Seattle City Council Finance & Neighborhoods Committee Special Meeting 8/9/19

are both inside and will be joining us soon.

So since I'm going to be here by myself in the beginning, I'm going to move adoption of the agenda.

And since there are no objections, the agenda is adopted.

Thank you very much.

That was well done, don't you think?

Thanks.

Thanks so much.

Just to give you a little update, I'm going to take public comment.

I'm going to ask you to keep your comments to a minute.

I've got this notebook full of things that we get to go through today.

And I know you're all excited about the technical amendments.

I know that's why you're here.

But actually, I will just, as a little preview, on the amendments, I think we've worked most of these through.

So don't feel like you are having to twist our arms.

There is money in the budget.

I have been working on this for weeks to make sure, for example, that our downtown emergency services center nurse will be funded.

Our lead database staffing and funds will be funded.

The AIDS memorial pathway.

That is a special add.

Councilmember, former Councilmember Tom Rasmussen has been here working with us on this.

Our human services COLA that's going to pay the COLA increases for non-general fund contracts.

We've got money in the budget to handle that.

Our Highland Park intersection, the University Heights elevator, all included.

The food bank support for the U District food bank, and I believe we've got an amendment for D5, the North Helpline food bank.

Nope, we don't.

OK, moving on, the Green Janitor Education Program.

that will be supported.

The last two we're going to have to finesse a little bit on the Native Cultural Organization support because we haven't run that through any kind of an RFP or competitive process.

And also the HSD dashboard tracking performance.

There's some issues that we don't want to duplicate what's been going on with All Home.

But if you're on any of the first, the top ten, you're covered.

So welcome to City Hall and glad that We're going to be able to move ahead.

Just know that we're going to have money to support your projects.

OK.

So with that, I think the next thing that we're going to do is just jump into public comment for a minute apiece.

It looks to me like we've got 15 people signed up.

So Lindsey Grad, welcome back.

Beth, I haven't seen you in a long time.

Glad you're here.

Maureen Ewing, you're the top three.

So if I could ask you just to line up at the microphone so we're just ready to go one after the other.

Good morning, Councilmember.

Nice to see you, Lindsay.

For the record, Lindsay Graut on behalf of SEIU Healthcare 1199 Northwest.

Great to start out this morning by saying that you are already in support of what I was here to talk about today, which was the DESC nurse in particular and the HSD inflationary increases.

So I'm really glad that both of these amendments have been brought forward and are being supported.

And in particular, when it comes to redirecting for similar purposes, the HSD inflationary adjustments, just want to reiterate that we supported both your budget work last year which created this pot of money, and the inflationary adjustment work done earlier this spring.

And so this is the logical way to follow forward on those values and make sure these workers are being taken care of.

So I appreciate your support and your work on that.

Thank you.

Great.

And, Lindsay, thank you for all of the support you and those that you represent.

It's been very helpful to hear from you.

Thanks.

Very good.

Beth, Maureen, and then Jennifer.

Great.

Good morning, Madam Chair and Councilmember Bagshaw.

I am Beth Mountseer.

I'm co-chair of University Heights, and if I heard you correctly, we are included in the proposed budget amendments, and that is what I was here to advocate for.

And I'll just briefly say that University Heights has invested over $4 million into the capital program and projects at U Heights since the time that the state of Washington and the city of Seattle purchased the community center in 2009. And though we've made huge progress on all sorts of projects, seismic, we're completing the parapet roofs, and we've rebuilt the outside, the park, the P patch, the parking lot, and everything, but the next thing that we really need to tackle is our ADA access to the building.

And so that's why this elevator project is so important to us and so important to the community.

And I'll stop there.

Good.

Well, Beth, thank you.

And I just want to ask you to extend my thanks to your board.

That University Heights Center is such a gem for the university district.

And I want to acknowledge that you've had great support from Abel Pacheco and, of course, his predecessor, Rob Johnson.

And the mayor's office has also indicated this is important for ADA purposes.

So it's a great request, and we're happy to support it.

Thank you.

Thanks, Beth.

Jennifer, and then Jerome, and then Matthew.

Good morning, Council Member Beck-Schon, Madam Chair.

We are very appreciative that you're including us in a re-appropriation.

As we know, rents are, commercial rents are going up, but U Heights rents are staying the same, and we house 14 resident organizations that provide critical community services for children on the autism spectrum, for homeless youth, older adults, and more.

Our vision is to be a place for all, and we can't do that without an elevator.

Right now you have to climb 15 steps to even access, you know, right?

And so either people get to the door and they leave.

We've had theater groups from our new U Heights Theater Alliance refuse to perform because we aren't ADA accessible.

Just last week we had a Hogwarts camp and there was a 11-year-old girl who participated who had, who's wheelchair bound and I watched her every day.

She refused to get on her lift because it's scary and now it's not working and we're having to dump five grand into it.

but I watched her climb up the stairs using only her arms and she had to go in and out several times a day and she's always the last person out for recess.

So we do not want anyone else to have to experience that and we want to continue to be a welcoming place for all.

So thank you very much for your support.

Yeah, absolutely.

And thank you, Maureen.

I appreciate that.

I mean, it's quite a visual.

And you know that our office has been really leading the charge around all ages and abilities and making sure our buildings and our city as a whole is accessible.

So thanks for bringing this up.

Appreciate it.

OK, Jennifer, Jerome, and then Matthew.

My name is Jennifer Annabel.

I'm the executive director for the Academy for Precision Learning.

We're located in University Heights.

We serve kids all across the autism spectrum, as well as typically developing peers.

We have our high schools on the second floor.

We have families of a dad who's in an electric wheelchair and the lift won't hold him.

So whenever we have meetings, we have to meet off campus.

We also, with graduation time, when we hold it upstairs in that great auditorium there, I have to go off site if I have anybody that is not able to access the building.

So I really appreciate that we can now be accessible to everybody.

And also so they can participate in their kids' planning and education.

The other thing is I'm also on the board of directors for a Broadway-bound children's theater.

And they put on shows up in the auditorium as well.

In the summertime, it's like five shows every Friday.

And we have a really hard time when it comes to grandparents and helping them be able to get up those stairs.

They'll have to take many breaks.

And it's really important for them to be able to come and participate.

So we're grateful and very thankful that you support this.

It would be greatly appreciated so everybody can have access.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for that and for all the work that you're doing.

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Thank you much appreciated.

We want to make sure we're doing the right thing for future generations to come after us.

An education program would be very helpful.

I know that many of my co-workers probably don't have an interest, but there are some of us that do have these concerns.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I appreciate your coming down today.

Matthew, Stephanie, and then Lauren Ross.

Hi.

I'm Matthew Coleman.

I'm the executive director of the Seattle 2030 District, an organization that's trying to significantly reduce the environmental impacts of buildings by the year 2030. And I'm here today to talk about the Green Janitors Program.

I'd like to thank you for your support.

First of all, it was nice to hear that at the beginning.

I had to change my comments just quickly on that.

I kind of thought it might shorten things a little bit.

It does.

But it provides one more solution to building owners to help them improve their environmental performance of their buildings, but it also provides that additional training to janitors in those buildings.

The program in L.A.

has shown significant savings in both energy, water, waste, and then also the clean building, the green cleaning products.

God, that's hard to say fast.

But this program also shows that everyone has a significant role to play in combating the climate crisis that we have here in the world, from the developer of the building, the designer of the building, but also the people who work here.

So thank you very much for your support.

Thank you for coming.

Stephanie, Lauren, Britton, and Richard.

Good morning.

My name is Stephanie Selt, and I am the Washington State Policy Coordinator for the Blue Green Alliance.

We are a labor environmental partnership that seeks to create and support good jobs in the clean energy economy, and I am here speaking in favor of the Green Janitor Education Program.

Thank you so much for your support.

I will just briefly say that my work is often focused on trying to create good jobs And they often, you know, the ones we think about are mostly in the clean energy sector, solar installers, retrofits, that kind of thing.

But it's really important to be thinking about the full range of our workforce and our workers that can benefit and want to be part of the solution in a clean energy economy, that want to have cleaner materials, you know, to be doing their work at different times of day that can help save energy while having a better work-life balance.

and to provide workforce development and more economic security.

So we're really excited about this program.

Our colleagues in California have been involved and found it successful, and we're really excited to see it roll out here.

Thank you.

Well, thanks so much for coming, both Matthew and Stephanie.

It matters a lot that we're focusing on not just workers' health, but that the positive impact that we can have on buildings by getting rid of some of the toxic materials.

So well done.

Thanks for doing it.

Councilmembers Pacheco and Ms. Gaita, my buddies, thanks for being here.

Okay, please.

Good morning, my name is Lauren Ross and I work with the Soto Business Improvement Area and I'm here today in support of the city looking further into solutions surrounding unsafe RV conditions.

Soto faces a public health and safety crisis.

RV encampments present an unsafe and unsanitary environment for all.

and have a direct impact on the social and economic health of the area.

We strongly support policies that address the health and well-being of our city's unsheltered residents and the health and well-being of the more than 45,000 employees that come to work in Soto each day.

The Soto BIA remains committed to being part of the solution.

We want to work with the city to develop a plan that addresses the very real tragedy of homelessness and the unsafe environment it creates when neglected as it has been in Soto.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for coming.

Britton, Richard, and Tracy Gillespie.

Hello, and thank you.

For the record, my name is Britton Reif, and I'm here representing the Northwest Energy Efficiency Council.

We are a locally-based nonprofit trade association that represents energy efficiency product and service providers.

And so I'm here representing one of our programs, which is the Building Operator Certification Program.

It's a national program that is a training and certification program that helps the people who go through the program make their buildings more comfortable, efficient, and environmentally friendly.

So we're here to support the Green Janitor Training Program as well and are very interested to support the program and help empower the people who work in buildings in Seattle, realize that they're the ones who can actually make the buildings more green and help Seattle meet their climate goals.

So thank you very much for your support.

And yeah, that's all I would like to say.

Very good.

Thank you for coming, Britton.

Richard?

Good to see you again, Tracy Gillespie and Tim.

Good morning.

Morning.

I'm here today on behalf of the Youth Care Board of Directors and in support of Councilmember Muscata's amendment to carry forward unspent 2019 funding for an inflation adjustment to human services contracts not supported by the general fund.

I want to thank you for your leadership in passing an annual inflation adjustment for human services contracts tied to CPI.

As you heard during testimony, human service agencies are not only struggling to pay our staff a living wage, but also to keep our doors open, our lights on, our water running.

The annual, excuse me, the annual inflation adjustment is a first step that will allow human services agencies to stabilize our budgets and begin to focus on compensating our staff for the incredible work that they do every day.

This amendment offers us an opportunity to protect funding that was intended to support these agencies.

We should safeguard that funding and honor, excuse me, and honor what it was meant for, supporting and not undercutting the human services sector.

YouthCare supports carrying these funds forward in 2020 to serve the purpose for which they were intended and not putting them back into the general fund.

Thank you.

Very good, Richard.

Thank you.

And I do want to acknowledge Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you for your leadership on this.

You have been the stalwart starting last budget and carrying it all the way through this year.

So you're doing the right thing.

Okay, Tracy, Tim, Katrina Johnson.

Hi.

Good morning.

I'm Tracy Gillespie.

I'm a project manager with the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Program.

And we are here in regards to the budget provision prepared by you, Councilmember Bagshaw, to ensure that there is support from Seattle IT for the development of our LEAD database.

So first of all, thank you so much for your leadership on this, Councilmember.

The LEAD database is completely funded by Microsoft and will be built by a contractor.

However, these additional funds would help ensure Seattle IT to be able to provide oversight and ensure that the LEAD database is created in a way that's effective and efficient for all of our LEAD governing partners and operational partners.

Seattle IT helps create our scope of work so they deeply understand this project and their support would be essential to its rollout.

There are two main goals, of course, for the LEAD database.

One, to support communication between partners, and also to help ensure our ability to share data with community members, with our funders, and with our governing partners as well.

We're deeply committed to our transparency and being able to provide reporting and data that is accurate and efficient.

So these funds would really help ensure that that database is able to provide that.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And I know, Tim and Katrina, that you're talking about the same topic.

I just want to say thank you to all of you for making this happen and to recognize our King County prosecuting attorney, Dan Satterberg, who was instrumental in getting this $300,000 grant from Microsoft.

So well done to all of you.

Please, go ahead, Tim.

Thank you.

So for the record, my name is Tim Kendall.

I'm a project manager at the Public Defender Association specific to the LEAD program.

So to the ever growing questions and the expansion of LEAD, people want to know about real time performance.

So in response to that, once again, thank you, Council Member Bagshaw, you put together a slide.

and a proviso that allotted us a business analyst from Seattle IT to identify a vendor.

We were able to identify a vendor, and as Tracy mentioned, build out that scope of work.

Upon review, Seattle IT deemed that this was a reasonably priced database, especially for what they were being able to provide.

And again, just echoing the importance of King County prosecuting Dan Satterberg and his relationship with Microsoft for us to secure that 300,000.

And we recently did sign our contract with DXC Technologies with a go live date of March of 2020. And this extra support from Seattle IT and continuing this would be instrumental in ensuring that this is effective and holistic.

So thank you.

Very good.

Thank you.

Thank you, Tim.

Katrina.

And then after Katrina, Peter and batting cleanup is Allison Isenker.

Good morning.

I'm a project manager for the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Program, South Precinct, specifically the Soto area.

And operationally, the cross-agency data sharing that happens with partners is essential, and that database will be a way for law enforcement officers to query, you know, what's going on with clients in a real-time way.

so that we can find out if they have housing that's coming up and other important dates.

So prosecutors will also be able to see if they have upcoming court dates and things like that.

And so officers can get the whole picture when they are interacting with these individuals and make the best decision for those individuals.

And this database will enhance that.

And I just want to thank you, Councilmember, for taking the lead on this and making sure that we get those dollars and that Seattle IT is able to oversee the database being implemented and being done in a timely fashion and the way it's meant to be done.

Thank you.

Great.

Katrina, thank you for that.

We will be talking more about LEAD as we get into the individual amendments.

It's something that I've been supporting for years now.

And I know there are some folks who think, well, we don't have the outcomes to show the positive steps forward based upon the investments that we're making.

I think this database is going to be really important for us to show this is really valuable.

The harm reduction model works if we're able to follow up and make sure that people have a roof over their head that they've got the case management, whether it's mental health or behavioral health, the services that they need to actually get themselves back on their feet and be able to move forward.

And Leigh has a really important part to play in this.

So thank you for that.

Hey, we got a baby here.

I'm so glad.

So I don't see Peter.

I don't see his name on this.

Yeah, his name is Kyoto.

Oh, very nice.

Yes.

Okay.

So what do you have for us today?

Yeah, I'm Peter Hasegawa, and I'm here on behalf of MLK Labor, King County Labor Council, and I'm here to speak in support of the Green Janitor Training Program.

And the reason that the Labor Council supports this program, I'd just like to echo what others have said.

We believe this program helps create the kind of green jobs that we need as we're all living through climate change.

It also helps downtown buildings and our city meet its sustainability goals.

But I'll say one other thing that others haven't mentioned, which is that workers...

bring what they learn on the jobs home to their home communities.

And so as they're learning these more sustainable cleaning practices, they're going to be bringing that back to their own homes, to their place, the civil sector institutions that they're a part of, their communities of worship, their kids' schools when they volunteer there.

And so we believe that this program will have an impact far beyond just the immediate jobs that it affects.

Great, thank you.

I think that's a very good point.

And I'd also like to ask whoever is involved in this program, please make sure that you reach out to Seattle Public Utilities.

They have done a tremendous amount of work on green options, so things that do help us clean our homes and aren't necessarily the really strong toxic kind of things that many people who are having to work in these buildings have seen for years.

So thanks for doing that.

Thanks for bringing your baby.

Always a good move.

Allison.

Never follow babies.

For the record, my name is Allison Isinger.

I'm with the Seattle-King County Coalition on Homelessness.

Good morning, Chair Bagshaw, Councilmember Pacheco, and temporarily absent, Councilmember Mosqueda.

I am here to speak in support of Councilmember Mosqueda's proviso specifically regarding the remaining funds from the budget work that you helped us through, Council Member Bagshaw, last year to support the non-general fund human services department contracts.

I also want to just take a moment to note that this is a really interesting part of the budget process that most people don't see, you know, the idea of investing in it green, education for janitorial workers, the extraordinarily important ADA accessibility issues for my local community center in the university district.

Thank you.

The work to provide the ability to technically gather and report good data.

These are all the small additional corrections and changes that council can make to the budget and we appreciate your doing that and thank you for that.

I really look forward to our budget session this fall, and I hope we will have the opportunity to work together to make some much more large and significant investments in some of these same kinds of programs.

Tell me about that, Ms. Allison.

What are you planning to come back with in six weeks?

Well, Council Member Bagshaw, you know as well as I do that what we need is, of course, the kinds of sustained and significant investments that mean that these kinds of programs can do their work throughout the year in between the $100,000 adjustments that important committee meetings like this are making.

It would be such a blessing if at one point in just our city's history going forward that we have the necessary revenues to do the work, the good work that you're doing, without you having to come back two or three times a year and put a full-on effort to say this money is needed in a sustainable way.

I'm also going to be coming back and asking all of you and the work you're doing to help us figure out how we get more people inside the 24-7 kind of shelter that's a bridge.

It's not the end all.

We all know that.

But getting people, and especially as we're talking about the RVs here very soon, I need to have places to put people.

I can't just say it's going to be okay to put them back out on the street.

I look forward to working with you on this too.

I do too.

I appreciate that and Council Member Baggio, I have some ideas that I'm happy to share with you.

Very good, Alison.

Thanks so much.

Okay, that's the end of public comment.

We'll get going into our first item of business.

Alison, if you'd kindly read that in.

Happy to.

Item number one, Council Bill 119603, an ordinance relating to the transfer of city real property for housing development, declaring the property located at 1314, 1326 and 1336 Yakima Ave South, surplus to the city's needs.

Very good.

Thank you for that.

Tracy, so glad to see you as always.

And so Emily is not here, but we have the stand in.

So if you'd all introduce yourselves.

Sure, Tracy Bradsliff, Council Central Staff.

Good morning, Erica Malone, Senior Homeownership Specialist with the Office of Housing.

Thank you.

Good morning, Jennifer Lobrek, Office of Housing.

Great.

Thank you so much, and in advance, for this great project that you're bringing forward to us.

So, disposition of Yakima Avenue and the new townhomes.

Great, so we are here today to talk with you about disposition of the Yakima property for the creation of permanently affordable home ownership.

This is an exciting project that uses publicly owned land to advance affordable housing in the city.

And as you know, this is one of many actions that the mayor is taking this summer to advance housing, affordable housing for low and middle income households.

And at that point, I'm going to turn it over to Erica to talk more about the property and the disposition process.

Very good.

Thank you.

So we have come several times before you with this property and today are sort of closing the final loop and moving towards disposition.

Just a quick reminder, reorientation, here's a zoomed out map of the property location.

just north of I-90, west of MLK, and east of 32nd, in the Leschi neighborhood adjacent to Judkins Park, and a very short walk to the soon-to-be opening in 2023 Judkins Park light rail station.

So we're really excited about that.

As you recall, this is a piece of property that's been owned by the city for many years under the jurisdiction of FAS on the corner here of Yakima Avenue, South and South Irving Street.

We first presented to the council back in 2016 after FAS circulated the excess property notice to all the city departments.

Office of Housing was the only department that expressed interest.

With council direction, we published a request for interest to gauge whether or not permanently affordable home ownership or affordable home ownership would be feasible on this site.

Turns out that it is.

And we returned in 2017 with the draft public involvement process, which is now complete, and with council direction again issued a request for proposals.

Through that RFP process, Office of Housing selected a joint proposal submitted by Homestead Community Land Trust and Edge Developers.

Originally, OH had determined or estimated, rather, that there'd be between seven and nine townhomes built on the site.

The selected developer was really creative with the site and is now able to put 16 townhomes on that piece of property.

Erica, do we know what the score footage is, more or less, of these?

Of the homes themselves?

Yes.

Great question.

I think probably about 1,200 square feet.

I think that we can get back to you on that specifically.

I think we've got a wave back there.

Go ahead and speak up.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So there will be 10 of these 16 townhomes, 10 of them will be permanently affordable, affordable prices to households making at or below 80% of area median income.

And six of the homes will be market rate.

All of the net sales proceeds will go to subsidize those affordable homes.

And we're working through Homestead, the land trust.

So would you just give us a quick example.

So a family comes to you and wants to buy this.

How do they, how does that, what's that next process?

How do they find out about it?

How do the loans work?

How do the financing and how do you keep them and retain them?

as permanently affordable?

Yeah, so Homestead is engaged in partnership with Africatown Community Land Trust to do a broad affirmative fair marketing effort with the hope that folks will, who have maybe even been displaced from the neighborhood, be able to return.

Homestead also has an applicant pool of 400 households who are income eligible and ready to buy.

So They would find out about the opportunity through Homestead, apply to Homestead to determine income eligibility.

And then they get a mortgage from a conventional lender.

that's a monthly cost that they can afford.

And the home prices, the 270 to 290, is what is affordable to a household of three or four at about 65 to 70% area median income.

So they would go through sort of a normal, if you will, home buying process.

And Homestead will retain ownership of the land.

have a 99-year ground lease with the homeowner.

The city's regulatory agreement will be for 50 years, deeming those homes to be resale-restricted, but because of Homestead's long-term affordability model, it will be affordable for much longer, serving low-income households for generations to come.

And as you're talking about Africatown, will individuals who have been displaced from the neighborhood have any first priority to come back?

How are you making sure that that's fair?

Great question.

So the Office of Housing, along with the Office for Civil Rights, are working on a community preference policy, or guidance rather, that will inform this process as well.

And I think the details have yet to be determined.

the hope is that there will be some priority for folks who have been displaced with historic ties to the neighborhood.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So at the time of resale, if a family, when or if a household is ready to resell, they do so at a price that's affordable to the next buyer, taking with them some of the equity that is accrued, but not at the expense of pricing out the next homeowner.

So the resale formula that's embedded in the ground lease is to balance the need for stability, security, equity for today's home buyer while offering that same opportunity to households in the future.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Like you said, the location is so perfect for families next to the park and with light rail coming in in just a couple of years now.

three or four years.

It'll be faster before we know it.

So the legislation quickly just does two things, mostly, asking for a jurisdictional transfer from FAS to the Office of Housing and authorizing the director of the Office of Housing to enter into a purchase and sale agreement with the developer.

The transfer would take place at such time that the developer has all necessary permits and ready to go forward with construction and they're in the permitting process right now.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

Colleagues, do you have any questions?

Please.

Thank you.

Less of a question and more of a thank you.

I want to thank Chair Bagshaw for taking some of the items that We had been working on and including them in your agenda.

I know your agenda's packed.

This is a really exciting opportunity, though, for us, and I want to sort of frame it up and elevate some of the things that you talked about.

The 90-year lease, the ability for people to actually have access to home ownership opportunities.

If you look at the slide, I think it was slide two or slide three that shows the broadened out map and the area that we're talking about, this is an access to high opportunity neighborhood and relatively expensive as well.

So when we talk about offering homes to people in the 270 and less than $300,000 range, that's an incredible, incredible opportunity for families.

that have really been priced out of this market.

When the average cost of a home in this city is around $720,000, $740,000, even in the area just south of this in Columbia City and the south end, we think of it as being, quote, more affordable and it's still an average cost of $650,000.

that is so out of reach for families.

So this in combination with the affirmative marketing and the way in which we've engaged with our nonprofit developers around community preference and other ways around the city, I think this is a great asset to bring forward.

And it could be seen as a routine transfer, but I think it's really an opportunity for us to show what it looks like to have a proactive project, cooperative partnership with the Office of Housing as we create more home ownership opportunities around the city, so thank you for allowing us to have this conversation in your committee, and I really think it's exciting also to look at the proximity to the parks as we create this density, which we want density, density, density, to continue to create density around parks because this will be folks' new backyards and new places for kiddos to grow and seniors to enjoy their retirement.

So I'm very excited about this work, and I want to say thanks for the incredible work.

Tracy, you've been working with us for a long time on this as well.

and thank you for having this in your committee today, Council Member.

Thank you, and if I could add just one thing around green space.

We are, based upon just looking down at the photographs, we're taking out a lot of trees to put in this, and I just want to acknowledge the fact that we are reducing the existing canopy, and I'm hopeful that as Office of Housing is doing the designs and overseeing that, please make sure that we are getting as many trees back in and good size trees.

So I know I teasingly say to people sometimes St. John's Wort doesn't count, you know, it's green, it's on the sidewalk, but I'm really looking to put back some of the street trees all around the area, just makes it a nicer place, but also helps us keep the numbers up as far as the trees were taken out.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Do you mind zooming back out to that slide that shows the broader picture of the land real quick?

Yes.

Yes.

And can you point to us if you can where Judkins Park is?

Just directly south west.

You can see the little green sort of triangle there, or rectangle.

So I think that's important also just to note in the context of not just creating opportunity for opportunity's sake and creating equity so people can get out of generational poverty, but that map really illustrates the past areas that had been previously redlined.

The homes that are situated in and around Judkins Park were previously redlined neighborhoods.

So it's interesting to think about the work that we're doing now in comparison to what we're trying to do to move forward.

Redlining, the discriminatory mortgage lending, racially restrictive covenants, and even all-out exclusion ordinances had previously precluded people from living in and around these areas, including Native American population explicitly.

So I just I wanted to call that out as a way for us to right historic wrongs and to be really explicit when we're doing so that this isn't just a nice to-do it's the right thing to do to fix those past practices and maybe we can talk a little bit more about that on Monday when you bring this forward but I think that that's really helpful to have that map so we appreciate it.

Thank you.

So does this come forward this Monday?

It's a week from.

It's going to be after recess.

Okay.

We've got time then.

Assuming I'll be around.

You're going to be around.

Another six weeks.

Great.

Any other comments or questions on this?

So again, this is a fantastic tool in our toolbox.

And I know that sometimes we look at this and we're just like, oh, it's so slow.

But if you look at how many units that we have brought on board in the last decade, it is life-changing for the families.

It's also really improving and making our city a more equitable place to be.

So I want to say thank you both for your good work.

So if there are no other comments, I would move that we pass Council Bill 119603. Second.

Anything else?

Okay.

It's been moved and seconded.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

None opposed.

No abstentions.

Good job.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Tracy.

Okay.

As we just said, it's passed and it will go forward in September after our break.

Okay.

So would you read item two in, please?

Happy to.

And have our presenters please come on up to the table.

Item number two, Council Bill 119574, an ordinance authorizing in 2019 acceptance of funding from a non-city sources, authorizing the heads of Executive Department, Seattle Police Department, and Seattle City Light, and the Department of Parks and Recreation to accept specified grants, private funding, and subsidized loans to execute, deliver, and perform corresponding agreements.

And colleagues, we have five council bills that we're going to review and consider.

This first one is the grant acceptance ordinance.

We talked about this at our last meeting.

These are grants that come from outside.

And they come to various departments, but we have to accept them officially.

So I think they're both, thank you for being here.

Tom and Lisa will go through and explain what they are.

This is routine.

We do this annually.

So thank you if you want to dive in.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I am Tom Mikesell with your council central staff.

And as the Chair mentioned, the first item that we have today is the Grant Acceptance Ordinance.

So this, as stated, formally accepts grants.

We need to accept them before we spend them, and this does that.

And we provided a memo which covers this piece of legislation as well as other topics on today's agenda.

There is one amendment that has been submitted for this piece of legislation which refers to Some technical corrections identified by the city budget office after it was introduced And I Great yes, so The first there are there are two different so it's one amendment that accepts two different grants one is I should actually refer to the actual amendment $225,000 from Amazon that goes to the Department of Parks and Recreation Fund.

So this one was actually included in the supplemental budget, which is later on in the discussion today.

But we have to accept it so we can spend it.

And this is for scholarships, as I understand, for summer camp, for kids that wouldn't be able to otherwise go.

Correct.

Correct.

And so that's $225,000 to the Park and Recreation Fund.

The other one is a Transportation Improvement Board grant that is $500,000 going to provide age-friendly streetscape in the Delridge neighborhood.

This one is not actually in the supplemental.

This will be, once it's received, they'll include it in a future supplemental budget adjustment according to CBO.

However, we do need to formally accept the grant to be in compliance with the TIB process.

Okay, very good.

Colleagues, do you have any questions about this?

It's fairly simple routine.

I don't have any reason to think that we shouldn't.

accept the grants.

So two things, one is we're going to move to accept and assuming it passes, we are going to have a second motion that will allow us to bring it forward next Monday at full committee, because it's really important that we have the money in order to spend it.

Okay, so if we have no other questions, then I would move to pass Council Bill 119574. Sorry, okay, so the amendment that we have here is, so it's a grant acceptance for this addition to the other grants we've already discussed, so I would like to move amendment one for 119574. Second.

All those in favor, oh, just the amendment, say aye.

Aye.

Okay, none opposed, no abstentions.

So now we have this amended grant in front of us, and I would like to move council bill 119574 as amended.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Okay.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

None opposed.

No abstentions.

So that will move forward.

So now that this is passed, I would like to move that we have a special recognition that this will come forward this Monday, August 12th for review and approval by the council.

Okay.

Second.

All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Good.

None opposed.

No abstentions.

So we will bring that item in front of full council on Monday.

Thank you, Tom.

Thank you, Allison, for reminding me about that.

Okay.

Item number three.

Thank you.

Item number three, Council Bill 119575, an ordinance amending Ordinance 125724, which adopted the 2019 budget, including the 2019-2024 CIP, changing appropriations to various departments and budget control levels and from various funds in the budget.

Very good.

So we're going to be spending a little more time on this one than our other items, because we're going through one by one, and then with the amendments that we've brought forward.

OK, Tom, do you want to explain this to us?

Great.

Yes, so Lisa handed you a copy of the memo that was distributed, because it'll help orient as we walk through the amendments.

This is the only other piece of legislation with amendments.

just in terms of orienting, we will start the amendments on page 2 of 19. So it's essentially the, after we move past the grants, it's the third piece of paper in the memo.

I'm sorry, yes.

And so there, thank you, Allison.

So there are a It would be on one of 19, great correction.

And this is again, and kind of to preface, the City Budget Office and their departmental colleagues are doing this in their new budget system for the first time.

So I think that's kind of the reason that there are a number of technical adjustments that they have sent to us.

And so the first three ones that we'll be talking are technical in nature, sent to us by the City Budget Office.

All right.

And also in this technical amendment, I think we've changed the name of the fund.

So it had previously been Key Arena Fund and now it's Seattle Center Fund.

That's exactly correct.

Very good.

And so that's the change, is it changes the fund title and the BCL where the money goes.

Otherwise, there's no substantive change.

And that is Amendment 1A in the packet.

Okay, so we're going to go through these individually.

Any questions on this?

All right, then I'm going to move that we accept Amendment 1A.

This is a technical adjustment regarding the Seattle Center Fund.

Second.

Okay, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

None opposed, no abstentions.

Okay, this passes.

Amendment 1A, the technical adjustment fund.

Good.

All right, Tom, please keep going on to 1B.

Okay, so 1B is on page 2 of 19. In a similar vein, this is a technical correction.

In this particular case, it's correcting section 11 of the supplemental bill.

It's aligning the position totals in the table in section 11 with the other elements of the supplemental where where there's either appropriations provided or other elements of the ads discussed.

So what this does is it increases the position table by 1.5 position totals in the Department of Human Resources for positions to provide work supporting HR.

It also adds language that allows the Department of Human Resources or so the Human Resources Department Director to hire these positions, which is a technical requirement for this type of an ad.

Okay.

Any other questions?

It seems pretty perfunctory, correct?

There's nothing here that we need to be concerned about.

All right, then I'm going to move Amendment 1B.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

None opposed.

This motion, this amendment passes.

Thank you.

If you want to proceed to 1C.

Okay, so 1C is on page 4 of 19. And similar, this goes in the other direction.

It updates that position table, which deals with the exempt position category.

It actually removes a position, one position from that table, correcting the total from four to three.

Again, it's under the same technical adjustments identified by CBO after introduction.

Okay.

Very good.

Any questions?

All right.

Once again, this is an amendment that provides technical change to the positions in our Human Services Department.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

None opposed.

No abstentions.

This amendment 1C passes.

So moving through the agenda, so now we are dealing with council proposed amendments.

Amendment two, it deals with the Central Area Community Preservation Development Authority.

proposed by Council President Harrell.

I'm sorry, Madam Chair, for some reason the printout that we have doesn't have the full title on the top here.

Can you tell me what page we're talking about?

5 of 19. Okay, for some reason mine printed with a half a title.

So thank you for just keeping me updated.

That happened to me all morning.

I almost killed the printer.

Oh, I got a new copy.

Thank you so much.

No worries.

I'm following along.

I got you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Please continue.

So this amendment, so green sheet 13-4B-1 from 2019. It creates a set money in finance general and the general fund for a feasibility study to form a new central area community preservation and development authority.

It's much as funds from the state and from the county, totaling $250,000 for support initial planning and outreach work.

And what this amendment does is it moves the money from Finance General to the Legislative Department to engage in that work.

So there's no additional money, it's just a transfer?

Zero net increase, just a transfer.

Very good.

Any questions?

So I will move amendment number two, which is our Central Area Community Preservation and Development Authority.

Second.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

None opposed.

Thank you.

This amendment passes.

So the next one is our Downtown Emergency Services Center nurse.

If you'd like to introduce it, Tom, I'd like to say just a few words about it.

Okay, so what this amendment does is it does not add to the budget.

It redirects some salary, some budget savings within the Addressing Homelessness BSL.

It directs $44,000 through a proviso to provide medical care during evening or overnight hours at a shelter for people experiencing homelessness and is proposed by the chairman, Madam Chair.

And because it is just repurposing funds that are existing, it is a net zero increase.

Great.

Thank you very much.

This is a really important step that follows on the work that we did with our first responder, HealthONE.

last year.

One of the things that we know is that in the shelters there are people who need immediate medical attention, but they don't need a trip to Harborview, the $2,000 trip as we refer to it.

We have people that are available.

DESC has somebody that is on staff during most days, but they've recognized that having somebody who is available in the evening will really reduce the number of calls.

Our fire department first responders fully support this.

We had $44,000, $44,400 last year that we had budgeted and passed for hand-washing stations, but interestingly enough, neither parks nor Seattle Public Utilities felt like it was something they wanted to pursue because it really would be temporary.

They were concerned that it really wasn't solving the problem, so nobody picked up the money, so I grabbed it back.

So we're going to apply that for this nurse till the end of the year.

And I want to say thank you to Mayor Durkan because not only does she concur with this, she told me that she will put money in her budget to continue it.

And the delight is, is that other organizations are seeing this as real money savers because we don't have our firefighters having to respond with two trucks, eight firefighters to take care of one person.

We were really able to use the nurse to help us through that.

Union Gospel Mission came and said the same thing they're interested in having on site.

It'll reduce the number of calls there too.

So thank you for setting this up.

Do you have anything else you'd like to add?

Yes, Madam Chair, thank you.

Just one minor change.

It's just purely technical to ensure this orients to our accounting system.

In the budget summary level BCO code column, the fund was left out.

So where it says, instead of, so essentially the voice amendment is instead of BO, dash HS dash H3000 use 00100 dash BO dash HS dash H3000.

So it's just an accountant thing.

Thank you.

Thank you for doing that.

Goodness knows I never would have picked that up.

So I appreciate your help.

So now we have Amendment 3. that will provide this $44,400 for an emergency services nurse.

And we've got the correct numbers here under the BCL code.

So I'd like to move that we pass amendment number three.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

None.

So we'll move forward with that.

Thank you very much.

And thank you, central staff, for helping us identify that source.

So appreciate it.

Okay, Amendment 4 is our LEAD, Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Database.

If you'd like to introduce it, I have a few things I'd like to add as well.

Thank you.

essentially transfers $137,000 from the general fund to the Seattle IT department to hire temporary staff on a short-term basis to work on the lead database in essence.

Good.

And we had Tracy, Tim, and Katrina this morning from LEAD speak to it.

I don't think, oh, they are still here.

At least somebody's still here.

Thank you very much.

And Jesse's here, too.

Thank you.

Good to see you again.

Welcome home.

I just want to acknowledge how important LEAD is, and we know that this harm reduction model is something that is working, it's getting international attention, and at the same time we continue to hear, well, We're not sure about the outcomes, that hundreds of people are engaged in this, but there is concern that we're not getting the results, or at least we're not seeing the results, and that sometimes case managers don't get hooked up with individuals.

Police are sometimes confused about if an individual's involved in the program, and there's further concerns, what they can do.

So I think this database is something that everybody is asking for.

We want to see it move forward.

Again, I want to acknowledge our King County prosecuting attorney, Dan Satterberg, for his work and help in this.

And this is a real creative effort to try to get people who are currently unhoused or are finding themselves with drug addiction, with low-level prostitution, finding just a difficulty in living, that this is one way our city is able to put our arms around them, help improve conditions for them and for the streets in which they are living.

So I am a huge fan of LEAD, want to see us move forward with this, and this will give us some additional money of $137,102 to help with the administration within our IDT our information IT, Seattle IT department, to help them coordinate the work with the grants that the LEAD program has already accomplished.

So with that, I would like to move amendment number four.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

No abstention.

And we have no amendment on that one, right?

Okay, so amendment four passes.

Let's move on to AIDS Memorial Pathway, and I can speak to this as well.

Okay, just for purposes of orientation, this is on page 8 of 19.

Thank you for that, Tom.

That's really helpful.

So what this does is it appropriates $100,000 from the general fund of the Department of Neighborhoods to support the AIDS Memorial Pathway Phase 2 Narratives Project.

Very good.

So I want to extend thanks to Council Member Herbold, who has been working with me on this.

And our former colleague, Council Member Tom Rasmussen, is leading this, or co-chairing, on Capitol Hill.

I met with him and Michelle Hasson recently.

This is going to recognize many of the personal stories of all of the both the impact on the Capitol Hill community with those who have AIDS and HIV AIDS.

This is a phased project that will be up near Cal Anderson Park.

So I think that just recognizing the trauma Those folks who have survived this terrible disease and the impact on the community, this is an opportunity for us just to recognize what the community has gone through and many of the stories where people have prevailed.

So I'm supportive of this.

We're going to be putting in $100,000 to let them move forward now, not wait until the end of the year.

And I believe that the mayor's office is also supportive and will add that to her budget.

Good, any comments?

Okay, very good.

Do you have something?

A slight note in the narrative, it says 75,000, so just note that it is 100,000 as the actual amendment says above.

In the effect box, it said $75,000.

I found out that we would have access to $100,000 working with Ben Noble, so we just wanted to make sure that the project could move forward.

So with that, then amendment number five, I would like to move to pass this today.

Okay, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

None opposed.

No abstentions.

Thank you for that.

And again, thank you to Councilman, former Councilmember Tom Rasmussen, Michelle Hasson, and all those that are supporting this project.

Okay, amendment number six is a proviso on funds that are provided for human services contracts and Councilmember Muscated, this is yours.

Tom, do you want to introduce it?

Right.

Yes, so this is on page 9 of 19. And what this does, this does not result in a net budget increase.

It just establishes a proviso on a $268,299 in the human services department in the general fund.

And it restricts those funds for use to support human services contract provider inflationary increases for those contracts that are not supported by the general fund.

That's okay.

I want to first thank you for your leadership and your support as we've been working to get the HSD inflationary adjustment included not just in one year's budget but to have the base legislation.

You've been very supportive and also have asked all of the right questions about making sure that we are looking at continuity and stability for the fund.

I'm very excited about the work that the community has done.

It's been a 10-year effort as we've heard over the last year or so that people have been asking for this inflationary adjustment to be included.

So we're really excited to bring this forward.

We've talked a lot about this over the last year, so I won't go into the details, but this really is exciting to be able to make sure that with this small set of, there was a set aside that we had excluded for a small set of contracts for various reasons last year, which was approximately $268,000 that was unused.

So the exciting part is that we're able to now apply this to the HSC contracts going forward and ensure that the legislation as desired is applied to the CPI increases for the provider contracts and at the same time reaffirm our commitment for the work that these organizations do, the workers who are conducting the services and the critical social safety net that they provide to those who are unsheltered, who are elders, who are youth, who are experiencing domestic violence, sexual assault survivors, and more.

So just a huge amount of appreciation for their ongoing presence here today and over the last year and a half, plus 10 years.

Thank you for that.

Any further comments?

Then I'm going to move we adopt amendment number six.

Okay.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

None opposed.

No abstentions.

Thank you very much.

Amendment six passes.

So amendment number seven is the Highland Park intersection improvements.

I know this is Council Member Herbold with support from Council Member Gonzalez as well.

So page 10 of 19 amendment 7 does not affect the current year's budget.

It does make changes to the CIP and it includes attachments of those changes.

It updates the title and description of the Highland Park Intersection Improvement CIP project to reflect the design options under consideration by the Seattle Department of Transportation and the community.

So Department of Transportation or SDOT has identified 300,000 of local matching funds to support state grant applications anticipated for this year.

The amendment shows the local match and potential grants in 2020 and it shows a decrease in the Vision Zero CIP project.

Okay.

I don't think there's much here that we need to discuss.

As you said, it is an effort to improve the neighborhoods.

It has been planned.

It's gone through various community processes, and it is a Vision Zero.

capital project.

So any further questions?

And you're a West Seattleite, too, so you're probably supporting this, too.

Okay, if there's no further questions, I'd like to move Amendment 7. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

None opposed.

No abstentions.

Okay, next item is attachment 8, and we do have another one of these budget number changes that I might as well bring up in the BSL.

Yeah, so if I could, so attachment A, I'm sorry, were you referring?

We're moving.

So those were actually just the CIP project pages.

So if we move to page 15 of 19, we'll get to the next, because those attachments were associated with that.

Okay, good.

I have amendment 8 here that there was another change.

Okay, that is correct.

I can cover that.

So Amendment 8 on page 15 of 19.

This is our elevator.

Do we still have our University Heights people here?

Great.

OK.

This is yours.

So this appropriates $125,000 from the general fund to allow the Department of Neighborhoods to support accessibility improvements to the nonprofit community center that provides multiple arts, cultural, and educational groups with free and reduced rental space.

It would be supplemental to a State Department of Commerce grant and private donations to construct the elevator at that site.

Very good.

And did you want to have us change the BSL, the BCL code on this one?

Yes.

So I think that we all have an attachment here.

And instead of B-O-D-N-1-3-3-0-0, use 0-0-1-0-0.

How do we do?

Okay, very good.

So that'll be added to budget eight.

I mean, amendment eight under the budget summary level.

And I just want to speak very briefly to this.

I think council colleagues during public comment, A number of these folks in these lovely black shirts out there spoke very articulately about the need for the elevator to provide access.

And this is not only an ADA-approved, but just from all ages and abilities that we are promoting, making sure that buildings like this, which are such a community gem, have access and are available to...

You talked about the grandparents that want to come and see the concerts or to see the dance recitals.

So I'm a fan of this.

I would like to move forward with amendment number eight.

Okay, all those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Oh, Abel, did you want to speak to it because it's your district?

One, I didn't want to speak to it, but two, I wanted to clarify with you, Madam Chair, because one, my district office is inside the University Heights Center.

Do I abstain?

No, you're fine.

No, but I do want to speak to the University Heights Center.

The University Heights Center is not just where it's been a community treasure for District 4, but also for Northeast Seattle.

And so I've, this is one of the first requests that we had received in our office with regards to the importance of it.

And so I'm really excited to support this and thank Council Member Mosqueda as well for her work on this too.

Right, and during public comment, one of our speakers talked about a little girl who was in a program and couldn't get up on the lift because the lift was broken and had to literally crawl up the stairs multiple times.

I mean, it just breaks your heart to even imagine that vision.

We're moving forward with this.

I'll take a vote again.

Abel, thank you for speaking.

Council Member Musqueda, do you have some other comments?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just want to, again, thank you for the opportunity to include this in the supplemental budget.

We've been trying to go out to each district to corresponding with the month of the year so we were in d4 for Month four and had the chance to meet with the folks at University Heights then and heard about the need for this lift Well for a actual elevator to be included at University Heights and I was really excited to help work with them and the I'm now new representative of District 4 to be able to bring this amendment forward.

I think what's important to note as well is that we're working in partnership with some of our state partners and our local community partners.

They've raised 70% of their campaign goal of the 700,000 that's needed.

And they just have a little bit left to raise.

So this is an incredibly important way for us to be a good partner from the city to the state, with the state and other local partners as well.

And I did have the chance to listen to your testimony.

I was on my way out here and I heard the story about the individual crawling up the stairs, which is just heartbreaking.

Some of the stories that they also mentioned when we were meeting, we're talking about how this is, the lack of an elevator is truly a barrier, not just for people who want to take a class there, but maybe for the grandparents and the parents and the siblings that want to come and watch either the kiddos or the parents who've taken part in some of the amazing classes they have there.

They host over 160 arts.

cultural and education groups each year and are home to the 14 organizations and our good council colleagues office apparently.

So wanting to make sure that it's truly accessible and that it's a community gem that's accessible to the full community.

We're really excited to bring this forward and just want to also underscore our appreciation for the work that they do to make the space affordable at 50 to 70 percent below market rate for these spaces for our community organizations.

to have space in this facility is is such an important asset to an increasingly expensive city including for non-profit organizations given the cost of retail space in this city and applaud them for the work that they did last night.

Council Member Pacheco and I had the opportunity to participate in a community forum about what it looks like to have safe parking lots and why it's so important to have this as an additional tool in our toolkit as we try to address getting folks into safe places to sleep at night if they're unsheltered.

I think they've shown leadership already with the type of work that they do inside the building.

And now they're expressing an interest in showing leadership for how they use their full space outside the building as well and have been inclusive and I think proactive and engaging community on what that looks like and why it's important across the city.

Huge, huge turnout last night.

A standing room in the back only, and I appreciate their leadership and excited about this amendment.

Thank you for that.

Thank you both of you.

And Council Member Pacheco, I just want to say it's been an absolute pleasure working with you since you have been brought on the Council.

I appreciate all you're doing for District 4. Thank you.

Good.

All right.

With that, would you like to move this?

Please.

I move.

Amendment number eight.

Amendment number eight, sorry.

Very good, thank you.

Second, okay, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

None opposed, no abstentions.

So our University Heights Accessibility Improvement has passed and that will go in front of the full committee on Monday.

Good, and congratulations, big thanks to all of you.

All right, amendment number nine is our food bank support.

Amendment number nine is on page 16 of 19. This actually modifies the supplemental ordinance as transmitted, so that piece of legislation included $1.2 million for food bank facility improvements.

What this does is a portion of that was unallocated, and this allocates $85,000 of that amount to provide support to food bank organization benefiting the nutritional needs of low-income people in Northeast Seattle.

All right, very good.

Do we have any comments on this?

Yes, Council Member Pacheco, it's yours.

So, again, this is being in the district and spending my district Fridays.

I came across this request for the U District Food Bank, which does a fantastic job operating with community pantries like these, operating community pantries like these.

And I think that this is just the type of partnership we want to see to increase fresh food access in a place with such limited options like Madison Park.

It's spread between District 4 and District 5. We know it's a food desert, and being able to provide for those low-income families that are in Madison Park is of importance to us as a city, as a community, and I know as a district, so.

Very good.

Any other comments?

All right, would you like to move Amendment 9?

So moved.

Okay, and I'll second.

All those in favor of Amendment Number 9, say yes.

And then opposed?

No abstentions.

All right.

So the Human Services Department will have some additional food bank support in a pretty large amount.

Very good.

So I just want to ask here, we've got 1.7 and then we have 1x.

Do you want to, we're still in amendment number nine, just clarifying page three and how this is working.

Yes, I can speak to that.

So the first step in this is to reduce the bill as proposed by $85,000, which was an existing line of appropriation in that bill.

So it reduces it from 1.2 to 1.115.

And the next step is to add the new appropriation of $85,000, which is added through this amendment.

Okay, so are we actually just transferring funds from one budget item to another?

Essentially, yes, it is budget neutral.

Yeah.

So the originally transmitted supplemental budget put $1.2 million into food banks and left it broad.

So this just appropriates of that $1.2 million, $85,000 of it will be used specifically.

Directly to university?

Yeah.

Okay.

Very good.

And that was out of an unappropriated chunk of money.

So it does not harm the balancing of the budget.

Okay.

Very good.

All right.

Next, we have our Green Janitor Education Program.

This is Amendment 10. Tom, would you introduce it?

And then Council Member Muscat, if you'd like to speak to it.

So, page 17 of 19, this adds $35,000 from the General Fund to the Office of Sustainability and Environment to implement a Green Janitor's Education Program.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member Musqueda.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

First, I want to thank the folks who are here and have been here talking about the importance of the Green Janitor Education Program.

This is an opportunity for us to pilot what it looks like to lead by example outside of just city buildings and to work in partnership with green building owners and with our labor partners I want to thank Karina Bull and Yolanda Ho from our Council Central staff who've been working with our office, with Seattle 2030, with SEIU 6, Puget Sound Stage, and Got Green, who've all helped to bring forward this concept.

You know, Seattle's been a leader in how we institute green building policies internally for a very long time.

the opportunity to lead the nation and establish the municipal green building policy in 2000. We required the city-funded projects and renovations over 5,000 square feet of occupied space achieve LEED silver ratings.

That was a huge, huge win.

And I think that it also was a pat on the back to Seattle for the efforts that we mandated in 2010 to create energy benchmarking.

for reporting on non-residential and multifamily buildings over 20,000 square feet.

And here we are.

We've passed some updates to our ordinance requiring building tune-ups in 2016, and we did some work last year to make sure that our energy efficiency standards were met, especially at Seattle City Light-owned properties.

So we've been a leader in many ways, especially in looking internally at our own buildings, our clean energy standards, and our green building standards.

And the really exciting part about this project is it allows for us to expand that kind of vision to our private sector partners and work in partnership with labor unions and environmentalists, as you heard today from Stephanie Selt, the Blue Green Alliance who works in partnership with environmental justice workers and the labor movement to try to figure out how we can continue to advance this.

So this is a very exciting opportunity for us to train around 30 to 50 janitors in three to four lead buildings in Seattle with a 30-hour curriculum on green cleaning, including energy, water, landfill, and landfill reduction technologies and improve the health and safety of janitorial staff.

I think it's really good that we're moving forward if we are able to today to make sure that we have this pilot up and running this year because if we are able to get this pilot up and running this year and accomplish some really great benchmarks before the end of quarter one, then we can hopefully take it even more to scale next year.

So really excited about being able to follow Los Angeles' lead.

2014 is when they started that program, and already 500 janitors have graduated from the program.

So this is a huge opportunity for us to improve the health and safety of workers and the health and safety of our buildings and meet the goals that we've established for a long time in the city of being a leader on green energy and supporting workers.

I wanna thank especially the Office of Sustainability as they're enthusiastically supportive and appreciate all of the support that we've received from the mayor's office and the agencies as well as we've looked at this through the lens of not just supporting workers, but supporting our entire city's commitment to workers and the environment.

Do we have a similar program internally?

So do we train our own janitors and custodians on this?

Is there somebody from SPU?

I did see you...

I'm sorry to embarrass the folks, but I would love to make sure that we've got a similar program.

We should be leading first by example.

Great, and I will follow up with the Office of Sustainability.

Okay, very good.

Can you just, and of course I'm going to support you in this, but would you describe why we are paying for private employers to do this?

Is it just to encourage them to do it?

Is it as contrasted to saying, thou shalt?

Thank you, Madam Chair, for that.

I do wonder if I might be able to ask our friends who are in the audience who are working on this partnership.

Please ask them to step up to the microphone.

Not to put you all on the spot, but I just deflected that a little bit.

So my question was, we're budgeting $35,000 essentially for the benefit of private employers to train their janitors and custodians in this.

And I'm wondering, is this an appropriate expenditure of broader taxpayer money to give to private businesses and buildings to do this training?

So maybe you can talk about how we're leveraging the money.

Chairman Bagshaw, members of the committee.

Yes, so we see this as a seed to help meet Seattle's goals.

As Council Member Mosqueda said, this is a pilot project that we want to lift up off the ground with plans to sustain the program, move on to private funding and employer-backed training.

And so this is really the the spark that gets that all moving.

Okay, so it really is a pilot that we are helping fund, then we will take that up to scale at another time, is that your intention?

That's my intention, and the combination of looking at Los Angeles example, when they implemented their program in 2014 in Los Angeles, they showed that their green janitor program reduced energy consumption and reduced water use for building owners and has a positive impact on the sustainability of their energy efficiency in the city.

So also wearing my hat as energy chair with Seattle City Light, I think that this is well in alignment with our goals to help building owners who are in the private sector be more efficient with their energy consumption.

And while I don't represent SPU, then that's Council Member Herbold who has water in her committee.

We're all looking for ways to help reduce consumption that might be unnecessary so that we can be better conservationists.

And this is, I think, in line with our good commitment to helping those private partners as well.

Very good.

Thank you for bringing this forward.

Thank you for stepping up to the microphone, too.

Any other questions, comments?

All right, then I will move Amendment 10. Second.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

No.

No abstentions.

Thank you for the Green Janitor Education Program.

Council Member Musqueda for bringing that forward.

Okay, Lisa, thank you for being here and if you will describe Amendment 11 for us.

Sure.

Tom just had to step away for a minute.

Lisa Kay, Central Staff.

Amendment 11 would appropriate $100,000 in general funds to pay for some one-time capital improvements to an organization that provides culturally responsive services to Native and Indigenous communities.

And this is sponsored by Councilwoman Mosqueda.

Very good.

And a couple of questions you and I talked about yesterday.

If you can, Councilmember Mosqueda, Tell us whether you connected with Councilmember Juarez's office if that was possible and then also that this is one time not ongoing.

Yes.

So on the ongoing question, we have amended the amendment for possible consideration today to really focus on just the capital construction projects.

and not the ongoing operating costs.

We do know that there is a robust process that each of our partner organizations go through and while these the Seattle Indians, I'm sorry, the various native groups that we do partner with including Folks at United Indians of all tribes, they do have contracts with HSD.

I think it is important, as you suggested, Madam Chair, to look at the one-time funding, recognizing we don't know what our budget will ultimately look like at the end of this year.

So on the first question you asked about whether or not we had one-time funding here, what you see in front of you is a request for $100,000.

83,000 of that would go to restroom renovations, which includes complete renovation of the men's room downstairs.

and renovations of women room, completion of walk-in freezer and installation, and standing freezer.

That's an example of what potentially could be done if we looked at Daybreak Star, exactly.

There is also an opportunity for us then to look at the $17,000 for appropriate freezers and refrigerators and stoves.

If folks have been to Daybreak Star as an example, They know that it hasn't been updated since the 70s, and it's a really great cultural gem.

Checking in to see if our team had had the chance to talk to Councilmember Juarez, it doesn't sound like we have.

I'm not sure if central staff had the chance to hear that request either, and I apologize for that, but I did not have the chance to do that.

I know it's busy.

I'm going to go out on a limb and believe that Council Member Oras will be supporting this Daybreak Star.

And I will definitely reach out to her immediately after this.

Just let her know that we're moving forward with this.

It's just a request that sometimes I want to make sure that as we're going forward with something like this that the community supports it because we know that there's some folks that might think, well, we're picking favorites here.

From a capital standpoint, Daybreak Star is something that the community is welcome to.

We use it a lot.

I want to acknowledge and thank the work and the fact that they opened that center during all the conversations we had at Fort Lawton.

So I think it's appropriate for us to move forward with these capital investments.

I'm going to support this.

And Council Member Pacheco, do you have any other questions?

Yeah, please.

Council Member, in the effect, it still says it's ongoing support.

Is it your intent for it to be one time?

It is my intent for it to be one time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for noticing that.

And should we just strike an ongoing and provide?

I'd say one time.

Okay.

To provide one time support.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Do we need an amendment?

Do we need to amend the amendment or is this, since this is in the effect box that you can just fix it before Monday?

I mean, the amendment will still be the same to the bill.

I think the kind of the voice comment about how the effects change should be sufficient.

Okay.

Thank you for catching that.

I just want to say one more thing.

I think it is so appropriate, Madam Chair, that you asked us to reach out to Council Member Juarez.

As we were talking about the Discovery Park creation and the creation of Daybreak Center, for example, She had a pivotal role in the creation of that cultural gem, so we will definitely reach out to her and want to acknowledge all of her work on that.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Okay, one more, Lisa.

With your permission, Madam Chair and Councilwoman Mosqueda, we're doing some further investigation to make sure we have the right budget summary level on this one.

Oh, yeah, okay.

Very good.

So you can just present that on Monday in front of full council.

Thank you very much for tracking that.

Allison, for catching the one time, that's really, I think it's important.

Thank you for acknowledging the work that Council Member Juarez has been doing too.

Appreciate this.

Okay.

As amended, one time capital funding that will be used for such things, but we're not necessarily tying their hands to this, but it's restroom renovation.

kitchen renovation, and they will come back to us with a list, so it's not like we're handing them a check.

Okay then I will move amendment number 11. Second.

Okay all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

None opposed.

No abstention.

Thank you very much for that.

Okay I think that there's going to be a change in amendment 12 and I'll let you speak to that and then I'm going to add some things too.

Excellent.

Well thank you Madam Chair.

Do you want to brief us on what item number 12 was and then maybe I could if that's okay.

It's about to be pulled so we don't have to go too far on it.

Sure.

This amendment is going to add $400,000 to the Human Services Department from the general fund to provide a public facing dashboard of metrics for investments in homelessness.

Very good.

So would you like to explain what your intentions are and what is going to happen going forward?

Yes.

So, again, thanks, Madam Chair, for your leadership, not only in this committee, but your leadership on the Select Committee on Housing and Homelessness.

Over the last eight months, we've really been talking about the desire to see apples to apples data points, recognizing Sometimes data can be used in a punitive way, especially for our organizations who are trying to serve a really diverse and hard-to-serve population.

We don't want data to be misused, but we also want to have apples-to-apples comparison month over month to see how we're doing as a city.

Part of the conversation we've had with the public with our community partners and with the press has been to say we are doing a really good job in many ways of trying to serve individuals with the services that we have.

And we know there's still 5,500 unsheltered folks outside who don't have a place to sleep inside each night.

And trying to get them into shelter or a safe place has been very challenging.

If we look at just one data point, being that last time we've asked I'm sorry, the number of vacancies a month on average, we know there's only five to six enhanced shelter beds open a night, which helps put in perspective why folks see so many people sleeping outside.

I would love to have a month over month data set that combines all home data, Seattle, HSD data that we currently receive, and to couple that with potentially what we've heard from community partners about what could be more appropriate ways to measure success, such as was somebody able to stay with their case manager?

Were kiddos able to stay in the same school?

Were people able to access their medication if they needed to or get their health card?

Some of those things we've heard from community partners are a more accurate representation of the types of services they provide.

And importantly, on the prevention side too, how many people were allowed to stay in their home or their apartment without getting evicted because they got maybe just $200 that month and didn't get kicked out onto the street?

I don't pretend to have the exact formula.

We've suggested about 15 metrics to our city partners and in recognition that the city is working in conjunction with the county to create the regional access plan that is forthcoming.

We've heard from our county partners that they would like to continue to pursue this idea but need a little bit additional time.

My hope would have been that this work would have started in December when we started asking for it.

I will be pulling this amendment today with the recognition that the regional access plan will come to us for consideration in September.

And I think that while there is some numbers of vacancies that have allowed for us to identify a $400,000 bucket, what I'm hoping folks will do in the future with your support is that we can continue to direct either the regional entity or our city partners to really incorporate more of these community-driven data metrics.

and that we can have a visual dashboard that's presented to us month after month that uses the same type of measurements so that we have the same methodology applied each month so we're not actually scrambling to compare numbers that might not be apples to apples and so while we're not potentially moving forward this amendment today the desire is still there our pulling of this does not should not indicate that we're not interested in this type of coordinated data across the county and across the city and for that data at some point in the very near future, hopefully before the end of the year, to include those metrics that we've heard from community partners are so desperately needed to more accurately reflect the type of services.

and the need for more services out there so that we're able to appropriately direct appropriations in the future where we need to scale up or maybe where we've seen something work really well at how we're doubling down.

So I will be pulling this amendment today.

All right.

Well, thank you for that.

And I also, I want to appreciate the fact both of what you're trying to accomplish and the fact that we did get this early memo this morning from Ben Noble and from Jason Johnson.

I got an email from Meg also that just said we've got a lot going on.

All Home has a program performance metric that they're building.

It's taken them 18 months to build out what they've got.

I want us to build on that and add the kinds of things and the criteria that you're talking about.

And I also, one of the things that I've been struggling with, with some of our partners, we need to be able to identify individuals and be able to make sure that individual by individual, they're getting the help they need.

Other cities have done this through a form of ID, and we're not trying to be Big Brother.

We're trying to make sure that the individuals who are out there are getting what they need.

And that is a bit of a side from your dashboard, but to make this effective, and as our regional partnership is coming together, I think we've got some new opportunities to build on what we've got, not start over, but at the same time be a lot more effective.

So thank you.

Thank you for pulling it.

I know that hurt, but I appreciate you doing that.

I'll ask for that memo.

I actually didn't receive a copy of that.

I think it just flowed in this morning about 8.30.

So I appreciate that.

And then we'll work with you, Council Member or Madam Chair, so that we can follow up on this, whether it's in this committee or whether it's in our new regional governance entity.

I really appreciate your support for the action that we're calling for.

Right.

Very good.

Okay.

So that's pulled.

Now, we have just gone through a number of amendments, and I think we Allison, go ahead.

I was just going to remind you as when you're making the motion to refer it to Monday.

Very good.

And we've already said we were going to do that, right?

Not every single amendment?

Every single bill, because we did that.

Oh, fine.

Okay.

Very good.

Thank you.

So we are now at Council Bill 119575. And we've had multiple amendments that have been moved and passed.

And do we move first to put it forward to the committee on Monday?

All right, so I'm going to move that we agree on a special fast track schedule to move this amendment for our budget and with the additional amendments to full committee this Monday.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

None opposed.

No abstentions.

So we will go forward.

Now we're going to move to pass 119575 as amended.

All right.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

I know I'm not opposed, and we have no abstentions, so that will go forward to our full committee on Monday.

Thank you so much for your patience and your work through on this.

Okay, item number four, 119572, would you like to read that in for us?

Thank you.

Item number four, Council Bill 119572, an ordinance amending Ordinance 125493, which amended the 2018 budget, including the 2018-2023 CIP.

Very good.

Okay, Tom, you're on.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So this is a sort of a technical piece of legislation.

What this refers to is the 2018 year-end exceptions.

So by law, we are required to, expenditures need to be below the level of budget authority, and in the abundant level of cases, that is the case.

However, there are some rare exceptions, and what this ordinance does is retroactively increases the 2018 budgeted appropriation to provide the authority for those rare exceptions to go under the threshold.

Okay, very good.

Anything specific, these are pass-throughs in most cases?

In most cases, so it's a The total impact is $13 million.

The largest, the lion's share of that is in the Customer Request Attendant Improvement Program in FAS, which is just passed through authority for FAS to do work on the behalf of other departments.

If that work has already been done, the money has already been spent, this just increases, it essentially corrects for something that would have been done in the fourth quarter supplemental, however it was missed.

So it's very technical.

Is there anybody else that needs to speak to this or are we good?

There's no amendments.

as discussed prior in the committee.

Okay, any further questions Council Member Miscada?

So I will move Council Bill 119572. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

We missed one here but we still have a majority and we're passing.

Very good, thank you.

So item number five.

Madam Chair, if I could.

So Lisa just pointed out that we didn't actually suspend the rules on that one.

And we, I think the intent is to discuss on Monday as well, the exceptions on Monday.

So we're going to be doing that.

I will move on this item number four to suspend the rules to allow us to put it forward on Monday, August 12th.

All right.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Thank you.

None opposed.

Thank you for that.

Thank you for keeping us on track.

Item number five, Council Bill 119576, an ordinance amending Ordinance 125724, which adopted the 2019 budget, including the 2019-2024 CIP.

Okay, very good.

So, will we continue on item number five?

So, the Council Bill 11957, is it 576?

So this is the Capital and Grants Abandonments Ordinance.

So it's in the similar vein as the exceptions.

In some cases, departments recognize that their appropriation authority is no longer necessary for a variety of technical reasons, and this is just their request to decrease the authority to match what their needs truly are.

It doesn't happen very often, but in this particular case, our budget is being reduced.

Yes.

Very good.

All right, any questions?

We went through this pretty.

So yeah, so we need to move to suspend this one as well.

As well.

So shall we do that first?

So I will move to suspend our rules that will allow us to put this forward to full council on Monday the 12th.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

None opposed.

Thank you for that.

Now we will move item number five.

I will move 119576. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

None opposed.

No abstentions.

Thank you for that very much.

So now we're moving off of budget.

All of those.

We still have one more.

We still have one more.

Item number six.

Item number six.

Almost, I was so excited.

Council Bill 119573, amending the ordinance 125724, which adopted the 2019 budget, including the 2019-2024 CIP.

All right, so shall we first move to suspend the rules, see if we've got this right yet?

So I will move to suspend the rules to allow Council Bill 119573, if it passes, to full council on Monday.

All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

All right.

Please speak to Council Bill 119573. Thank you, Madam Chair.

So this is the 2019 carry forward appropriation.

So what this does is in some cases there was appropriation authority that was provided in 2018. However, the work that that authority was provided for was not complete.

There is still cash available.

However, departments need the authorization from council in order to spend that to complete that work.

So in a nutshell, that's what this does is it moves the money and the appropriation from 2018 to 2019 to complete those projects.

All right.

Very good.

Thank you.

We talked about this last week as well.

These were items that were budgeted.

We're just moving the authority to pay for what's already been done.

We have 14 pages of this.

Correct.

Good.

And I don't think we need to go through it again since we went through it at the last meeting unless you've got any particular questions.

All right.

So this has already been approved that we suspend the rules.

And if we are ready for the vote, I'd like to move committee pass.

Council Bill 119573. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

None opposed.

No abstentions.

Thank you.

All right.

I think we are now able to move on to our last item on our budget.

Item number seven.

Item seven, prohibiting predatory renting of extensively damaged vehicles.

No vote on this.

but we're gonna get our first briefing.

May I invite folks to come up?

Eric, Jeff, oh good, Tess, everybody?

Oh, please, please.

Item number seven, extensively damaged motor vehicles ordinance briefing, briefing and discussion.

Nice, nice to see all our friends coming up.

We could, it probably would have been simpler if we just came out to you, since we got half the audience moved up.

Do you wanna come join us?

Ah, come on, we love SBU, okay.

Very good.

Jeff, would you like to start introductions?

Sure.

Jeff Sims, Council Central staff.

Calvin Goings.

Calvin.

Calvin Goings, Director of Finance and Administrative Services.

Nice to see you.

Idrees Beauregard, Seattle Public Utilities.

Kirsten Grove, Mayor's Office.

Tess Colby, Mayor's Office.

Very good.

Thank you all.

So, Jeff, are you going to speak to this?

Sure.

I can provide a brief introduction, though the staff here will do most of the discussion on it.

So, as council members know, approximately a fifth of the people experiencing homelessness in Seattle are living in vehicles, about 7 percent, I'm sorry, not in Seattle, in all of King County.

about 7% of them are residing in RVs.

This ordinance would deal with vehicles that are extensively damaged, so they would be unmovable.

Frequently, the sanitation systems do not work, so they only have the option of, if it's an RV, they would only have the option of dumping that sanitation into sewers, things like that.

It would make it illegal to rent these vehicles, these extensively damaged vehicles, not just RVs, but all vehicles, out to individuals, and also lays out the penalties that would be associated with that violation.

Okay.

And I look forward to hearing from the mayor's office on this.

And I did have a chance to talk to the mayor earlier this week.

And I want to set up a frame on this of we're looking for really three things.

One, we don't want people to live in horrible substandard housing of any kind, any place.

And so I do want to acknowledge that I believe that that's really first and foremost in people's minds You know, we don't allow people to live in rat infested or mold.

We've done our best over the years to really take a firm position that we're not going to allow that kind of housing to be rented to anybody or any family.

And I also recognize that neighborhoods have said these dilapidated things should not be allowed to remain in the neighborhoods.

Third big item for us, I know, is to be able to find spaces for these folks, that we don't just take what is probably their last ditch effort as a place to survive, but to find, and we're going to have to create some more 24-7 places for them to be, I believe.

So with that frame up, please, Calvin, really nice to see you again, so please introduce it.

Chair Bagshaw, thank you very much for the chance to be here today.

Good morning.

Members of the committee, Council, Calvin Goings, Director of Finance and Administrative Services.

As you may know, Chair Bagshaw, FAS oversees the tow administration contract for the City of Seattle and the budget oversight related to towing and RV.

disposal.

And so, therefore, I'm here before your committee, which has oversight of FAS.

We're here today to discuss legislation that would prohibit predatory rentals of vehicles that pose health and public safety risk to the occupants and to the broader public.

In the course of our work with people living in vehicles and their communities, staff across multiple departments have come together to recognize that there are conditions where people are living that are extremely dangerous.

Many of the people living in these conditions are also paying to do so.

Lacking protections under our existing laws, staff worked with our partners at Seattle-King County Public Health, the city attorney's office, to develop legislation that we're here to talk to you about today and appreciate the chance to do so.

Before I start, I do want to note that we're here today to talk about the predatory rentals of unsafe vehicles.

the predatory rentals of unsafe vehicles.

We recognize this legislation does not solve the broader vehicle living challenges, but we do think this is an important step in making conditions safer for everyone.

With this, I'm gonna turn it over to Idris Beauregard from SPU to give an overview of the situation, but also give a brief overview of the city's work regarding vehicle living and trash cleanup in the right of way through the RV remediation program.

Great, thank you.

And thank you for coming to the table.

Thank you to SPU and FAS and the mayor's office for bringing this interdepartmental team together.

All right.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Idris Beauregard, Seattle Public Utility.

Over the past few years, there's been an increase of recreational vehicles parking in the right-of-way, which has led to prolonged periods of time, which led to essentially a lot of trash accumulation and debris buildup.

Based on the circumstance that we're dealing with, we had went to pull together the RV remediation pilot, which was initially brought together in November of 2017, which ultimately expanded to a citywide.

We started off in the Soto District.

Based on that, it's several city departments that came together, as Calvin mentioned, them including Seattle Public Utilities, FAS, Seattle Parks and Recreation, Seattle Police Departments, Community Police and Team.

The pilot, it was essentially designed to work with RV occupants and have them voluntarily move their vehicles in a way that would enable city crews to come and work together to clean up the safety, public health and safety hazards around the RV vehicles.

Through this work, teams came across several different type of public and health and safety issues that they encountered, and they fell under four main categories.

Those categories being inadequate sanitation, environmental hazards, fire hazards, and inadequate protection from weather.

As we have here.

I'm sorry, what was the last one?

Inadequate protection from weather.

What they've seen oftentimes is During the RV remediation pilot, they would come across recreational vehicles that were dilapidated, the roofs torn out, the structure was real weak, posing a threat to all type of weather, whether it was rain, snow, harsh conditions that led to mold buildup and other concerns within the RV itself.

So I'm respectful of what you just said, and I'd like to know, how does this differ when we run into people who are living in a tent?

I mean, that's clearly inadequate shelter.

It can be an environmental disaster.

I know that we removed tents from underneath I-5 because we were worried about fire and clearly inclement weather.

So how are we differentiating the You know, the icky living conditions inside a mobile home or a car from the bad conditions for people living in tents.

Well, that's a good question.

let the navigation team handle on how they address the living conditions within the tents.

Navigation team works directly with the human conditions that they are experiencing in homeless encampments.

For us, what we've done is in order to determine what the public health and safety risk were based upon, we partnered with Seattle Public Health in King County in order to establish some criteria that identifies some of the risks that are involved.

That language was developed using the initial junk vehicle after David was already created, the criteria from the Department of Licensing, and also information from the City of Seattle Housing and Building Code, along with the City of Seattle Stormwater Code.

So them are some of the ways that we've established some public and health and safety criteria, and we're applying it to the RVs itself.

Okay, Council Member Bryan, thanks for joining us.

Some of these under the categories what we do come across when they're out in the field working with the RVs are some alarming conditions which include infestation of insects, rodents, rats, other pests, large amount of garbage, debris.

That also includes air quality hazards, as we mentioned, from mold, exposed insulation, or other pollutants, a large amount of urine, blood, needles, human waste, lack of properly working RV sewer systems, and hazardous waste from improperly placed propane tanks, batteries, and chemical motor oils.

Are we talking specifically about RVs that are being ranched or leased out?

Are you talking about all RVs here?

These RVs that we're referring to that we've noticed in the field is based on the RV remediation pilot.

So our staff, SPU staff, our parking enforcement staff are coming across large amount of RVs and these are particular to the RV remediation pilot.

But other parking enforcement staff have also come across RVs that were in similar conditions.

And most commonly, the conditions that we've run across with the RVs and the remediation pilot are inoperable.

Sure.

I mean, clearly these people are extremely poor, so they can't afford nice RVs, so we get that.

But I guess I'm curious, my understanding is the impetus of this legislation is about the issue around people leasing out RVs, and I can't tell if you're talking about specific subset of these that are leased have these conditions, or are you just talking about broadly, we know the RVs are in pretty bad condition because these are extremely poor people that

This is just the overview of what we're dealing with the RV remediation pilot.

And commonly, we're running across these type of RVs in the RV remediation pilot.

So.

So this is just broadly about RVs in general.

Right now.

So I think you're about to transition.

Yes, I was.

In the course of this work you have, and I will let you do so.

And so in the course of this work, we have developed the language in order to identify the risks that are involved, the public safety risks, which are inclusive of these.

These are just some pictures that you can look up to, but we've also noticed working on the RV remediation pilot, the extensively damaged RVs and the behavior of the predatory behavior that was preying on vulnerable community subsets that are living in the RVs, them including the branching and leasing and trading of certain services in order to be able to reside in RVs.

That's something that our RV remediation teams have noticed.

In addition to, we've also identified gaps in our current city tow system in the way that we're towing the vehicles after they're left behind during an RV remediation pilot.

And oftentimes, about 53% of the time, we've seen the same vehicles show back up in these clusters of RVs that we're dealing with.

I'll let you go through as I talk a little bit about what we're here to talk about today, which is the proposed legislation.

So essentially in the course of the work that SPU, SPD, HSD, and FAS are doing related to RVs, they've come across a number of conditions where residents are reporting that they are actually paying to live in this condition.

Situations where people don't have the keys to their vehicle to move them for pickup.

Situations where people are worried about the security of their belongings within these RVs.

The purpose of the legislation, go ahead.

Can I ask a question on the keys?

I've never owned an RV, but there's an ignition key, which may be useful or not, depending if it's even operable.

And then I assume there's a key that locks the doors that's probably a separate key.

I don't know the answer to the situation with the keys.

We do know that people report that they are unable to move their vehicles because they do not have the keys as a condition of their agreement to live in.

I'd be interested in knowing if they have the keys to lock their belongings because that's a, you know, when I read the articles about it, it wasn't clear which set of keys they were talking about.

So today we're here to talk about two things.

One is we're here to address two issues.

One is that we have the situation.

It's our predatory behavior affecting vulnerable people.

We're not talking about prohibiting renting of RVs.

We're talking about prohibiting Renting of dangerous vehicles, vehicles that the health condition poses a challenge to the people living in those vehicles and a challenge to the people in the surrounding neighborhood.

So to do this, and I think Idris has a few pictures up here of some of the conditions that we're talking about, I think what you can't see here is the situation with mold, the situation with rain coming into the buildings.

These are conditions where people are living.

The insects, the vermin, it's pretty substantial.

And I think also noteworthy just the situation of not having any type of working bathroom or running water in this condition.

Excuse me.

When I stepped out, did you answer the question how many people you think are impacted by this?

Is the question how many people are in fact renting in a condition like this?

Actually, if we're focusing on the predatory approach of people living in something where they're having to pay rent and you're going after the ranchers, do we have a sense of how many people we're talking about?

So I think we have heard of somewhere between two and five people, this is a really fluid situation, who are in fact renting these vehicles out to other people.

At any time, there could be a variable amount of people who are living in one RV or many RVs.

So the actual measuring that particular thing is incredibly fluid, but we have heard of two to five ranchers who are out there.

Okay, so I know we had talked just before you came in, Council Member O'Brien, about We're trying to address a health problem.

We're also trying to find places for people to go.

My real concern is I'm trying to get a sense of if we enact this legislation as recommended, then how many people are going to be, you know, goodness knows we don't want people living in these terrible conditions, but we have to have a place for them to go that's going to be better.

you know, throwing them back out on the sidewalk in cardboard boxes doesn't strike me necessarily as being better.

So as we're going through this, I really appreciate the focus that you all have done on the public health nature of this.

I want to know, how many people are we going to need to accommodate?

I believe the mayor told me, well, they're offered shelter, but if it's just overnight shelter, we still haven't solved the problem.

So I'm just hopeful that we're all on the same team here trying to address the public health crisis, but also make sure we've got better places for people to go.

Absolutely.

I think we are.

If you don't mind, I'd like to go through the actual content of the bill.

I'm just trying to get through a presentation with this group.

I apologize.

And then I'm going to turn it over to Tess, who's actually going to speak a little bit more to your particular questions.

So the content of the legislation essentially is pretty simple.

It prohibits allowing another person to occupy a vehicle that causes public health and safety threats to those individuals and to the public.

And it defines such a vehicle as being apparently inoperable, so things like missing tires, missing engine block, having inadequate sanitation, things like insects, accumulation of garbage, problematic wastewater systems, health, safety, and fire hazards, which we are increasingly seeing within RVs, and then finally, in sufficient protection from the weather.

So in order to meet those criteria, a vehicle would have to meet two of those four specific criteria to qualify.

And then the legislation itself establishes penalties for the owner of the vehicle.

the person who is essentially letting the other person occupy this.

And those penalties are a civil infraction for the first occurrence, a misdemeanor for every occurrence thereafter.

It also includes a $250 fine for each occurrence, as well as up to $2,000 in restitution for the victim.

I'm going to turn it to Tess then to speak a little bit more to your question.

Yes.

On the legislative summary, I mean, This is the meat of the conversation.

You have a piece of legislation that does not distinguish between an individual that is renting out these vehicles in a predatory nature.

There's nothing in this legislation that directly talks about the penalty being applied to those who are engaged in a market because there is no other shelter opportunity.

I think we can all agree, especially from a public health perspective, that all of the ways in which we have seen individuals living in these very unsafe conditions is not only heartbreaking to see, but we know from a public health perspective immoral to allow individuals to live in those situations, but the reason they're living there is because we do not have other options.

They are living there because there is not the ability to occupy a bed with in our enhanced shelters that allow for families to stay together, that allow for couples to stay together, that allow for people to be with their pets, that allow for them to stay with their belongings.

People are opting to use these items because we have not created an alternative.

So I understand that it is an unsafe condition that many individuals are facing.

I also understand from the public's perspective that they see unsanitary conditions and they want those vehicles moved off of the street.

I get it.

But we have not created an alternative to these vehicles.

That's a point that we should all underscore.

The second thing is, specifically to this legislation, it does not specifically identify who the penalty goes after.

When it says, no person shall allow another person to occupy, does not clarify that we're going after the predatory nature in which many of these entities have engaged in marketing or renting these deplorable vehicles or RVs to individuals who have no other option.

When you look at the enforcement and penalties section, and Madam Chair, I'd love to work with you on this because I know that we share an interest in making sure that people have a safe place to live and a safe alternative to living in vehicles and cars.

But none of the language in the enforcement section is directed at the predatory leasor or the predatory renter.

I would have to say I do disagree with that.

Let's pull the legislation up and I'd love to see it because it doesn't actually specify in the legislation who the misdemeanor goes to, where the penalty goes.

And it does actually leave up to question whether or not the individual in the car is going to get penalized, or if we're actually talking about the people here.

And that is not our intent to clarify.

The intent is, in fact, to penalize the person who is profiting from this predatory behavior.

We should absolutely include some clarifying language on that.

So we absolutely welcome a conversation if that is not clear to this, this table.

And then if that is the case, sorry, just one follow-up question, because I'm afraid I do have a hard stop here in a few minutes, but That clarification would be extremely welcome.

The other thing is if there is not an alternative for them, what are we offering these folks?

The folks who are living in these vehicles clearly are doing so as a last option, as a last resort.

So given our ongoing conversation about the lack of vacancies at enhanced shelters or tiny homes or, you know, even better, affordable housing, What are we doing as an alternative if we're going to be taking away this last opportunity for them to have a place to feel safe?

Because many people don't feel safe in our mat on the ground shelters.

And they don't feel safe in tents.

And sometimes a vehicle gives them an ability to lock the door, as you talked about.

That is incredibly important for people who are escaping violence and need to feel safe.

Though I understand from a public health perspective why these are not a healthy option, we need to offer them an alternative.

And again, we are not talking about all RVs.

We are not talking about all vehicles.

We are talking about a very specific subset of this.

And we're also talking about people who are renting these vehicles, not necessarily about the people who are there.

So the penalties occur to the people who are renting these vehicles out to other people.

And seeking clarification in this legislation before it moves forward, that is something that absolutely needs to be clarified in the legislation as well.

I don't read anything in these two sections that actually talk about the type of vehicle beyond its deplorable conditions.

We all can acknowledge the deplorable conditions in which you just showed some pictures and we've all seen on a daily basis.

I see it commuting in on East Marginal Way.

on my commute to go enjoy recreational activities along Alki.

I see it.

We know that this exists.

And we also know that from our friends at BIA and SOTO, they see it on a daily basis too.

We know it exists, but there's nothing in the legislation as I read it that specifically talks about just those vehicles where people have rented them out in a predatory way.

And that clarification really needs to be clear.

And I would also encourage, if you haven't already, to discuss this specifically with the city attorney's office as well, so to make sure that we're clear on specific language and that we have a common understanding.

What I'm hearing is you're open to adding, clarifying.

We are absolutely open to having a conversation about making sure we're on the same page.

Mr. Goings?

Thank you, Chair Baxter.

I think the foundational question is, does the council agree this is a problem?

Does the council agree that these conditions, these squalor conditions are not fit for our fellow citizens?

And if so, and I think you do, work with us to protect this legislation.

I think the chair brought this here as a draft for partly this reason, and so we're very interested in getting this right and working with council staff.

But this is, the difference between the tents And some of the other conditions is this is an issue the city has a role in currently.

There is an inhumane supply chain of RVs that are putting our most vulnerable citizens at risk.

And the city has, I believe, a moral obligation because we are involved in the supply chain to say that's not acceptable and to put forward our best proposal to remedy that situation.

And so we're very interested in working with the legislative branch to perfect this legislation because I, I think you share our shared values about these citizens and that we should not be part of a system that allows for a revolving door, a predatory system with RV ranching in the city of Seattle.

Council Member O'Brien.

Again, I think it's important and it would be helpful when we're talking that if we're talking narrowly about just the people that are being predatory leased to, There's implorable conditions everywhere, and there are plenty of people that are sleeping without sanitation and all those things.

And if it's, you know, I read the article, and it talked about two people, one who I think was out of the business, and one was down to one RV.

He said maybe two to five.

I mean, of the 800 RVs that are out there, when I count, are we talking five?

Are we talking 300?

Because this is a situation that we're actively enforcing on, it's difficult to do a census of that.

So what we have are anecdotal reports from individuals.

Calvin, when you ask the question, do we agree this is a problem, if it's three RVs that are being predatory leased for $40 a week or whatever, That is not the most important problem to be discussing right now.

And if it's 300, it is, maybe on the list.

And I would expect someone to get that information.

And I read, you know, similar to Council Member Musqueda, when I read the legislation or look at the summary here, How are you going to distinguish between, you know, the pictures of these are deplorable, right?

And, you know, there's these completely, these are completely uninhabitable.

And I don't know if someone's actually living in those at the moment.

I've been through RVs that, as doing outreach stuff, and I see ones that are much more livable, but probably fail the test.

I don't know if they have a bathroom that works.

Most of them don't seem to.

They may not be operating, but it's still providing shelter that I would say is a significant upgrade from a tent, but based on this, could be subject to being confiscated and pounded.

And similarly, there's people that, you know, when I look at some of these pictures, they remind me of people that are hoarding in houses and everywhere else.

And it wouldn't surprise me if there's significant mental health issues.

And the idea that we're going to impound their vehicle and put them on the street as opposed to make sure they have access to mental health treatment doesn't seem right.

And I think to that point, Council Member, and I know Tess was hoping to get to there, but to talk about to your concern and others, I think all of our concerns, if this proposal was to pass, and if these deplorable conditions, these predatory, these unsafe, these squalored RVs were to be appropriately junked, What are the wraparound services?

And I know Tess has been trying to get to that point, and I'm not sure, Madam Chair, if time allows or not.

I think, Tess, this is about the fifth time you've been in front of us, and it seems like we always jump the gun and don't let you do your presentation.

I wonder if we could allow you to do that, and maybe at the same time you can talk about in your mind, in the team's mind, how will the process be initiated if somebody is, is it somebody internally who's living there?

I doubt oftentimes that they would have either the, they would be worried about getting tossed out if they were to, I don't want to, if they were to report the person who is renting.

So maybe you could just walk through and tell us what it is that you all are thinking about, how the process works, and then we can respond again after we hear a little bit more.

Very good.

Thank you very much.

Again, Tess Colby with the mayor's office.

So we've definitely been talking about the goal of the legislation in terms of stopping predatory behavior that folks who are allowing people to occupy RVs that are exposed to health and safety.

hazards.

We understand that removing these vehicles from circulation often causes the occupants to seek alternative shelter.

When RVs that are occupied are towed, system navigators are available to begin outreach at any time within the 72-hour period.

including they're there on the day of the clean.

They do, in the same way that they work with folks who are living in encampments, they offer services, such as reconnecting people to their case management, which is actually the primary service that people are asking for, is to get back in touch with the folks that they already have a relationship with, and those are the folks who can actually long-term help them access behavioral health programs, access housing, and help them generally become stable.

The navigators, of course, also offer shelter.

They know which shelters have available beds, so they can refer people to shelter.

And that shelter includes villages, and we know that the villages are, in fact, the type of shelter that is most often requested.

So, and that addresses in part the issue of people being able to keep their pets with them or couples being able to find a place to stay as well.

I will say that the navigation center also addresses those needs that admittedly basic shelter does not address.

When a referral is accepted, the navigators can offer transportation and they often do the transportation themselves to make sure that people have access and are able to get to the shelter.

As an example of how this works in real life, last month the RV remediation team encountered a known car rancher during a cleanup event in Georgetown.

The individual was also living in a vehicle with significant debris and infectious waste.

At first, the individual was very confrontational but became much calmer when the navigation team was called to make contact and offer outreach services.

Eventually, they accepted shelter and were transferred to that shelter.

So it's also important to keep in mind that people who are occupying RVs generally don't consider themselves to be homeless.

And so acceptance of services or shelter may not happen regularly.

In fact, in data that we've seen recently, it happens somewhere between 10 and 15% of the time.

That doesn't mean that we give up on them if they say that they don't want services.

The navigators continue to work with everyone to ensure that they know what their options are that they can help them find an alternative safe space.

In addition to providing supports to occupants through the system navigators, we wanted to make sure that they have access to reimbursement of costs that are incurred, such as those for relocation, again, understanding that they are going to need to look for alternative shelter.

So for that reason, we have included a restitution requirement for up to $2,000 for violators that helps folks.

It's realistic.

I mean, you think the ranchers have money?

I think some ranchers do.

Yes.

And you think the people living in the vehicles have the wherewithal to track the ranchers down?

I think this legislation essentially gives us the ability to work with them to end the court system, to have that happen.

And absent something like this, we do not have that ability.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Tess, thanks for doing the outreach slide.

I think your outreach elements focused on those who've been victims of this type of predatory rental scheme is important and would love to see that type of language included in the legislation.

I think that's an important element.

However, the fact that when we talked about outrage and enforcement, we've really again focused on the occupant of these vehicles, these RVs, underscores to me that we're not thinking about the individual entity or the individual person who's engaging as a car rancher.

In fact, we haven't even defined what a car rancher is in this legislation or defined the type of entity or individual that is renting out or marketing these unsafe products.

So if we want this legislation to be focused on the predatory nature and the predatory crop of industry or market that has become a huge, I think, problem point of concern for us when we look at these pictures, anecdotally, but we need the data as Councilmember O'Brien said to understand whether or not it's huge in terms of presence in our city, that would be very helpful to have definitions of what the car rancher is or the renter or the market.

versus saying no person shall allow another person to occupy a vehicle.

I mean, I worry that that is so incredibly broad that people may take it upon themselves to say, hey, you can't be here because that ordinance passed.

We really need to be specific in the legislation about who it is that this type of penalty should apply to and what the intent of this penalty is in addition to the good outreach that you just outlined.

I appreciate that for the folks who have been victim to this type of predatory marketing and, you know, victim to the fact that we haven't created enough shelter around the city.

And I do have to go, Director Goings, I just want to, you know, answer your question directly.

You asked, the question is, does the council share the concern of individuals living in this type of situation?

And I think from the last year and a half that I've been on council, it's very clear to me that the full council shares the concern of people living in unsafe conditions.

That's why we've called for additional funding for housing.

That's why we've called for additional funding for enhanced shelters.

That's why we've done more to try to make sure that people have access to health services across the city.

And, frankly, why we've, you know, even though there's other services that we know need funding, that's why we've continued to invest in the robust requests that have come from the executive around the navigation services navigation team specifically because we want people to get access to the human services element of it and all of that should underscore a shared interest.

But when you ask does it matter or do we share the same level of interest, When we're looking at specific legislation, we have to look at the language here.

Legislation matters.

The words in that legislation matter.

And to the extent that we're not being specific enough to the industry, the marketing, the targeting, the predatory nature that has cropped up, then it really does leave open the question of who we are trying to get at and what the consequences will be.

The incredible speaker that I had the chance to sit with at U Heights yesterday, he's a priest, he said when he looked at this legislation, he saw that this was directed at the vehicle and not the people.

And yes, if we want to look at the type of vehicles that are being rented, we have to look at who is renting those vehicles.

But without clarification in this legislation, It is, I think, sending the wrong message across our city that those who are living in this type of situation, it is the people within it that will suffer the consequences versus us intentionally going after those who are preying on people who have no other option.

So I look forward to working with you on amendments.

I'm not clear if this is, as Council Member O'Brien said, the right approach to getting at the concerns that we see, but whether or not the council shares our concerns about people living in this type of condition, unequivocally, we are concerned about this.

Unequivocally, we don't want people to be living there, and unequivocally, we will work with you all to find alternatives to that.

I'm not sure that this is the right vehicle, if you will, to get us there.

And I appreciate those comments, Councilmember, and my comments were directly at this legislation, and I appreciate that context.

You know, I think we should just be very clear about what we're talking about.

These are inhumane conditions run by slumlords on wheels.

And these conditions are not fit for a dog.

Part of FAS's oversight is animal shelters.

If there were animals living like this, we would seize those animals.

And please tell me that Seattle is not a place that would not allow a dog to live.

but that we would allow human beings to live.

So we are absolutely committed to getting this pitch-perfect council member and would very much welcome working with you.

And that's, again, why I think the chair rightfully brought this legislation as a draft to engage in this dialogue, and we look forward to doing so.

Great.

Thank you.

Tess, did you want to continue?

I think you had some other...

I was the first one to interrupt, and I apologize for that.

But do you want to continue?

Because where I left off was whether or not, and I'm going to use the term ranchers, actually have the money to pay, so.

So again, we believe that they do.

We think that this is, and we also think that this is an important message to send to ranchers and a disincentive to continue to do this, but we believe that this is the appropriate level.

There was a lot of, frankly, there was a lot of conversation in the interdepartmental team meetings about how to ensure that the legislation is also drafted in a way to protect and well, to protect the folks that are being preyed upon.

And we believe that this is the right course to take.

Do we have money in leftover from the last time we asked to have another village built?

Just this week, I've talked with a couple of individuals who are reaching out to some of our faith institutions that are saying that they were willing to reconsider putting some tiny homes in their parking lots.

I would feel much better if, as part of this, we could have set up in advance places for people to go.

And I know we argue all the time that tiny homes are inhumane as well, and I hear that.

Nobody says we want people living in tiny homes forever.

But as a bridge, better than a tent, better than this dilapidated, mold infested, whatever you've got, I would love to be able to say to this individual, we think that this is an inhumane place for you to live.

We're going to offer you something better.

Is it perfect?

No.

I wish I could get it inside, but I'd rather have somebody have something with running water close, with cooking facilities close, with a roof over their head and a door they can lock.

And if they cost us $5,000 a piece or some of those modulars we're looking at, I really believe that we need to, as a parallel path, get places set up so we can direct people to go.

And thank you, Council Member, that's exactly the reason that the mayor stood up 500 additional shelter beds is because and exactly why our emphasis has been on enhanced shelter and on supporting the existing villages.

completely agree with you that it's important to provide shelter that provides all of the basically human needs and the necessary services for folks.

We think that the NAV team's approach with the system navigators making sure that They have offers that they know which shelters have beds, which villages have space, that that's critical to the success of this.

And I'll note that both in Enhanced Shelter, in the Navigation Center, and in villages, there are case managers, there are staff available to really help people take the next step towards housing.

I guess the question is, are they full?

Do we need more?

Can we accommodate with the 500 and bless you and bless the mayor for having us for 500 more beds.

Do we need more to be able to have open spaces for these individuals if we're going and saying that RV is impossible and it's clearly one that is being leased out inappropriately, but can we say to that individual, Hey, look, we've got a bed, but not just an overnight shelter, but we've got a place for you to go.

Is there space now, or do we have to do a fast track, say, we need 50 more?

Just tell me where we are.

So what we've seen now with particularly moving to enhanced shelter is that the throughput, if you will, has definitely improved.

So the enhanced shelters have a much better rate now of exiting people to permanent housing.

The villages are also improving in that.

And so that does create opportunities, that throughput then creates vacancies in beds and opportunities for folks who are living outside.

In this case also for folks who are in this kind, these kind of inhumane situations.

And so in RVs and also as you know the navigation team that's working in encampments have a similar opportunity to offer people into shelter.

They only offer it when they know that there are shelter beds available.

So that's part of, again, the rationale to really moving to a shelter system and a shelter model that has more heightened services and is much more focused through their housing navigators on moving people into safe, stable housing.

You bet.

Council Member O'Brien.

The last data I saw on the enhanced shelters showed that they're essentially full.

I think it was a 1 to 2% vacancy rate.

Is that still roughly accurate?

So what I think you're referring to is the utilization rate, and we actually like a high utilization rate because that shows that there aren't beds going wanting.

That doesn't mean that on any given night there are, that all the beds are utilized, which is why there are regularly beds available for the navigation team to refer.

Some of those beds get held specifically for folks that are being referred to them, but then if, Quite frankly, they don't get filled by the navigation team.

There are people still available to fill them.

So the goal really is, and this may sound counterintuitive for the conversation that we're having, but the goal is to make sure that there's space available for the navigation team and to make sure that those beds are filled so that we don't deliberately have people sleeping outside.

And I think what you said is consistent with my understanding, which is in general the beds are full.

and we have people to fill them up and we may prioritize a certain population at different times.

But we're not, we don't have a bunch of beds and we're struggling to find people to get into.

And similarly, on the affordable housing side, the last I understood was there's really long wait lists to get into that.

Again, on any given night, there's turnover and there may be a few spots where they get new people to move in.

But there's, we don't have a problem of affordable housing or enhanced shelters that we just can't find people to go into.

So, I mean, the challenge for me, well, I guess I have some specific questions on this legislation and then maybe I'll give a little feedback, but I don't want to.

No, go ahead.

So, the legislative summary talks about these damaged vehicles and says two of these conditions need to be met.

Is that only in the case of a vehicle being ranched or is that any vehicle that has a tuition?

It's in the case of a vehicle that is being ranched.

And how will we determine if it's being ranched?

There would need to be, somebody would need to report, in fact, that they had been, in fact, victimized or that somebody had engaged in this behavior.

So would it be like the tenant would say that or could anyone say that?

It could be the tenant, but in order to, I will also ask that you probably should direct some of these questions to law because some of this will play out.

in a court system, but I think the way that we are seeing this happen on the ground, at least in terms of how our staff are interacting with people who are affected by this, is that an individual will say, hey, I am a victim of this condition.

I don't know what to do or sort of how to address this situation.

In that case, we imagine that we could say this is a vehicle for you to pursue if you are interested.

Charges then could be filed against the person who is, in fact, the owner of that vehicle.

It sounds like there would need to be a process in place to determine that, and I would love to, in advance of passing this legislation, have that process play out a little bit so we can determine, like, again, are there 10 of these, or 100 of these, or how likely are we to be using this?

Because that would be really informative.

And I will say, we got caught up in the earlier conversation, but we have had reports of, in fact, perhaps dozens of conditions like this that exist on the ground.

So we didn't have an opportunity to answer that earlier.

But it's not one or two.

But again, I will just stress that given the nature of vehicular living, it is a changing situation on a daily basis.

So there is, and I think Tess mentioned this earlier, there is benefit to having this in the book in terms of how it would discourage the practice from proliferating in the future.

So another question.

So it would be great to get a little more data on that as we move forward.

I'd also love clarity on if the tenant is like, I don't want to lose this.

I wish I weren't paying $40 a month or a week or whatever for this.

I think 10 is more fair.

or the landlord won't give me access to this, or being abusive, or the article and others have talked about drugs, sex trade, those types of things for this, which obviously is completely illegal and inappropriate and we should act on that if that's going on.

But I want to be clear, if this is going to be a tool that someone says, I suspect this is going, and then we're going to take away someone's housing, or it's only going to be used in the case when the person living there says, I need you to help me get out of this situation.

And if the result of this gets impounded, that's okay.

But the way it's drafted and being interpreted feels like people were going to impose this upon tenants.

That is not the intent.

I think for us to, the word occupy I think has come up a little bit, and I just want to stress that we opted to use the word allowing to occupy in order to allow a person who has been victimized by this condition a little bit more leeway and their ability to prove what the conditions of their agreement were with it.

You all have made a couple references to the city attorney's office and I appreciate that I can I think read between the lines that there's a lot of tenant landlord stuff And there's another lawsuit about is a vehicle home But understanding the policy intent I think is really important to me and we can discuss that here And so what I hear you saying is the intent is really only with the consent of the occupant Would we pursue that is the intent and and there's a question about this?

Occupy So if like, you know Let's say I had an extra RV and said, you can use it for free, and I'll move it around every three days.

I don't do that for people out there watching, but if one wanted to do that.

They're not paying rent.

I'm not profiting off this.

But there's been a question raised about do they have to pay rent or not.

And I suspect, if I get this correct, but maybe you can clarify, that they may not be paying rent, but there may be other forms of compensation.

sex acts, drug trade, those types of things.

And you wanted to include all of that, is that accurate?

That is the intent.

And I also just want to stress in the condition that you're putting forward, it's not about any RV or any vehicle.

It's about a severely damaged public health hazard.

So it's a very specific subset of these.

Sounds really narrow, what you're trying to accomplish in this legislation.

Yes, it's very narrow.

And to your point earlier, Council Member, you know, is this three or 300, probably in the dozens.

And we feel that being aware of even a half dozen or a dozen people who are being victimized in this revolving door, this predatory cycle is too many, and the executive really wants to work with the council to get this right, but to address a small piece, the piece that we can address today, here and now.

So a suggestion would be, and I appreciate that clarification, because that helps, and I get that you had to write this with law oversight, and it's just a draft that's being introduced, clarity around all that is going to be really helpful.

suggestion and I haven't thought this through nor have I talked to the city attorney but instead of coming at this from a negative angle coming from like a more positive angle and say if someone's renting a place we're gonna set up a you know a vehicle inspection program just like we do with rentals and if someone says yes this is not my vehicle there is a landlord whether I'm paying compensation monetary compensation or something else whatever that is and we could say okay that's the case you know we will we need to connect with the landlord and get certain that they meet certain criteria.

And there would be a sticker that goes on the side that says this is a rental vehicle and it's been inspected and it's good to go.

And some penalty if a landlord fails to go through that.

You know, the article that talked to a couple of these, you know, I haven't met any of these ranchers.

It's hard to tell what their motives are.

Of course, in the press, they sound like somewhat generous human beings that are trying to make a few bucks, not a lot, but really just kind of help some people get some housing.

So, you know, I want to be clear that to allow that there might be some pretty awful people that are taking significant advantage of people.

And we want to shut that down.

But some program that's a little more, feels a little less threatening and a little more, hey, there's a path to do this.

If you want to rent them out, this is what we require.

And if you don't do that, then we will enforce, and we will find housing for the other folks.

At the end of the day, I think this sounds like it's a fairly narrow program, and this legislation is a narrow problem.

This legislation is intent is to narrowly define that.

And we still have hundreds and hundreds of vehicles out there after this is done, many of which are, probably most of which wouldn't meet our standards of acceptable living, maybe not as deplorable as those in the photos, but still this is not a long-term solution.

And I think the best way for us to solve this crisis is that we give people better options.

And when we're taking away the best option they have, that's when it just feels, I look at it, you can show me the picture, Calvin, I'm like, that is an awful option.

And if that were my best option at the moment, taking that away makes me even worse off.

And if these people are making bad decisions because they have mental health issues, then we need to get them treatment.

And if they're simply, this is the best option they have, you know, how do we get them into something better is the thing that's going to really help.

We can drive them out of business by providing enough affordable housing, enough enhanced shelter.

And I know that, you know, we're trying and we add 500 and they fill up and that's a challenge.

And I think I would just point that this particular legislation creates an option to actually get some restitution and to potentially transition to something a little bit more substantial.

And currently we do not have that.

And what I would suggest, I believe similar, how do we do the landlord, just for feedback, would be that the city would provide the restitution and be responsible for collecting it.

Because kicking a tenant out and saying, yeah, there'll be a court process and someday you might get some money, but the one guy that was just evicted in the article.

I can't imagine he's got a bunch of cash.

He'll just have a judgment against him, and it sounds like he's living in an RV, too, so he's part of the problem and part of the other problem.

So if the city feels strongly about this, let's put up some money and say, hey, when this happens, if you're being abused, we will fund some money to do it, and we'll put mechanisms in place so that we can recover that.

We'll see how much of that we actually recover.

But that should be on us, not someone who's already living in deep poverty to have to wait for a court system to produce something when they don't have attorneys.

So that would be another suggestion for amendments to how that might work.

And what I hear is that there is general agreement this is a problem and there's some fine-tuning to be done on this narrow slice and maybe some opportunities with a longer-term conversation about other 750, a certification inspection program that would be an interesting conversation to have.

And just in one of those statements, it would be really helpful for you to say, this is a problem.

We know renter A has 12 of these, at least in the field.

Because what I've heard today is we think it's two to five people.

And I saw an article that said one of them is out of the business and one of them has one left.

And so one is too many.

But I also don't know that we and the whole city infrastructure needs to be spending a big chunk of our resources on a problem if it's just a handful.

But if in fact there's an actor or two that we know are out there, and I assume that we can investigate and track these down and talk to the, you know, Lincoln Towing who's selling these and figure that out.

And then, yeah, let's figure out the best way to get them out of that business without damaging the people that are in there.

So some more evidence there would be really helpful.

So we have another conversation scheduled on August 14th.

And I think, Jeff, you've written a good memo on this, and we can go through it.

What I think I'm hearing, and loud and clear from you, is we want to make sure we have information Rather than spending a lot of time on legislation, if we're spinning our wheels, I'd much rather be targeting, okay, what are we going to do?

How many people are involved?

I like what you're suggesting about having the city being able to help find other spaces for people, go after, if there is real restitution, for the city to be able to do that.

I completely concur with you.

Somebody who has no resources or maybe is really struggling with mental health or behavioral health problems isn't going to have the wherewithal to run through our legal system to recover that.

I hope we can take another conversation on this.

And really, I want to come back to the idea of we're a team here.

This is not seventh floor versus second floor.

I want us to be figuring out what's the problem we're trying to solve.

and what I know based upon conversations with Council Member Muscata too, we need to add more places for people to go.

I just do not want to say we're taking this icky horrible thing we're going to destroy it and good luck to you Mr. Tenant.

We've really got to find a solution to that next step as well but I'm willing to work with you.

I hope that Council Member O'Brien that You're willing as well.

I know that, Jeff, you've written a great memo as a start.

We'll have another conversation on this in my committee on the 14th, which is next Wednesday.

And I'd like to pick that up.

Without people saying, this is garbage, let's say, how do we care for the people and take care of the problem as a collective effort?

So that would be my proposal.

Okay, anything else?

Really, many thanks for coming together around this.

I just keep feeling like we're chipping away, chipping away.

If we had tons of resources, unfettered, I think we could make some faster progress.

But just getting people inside is important to me.

Can I say one last thing, Council Member Bakeshaw?

I really appreciate your comments at the end there.

You probably sensed some frustration from me.

No, we didn't, Mike.

I want to just state, which we've all stated multiple times, that the challenge we're facing is a really hard one.

And I don't question, I'm trying not to question the motives.

I really appreciate the clarification, which helps a lot, having this conversation.

So thank you for having that happen.

We're doing some amazing work.

The mayor added 500 new shelter units.

We are gonna open close to 1,000 new units of affordable housing, which is three to four times as much as we did just three or four years ago, and that seems to be an ongoing, and we're getting more throughput because of that.

All those things are good, and yet we still have thousands of people entering homelessness every year because of a failed system that's not working on the other end, our whole economic system and those things.

You know, we are all trying to do really good work.

I would argue that we are doing really amazing work, and the results show it.

But we are still overwhelmed by that input.

And then it looks like we sit here and argue to each other on these failures.

And I think it's more just shared frustration that, like, you know, in a city with so many resources, not just the entity, but everyone here, that we can't figure out how to house everyone, it's maddening.

And I know you all share that, so thank you for coming out.

Thank you, Council Member.

Okay, anything else?

Good of the order, Tess, do you want to wrap her up?

I have nothing else to add.

Okay, thank you.

I appreciate this.

Good first conversation, good, you know, just putting things on the table, let's like, Let's have an understanding about what the problem is we're trying to solve.

Very good.

Thank you for that.

Thank you for having an IDT.

I just am very respectful that all of you are talking together.

This is our last agenda item.

We will have another meeting, as I said, next Wednesday.

But I also want to acknowledge Council Central staff, the great work on budget, moving that through today was super.

And thank you, Allison, for keeping us on track and getting me organized.

So with that, we're adjourned.