Seattle City Council Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development & Arts Committee 7/23/19

Hello?

There we go.

Greetings and welcome.

It's 9.36 a.m., and this is the Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development, and Arts Committee.

It is July 23rd, and I am the chair of the committee, Lisa Herbold, as well as council member representing District 1, West Seattle, and South Park.

Just real quickly, going over the agenda, we will start off our morning with Cultural Spotlight, which is a monthly edition spotlighting some local culture and arts in the region.

We'll follow that with public comment, and then we'll move on to the items of business for the day, including a report from Seattle Public Utilities on Seattle bag ban compliance.

We will hear a briefing on an ordinance that we refer to as the Harmonization Bill, with state legislation that was recently passed to accomplish some really important eviction reforms.

We'll hear from the Office of Economic Development on their race and social justice report, and we will then hear another ordinance related to a proviso lift for some funding that the council provided for Town Hall to finish a capital project.

And then finally, we'll wrap up the morning with a social impact of the art study from Arts Fund and the Office of Arts and Culture.

So if there are no objections to this agenda, the agenda will be approved and we will call the meeting to order and move right into cultural spotlight.

We're joined today by BJ Bullert, who has a really fantastic a film that she's been working on to preview for us.

And without further ado, I'll hand it right over to Vijay Bullert.

Well, thank you, Lisa.

I'd like to show two short clips from my film.

The film is called Space Needle, A Hidden History, and it's a really good example of what filmmakers and artists can do to refract their perceptions and give it back to the community in a slightly different form.

So before showing, I also just want to let you know that You know, I'm a dual career filmmaker in the sense that, like many filmmakers, I have another job, and my job is to be a professor at Antioch University.

So, here we go.

I'd like you to just take a look at this one.

Thank you.

The wonderful thing about architecture is that symbolism is deeply part of it.

The styles, the influences, and the expressions come from different cultures, different eras.

Architecture builds on itself.

The unique shape of the Space Needle has made it retain interest until today.

I mean, even though they might think of Starbucks and Microsoft, it's the Space Needle that's really what everyone wants to know about when they come to Seattle.

The Space Needle has this beautiful grace.

It is ladylike, it's a ballerina, it's something of substance, and it's of great beauty.

And why is that?

How did we get that?

Is it a building or is it a piece of sculpture?

A building serves a function.

A sculpture is just a sculpture.

And I think it's a little bit of both.

Why does that form combine art and architecture?

Well, it was inspired by art in the first place.

you.

So that was the opening of the film, and it starts off kind of like a conventional documentary, but it certainly doesn't end up that way, because as I started reimagining the Space Needle as gendered, it introduced all sorts of new collaborative elements, including poetry, dance, and new voices.

So I'd like to show you the second short clip and then tell you a little bit more about it, assuming there's time.

In 2012, we were getting ready to celebrate our 50th anniversary of the Space Needle.

And we looked back through our archives and tried to, you know, we were putting a book together and trying to find interesting facts and directions that people were leaning.

And so we came across a reference to the feminine one in Victor Steinbrook's office.

He tells this story and the directions that people, and we looked back through our archives and tried to, you know, we were putting a book together and trying to find interesting facts and directions that people were leaning.

And so we came across a reference to the feminine one in Victor Steinbrook's office.

He tells this story in a journal that I have that he wrote in December of 1960, a handwritten journal.

Feeling that I needed to try for some fresh ideas without the pressure of producing something with the forms that Graham liked in the office, I started to work at home looking for ideas.

And Victor took that summer and just, you know, worked alone, just kept coming up with ideas.

And at one point, he looked across his table, and there he had a beautiful wood sculpture.

And suddenly it dawned on him that this beautiful sculpture really represented how he wanted to go, and he used that as his guiding light.

So one evening, I thought of and put down on paper the essential concept that has become the needle.

When I had drawn the idea in my office, I came out and told Elaine that, I've got it, I've got it, the idea that they'll take for the tower.

The source of the idea is the wooden sculpture of David Lemons that we had had for about 10 years.

Dave calls it the feminine one.

And he had that sitting at the end of his desk when he was working daily on the design and new design and outside the box design of the Space Needle.

That's where this idea came from.

Neat.

So that is a slow reveal.

The rest of the film goes into exploring more about the gendered identity of the Space Needle, but I'd like to leave you with a thought, which is, what would it look like in your daily life if you start envisioning this icon of our region as having a female gaze?

something that, you know, an entity that would be looking out at the world, not from a masculine warlike image.

I know, realize that's a bit stereotypical, but more as a welcoming, empowering figure.

So if anybody wants to learn more about it, the film's going to be shown at Bumper Shoot, and also we're having a special showing with some of the artists who made the film possible at the Seattle Public Library on October 22nd at 7 o'clock.

And at that time, the poets and the dancers and the musicians, all women from our community, will be present as well.

So, thank you.

Absolutely, thank you for joining us.

And just a shout out to some of the other folks that were involved that it sounds like people will have a chance to meet.

Jordan Imani Keith, former civic poet here for Seattle, as well as, I believe, there's dance and music also.

Yes, Gretchen Yanover, the electric cellist, and also we have the joy of Nia Amina Minor, who dances with Spectrum.

Thank you so much for this really imaginative and challenging imagery and using sort of Seattle's iconography to really think about the history of our city and how we want to envision it moving forward.

And it's fun to have the familiar voice of former council member Peter Steinbrook in the chambers again.

So thanks for joining us.

Thank you.

All right.

So for public comment, Alex will be taking time.

And you'll have two minutes to speak.

And he'll let you know when you have a minute left, 30 seconds left, and when your time is up.

I'm going to read two names together.

And if you don't mind coming up to the mic, there are three mics.

But if you could come up to the two separate platforms.

And that way, it'll just move a little bit more quickly.

So we'll start off with Alex.

Carolyn Malone followed by Mackenzie Guy.

Okay, thank you.

My issue is a continuing civil rights issue with the Seattle police, corrupt, retaliating cops.

On July 1st, my 74th birthday, my driver's license of 55 years was illegally canceled because I filed too many opioid OPA complaints against police for harassment and other crimes.

And so, officers John Engstrom, Jason Bender, Philip Haskins, and Bea Conway suspended my license I can no longer fly.

I don't have a valid photo ID, even though I retain my driver's license.

But the removal of suspension cancellation on my record prevents me from doing many things that I had the opportunity to do for 55 unimpeded, trouble-free years.

I now have housing after five years of homelessness created by police.

And in my housing, because I filed a lawsuit against these offices for the suspension, I'm threatened after three months with eviction in housing.

And so I'm a fighter, I'm a survivor, and I intend to continue to fight on.

But this is a photo of my driver's license.

I have my license.

I never surrendered my license because the suspension and ultimate cancellation is illegal.

Thank you.

Mackenzie Guy will be followed by, I believe it is Jordan, somebody with a C.

Okay.

Hello.

Hello.

My name is Mackenzie Guy.

I am a Seattle resident and a Youth Ocean Advocate at the Seattle Aquarium.

I'm here in support of plastic bag bans in Seattle.

I've lived in Seattle my whole life, and my family has been in the Pacific Northwest for four generations.

I care a lot about our local environment.

Because I've been incredibly lucky to grow up next to an amazing body of water that has given me so much joy.

My first memory is actually seeing a pod of our local southern resident killer whales.

I hold on to this memory and other memories that I've gotten from our local environment very close to my heart.

We live in such a rich and diverse area, and many people don't get to experience the joys of living in the Pacific Northwest and all it has to offer.

As Seattleites, we are incredibly lucky to live next to an amazing body of water that is home to an immense amount of marine life, as well as an amazing ecosystem.

We need to help protect it.

Plastic is greatly harming the Earth and on its lands and in its oceans.

Plastic never truly breaks down into nothing.

It just splits up into smaller and smaller pieces.

To certain species of fish and other plankton-eating organisms, microplastics look a lot like plankton.

Once those fish or organisms eat those microplastics, it won't get out of their bodies.

Those microplastics are then carried on to whatever eat those fish, like bigger marine animals or humans.

This means that we too can eat plastic.

It is now estimated that humans are consuming 39,000 to 52,000 microplastic particles a year.

As other cities, states, and even countries are starting to enact more bans on plastics, Seattle needs to continue our work to protect our local environment as well as the whole ocean by having more bans on single-use plastics in Seattle so our local ecosystems and animals thrive instead of deteriorate.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Jordan will be followed by Kelsey Valdez.

Hi, my name is Jordan, and I am also in support of the Plastic Ban.

I am from the Seattle Aquarium as well.

I'm a Youth Ocean Advocate as well.

I've lived in Seattle basically my whole life.

I've lived in Seattle since I was four years old.

Before that, I lived in Spokane.

It's still in Washington.

And I've loved our water as long as I can remember.

The water is just something I love, I take care of.

in as most of you know um in 2020 there's estimated to be 50 million pounds of plastic in our ocean and that is Devastating.

We are just putting things into the ocean.

What I think people don't recognize, like Mackenzie said, is that the fish eat the plastic and then we eat the fish.

So it's not just the fish being affected, it's also us being affected.

And that's why I think it's a bigger cause than what people recognize.

I also think that we are doing a good job by banning plastics, but I think we could do more in our community.

Yeah.

And I was going to say, sorry, I lost my train of thought.

I would like to ask of you guys just to make microbeads kind of outlawed in Seattle because they are a really big problem.

That's the number one thing I talk about at the Seattle Aquarium is microbeads.

Oh my gosh, microbeads.

So yeah, thank you.

And Kelsey Valdez will be followed by David Garcia.

Good morning.

My name is Kelsey Valdez, and I'm part of the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps, and I live in South Park.

In the past few months, me and my coworkers have been cleaning up all around our community and been finding a lot of trash and pollution and plastic.

We have measured and weighed them, and we have filled up at least 30 to 40 buckets of plastic and trash.

Plastic was the most quantified item in our litter assessment.

I feel that, I feel very disappointed from my community because many people see us walking in the streets and picking up and like just cleaning, but then at the end of the two weeks, we go out again and there's many trash still.

So I feel very disappointed because they see us working very hard to pressure our goals, but then they just ruin it by just littering and like leaving their stuff in the streets.

Thank you.

David Garcia, be followed by Alexis Sorm.

Hi, everyone.

My name is David Garcia, and I'm part of the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps.

Today, I'll be talking about our experience going to Recology, which is a facility of recycling.

On our trip there, we saw that there was a lot of plastic.

And I was really shocked to see how much plastic the community wastes.

And the thing that shocked me the most was that most of the recycling was mixed with trash and other materials that made it not able to be recycled.

And that really shocked me and really made me think a lot.

Because a lot of people recycle, but if people don't put the right things inside of it, it just really doesn't make no sense.

You can't do anything about it if people don't go in and do the right thing.

So I would like people to recycle and think about what they're recycling and find out what goes in and what doesn't go in.

Thank you.

Following Alexis will be Bruce Spite.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Alexis Sorum, and I am part of the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps also.

I live near an area called Boulevard Park, which is right between Beery and White Center and South Park.

Recently, our group has learned a lot about plastic pollution and its effects upon our current world.

We learned that the production of plastics has been on high rise since the 80s.

Everywhere we look, almost everything that we purchase turns out to be made of plastic.

Unfortunately, a majority of the plastics, such as water bottles and the general plastic packaging, is single-use.

The revelation of these facts, in that plastic is not only becoming even more popular and used, but also that it is becoming even more wasteful and space-consuming in our world, has made us, the youth, realize that it is becoming a huge problem that must be dealt with immediately.

With the increased time and increased use and waste of plastic, although it is a great shame, it still must be said that there is an obvious problem revolving around this particular material.

And so once again, it is in the interest of our world, our environment, our loved ones, future loved ones, you and I, that this concern of plastic pollution be confronted.

Thank you.

Following Bruce, we have Daniel Klinker.

Good morning.

My name is Bruce Spade.

I'm the director of Environment Washington, a statewide membership-based environmental advocacy organization representing thousands of members here in the City of Seattle.

I look forward to hearing the report on plastics, but wanted to share a few quick thoughts about additional steps the City of Seattle could take to address plastic pollution.

First, we appreciate the City of Seattle's leadership on reducing plastic pollution and hope that you would consider doing more as we are seeing cities and states across the country take increasing actions to reduce plastic pollution.

Nothing we use for a few minutes should be allowed to pollute our rivers and oceans for hundreds of years, especially when we don't really need it.

Scientists have found plastic fragments in literally hundreds of species, including 86% of all sea turtle species, 44% of all seabird species, and 43% of all marine mammal species.

Ingesting these fragments is often fatal.

Animals can starve when they ingest too much plastic that they can't digest.

When animals ingest plastic waste, it can block their digestive tracts, and as a result, they starve.

Toxic chemicals in plastic can harm animals' health, and people can ingest these chemicals as well as they make their way up the food chain.

In their 2017 microplastic distribution in Puget Sound report, Puget Sound Keeper Alliance found 93% of the 44 samples taken contained at least one microplastic.

Plastic's a major problem, as I think we all know in Puget Sound.

Aggressive action by cities and governments throughout the region can help turn the tide and reduce the impact that plastics are having on Puget Sound, our waters generally, marine wildlife, and human health.

Ultimately, our goal is to reduce and eliminate plastic pollution.

To that end, Environment Washington would be eager to work with you to take additional steps to address plastic pollution here in Seattle.

Thank you very much.

And following Daniel is Heather Trim.

Hello, my name is Daniel Klinkner.

I'm an environmentally concerned citizen living in District 3, and I wanted to come here today to advocate for every other week trash pickup instead of weekly trash pickup.

I've been passionate about recycling since I was a teenager.

Back in high school, I ran a shift of the recycling team at my high school because the janitorial contracts in my hometown didn't permit for the collection of recycling.

And so I learned a lot about how recycling works and how best to maximize it as a way of reducing waste.

And I believe that biweekly trash pickup would be an excellent means of doing that.

Besides the obvious benefit to both air and noise pollution of having fewer trucks on the road, it also has been shown in the cities of Tacoma, Portland, and Olympia, specifically, to actually decrease the amount of waste that is being sent to the dump rather than to designated recycling centers.

Ultimately, reducing the amount of disposable plastic and similar materials that we generate is paramount.

the ideal endgame, as many people here today have discussed.

But in the meantime, while we do continue to create and use disposable packaging and disposable plastics, we should do everything in our power to make sure that we're disposing of those things responsibly.

So please consider switching trash pickup from weekly to biweekly.

Thank you.

Good morning, Councilpersons.

My name is Heather Trim.

I'm Executive Director of Zero Waste Washington.

Our goal is to make trash obsolete in the state of Washington, but we do see Seattle as a major leader in helping do new and innovative things.

Last night, the county council in Kitsap, the commission, was supposed to vote on the 30th bag ordinance in Washington.

They decided to put it on their consent agenda for August 12th instead of actually taking the vote, but it looks like it's going very well there.

So, Seattle was part of the first wave of ordinances for plastic bags in Washington, which has now, as you know, swept the country, and we would like to see more of that in Washington and other cities, and we'd like to see you take the next step here, and we're looking forward to today's presentation.

On the way up here from our office, found this plastic bag, it's a small t-shirt bag, a straw and a plastic lid all within a few feet right below City Hall.

So we definitely have a ways to go here even in Seattle.

The issue of food serviceware is a tough issue.

When we passed the first ordinance here in Seattle in 2008, it was the strongest in the country.

But things have changed.

We have a recycling crisis.

We have new products that are coming from manufacturers, things have gotten very tough.

And so it does seem like there's an opportunity for Seattle to now take some more leadership steps on addressing plastics in a wide range of areas.

So thank you.

We look forward to hearing the presentation today and look forward to working with you in the future.

Thank you.

Great, thank you everybody for taking time out of your morning to come and speak with us today.

Special thanks to the folks from Duwamish Youth Corps as well as the youth from the Seattle Aquarium.

recognition to Councilmember O'Brien who's joined us today and also for his leadership in these issues and really the Councilmember responsible for the report that we're going to hear today in many, many ways.

So with that, I think we'll just jump right into item one on the agenda.

Item one, 2019 report on Seattle bag ban compliance.

Great, thank you.

Quick introductions and then Brian, if you kick us off after those introductions.

Absolutely, thank you.

Brian Goodnight, Council Central staff.

Sago Jackson, SPU, Strategic Advisor for Waste Prevention and Product Stewardship.

Susan Farris with SPU.

I'm the Director of Planning and Program Management for Solid Waste line of business.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So in 2011, Council did approve an ordinance banning single-use plastic carry-out bags at retail establishments.

Five years later, Council made a few revisions to the bag ban regulations and requested that SPU provide an annual evaluation of the bag ban program.

So today's presentation does make that presentation for the 2019 updates and also contains some opportunities for improvements.

Lastly, I just want to bring to your attention, in your packets is a memo that does provide kind of a background and some high-level summary of the key takeaways and the recommendations from the report.

And additionally, the final section of the memo briefly describes a few issues related to the bag ban and to other solid waste issues that Council Member Herbold is currently investigating or pursuing.

So those are listed at the end of the report.

Thank you.

And just for the viewing public and for folks who spoke in public testimony, as it relates specifically to one of the items referenced in the memo that Mr. Goodnight just talked about.

There is a mention of our interest in looking at every other week garbage collection.

That is something that we will be discussing in our next committee meeting.

Last committee meeting, we had a presentation of the 2012 pilot of every other week garbage collection.

We heard from the executive about the lessons learned in that pilot, and we identified some follow-up questions that we wanted SPU and the executive to answer, and we'll be hearing them at our next meeting.

And with that, I'm going to kick off on the back off.

Thank you very much.

We appreciate the opportunity to be here today.

Thank you for the time to talk about the bag ban update.

As Brian said, this is an annual thing that we've done for the last three years, and it basically this year builds on last year's report.

We highlight notable developments and then talk about next steps.

What our big focus on with the ordinances is environmental health and safety concerns of our customers and our residents.

And then the report basically we cover four different things.

We cover four different things that we're focusing on is the litter reduction benefits, the strategies to increase compliance, the effectiveness of the ordinance in reducing the contamination in our organic stream, and then also strategies to address impacts of the loose bags at the curbside.

So that's where our big focus is for the report.

And with that, I'm going to hand it off to Sega, who's going to go into the detail, and then we're both available to answer questions.

Great.

Thanks.

And I want to point out that the data that we use in the surveys that we'll be reporting on is largely conducted by Evans School student consultants and the SPU green business team.

The Evans School has just been tremendously helpful to us.

I thought it might be useful to do a really quick overview of the existing ordinances and what's required.

So, plastic carryout shopping bags are banned.

Large paper shopping bags are allowed.

They have to have 40 percent post-consumer recycled content, and they also have to have a minimum pass-through charge of 5 cents, and that 5 cents is kept by the retailer to help offset the costs.

Smaller paper bags are allowed and they can be free.

Clear plastic bags that are for bulking food or produce, those are also allowed and free.

And then what's banned, and this is more recent, we'll talk about a little bit more in the presentation, is green plastic bags, like green produce bags, are now banned in terms of the tinting color.

They can't be tinted green or brown.

So a couple other elements is that 2.25 mil thicker bags, plastic film bags, are allowed.

They're considered reusable in the current ordinance.

There's no requirement for the pass-through fee.

Our ordinances do not apply to carry-out bags for take-out food.

In fact, we don't use the term carry-out for take-out food.

So that is one thing I wanted to point out to you.

And then compostable bags are not allowed to be carry-out bags.

but they would be allowed to be used for takeout food.

That's not common, but I'll go over that a little bit more in a moment too.

And then compulsible bags that are allowed for produce have to be tinted green or brown.

And on the five cent charge, just making a note that that was intended by the, I think the original legislation to sunset, but then we, We passed legislation lifting the sunset.

I think that might be, there might be a recommendation related to that charge as well that we'll hear about later.

Yeah.

All right.

So we've packed a lot of information in the report and has built on other reports including last year's report.

So I'm not going to go over all that detail and really stick to the high points and some updates.

But I do want to tell you there's a lot in there including last year's report that has a lot of detail.

So in terms of waste and litter reduction, Seattle has really served in this really important leadership role related to bag bans.

And there are now, we've just heard one more has been added since this PowerPoint was put together.

So there are now 29, not 28, local bag bans in the state, and that would be 10 since 2018, including three more that are near Seattle, Burien, Lake Forest Park, and Kenmore.

Now the reason we point this out is one of the source of bags coming into the city are from our shoppers that go other places and bring the bags back.

And the more consistent these bag bans can be around us, the better it's going to be for us.

There is also state bag ban legislation introduced in 2019. It made it very far through the process, did not pass.

It will be back in 2020. That was SB 5323. Now, a couple things I want to highlight on that is that definitely goes some next steps that are very positive beyond what the Seattle existing ordinance does, but it doesn't do everything that might be good to do in the future.

And it does preempt all local legislation, including Seattle's ordinance.

So that is something to be aware of.

And then all this works together to really reduce the amount of plastic bags in the waste stream and in litter.

But we don't have really good measurements for what we are seeing in litter right now.

And Zero Waste Washington is piloting a way to quantify litter in public places and we want to learn from what they discover and see what we can do with that.

I think the Duwamish Youth Corps is probably involved with that.

In terms of compliance, The overall compliance rate is now 85%.

There's a mistake on this slide that I found when prepping for today.

That should be 227 businesses surveyed with 193 compliant.

So that was from a previous year report.

The ongoing outreach that we do and the expansion of the back bands are going to continue to increase compliance.

And we now have outreach materials that are in 18 languages and two, well, one has been trans-created into Chinese and one is in the process of being translated, trans-created into Spanish.

What this chart is showing you is by the type of store, the number of stores that were surveyed and blue is compliance and then the other colors show how they were not compliant.

I realized that it would have been helpful to provide the actual percentages here too, so let me just do that really quickly for you.

Small retail is 93% compliant, large retail 94%, ethnic grocery 60%.

Medium groceries 84% and large groceries 94%.

The large groceries originally in the work that was done leading up to the original ban and thereafter were identified as the biggest source of plastic carryout bags in the city.

So their 94% compliance rate is really significant.

Can you talk a little bit about the high use of plastic bags in ethnic groceries?

And I understand that your outreach materials are in many different languages, I think 18. I'm wondering whether or not SPU staff are fluent in communicating verbally as well as about the ordinance.

And just any insight as to above and beyond knowledge of the law.

what you know about the high use of plastic bags?

Yeah, a couple things.

So I would say no, we're not fluent, but our consultants are.

So we have ECOS and some other consultancies that we work with that go out and work with businesses in language.

And that's where those translated documents are very helpful too.

The feedback that we get from surveying and what we've been told is, I can't remember the percent, but it's like 30, 40% are not aware of the legislation.

We also hear, and I think there's a language barrier.

The other thing that we hear is that there are some groups where their customers are pretty aggressive about really wanting plastic bags.

So there's a cultural change there that kind of needs to be worked with at the customer level.

And I think those are really the primary things.

And this is one of those areas where it seems to be steadily increasing in terms of compliance, but there's always a lot more work to do.

You use the term surveyed on this.

Is that like someone gets on the phone and calls up a grocery store and asks?

These are in-person surveys.

What's that?

In-person surveys.

So they're observing whether they're giving out.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

And then I am, I know that when we originally passed the legislation in 2011, there was a lot of work done by both the city and community members on outreach to ethnic grocery stores, and we recognized that that was a particular challenge.

There was a lot of effort to give, distribute some free reusable bags so folks could get those to their customers in different ways.

But I'm a little stunned that eight years later we still have this and that the majority of the people that are out of compliance sounds like they're just not even aware of it.

And so I'm curious, what is, What has happened in the intervening eight years?

I mean, what efforts have we done to get into compliance?

We have the ongoing outreach that I described.

In terms of any form of enforcement, we've actually not done enforcement on the bag legislation to date.

It has all been when there's a complaint or when we survey a place or see that there's, not when we survey, when we are doing site visits and we see a problem, then there is technical assistance that's applied.

There can be warning letters.

We go through a fair bit of work to not actually due of financial enforcement.

And I think that we're having some internal discussions about is it time to shift on that because I think there's a growing awareness by everyone, the plastic pollution problems and much more awareness around plastic bags too.

So I think that people are probably ready for the shift and just need a nudge.

And so, yes, I'm still a little confused if, If, you know, whatever the number in ethnic grocery looks like, you know, 30 to 40 percent of the ethnic groceries are out of compliance because they're using plastic bags, the majority of those just don't even know that it's there.

Do we think that they're, the self-reporting on unawareness is maybe not accurate, or do we think they really just don't know despite all of our efforts?

It seems like over eight years, we should be able to communicate clearly with every grocery store in Seattle that this is the law, and a visit, and then a repeat visit, and say, OK, we've told you twice in the last year.

You clearly know this, and now you're disregarding it.

Or are there people that really haven't had a touch in eight years, and they're just finding out about this?

I don't know that I honestly know the answer to that.

I do know we need to do more work.

I know that we're working very hard at this.

There's more to be done.

I was in conversations this morning, different subject, but there's a possibility to do some work to figure out how to even talk about bags in some of these different communities so that you're not just talking to the business owner, but the community itself too, why this is important.

And this is my personal observation.

that I think sometimes people have not been invited into making these behavior changes as effectively as we could.

And we've just got to figure out how to do that.

And I don't think we've got a magic bullet.

I would, as we move into budget this year, if it's a resource issue, would love to think through how we can make sure that your team has the resources it needs to have those conversations.

What I recall in 2011, and I imagine it's even more true today, was two things, one that, talking to some of the ethnic groceries and restaurants, just for them it was often like we're just barely hanging on, we're trying to survive in the system, and every change you make is really hard for us.

So how we do that, communicate with them, I thought at the time we're very generous, like you can work through all the plastic bags you've already bought, you don't have to throw those out.

The other conversation we heard from people was because a lot of these ethnic grocery stores, the countries they originally come from, are bearing the brunt of the plastic pollution.

Both international plastic pollution that washes up on the shore and domestic pollution that's really polluted their waterways.

And so some of them were the most resistant, and some of the immigrants, refugees to Seattle were the most supportive, saying, I have seen how destructive plastic can be, and I want to make sure that we are not contributing to a problem that's made the country that either I or my parents came from.

And so I think there's challenges there, but also great opportunities.

But it does require resources.

And if the reality is it's simply a complaint-based system, then we probably need to be putting some more resources into that.

And so that's something we can think through in the budget.

I'll just quickly add that some of these countries are banning plastic bags themselves.

And I think that will make a difference culturally as well.

Before we move off of that, I just want to, I'd be interested to have a little bit more granular information after this meeting about the follow-up after the surveys.

It looks like 177 businesses were surveyed.

Do you do sort of an equal sampling across these categories or do you have a, a deeper survey sample in the types of stores in last year's report that were identified as needing more, reaching better compliance rates.

If so, what did you do after the survey with those particular, I mean, you sort of broad brush described it, but it just seems like some deep education with those, instead of just a touch, but some deep education with the folks that you've already surveyed would be helpful.

We'll get back with you with what you asked, but just very quickly I can respond to it, which is there is a follow-up, technical assistance provided, I think a couple of years ago when I was before you, you asked, you know, when you find someone's out of compliance, do you, in surveying, do you enforce?

And we don't.

When we go and do the surveying, we really want to get the information and...

I remember that.

But what kind of follow-up, if it's not an enforcement-based follow-up?

Yeah.

Yeah.

We'll get that for you.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Okay.

Other areas of compliance is, again, more recently, there's been a requirement that plastic bags be tinted, that the non-compostable plastic bags cannot be tinted green or brown, and that the compostable plastic bags must be tinted green or brown.

And I would say that you probably remember the samples that I brought before, but this has created a market shift.

We had a problem with bags like this that are not compostable.

being tinted green, like compostable bags, and people were starting to put their food scraps in it, and that was ending up in the compost, in the compost facilities.

Here's an example of market shift, where Crown Poly came out with at least what they've described to me as their Seattle blue produce bag, and this is their green tinted compostable bags.

So that's a very major shift in the marketplace that...

But this is not compostable.

That is not compostable.

So that's compliant.

That is compliant.

That's compliant because it's not green, but it's also not compostable.

This is compliant?

Correct.

So they shifted from that green to the blue?

they shifted from that green to the blue bag.

They did, they did.

Okay, so now the last surveying that we've done, which was 63 grocers surveyed, only six of them still had non-compliant plastic green tinted bags.

And I'll show you some other stuff here in a minute, but that's a pretty quick change.

All right, so contamination impacts the curbside.

We've talked to you before about this and brought this forward in the previous report, but the plastic bags have had a tremendous impact when they are in the curbside system and go to the material recovery facility.

And when they are included in curbside in 2009, that was with all good intention, but it really has not worked.

It has not worked for a lot of different reasons.

I'll keep it short, but clogs up the machinery at the MRF.

It's extremely expensive.

It's dangerous for the MRF workers to have to get in and hand cut with box knives.

The plastic from the equipment, the MRF shuts down twice a day to clean out the plastic bags.

It causes mis-sorting of valuable recyclables like paper.

And then that, that is actually recovered and put into a bale, there's no domestic market for it.

It's dirty, it's gritty, it's contaminated, and it has all been shipped off to Southeast Asia, typically to China, and then as you know, with the Chinese Blue Skies Initiative, that has stopped, but now those materials are going to other parts of Southeast Asia.

This doesn't really meet our expectations of what responsible recycling is.

So we have worked regionally with others and are taking plastic bags out of the curbside system.

It's a phased approach, but it should be complete by quarter one of 2020.

So maybe a little more on that.

I've noticed in our household, discussion about which plastic bags should go in or not, and I've noticed that on the newer sticker on my garbage bag, I'm like, it doesn't, There's no plastic bag on there.

It doesn't say it's not allowed.

It doesn't say it is allowed.

My assumption has been that at this point, let's just throw all the plastic bags away and then let's not have any plastic bags to throw away would be the best.

But so tell me a little bit about the phase and what that means.

So our materials are staged throughout the year.

So single family comes out one time of the year, multifamily comes out another time.

So as we're staging things, we're stripping out the plastic bag.

instructions to bag them and put them in curbside and then towards the end of the year and beginning of next year there'll be a campaign and a lot more information going out about don't put them in there.

So that's part of the phasing and I'm gonna speak to you right now about about you're correct that is better for it to go into the garbage than to go in the curbside recycling.

But for those retailers that provide retail take back, those materials don't go through the MRF.

They're kept separate from those materials.

So it's clean material.

It doesn't create problems.

And there are domestic markets, though, they're teetering a little bit right now for that material.

So in those existing retailer programs, we are working with an industry-led group.

to stabilize, improve, and hopefully expand the number of retailers that take bags back.

And that is with support from Sustainable Packaging Coalition and Recycling Partnership, Association of Plastic Recyclers, and American Chemistry Council.

And if I can add something, we're going to also focus on film.

So plastic film, if you go to a Costco or you go to any large retailer and you buy your toilet paper or other kinds of things, it's often wrapped in lots of plastic, and that's something that we haven't really targeted specifically much, but we will with this new campaign to target the type of plastic film be put with the plastic bags and be able to be taken back to these drop-off locations.

Okay.

So again, not in the curbside system because it's too problematic, but if it's sorted and clean and taken back at Costco or Safeway or whatever.

Right.

in hoping that they can expand it to the other types of films.

I think that's what happens in households a lot is like, it all feels the same, can't I just recycle it?

The kind of greenwishing or whatever you call it.

Optimistic recycling.

So moving on to some future opportunities.

You know, we've served a really important leadership role and the world has kind of moved along.

And while So there are new next steps that would be good to be taken, and other cities are taking those.

The state legislation included some of those, but not completely.

So some items that we've tagged in terms of future potential work includes the following.

Extending the requirements of the existing ordinances to cover takeout and meal delivery service bags also, because remember, those are not covered in the ordinance right now.

to have plastic bags.

To allow compostable bags for takeout food, if they include messaging to use the bag for food scraps composting, I want you to see these two bags.

These are two companies that have that kind of messaging on their bags, so the bag becomes a tool for moving the food scraps into the compost system, which is tremendously important, not only for our recycling rate, but more important for climate reasons, greenhouse gases.

So these can sit on our countertop in the bins and be dumped in the composting?

Exactly.

Yeah.

That's reusing.

Yeah, and a fee should be applied to those too, like other bags.

But that would open up that opportunity.

Increasing the pass-through fee to 10 cents per bag is something to consider.

And then the reusable plastic film bags that we discussed, the 2.25 mil bags, that is still showing up in next step ordinances, but there's been a shift to trying to get the mil bigger.

So Oregon just passed its law statewide.

requiring 4 mil bags and that's what we would suggest.

A 4 mil bag if you're going to allow film bags to continue to be considered reusable and that would also help encourage customers to actually reuse them and bring their own bag really instead.

And so currently right now if a retailer is using a 2.25 mil That is a free plastic bag, but it's considered reusable that they're giving away.

They don't have to charge for that?

Correct.

They don't have to charge.

Some do.

Yeah, okay.

And I imagine a four-mil bag is going to be more expensive than a 2.25.

I mean, at some point, hopefully we start to get to more and more incentives where, you know, the retailers are going to have a pretty large incentive to really encourage people to reuse those or bring their own or whatever as opposed to just as a kind of loophole to get around it.

That concludes the presentation.

I'm happy to see that many of the next steps identified as recommendations for legislative follow-up are aligned with some of the things that we've highlighted working with community on important reforms and improvements that we can, as was said in public testimony, continue to lead the way in Seattle for the rest of the state.

So I look forward to continued work with you and development of legislation to address the need for an increased pass-through charge for carry-out bags, and also looking at the requirement for a compostable takeout or to go containers, and there's a couple of other things that did not come out of this report that I think will be useful to talk about, including a pass-through charge for to-go cups.

I think it's useful to have a discussion about that.

That's something we're looking into.

Haven't made a decision about whether or not we want to bring something like that forward, but I think it's definitely worth consideration.

And then a discussion around prohibiting travel-sized plastic containers at lodging hotels and motels and whatnot.

That's another example of single-use plastics that I think we should take a look at in lodging establishments.

But we can talk more about what steps and what a timeline would look like for follow-up.

And I know Brian will be continuing to work on this as well.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

I have one other question.

When we first passed this ordinance back in 2011, I can't remember the numbers, but whether this was Seattle or statewide, but how many times, you know, Safeco Field would be filled with bags and how many bags were in the waste stream at the time.

Do we have numbers now from our annual or biannual recycling or waste stream analysis of the reduction of plastics that's happened?

So we don't have current information.

We actually looked yesterday to see if we could bring that information.

We haven't done a waste composition recently.

We know that plastics in our recycling stream, all plastics is about 5%, but we don't know what plastic bags, but we did do a rough back of the napkin analysis and based on you know kind of our best judgment and pulling Hans Van Dusen into that conversation too that it was it's probably the plastic bags make up if we pulled them out and everything it would reduce our recycling rate probably by three hundredths of a percentage point so it's 0.03 percentage of the overall what's in the recycling mix right now.

But that's, again, a little back of the napkin, rough calculation, not based on total, you know, a recent waste composition study.

We have tonnage also from the waste characterization studies, but these are like on a four-year cycle.

I think it's the previous year's report.

We noted how we're going to have to change some categories for those sorts to actually really get to the real numbers.

And then there is such a proliferation of other plastic film and wrap happening that it starts getting difficult to pull out what's a bag and what's a wrap.

So we'd be good to just get a sense, and this might be even helpful for state legislation, There was a pretty good numbers, I don't know exactly where they came from, but how many bags were being used in the city back in 2010, 2011. And it'd be interesting just to see, you know, the sense was that the grocery stores, the Home Depots were a major source of that.

And while we still have exceptions for takeout food, that we were eliminating a big chunk of that.

But it'd be interesting to see if that showed up in the waste stream that whether it's recycling or garbage that there's a lot fewer bags.

It sounds like some of that's being offset by increases in other plastics.

Yeah, also what we've also been working is with our regional partners because we're very Cognizant of the fact that people who live in Seattle often work outside Seattle and people who were live outside Seattle or live outside Seattle work in Seattle and so if our neighbors don't have bag bands or If we don't have similar legislation to ours, then we get bags that migrate into our system from outside.

So we've been working regionally to try to encourage that across the region because as you expand, as Sago showed, you know, there's 29 now.

Not all of those are just in our region, but three just recently that neighbor us have passed bag bans.

It means less migration into our system.

So we can do everything we can within Seattle, but if we're not stopping those bags at the border, you might say, then that creates problems.

So, but as we also do our waste composition studies, there's not only the waste composition studies, but there's also studies we could do, though they aren't in our budget right now, where we actually do neighborhood sorts, where we actually go through a neighborhood and we do, you know, random houses and we see what's in an actual household as opposed to a large truck that's coming to the transfer station.

So there's ways to delve down and then you can extrapolate based on the numbers that you pull out of that as to how many bags are still in a residential customer's mix.

When was the last waste composition study done?

So we do them every year, but we do them over different sectors.

So the last residential, I don't know off the top of my head, but it was...

2015, I think.

Yeah, it was a few years ago.

How many sectors?

So we have five sectors that feed into the municipal solid waste stream, and then we have the construction and demolition debris.

So over the last five years, the entire city would have been done?

Yes, yeah.

So we do.

I don't remember the schedule, but it's residential recycling.

It's organics.

It's probably commercial.

And they rotate.

We cycle through about every four to five years.

We used to do every four years, and now we've gone to every five years just because our data is so rich over the last 20 plus years.

So it meant we could spread them out a little bit further.

Yeah.

The last thing, this is more for the audience, but I'd love your feedback as we think through this.

You mentioned that the state legislation would both make a consistent statewide policy, which would be outstanding, but would also preempt us.

And so cities like Seattle, Bellingham was actually the one who went before us and we copied their legislation.

So I want to give credit to Bellingham for being a leader on this.

But having cities have flexibility to pilot things helps advance state legislation.

Of course, as you look at the map, there's a bunch of white areas that show up where cities like Bellevue haven't passed the ban, and so state legislation would help that.

I see Heather Trim nodding back there, really curious from an advocate's perspective what a tradeoff at a state piece of legislation would be that would make sense.

You know, there's a place where I imagine we can't quite go as far as Seattle wants to go, but if the whole state goes there, we're better off.

But I don't know how far that is and what type of preemption we could live with and what type of things.

Like, no, we continue to need to pilot things like, you know, compostable bags that can be reused on the countertop for other services.

And if the state doesn't allow us to do that, it's not worth it.

And so as we lead into next year's legislative session, and I imagine that this will be a topic that will be a primary concern for the environmental community, and hopefully we'll get a lot of traction.

We want to be really thoughtful about getting it right and hopefully carving out places where cities like Seattle or Bellingham or other leaders on this, Edmonds was an early adopter, could come out and continue to be innovators and try new things.

As we heard from the youth here today, this plastic crisis, unfortunately, you all are going to inherit this problem and have to solve it.

And if local jurisdictions, if your local city council, whether it's Seattle or someone else, can't be trying new things, I fear that we will not do enough to prevent the catastrophe that's coming.

Thank you.

Yeah, there are always trade-offs with preemption.

So yeah, and I think it's important to take our lead from the advocacy community on how much we want to give up.

Yeah, for sure.

Thank you.

I really appreciate it.

This is a great presentation.

Look forward to the continued follow-up.

Next item.

Item 2, Council Bill 119584, an ordinance relating to residential rental properties conforming to the Seattle Municipal Code with changes in state law, amending section 7.24020, 7.24030, 22.202.080, 22.206.160, 22.206.180, 22.210.030, and 22.902.120 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Thank you, Alex.

Quick introductions, and then Asha, you want to kick us off?

Yeah.

Asha Venkatraman, Council Central Staff.

Introductions?

Oh, sorry.

Faith Lumsden with the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections.

Jeff Talent, Rental Programs Manager for SDCI.

Fantastic.

It's great to have you all here.

This is the first of, I think, what will be hopefully a short series of visits to get this passed.

Asha, you want to give us a little bit of background about how we got here?

Sure.

So for Council Bill 119584, essentially what this bill is doing is aligning changes that happened at the state legislative session this year that were in Senate Bill 5600 and the House Bill 1440. And so it made three major changes that we are now going to be incorporating into city code.

It changed the provisions around eviction for non-payment of rent from three days to 14 days.

provided a definition of the term rent, which we hadn't had before.

And it also increased the amount of notice that landlords are required to give to a tenant if there's going to be a rent increase from 30 to 60 days.

And so those are the general changes that will be in this legislation.

And I'll turn it over to you.

And before we move on, I just want to give a shout out to the Seattle Women's Commission and King County Bar and I forget the name of the other organization that worked together to put Well, there's Washington, Ken, yes, I was thinking the other legal organization.

But nevertheless, the losing home report that we commissioned together identified a lot of recommendations that were successful in getting passed in the state legislative session.

This council last year passed resolution, or earlier this year, passed resolution 31861 and highlighted a number of these items as high priority items for either the state or the city if the state didn't act.

And so we're really pleased to see that the state was successful in their efforts on eviction reform.

Great.

So, as you said, we really were delighted with the actions at the state level.

There, I think, will be a continued push next year for some things, but we were thrilled to see the change for the pay or vacate notice, which It gives us more time to respond to tenants and also gives tenants more time, which we see frequently is all that they need.

The Bill 5600 did much more than just these couple of changes that we're incorporating into our just cause eviction and our rental agreement regulations.

But those are changes that mostly relate to allowing courts a lot more discretion in their actions when they're dealing with unlawful detainer.

My group, the code compliance group in SDCI, works with tenants before they're in court.

So these are lovely extra time periods that we can use when we're working with tenants who are at the beginning of a process and maybe not quite to court.

So really important there.

I'll say, and Jeff can walk you through, but these changes, especially on the definition of rent, that tracks a lot of, in fact, almost exactly how we defined rent or housing cost before the state picked it up.

So that was that was some nice validation of how we've tried to set our system up.

And of course the 60-day notice of rent increase.

Understand there's some discussion about is even 60 days enough, but great for us to have that confirmed regardless of whether it's a small less than 10% increase or a bigger more than 10% increase.

So I'm just gonna ask Jeff to give you a short walkthrough of where these changes are going and then we can answer questions.

Thank you, Faith.

Faith covered a lot of this, and these are very straightforward changes in our opinion.

So first, everywhere where our codes reference a three-day notice, we're now referencing a 14-day notice, and that's in several places throughout our ordinances.

Changing the city definition of housing costs to the new state definition of rent.

As Faith said, this was an important step for the state.

They've now caught up with us, the city, but we're bringing our ordinances into alignment with how the state described rent.

And I think for the viewing public, just confirmation of my understanding of why this is important on the ground for tenants is this relates to the prior enforcement that SDCI used for the 60-day notice for rent increases to include housing costs.

Now that we're going to have a 60-day notice And it's not tied to a 10%.

How is the definition of housing costs, our definition, the use of our definition for housing cost going to be important for the definition of rent?

I think, so housing cost is just a little bit more broader definition than just maybe your core rent payment.

So housing cost is all periodic payments that are identified on the lease.

So if there's parking fees, utilities sometimes are a fixed rate identified on the lease.

So any change in any of those, storage.

So a change in any of those represents a rent increase now under the state definition, and so you need 60 days notice.

Fantastic.

That's super helpful.

How does this intersect with, I believe, one of the changes in state law says that you can only, for non-payment of rent, it restricts it to rent.

Now, if rent is now broader and includes other costs, I'm wondering how state law actually, I was under the impression that state law narrowed the ability to be evicted for nonpayment to nonpayment of rent.

So, you know, nonpayment of late fees, for instance, is no longer my understanding is no longer an evictable offense.

That's right, and most of those charges, parking, storage, some utility fee, they would get wrapped into rent, but late fees was a very big issue, and we would see some landlords, if late fees were owing, would apply your payment first to the late fee, and so you would have these rolling late rent payments that still created a lot of challenges and could send someone down into an unlawful detainer action.

So we're really happy to see rent gets covered first and getting, you would not be facing an eviction action for a late fee.

So moving on, so we are changing the, city requirement of a rent increase to a uniform 60-day notice, as Faith discussed.

There is an exception for affordable housing providers on that 60-day notice, and those would be affordable housing providers that are doing income-based rent.

So if a tenant's income went up, and per maybe the federal program that was funding them, they were obligated to raise the rent on those tenants, they can give shorter notice, 30 days.

And then finally, state, Faith just touched on them.

We're requiring payments to first be applied to rent.

We did before.

This is another example of where the state has caught up with us, but we're changing the way we describe it to match the state's description.

And what about some of the changes in state law?

Maybe we don't need to make them in our legislation.

I'm just curious.

There are extensive requirements around What should be on, not three-day pay or vacate, 14-day pay or vacate notices, notifying the tenant of what resources might be out there for their assistance?

Is that not something that we'll be doing here?

That's not anything we had to change.

That's an idea we're exploring about taking that and possibly enhancing that state requirement.

Again, there was nothing we needed to adjust in our current ordinances to match the new state law.

Right.

We actually like that idea, so we're including that in a proposal.

As you said, we probably have another couple of opportunities to come and talk to you and the other council members.

Fantastic.

So one other piece of this is just implementation.

So these are some big changes, and they affect landlords and tenants.

So we've already done some work to get the word out, and we're going to be doing quite a bit more as this goes into effect in the end of this week, early next week.

So we did some early notice and information on our Renting in Seattle website.

It's kind of featured right there as you come in.

Early information to our mailing list of landlords that are registered with the Rio program.

So that's 19,000 landlords or property managers that we can reach.

And then we've been starting to fold this into landlord trainings.

And then coming up is more information going out on the email list to landlords to reinforce the earlier message.

Materials on the website are being updated to reflect these changes.

This can be integrated into the future landlord curriculum as an obligation on landlords going forward.

And it's highlighted in infographics and materials we're using in community outreach, including some of our grant partners that we're funding.

Fantastic.

I'd love to know a little bit more about the use of the Rio database.

That is, so you've already had outreach to folks about the proposed changes in state law and when they go into effect and what the city is doing to harmonize.

Is that a resource that might be, that we might talk about using to notify landlords of some of the other pieces of legislation that we're gonna be bringing forward as it relates specifically to the obligation of a domestic violence survivor to pay for damage, damages done by her, or his attacker and other items related to the right of a tenant to have a family member or roommate live with them.

Yeah, so this has turned out to be a tremendous value and resource from the RIO program and landlords seem to appreciate it very much too.

We've been doing about quarterly updates to landlords with changes in city law, some tips and best practices, resources they might want to be aware of.

We try and partner with other departments like Office of Housing or even the utilities to fold in some of the messaging that they want to get to multifamily property owners.

Yes, I think every time something new comes along, we'll make sure to include something in there.

Fantastic.

And do you want to just mention the specific landlord trainings that we do?

Yeah, so we're providing quarterly landlord trainings.

They're usually 150 to 200 people.

We try and do a pre-registration for them and they've been consistently sold out.

We've been rotating them around the city, sometimes on weekends to try and reach more landlords.

It's been very successful and we get very good reviews and feedback from the landlords through that.

I think that's it, as Asha said, and Jeff, pretty straightforward.

So we're delighted to be able to get this one to you and have it take effect as soon as it can.

We will be enforcing these changes when they take effect, which is July 28. For the state, yes.

For the state changes.

It will be a lot.

easier for us when they're actually adopted and effective in city laws.

Well, public information as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

Ashley, you want to talk about next steps?

Sure.

So for, I think we'll probably plan on another committee meeting for this bill in combination with talking about the bill you mentioned around the protections for survivors of domestic violence and damages.

And then we'll also be talking about the, bless you, The last bill you mentioned about the right to live with family members or another immediate occupant, or excuse me, or another occupant in the next committee meeting and then the committee meeting after that.

And so the intent is to hopefully get this slate of bills out of committee before budget.

Fantastic.

And I'm just trying to pull up what my next committee meeting is.

It's the 13th, August 13th.

Thank you so much, Alex.

All right, well, with that, thank you so much for the presentation.

I really appreciate it.

Excited about this work.

And we'll move on to item three.

Item number three, Office of Economic Development, Race, and Social Justice 2018 Report.

We're kind of running late.

Is that right?

Yeah.

We're good.

Okay.

Greetings.

Let's start with a quick round of introductions.

This is Bobby Lee, Director of Economic Development.

Hi, I'm Amanda Allen, OED's finance and operations manager and one of our change team leads.

OED, Jonas Seifu, Office of Economic Development, and I'm also a small business advocate and also a co-lead on this change team as well.

Ken Takahashi with the Olean Seattle Business District team.

Alex Rose, Office of Film and Music, creative economy advocate, and I'm also a change team member.

Garbage, Youth Employment Advisor at OED.

Great.

Director Lee, would you like to kick us off?

Well, first of all, I'm so impressed you have this type of feedback on a regular basis here at the City of Seattle.

It really shows a commitment towards diversity and inclusion.

So thank you very much.

I'm just really impressed.

I haven't experienced this in other cities.

So it says a lot about the City of Seattle.

I'll just keep my comment short because we're running out of time.

But I just want to share with you two data points that I think illustrates really a compelling narrative here in Seattle.

So Brookings did a study.

And essentially, in terms of inclusion by our economy, and if you look at the scale on the bottom, the best performing city would be ranked one.

And so it would be an inclusive economy, if you will.

And then 100 would be the worst.

And so City of Seattle, by Brookings, is ranked 67th.

So that gives you a perspective.

And you've got to understand the range of the time frames, 2007 to 2017. So that gives you a broad perspective about our inclusiveness.

And it's not just City of Seattle, this is the regional.

So just keep that in mind as well.

And then in terms of, I just sent you the, the one I sent you was relatively poverty.

And then in terms of earnings, just give you a perspective.

Both of these data points will show that really overall since 2007, things have not improved.

It has gotten worse.

And so that just gives you a perspective of how our economy is behaving.

And the overall conclusion is that in a knowledge economy, knowledge here in Seattle tends to be exclusive, is not as inclusive.

And we've talked about that during my process.

But so this is nothing new to you.

So the question is, what does my department do about it?

And so let me just share with you these two.

Oh, go ahead.

Well, calling it out, I think, is really important.

Yeah, data.

I think it's good having data.

Yeah, and it shows, I think, a lot of courage to face where we're failing.

So thank you.

Yeah, you bet.

And so the question then is, what do we do about it?

And so my department is going through an internal discussion and rearrangement, frankly, about how we can better address this growing inequity here in Seattle.

And I won't belabor you with all the details, but basically four different areas is workforce development, small business, technical assistance, industry cluster development, and neighborhood economic development.

So those are the four organizing principles.

And our core competencies laid on the second part of that layer.

And our brand new vision statement is building an inclusive economy.

That's great.

We'll talk more about this in detail down the road, but these folks here at the table have been working really hard before I got here to address this issue as well.

And so I just want to go ahead and allow them to do their presentation.

Thank you.

You can just go to your slide.

So the Race and Social Justice Initiative across the city has a variety of different equity areas where we can focus our time in order to increase racial equity.

And there are three equity areas that Office of Economic Development and Office of Film and Music are touching.

And that we're really looking at those different, those three areas through the way that we implement our programs.

and the projects that we're implementing in order to implement them in a way that reduces racial inequity and as well looking for ways to build into our policies equity so that from the get-go, the way that we approach our work and the way that we are operating.

is bringing equity to the forefront.

And then lastly is through our partnerships with external and really diverse community organizations.

So I will turn it over to Ken.

Hi.

So racial equity is a big part of our Only in Seattle program serving business districts.

We have provided funding and staff support for 11 organizations that serve communities of color.

We've supported their actions that really help better engage with communities of color and business owners of color through things such as working closely with the Department of Neighborhood Community liaisons.

make sure the outreach is done well.

We've supported racial equity training for the managers in the business district organizations to make sure they're better informed about how to serve communities of color.

We have also supported their efforts to compile race and gender data of businesses in their districts so they have a very good understanding of the folks that they are serving in their districts.

And we have also provided direct financial support to business owners in those districts using community development block grants.

And we have a small grant program that we provided funds to 25 WMBIEs last year.

So.

And so this is our small business team, and we provide and connect new and existing businesses to financial resources, management, education, and help them navigate through government processes in terms of obtaining permits and licenses.

And all these services, they're available to all Seattle small businesses, but we particularly focus on low-income communities, particularly in support of minorities and immigrant-owned businesses.

Can you talk a little bit about the type of assistance that small businesses are seeking from you?

Sure, sure, so one of them we'll talk about a little later on, but it's a lease education where we're actually going out to the community and helping them understand their leases and what they could do within the confined contract that they've signed.

Other things we're doing currently is just navigating through the construction impacts that are happening around the city.

And how do you help people, businesses as it relates to construction impacts.

That is something that we hear a lot about.

Oh, yeah, definitely.

And so we collaborate with the SDOT and making sure that the businesses know about the impacts that are coming and also actually helping them navigate in terms of providing them marketing tools so they could reach businesses that are outside of that area or delivery services for food businesses.

So it varies based on the particular neighborhoods.

And we have in some neighborhoods had a business stabilization funding pilot to help address the needs associated or the needs that are created when some of these kinds of construction projects occur.

Sometimes they impact a business's ability to draw in customers.

And we've experimented with that before.

I think we've had some good successes.

Can you talk a little bit about potential plans to make something like that permanent?

Yeah.

We're actually working on something right now.

We're piloting a program and going down to the neighborhood and talking to the businesses what kind of help they need.

looking at maybe funding some of the changes that they need to make within their business in order to adapt.

And so we don't have conclusions yet, but we're still in the process.

We just started a few weeks ago.

Well, as you know, because through your leadership is the CDBG money.

There's some restrictions in the state of Washington's constitution.

And I'm learning a lot here.

And so we have to use federal dollars to support small businesses.

And, but the CDBG money comes with some restrictions, but The $200,000 that was allocated as a one-time pilot, we have application process going on now.

So far, as I understand it, by today, I just checked in, we have four businesses that actually filled out the form and is in the pipeline.

Some of the folks are from your community.

And so there's a process in which they apply, and there's a committee structure to evaluate the application, and so on and so forth.

And I'll be happy to share more in detail.

Yeah, I would really love some additional detail about that.

We had talked about that a couple months ago, and we didn't have a green light yet.

No, we just got a green light from ESPA.

So that there'd been an application process and all that going through.

So I would love to, just after this meeting, catch up on that.

That'd be fantastic.

So next slide.

OK.

One of OED's teams is focused on supporting entrepreneurship in industry, in particular industry sectors.

And there are three different examples that I want to highlight here as it relates to our work with RSJ.

One is the work of our startup business advocate who has really sought to make connections between technology, industry, and young adults of color.

And so doing that by making connections with technology training, with that audience and connections with technology training and with industry familiarization, as well as support and job networking opportunities.

And this particular position has really sought to be out in community and is really focused on making sure that at least 50% of his time is spent with individuals of either women or minority individuals.

Second is our Restaurant Success Program.

which is a program that is created to help ensure that folks that are interested in either starting a restaurant or expanding a restaurant or a food truck can do that and understand what the regulations and the requirements are.

And that person's really gone out and sought collaborations with community partners and brought kind of a roadshow to a variety of our Seattle Public Libraries, really targeted in our communities of color.

so that that information is easily accessible.

And then lastly, we have our EnviroStars program, which is a green business recognition program.

It's actually a regional effort that we partner with from, golly, I think it's like Snohomish County to the east side and King County.

In any event, that program is aimed at supporting small businesses to green up their operations.

Last year, we engaged a racial equity toolkit with that program and highlighted the need to have some in-language business assistance.

So we were able to get some additional funding this year and have launched that work.

It would be really helpful to get some data about some numbers attached with these three bullets for each tech hire and tech talent, the food business outreach and support and the EnviroStars, similar to like what you do on the...

slide that we're moving forward to just to get a sense of the scale of the program.

That'd be super helpful.

Sure.

And yes, we can follow up with that if it's not already in our report.

It could be in your report.

We're just glossing over it on the presentation.

I will look before following up.

How about that?

I don't want to make work for you.

I can look and if it's not there, we can provide some more detail.

Thank you.

That's great.

So the workforce development team, we know in our region that there's too many of our community members that are not benefiting from our economy.

And there's even fewer federal workforce dollars that are flowing into our region.

Our latest unemployment numbers, we know, Youth, the unemployment rate in our region, five-year estimates, is about 22% for 16 to 19-year-olds, and for youth 20 to 24, it's about 8%.

We don't have data on both youth employment, or age and race, but we also know that African-American unemployment rate is about 11%, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander is also about 11%, whereas white alone is about three, a little three to 4%.

For all of these percentages, this is the percentage of the demographic population that is seeking work.

Yes, that is unemployed and looking for work.

And so our office, the Office of Economic Development, has really built strategies to really target both low-income and communities of color.

We primarily do that through our contracts with our nonprofit providers, through our Career Connected Learning Grants, which we'll talk about in a second, and our partnerships with the community colleges.

They're all aimed at building out these pipelines, not just helping folks seek their first job, but really find pathways to employment that gets to the economy that our director has been talking about, so that they really can thrive in our local economy.

All right.

OED's finance and operations team oversees, obviously, the general operations of the office.

And we look for ways to build racial equity into our department policies, as well as are responsible for tracking OED's investments and expenditures.

Specifically, we track our annual WIMBY spending.

When you look at our stat that's tracked through the city's financial system, you would see for last year we had 11.5% spend with Wimby vendors.

One of the challenges that OED faces is that a lot of our money that is discretionary goes to nonprofit organizations that are serving communities of color, and also what I would call quasi-governmental organizations like Seattle Colleges or the Port of Seattle.

And those expenditures are not eligible to be flagged as WMBIE, and so they don't contribute to our WMBIE spending.

When you back out those types of expenditures, you actually would find that about 77% of our discretionary budget goes to support WMBIE vendors.

So we're proud of that.

And then one example of how we would build equity into our department policies.

You may or may not remember seeing legislation coming through over the past couple of years for money for OED to help do redevelopment of our space.

but we've been building out space and making it the new seven by seven workstations with the adjustable decks and whatnot.

And as we've been going through that process, staff have been reorganized to new workstations and we're almost to the end of that process.

I ended up undertaking a racial equity toolkit to look at as it relates to space planning, how are we doing?

And actually found that a disproportionate number of our staff of color actually have more interior office spaces.

And I think...

Had we not done the toolkit, we have perfectly logical explanations about why things play out the way that we do.

But I think we know with implicit bias, there's an opportunity to question some of those assumptions.

And so with the completion of this space planning effort by the end of this year, we should be able to address a little bit of that inequity.

I really appreciate That analysis is great.

And so it's just a small example of how things show up that impact our ability to, you know, sustain a really robust workforce that includes the range of perspectives we want there.

So thank you for acknowledging that here.

Regardless, I mean, as it relates to the space, the, I'm trying to make a rhyme, but I'm just gonna just leave it.

Space and race, but it doesn't matter how we got there.

It's right, it's what's most important is to correct it.

So I appreciate that this analysis has given us the tools to do so.

So.

Definitely.

Yeah, and so this is one of the examples of our partnerships with the small business support organizations.

We have a contract with Venture and what we do is we actually try to really be specific in terms of the neighborhoods that we go into and we try to make sure that the programs that they come up with in collaboration with us are time sensitive for small businesses to make sure to tailor our program to be to be convenient for them.

The location, a lot of businesses don't want to go too far away from where their businesses are, so we tailor that.

And also, in collaboration with the D.O.N. liaisons, we actually do language translation on the spot as we do some of the education.

for small businesses to be able to interpret the limits and opportunities within their leases.

One of the things I've heard thrown around a little bit is that there's actually a need for not just training on doing a new lease negotiation, but perhaps somebody to not do the negotiation with the property owner, but to sit with them.

Yes.

And have we looked at whether or not those services could be part of the toolkit?

Definitely.

That's one of the things where we'll talk about that we did a read on.

And so let me go to the next slide.

You're going to get there.

All right.

Fantastic.

We'll talk about that.

All right, film and music.

So as you have all mentioned, data is important.

And so we have been trying to get better data that will tell us how can we better serve the constituencies that make up the creative economy.

So we've undergone a nightlife equity study.

We did a music ecosystem study that began last year and ended the beginning of the year.

So really trying to identify where are the gaps that where our office can either directly better serve our film and music industries and other creative industries.

And also what are the blind spots that we have We have identified that people of color have greater barriers to accessing capital, professional development opportunities, and networking opportunities.

So this is an example of how we can use data to better program, provide better programming from our office.

I would also like to mention as the city's liaison to the Seattle Music Commission, the commission's commitment to racial equity has really blossomed over the last couple years.

One of the examples is with the City Music Career Day, we have done much more intentional outreach to high schools that have higher numbers of black and brown students so that we can make sure they're also getting the opportunity to network with music professionals who look like them.

Representation matters.

So we've also been making sure to diversify the panelists and speakers that are part of Music Career Day.

We have also been working with youth directly to hear from them and making sure that we are inviting young leaders of color to be at the table with the Music Commission to help inform how we do our programs, like Career Day, but also, you know, looking at maybe some internship opportunities or other ways that young people can get connected with work opportunities in creative industries.

I just want to call out some of the findings, or it's one finding for several demographic groups in the Creative Economies Report.

Female workers were underrepresented in 7 of 10 largest creative occupations, American Indian or Alaska.

Native workers were underrepresented in 9 of 10 largest creative occupations.

Black and African American workers were represented also underrepresented in 9 in 10. Hispanic and Latino workers underrepresented in 8 of 10. And Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander underrepresented in 10 of 10. largest creative occupation.

So it's clear, you know, again, highlighting where we're missing the mark is really important to identifying the gaps and coming up with strategies to address them.

So thank you for that.

And so we've done various racial equity toolkits, and these are the four that we're going to talk about.

And so we have actually two of them we're going to talk about today.

One is the youth employment career awareness, and Sasha will tell you a little more about that.

And then as you talked earlier about the commercial lease education, Ken will tell you a little more about that.

Okay, I'll go first.

With commercial lease education, this is something that came up in Chinatown ID as we were seeing a lot of development activity going on in the neighborhood and wanting to make sure the businesses would be prepared to take advantage of those opportunities.

And we work closely with our community partners there, including Skipta, And they also had a consultant that did a lot of outreach to businesses to understand what kind of support would be really valued by those businesses.

And that really helped inform sort of a program that we put together, a workshop series.

that focused on what we call the sort of commercial leasehold workshop series that really looked at all of the parts of the leasehold process, starting from before you even talk to a landlord, what do you need to be prepared to talk to the landlord with financial information, your business plan, that kind of thing.

And then we dove into standard sort of commercial lease.

We had help of Wayfind and an attorney that helped to We flagged the key terms of a lease and to help define what some of these terms meant.

And so we provided sort of a checklist on leases.

And then we looked to organize a design workshop.

So once you have sort of your lease negotiation going on, what kind of design would your space look like in the location.

We had a day where we brought an architecture firm to help do one-on-ones with small businesses.

And they actually came out of that session with a sketch of they knew of potential space.

And they just kind of went through what would the design need to be for their business.

And they walked out of there with a sketch.

And so those are examples of workshops that we did in the neighborhood.

And it had a real tangible benefit to those businesses.

We've been seeing that businesses that participated in those workshops are now getting leases.

For example, in the Louisa Hotel building redevelopment in Chinatown ID, three tenants participated in the workshops.

In the Thai Bin building, Phnom Penh participated in the workshops, so we know it helped get them prepared to lease their space.

It's also helping to prepare them to apply for funding.

We have a pilot tenant improvement fund.

Phnom Penh is one of the first awardees of those funds, and we know that because they received all that training beforehand, they really understood the steps that needed to go through, due diligence that would be evaluated by all the parties.

So we were pleased that it really helped some of the businesses so far.

And the, I think you named four different businesses.

Those are all businesses that currently exist in, Chinatown International District, and they're just relocating to a newer space and make sure everything's better?

I think two of them currently exist.

One is Panam Pan is coming back to the neighborhood, so they're coming back.

And then another is a mobile food business that's kind of going to the next step of getting brick and mortar.

So I think it's important to understand, or at least it is for me, how we are defining our outcomes.

I don't know necessarily that somebody who was going to be on a lease took the workshops that you guys offer and then ended up being on a lease, that that in itself is a way to measure the success of the program.

I think the way to measure the success of the program is taking a look at the lease that they ended up signing and how it aligns with an evaluation of what a model good commercial lease is.

So I'm wondering whether or not that sort after the fact work is being done.

You know, just I don't know that you can do a before and after, but just it would be helpful, I think, to be able to check our assumptions that the result of these trainings is actually the outcome is, you know, better leases that are less likely to take advantage of communities that don't have a lot of experience in this area.

So I don't know what we're doing to look at the leases after they've been signed.

That's a really good point and something to keep in mind.

We are seeing, at least with some of the businesses who are applying for the tenant improvement funding, that the leases are not just standard, but they are actually to the benefit of the businesses with very reasonable sort of lease terms, the rates, generous sort of options to extend, and sort of the initial concessions on rent and triple net sort of charges that we're seeing that that is being built in.

And because we're at the table with pilot funding, it really does help the business and our business disorganization.

We're creating an incentive for those good licenses in that instance because we're helping to fund improvements to the property.

So I think that sort of partnership definitely lends itself to good outcomes for everybody.

So in previous years, OED managed our major youth employment program, which was traditionally just massive internships.

While we've made progress while we were running that internship program to expand access to youth of color, we still found, we did our RET last year, we still found that youth of color continue to have less access to employment opportunities and often are less successful in those larger internship programs.

Youth of color have multiple and institutional barriers to accessing these programs and need a lot more targeted approaches and wraparound services.

So building off that RET we did last year, in 2019 we developed a career-connected learning continuum with other departments.

that includes a kind of a tier or kind of job readiness continuum, which is kind of akin to kind of meeting youth where they are.

We built this approach to let the community tell us what would best serve their young people.

So this is the first year that we've instituted our Career Connected Learning Grants based off of what we heard from our previous RETs.

Grantees submitted to us along that development continuum a myriad of different approaches ranging from career readiness activities, social capital like Alex talked about, meeting professionals that look like them, all the way up to internships and even youth apprenticeships.

This approach also required our community partners to partner with employer, keeping in mind the workforce component that we want to make sure that we're preparing young people for this economy.

But really this new approach that we developed was to better serve those that are traditionally left out of these programs.

We recognize that internship programs are one of the best ways to prepare young people for the future and we still need to build those programs, but we know that not everybody can access them and we need to do a lot more support kind of upstream to make sure that young people are prepared for those internship opportunities when they get there.

So this approach, we're doing an RET on this approach this year to see how this works to make sure that we really are serving youth of color, immigrant and refugees communities, and really letting the communities work with us to design those programs that best serve their needs.

One of the issues that has been flagged for me among youth in South Park is the fact that many of our city-operated internship programs or programs that provide a stipend have a built-in barrier for undocumented youth.

Are there ways that we could deal with that, or is that just something that, a bridge we can't cross?

Yeah, so there are ways.

The traditional internship programs, that's always a barrier, especially if they're on employer payroll, but through opportunities like these grants, Young people are able to be paid a stipend for their time.

We actually are funding a group in South Park this year through the Vietnamese Friendship Association.

They have a consortium of partners who are doing job readiness training, internships through stipends, training, entrepreneurship, kind of in a cohort model.

check in with other city departments that use the stipend model, because I don't know that all the departments that are using the stipend model are using it in a way that reduces those barriers for undocumented youth.

I think I've heard that the parks department has a stipend, but it's still non-documented youth are still not able to.

Again, I'm repeating third-hand what I'm hearing from other folks, so.

Yeah, and this approach, too, that really allows the dollars to go to the community organizations who are experts at approaches like that and can find creative ways is one of the ways that we know we can address that problem, so we'll make sure to include that in our RET for this year, too.

So just quickly in summary, some of the challenges that we have encountered in engaging in race and social justice work, I think being intentional takes time and requires you to slow down.

And often that can be seen as a luxury because we want to get it going, we want to get it out, engage with community and so that sense of urgency is something that needs to be interrupted and the toolkits are definitely a way to help us to slow down.

And also opportunities, we've talked about the importance of representation and who's in the room and who are we serving and who are we talking to.

So that also takes some time and change in the way that we normally have done our work.

requires us to reach out, requires budget, and additional staff time.

So that has been something that is important and also has presented a challenge.

I think just in general, having a culture of learning, not only for staff to get trained up and to attend RSJ trainings, but also for our partners.

I think we've seen real success with The music commission engaging in RSJ training with the Only in Seattle program, but that also takes capacity and dollars and also a certain amount of readiness and buy-in from community, which is something that we can push but hasn't been standard in everything that we do.

And I think we've talked a lot about data and collecting data so that we know that we're getting where we want to go.

While this is important, it also can be sensitive.

Figuring out the right way to ask for data so that people's identities are respected and protected is also a bit of a challenge.

So you want to know who you're serving, but you also don't want to put people in a bad position.

I think those are the main things.

I think also just the impacts of working in a political landscape, particularly now with districts and council members really interested in wanting to serve their district.

Sometimes from doing RSA work, we can see that as potentially diffusing our efforts to really target our work toward the most vulnerable.

I appreciate that recognition for sure.

As district council members, we have an obligation to promote the interests of our district.

As a city, we have to walk the talk of using race and social justice and equity lens to make sure that we are spending our limited public resources in a way that benefits the communities that have been neglected the longest, where the greatest needs are.

So I appreciate you guys walking that walk.

And also sort of.

being understanding of the line there as well and the balance.

Thank you as well for also lifting up that the RSGI work really helps us develop in the city a learning culture.

I think really that's, we don't talk about that a lot.

I think by identifying these gaps, it pushes us and in order to push ourselves, We have to learn about the gaps and learn about the impacts to get committed to addressing them.

So I really see this citywide initiative as always having great potential to keep pushing us forward together.

Council Member O'Brien.

I appreciate those comments, Council Member Herbold, and I appreciate that recognition as a district representative, council member.

That tension is real.

I think one of the things that's really helpful is when departments or the city as a whole can kind of lay out with some clarity how we're going to prioritize things.

And so, for instance, Parks Department has done a gap analysis.

that shows where the areas where people don't live within a certain distance of a park.

And so when my constituents come to me and say, hey, we'd really love your help getting a park, I say, that's great.

I'd love to help you.

Let's take a look at where you fit in the gap analysis.

And if the reality is like, oh, actually your neighborhood is really well served by parks, and I recognize there's an opportunity, but if we take that opportunity, that means that an area that's not well served will miss out.

And sometimes that response is frustration, but oftentimes people really understand the fairness of that.

And they'll say, well, you know, we think that there should be, the gap analysis should be bigger.

It's like, great, well, let's work together to fill all the gaps and then talk about how we, how we even make it more inclusive communities and that means that your project may have to wait for a while.

And so the analysis that you all are doing, I mean the work you're doing is outstanding and I really appreciate this report.

And I think helping us figure out how to prioritize it in some kind of systemic way, or whether it's mapping or other things that we can use as tools to look at and say, yeah, this neighborhood can use some help, but it's definitely way ahead of some other business districts, and those are gonna be prioritized, and here's why we're doing that, and I recognize those may not be in my district, but I'm committed to race and social justice work at the city, and that means that sometimes we have to take a back seat to allow other places to catch up, and I think that's great.

No, I'm right with you.

And so we are doing massive data analysis, and we have done quite a bit of work around geography, education level, and also race, and cutting those data into pieces so we can make sense of what's going on in today's economy.

But one of the interesting perspective, and thank you so much, because you just paraphrased what I was going to say.

When I presented to business associations about our new inclusive economy vision, some folks will say, you're turning into a social service agency.

But then when I present the data and the trends, then they understand.

And so it's about making sure that this community understands why we're doing it in a macro data perspective.

If you lay it out that way, then people do understand, to your point.

I appreciate your opening comments, Bobby, about how the work that we're doing here at the city is unique in your experience for the city.

You have an amazing team here.

It's doing great work, but they can only do that work if it's intentional and you have a role to play.

You know, we've talked about this privately, but to create space for that.

The day-to-day urgency of all the stuff we all need to do is really important.

And I know that often for change teams, it's a commitment that you do on top of your other expectations.

But making sure that the head of the department and the whole city, we're carving out space and prioritizing and valuing it so the team can continue to do that amazing work is really important.

So I hope that's something you can carry on.

And the community as well, because they have to also go through the learning process.

So it's a 20% rule that I've applied in other departments, and that is 20% set aside for learning opportunities, not just for us, but our service providers as well.

So we do that type of analysis to make sure that we can do that.

Sometimes it means that admin cost will go up a little bit, but from studies, if you want to really create an anti-racist organization, you have to have capacity to do it.

And so that's the type of analysis that we will go through, not just for ourselves, for our partners as well.

Thank you so much for that note.

I appreciate you taking the time.

I have an 1130 meeting.

Item 4, Council Bill 119583, an ordinance relating to appropriations for the Office of Arts and Culture, amending Ordinance 125724, which adopted the 2019 budget, and lifting a proviso imposed on the Office of Arts and Culture's cultural space budget control level by Seattle City Council, Green Sheet 25B1-2019.

And we just made an off-camera decision to hold the last item on the agenda for the next meeting on August 13th.

Thank you so much for your patience, folks.

Asha Venkatraman, Council Central staff.

So we're talking about Council Bill 119583. And this bill essentially lifts a proviso on funds that were allocated in the 2019 budget last year for $150,000 to assist Town Hall with their renovations.

During last year's budget, that $150,000 was allocated in Green Sheet 25B1 and its funds in admission tax to go to the Office of Arts and Culture.

The proviso basically stated that until council was able to see the negotiated benefits, public benefits that were coming through, we would hold that funding.

After negotiating those benefits in conjunction with your office and the Office of Arts and Culture, we have a negotiated agreement that would create another set of public benefits in exchange for the $150,000.

The reason for having to negotiate those benefits is a limitation in the Washington State Constitution that prevents the city from gifting public funds to organizations.

So the historic practice generally citywide and through the Office of Arts and Culture is to negotiate a set of benefits that would benefit the city more broadly.

And so this funding is the last of three sets of funding excuse me, three sets of budget actions that provided funding to Town Hall.

We did $500,000 in 2016, $350,000 in 2017, and as I mentioned in 2019, an additional $150,000.

And so the benefits negotiated for this $150,000 are to have Town Hall continue its focus on race and equity by providing 50 hours per year of free use of their reading room by city departments, community-based organizations, and other community groups.

And it's all for programming specifically related to race and equity.

So Town Hall plans to advertise these offers through their normal communications platforms, public announcements to entities such as regional equity facilitators, other organizations, and all city departments.

And so passage of this bill will lift the proviso, allowing the contract to be executed and the funds to be released.

Fantastic.

Thanks.

This is very helpful.

And for folks who may be watching along, I think it's important to highlight you went through a number of different appropriations.

The underlying principle, though, is that for each of the times that we have funded the costs associated with the town hall capital project, we have had public benefit requirements and it's important to recognize that those public benefit requirements are unique to each funding decision.

They are not, we do not So you don't get, for the funding that we provided in last year's budget, you're not getting credit for the public benefit you provided in, you being Town Hall, that Town Hall provided in 2016 or 2017. There is a new public benefit requirement that is distinct and unique from the public benefit requirement in the previous two years.

It would be helpful to understand, what's the term the number of years that this public benefit is required.

So for these...

I see that it says 50 hours per year, but I don't know how many years.

I will have to follow up on that piece.

I'm not quite sure for how long.

I know in previous...

I know the 2017 public benefit, it was for five years, I believe, and that was a public benefit to require arts and culture event series free of charge to people under But yeah, again, that was, I think it was a five-year obligation.

It would be helpful to know.

And then also, what the plan is that town hall has to get the word out that the reading room has this 50 hours of availability by not just city departments, but community-based organizations, I think.

I remember, Former Councilmember Licata did an analysis of the use of public benefit agreements by the organizations that were obligated to follow them.

And what he found at the time is that there are a lot of public benefits out there that the community could be taking advantage of that they're not because they don't know about them.

Absolutely.

So in terms of their advertisements, so they'll do them through their regular announcements, but also they'll be targeting communities that are underrepresented and marginalized, as they have in the past, because this is specifically about race and equity work.

For example, in the last set of public benefit agreements, when they were providing programming to conduct outreach to those communities.

It was specifically, they specifically invited those communities to take advantage of those tickets, that opportunity.

And so my understanding is that that approach is going to be similar.

So they're going to reach out specifically to communities doing race and equity work.

City departments, I think, are generally aware that that opportunity exists.

But in recent months, I think there's been a little bit more of a push to make people aware.

of what those opportunities have been.

Do we typically require any sort of a report back on the success that a funded organization has in fulfilling its public benefit?

I don't believe that there's a report that comes to council, but my impression is that ARTS tracks all of the different organizations, what kinds of opportunities they have, and then when they get fulfilled.

That would be, I'd love to know or to have that confirmed that it's tracked because I do recall that when Council Member Licata did the audit, it was pretty, it wasn't being tracked.

So it was pretty, an extensive job to compile all the public benefit agreements and figure out which ones had sort of exhausted their offerings to the community.

Absolutely.

And I don't know that that's for all departments that it's tracked so closely.

I know that for arts it's tracked.

Yeah, for example, our legislative change team retreat this year was done at Hugo House because we were able to take advantage of those benefits.

Fantastic.

All right, great.

Well, I have no further questions, and given the time and the dearth of council members, I'm going to move Council Bill 119583. I'm going to second Council Bill 119583, and I'm going to vote in favor of Council Bill 119583. And nobody is abstaining and nobody is opposing.

And so this will move on to full council on Monday.

And with that, the meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.