying to lay the larger context about where things are heading, it's concerning to me.

And I say that just on a local level because we have, you know, thousands of city employees.

Again, as I said earlier and I shared earlier, the word recession, especially for myself, many others, my generation, it's a scary word because it meant for us, we couldn't find jobs.

And so, just want to provide additional context, again, for everybody about what those decisions are going to be moving forward.

And again, still remain supportive because I do know and recognize that OLS does important work.

Great.

Thank you.

I would like to do what Councilmember Juarez had asked.

We'll do a two-tier vote.

One is to support the $1 million general fund ongoing.

So, those who want to add your names as a sponsor to that, raise your hand.

And those who would prefer second tier, either a lesser amount or something you want to look at differently.

Okay.

Did you get the count?

Did you want to speak?

I trust the chair.

Okay.

Very good.

All right.

Thank you all.

That takes us through item 59. And we will now turn our attention to public comment.

Thank you all for coming.

Thank you for waiting.

Appreciate the time you've been here.

And as I have asked earlier, please make your comments shortened so we're going to have one minute apiece.

And we've got six pages of people who have signed up to comment.

So, again, I'm going to try to And thank you for writing clearly.

This is nice.

Musa Sam, Walter Ellis, and Nirani, I apologize, Fafain, Fafani.

So, if you three would line up.

Musa, Sam, Walter, Ellis, and oh, we've got groups.

Okay.

So, with one minute apiece, and we've got large groups, How about if we go four minutes?

Okay.

Very good.

And thank you.

What I'm going to ask you to do, if you're signing up for one group, please don't stand up for other groups.

We're going to try to move this forward.

So, Tony, good to see you.

Four minutes here.

And this one is about Office of Housing.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

Chair Berkshire and members of the committee, my name is Musa Assam, and I am the new Home Ownership Center Director for Homesight.

And I am here with Tony To, our Director Emeritus, and also Tom Jacoby, our Chief Portfolio Officer.

We are here to talk about support for amendment OH7A1.

And first, we would like to thank you all for your support this morning.

And also, we want to thank council member Mosquera for submitting this and council member O'Brien for introducing it.

Thank you.

We appreciate that.

So, just a brief history.

has been created since 1990, and the city of Seattle was instrumental in creating that.

And we have been, since then, we have been helping would-be homebuyers with homeownership education, and also we have been also being very instrumental in helping develop the neighborhood in Southeast Seattle.

So, but what happened is recently we realized that our funding for the home ownership education has been, is going to be cut abruptly.

So what we wanted to do is come here and request that that funding be restored.

And it's about $67,000 because what it does is it help people go through our program, those who normally would be marginalized by other lenders.

So we're here to ask for that.

We're here to help for that.

So in the past three years, we have helped educate 570 households, and out of that number, 80 households have bought their house in Seattle.

And we believe that our work is very instrumental in what's happening here in the city.

So therefore, we are definitely requesting that you guys help us restore that.

And we are here with a group of supporters whom we work with, Habitat for Humanity, Homestead Land Trust, Park View Services, and I would like them to each introduce themselves.

Thank you.

Please.

Sure.

Yeah, my name is Ryan.

I'm with Habitat for Humanity and we require all of our homeowners to go through home site for all the homeownership counseling.

Excuse me for interrupting you.

So as a group, we're trying to keep you to four minutes.

Right.

And we've passed four minutes.

So can I just ask you to wrap up if you've rather than going through and introducing everyone, it'll take too long.

Okay.

Eric Provitz, Director of Real Estate Development for Homestead Community Land Trust.

Good.

Here to support.

All right, thank you.

Yes, Bill Connor from the Washington State Housing and Finance Commission.

Thank you.

All right.

Hi, Shelly Duran from Parkview Services.

Very good.

Thank you.

All right.

Well, thank you so much for coming down today.

Hi.

And are you Walter Ellis?

I'm Walter Ellis.

We're a group.

We're all being fed misleading scare tactics by Uber and Lyft claiming that they're for us.

Clearly, they don't care for us at all.

These are the same companies who announced a $90 million sweet-sounding appeal to voters in California to try to strip us of our rights and keep pay low.

What's their proposal?

Paying us $0.30 per mile.

That's less than our cost.

and an hourly wage that might look okay on paper, but it only pays for parts of each hour.

They've fed us little half-truths and flat-out lies to distract us.

They want us fighting over 51 cents so they can avoid paying us the real dollars that they've been taking away from us.

They don't want us to have a right to fair pay and fair treatment.

They try to scare our passengers while they've been secretly pocketing a bigger share of our riders' money.

We took a big cut when we moved from 80% of the fare to a much smaller rate that has no connection to what our riders pay while they charge our riders whatever they can get away with.

They replaced some of this lost money with bonuses, which have now been shrinking very rapidly.

And it's going to get worse.

Uber promised shareholders that they will reduce our pay more to make more profits on the backs of the very same people who bear all of the costs and take on all of the risks.

We have stories of them taking of it.

We all have stories of them taking advantage of us.

Right now, I'm being forced to file a wage theft claim.

They take what they can get from us and our passengers and leave us hanging to fend for ourselves.

We need to build a coalition of allies to fight for our rights.

Let's not be fooled by the fuzzy math and misdirection.

Let's fight together for a fair and just future.

My name is Satyen Banwath, and I'd just like to say we are not asking much.

We just ask stop unfair deactivations, just take a fair commission, treat us as their family members so we can work with a little peace of mind.

And we deserve a little better than it is.

Drivers are the reason they are billionaires.

We really appreciate it if they can take it to consideration.

Please support the fair share plan and we really appreciate the Seattle Mayor and City Council members.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Unity.

Umoja.

Kambel in Gambia.

Medhime.

Mada in Somalia.

I am here to urge all the drivers to make so we unified under one umbrella.

We have nothing more than unity.

If we are unified, Uber and Lyft will not treat us as slaves.

Right now, we are getting paid less and less and less.

And this will continue as long as we have in fighting and we are not unified.

Teamsters are here to help us.

The City Council will listen to us.

We are the voters.

Remember, we all have families back home.

If we come here and they don't listen to us, we know what to do, right?

Come 2020. So, therefore, it's not a threat.

But it is something to be told to them too, to listen and support Uber drivers because we are driving day in, day out.

So we appreciate the city council to listen to us.

Thank you for all what you are doing for us.

Thank you.

We have another group.

My name is Lorraine.

I think I was called Elia, and I was using the bathroom.

She's going to talk.

Thank you.

I just set the time for three minutes, please.

Thank you.

In the spirit of Halloween, I speak today not as Jake Laundrie, the five-star Uber and Lyft driver who stands with my brothers here in support of the fair share law, but today I speak as the Seattle-based cloud server that connects to Uber and Lyft drivers' phone and uses their GPS to train the self-driving cars meant to replace them all.

My Uber and Lyft shareholding masters also seem to be celebrating Halloween today because they're still using their scare tactics on drivers to try to trick them into thinking that this fair share law is bad for drivers.

These companies dressing up as the protectors of driver earnings might be the most ridiculous Halloween disguise here today.

Because in truth, my corporate masters have long had a history of tricking and taking advantage of their drivers, as the other drivers have mentioned, by cutting our pay, by unfairly deactivating us, and yes, by using my surveillance powers to create fleets of self-driving cars that are meant to entirely replace this vulnerable class of workers.

So my existence alone is just one more reason that drivers deserve the fair pay and increase in job security protections that this law promises.

My algorithms predict that you will be thankful you passed this fair share law.

It will at the very least have made tech worker labor movements stronger and more resilient against the enormous changes that artificially intelligent workers like me will bring.

So thank you for protecting workers today with the fair share plan and boo.

Good afternoon, Council Members.

My name is Nourain Adam Fofana.

I'm an Uber driver.

At the same time, I drive Lyft too.

I've been driving for three years now.

I bought my car purposely for the ride share.

2017, I had an accident.

None, I mean, the guy who hit me has no insurance.

I called the police.

The police came over there.

They accessed everything about the accident.

They took him.

They gave me his information.

I gave it to the insurance.

I didn't even get a chance to report to Uber.

My riders reported to Uber, and Uber just shut my app right away.

So I talked to them and let them know what happened.

I gave them all the information they needed from me.

They saw the police report.

I was in the faulty path.

They shut me down for six months.

And I bought my car purposely for that job.

For six months, I don't have no income.

Lucky for me, my wife was working, so she was able to support the family.

But I just have to be accepting, I mean, all the insults.

She get mad sometimes because I'm supposed to be bringing something on the table.

I couldn't pay the rent.

I couldn't pay no electricity, no None of the bills, because nothing was coming in.

So I support the solidarity and resource center that this bill is talking about, which if we had earlier, it would have helped me.

Somebody outside Uber and Lyft would talk on my behalf and decide if if I should be deactivated or not.

So thank you very much.

I support the driver solidarity and resource center.

Let's make it happen.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right, next we have Charlie Lapam, Peter Keel, and Francisco.

Hey, I'm Charlie.

I'm going to split my time with Katie, if that's all right.

It's OK by me.

All right.

Hi, council members.

My name is Katie Garrow.

I'm the deputy director at MLK Labor.

And I just briefly wanted to express my support for the creation of a high road training program coordinator.

I also serve as the treasurer of the King County Workforce Development Council.

And that entity, as you know, you and the county have joint jurisdiction over.

And it invests $13 million a year in workforce training.

And over the last two years, we've gone through a massive reorganization, you know, reorg.

And the intention of that reorg has been racial equity.

However, one of the big holes in this reorg, as far as I can tell, is that there are not good pathways into high road, good high wage jobs through this particular training program.

So I appreciate the work you all are doing to fund that effort.

Great, Katie.

You got nine seconds, buddy.

Yeah, but I just want to say a few words about the fair share plan and why we're supporting it.

It's not just good for drivers, but it's really good for everybody who wants to live and work in Seattle.

Well done.

Thank you.

All right, Peter, and is it Krell?

Krell.

Okay, and then Francisco, then Lata Ahmed.

Lata Ahmed.

My name is Peter Quill.

Thank you very much, council members, for being here to hear on me.

My topic today is about unity of drivers.

I heard all the drivers, from all the divers, to stand together against Uber.

Uber is not your friend.

Don't be, again, another driver.

Be, again, the Uber who is threatening us badly.

You have to understand that when we stand here, talk about the issue that Uber is doing to you, not about me, not about anybody.

We support our unity on a shared ride, our unity on unpaired deactivation, and our unity on driver support center.

Those are the things that we need so that we can survive and feed our kids.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Bob Gilbranson, and I want to talk about deactivation.

I was deactivated last year and then again this year.

Last year, they said I didn't have a driver's license.

I proved that I did, but they didn't pay any attention to me.

Now this year, about an accident, and I brought down to the Uber Hub a statement from the from the highway patrol that the other driver was at fault.

The customer service person down there said, I can't read your letter, and I can't talk to you about it.

He didn't take down any information.

He was no help at all.

Just recently, I read that Uber was asked to speak in front of Congress, send someone down to the Transportation Committee, and they refused.

Just how powerful is Uber getting?

We need some help with regulating Uber here in Seattle.

My name is Zia Fitz.

Thank you City Council so much that you gave me opportunity.

My account is deactivated since last year.

The reason was because of service dog.

A young lady, she asked for a ride and she has a dog.

the dog was, it's not, looks like service dog.

And I asked her, is it service dog?

And she said, yes.

Do you have the ID that explains that service?

She said, no.

And when, during the conservation, she start to fight with me.

And I afraid her behavior.

And she start to calling me and bad words.

And yeah, I, I didn't accept the ride and my account is deactivated.

We need information in the app that if it's service talk or not, there is no any information.

How can we know?

Please protect unfair deactivation.

Thank you so much.

Francisco, Lata, then Dustin Lambrou.

Is it Francisco here, number six?

All right, moving to Lata, number seven.

Dustin Lambrow, eight.

Ahmed Mumin, nine.

Hi.

Lata Ahmed.

I like this group.

Is that Francisco?

No, Ahmed Mumin.

Okay.

Ahmed, would you kindly get over to the microphone?

There you go.

Yes.

Thank you.

Council Member Ahmed Mumin.

My name is Ahmed Mumin.

I'm the founder of Seattle Rideshare Driver Association and also the executive director And we don't have proper representation.

We don't.

As Uber and Lyft drivers, I have been part of the driver leadership committee with the Timsters.

We requested the Teamsters to propose to the mayor an increase of per mile help with insurance, help with maintenance of our cars.

None of that message was conveyed to the mayor.

Instead, we were brought a proposal that was a deal between the mayor and Teamster called fair share.

This proposal is not fair share if the driver is not getting what he wants.

Driver Solidarity and Resource Center.

We want, as you, the city government, to allocate at least 50% of the money being given on behalf of the ride share.

Otherwise, you will be doing injustice.

Franklin Delano FDR, the former president of this country, said, workers' right is a human right.

our human rights is infringed.

You see all of these people behind us, they are here to tell the council member we are not being represented the way we want to be represented.

We don't hate Timsters, we don't hate anybody, we want unity, but we cannot close our eyes and just say unity for the sake, I'll pass to Julia.

Hi, my name is Julie Davis.

I've been a driver for two and a half years, full-time.

I am the spokesperson for the Seattle Rideshare Drivers Association, and I would like to say this.

The drivers here before you today are calling on the City Council to include funding for the Drivers Resource and Solidarity Center using at least half of the funds raised by the Mayor's per ride tax proposal.

We appreciate council members who want support for our proposal, and we call on other council members also to support our demand.

We are part of the Seattle Rideshare Drivers Association, which represents drivers throughout the region.

I am presenting to you a petition that more than 300 drivers have recently signed, calling for the city council to adopt our proposal.

We are continuing to gather signatures.

While we support affordable housing and transit, we think it's obvious that if our work is the basis for collecting the tax, then we, the drivers, should be the beneficiaries.

While we support Drivers are struggling to survive economically, especially with the high cost of housing.

Many lack health care.

Some drivers are even living and sleeping inside their vehicles.

Others have trouble paying their rent every month.

Many drivers were former taxi cab drivers who owned taxi medallions.

These medallions were their primary life investment and at one point were worth upwards of $300,000.

Taxi drivers borrowed huge sums of money to purchase medallions in order to operate their taxi business.

Since Uber and Lyft disrupted the paid transportation sector, the medallions nearly lost all of their value, destroying the hard-earned assets of the taxi drivers and casting many drivers deep into debt.

Many drivers are immigrants, and English is their second, third, even fourth language.

For them, we need help advocating for our rights and dealing with Uber and Lyft.

We also need help obtaining range of service, housing, mental health, naturalization, English classes, and training in customer service and financial management.

English comprehension is a big issue for many of these drivers.

A driver's resource and solidarity center funded by the monies raised through the per ride fees would support the needs of the drivers and their families, help drivers build an effective voice.

We need dispute resolution resources and in our proposal they would be a part of the driver's resource and solidarity center.

But it's important for us to be clear that our main problem with Uber and Lyft is a power imbalance.

And no dispute resolution law alone is going to get us justice if we're not addressing the power imbalance.

Julie, thank you.

I'm going to ask you to wrap up please.

Okay.

So basically what we're saying is we would like to have a driver-based, run-based resource and resolution center.

A government one can't help our needs because it'll trickle down through government agency to government agency.

Drivers will see little.

Thank you.

I want to just check on a couple of names that, tell me if you were here, the Iyadah Ahmed and Dustin Lambrough.

Dustin's here?

OK.

Thank you very much.

OK.

Thank you.

Dustin?

Sure.

Hi.

I was going to talk to the fair share plan, but I think you all know my position on that.

I wanted to engage on the last council item 59 on the funding for Office of Labor Standards.

Thank you, Council Member Gonzalez, for speaking to that today in Council Member Mosqueda's absence.

I want to specifically talk to your concern, Council Member Juarez, and to you, Council President Harrell.

even if we were to give all a million dollars to the Office of Labor Standards, it's not going to recover all of the lost wages that are stolen every single day by employers in this city.

When our We launched and encouraged the Office of Labor Standards back in 2016 to launch an investigation into Leadpoint.

That settled this summer for close to $700,000.

Had we not done an organizing campaign, and thank you, Councilmember Herbold, for your support on that.

Had we not done that, those workers would still have money stolen from their pockets.

It took thousands and thousands of hours to do all the affidavits, the witnesses, and That million dollars is sorely needed just on outreach and that's not even, we have not had an increase since 2017 and we've passed two major laws since then and are poised to pass another one with the fair share plan.

So thank you Councilmember Bekshaw and I'm sorry I ran over a little bit on the time.

Thank you very much Dustin.

Kelsey Mesher and Katie Wilson.

Hey, Kelsey.

Hi, thanks.

I'm Kelsey Mesher, speaking on behalf of Transportation Choices Coalition and the Fair Share Coalition as well.

Drivers in our transportation system, whether they're driving a bus or light rail train, streetcar, or an Uber or Lyft, have a really big job.

We trust them not only to get us where we need to go, but to keep us safe while doing so and to stay professional under some really, you know, stressful circumstances sometimes.

It's a huge responsibility.

The job deserves respect and dignity of fair pay and of protections.

And this is why workers are at the heart of the Fair Share Plan.

But we spend a lot of time also thinking about how transportation functions as a system and how our transportation system is connected to our city and our region at large.

Uber and Lyft are private companies that are using our public right of way, and they are having an impact on our transportation system and the ecosystem of our city.

And so this is why we support that the fair share legislation, in addition to putting drivers first, also addresses urgent issues around mobility and affordable housing.

Thank you, Kelsey.

Katie Wilson.

After Katie, Abdul, Yousef, and Michael Wolfe.

Hi, council members.

I'm Katie Wilson here representing the Transit Riders Union.

And we are also part of the Fair Share Coalition and wanted to express our support for the Fair Share Plan.

We can't let this new destabilizing sector of the transportation industry be built up on the backs of low-wage workers.

We strongly support all of the new labor protections for Uber and Lyft drivers, especially protection from deactivation.

And we support a living wage for drivers.

We can't let drivers' livelihoods depend on the whims of an algorithm.

We also need to acknowledge and mitigate the effects on our transportation system and the wider community that Uber and Lyft are having.

The reality is that these platforms are contributing to decreasing transit ridership in many places around the country, in some places sending it into a death spiral.

Seattle has so far resisted this trend, but we have to acknowledge that Uber and Lyft are contributing to traffic congestion and our region's rising carbon emissions.

That's why we support a fee for transit and affordable housing near transit.

We have to start holding large corporations accountable for their impacts to our community and to our city.

So please pass the fair share plan, protect drivers, and support a sustainable and equitable transportation system.

Thank you.

Thank you, Katie.

Abdel, Yusuf, Michael, Wolf, and Patience.

Do I see...

Okay.

Okay.

Abdul's not here?

I don't think so.

Okay.

Michael, you're up, and if Abdul shows up, we'll come back to him.

Michael Wolf inpatients.

Thank you.

Again, for the record, my name is Michael Wolfe.

I'm the Executive Director of Drive Forward Seattle.

Much like the previous large group here from the Seattle Rideshare Drivers Association, we are opposed to the fair share plan because we feel the tax is not necessary to get the kinds of benefits that the drivers pretty much all agree that we need.

We need to have a minimum earning standard, a floor for those times when it's just slow or you had a bad week.

We need to have a better process for driver deactivation appeals.

These are things that all drivers agree on, whether they support our organization, whether they support the Teamsters, whether they support the Drivers Association.

Where there's major disagreement is whether you need an additional tax to do it.

Even in the legislation you propose, you propose reducing the FAS's finance fee to then fund these two programs, and the 51 cents additional is just more money.

So why not do what they suggested and spend that money on drivers?

Create a city portable benefits fund that allowed drivers to offset costs of health care, fit paid family leave, all these other benefits.

These are all things that Drive Forward has called on the city to do, and yet we haven't seen it happen.

Thank you, Michael.

Patients and patients.

It's Chris Fife, Doug Dumas, Melissa Purcell.

So we have a group, kind of group.

I will introduce our board member from HDC who's here to speak in support and stand with our fair share coalition partners and drivers who deserve a living wage and investments in affordable housing and transportation projects.

So over to Michelle who will express her support.

Good afternoon council members and thank you for your time on this.

My name is Michelle Moreland.

I'm a principal of Lotus Development Partners which is an affordable housing development provider in Seattle and King County.

I am also a member of the Housing Development Consortium Board and we support strongly the fair share proposal and thank you for bringing this forward.

This measure will provide a significant amount of resources we know for transportation and affordable housing as well as support workers rights all of which we are strongly in favor of and on the point of affordable housing which is the world that I live in and know I mean I think it's no surprise to anybody that there's a number of drivers who may be living in some of the units that get produced by the work that we do.

I personally in my organization have 400 units of housing in production currently with a number of other organizations on the HTC in the HTC membership totaling thousands of units of housing in production currently and every single dime that is produced that is created by the city is necessary and desperately needed.

So I support this measure and I appreciate the acknowledgement that housing and transit and transportation are all linked as are the rights of workers and a living wage for drivers.

So thank you very much.

Thank you, Michelle.

All right, thank you.

Next, Chris Fyfe, Doug Duma, Melissa Purcell, and then Babs.

Are you Chris?

I am Chris.

Thank you for taking the time to hear my brief testimony today.

My name is Chris Fife and I am a Lyft ride share driver with over 7,000 rides since 2000. As a driver, I want to express to the council that the ride share community offers part of the solution to the city's parking problems and the vehicles on the road.

Placing a tax of 75 cents per ride regardless of the length of the amount or the amount of the ride is extremely regressive.

Repeated short rides would effectively be priced out of the market.

It looks like the Council and Mayor are purposely trying to destroy the ride share.

The ride share provides an effective, economical, and efficient alternative for many riders who require an individualized transportation solution.

As a driver, I interact with many of your constituents on a daily basis and they share my same sentiments.

I'm here to object to the council mayors to this ill-conceived tax because that is what it is.

You are actually taxing your constituents and making the transportation situation worse.

I urge the council to listen to all the drivers and passengers in considering how this tax would negatively impact so many while benefiting so few.

I am part of the solution to the transportation problem.

Your time is up Chris, so just the last sentence.

Please do not treat me as part of the problem.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Dana?

Dana Dumas.

Hi, I'm Doug Dumas.

Thank you very much for taking the minute.

Pardon?

I see it there now.

Okay, okay.

I am a Teamster and I was part of the group last week that President Harrell spoke about in terms of the optics of us and I want to say that our union representation of the members in this industry are completely and totally devoted to the equity that is inherent in our business.

We're here to tell you that we absolutely have tried over the years to adhere to those ideals.

As a matter of fact, had we had an opportunity to participate in this mayor's proposal, you would have understood that.

We did not.

The mayor's proposal has absolutely not a single program or plan to address those issues.

That's why we're here now.

because we want to see those things put in place in real time for real people to create real jobs for everybody.

I have tried for 15 years to get the city of Seattle to put in a program in the high schools so that we can mentor kids and let them know that they have these opportunities, that all they've got to do is let us know.

We're welcoming them in.

Thank you.

Thanks, Doug.

Melissa Purcell.

Hi, thank you all again for listening to us today and for your support today.

Council Member Herbold, thank you, and for the rest of your votes and support.

I am the business agent for IATSE Local 488. We are losing jobs and economic opportunities, so we applaud the work that the city has done so far to make changes to OFM.

We especially applaud the work on racial equity, outreach, and inclusion, and we are committed to that work.

Our concern and our work are about jobs and economic development.

Sorry, I just got lost here.

We are concerned that the changes as they currently are written may be to the economic detriment of our industries.

One example of this is changing the name of the city of film office, which is a standard practice within our industry.

All cities that have infrastructure of production have city film offices.

This is an example of why labor and people that are boots on the ground must help define and guide this work.

As the program is currently written, it lacks definition, clarity, and set goals for the creative industries or how many entities might fall under this program at any given time.

We need the program to succeed and therefore ask that we are a part of that work, that our knowledge and expertise are included in this conversation.

Can I ask you to wrap up, Melissa?

Yes.

I just wanted to note that we did, after the other hearing, reach out to Tim Lennon and to Sharon Williams.

And Vivian, he reached out to us.

We had great conversations.

We all agree that we have the same goals.

We all want places at the table and support for our industries.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you for that.

That's helpful.

Babs.

Okay, you will be followed, you're next, and then you'll be followed by Don Creary, and then Yafet Giorgias, and then Gausu Odergrad.

Peace and harmony to you all.

Thank you for letting me come this far.

I have a copy of my testimony, if you want to have time and evidently use it.

Look around you.

Everybody you see, isn't this whole world full of drivers and passengers?

This is who we are.

And to this, my objection is this tax will not benefit my riders, nor me, nor anybody else.

You can do better by controlling the rent and then get money from there and do something with that.

For now, what I'm trying to say is simple.

Listen to your drivers.

Listen to the people.

This is just a summary.

Evidently, you can use that paperwork to go through if you have time, if you will ever have time, to go through what I want to say.

I don't want to hold anybody here.

Thank you for your time.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, Peps.

Don.

Don Crary, I'm with the Outbased Drivers Association affiliated with Teamsters 117. I would like to speak in favor of the fair share legislation and address the topic that's not being talked about.

There's a lot of dwelling on the tax and we're not talking about the main aspect of this legislation which is increasing drivers pay.

I think a driver resource center is certainly a good idea.

However, that's not going to get anybody out of sleeping in their cars.

What's going to get people out of sleeping in their cars is a significant increase in pay, which I believe you folks have the boldness to do for us.

I hope that we don't try to make the compensation aspect of it complicated.

Let's not be afraid to look to the past, a few years ago, at what worked then.

The app doesn't change that.

A significant increase in per mile per minute, I'd say $1.75 per mile, 50 cents per minute, will take care of minimum wage, our expenses.

Let's focus on that more on this small, instead of this small tax.

Okay, and I'd like to close.

Herbold, Swant, Juarez, four more years.

Well done.

Yafit.

Gausu and Abdulie?

All right, probably with the larger group.

Adisu, Adrisu?

Sure, sorry.

Adrisu Ismaila?

How about this?

I'm going to give you a phone number.

425-626-7663.

Looks like the next one is Molly Coby, 206-483-5666.

Another phone number, 206-432-6956.

Abdi Shire.

Paige Reichel.

Yay, Paige, come on up.

Are you all speaking?

Yes.

OK.

Would you give them four minutes?

Thank you.

I'm Paige Reichel.

I'm a community volunteer with the Eli's Park Project, which started with a dream to build a more diverse community in nature.

In the very beginning, our goal was to go to the people who are least likely to have had their voices heard and to engage them in our process.

Our first Department of Neighborhoods grant allowed us to hire awesome landscape architects who are walking us through an inclusive design process.

And we're imagining with our community how to best transform the Burt Gilman Playground Park into a nature-based space that's accessible for everybody.

To truly be able to enjoy nature, you have to be able to access it and also feel a sense of belonging once you get there.

When you look at public spaces in terms of equity, looking at belonging, you start to see huge gaps by race and class and health, gender, sexuality, ability.

This park is surrounded by a super diverse community, surrounded by Capitol Hill housing, ProVail housing.

It's next to the Ronald McDonald House, Seattle Children's Hospital.

It has a low-income housing community around it.

Because of this location, it should be serving a super diverse group of people, but it's not.

We have gone to the communities around this park, and they feel isolated.

I know my job as a middle-class white volunteer is to take my privilege and to hand it to people who have important ideas and less access to power, and this is what we're trying to do.

We have a family who is considering making a significant donation to our project, and what we're hearing from them and the foundations that we think are good matches is that they want to see that the public is backing our project.

If you would consider supporting our project with a commitment of public dollars, you can help us leverage these private philanthropists.

This process in park is going to support a broader goal that I know you share, which is to connect our whole community to nature and to each other so we can have a healthier, more inclusive world.

Great.

Thank you, Paige.

Hi.

My name is Trinicia McClendon.

I'm 16 years old.

After joining the Eli's Park Project, I have learned that many people not only like me, no matter what race, ethnicity, gender, and disability, all of us want to seek all different changes.

We want to be heard, welcome, and not to be judged.

The Elias Park Project is all inclusive and is all accessible for everyone.

The Elias Park Project, I've gone out of my comfort zone to meet new people that I've never met before.

And I've also was able to be a better leader at my school and to speak on behalf of all the problems that go around, such as racism.

Thank you.

My name is Kissanette Tesfa, and I'm 16 years old, and I'm part of the Eli's Teen Advisory Group.

As a girl of color, I have experienced a lot of racism at my school and in my communities.

I never had the chance to get my voice heard, but through Eli's Park Project, I now have the chance to get my voice heard and let people know that we are the same no matter what we look like.

We have planned events where there are so many different people.

I've never been to a place where it's so diverse.

Being part of the Eli's Park Project makes me feel like a member of my community.

Parks are not privileges.

They are rights.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Shawn Rundle.

I'm a community volunteer and I'm here on behalf of Blake Guyon who uses an alternative and augmentative communication device.

So I'm going to play his message through my computer.

Committee.

I'm Blake Guyana.

I use a speech device to communicate.

I wanted to express my support for Seattle Parks and Recreation Budget Action 5-1 concerning funding for the Eli's Park Project.

I serve on the Eli's Park Project leadership team.

Completing the Eli's Park Project is very important to me.

When I was in elementary school, that have large gaps.

Play is critical for a child's development, and most children with special needs are prevented from using playground equipment.

I enthusiastically joined the Eli's Park Project leadership team because I really believe that all children should have an area where they can play regardless of their abilities.

and actively engage and play with other kids.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you very much, all of you.

What school do you go to?

Roosevelt High School.

Very nice.

Well, thank you so much for your participation in all of this, and thank you for bringing that forward.

Very kind.

Okay, Jamie Lee, Doris Koo, Chris Persons.

Good afternoon, Council Members.

Unfortunately, Jamie and Chris have to leave.

I speak for the Yesler Community Collaborative, and I want to thank you for all your hard work throughout the year, not just into the budget season, and we're here to speak in support of Council Member Mosqueda's various budget proposals to increase funding for affordable housing.

But I want to highlight one item, which is item number one, CBA OH1A1.

And this is about implementing community preference policy.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold, for being a champion for it.

And the question here is, if we build them, can they come back?

This is a critical question where the Central District lost from 70% African American to only 14% over two decades.

And in the recent Liberty Bank project, With no funding, but only sheer goodwill and out-of-pocket spending, Capitol Hill Housing, Africatown, Bird Bar Place, the Black Community Impact Alliance embarked on an extensive and aggressive outreach effort.

And as a result, 86% of the tenants in the building today came from the central district or from people who used to live in the central district or had been displaced from the central district.

This is a concrete result of community preference policy that today is unfunded and voluntary and then we really ask you to support this one-time demonstration to build a system to encourage this kind of extensive outreach efforts so that we can repair and restore the fabric of those communities that had been decimated first by segregation and then by gentrification.

Thank you so much for your hard work.

Nice to see you.

Thank you.

Faisa, Drive Support Service.

I hope I've got that name right.

Looks like F-A-Y-I-S-A.

Okay, come on up, buddy.

And then after is Nico Winodo and Crystal Sakagani.

I don't have nothing to say.

I just say thank you.

Well, that's the nicest thing we've heard all day.

They just finish, you know, they come here, they talk about all what I come for.

Thank you.

I say, yes, thank you.

Thank you very much.

Well, thank you for coming.

I appreciate that.

Nico, Crystal, Aliana.

Hi, thank you.

Nice to see you again.

Nice to see you again.

I just want to follow up about last we have a hearing.

Just like I say, I pick up the woman who spoke in this building, and then he live in Bellevue.

So I asked her, why you take a Uber and leave?

And then he said, I don't want to pay parking, and then I avoid the traffic, so I take a Uber and leave, he said.

And then I talked to her about the increase the taxes, you know, 51 cents, and then he said, if I have to pay more, maybe I'm going to drive my car, so it's going to be more traffic.

And by the way, I have talked to the other rider, seven of Ten, they disagree about to pay more taxes because they use Uber and Lyft every day to go walk and home.

So, yeah, I hope your decision is not based on the interest group.

based on the people in Seattle.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

Thank you for coming.

Crystal, then Eliana.

Thank you.

Good afternoon to the members of the Council.

My name is Crystal Sakagami and thank you for giving me a chance to speak briefly today.

I am a part-time Lyft and Uber driver and a full-time caregiver for family members.

I've been able to give over 1,500 rides in the last two years as a way to supplement my income.

That works best for me, which is usually late at night.

And I have many friends who are in similar situations and are only able to do this type of work late at night.

When I think about the tax the mayor is proposing on rideshare, I first think about the passengers that I drive.

and am happy to take home people who may have had too many drinks that I keep, you know, and I keep the road safe by helping them out.

I feel that this tax would be a step backwards in addressing those issues of safer and more accessible streets.

So please take these remarks into consideration when voting on the budget.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Crystal.

After Eliana is Mohamed Ariou.

You may have been in.

Okay.

You will be after Eliana.

And then is it Abdullah?

I'm sorry that I'm matching that.

And then Yiddik Olana.

Please, go ahead.

Hi, my name is Eliana Skathonis.

I'm here wearing my Neighborhood Action Coalition hat today.

I don't have roses or rhetoric today.

I spent most of the rest of today at a sweep.

And I come here a lot asking you to defund the NAV team.

And I met somebody today whose story really encapsulates why I keep coming here saying this is a program that is causing enormous harm and little to no benefit.

Wendy and her adult son were swept with 30 minutes notice today.

They were told they were an obstruction.

Their tent was in between pillars supporting I-5 near the Green Lake Park and Ride.

They were not blocking anybody's access to anything.

They were swept Sunday as well.

They've been swept more times than they can count.

Wendy has experienced enormous trauma through her life, including being a domestic violence survivor.

She is being re-traumatized, sometimes multiple times a week, with our taxpayer dollars, and she's not getting help.

She's been raped in shelters here and assaulted and had her possessions stolen.

She's not willing to take referrals to another shelter.

We need to be investing in things that are helping people and not putting all this money into traumatizing our vulnerable neighbors.

Thank you.

Thank you, Eliana.

And then I'm going to try one more time on this name.

A-B-D-E-L-W-A-H-A-B-CASA.

Is that?

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

Please proceed.

Thank you for the opportunity.

My name is Mohammed Aria.

I have been driving for over six and a half years with 6,679 pickup with the highest grade of 4.9.

We brought really over from zero to hero.

But having said that, as drivers with no reason last year of this month, they make me deactivated.

When I went back to ask them, they said that somebody opened your phone from Nigeria.

which I have no any clue.

Since then, I was back and forth and keep asking them.

Nobody's told me that what went wrong or something or they fixed the condition that I have to go back to work.

I have a big family, six children.

The reason why I'm supporting the share driver solidarity is one point, because The money that is proposed in here, if it comes to the drivers, because the drivers have no nothing, no benefit, and no whatsoever 401k or any type of benefit.

If I am in an accident, there is no way I can support my kids.

I have been left over for almost a year now.

One can wonder how I will survive I have been in the business for 15 years.

Somebody who pick up two or three trip, he just cut it back and gave me one trip.

That's how we survive and we live.

I think I went all, most of the council members, I talk to them in person, I know them.

So I need, this thing has to pass and get help between the drivers.

There is no animosity or there is no division.

We are one, we are the same people.

Great.

Thank you.

Can I ask you to wrap up and we'll take the next speaker?

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I appreciate for your time.

Thanks.

Did you want to speak?

He yelled the time to me, but I can finish the sentence.

Okay.

I apologize.

Give him 30 more seconds and let's let him finish.

And three more seconds.

I wish I can say something, but I would like to appreciate that.

You know, and right now we are suffering because of the condition, the Uber is no regulation and no nothing to them.

We are suffering as members of drivers.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

Yidnik Olana.

And now we're going to have a list that may have already spoken, so let me know.

Amadou Diallo.

Mohamed Ahmed, we have another Mohamed Ahmed.

Second, Rasheed Aleo.

Fortune?

Okay.

Well, I don't want to leave anybody outside.

All right, so let me just run through this to make sure that I'm being fair.

Simon Nugantz.

We're getting real close to my buddy Dale Bright.

Andrew?

Humberto?

Sousa?

Seth?

Wilson?

Okay, good.

Thank you.

Please go ahead.

My name is Humberto Souza, and I'm a ride-sharing driver.

I'm here to show my opposition to this aggressive unfair share plan.

I cannot stand to lose another 50 cents, nor I could stand alone to lose $1,800 a year.

This is for limited ride sharing in Seattle.

This really isn't help us all.

If the City of Seattle really wanted to help us, it should consider proposed drive forwards, common sense plan to help drivers, $27.50 per hour minimum earnings, guaranteed pay by the companies, an independent driver association voted on by all drivers, not selected by the city.

A drive led and run the activation review panel, a modest $0.05 to $0.10 fee increase that wouldn't harm our aliens.

I think you guys should put politics aside to create the nation's first framework for regulating tendencies that places rivals in riders first.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming.

Seth Wilson.

Garang.

David Edo Santos.

Abu Bakar?

Abdig Ali?

All right.

Dale Bright, come on.

Come on, Dale.

Nice to see you.

I've got to sign in at 7 tomorrow morning.

Have someplace else at 7 o'clock members.

Thank you for having me here.

I appreciate you guys I know it's been a long day for some of you and for most of you actually Elias Park is a great thing.

That's nice to hear hopefully we'll consider that so start off on a good thing I want to thank councilmember herbal for putting forward the proposal to drop the priority higher down 2.5 million I'll be putting that in front of the priority higher Advisory Committee as soon as it passes this council and I'd like to see it eventually drop down to a million, creating more opportunity for young men and women in the community to access careers in the building trades.

Everyone here, I think, knows that's a passion of mine.

The other thing is that's another passion.

That's a lot of hard work we put together as a city.

I'm really proud of the work that OLS does.

At times it isn't pretty but it does do great work and I would hope that you continue to fund it and you look at the additional million dollars to continue to do outreach and education because that is where it truly starts is education and outreach with the company with businesses and labor.

Thank you all.

Go get some dinner.

All right so did everybody get to speak who signed up?

All right, this brings us to the end of our day today.

Thank you all, colleagues.

Thank you for being engaged.

We'll see you tomorrow starting at 930. Bye, Dale.