Thank you very much.
Good morning, everyone.
The March 10th, 2023 regularly scheduled meeting of the Neighborhoods, Education, Civil Rights and Culture Committee will come to order.
It's 9 31 a.m.
I'm Tammy Morales, chair of the committee.
Will the clerk please call the roll?
Council Member Lewis.
Present.
Council Member Nelson.
Council Member Nelson.
Let's come back to her.
OK.
Council Member Strauss.
Present.
Chair Morales.
Present.
There are Council Member Nelson.
If she comes in, I will rise to knowledge.
And Vice Chair Sawant is absent.
Is that correct?
I don't see her.
I do not see her.
No.
Okay.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
If there's no objection, today's agenda will be adopted.
Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.
We have three items on the agenda today.
We've got a resolution excuse me, approving a memorandum of agreement with the UW Medical Center.
We'll be hearing from the Department of Neighborhoods about that.
We have an update on the passage of initiative 135 that creates a social housing developer and we have an ordinance creating a race and social justice establishing the race and social justice initiative as city policy.
We are probably going to have the we are going to have a briefing and discussion on that item and we will vote on that item at the next meeting.
So, before we get started with public comment, I do want to acknowledge that we have a guest in Chambers today from Alexandria, Louisiana.
Councilmember Reddix Washington is here.
Very nice to see you today.
We had a short chat in my office this morning, and he's very interested in our agenda.
So, welcome to Seattle.
Okay, at this time, we will open the general public comment in person and hybrid.
Let's go ahead and open it.
I know we've got a couple of in-person people here.
So I'll ask that everyone be patient as we operate this system.
We're continuously looking for ways to fine-tune the process and add means of public participation in our council meetings.
It does remain the strong intent of the City Council to have public comment regularly included in our agendas.
but we reserve the right to modify these periods at any point if we deem the system as being abused or is unsuitable for allowing our meetings to be conducted in an efficient manner.
So I will moderate the public comment period.
The period is up to 20 minutes and each speaker will be given two minutes to proceed.
I'll call you up to the mic.
I don't believe we have any signed in online, is that right?
Okay.
I believe Council Member Sawant has also joined the meeting.
Oh, thank you.
Council Member Sawant, welcome.
Thank you, Chair Morales.
And Council Member Nelson is here in Chambers with us today.
Good morning.
Present.
Okay, so we will go ahead and call the speakers.
You will hear a chime when you have 10 seconds left.
When you hear the chime, please wrap up your comments so that we can move to the next speaker.
Okay, the public comment period is now open.
Who has the list?
I have the list.
Okay.
Our first speaker is Marguerite Richards.
Richard.
Yes, my last name is Richard and I do that on purpose because people like to say Richards, Richard's son.
I don't have any sons.
But anyway, let me get to the point.
The point is race and social justice.
You see what color I am?
Did you see what color Tyree Nichols was?
Look, civil rights is dead.
And you should know it permanently by what you did when you were with the Human Rights Commission.
We're still being disrespected.
We're not being treated fairly.
We still have to attack racism and discrimination.
to attach something on to a dead-in-the-water committee.
Ever since I've been living here, civil rights has been dead in the water.
I don't care how many of us died and sacrificed for it.
It's dead in the water when you can have law enforcement taking the Negro population, Afro-American, Black, whatever you want to call us.
I'm indigenous Black now.
have this type of stuff going on around here and we have a constitution that is not even effective.
Let me tell you why.
Because Ben Crump, it's a wonder he hasn't had a stroke or heart attack.
Just taking on all this mess as an indigenous Black man, having to see the faces of those families, he has chosen to represent.
Because many are called, but few are chosen.
That man had to be chosen by God to do what he did, because all these other scared Negroes out there running around acting like they're trying to help us and they're perpetrating fraud.
It's called evil and wicked intent.
And the man upstairs, Jesus Christ my Lord, he's looking and he's booking too.
He done erased a whole lot of folk from this planet that should not even be walking around treating us indifferently.
Our next speaker is Azani Smith.
I think it's Asian A, is that right?
I'm sorry if that's Asian A.
Hello, how are you guys doing today?
I just have to speak about the Civil Rights Office due to the fact that I've been helping my aunt with her process with her Civil Rights Office case that she had because she was here in City Hall and her and Honorable Michael before were racial racially profiled even though people are saying it's not racially profiling When there's two people who are elderly and both of them are sick having somebody that's supposed to be representing as your security comes up to them and they're elderly and telling them to get up and and that they couldn't sit there.
And I ask, you know, just me being one person who is curious about what's going on in my city, I go over here and I ask, oh, can people sit over here in this section?
Oh, this is a public place.
This is for the public.
The public can be here.
So if the public can be here, I'm trying to figure out why my aunt's civil rights investigation is still going on.
Even though it's because of the, I guess, security company that you guys are having here at your guys' building, I'm wondering how you're going to sign over an initiative with someone or an office that's not even doing their job at all.
And my mom, my mom, my aunt has had multiple cases with the Civil Rights Office, and they're still not doing anything.
So I'm kind of worried right now on if anything is going to be getting done.
If you're going to just sign something over to an office that's not doing their job, in my opinion, Because if it's civil and it's civil rights, you guys are supposed to be protecting the people and you guys are supposed to be helping the people get justice.
But if my aunt has never had any justice at all in any of her cases, that's a problem.
Thank you.
Bye.
Thank you very much.
We have no other public commenters, so I'm going to go ahead and close the public comment period.
Okay, let's move on to the agenda.
Alexis, will you please read item one into the record?
Agenda item one, a resolution approving a memorandum of agreement with UW Medical Center Northwest Campus regarding the establishment, composition, and rules for the Development Advisory Committee for preparation of a major institution master plan for UW Medical Center Northwest Campus.
Briefing, discussion, and possible vote.
Thank you very much.
Okay, we've got folks from the Department of Neighborhoods here, Dipti Garg and Sarah Beltz, if y'all, oh, and Julie Blakeslee from University of Washington.
All of our presenters are online today, so I will hand it off to you to take it away.
Hi, good morning.
I'm Sarah Beltz with the Department of Neighborhoods.
Hi, I'm Vicky Garg with the Department of Neighborhoods.
And we just had a short presentation to run through for that committee this morning that pertains to Resolution 32088, which would establish a Development Advisory Committee for UW Medical Center Northwest Campus's major institution master planning process.
So without further ado, I will move into the presentation.
So just as a little bit of context setting, there are 13 organizations within the city of Seattle that are established or defined as major institutions under the Seattle Municipal Code.
And one of those is the University of Washington Medical Center's Northwest Campus, which was previously commonly known as Northwest Hospital.
Our PowerPoint's being a little slow to advance here.
There we go.
And there's a map just showing the location of the campus up in North Seattle.
It's sort of roughly bounded by Aurora Avenue to the west.
Interstate 5 is a little bit to the east.
Holler Lake is to the north.
So the city's major institution master planning process is largely under the purview of the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, although what the Department of Neighborhoods' role is, is we staff and provide facilitation support to the advisory committees that are formed to advise on master plan development and implementation for each of the major institutions.
And there's a quote on the full quote from the municipal code on the slide that's up now.
I'm just sort of describing the overall intent of the city's major institution master plan or MIP process, which is to balance the needs of major institutions to develop facilities for the provision of health care educational services with the need to minimize the impact of institution development on surrounding neighborhoods.
So as I mentioned, DON's role in the MIMP process is to staff and facilitate the advisory committees for each of the city's 13 major institutions.
In addition, SDCI and SDOT also provide technical support to those committees.
There's two types of advisory committees that we staff for major institutions.
And major institutions that are actively involved in the preparation of new major institution master plans have what we call development advisory committees.
And institutions that have existing master plans that they're engaged in implementing have what the code refers to as implementation advisory committees.
So today what we're here to speak about is the Development Advisory Committee for UW Medical Center's Northwest Campus.
Development advisory committees, they are a required component of the major institution master planning process, and they are established, required to be established and appointed by the city council via a resolution.
And the average duration for a development advisory committee is generally about two years once a new MIMP is approved for a major institution.
The Development Advisory Committee then transitions into an Implementation Advisory Committee.
And Implementation Advisory Committees are, those members are appointed by the D.O.N. directors.
And they meet less frequently since their role is generally monitoring compliance with adopted MIPS.
They tend to meet, some of them meet multiple times a year, but many just meet once a year just to sort of track progress toward implementation of the adopted master plan.
So I guess just to give a little bit of context of what is involved in forming a Development Advisory Committee.
So as I mentioned, the Municipal Code requires the development of a Development Advisory Committee for institutions that are actively involved in the master planning process.
So per the Municipal Code, DON works with each major institution that's initiating the creation of a new group to form a development advisory committee with between 6 and 12 members.
We do mailed notice, we do direct outreach to community organizations working in the areas or the neighborhoods surrounding the institution, and pursuant to the code, we seek to recruit and onboard development advisory committee members that are directly affected by the actions of the institution, which is engaged in the master planning process, and also, to the extent possible, individuals that have either professional or volunteer experience tied to areas such as consensus building, land use, zoning, urban design, economic development, or educational and medical services, depending on the mission of the organization engaged in the master planning process.
In addition to community members serving on development advisory committees, they also include a non-management representative from the institution engaged in the planning process, as well as non-voting representatives from the institution and various city departments.
And this resolution will adopt a memorandum of agreement between the Department of Neighborhood and the UW Medical Center Northwest Hospital.
And with this adoption, the major institution master plan will actively involve three city departments.
The Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection, will provide technical assistance to the advisory committee on code-related issues.
It will also help prepare the advisory committee with the formal staff recommendations to the hearing examiner and the city council.
And then the SDOT, the Seattle Department of Transportation, will provide advice to the committee members on all things related with transportation, and specifically with the transportation management plan.
And the Department of Neighborhood, as Department of Neighborhood, we will provide staff support to all the advisory committees, including assisting in scheduling and facilitating meetings, preparation of agendas and meeting minutes, and also assisting the committee members in preparing various reports to the institution, the SDCI, to the hearing examiner, and to the city council.
This slide shows the bird's eye view of the UDAP Medical Center Northwest Campus as it exists today.
One thing to note is that the current UDAP Medical Center Northwest is operating under its master plan that was adopted way back in 1991. So it has not been updated from its current master plan for more than 30 years now.
This slide lists the proposed ACT members for the UW Medical Center Northwest Campus, the voting members.
are the committee members, and there will be 10 voting members.
And in addition to the committee members, DAC includes ex-officio members, and they represent the institution, which is UW Northwest Campus in this case, the SCCI, SDOT, and DAWN.
The ex-officio members participate in all aspects of the committee work, except they have no vote.
The DAC will have several deliverables through this whole master planning process.
The DAC will have an opportunity to comment on the concept plan, provide inputs on the EIS scope, the environmental impact statement scope.
It will have opportunity to, again, comment on the preliminary draft master plan and the preliminary draft EIS.
and the draft director's report, and finally, the final director's report.
And at the end of this process, the DAC will deliver a final advisory committee report to the city hearing examiner, STCI, and the institution.
And this slide is a sort of a graphic image of what we just discussed in the last slide.
All the arrows on top are the different milestones that the DAC will be participating in, either through providing comments or through providing deliverables.
as part of the process.
And along the same timeline as the master plan is getting developed, the EIS, the environmental impact statement, will also be developed simultaneously.
And in the end of this process, the top row process, when we come to the hearing, then the, once the, Then the final report goes to the hearing examiner, and then for final approval to the city council.
And once this master plan is adopted, then the new master plan will become the guiding document for this institution.
And this last slide outlines the MIMS schedule for the next few years.
UW Northwest submitted a letter of intent to the city last year to begin updating its MIMS.
The code recommends a 24-month duration from the start, that is, from the letter of intent to the council approving the master plan.
And based on this agenda, looking at a final phase of the master plan to be sometime during this second quarter of 2020. I think that's it.
Thank you.
Great, thank you both very much.
Julie, did you want to make any comments or?
Sure, just thank you to Sarah and Dipti for putting all this together and we worked through a really nice process to, we had a SAC, a Standing Advisory Committee.
Some of those members wanted to continue to be members of the DAC and we did a nice process to be able to add some more members to this advisory committee and look forward to seeing this adopted and getting started.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, thanks for being here.
I know when I met with Department of Neighborhoods earlier this week, they indicated the 10 committee members who have been identified and, you know, talked a little bit about the array of expertise that they're offering.
So I think this is going to be a good way to get this group started and look forward to continuing to hear about the development of this plan.
Colleagues, are there any questions or comments for our presenters?
Nothing from Council Member Nelson.
Okay.
I don't see anything.
So if that is the case, then I move the committee recommends the Council adopt Resolution 32088. Is there a second?
Thank you.
It's been moved and seconded.
Will the clerk please call the roll on adoption of Resolution 32088.
Council Member Lewis.
Yes.
Council Member Nelson.
Aye.
Council Member Strauss.
Yes.
Vice Chair Sawant.
Yes.
Chair Morales.
Yes.
Five in favor, none opposed.
Thank you.
The motion carries.
And the committee recommendation that the council adopt Resolution 32088 will be sent to the March 24th first city council meeting.
Okay.
Will the clerk please read item 2 into the record?
Agenda item number 2, update of passage of initiative 135, creating the Seattle social housing developer public development authority.
Thank you very much.
Esther Handy is here from central staff to walk us through a presentation.
Colleagues, now that I-135 has passed, the city has certain obligations to assist with implementing the social housing public development authority.
As a reminder, we do have several PDAs in the city, including the Pike Place Market PDA, SCPDA.
More recently, we have the Central District PDA and the Cultural Space Agency PDA.
I-135, as you know, is a voter-approved initiative to create the social housing PDA, and its intent is to develop, own, and maintain publicly financed Mixed Income Social Housing Developments.
So Esther's here.
She's going to walk us through what these obligations mean, and then we will open it up for discussion.
Please go ahead.
Great.
Thank you, Chair Morales.
Esther Handy, Director of the Council Central Staff.
I'm standing in for a couple of staff who are out of town, so I just want to acknowledge the good work of Deputy Director Ali Panucci and Housing Analyst Staff member Tracy Ratzliff for their background work on this.
I have five or six slides.
My plan is to walk through the background of the initiative, and I'm happy to take questions, including sort of the next steps for the city.
Thank you.
Great.
Alexis, we'll go to the first slide.
Initiative Measure 135 regards to the development of social housing in Seattle and was approved by voters in February.
It became law on March 1 when the mayor certified the election.
So this is 10 days of fresh law.
The new law establishes the Seattle Social Housing Developer Public Authority.
I'm going to refer to that as the PDA during this presentation.
The purpose of the PDA is to develop social housing in Seattle, which means owning, maintaining, developing publicly financed mixed income social housing developments.
The initiative established the PDA and adopted the charter for that PDA.
On this slide are some of the characteristics of what social housing development means.
It's not an exhaustive list defined in that charter.
So these mixed income developments will be owned by the PDA.
They will be affordable to households earning between zero and 120% of area median income.
They will allow tenants to remain in that housing even if their household income changes.
It'll set rates based on the cost of operating and the debt service on these buildings.
It will allow residents opportunities for restorative justice, conflict resolution, and engagement in decision-making in their housing.
These developments cannot be sold or transferred to a private entity or public-private partnerships in the future, and they must be developed to high green development passive housing standards.
The next slide says a little bit about the governance.
The PDA will be governed by a 13-member board, and we'll talk more about that board shortly.
After the initial appointments, half of the board members will be residents of the Public Development Authority Housing, and the governance board will be paired with individual governance councils for each multifamily project.
Next slide.
This takes a look at what are the obligations of the city related to the PDA.
The first obligation is that the City Council, the Mayor, the Renters Commission, and the Green New Deal Oversight Board, those city entities, shall make appointments to the Board.
The City Council is responsible for calling the first meeting of the Board within 30 days of those appointments.
The city has a requirement to fund the salaries of the chief executive and chief financial officers for 18 months, including and must offer limited in-kind support for things like initial office space, supplies, insurance and bonding, legal services, and that includes the hiring and retaining of these first two staff members.
Additional city funding is required but not prohibited.
And then finally, the city per this new law is required to conduct a feasibility study whenever considering the sale or the gift of public land.
There is current city policy about surplus properties that is defined in Resolution 31829 and 31837. Those policies do require the prioritization of affordable housing.
It is my understanding that these disposition policies will be picked up in the Finance and Housing Committee this summer in order to add the new requirements from initiative 35 that a feasibility study for social housing be conducted as part of those processes.
Great, I'm going to say just a little bit more about the initial board appointments, because that's the first action that the city must take.
So the Seattle Renters Commission is responsible for appointing the majority of the board.
And this slide indicates some of the requirements for their seats that include somebody who has experienced housing instability, someone who has experienced financial eviction, and someone who is displaced, along with a range of incomes that will be served by the PDA, must be present in those seven seats.
The other six seats are appointed by the MLK Labor Council, El Centro de la Raza, the City Council, the Mayor, and the Green New Deal Oversight Board.
This body, the City Council, is responsible for the appointment of two positions.
And per the initiative, a combination of the Council and Mayor appointments must include someone with expertise in public financing, urban planning, and nonprofit housing development.
All 13 appointments will be filed with the office of the city clerk, but only the two council appointments will be confirmed by the council And my last slide here shows the estimated timeline for these actions.
Per my conversation with your office, Chair Morales, my understanding is that the two city council appointments will come to this committee on April 14th for discussion, and they would go to the full council on April 25. April 30 is the 60-day deadline for all appointment packets for all 13 seats to be filed with the city clerk.
And then no later than May 30th, the city council will call the first meeting of the PDA board.
There will be some future actions, like I just mentioned, this summer, an evaluation of the city's property disposition properties, and then funding the salary and benefits of the CEO and CFO for 18 months.
One final note on that funding piece, there is a provision in the city charter, Article 4, Section 1F, relates to the adoption of initiative measures.
And it says that if a measure contemplates expenditures that are not included in the current budget, those expenditures above $20,000 shall not be lawful until after the next succeeding budget shall take effect.
As I said, this law is only 10 days old, so there's a lot more conversation amongst the city family about implementation.
But in broad strokes, what it likely means is that the timeline will focus on appointing the PDA board, standing up the entity with in-kind support from the city, and allocating the required resources in the 2024 budget.
That's the end of my overview, and happy to take questions.
Terrific.
Thank you so much, Esther.
As you said, it's brand new.
We we are working on getting this board set up.
I will let folks know that I am convening a task force of the appointing entities today to review the job description.
They'll be meeting.
The plan is for them to be meeting weekly until we get the recommendations, which, as Esther said, will come before this committee.
Any questions from my colleagues about this process?
What to expect?
I am not seeing any hands.
That was very thorough, Esther.
Oh, yes.
So is there an outreach plan to solicit nominations or recommendations?
For well so the for the two council seats do you mean?
Well for the for the makeup of the advisory.
So each of the other appointing entities that Esther mentioned, the Renters Commission, El Centro, they all have their own application process.
I do not yet know what their processes are going to be, but we will.
That's part of what this task force will be talking about is, you know, what we need to do first is review the job description for these boards or for these positions, because this is effectively a development entity.
we want to understand the skills that the board is going to need in order to oversee the agency once it's created.
So that's the first conversation to be having.
Might be an outreach just to get the word out.
Right so yeah so more to come and I will be sure during council briefings every week to sort of update on what's happening with that and make sure that folks stay in the loop.
Thank you for the question Council Member Nelson.
Any other questions?
Okay.
I'm not seeing any.
Esther, thank you very much.
I know we have a lot of things to dig through, and we'll just make sure we're being as clear as possible about what we understand as we move through it.
That sounds great.
Our team is at the ready to help implement this initiative and work with the council to answer those questions.
Great.
Thank you very much.
Okay.
Alexis, will you please read item 3 into the record?
Agenda item 3, an ordinance establishing the race and social justice initiative as city policy.
Establishing governance of the race and social justice initiative within the Office of Civil Rights, authorizing the Office of Civil Rights to lead the race and social justice initiative, and adding new sections 3.14.941 through 3.14.945 to the Seattle Municipal Code for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.
Thank you very much.
Okay, we have from the Office of Civil Rights, Interim Director Derek Wheeler-Smith, Davida Ingram from the Race and Social Justice Division Director, and Asha Venkatraman from Central Staff.
Before I hand it off to you lovely folks, I do want to say that it's really important that these principles of the Race and Social Justice Initiative, which we've had in the city for some time, The principles around undoing racism, analyzing power, learning from our history, are all crucial to the work of the city.
As an institution, we can't do the work of undoing racism, of establishing anti-racist practices, unless we acknowledge the historical role that this institution has played in creating inequity across the city.
So I am eager to work with the department to create a culture of racial equity among our city family in all of our departments and to use that racial equity lens to let us do our work as a city to best serve Seattleites.
The Race and Social Justice Initiative challenges us as public servants to redefine the kind of city we want to be, the type of future we want to build for our children, and the kind of communities we want to create for our elders to be safe in the city.
So I am excited that we're having this conversation and really want to thank the department, Asha and central staff and my own chief of staff, Alexis Turla.
They've all been working really hard together and do want to thank the mayor's office for his support of this as well and look forward to the conversation.
So I'm going to hand it to, who's first?
Asha, are you going first?
No, okay.
Derek, please take it away.
Awesome, I will kick us off.
Thank you for having us here, Chair Morales and council members.
We're excited to bring this ordinance before you today.
I want to first really just salute the OCR, Office of Civil Rights staff.
As a year ago, I challenged us to consider what it meant to bridge, to shift our focus from destroying the things that harm us to building the things that heal us.
This has required us to work on discovering our interconnectedness building shared humanity by bridging across difference so that we can focus on organizing systems and structures, really to increase agency for the persecuted and prevented groups in the city of Seattle.
Bridging in this instance has meant stepping back to ask what is the common good of the people and looking at what is good governance and policy, and it's meant bridging between a wide range of stakeholders.
Across my life, at least, of conversation, I've seen the wisdom and wholeness emerge in moments like ours We have to hold this seemingly opposing reality and create a tension of interplay in terms of power and frailty, pain and hope, beauty and brokenness, mystery and conviction, calm and fierceness.
And so we want to recognize that there's always buildup before breakthrough.
So it's so important to acknowledge the immense amount of work that's gone into this ordinance by folks whose names will not be called out in this space.
Folks who I would say were more committed to planting seeds than harvesting crops.
Thank you to Mayor Harrell for his support of this ordinance.
I'm grateful for Council Member Morales and her office, OSHA and central staff, the many folks who make up the network for getting us to this point.
So I'm gonna step aside and make way for our fantastic Race and Social Justice Director, Davida Ingram, who will share with you a bit more on why this ordinance
Good morning everyone.
Good morning council.
Thank you for taking the time to listen to the ordinance the Race and Social Justice Ordinance on the floor today.
My name is Davita Ingram and my pronouns are she her.
I'm a deep brown skin African-American woman who identifies as Black and I'm wearing a gold outfit and I have the honor of leading the Race and Social Justice Strategy Team.
The broader RSJI network thanks you.
We all believe in the vision of Seattle as a place of opportunity where everyone can thrive.
And what makes me excited about the conversation we're having today is looking at RSJI as my as my Director Wheeler-Smith often says moving it from an initiative to something that has permanency that like Council Member Morales said honors our history and is foundational.
With the support of hundreds of city employees and community members and this council, we do have an ordinance that's designed to continue creating measurable change and ending racial disparities across the city.
The RSDI initiative at its heart has the dual purpose of advancing racial equity within the city's workforce and for all of our communities.
I'm thinking about the the 2023 Dr. Martin Luther King Unity Day celebration, Council Member Morales, Mayor Harrell, and Director Wheeler-Smith, they dreamed in real time about our city and our beloved communities with a unified voice harmonized to the tune of racial justice and social justice.
So we're here today in front of you asking Council to please bring this RSAI bill to a successful vote Passing this bill enshrines a first of its kind initiative into our city code permanently.
It builds on Seattle's historic commitment to legislating equity.
The RSAI bill is also a balm in the heavy winds of change.
There has been COVID.
There has been colonization.
There's been racial housing covenants and gentrification and displacement.
You know that leading economists are saying that businesses and people should prepare for rough economic times ahead.
So we're bringing hope.
The ordinance is a stake in the ground, not for scarcity, but for abundance.
I love that we are working on the coming vision of the 2044 city comprehensive plan.
Why?
Because we've had 20 years of threading RSDI through all 44 city departments, and when we move 4040 twenty years into the future, to 2044. This is just a year before 2045, when it's projected the communities of color will hold just over a 50-50 split with white communities nationally.
This bill is futuristic and hopeful.
It says, yes, we can live with racial harmony together.
But more importantly, it builds a concrete understanding of the work ahead of us civically and administratively.
Seattle is a great and beautiful city, and yet we know it's still troublingly inequitable on important measures of income, education, health, accessibility, and opportunity.
We know that this is a cumulative effect of facing multiple disparities that hinder opportunity for far too many.
So if you're a low-income, uninsured, from a struggling family, undocumented, incarcerated, or justice-involved, unhoused, disabled, you just might not feel like the city's arms are around you or that your options are slim.
So just to wrap it up, we know it doesn't have to be this way.
We know Seattle will be at its best when people of all colors can stand together in spaces of love, unity, belonging, and healing together.
I think we all can agree that Seattle should be a great place to live and is.
And it can be better when we endeavor to absolutely require racial justice and social justice.
The RSAI bill is a blueprint for one Seattle created with an equitable vision.
It does have backbone where our wishbone is.
So thank you on behalf of my colleagues your employees and our beloved communities for taking an important step forward to make Seattle a racially equitable city.
And thank you to Asha for explaining more about what's in the law.
Thank you very much, Davida.
That was great.
Very excited to be moving this conversation forward.
Asha, please.
Let's talk about the bill.
Right.
Good morning, Chair Morales and Council Members.
Give me just a moment to share my screen here so I can pull up the PowerPoint.
Is that showing up okay?
It's not in presentation mode, but we can see it.
Okay.
All right.
There we go.
Good morning.
So I will be taking us through an overview of Council Bill 120525. I'll go through some of the background, what the bill's intent and the elements are, talk about some next steps, and then I'm happy to answer any questions that anyone has.
So to start, RSJI officially began at the city back in 2004 as a citywide effort to eliminate racial disparities and achieve racial equity in Seattle.
Since that time, mayors have, across administrations, have issued a variety of executive orders that relate to RSJI work and how RSJI work will move in their administrations.
Back a couple years ago, the council adopted Resolution 31164, which also affirmed RSJI work.
But one of the reasons that the discussion around permanency of the initiative as an ordinance came up was because executive orders don't necessarily translate across electoral administrations.
Resolutions can be non-binding across councils.
And so there was no permanent place where the initiative actually lived in the way that this ordinance would codify this into the Seattle Municipal Code.
There's been a lot of years of work on this, both in the RSI network more broadly, as well as within the actual city process here.
And one of the steps towards moving towards an ordinance was the result of a racial equity toolkit that so CR did.
starting back, I think, in 2017, those recommendations came out in 2019. And the idea there was to figure out how to minimize political influence and strengthen SOCR's ability to fulfill its mission.
After those report recommendations came out, the Council more widely adopted a statement of legislative intent to review those recommendations and see what was actually ready to be implemented.
And one of the recommendations coming out of that workgroup was passage of an ordinance to codify RSGI permanently.
So the intent of Council Bill 120 that should say 525, apologies, is to codify SOCR's authority to set foundational practices and principle within existing RSJI practice and do that citywide.
And so since the beginning of the initiative, RSJI has been cited within SOCR, but this ordinance would both make sure that that is codified permanently, both its placement within SOCR, as well as giving SOCR the authority to set those RSGI principles and practices for departments citywide.
The idea of this ordinance was not to specifically and strictly dictate how each of the departments did their work when it comes to RSJI, but to set the foundation, to set the floor of what RSJI meant, what it currently means, and setting a floor upon which departments can build their analysis according to their own lines of work and lines of business, but making sure that the city is using a shared analysis when it comes to understanding how race and social justice principles should be implemented.
So there are a couple elements as a part of this bill.
First, as I mentioned, it establishes RSJI within SOCR and gives SOCR the authority to lead the initiative.
It directs departments citywide to support internal staff, racial equity, and social justice groups.
So groups that are doing work within their departments to shift culture and move towards a place where race and social justice principles are part of everyday work.
It authorizes us as you are to develop guidance for those internal teams, so that they are providing foundational practices and framework, as well as direction about how to allocate budgeting for these internal groups.
It gives SOCR the authority to partner with other departments to define what foundational trainings are and to figure out how to prioritize employee time for those trainings.
And lastly, it would charge SOCR in partnership with the council and the mayor to celebrate exemplary RSJI practices from departments or employees.
Last element of the ordinance, which is not going to be codified in the Seattle Municipal Code, but does ask the Seattle Department of Human Resources to come back to the council with a plan and a timeline to figure out how to address issues of position classifications and civil service exemptions as related to race and social justice work.
More broadly, SDHR, and I think the city in general, has been talking about the issues that have come up around classification, how positions are classified and defined, and what civil service exemption looks like.
Our classification system is a couple decades old, and so there's already ongoing work discussing how to address that issue.
And so this ask would simply ask SDHR to consider how it would go about accounting for race and social justice considerations while they're doing that ongoing work.
And the ask is not for them to actually do that work, but to provide council with a plan for how they would approach it.
And so the idea is for that report to come back to council by the end of the year.
So December 20th, oh, excuse me, 31st of this year.
If you all, oh, I guess, oh, did I slip aside?
Yes, I skipped a bunch of slides, I'm sorry.
we are.
And so there aren't a lot of amendments still.
Proposed Amendment 1, which you'll see on your agenda, is primarily editorial and technical.
It just corrects some language in the recitals for clarity and for accuracy, inserts a missing word here or there, makes a couple editorial changes.
So if you have any questions about that, I'm happy to answer them.
And then if it was voted out of committee today, this would move to full council, not next Tuesday, but the Tuesday after.
But it may be moving to another committee meeting in a couple weeks.
And so the full council vote might be after that.
But once a bill is adopted by the city council, it will go to the mayor for signature and then would become effective 30 days after that signature.
So that is the overview, and I'm happy to answer any questions anyone has.
That's great.
Thank you very much, Asha.
So I will say my office has been working on this for quite some time, so I don't have any questions, but I would like to know if colleagues have questions or anything they want additional information on.
I have a comment.
Yes, please.
So I think that my favorite part of this is in section one, where it says, let's see, the Office of Civil Rights, the work of the Office of Civil Rights will be, will inform setting metrics and measurable racial equity outcomes, setting equitable indicators, collecting and assessing demographic information and implementing change.
This is the crucial, to me this is so crucial because we have to know if what we're doing is having a real life benefit.
And so I'm really looking forward to seeing that work.
And I'm not gonna say is there a timeline or anything, but I'll be looking forward to that product.
And if you know when that could be done, that would be great.
But I think that is a crucial piece of this legislation and I am looking forward to supporting it.
Thank you.
Yeah, I don't know if there's a timeline.
Does the department or ASHA, is there specific information in this about in the bill about timelines for reporting back?
There aren't specific timelines in the bill, but I do know that that settings or racial equity outcomes and metrics is ongoing work that the department and RSI, the network in general, has been doing for many years, and it is.
If they don't, I don't think that they exist across the board for every single issue that the city looks at and associate, please feel free to correct me, but those they do exist.
I think in as racial equity indicators in some areas.
Excellent.
Thank you.
Any other comments or questions?
Okay.
Well, I think what we'll do is go ahead and move this technical amendment and get that onto the bill.
And then I do understand that there's a couple more things we need to review before final passage.
So if there's no objection, I will move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120525. Is there a second?
Second.
Thank you.
It's moved and seconded.
There is the one proposed technical amendment, so I'm going to move that Council Bill 120525 as presented on Amendment 1 be adopted.
Is there a second for that?
Second.
Thank you.
It's been moved and seconded to adopt Amendment 1. Are there any comments on the amendment?
Not seeing any.
Will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of amendment one.
Councilmember Lewis.
Yes.
Councilmember Nelson.
Aye.
Councilmember Strauss.
Yes.
Vice Chair Sawant.
Yes.
Chair Morales.
Yes.
Five in favor, none opposed.
The motion carries and amendment one is adopted.
So we do have the amended bill before the committee, but as Asha mentioned, we do have a couple more things that we realize we need to review.
So I'm going to hold the bill at this point.
We will bring it back at the March 24th meeting for a vote at that time and look forward to getting this going.
I know everybody's been working really hard on it and really wanna thank the department and thank central staff, Asha, who's been a real champion on helping us get through this.
So thank you all very much.
We will see you next meeting.
So if there are no other comments or questions, from colleagues.
Thank you very much.
Okay, then this concludes the March 10th, 2023 meeting of the Neighborhoods, Education, Civil Rights and Culture Committee.
Our next scheduled meeting is March 24th.
Thank you everybody for attending.
It is 1025 and we're adjourned.
Thank you.