Finance & Housing Committee 9/17/21

We are recording.

Thank you very much, son.

Good morning, everyone.

Welcome to this rainy Friday morning, September 17th, 2021. I'm Teresa Mosqueda, Chair of the Finance and Housing Committee.

The committee meeting will come to order.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Vice Chair Herbold.

Vice Chair Herbold.

Here.

Council President Gonzalez.

Here.

Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Madam Chair.

Could you please call alternate Council Member Morales.

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Madam Chair, that is present.

Madam Chair, that is five present, one excuse.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, colleagues, for joining us this morning.

Council Member Morales, good to see you.

Thank you for being here.

And if we're joined by any additional colleagues who are joining us today to hear updates on budget-related items, such as the revenue forecast, we'll make sure to announce them as they join.

Colleagues, we do have a full agenda today.

I do want to make an announcement at the beginning as it relates to our agenda.

You may recall on Monday that I mentioned that we would be considering Council Bill 120-1619.

I want to make sure that that Council Bill number is correct because it has one more digit than usual.

However, this relates to the SPD grant acceptance legislation.

We had been We are still going to give this additional time, but we are going to do that during the budget process.

I know this is an item that equally anticipating discussing so that we can get to the heart of some of the questions.

As you may recall, on Monday I talked about how if you had any questions related to the grant ordinance, we would be discussing those.

We will still do that.

I want to thank Greg Doss from central staff who had sent out a request for questions.

There were a lot, so I think it would be, it was an unknown if there was enough opportunity for time today to get through those questions and vote out the grant acceptance ordinance.

We will include the grant acceptance ordinance for 2021 in our budget deliberations.

We'll have the chance to have Greg Doss and other members of central staff there.

So if you have sent questions, and I know many of you have, those questions are now being processed and we will have the chance to have a full presentation by central staff and we'll have the opportunity, of course, to work with the department personnel as well to report out on any questions.

So I want to apologize for that.

As a reminder, this was 2021 grant acceptance dollars, many of which are being reimbursed for what work that SPD already does.

and typically this is included in the quarter four grant acceptance ordinance annually.

This year we're not doing a typical quarter four and because of that the executive had asked for council to consider these SPD items separately from the city-wide grants ordinance that we just voted out in August.

Since today is our last Finance and Housing Committee meeting, we will be taking up this item, the SPD Grant Acceptance Ordinance, again, during the Special Budget Committee, along with the rest of the year's Grant Acceptance Ordinances and other budget-related legislation.

I know that council members had a number of questions, as I mentioned.

Those are going to be queued up, and we will get a chance to have those answered with ample time during the budget process.

Before I move on to other items on today's agenda, Council President, please go ahead.

question, mostly just related to process that you highlighted for the grant acceptance ordinance.

If it's going to the Select Budget Committee process, are you anticipating that we are going to vote on that grant acceptance ordinance at the end of our budget process, or are you expecting and anticipating that the Select Budget Committee will consider that ordinance early on in our process and then vote it out of committee and send it to full council.

I'm just trying to get a sense of the timing and whether you have heard from CBO or the department any input related to the timing of when we do the grant acceptance ordinance.

Thank you very much, Council President.

And again, thanks for your grace.

I know we do need to work with your office to re-refer the legislation as well.

I believe in talking to members of central staff that we would be taking it up with everything during budget.

I will have to confirm with them if that means at the end of processing the 2022 budget, or if that is simultaneous, and if you have preference, we'd be happy to work with you as well.

I don't think I have a...

preference developed now, but I would like to have conversations about the impacts of waiting until the end of our budget process to accept and consider the grant ordinance, right?

Because there's a bunch of budget-related legislation that we usually vote on at the very, very, very end, which puts us into mid to end of November.

And I just want to make sure that I have an understanding of whether there's any sort of operational impacts as a result of waiting until the end of November, particularly since I think at our last finance and housing committee meeting, we talked about sort of understanding that we would consider it sooner than then.

You know, I think I just want to get a solid understanding of what the operational impacts are, if any, as a result of waiting to consider the grant acceptance ordinance together with the 2022. Budget related legislation, and whether there is.

An opportunity to perhaps consider the grants acceptance ordinance.

Sort of, you know, in advance of that sometime in October, perhaps to just get it off off the off the plate, but I will I really having conversations with you about that.

I appreciate that and part of the goal for having it on today's agenda originally was exactly to deal with the grant acceptance for 2021 prior to having to take something up in a typical quarter for college.

You are all well aware of our effort to try to we are not in a position that we are every year, especially last year where we passed a robust budget for the upcoming calendar year and have to process the quarter 4. I appreciate that suggestion and we will follow up with you.

we are going to go through this process before we deliberate on the 2022 budget.

I know this was an area of interest to you and I apologize as well.

I know you had a number of areas you were interested in diving in.

Please go ahead.

There are some grants that, although this is a grant acceptance, there are some grants that are prospective.

The grants have not yet been received.

And to the extent that the council is interested in influencing I think it's important to understand that if we don't have those prospective grants and whether or not they're pursued, we'll be losing that opportunity if we, the longer, we could be losing that opportunity for some of those the longer we wait.

So just want to flag that it was my understanding that the council felt very, very strongly last year that we didn't want to just be to make a determination of the items in the grant acceptance, which ones had already, the work had already been committed to, and which ones, there's still that question.

And I just think that I think there is a likelihood that the longer that we wait for that second bunch, we will have less influence over those areas if, in fact, those are areas that we want influence over.

I agree.

I agree.

Thank you very much.

And both what you have said, Vice Chair, and what the Council President have said have underscored the urgency of having this conversation prior to budget.

Again, that was the hope and expectation for today.

And I am going to ask colleagues for for us to be able to get back to you if there's a chance for us to either take this up very early in the budget deliberations, which again begin in a week and a half here.

we have a chance to work with you, Council President, on a timeline that makes sense given the upcoming budget with full counsel, we'd be happy to do so.

But both of you have underscored the same goal that I have, to get this out as quickly as possible.

And not out, excuse me, let me rephrase that.

Deliberated and fully understood so that we can have a conversation about the allocation of these grant dollars and acceptance of the the timing of when to take this up.

I'm seeing a thumbs up from Items on our agenda today do include a presentation from the office of labor standards on the race and social justice initiative.

We will take on a possible vote discussion and conversation continuing from our meeting last week.

On the strategic investment fund proviso lift, again, this is the Mercer mega sale receipts that are allocating $30 million to community investments for various capital projects.

We have a presentation on the Fort Lawton release agreement and a briefing on the revenue forecast, as we've asked the CBO to come back and provide us with any updates prior to receiving the mayor's proposed budget.

I do see a hand.

I think it is a leftover hand, so I'll just ask verbally if there is no objection.

Today's agenda is adopted.

Hearing no objection.

We have about 20 people signed up for public comment.

We are going to ask the public commenters to try to scale their remarks to one minute.

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The public comment link is still live.

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The public comment period is now open and we'll begin with the first three speakers on the list.

Speakers please remember you will hear a voice that says you have been unmuted that is your indication to hit star six on your line to unmute your own phone.

Both actions need to happen.

You need to hear you've been unmuted and then you hit star six.

Also double check that your own cell phone is not on mute as that has happened before.

We want to make sure we can hear you.

So we're going to go ahead and start with the first three speakers being Danielle Alvarado, Justin Smith, and Carmen Figueroa.

Good morning, Danielle.

I'm going to wait just a minute.

If we can get Danielle in the queue here.

The next person on my list is Justin Smith.

That is an old list you're looking at.

We have no public commenters.

All right.

Well, in that case, I want to thank Danielle and Justin for speaking before.

And colleagues, I do not have anybody on the list, apparently, to sign up for public comment.

If you do want to email us about anything on today's agenda, please go ahead and email us at councilatseattle.gov.

That closes public comment for today.

If we could please move on to items on today's agenda.

Madam Clerk, could you please read item one into the record?

Item number one, Office of Labor Standards, OASIS, and True Justice Initiative Report for opening discussion.

I want to welcome Director Steve Marchese from the Office of Labor Standards.

It's great to see you again.

Thank you, Director.

We also have Janae John, Jasmine Marwaha, Katie Jo, Katie Jo Kreppender, Megan Jackson, Karmi Estandian, and Ahmed Abdi from the Office of Labor Standards.

Please go ahead and let me know if you have any corrections to how I pronounce your name.

I apologize in advance, and it is wonderful to see all of you.

I know you've been waiting for a while to present this race and social justice report to our committee, so I want to thank you for all of your work.

We do typically receive the Office of Labor Standards and all of our department's RSGI updates and want to make a chance that we're able to hear those.

But with 2020 being what it was, we were unable to have the update in the 2020 timeframe.

So with that, I want to make sure folks know we're looking back in time to some of the great work that has been completed by the Office of Labor Standards.

And we also know that much of this has changed in the pandemic, and we would want to make sure to continue to be there for your team and the future work that you're doing seek to respond to the compounding crises that workers and small business owners across the city are facing in the wake of COVID.

So thanks for the work that you do.

Hopefully this will help give us a good baseline of where we can continue to work on and improve upon services as we seek to respond to creating a more equitable Seattle in the wake of COVID.

Welcome, Director Marchesi.

Thank you so much Council Member Mosqueda and thank you so much members of the Finance and Housing Committee for giving us the opportunity to speak with you again.

I'm Steve Marchese, I'm the Director of the Office of Labor Standards.

This is the first time that I've been here with You to talk about the racist social justice initiative since I've started here at the office in February and so much of what we're going to talk about is actually efforts that happened prior to my arrival, but I'm really excited to have this opportunity to share them with you.

I brought a team that I think will give you an informative and helpful production and productive.

overview of the work that we're doing and really ground the discussion that we've had, both as of the office and in terms of our work in the city around how race and social justice have been integral in the work that we're doing.

If I can get the next slide, that would be great.

And the presentation.

Terrific.

So, who's back?

One more.

Okay, perfect.

So just a brief overview of what we're going to be doing today.

This is our race and social justice presentation to you.

We're going to talk a little bit about our office, the background, our mission, our COVID-19 responses that really frames a lot of what we've been up to.

over the last 18 months, some discussions from our change team about efforts that they've been involved with, specifically also highlighting a couple of our RETs that we've worked on on budget transparency and COF and enforcement, and then the racial equity toolkits that we are working on right now for 21 to forecast a little bit about the initiatives that we're gonna be dealing with in the future.

Next slide.

This is just to give you a little bit of a grounding of what we're about.

You know that we don't have an Office of Labor Standards unless we are grounded as a city and race and social justice.

This is so integral and important to our work, the people that we work on behalf of, the communities that we touch, and the reasons why we're here.

We focus on community We focus on the business community, particularly the small business community and our BIPOC-domed businesses that are trying to figure out how to do right by their workers and also keep the balance sheet going.

And we infuse race and social justice in all that we do.

And just briefly, our mission is to advance labor standards through thoughtful community and business engagement, strategic enforcement, and innovative policy development with a commitment to race and social justice.

I'm excited for you to hear what our office has been up to and to highlight the work of our staff.

And I'm going to turn this over to Janae Jan. who will talk a little bit about COVID-19.

And as if you remember, Janae helped lead our office as interim director during much of the early COVID-19 response.

So Janae, if you could step in and we'll get going.

Thank you, Steve.

Appreciate it.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Janae Jan.

I'm the current policy manager for OLS.

I use she, her pronouns.

As been noted before, the pandemic has had and continues to have significant impact and unique impact on our workplaces.

It's highlighted pre-existing racial and social inequities in working conditions and benefits.

And these issues are at the heart of OLS's mission.

Our labor standards are critical supports to ensure the economic dignity of low-wage workers, including and especially workers who are black, indigenous, people of color, immigrants and refugees, women of the LGBTQ community, and those who live at the intersections of those identities.

These workers are often overrepresented in low-wage positions and subjects who are at higher risk for labor standards violations.

So during the pandemic, we took very seriously our responsibility to center race equity in our work.

and there were a number of ways that racial justice showed up in our response.

So it showed up in the implementation of new laws to protect essential workers like gig workers, implementation of existing laws like PSST and amendments to that law to expand use to ensure that workers could gain access to that benefit during the pandemic.

We had also showed up in how we shared information out with community to both workers and small businesses.

We used simplified messaging, multiple languages, and different methods that were designed to reach as many workers as possible.

It showed up in our increased support for our contract partners, which are primarily led, operated by, or served by POC communities.

So we wanted to make sure that they could continue their support of workers and small business while adjusting to the pandemic conditions.

It also showed up in our enforcement efforts to adjust priorities to ensure quick resolution of pandemic-related labor standards, especially like those promulgated for gig workers and this year grocery employees.

And those had deep impacts on BIPOC workers.

It also showed up in our partnerships with other departments to ensure information and resources reach the communities most in need, supporting the city's efforts to capture low-wage, displaced BIPOC and immigrant and refugee workers and small businesses that ordinarily or would not easily gain access to resources like food vouchers, face coverings, small business stabilization and information about unemployment, et cetera.

So OLS will continue to invest our efforts in undoing and preventing racial inequity as we continue to respond to the pandemic and as we continue our work.

And with that, I'd like to hand it over to Jasmine Marwaha, who is one of our policy analysts and a co-lead for the change team to talk about change team's efforts.

Yes, thank you.

Yeah, as Janay said, my name is Jasmine Marwaha.

I'm a policy analyst with OLS and co-lead of the change team at OLS.

The change team's mission is to eradicate institutionalized implicit and explicit racism within the Office of Labor Standards.

And this includes internal practices and policies, as well as our external facing work in policy outreach and enforcement.

In 2019, we focused on getting staff trained up, including arranging for all OLS staff to participate in the People's Institute Northwest anti-racism training.

We also advocated for better advancement opportunities for our admin and BIPOC staff in the department.

And we led the implementation of OLS's racial equity toolkits, many of which you'll hear about later in the presentation.

For 2020, our main highlight is we're still here.

You know, we spent some time reimagining Change Team's role given our lack of capacity and also given the fact that many of our department staff were former Change Team members or steeped in RGI work in other ways, you know, through the COVID response mostly or through ongoing work that they were doing on racial equity toolkits.

So that we really wanted to celebrate.

But one of Change Team's main efforts in 2020 was actually participating in the citywide calls for budget transparency among staff as a step towards more community transparency and awareness and ownership of the city budget in the Movement for Black Lives protest last year.

You know, we really, we really, like, wanted to amplify that call for transparency, because how can we expect community to understand our city's budget if our own city staff, particularly those who are closest with community, don't understand how our budget is created or how we can request budget changes in the department?

So I'm going to turn it over back to Janae to talk about how that request for more budget transparency at the staff level was received and followed up on.

Thanks, Jasmine.

So this is actually one of the efforts that I'm really proud to highlight.

As Jasmine mentioned, we undertook a number of efforts to increase transparency and participation in our budgeting process in response to Change Team's call and in recognizing the importance of those principles in budgeting processes.

So our leadership examined how we could increase transparency of information, not only about our own budget process, but also the citywide budget process more broadly.

and then also creating mechanisms that staff could participate more meaningfully in the budgeting process.

So our management team gathered a bunch of information from other departments, not all, but some that we were able to reach out to, gathered their lessons learned and best practices, had some conversations, and identified key ways that we could increase that information flow and also participation in the budget.

So we created a number of primers to share information about the budget process and how staff could put together proposals to elevate needs for our budgeting process and then roll that out to the staff with the goal of trying these processes on during the 2021 year and then coming back together with the commitment to coming back together to kind of evaluate how that all worked and how to improve that.

So we're really excited to see how this year pans out and come back next year and reevaluate.

With that, it is my pleasure to hand it over to Katie Jo Koeppinger, our enforcement manager, to talk a little bit about another effort in the office related to our community outreach and education fund partners and our enforcement team.

Thanks, Janae.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Katie Jo Koeppinger, and I'm the current enforcement manager at OLS.

I use she, her pronouns.

The Community Outreach and Education Fund, also called the COEF, started in 2015, and the current 2020-2021 COEF funding is for $3 million, which funds 15 organizations over 24 months.

COEF partnerships with OLS's enforcement are key for effective enforcement because our COEF partners engage with low-income BIPOC workers who are experiencing labor violations.

And these are often workers who most likely will not contact OLS on their own.

Since 2015, COEF partners have been raising to us key challenges that they've noticed when referring workers to OLS.

You'll see those challenges on the left column of the chart there on the slide.

The 2020 successes, which are in the right-hand column, are a culmination of two years of enforcement's collaboration with COAF partners to address these challenges.

These accomplishments include creation of a community intake referral form, which is a tool for COAF partners to use when making referrals to our office that is less burdensome for workers, creating a more accessible investigations process handout, which makes our investigation process more accessible for workers to understand, and deepening relationships with OLS investigators through consistent one-on-one quarterly trainings that allow for customized content and questions.

A key strategy for this success was our COEF engagement specialist, Claudia Perez, working with enforcement leadership on these solutions and getting feedback from COEF partners and buy-in from them throughout the process.

One last thing I'll mention is that COVID-19 increased barriers for workers to report labor standards violations.

And most low-wage workers had fears of losing their jobs if they reported violations.

One way to reduce this barrier would be to have worker relief funds that workers could immediately access if they were fired from their job during an investigation.

Next slide, please.

Before we move on to discuss racial equity toolkits, I'd like to mention the art that you see here on this slide.

This block print was created by artist and longtime OLS senior investigator, Sarah Lair, who passed away in an accident last August.

Sarah was deeply committed to racial equity work, and it was very important to her.

She made significant contributions to our racial equity work at OLS.

She was a rare gem, and we feel her loss every day.

I'll now pass this on to my colleague, Megan Jackson, who will begin the discussion of OLS's RETs, starting with the Accessibility Guide Toolkit.

Thank you, Katie Jo.

That's a great picture.

Good morning, council members and all.

I'm Megan Jackson, Executive Assistant and Out-of-Class Engagement Specialist at OLS, and I use she, her pronouns.

OLS ordinances touch a large amount of people conducting business and working in Seattle so it's important that our outward facing materials are understandable and accessible to all.

In 2019 OLS teams collaborated to create a guide called Creating Easy to Understand Materials.

This guide includes tools and principles to address cultural relevance and competence plain language language access visual learning and disability access.

Our RET engaged staff via anonymous surveys and one-on-one interviews to provide feedback on the sufficiency of this guide, as well as any racialized impacts that might be experienced in using it.

At OLS, we're very proud to have a diverse staff of different lived experiences and intersectional identities, so we felt it most appropriate to start the conversation in-house.

Feedback received didn't reveal any racialized impacts, but our stakeholder engagement did inform these recommendations.

Next slide please Jene.

Thank you.

So first to create a training and implementation plan.

All staff have received training in the guide's use and introduction to the guide is now a formal part of our onboarding process.

Secondly to track community feedback.

A linked spreadsheet is now located within the guide to track all community feedback on documents for future reference and learning.

And finally to share the guide with other departments.

So far, the guide has been shared with the COS Language Access Liaison specifically to promote use of plain language and English materials for quality translations, but we hope that all information will be beneficial as it's shared out.

Thank you very much, and I'll hand it over to Parmiz Dandian to present the demographic data RET.

Thank you, Megan.

Good morning, City Council.

My name is Carmen Stangen.

I am the Senior Data Specialist for OLS.

I go by she, her pronoun.

I'm here to talk to you about the demographic collection.

This group was revived at the end of 2020, which consisted of members from the Policy Enforcement Outreach Team.

This survey is primarily designed for the workers that directly contact our office, workers that community partners talk to, and workers who have received monetary settlement or are at case closure.

Our goal is to better assess and identify gaps in our efforts to improve the community we serve through data collection and analysis.

Issues were identified where the survey was too lengthy, challenges with prejudice and discomfort within different community about answering questions of culturally and politically sensitive in nature.

And in January 2021, we launched a new universal demographic survey.

Next slide.

Can I have you pause just very briefly if that's okay to take questions throughout?

Council Member Morales?

Thank you.

I was just curious about, Megan, you mentioned that part of the outreach and part of the kind of things you're considering is how to make sure that folks with disabilities are also able to access the information and I'm just trying to get a sense of the obligations, for example, for business and for any employer, really, as it relates to accessibility for people who are blind.

So do we have systems in place for providing things in Braille, or can you just, I don't want to get us too far off track, but I know that that is a concern too, is how folks, who have vision impairments are able to engage in the city processes and in small business to make sure that their employer's obligations for people with vision impairments are met.

Thank you very much for that question.

So our guide deals with our external materials from within OLS.

I can't speak specifically to at the employer level what those obligations are in terms of disability access but I am happy to get back to you on that.

Thanks very much.

Thank you so much.

You can go ahead.

For recommendations, we've improved response rate.

Our CF partners conduct surveys one-on-one with workers.

The enforcement team implemented a new intake process to include a demographic survey.

And the second recommendation, reducing respondent burden.

We reduced the questions from 16 to 11, and the survey now takes less than three minutes to complete and no required questions.

We improved the design survey.

We've already organized the order of questions.

We've created a catchy tagline and email subject line when we send out the survey.

Accessibility, our CF partners conduct surveys in other languages, including Spanish and Chinese.

We plan on upgrading our survey monthly subscription to premium to include language translation option.

The last recommendation is using external resources.

For our analysis, we'll be using external data sets for cross-validation and filling information gaps, resources such as Seattle.gov data portal and National Equity Atlas data sets.

We are also working with a study dispatch team to help us improve our data collection and data analysis efforts.

Thank you.

I will now turn it over to Katie Jo for CFRP toolkit overview.

Thanks, Carmi.

In 2019, we wanted to ensure that the Community Outreach and Education Fund requests for proposal guidelines and the accompanying process were easy to understand and accessible for community organizations, in particular those led by, staffed by, or serving BIPOC community members.

Our RET team for this toolkit consisted of OLS outreach staff, investigators, and our finance and operations manager.

Our stakeholder process included one-on-one interviews with community organizations that had previously applied to the RFP and organizations that had not previously applied but served low-wage BIPOC workers.

One community organization that hadn't worked with us before commented that it was refreshing for a government funder to engage community organizations.

on ways to make the application process better and wished that more funders would do this process.

Three key issues were repetitive and convoluted RFP language, the application process favored seasoned grant writing skills, and there was inequitable opportunity for applicants with stronger oral communication and in-language skills.

Next slide, please.

So our three recommendations were to declutter and simplify the RFP language.

We took inspiration from Marie Kondo to spark joy and clarity as we eliminated redundancies, illegal jargon, and complex sentences.

The second recommendation was to create an accessible application process by replacing the broad 20-page narrative with a question and answer application template.

the written application was more accessible to all levels of grant writing skills.

And accommodating oral communication and in-language skills, applicants had the option to request an oral presentation to answer application questions instead of submitting a written form.

Applicants could also request an interpreter if needed.

And we discovered that even though there was a process for applicants to answer application questions through an oral presentation, none of the applicants took this option because they felt like it was safer to apply with a written application.

This showed us how deeply internalized written applications are in funding culture.

Organizations didn't feel like they could trust that if they chose an oral application, their application would be as strong as other written applications.

For there to be a shift on written application emphasis, the culture of RFPs would need to change in the city's granting process.

Thank you, and I will pass this on to my colleague, Ahmed Abdi.

to discuss the BOEF RFP toolkit.

Good morning, council members and everyone.

My name is Ahmed Abdi.

I'm an engagement specialist at the Office of Labor Standards.

I currently oversee the Business Outreach and Education Fund, which is known as BOEF, which is two-year funding cycle.

The BOEF is designed to increase compliance through Seattle's labor standard by building partnership with trusted community organization that engage small business owned by low-income and historically disenfranchised communities.

In 2020, the BOEF team decided to review the 2017 to 2020 BOEF request for proposal RFP to evaluate whether the process was creating barriers for paper community organizations to succeed in the application.

This, as you heard from COEF, we were all looking at the same way to improve how the application was designed previously, both for COEF and BOEF.

So the team used the Racial Equity Toolkit, which is known RET process to equitably streamline the process of the process of RFP, BOEF RFP process by narrowing the scope, which included and simplifying the scope of work outcome with an RSGI lens, meaning that what work we want vendors to perform, And then number two, qualitative and quantitative performance measure.

Number three, examining the use of professional service providers that can promote voluntary compliance and consider multiple RFP with different scope.

An example of contracting only for technical assistance or a contract for only for door-to-door outreach.

The BOF team engaged up to 12 existing and former BOF partners, including ethnic chambers, through discussion and written survey to identify issues regarding the RFP process.

There were two main issues that the BOF team identified.

Number one, The BIPOC community organizations had fewer resources to comply with the RFP application, including staffing, language barriers, and less knowledge of grant 310 process, as you already had.

The BOEF RFP was too technical, and it was imperative to simplify the RFP application to make the process more equitable to everybody.

And after engaging the stakeholders and the The recommendation we have received were, number one, simplifying the application scope and the process.

Two, include professional services providers such as accountant, lawyers, and ATC.

Three, consider multiple RFP with different scopes.

After having had this recommendation from the stakeholders, we have incorporated Those feedback simplified the RFP, both the application and the process.

And as you heard from the COEF report too, we have created other options where the applicants can access the application, including translation as well.

and we are also considering the other feedbacks that we have gotten from the stakeholders in the coming future.

Thank you for your time and back to Steve.

Thanks so much.

I want to give you a little bit of a preview of some of the things that we are thinking about and certainly working on for 2021. This came through our own process internally of looking at the work that we are doing and really trying to focus our efforts in places where our RSGI work could really make a difference.

Some of it's focused internally, some of it is focused on things that we'll be doing in the community.

So this is just a preview for you for what we are going to probably be able to report to you next year, but so that you are aware.

We've had an internal group to start with to build our own capacity around RSJI that we're discussing issues around race and social justice.

We've started with the text of, so you want to talk about race and really use that as an opportunity for internal staff conversation and awareness.

We've worked with the, with OCR to do specific staff trainings and that strengthen our capacity to really incorporate these principles in our work, both internally and externally.

We are working, continuing the work that we're doing on the data demographic, RET, that you heard about from CARME, to really use that information in ways that also help target our enforcement efforts and really help us learn a bit more about who we're impacting and thinking about ways that we can use that to target our outreach efforts as well.

There was a lot of interest in thinking about how our work connects with our BIPOC communities, particularly immigrant communities, and the ways that we want to think about working with immigrant rights organizations and strengthening those connections so that we can work more closely, particularly when we look at some of the communities that are affected specifically by some of our ordinances like the domestic workers ordinances, hotel workers, others, where we have large groups of immigrant workers.

Immigrant workers are facing a lot of different pressures trying to figure out how we can increase our ways of connecting with organizations.

that work on immigrant rights so that when there are issues that come up we can do things like help them get U visas and continue to remain in this country and change status if that's necessary based upon what the worker wants to do.

So this group is really looking at a spectrum of issues.

And then we also identified some issues related to how we distribute settlement checks.

Do we do them in ways, particularly now with COVID and having limited time to access the office, how do we make sure that workers get the money that they are entitled to, that they get it in ways that they can use?

Obviously, workers don't always have bank accounts easily accessible or able to come to the office.

How do we then change our process?

to make that more equitable and center the experience of workers who are receiving checks as the basis for our discussion.

So this is an RET that we're working on right now, and I look forward to learning more, thinking about how we can switch up or change our processes and use that to be more responsive to the community.

So let's move to the next slide.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to spend some time with you, highlight some of this work.

We are happy to answer any questions that you have and we look forward to continuing this conversation with council members and being back in front of you in 2021, 2022 to talk about what we've done in 2021.

Well, thank you very much and really, really appreciate the work you do.

We're proud of the Office of Labor Standards here in Seattle, proud of its history and its creation, proud that it continues to be looked at as a national model.

And I think that this work is another example of why we're proud of OLS for being a leading model, not just across the nation for labor standards, but within departments for this RSJ work.

So I'm really excited to see this work and I just want to also note my appreciation for your entire team, including Sarah Lair, who we know is a big champion of workplace standards and making sure small businesses have the information they need and is deeply missed.

And we know that her work continues to live on in the work that you do here and glad to see her artwork memorialized in your RSGI report as well.

So thanks for the presentation.

I'll hold my comments and questions until after our colleagues.

Vice Chair Herbold, please go ahead.

Thanks.

I just have one pretty small question.

The 2015 to 2019 challenges column on the slide that related to the enforcement partnership there's a reference to the language on the website being difficult to understand and including a lot of legal language.

And the solution, which is great, is identified as a graphic handout.

And I think having physical materials to give to people is great, but it's not clear that the website was also updated.

Maybe it was updated with a PDF of the handout.

I'm not sure, but I just want to check to see that the website was also updated.

I can answer that.

My recollection is yes, it was.

We replaced that really lengthy PDF with a very shorter, more user-friendly one, and then removed a lot of the duplicative language from that website page as well.

Great.

Thank you.

any additional questions.

I'm not seeing another new hand.

I still see another hand there.

So I want to bring us back to 2019. I know, Director Marchesi, you were not there yet.

You had the privilege and pleasure, I'm sure, of starting a new job in the midst of a pandemic.

So pre-pandemic, back when we had our previous council, there was a lot of questions that then-council president at the time, Harold, had asked about the ways in which businesses were potentially being either left out or inappropriately investigated.

And it was an issue that kept coming up in the committee meeting.

But I think that the report here clearly rebukes those comments and concerns.

It seems like what we're seeing here is a lot of analysis of how small businesses and the investigation work that is really rooted in RSGI principles and is rooted in equity.

And I just wanted to lift that up in case anybody was still remembering some of those questions that came up in 2019, because I think that this is a good, well-researched response to those concerns.

And we always want to raise the concerns when we hear them, but I want to make sure that when we have the answers to those concerns that they also get the airtime needed.

I wanted to lift that up, and if you have comments, you're welcome to chime in on them, specific to the outreach and engagement and investigation aspect with small businesses.

But I thought that was an important element to remind us of why that information is so important.

Okay, I'm seeing some nods.

Thank you very much for that observation, Council Member Mosqueda.

As I've kind of learned about this office, as I've made my rounds through the community, obviously some in person, some virtually, to talk to some of our partners that we work with both on the BOEF and COEF side, I think we understand what COVID has been for our business, small business community.

We understand the impact.

that it's had.

And we understand that we want to assist businesses to do the things that they know they want to do and they should be doing to help their workers, that helping their workers is also good for business.

And in many of our communities, those connections between business owners and workers are very close.

And so we are not talking about people who are coming from opposite ends of the universe, particularly as it relates to many of our small businesses.

So we think that's smart for economic recovery.

We think that's smart for community well-being.

And the work that we're doing with our BOF partners and that they're doing in the community, number one, to remember they're grounded in the community.

We work with organizations that have direct relationships with small businesses who are coming to them for a variety of different types of advice, and the kind of advice they get from our partners and the information that they're passing as part of a portfolio of information that they get.

And that helps them run their business, but it also part of helping run their business is helping them be in compliance with our ordinances and our standards.

And I think, you know, the investigations that we're doing, I'm very pleased at some of the recent coverage that we've had for some of the work that we've done.

Obviously, a lot of that tends to relate to some of the bigger initiatives we've had with larger businesses, some of the work that we've done with gig workers and gig worker protection.

Obviously, when you look at who those workers are, as you all know, that's overwhelmingly BIPOC workers who are in the gig worker industry, in the TNC industry, where we're talking about Uber and Lyft drivers.

So we're happy to see those impacts from the investigations.

But we also, our enforcement team does look at who comes in, and they really look at opportunities to make sure that the businesses that they're contacted, that they're being contacted about, that they're investigating them, that they're doing them in ways that they can understand and that the business understands what's going on.

We have a large proportion of our enforcement activities that end up in settlements.

That's a good thing because that means the business understands the need and the workers get compensation quickly and we do that as often as we can when we can.

So I'm happy to continue this conversation and I'm glad for this opportunity and thank you, Council Member Mosqueda for this recognition, we appreciate it.

Wonderful answer.

Thank you.

I want to bottle that up and take it with me as we talk about the importance of labor standards and education and coordination, not just with the worker side, but the employer side.

So I really appreciate that.

And also, congratulations on not just the settlements that you've received, which have been very meaningful, I know, to workers and to righting some wrongs so that our employers can get on the right track.

But with the cases that you've won, I think it sends a really important message out to the broader public as well.

When we were able to announce the Lyft and Uber drivers being able to receive back pay for wages that they should have earned for sick leave, that also sends a message to other employers, oh, I need to pay attention.

I really need to correct my books.

I need to make sure everything's above board.

And so we know that it had ripple effects and that it's It's much larger than the millions that even just those Lyft and Uber drivers received, which was very significant.

But it helps to correct behavior across industries.

And I am thankful for your work, both on helping to educate folks, helping to identify settlements, and then helping to identify ways in which we push the information out so more people know about the importance of staying in compliance.

And as you said, that's good for workers and it makes sure that there's more money in the pocketbooks of families so that they can spend it here in our local economy.

I'm not seeing any additional hands.

It's been a long 18 months, two years, again, during this pandemic.

And we know you all have been on the front lines with helping those who've been disproportionately impacted by COVID.

So thanks for all the work that you do in this really tough time.

And thanks for the upcoming work that we know we'll do in the budget to help make significant investments and make sure our community is able to be resilient and more equitable in the future.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

See you back here soon.

Thanks to your entire team.

Please pass on our appreciation.

We will thank you so much again.

Wonderful, let's move on to item number two.

Madam Clerk, if you could read into the record.

agenda item number two, council bill 120178, an ordinance amending ordinance 126237, which adopted the 2021 budget changing appropriations to various departments and budget control levels and from various funds in the budget for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Well, thank you, and we are happy to have back with us Uba, Garaldite, excuse me, Uba, I'm mispronouncing your last name.

And you can jump in and correct me anytime.

So we have Julia Prosciutto and Uba Garderi.

Yes.

Thank you.

You're fantastic.

Sorry.

And then Rico Kirindongo, the interim director, all of which are with the Office of Planning and Community Development and are back here with us again to talk about this item for possible vote today.

We also have with us our esteemed council central staff, Tracy We're going to talk a little bit about the strategic investment fund.

This is an item we discussed last week.

We discussed the strategic investment fund that follows through on the long process and years of advocacy by community organizations who work to ensure that the city made good on the promise that during the sale of the large piece of public property known as the Mercer disproportionately affected by displacement and discrimination.

As a reminder, this fund was initially established in 2019 when, in addition to allocating a portion of the Mercer sales to the historic investments in housing, the city council passed a proviso that $30 million needed to go to creating community-driven strategic acquisition.

This made sure that we included an advisory board to work with the department to make recommendations on how we spend the money, and make sure that it was going towards equitable development projects in communities experiencing high rates of displacement and access to low opportunity.

Given that background, it's really exciting to see this legislation in front of us.

We do have an amendment to consider as well, but the legislation would lift that proviso and move forward so we can get the funding out the door to community-driven projects that are working on anti-displacement, that are working on acquiring properties to support things like housing, childcare, small businesses, and community space.

I'll turn it over to our guests here today.

And first, welcome, Director Kidding-Dongo.

I see you off mute, so I will just double check real quickly with central staff.

Did you have any opening comments that you had, central staff?

No, you covered it all, council member.

OK, thank you.

Good morning, director.

Good morning, Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you for the introduction and for the audience today.

I'm really excited to be here.

I'm sorry that I was not able to be present last week.

Julia, do you want to go ahead and share the slide deck that we have for everyone today?

And thank you for all the council members, both for your service and for being here today to take a look at this obviously extremely important project opportunity to get $30 million into community to fund and support community-led projects.

which for OPCD and with our equitable development initiative team, like this is the work that gets us out of bed every morning.

Go ahead and go to the next slide.

Council Member Mosqueda, as you mentioned, the presentation today is in consideration of doing a proviso lift for that 30 million.

Julia, next slide.

I just want to make sure I'm sharing the slides and not the notes.

Am I sharing the notes?

We do not see notes, just the slides.

All right, perfect.

So again, As Council Member Mosqueda has already stated, this $30 million fund comes from the sale of the city-owned property at South Lake Union and allocated to the 2021 budget.

Next slide.

Outcomes for the Strategic Investment Fund, responding to immediate displacement pressures, create long-term impact by strengthening community relationships and growing community wealth in historically marginalized communities.

co-locate affordable housing with other community benefits, such as affordable commercial spaces, public open space, cultural space, and child care facilities, and fill gaps in the existing funding for community development.

All of these objectives informed criteria for the applications that we received and reviewed for strategic investment fund awards.

Next slide.

Uba, I think at this point, I'll turn the slide back over to you.

Thank you, Rico.

You have talked about the background and that we're here to deliver a very short presentation since we were here last week, and we are going to be doing an executive session next week.

So I'm going to hand it over to Julia since she's more versed in the projects and the next few things we're about to talk about.

Thanks, Uma.

Thanks, Rico, Julia, Pashuto, she, her pronouns.

Through a consensus process with our community advisory group representing BIPOC communities, leaders, equitable development experts, and funders, 13 recipients were recommended for award, and we were unable to share the details of the awardees publicly due to the sensitive nature of the real estate transactions.

But as Uwe said, you'll have an opportunity to review And colleagues will have an opportunity to review on September 20th and executive session.

The CAG was proud to represent fund organizations, representing a range of geographies and communities.

with public benefits such as affordable housing for families and seniors, childcare, cultural space, community space, small business incubation and preservation, open space and historic preservation.

And you can see we have strong geographic spread and we'll also be funding Black-led, Indigenous-led and mixed BIPOC-led organizations.

And then this is these are the details about the proviso lift legislation in front of you today.

As everybody has said, there's a proviso in the 2021 adopted budget, and this proviso moves the $30 million allocated from Finance General to OPCD and Office of Arts and Culture.

Between the bill last week and this week, we've substituted a new bill in that allocates about nearly $6 million to the Office of Arts and Culture.

Basically, it became clear that they were best suited to manage several of the contracts given the existing relationships they have with the awardees.

Once the proviso is lifted, OPCD and Arts will begin the contracting process, and we will not be announcing the award publicly until the transactions are finalized.

And that's all we have.

Thank you.

Well, thank you again.

I know this is a long anticipated process and so we are looking forward to.

being able to do our part today to move this forward so that we can then have the executive session and community can receive the funds.

I'm sure there's a few questions, but I do want to first say thanks.

Thanks to all of you within OPCD for your work.

I want to thank the Community Advisory Board for their thoughtful work with the department in identifying projects and the selection application and, excuse me, the selection process and the project application.

We know that there's a lot of projects as well that were requested with these funds and not every project that made the criteria is necessarily getting the funding today.

We want to know more about those projects that are out there and working with you and community partners and As we look at other opportunities for revenue to be available, such as Jump Start, it's my intention that we are able to identify some of those projects that have met criteria, but just don't simply have enough funding today to see what else we might be able to do in the upcoming budget.

So look forward to working with you all on that possible process.

A few quick notes.

We do have a substitute that is in front of us for today.

I would like to move that, and I just want to give you a heads up, and we can talk more about it with central staff here.

It would be an administrative change shifting the appropriations to provide $5.6 million of the $30 million funds to the Office of Arts and Culture, and the remaining amount would stay at OPCD.

The reason for the shift was that it was discovered by CBO after transmittal of the legislation that there were at least two contracts with the Office of Arts and Culture that have already established contracts with some of the grant awardees.

And it makes it easier for us to have more streamlined administration of the grants if we have those housed within the same department.

So it doesn't have an impact on the projects or the selected amounts or award.

It's simply an administrative change that would be in process to leverage the existing contracts.

Before we consider that amendment, though, I do want to just make sure we have a chance to take any questions or comments on the underlying bill.

I'm not seeing any.

I see some folks off mute, so ready to move forward here.

I move the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 120178. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you very much, Vice Chair.

It's been moved and seconded, the committee recommends passage, and we will now consider the substitute amendment.

The substitute is in front of us as version two.

So, excuse me, version two.

So I move to amend Council Bill 120178, substituting version two for version 1BE.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thanks so much.

It has been moved and seconded.

Is there any additional comments on the substitute?

I guess I will just ask one question and I'm glad that we have Council Member Morales here today.

often a part of our committee meetings as an alternate and also chair of arts and so it's a good opportunity for us to make sure that we're connecting the dots and ask the department as well.

It does seem like there is quite a bit of overlay with the priorities that you all were looking at and arts and culture.

Is there more that you might be able to tell us about why it's just the 5.6 or is there an opportunity at some point in the future to identify more of the potential grants once they become to see what synergy may exist with arts and culture.

And of course, Council Member Morales is chair of that committee.

Please feel free to chime in if you had questions along a similar vein.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda, for the question.

To your point, I think that with the Proviso lift, that One of the things that's on my, I mean, fingers crossed, one of the things that's on my list of to-dos for October is to convene a meeting between OPCD and ARTS to take a look at how we move into implementation phase, right?

So with all the organizations that will be awarded funds and will be entering into contracts with, one of the things that those organizations need is that the community needs to be best supported in the work um so uh you know as early identifications we have two awardees that we that we know already have contractual relationships with arts that are in place today so we want to make sure to just make sure those dollars get allocated to to arts right now i think that there are others that we want to take a look at and have a have a in extending conversation with arts and with our own staff to figure out what the best contractual relationship, who should be in the lead, who are the partners that support the organizations that are getting funding.

And that's a process I want to jump into as soon as we have a proviso lift and can take that next step forward.

I hope that answers the question.

And Council Member Morales, please go ahead.

somewhere else.

Thank you.

Yeah, I think this it is important to understand some of the context here.

You know, the the Arts Department, OED, EDI division here have been meeting for quite some time for several years to really think about the intersection of these three departments as it relates to our artist sector, our creative industries, and how to support and advance the sector, because we know that the arts industry, the creative economy, contributes to about 20% of Seattle's GDP, which is, I think, four times as much as in the country.

So it's a really important sector, and I think you know, the fact that there is a relationship, there's a connection to community development, to economic development, to land use, is a result of that years of collaboration that's been happening with community, with our arts artists and arts industry folks.

You know, this year we created the, or maybe it was last year, created the Cultural Space Agency PDA.

That is one piece, really critical piece of the work that these three departments have been doing together in partnership with community.

But it's just one piece.

There is a lot of work that still has to happen that community has been deeply involved in.

And these kinds of development opportunities are all part of that work and really need to be integrated well.

And so I'm excited to see that apparently there is at least some of that funding that is part of the arts conversation that will be moving forward.

But the work is really just beginning and the relationship and the connection to community needs to remain very strong so that all of the work and time that they have put into this in the last few years is honored and that we actually get to see you know, it comes to fruition and really serves the community in that way.

So I'm eager to get moving on these pieces that are beginning.

Thank you.

Well said, thank you very much.

So we'll look forward to additional conversations to come in October and beyond about how that alignment with the arts department.

And I would also call out the arts commission in their role, their important role here, how they will interact with the grants going forward and the grantees.

Okay, I want to thank Councilmember Morales, not only for being here, but for those comments.

I'm really happy that we are able to integrate that line of questioning as it relates to these contracts.

And I also want to welcome Councilmember Lewis, who has joined us.

Thanks so much for being here, Councilmember Lewis.

So as we call roll, you'll still hear the five committee members call, but Councilmember Morales, we're happy that you're here and hope you continue to stay with us as we continue the agenda as well.

Madam Clerk, I don't see any additional questions or comments, so go ahead.

Let's call the roll on the passage of amendment to Council Bill 120178 by substituting version two for version 1B.

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is the five in favor and none opposed.

Thank you so much.

The motion carries and the substitute is adopted.

The bill as amended is now before the committee.

Are there any additional comments on the bill?

Okay.

Oh, please, Vice Chair Herbold, please go ahead.

Just real short, I want to thank everybody at OPCD for ensuring the fidelity of the original intent of this funding and thank everybody who participated in the rating process.

It's really a fantastic process and I'm so excited for these dollars to get out for so many wonderful projects and thanks as well to OPCD for spending a little extra time with me on some of that additional information and just looking forward to the next steps on this and I'm so grateful.

Thank you.

Well said, Vice Chair.

Thank you so much.

I also want to thank all of the folks within OPCD and the broad community partners and the hard work and the vocal work that it took to make sure that this process remained on track.

A lot of courage went into making sure that these commitments were kept.

And so I really appreciate that.

And I want to thank as well Aaron House in my office who worked on this legislation to make sure that it got in front of us before the end of our committees.

Director Kidding-Dungill, please go ahead.

I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to all of you and also a huge thanks to Uba and Julia on staff in leading what has been a very rich process with community and conversation of opportunities and products to lift up.

And also to our community advisory group who went through a huge number of applications, over 100 applications.

We had a huge response from community and understand that the dollars that we're putting out to community is large.

but the need is much, much larger.

So really appreciate the opportunity to be in conversation with council members about what other opportunities are out there looking forward.

But this is a huge step today and right now.

So thank you so much.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

All right.

Let's take this step then.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the passage of Council Bill 120178 as amended?

Vice Chair Herbold?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Madam Chair?

Aye.

Madam Chair, that is five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you for all of your work on this.

The motion has carried and the committee recommendation that the bill pass as amended will be sent to the September 27th Seattle City Council for a final vote.

Thank you, Lish.

Thank you, Tracy.

Thank you, Director Kidding-Dungo, Uba, and Julia and all community partners for all of your work.

Excited to see this move forward.

Let's do more.

All right, let's move on to item number three.

Agenda item number 3, Fort Lawn lease agreement for briefing and discussion.

Okay, in terms of eagerly anticipated pieces of legislation, unfortunately this is not the legislation that allows for us to move forward with the beautiful redesign and inclusive housing for both renters and new homeowners in the area.

This is more of a procedural piece today that's in front of us to keep this train moving so that we can fulfill that vision ultimately.

We have in front of us today members from the Office of Housing, including Robin, excuse me, I don't see Director Alvarado, but perhaps if Director Alvarado joins us, we'll announce her.

Karen Gruen from the Office of the Department of Finance and Administrative Services, Robin Kosky from Intergovernmental Relations, and of course, Tracy Ratcliffe with Central Staff.

Jessica, did I mention you?

Jessica.

Welcome, Jessica Gomez, and we'll have you introduce yourself as well.

And Tracy, do you want to tee up this piece of legislation in front of us?

Here I will.

So we were alerted to the fact that the Army was wanting to extend our lease that we have currently with the Fort Lawton property.

That lease agreement ends in December of this year.

and that they wanted to very quickly get that lease agreement extended for an additional five years while we await HUD's approval of our Fort Lawton redevelopment plan.

So what you have in front of you is a description through the presentation of that lease agreement and really is a almost exact renewal of our existing lease agreement.

We are waiting for one final piece of information from the Army on the actual lease agreement.

They being so quick to want to get this through, but they themselves having some hurdles themselves administratively in terms of getting us the final piece.

So we don't have the legislation ready for you to actually vote on today, but we wanted to brief the committee.

And then as soon as we get the language from the Army for the lease agreement, we would actually just recommend that that legislation get referred directly to full council and you take it up in full council since it is really a renewal of our existing lease.

So that's what you will hear today is a description of that lease agreement.

For those who have not been through this before, for our five-year lease agreement, you'll get the full meal deal on what this is all about.

But that kind of is a summary of what you'll hear today and why we are doing it the way we are doing it today.

Okay, well, thank you very much, and good morning, Robin.

I see you off mute.

I'll hand it over to you.

Good morning, Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here this morning, and I think I'll just let the other members of the panel introduce themselves, and I'll, for the record, say that I'm Robin Kosky, the Deputy Director at the Office of Intergovernmental Relations.

Hi, my name is Jessica Gomez, and I'm from the Office of Housing Policy and Strategic Policy and Equitable Development Team at the Office of Housing.

I'll hand it over to Karen.

You could have said strategery, and we'd all be like, yeah.

I almost got there.

I haven't had a full cup of coffee yet.

I know.

Well, it's good to see you.

Thank you for being here on behalf of the Office of Housing.

Hello, Karen.

Hello.

Good morning, everybody.

I'm Karen Gruen.

I'm the Interim Chief Operating Officer at FAS.

Happy to talk to the committee this morning.

Great.

And I'll be sharing my screen.

Are we ready to do that?

I think so.

Great.

While Jessica is sharing her screen and getting the presentation ready, I'll just say, you know, as Councilmember Mosqueda said, the city's vision for Fort Lawton that you're all very familiar with is to create an affordable, livable community, which includes affordable housing in the Magnolia neighborhood, as well as increased recreational and open space for Seattle.

And just for a little background for those of you who were not members of the council at that time in 2019 Fort Lawton The Fort Lawton redevelopment plan was approved by City Council on June 10th 2019 via resolution And then the city submitted a redevelopment plan to HUD in August of 2019. So that's kind of where we are procedurally in the process But as Tracy said as well, we're really here today just to discuss a rather technical matter of the lease renewal with the U.S.

Army while we're working with HUD on approval of that redevelopment plan.

We currently have a five-year lease.

I think, Jessica, you could probably go to the next slide.

And that lease expires at the end of this year.

So now we are just trying to renew that lease for one year.

Karen will talk a little bit more about the details of that lease.

But it is a four, almost 34 acre site, which is on the next slide, I believe.

And that's the location of the site as a reminder to everyone.

And, you know, we recognize that you don't have the lease before you right now, but it is substantially similar to the lease that's in place right now.

And the FAS serves as the custodial manager for the property.

And then the costs are shared by the Office of Housing and Seattle Parks and Recreation.

OIR is just a partner in this project to make sure that we're moving this all forward with our external partners.

And I think that that brief introduction is all that I really have for today.

And I'll just hand it over to Karen so she can just talk to you about the particulars of the lease and the one-year lease extensions before you.

Thank you, Robin.

Good morning again.

As Robin mentioned, the city is on its fifth year of a five-year lease with the U.S.

Army for the Fort Lawton property.

The lease that we are briefing the committee about today is substantially the same as the existing lease, so we're just coming off of that five-year lease at the end of this year, and the renewal will be a one-year term with four one-year extensions.

The reason for that is both parties agreed that the city may not need another full five-year term, so the approach is to have a one-year term with renewals for one year each, up to a limit of five years.

The terms of the existing lease and the terms of the new lease call for the city to be the sole caretaker of the property.

So it's a vast property, nearly 34 acres.

The city maintains it, operates it, and looks after the security, and those costs are split between Office of Housing and Seattle Parks and Recreation.

The documents are currently in process with the U.S.

Army, as Tracy talked about, and the U.S.

Army in June of this year, toured the property with FAS to conduct a site tour and property conditions review so that it can issue an environmental report.

That's the last thing pending with the Army.

They intend to finish their report in later this fall.

So what we wanted to do overall in the timing of this is brief the committee in September and then move into a full council process for renewing the lease later this fall.

The environmental report will only affect sections 9C and 9D of the lease, and that has to do with bringing the parties current on the physical condition of the property and the environmental condition of the property.

And again, we think that will issue very soon from the U.S.

Army.

The next slide gets into the final slide, but what we anticipate is FAS being able to sign the lease on or before December 1st.

That was a request to the city by the U.S.

Army for a commencement date of the new lease on January 1st, 2022. And we're happy to take questions from the committee and And with that, I think that's our slide presentation, so we'll move into questions.

Well, thank you very much for the update and I know that the Fort Lawton issue has been around for many years and so really appreciate you providing the overview.

I'm briefly just summarize for folks who are like what is happening today.

So as a reminder, we are all very committed to this Fort Lawton vision to utilizing that property that is currently owned by the Army.

There is a process in the works to create much needed affordable housing, including rental and homeownership options, making sure that we're creating opportunities for the existing wildlife habitat to be cared for and expanded.

We're also opening up space on the property for there to be play area for communities.

So this is a really great way to couple existing Discovery Park assets next to a more affordable housing as we're creating a use of underutilized land, especially in an area like Magnolia that has access to high opportunities.

We're excited about the future efforts on that land.

So the city currently has this lease agreement with the Army.

While we're waiting approval from the Federal Housing and Urban Development Department for our plans on that site, we are also hoping that we can move forward with this lease today because if we don't move forward by extending our lease, it will expire in December.

So this legislation in front of us essentially extends the lease agreement that we currently have with the Army for the Fort Lawton property at Discovery Park.

And we're going to continue to work to get the approval for our redevelopment plans for Fort Lawton and working in partnership with the Housing and Urban Development Department at the federal level.

I want to thank Office of Housing for the work that you've done on this legislation so that we can have a lease agreement signed before our lease expires.

And we, colleagues, will again have a chance to have the actual legislation with us in full council.

Thank you, Council President, for allowing for that to be directly referred to full council, likely on September 27th.

And the, excuse me, once we receive the last attachment to the finalized legislation, we'll make sure that that all gets submitted.

Tracy, please add anything in terms of process so folks know what to expect coming up, but this is a briefing so that we could ask any questions, and then we will have a possible vote on September 27th in full council.

Anything to add to that, Tracy?

I do, which is that we actually aren't going to introduce the legislation until we get that final piece from the Army, and that could happen in the next week, the next two weeks, it could be longer.

So we will, you will not see this put on the introduction referral calendar and in front of you in full council until we get that last piece.

And that's, as I referred to, is uncertain in terms of when the Army can cut loose that information for us so that we can complete that lease agreement.

So I don't anticipate that being by the 27th of September, in all frankness.

What I'm hearing from the Office of Housing and our executive counterparts is that, you know, it may be a few weeks.

So I just want to let people know.

We will let all of you know when that legislation is coming through for you all and make sure that you are covered in briefings about that when it is going to be in front of full council.

appreciate being able to brief council members about that lease for those in particular have not been through this before.

I will mention only one other thing, which is we are responsible for covering the costs of maintaining the property out there, so it actually does matter to us wanting to get HUD to approve our redevelopment plan.

There are some It's about $700,000 a year, and that cost is split between parks and the Office of Housing.

It has to do with covering security, drainage, maintenance of the buildings, and so forth.

So there is a cost to the city of continuing to be in this holding pattern.

And so we really are hopeful that HUD will move on that redevelopment plan approval so that we can get out of this, you know, kind of holding situation and be able to move towards redevelopment.

But I just wanted to be disclosing to all of you that there is a cost that we are experiencing as a result of us having to maintain this property.

with some slight increases because of security costs and property management costs and so forth.

So those will all be covered in the budget.

Are there any questions, colleagues?

Okay, thank you for the update on the timing.

We will look forward to being able to share with the public when we have received the last attachment that we are waiting for for the legislation to actually then be introduced.

And then we will make sure that it's publicly announced when that will be considered.

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have at full council.

If there are no additional questions, seeing none, we want to thank you for the briefing today.

Anything we can do to help expedite that process, we are all in as you know.

Thanks, colleagues.

Good to see you.

Wonderful.

Let's move on to the fourth item of business on our agenda.

And I see with us Ben Noble.

Good morning, Director Noble from the Office of the City Budget.

I also see Dave Haynes.

Good morning, Dave.

And I don't see anybody else popping up.

So, oh, good morning, John.

Hi, John.

Hi.

I appreciate you coming back.

Good morning.

Thanks for coming.

We know that we have had the chance to have the revenue forecast proposal in front of committee in August, so appreciate you coming back.

In that discussion, we did hear the projected revenue at the time.

We did ask that you consider making yourself available so that we could see if there was We appreciate you being here to present any updates on the revenue forecast in our committee.

And we have a lot of Thanks for making yourself available today.

I'll turn it directly over to Director Noble.

Thank you.

Appreciate the opportunity.

So as requested, we're going to give you a little update here, and I'm going to run through a few slides with Jan and Dave available to answer questions.

Credit to them really on the technical side.

At a high level, we don't have anything of large significance to report to you.

You'll see on a quantitative basis some small changes, and we'll share that information.

Qualitatively, concerns around Delta remain.

But I don't think, you know, essentially it's been a month.

And I think the overall tenor and the perspective on the forecast is unchanged.

But I do want to show you some of the additional information we have.

And you can see how the risks, potential risks to the forecast have played out in that time and what we see looking forward.

So I'm going to share my screen and put up some slides here.

One second while I execute that.

I'm going to try to get this to full screen.

One more to try at that.

There we go.

So again, obvious title.

So one thing we can report on is additional months of sales tax, and on the next slide, business and occupation tax data, and show you how those compare to the August forecast.

So we can now baseline to that.

So overall, as indicated here, through the first two quarters, we've collected just under $130 million of sales tax.

And that is, again, relative to the August forecast, just slightly below $200,000, 0.2 million.

So, again, that's, you know, a slight variation from forecast, that kind of month-to-month variation, not at all unusual.

I would note that relative to 2019, we're actually on, in nominal terms, getting close to that same level.

So we're sales tax returning towards pre-pandemic levels.

I would note there have been a couple of years of inflation since then, and most recently, relatively high inflation.

So the purchasing power of those revenues aren't quite what they were, but obviously good news.

You can see in detail on the right the differences by some of the key sectors in terms of 2019 versus 2021. Oops, I didn't mean to advance the slide.

And I'm not going to comment there, except to note that no surprise that the biggest negative impacts in comparing 2019 to 2021 are in leisure and hospitality.

So that's the sales tax side.

So relative to forecast, pretty solid.

So business and occupation tax, again, since the first two quarters of the year, total payments just over 134 million.

In this case, we're slightly above forecast, about a million above forecast.

These data come in quarterly, generally, some of it reported monthly, but the bulk of it quarterly.

And again, small variations, not a surprise.

And again, note that we are slightly below 2019 revenues, but not dramatically so.

And again, leisure and hospitality are where we're seeing the loss of revenues, but the information sector and financial services were actually ahead of where we were in 21 in nominal terms and probably even adjusting for inflation as well.

So again, on the actual received revenues since we last saw you, tracking to the forecast, which is obviously good news.

That said, Delta remains the obvious risk.

And you can see, I mean, again, these are case counts, so you can interpret them as well as we, because we're not in the medical profession.

Probably the key concerns now are both about additional restrictions that are imposed, and we'll talk about that in just a second, in terms of their limiting people's ability to to go out and participate in the economy, particularly around travel and recreation and dining and the like.

And the other is also supply chain interruptions.

You continue to hear in the documented instances of manufacturing powers come to mind being impacted by a lack of key inputs, in that case apparently computer chips.

But the other thing is sort of the psychology of this, and whether concern about where the economy may be headed may lead people to be more cautious.

That said, overall, the economy seems to have, and those of us participating in it, seem to have adapted to those kinds of risks.

And there's a sense that COVID is clearly having an impact, but perhaps not as large as at least initially feared by many.

economic behavior not as dramatically impacted as we might have thought.

But again, I want to show you some additional information on travel and dining here in just a sec.

Other point, again, sort of on the good news front, is that we're continuing to see employment recover.

So a lot of information here, but the top two bars here, the blue one and the red one, show the change in employment first in June and then in August.

And so what you're seeing, these are negative numbers, we've lost so many jobs, but what you see is that we've added jobs since June.

You can sort of read on the bar there, maybe as many as 10,000 trying to, for the metropolitan district here, metropolitan area.

So we're continuing to build employment.

Again, concerns remain, but that's good news.

There was a slight downward revision in overall employment for June.

Again, not ideal, but not necessarily that significant.

So this, again, continuing to see the recovery that we anticipate going forward and that is assumed in the forecast.

I did mention we wanted to show you some information about travel and dining, which does suggest some of the impacts of Delta.

So these are trend lines for, on the left here in the red is hotel occupancy, and the other is potentially airplane landings or travelers through SeaTac.

And on the right are restaurants' attendance, if you will.

The green is Seattle.

The blue is the U.S. as a whole.

What you see is that there's been a pattern of recovery over much of 2020, but that it appears that that recovery has plateaued over the last couple of months, July and August.

So these trend lines have moved up, but then are flattening out.

The same true here.

So again, that's consistent with what we know about concerns around Delta and the like.

So that can suggest some of the risks that we're facing, but again, we're not seeing these as necessarily dramatic or overly concerning.

It is interesting on the restaurant side, one thing to note is that Seattle as a whole, we saw a bigger drop and a slower and has seen a slower recovery, which I think speaks to but I regard as the appropriately cautious approaches we've taken around social distancing and the like but that's why those the level of those lines are different even though the trends are are similar.

I do see a question I'm happy a couple questions.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

Council President and then Vice Chair Herbold.

Yeah I was gonna ask that question that Director Noble ended with particularly around the seated diners at restaurants.

Sounds like Dr. Noble, you all did not take into account in creating this chart, sort of the regional differences, the very hyper local differences in indoor dining restrictions that play out in our jurisdiction versus across the country, which as we know, There was a lot of variety there.

So just is that the case?

This is just sort of like, just taking the data as it is without restrictions.

It's measured in percentage terms.

So, right, what you're seeing here is that we all dropped off very dramatically.

in March.

And then in the U.S., tracking the blue line here, that there's been this, the U.S. has more, elsewhere in the country as a whole, dining has returned at a more rapid rate than here.

So this is, you know, percentages relative to before the pandemic.

So we're seeing less restaurant use.

Elise, I'll be right back to you, okay?

Sorry, I have a sick dog at home.

The world continues.

Yes, I appreciate your forbearance.

No excuses necessary with this audience.

Understood and deeply appreciate it.

Recording stopped.

Uh-oh.

Hold on, please.

Everybody heard that announcement.

Sorry about that.

Don't know what happened.

Okay, for those who are watching us on Seattle Channel, which I assume is still broadcasting, we are just going to talk.

Wonderful.

We've just paused.

So if there was a glitch in the matrix, if there was a glitch in the recording, then please note that we did not continue the meeting while the recording was paused.

So we did have a chance to have a question from Council President and Director Noble, you were starting to answer.

You also were interrupted.

So why don't we go ahead and go back to you and see if you had more on that answer.

Just a general point, again, in the U.S. as a whole, there's more restaurant activity than there is locally.

Again, I think reflective of the difference in approaches taken towards social distancing and COVID restrictions generally.

Thank you.

Vice Chair Hurdle?

Thanks.

I'm just curious.

Obviously, travel recovery and the segment of the economy related to restaurants and hospitality is super important to our overall recovery.

Can you just talk a little bit about why these two indicators are ones that we focused, or not these two indicators, these indicators for these two sectors are the ones that we're focusing on as opposed to the other sectors that are important to Seattle's economy and our recovery?

Because it's these where we are concerned in particular that the rising Delta issues are going to play out.

And again, they're the ones that continue to lag in referencing the data you've seen in the previous slide.

So this feels like the core of the risk right now because much of the rest of the economy seems to have adapted, if you will.

So that's the- I'd make a plug for arts and entertainment.

Yes.

We need to be measuring that as well, because I do feel like that's a huge, and we've learned a lot about how much of a driver that is specifically to Seattle's economy as compared to other cities.

It's a much higher percentage of our GDP than other cities.

Very good point, and we can work, these are metrics that are easily available, one could imagine why.

We can take a look, and Jan may, and Dave may know whether there are metrics, I mean, for those sorts of activities.

One thing that occurs to my mind is that, you know, the seasonal sports are about to gear up, and that is, again, from an economic perspective, an important element.

I'm not going to debate the cultural or not significance.

So, but we can take a look for those kinds of metrics and see what we're seeing there and track those as well.

It's a very good point.

And I just have one last slide which highlights changes at the national level.

And there are lots of numbers here.

So again, reminding you that the way we build our model is to take a forecast from the national level and use it as an input to our regional model.

And what you have here with all these numbers are showing you the difference between the inputs that we used in July and the same forecast that has revised for September.

And what you see is, again, consistent with concerns around Delta and the like, that the national forecasts are down slightly.

So they're projecting slightly less employment for 21 and 22, similarly for personal income, similarly for personal outlays.

Interestingly, for retail, sales are actually expecting more in 21 than they were back in in July.

Again, I think that is consistent with what we described when we were in August, the federal stimulus has landed more effectively and more dramatically than 21 that had been anticipated.

These differences are very small, you know, largely less than 1%.

So again, Confirming that, you know, the mood of the economy and the forecasters is temperance has been temperance somewhat in the past month, but we don't think significantly.

So we will have yet again and another months of additional data before we provide you the update, either in late October, early November, depending on the precise timing for the final formal update that will include a quantitative forecast.

that will underlie your final budget decision.

This suggests certainly that the forecast won't be going up, might be a small downward revision.

But I would note on that front that we have constructed the budget, and as we're putting it, sort of dotting I's and crossing T's, it was a recognition that there may be some softness, if you will, in the revenues, and that the proposal will include some discretionary items that could be deferred.

And these will be your choices, clearly, but if there's less revenue, that you could make decisions to defer some of the discretionary items, and in doing so, there would not be a cut to existing city services in terms of the things that we are providing to the public.

It would not be a reduction in city employment, so no impact on our employees.

So we think there is room to absorb some reduction in the revenue forecast should it come without significant policy implications, at least in the near term.

We will keep you posted as we go and also work with central staff as well.

And again, be back just over a month from now with the late October, early November formal update.

Thank you so much.

I do have a handful of questions.

I also want to welcome Allie Panucci, our budget lead from central staff to the line as well.

Allie, of course, if you have questions or comments, please feel free to jump in and take yourself off mute at any time.

But Allie is also available for us as the legislative body to ask questions about.

If you could actually keep that.

Absolutely.

Just for one more second here.

So a few questions.

First in slide four we listed the factors that have gone into creating the data just looking at I think Seattle based data but and then subsequent slides you did Seattle compared to trends in the rest of the country.

Do you have similar data or factors that you're looking at on slide four that compare us to the rest of the country.

And if you could pull that back up for us, if you.

So by slide four, you mean the one that's, this one that describes the.

Sorry, Ben, it's not.

Oh, I'm not sharing.

Sorry, I thought I wish.

June, really?

I was doing really well.

You are doing really well.

Hang on, let me get here again.

No, sorry.

I will get there.

I have too many windows open.

Great.

Yes, that's the one.

Thank you.

Cool.

And I can go to full screen as well.

He says that like true.

You're okay.

I'll leave it like this.

Yeah, so, um, we can certainly compile, I mean, we can certainly pull that together.

Yeah, I don't know what to tell you.

I mean, you know, the national trends around caseloads and life are obviously, I mean, at some level, they're very comparable, although certainly more alarming in some communities, and that we are seeing a significant rise again in case counts and hospitalizations.

Again, I'm not a doctor.

Well, I am a doctor, but not that kind of doctor.

less so in mortality, but obviously very concerning.

And most recently, increasing cases among full age children as they return to classrooms.

Yeah, I mean, I think that it's important for us to see that those trends across the nation and appreciated you including the US comparison to Seattle's data in the subsequent slides because while Seattle is concerned and public health Seattle King County has been reacting proactively along with the governor of Washington state to the crises that we're seeing in our local region.

We also know that our economy is affected by these factors at the national level.

And if in many cases we're seeing growing rates across the country of COVID cases and really concerningly the hospitalization rates, I'm worried that we are going to be anticipating a budget that uses the baseline revenue projections when we could potentially be building a more conservative budget around the pessimistic forecast.

So is there any economic data or is there a potential future upside that we should be thinking about to avoid having to not just look at where there's, what was the word that you used, Ben?

Discretionary funds.

All of this is still, you know, frankly, up to the discretion, as you noted, up to the discretion of the city council.

So we're going to be then in a, to have to rearrange the budget to address potential downsides in the midst of receiving another economic forecast in November.

And I'm worried if these trends as we're seeing on this slide show cases of COVID and hospitalizations that are rivaling the most concerning peak at the end of last year.

how we reconcile drafting a budget prior to receiving that information in November with the anticipation for these cases to continue to get worse?

I recognize the concern.

Again, we're just, from a forecast perspective, in terms of the quantitative information we have available and the underlying national level economic forecast, You know, what we've seen that as these Delta variants and the case counts have increased in the past few months, what the data shows that we haven't seen the dramatic slowdown.

Again, the economy seems to be moving forward nonetheless, if you will.

I don't pretend and don't, you know, that that will necessarily be the case going forward, but, you know, try to be as, you know, subjectively as we can, given the information that we're being provided at a national level.

And again, what we're reporting now is that we haven't seen a significant change over the past month.

Yes, I don't know what else to tell you.

Again, we will continue to monitor, as will you.

And if Again, these will be your choices as the budget process proceeds.

If there is a significant downturn in revenues, know that we will be partners in helping you manage that reality, if you will, and adjustments that would need to be made.

Okay, thanks so much, Director Noble.

Are there additional questions?

And Dave and John, I appreciate you being here.

I know, again, how busy you are with the throws of the final creation of the budget and all that CBO is doing currently.

So is there anything else that you would add?

And you're not shy, so.

Chair Mosqueda, can I jump in?

Of course.

Thank you for being here again.

Allie, I can meet you from central staff.

Please go ahead.

Thank you.

I would just sort of reiterate or say a different way what Chairman Mosqueda, you were just pointing out and what Director Noble was highlighting that, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty here.

you know, from my perspective, as we're going into the fall budget deliberations, given the downward revisions to some of the independent variables, the increased probability of the pessimistic scenario and a lot of the unknowns on how recent announcements on our covid response, like vaccination mandates as well as increased caseloads will affect things.

Um, I think there is a Good possibility that the November forecast may reduce some resources available for the 2022 budget or, you know, may hold about study and it's hard to predict as Director Noble just pointed out but I will just highlight that a little more bluntly some of the discretionary decisions I think you will be facing is in 2020 because of the impacts of COVID the city had to significantly tap its emergency reserves to support ongoing services and the council was able to replenish some of those emergency reserves last year but it is likely that If there is a downward turn for the November forecast, we will be looking at having to reduce whatever is in the mayor's proposed budget in terms of replenishing those reserves, which increases risk for next year if trends continue, we'll have less resources available if there is another, you know, if trends continue to go down.

So I'm just pointing out that as we're going into budget deliberations, I think the council is gonna be faced potentially with some hard choices of how to plan for future potential, emergency issues, as well as addressing council priorities that may not be included in the mayor's proposed budget.

So this is just a ground setting for discussions of the 2022 proposed budget.

And I'll work with Director Noble and his team to consider when and how frequently we're updating some of this information to inform those decisions.

And it's going to be particularly critical as council members are considering what changes they want to propose to the mayor's proposed budget, as well as you're putting the package together and the choices that are being made about resource availability.

Thanks.

Just to state a different way, and I think, Ali, you're saying a lot of different things, but one of the things I thought I heard, and correct me if I'm not hearing you correctly, what I'm thinking I'm hearing is that if the executive shares the goal of the council of preserving our emergency funds for future use and creating sustainability, long-term sustainability around our emergency funds, it might make more sense to be budgeting using the pessimistic forecast framework in order to meet that goal of creating sustainability, long-term sustainability for the emergency funds.

Yes, thank you for saying that more succinctly, but I would also just note that.

There is just a practical reality of where this, when this information is available and the city budget office and the mayor putting the proposed budget together.

So I also just want to acknowledge that reality.

But yes, I think that it will be a hard, we will have to be looking at those choices of sort of looking at the proposed budget and reducing sort of certain services or proposed new spending rather than reducing any contribution to the emergency reserves for that long-term sustainability that you're referring to.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Did you have any subsequent questions to that?

Okay.

All right.

Thank you, Ali, for that, those comments as well.

And I think that this is good grounding for us to have.

I think it's concerning as well as we, We know we're all looking forward to having a return to normal, both in terms of revenue and then a new normal in terms of economic security for working families.

But since the baseline scenario has been chosen by the mayor and there is less certainty around using that projection at this point, I think that it is possible, as has been noted by the vice chair and Allie and Director Noble, that there will continue to be a downward track of we're going to have to make sure that we have a downward trajectory for future forecasts, and that will not occur until November.

So, colleagues, our challenge will be to make sure that we are receiving this budget that's being transmitted, protecting against future downfalls, and helping to restore reserves all at the same time that we're investing in our priorities as a We look forward to continuing to work with you, members of the CBO and Future Forecast Council, to help identify the most recent information that we can draw upon as we craft this budget.

And again, I want to make sure that we have a budget that is able to invest in our values, avoids austerity budgeting, and is accurate in its use of the future projected revenue.

So much more to come, and Ali and team here Perhaps we can also see if there's any additional information periodically throughout our budgeting process so that we're not just anticipating the November forecast.

But as always, Dave, John, Director Noble.

welcome the opportunity to work with you as you receive new and updated information both locally and nationally.

Please go ahead.

Just so you know, as information both on realized revenues are reported to us and also as we get new forecast information, we have a distribution list that includes central staff.

But we're also expected to be in dialogue over the next month and a half as you continue your work.

Thank you so much.

I'm not seeing any additional questions.

Hallie, anything else from you?

Wonderful.

Well, we know we will see much more of all of you very soon.

Colleagues, we've reached the end of our agenda here.

I want to thank you for your time today and all the presentations.

Are there any last comments or questions for the good of the order?

Hearing none, Council President and Vice Chair, thank you for your questions on the item that was removed from today's agenda.

We will make sure to follow up with you on the best I'm timing in place to continue that discussion on receiving and discussing the grant acceptance ordinance.

And with that, this will be our last Finance and Housing Committee meeting before the fall budget session.

Our next committee meeting of Finance and Housing is December 7th, after budget.

We will see you on December 7th at 9.30 a.m.

and look forward to seeing you in the Select Budget Committee coming up soon.

Thanks for all your work this year, and we'll see you in the Budget Committee.

Bye-bye.