Finance & Housing Committee 3/15/23

We are recording.

Okay.

Well, good morning, everyone.

Thank you very much for joining the Seattle City Council Finance and Housing Committee meeting.

Today is March 15th, 2023. The time is 9.35 a.m.

Apologies for the five-minute delay here.

I am Teresa Mosqueda, Chair of the Committee.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Council Member Herbold.

Is your microphone on, Madam Clerk?

Yes.

Okay.

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Lewis.

Madam Chair Mosqueda.

Present.

Madam Chair, that is four present, one absent.

Okay, great.

And we will make sure to announce Council Member Lewis when he joins us.

Thanks again for all of the folks who are here to provide public testimony this morning.

I see a lot of people, probably the most people I've seen since three years ago.

So welcome to chambers and thank you for being on the line as well.

I understand that we do have about 7 people online and it looks like we have about 10 people signed up.

So we'll make sure to hear from everyone colleagues.

We do continue to have a virtual meeting and encourage online participation.

There will be no panelists sitting at the table.

We do all virtual presentations to try to limit the number of people in the room.

Thanks so much for wearing your mask if you are in public here.

Again, I'll ask maybe for the clerk to bring us some additional masks in case folks would like those.

We want to make sure to keep folks safe, especially as we're having a conversation about sick leave.

So great topical.

introduction to our agenda today.

Our agenda does include a briefing and discussion on the establishment of labor standards and requiring paid sick leave and paid safe time for app-based workers in Seattle.

Today will be a briefing.

We will anticipate that the vote will occur next week.

So I wanted to make sure that folks know we had additional time to consider that.

We will have a briefing and discussion on the 2023 grant acceptance and appropriation ordinance.

We have it listed for briefing, discussion and possible vote, but I'm happy to entertain a vote next week as well if folks need additional time on a briefing discussion and no vote, this is just for informational purposes, on the Seattle Rescue Plan for 2022, the year-end report.

And lastly, we'll have a briefing discussion and possible vote on the structure of the charter position related to the Director of Finance.

I would entertain a vote on that today if possible, if colleagues feel comfortable on that.

Those are our four agenda items.

If there's no objection, today's agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

And I just want to welcome Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Lewis, I see you have joined us.

Thanks so much for being here.

The record will reflect that we have a full attendance here today.

At this time, I am going to open it up to public comment.

We seek to make sure that there is public comment available at all of our meetings.

We are encouraging folks to make sure to practice safe public public health practices and social distancing.

And so there is a number of people online.

We will start with the folks that are registered online to speak, and then we'll go through everybody who's listed in the room.

That might give folks in the room time to sign up if you have not already signed up.

Folks will be given two minutes to speak.

You'll hear a chime ding when you have 10 seconds left in your comments.

That's your indication that you need to wrap it up.

That's both for in-person and for online.

When you are online, please remember you need to hit star six to unmute first and then begin speaking, and you need to call in using the number that you registered online.

Once you have completed your public comment, please do hang up when you're online and listen in on the other listening options.

And again, for folks in the room, if you haven't already signed up, please make sure to sign up as we proceed here so that we can get everybody in the queue.

Greatly appreciate the interest and the participation here today from the community.

So let's go ahead and get started.

Madam Clerk, could you please read the names of the folks who are listed to provide public comment online?

Three at a time, please.

We have Georgia Rojas, but she is not currently present.

So first off, we have Crystal Barragan, Jake Laundrie, and Michael Wolfe.

Crystal, we'll unmute you.

Hello, I'm actually the interpreter for Silvia Gonzalez, so I can interpret after she gives her comment.

Sounds good.

Thank you.

I was originally going to comment, interpret for Justina, but she isn't here.

So yeah, thank you.

Thanks.

Jake Laundrie, looks like you're up next.

Followed by Michael Wolfe.

Hi, I'm Jake.

Good morning.

I'm Jake Laundrie.

I'm a part-time delivery app driver and gig work union activist since 2016. Though I support this endeavor for a new sick pay law, unfortunately, I've been negatively impacted by some of the older gig work sick pay laws policies that I understand are still in proposals for the new law.

And I'm against two policies considered here that create new rules and exceptions around Seattle workers' accrual and use of their sick pay.

I'm speaking first about the unfair method of rewarding one sick pay hour maximum per 30 days work.

And second is the policy that has prevented me and others from using the sick pay, because under these proposals, companies can deny us our earned sick pay if we haven't worked for them in 90 days.

We should eliminate this 90-day use proposal in favor of language which explicitly allows workers to use sick pay hours they accrued with any company at any time after 30 hours work, as is the case with Seattle employees.

Currently, once I've worked another 30 days for these companies, it doesn't matter if I work 70 hours a week or seven hours a week.

All I get for those 30 days is one hour of sick pay.

That's a slap in the face to all those extra hours I worked uncompensated for the same work Seattle employees are entitled to.

This further codifies a world where all of our labor time isn't worth your money, which is a dangerous expectation for lawmakers and companies to normalize for the working class.

We should instead calculate sick pay for gig workers like we do other large employers.

One hour of sick pay for every 30 hours worked.

If the machine ain't broke, don't fix it.

My second grievance story is about the difficulty I run into using my sick pay.

The old law's 90-day use policy of sick pay policy denied my use of sick pay when I was sick.

Grubhub denied me the sick pay I had earned with them because I hadn't worked for them in 90 days prior to when I requested the day off.

Despite the fact that I've worked well over 30 days with these companies, I've done tens of thousands of deliveries over many apps since 2016. But all I could secure for one day I've requested off in the last two years was $65 from Uber Eats.

We need lawmakers to stop making special sick pay methods and workarounds for gig work

Thank you very much, Jake.

Please send the rest of your comments to council at seattle.gov.

Michael Wolfe followed by Leif Greering.

Good morning, Michael.

Good morning, Chair Mosqueda, members of the committee.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to address you today on Council Bill 120514. My name is Michael Wolfe, Executive Director of Drive Forward, and I'd like to first thank you for bringing forth this bill to make paid sick and safe time for app-based workers like our members.

permanent in the city of Seattle.

Drive Forward will fully support these efforts and at the end of the day will support the final version of the ordinance to make paid sick and safe time permanent.

However, we believe there's an opportunity to make a good paid sick and safe time system better by changing the accrual and redemption from a system based on days of work and days of paid sick and safe time to a system of hours of work and hours of paid sick and safe time.

In doing so, you will both create a more flexible system for app-based workers and streamline city regulations, not only across the rideshare and delivery industries, but also with the current state regulations governing rideshare.

Simplicity and uniformity in government regulations while achieving a stated policy goal is always desirable for any legislative body.

And in this case, making this change would also preserve the flexibility that is highly valued by those who engage in this type of work.

The preservation of flexibility and independence of app-based work has always been Drive Forward's driving mission.

And we hope you will seriously consider making this common sense change to Council Bill 120514. Again, thank you for giving me the time to speak today.

Thanks again, Michael.

Okay, next we have Leif followed by Tina Sigurdsson.

Good morning, Leif.

My name is Leif.

I deliver for Uber Eats as my primary source of income.

Owner, operator, driving jobs have high expense rates and the extra costs that come from becoming sick or injured jeopardizes our long-term ability to work.

All workers, both employed and contracted, should be entitled to a basic safety net.

I am grateful to the city council for taking this policy into consideration.

Excellent.

Did you have any additional comments?

Okay, Leif, thanks so much.

If you had others and you'd like us to come back to you, please let us know.

Appreciate that.

Tina, followed by Silvia Gonzalez.

Hello, Tina.

Good morning, Council Members.

My name is Tina Sigurdsson.

On behalf of the 45,000 members of SEIU 775, I would like to express our support for permanent paid sick and safe time for at-risk workers.

I want to start by thanking Chair Mosqueda for her ongoing support for extending these rights to these workers.

And I want to also thank the council for its continued leadership on implementing equitable policies that recognize the evolving nature of work today.

Seattle continues to lead the way towards rectifying outdated exclusions from worker protection including gaps that harm Black workers.

Every day at-base workers travel to businesses homes and public spaces around the city providing essential services.

Without paid sick and safe time when a worker falls ill They may face an impossible choice between putting food on their family's table or staying home to recover and prevent the spread of illness.

It is common sense that out-based workers must be able to stop working and seek medical treatment when they need it.

Big workers don't need or deserve paid sick or safe time any less than other workers.

And as we've learned over the last few years, our communities are made safer and healthier when each of us can stay home when we are unwell.

Moreover, paid sick and safe time for APIS workers has proven to be a great success.

This policy is working.

Workers understand their rights.

Companies have implemented systems to comply.

And when necessary, OLS's successful enforcement of the emergency ordinance has resulted in millions of dollars recovered for thousands of workers.

Thank you again for your time and for continuing to prioritize worker and public health.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

And last speaker that's present is Sylvia Gonzalez with the translator from Crystal Barragan.

And we will put four minutes on the clock total with the anticipation that you can either do simultaneous translation, or you can wait to wrap it up at the end, whatever you prefer.

Bienvenidos, Sylvia, y gracias, Crystal.

Puedes empezar.

Buenos dias, Silvia.

¿Me oyes?

Silvia, ¿puedes imprimir Estrella 6 de nuevo?

Era off mute y ahora sí.

Te veo, pero ¿puedes ver también si su teléfono no está en mute por su mismo lado?

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, now.

Good morning, Silvia.

You can start.

Let's see, just...

Okay, perfect.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, good morning to all the speakers.

My name is Silvia González.

I am a housekeeper in Seattle and also co-president of the Domestic Workers Standard Board here in Seattle.

The pandemic gave us a hard time.

It made us see inequality for many workers Y también nos hizo entender las necesidades reales que todos los trabajadores, sin excepción alguna, necesitamos días de enfermedad pagados.

Hoy estoy aquí para pedir que la ordenanza temporal de días de enfermedad para los trabajadores de entrega de alimentos que se implementó durante la pandemia, se haga una ley permanente.

Porque el hecho de que ya no estemos en pandemia no quiere decir que los trabajadores ya no se van a enfermar.

ni que vayan a dejar de seguir entregando alimentos.

Es momento de hacer cambios en las leyes laborales que protejan a todos los trabajadores incluyendo a los contratistas independientes y a las trabajadoras del hogar.

Somos seres humanos y también nos enfermamos por lo tanto pido que sea una ordenanza permanente.

Gracias por escucharme.

Gracias.

Good morning to all council members.

My name is Silvia Gonzalez.

I am co-president of the Domestic Workers Standards Board as well as a domestic worker here in Seattle.

The pandemic was hard on all of us.

It allowed us to see the inequalities that many workers face.

It also helped us understand workers' real needs that all workers without exception need paid sick days.

I'm here today to ask for the temporary ordinance for paid safe and sick time for food delivery workers that was implemented during the pandemic become a permanent law.

The fact that we are no longer in the pandemic does not mean that workers will stop getting sick or that they will stop making meal deliveries.

It is time to make changes in labor laws that protect all of these workers, including independent contractors and domestic workers.

We are human beings and we also get sick.

Therefore, I ask that this become a permanent ordinance.

Excellent.

Muy amable, gracias, Silvia.

Y vamos a seguir.

Thank you very much, Silvia.

We're going to continue.

Gracias.

We're going to continue with the folks in the room.

It looks like Georgina Rojas is not present.

Georgina, si me oyes, necesitas llamar por el mismo teléfono que imprimiste.

And if you can hear me, please go ahead and dial back in with the number that you use for your registration.

Okay, moving on to folks in the room, we have James Lockhart, Terry Hernandez, followed by Joel Craft.

Good morning, James.

Thanks for your patience.

Oh, let me just make sure your microphone's on real quick.

Green light?

Awesome.

Thank you.

Uh, James, um, I don't, I'm big on titles, but I'm with, uh, drive forward.

I'm the president.

Um, I'm just here to, uh, agree with you on the, I don't like the word sick.

So health day pay, uh, would be a good idea for everybody to make it simple to go across the board.

Um, I don't need to talk fast because I don't have much to say.

Just basically we as drive forward, we do support it and hope that, you know, we make it simple that.

It's more of the hourly because I don't go to the doctor for eight hours.

If I do, then I'm in emergency.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thanks for the feedback.

Triri Hernandez.

Buenos dias.

Vas a usar el translator tambien?

Okay.

Buenos dias.

Hola, buenos días.

Mi nombre es Maria Hernández.

Necesitamos las pólizas de PIA para que podamos vivir con más dignidad.

Empecé haciendo gig worker en 2019 porque necesitaba más flexibilidad para cuidar a mis hijas.

Yo estoy en tratamiento de cinco años de cáncer de seno.

Cuando fue mi cirugía, el médico me recomendó tres meses sin trabajar.

Nada de bastante reposo y nada de estrés.

Solamente pude estar menos de un mes en casa porque necesitaba salir a trabajar para pagar mi auto, aseguranza, teléfono, renta, etc.

Necesitamos que esta póliza nos cubra a todos los workers.

Okay.

Gracias.

We're going to translate now.

Good morning.

My name is Maria Hernandez.

We need the pay up policies so that we can live with more dignity.

I started doing gig work in 2019 because I needed flexibility to take care of my daughters.

For the past five years, I have been in breast cancer treatment.

When I had my surgery, the doctor recommended three months without work, recuperating, and without stress.

I could only spend less than one month at home because I needed to go to work to pay for my car insurance, phone, rent, et cetera.

We need sick time to cover all gig workers.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Gracias, Maria.

Joelle Craft followed by Wee Lynn.

Good morning, Joelle.

Thanks for being here.

I heard you were waiting in line, so appreciate that.

Good morning, everyone, council members, those who are here and those who are attending online.

I was very lucky to be able to come down today as most of you usually see me online because of my disabilities and my health issues.

As someone who was diagnosed with MS in my junior year of high school at 16 years old, health is a huge thing for me.

And gig work was one of the few things that I could do during the pandemic, considering that all of my work was basically gone.

However, with this pay up legislation, the last time when we fought really hard to get this and to make sure there was sick leave, people like me were left behind.

Because I work for Rover that takes over 30% of my pay.

Gives me no idea how they advertise also gives me no protections and only makes the client give an email address I've been harassed.

I've lost jobs on there and rover does nothing and I have no protections Please don't leave us behind a lot of you I know are not going to be here next year Which I am very sad to say including my own council member and some others.

This is your last chance to help us Please don't leave us lower workers behind.

We are always left behind.

This is your chance Thank you so much.

I appreciate all of you.

I'm sad to see a lot of the faces go, but I know that this council can still bring this work, and this is your chance.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate you all.

Thank you very much.

And thank you for sharing your story.

Happy MS Awareness Month as well.

Thank you.

Wee Lynn, followed by Kimberly Wolf.

Good morning.

My name is Waylon and I have been a gig worker in Seattle for three years.

I drive for a company called GoPuff.

I need to use the PSSD and was able to access it when I needed to care for my families and myself.

It is important to me to use this sick time and the event I needed to be there for the people I care about and not have to worry about next bills coming.

or trying to work a double shift to try to make it up.

There was some difficulty in using the PSST, which should be more streamlined.

But PSST means when there is a need to use the time for my and my family's health and safety.

I know I got a cup, and that means a lot.

Gig workers in Seattle are facing serious matters, and the permanent PSST helps us gig workers have some reliability to deal with the things that might come up in our lives.

And I appreciate the city council working to address this issue.

We're looking to you all and counting on you all to make a decision to help us.

I want to thank the Office of Labor Standards for assisting us to do the GoPuff for getting the money that GoPuff didn't pay us.

And I just want to thank you all.

Thank you very much, Wei.

Appreciate it.

Kimberly, followed by Peter Kuhl.

Hello, Kimberly.

Thank you, I'm Kimberly Wolf.

I've been with the Pay Up campaign for a long time now, and I'm glad to see progress.

Thank you so much, Lisa, for really just being in the trenches with us for a while now, and Teresa.

You guys have been great, and I'm glad that we've gotten this far, and we need to get a little bit farther, so hopefully you can help us do that.

Pay Up is for PSST.

I've got a lot of people here, I'll be giving you testimonies.

that all say that this is a good thing and we need to do it.

And these companies during the emergency sick day were slacking off or not paying.

And I'm just glad that with this legislation, it'll be in the hands of the OLS who will actually enforce.

And that's important.

Also, You know, there's a lot of gig workers out there that need all kinds of help.

And this is just one aspect of the whole package that we've been advocating for.

But it's a very important package aspect because if you can't take a sick day off, then your work is gonna suffer, your life is gonna suffer.

Homelessness rises, pay lowers, all this kind of thing if you can't even just take a day or two off when you need it.

and our families suffer too.

So this actually has a far-reaching effect, just being able to give somebody a simple day off when they need it.

And I thank you very much for your efforts on our behalf, and hopefully they'll continue.

Thank you very much for your time today.

Peter, followed by Marguerite Richard.

Good morning, Peter.

Good morning.

Hello, good to see you again.

Thank you, Council members.

My name is Peter Quill, President of Driver Union, the union that represent Uber and Lyft drivers across Washington state.

When this body provided basic time to the city gig workers at the eye of COVID pandemic, it changed their life.

of drivers I represent.

Pay sick time allows drivers to keep themselves and their families safe and healthy without sacrificing their ability to pay rent and put food on the table.

Through the power of drivers organizing to fight together for a just system, we secured the right to pay sick time for drivers across Washington state in 2022. I stand before you now to urge you to allow all workers in Seattle to benefit from the rights that we have fought for and won.

No workers should be forced to choose between their livelihood and their housing.

And our entire community is sober when we stop forcing sick workers to make that choice, giving them the option to stay home and get well instead of potentially spreading illness because they cannot afford to do anything else.

I will hire you to support these drivers for both basic time and protection.

Those two things should come together and it's very important.

Thank you for your for your time and your wisdom.

I trust that you will continue to join us in fighting for the rights of workers of Seattle and keeping our citizens healthy.

And thank you so much.

Thank you.

Marguerite Richard followed by Azani Smith.

Good morning.

like the song said, and still I rise, never to give up and never to give in.

That's the kind of spirit that I have.

My name is Marguerite Richard.

Okay, back in front.

Okay, I'm here to talk about, there's something on here about the Department of Finance, okay?

And I'm gonna cut to the chase.

If you don't have the right money and resources to do anything, according to this establishment, we don't really have much.

What are we gonna do?

The Bible is clear.

Money answers all things.

And I've already been offended.

He said, offenses may come, but warn to them that bring them.

So the Department of Finances is over the establishment that handles security, okay?

I'm mentioning security because I went up today for the Community Police Commission, you don't even show our faces down here anymore.

And that's discriminatory, that we have to sit up here and look at a reader board, but other people up there on the screen are being seen, but not us.

You're the only establishment that I know of that participates in that.

And the Supreme Court prohibits arbitrary, capricious abuse of governmental power.

We have a power here that needs to be addressed right now.

Not to set no credence for people to be afraid.

Afraid of what?

No, you come here and testify because they're human just like we are.

We're all human beings.

And you're getting up from out of here, some of you that have not established the fact that we're all equal.

All men and women, since this is Women's History Month, are created equal.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

The next person to speak is Ms. Smith followed by Lynn Reed.

And then if there's anybody else that wanted to speak in person or online, we will do a last call, but just want to make sure we didn't miss anybody.

Good morning, Ms. Smith.

Hello, my name's actually Ajanae Smith.

Ajanae Smith.

It's just Aja and A.

I'm sorry, because I come here a lot with my aunt.

I'm just overhearing a lot of testimonies today and the simple fact that people are here fighting for sick pay.

is really disturbing to me because one, I don't work, honestly, because I feel sick in the mind sometimes.

I feel sick with society.

I feel sick about where I am positioned in my life.

Sometimes people just need a break mentally.

Sometimes people just need a break from life.

Sometimes people just need a break.

You know, sometimes people just need to live.

You know, life is not just about working, getting up every day, sitting in front of a desk.

And I'm pretty sure you guys don't want to do that every single day of your life.

Sometimes life is about living, seeing things, seeing people, meeting people.

Maybe that's why we're sick.

Maybe that's why we're so afraid of speaking up because we're in a society where we can't even meet people and feel like we're different because of our pain or maybe what we go through because everybody is tired.

I'm pretty sure people here are tired.

I'm pretty tired even though I don't work.

And I'm pretty sure people who are working on apps People are limited to working on apps.

That's sad, that's sickening.

And then on top of that, not being able to see our faces.

Yes, that's not right.

All these people here came and you didn't show none of their faces, but you guys show yours, but we're all equal in the eyes of God.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Lynn Reed is our last speaker signed up.

Oh, and then I'll make sure to come back to you, sir.

Go ahead, Lynn.

What do you think?

Can I just double check that your microphone's working?

And we will restart your time.

Sorry.

That's okay.

We'll restart your time.

Do you want me to start over?

Yeah, that'd be great.

Thank you.

So, thank you for hearing us today.

My name is Lynn Reed, and not only am I active on gig platforms, including delivery platforms, like Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub, Postmates, but I'm a member of DriveForward, and We would like to thank you for putting this legislation forward to make paid sick and safe time permanent for for gig workers like me.

It's really important that we have access to that to that paid sick time.

You know during the pandemic we learned that It's crucial for us to be able to have some kind of compensation when we need to take that time off for either ourself or family.

I am, however, concerned about two things in the paid sick and safe time bill being presented, and that is the accrual rate.

We would really, and our members have given us this feedback also, we would really like to see the accrual rate be of one hour for 40 hours worked, mimicking the driver's legislation that was put forward.

And also right now it's forcing drivers to take eight hours at a time off.

in, you know, for a one hour doctor appointment, and then not being able to go back to work on the platforms that day.

So we're asking you to maybe bump that down to four hours to again, mimic the drivers, you know, paid sick and safe time, that will make a huge impact.

I would really like to thank you for hearing us and hopefully adopting that into the The bill 120-0514.

Thank you so much.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

And we have one last speaker.

And if you could introduce yourself and then if you don't mind just signing on that last line on the paper, but you can do that afterwards.

It's okay.

All right.

Welcome.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My name is James Thomas.

James Thomas.

Good morning.

I'm a senior citizen.

I have a lot of health issues at the moment.

However, back in 1991, when my last child was born, she had major health issues.

And I received a bill in the mail from the job I was doing.

And it said $31,000 after her 30 days in the hospital.

But on the bottom, it said paid in full.

Oh.

Because I was supported by the company that I worked for.

Now there's billions of dollars flying around the gig industry for all these companies.

They have billions that they're pocketing And they're not sharing with the gig workers.

They don't have that right to do that.

They're doing it.

But in this society, in America, they don't have that right.

They're supposed to share the wealth.

They're not sharing the wealth.

People go out and work.

If they have to be sick and go to work, then they're going to be sick and take those illnesses back home to their families.

Then it's going to be more detrimental to their children who have to stay home from school and can't get their educations.

Now, with being said that, thank you.

But I think it only takes three hours to go to a doctor's appointment at the most, eight hours if you're getting a procedure that you need to be paid for.

So I advocate for three hours for a doctor's appointment and you only need a whole day if you have an actual procedure to be done and you're going home to rest up from it.

Thank you for your time.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

That does conclude everybody that we have signed up for public comment.

And I really appreciate all of the interest, just making sure for the folks online from IT, there's nobody else who dialed in, is there?

No.

Okay, great.

What's that?

There are no further public comment registries.

Thank you so much.

And I would encourage folks to stay if you're able to.

I know people probably have multiple commitments and we're also happy to follow up.

There's a few areas where I think that the state policy and the local policy that we're proposing to extend are getting a little crosswise.

So we'll have Karina Bull from central staff to talk through some of the cruel issues that came up and some possibilities for us to make sure that they're a little bit more clear and streamlined.

So that will come up soon.

And I also have all of the signups so we can follow up individually with people as well if you do have to leave.

With that, that brings us to the agenda in front of us.

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

Agenda item number one, Council Bill 120514, an ordinance relating to the outpatient workers in Seattle for a briefing discussion and possible vote.

Okay, great.

And can folks on the line hear the clerk as well?

Okay.

Okay, great well good morning everyone and thank you all for joining us in this virtual panel.

It's wonderful to see all of you I want to take a screen grab of this.

And I want to start with a thank you.

One person that is not here with us on the panel today but it's very much watching and.

and actively listening is Chief of Staff in my office, Sejal Parikh.

Sejal Parikh is lead on all things labor and has been over the last now going into six years.

And sometimes you have such great team members and advisors that you just implicitly trust the final product and the work that they are doing will be inclusive, effective, and thoughtful.

And that is what we have here today.

And she has done a tremendous amount of work in partnership with Carina Bull, who has spent endless hours working on this public policy that's in front of us, complementing the work that she did in 2020, and in partnership with the Office of Labor Standards, and really want to thank the mayor's office explicitly, Breonna Thomas, who's with us here this morning as well.

This is a joint effort, and without the partnership of Breonna, Karina, Sejal, and our partners at OLS, we would not have such a thoughtful and complete policy for our consideration today.

Colleagues, you know that this legislation was scheduled for discussion two weeks ago.

I myself had to take paid sick leave, but it has been out on the dais and publicly available since the end of last month.

So what we're going to do today is have a brief overview of how we got here.

We will have a presentation from The labor lead within the mayor's office that is Brianna Thomas, we will have a quick overview from office of labor standards from Karen, and then we will have a detailed presentation from central staffs, Karina bull.

I wanted to provide a quick overview for my colleagues about the why we are bringing this forward today.

As folks know, Seattle passed and implemented paid sick leave for employees about 11 years ago.

That was 2012. Some of you were here.

Thank you for your long-term commitment to making sure that more workers had access to paid sick and safe leave.

I want to note that this is not just a labor standards policy to improve the health and well-being of workers.

This is truly a public health and equity issue.

We are making sure that we are continuing our commitment to expand paid sick and safe leave to workers who interact with members of the general public, the same principles that led us to passing the paid sick and safe leave ordinance 11 years ago.

We want to make sure that workers are not having to choose between their jobs and foregoing a paycheck.

worried about not having a paycheck to pay for rent and groceries and all of the things that their family might need, but we want them to stay home when they're actually sick.

And that is what this legislation does.

It allows for workers who need to take sick time to be able to stay home, to care for themselves or their family, or to take safe leave if they're experiencing stalking, domestic violence, have experienced a sexual assault, and or if their place of care for their kiddo has closed due to a public health crisis.

We want them to take that safe leave.

We want to make sure that workers don't have to make a choice between their health and safety and that paycheck.

So that's what this is all about today.

As the pandemic hit in 2020, my office in partnership with the Office of Labor Standards and with tremendous amount of work again by Karina Bull, We were able to work over approximately two to three month period and craft legislation to make sure that we had robust protections around safe leave for families who were within hours notice finding out that their daycares were closing, that the schools were closing.

Do you remember early in 2020, March, February, we were all trying to respond and be as responsive as possible to the growing news about the pandemic and schools were just closing.

But the use of safe leave or sick leave wasn't an actual applicable use of our city's paid sick and safe leave policy.

So we expanded that and we said, you know what, when there's a public health emergency, if there's a hazard, we're going to change the city's code to ensure that safe leave is available for parents or caretakers who need to use that time.

to be compensated for not going to work if their place of care for their loved ones, it was closing.

That's the type of quick response that we did in early 2020. We amended to make sure that frontline workers, essential workers, had what they needed so that they could use that sick and safely for public health related closures.

And early in June, we worked together to pass paid sick leave for gig workers, recognizing that so many people were getting deliveries to their homes, whether it was groceries or food.

Many people were staying at home.

And using app based applications more than they had used in the past.

We wanted to make sure to protect the workers who are out there on the front line and that legislation to create create temporary sick leave for gig workers passed unanimously was signed by the then mayor.

and it was also temporary legislation.

So this emergency legislation that we passed had an extension on it that noted that whenever the mayor, whoever he or she or they might be, whenever the emergency order was ended by the mayor, it would give us a six month grace period for us to figure out how to best address the ongoing needs of workers and the public's health.

That paid sick and safe leave temporary measure is set to expire in April of this year.

So that's why it's so imperative that we work to give ourselves the opportunity to vote on this legislation this month so that it can go into effect next month and no workers left without access to paid sick and safe leave who received it under the temporary ordinance.

I'm really grateful again to the work of Sajal Parikh and Karina Bull in 2020, the close partnership that we had with our council colleagues.

And again, I want to thank Council Member Herbold who has not only champion and supported this issue, but has her own legislation that we have now built upon in the ordinance in front of us.

And especially now in 2022 and 2023, we had the partnership and the collaboration with Mayor Harrell and his office, explicitly the labor lead, Breonna Thomas, who's with us today.

We work to ensure that the long-term paid sick leave for gig workers was a possibility and that we had an opportunity to build, I would say, again, on the legislation from Councilmember Herbold and Councilmember Lewis, who is with us here today as part of our committee.

These two worked in the last year to expand access to labor standards for gig workers under the pay up legislation.

So we have a lot to learn from, right?

Two and a half years of temporary paid sick and safe leave, the work of the pay up legislation from Councilmember Herbold and Lewis, and we have the lived experience of workers, drivers, and our community members that we leaned on heavily.

Our office prides ourself in deep stakeholder engagement.

We want to really make sure that we understand how existing policy is affecting folks and what might need to change, especially as we think about application for companies who need to be responsible for sharing the rights and responsibilities out with workers that they have on their platforms.

So we worked with workers directly, with members of Working Washington who are here today, Teamsters 117, MLK Labor, UFCW 21, the Center for Popular Democracy at the national level, the Center for Law and Social Policy in D.C., our national partners with the National Employment Law Project, and we received input from several apps as well.

That includes DoorDash, Uber Eats, Postmates, and Lyft.

And we tried to get feedback on the original legislation as well as what we were considering under this legislation.

Since then, we've also connected with a few additional industry applications and sat down with workers at the table to talk about how this could be applied and how we can constantly improve public policy.

So since the passage of this legislation, there's four major takeaways that we've incorporated in here and I will make sure to turn it over to our community panel or our partner panel here in a second.

But I wanted our colleagues to understand that what is in front of us reflects the fact that number one, the gig economy is growing.

Number two, the application of the law needed to be consistent.

Number three, the public health crisis still persists.

And I should say crises still persist.

And number four, as I noted, we have.

Council members who've expanded and extended labor protections.

Now we have an opportunity to harmonize definitions.

So those are the four components that we really centered in our review of the legislation and how we could extend these temporary measures and make them permanent.

As you'll see in Karina Bull's memo related to the first item, the gig economy continues to grow.

A study by MasterCard projected double-digit growth for the app-based economy over the last four years.

Sales for app-based food delivery services collectively grew 8% year over year since 2018. And similar growth is projected through 2026. So this is an industry that just continues to grow.

And we need to make sure that the workers in this industry get access to those labor standards that we know are so good for them and also the population's health.

We recognize that this is sometimes conflated with the independent contractor issue.

I want to make sure that folks know that this legislation does not opine on the status of independent contractors similar to our past efforts.

We are just simply saying if you work on an app platform, we want to make sure that you have certain protections and my colleagues have.

led on ways in which we can make sure that greater awareness is provided to folks who work on these app-based platforms and we want to make sure that we continue to extend it.

It is imperative for us to recognize the growth in this sector and thus the increased need for us to extend labor protections as we see more than half of the workers on these app-based platforms expressing concern about contracting illness while at work.

The second item, where I mentioned that we've seen inconsistencies, part of the downside of our past legislation was that we heard from workers that there was inconsistencies with how the benefits were being explained to workers and how workers could access the temporary protections.

So what we recognize is that some platforms offered paid sick and safe leave, some did not.

And some of the benefits were being applied inconsistently.

This becomes especially problematic when we take into account the growth in the sector.

As noted in the central staff memo, 16% of all American adults earn some form of income on app-based platforms.

And about a third of those workers, this is their main source of income.

And over 50% of workers who use app-based platforms to earn their income, they fear contracting some form of an illness.

And that number is even higher for BIPOC workers.

60% of BIPOC workers on these platforms who are overrepresented in this industry worry about contracting illnesses.

So we have an economic justice responsibility, a public health responsibility, and a racial justice responsibility to address these issues.

The third thing is that while there's maybe disagreement out there about facts and data and truth in the public health crisis that is the pandemic, what we know is that everybody now has experienced the concern about whether or not they're contracting COVID.

That tickle in your throat that starts the worry that you just saw your family members or friends or neighbors and you're constantly concerned about if you yourself are contracting the disease or if you've shared it with your loved ones.

We wanna make sure that in this moment, we take away any of the politics of this and just recognize it's good for the public's health for us to apply sick and safe leave so that if somebody starts to feel sick, they know immediately they can have access to paid leave so that they don't have to go into work sick or that they can take care of their loved one.

This legislation, like our state and city policies before, also include paid safe leave.

And I wanted to emphasize this as well, because access to paid safe leave is a public health issue as well.

Safe leave, as I noted before, is available for folks who may be experiencing stalking, domestic violence, have experienced a sexual assault, also includes safely for if places of care are closing down.

We want to recognize that in the last three years, these types of public health crises have also increased.

Increased interpersonal violence is compounding the existing health stressors in our community.

and as a co-occurring issue during the pandemic.

So if people need access to safe leave, we are now extending that public policy to more workers so that no one has to go to work when they're in a state of trauma and they need to get access to health services.

So I'm excited that we have in front of us the legislation here for us today.

Three years ago we heard from a grub hub driver and I want to use his story because it varies, it's very similar to the stories that we've heard today.

Now that the pandemic is here, people are hungry and they are hiding in their homes from the virus.

And suddenly I'm essential.

I'm risking exposure to a highly contagious, possibly deadly virus to fetch people's dinner.

That is why we need sick leave.

I was sick with extreme flu-like symptoms through March of 2020. Although I was extremely weak and constantly coughing and having trouble taking a full breath, I kept working as a delivery driver because it was my only source of income.

At times, I was too weak to work to finish my shift, too weak to finish my shift.

I lost my opportunity to earn income.

Gig work is my only income, so I am now behind on all of my monthly bills.

I work as much as possible, but there are still days where I don't make enough to go on for the next day, to put gas in the car, or to grab a few groceries.

I do not live paycheck to paycheck.

I do not live day to day.

I live order to order.

I do not know how I will financially recover.

I am still experiencing waves of COVID-19 symptoms.

At times, I'm not able to work.

But with sick leave, I would not have tried to work when I was so very sick and possibly spreading the coronavirus.

With sick leave, I would have stayed home.

With sick leave, I may have recovered faster.

And that was the impetus to our work in 2020. And that is why we are so excited to be able to extend these protections on an ongoing basis.

I want to thank again the mayor's office and the department who began working with us in the beginning of this year.

In January, my office met with the mayor's office and with the departments and with Karina Bull from central staff.

We also met with members from GoPuff, Amazon Flex, Instacart, DoorDash and Uber.

members, these workers who work for these companies shared how valuable the paid sick legislation had been.

And one shared that it was quote unquote, a lifesaver.

And another shared that it allowed for them to take paid time off and not push past their limits.

So that is why we are doing this work so quickly here today.

And I want to thank Brianna, Karam, Thank you so much for being here.

We have done everything we can in this legislation as well.

The fourth item I mentioned was to harmonize definitions where possible.

So colleagues, I'm going to turn it over to our panel and I'll start with Brianna Thomas from the mayor's office.

Again, thank you for being here.

Thank you for your deep partnership and getting the ball rolling on this legislation and for your work with stakeholders.

We deeply appreciate the partnership with you and the mayors and the entire executive team.

And I'll turn it to you first to provide us with an overview.

And thanks for being here.

Thank you chairman skater Good morning, everyone, I'm in committee and watching on the Seattle channel I know I personally love watching legislation been made and this is going to be a particularly good piece of that.

And I couldn't agree more that Karen and Karina are absolute treasures and we are lucky to have them here in the city.

As you mentioned, Councilmember this bill is a good common sense value statement about the fact that we value our workers here in Seattle all workers and that they deserve to have paid sick and safe times they don't have to choose between meeting their basic needs and having a healthy and safe community.

in October at the end of the COVID-19 emergency order.

Several pieces of legislation were set to sunset and this is one of them.

So we got to work making sure that this was a permanent protection for the workers here in the city of Seattle.

Karim did quite a bit of work to harmonize definitions with changes that we'd seen at the state level and the transmitted bill that we sent down to you and I'm sure he'll speak on that a bit.

But we just wanted to make sure that when that sunset hit at the end of April, we were all ready to go to continue a seamless transition between the temporary ordinance and a permanent labor standard here in Seattle.

So I appreciate your time here in committee today.

I appreciate your consideration.

And I really appreciate the passage of this bill on Monday so that we can make sure that there's no gap in coverage for workers and no changes that are major and necessary for the platforms providing this benefit throughout the city.

And that's what I've got for you this morning.

Well, we really appreciate your partnership and thank you for your leadership.

And again, getting the ball rolling on this legislation.

It's really been an honor to work with all of you to make sure that we could extend this protection.

Karim, I want to thank you for being here as well.

The team from the Office of Labor Standards have been, as Central Staff's memo clearly notes, very busy in helping people understand their rights under the sick leave ordinance.

Do you mind sharing a little bit about the work that OLS has had during the emergency legislation and any other comments that you'd like to make about the legislation in front of us, including implementation, enforcement and costs.

We want to be really transparent about those issues as we seek to make sure that those issues are elevated more in the public policy committees.

Good morning, Karim.

Sure.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Karim Lebed is Policy Manager at the Office of Labor Safety.

It's going to do a very quick introduction of the issue and then address exactly what you teed up.

So as we've covered a little bit, so I'll keep it brief.

The city passed basically for employees in 2012. That policy has been successful.

Our office has done quite a bit of work on it.

And food delivery network companies and transportation network companies that make up a large portion of the gig economy largely classify their workers as independent contractors.

the existing employee-based SICLI ordinance, SMC 1416. At the same time, during the pandemic, as you noted, Chairman Esqueda, those workers really were the backbone of essential workers, providing delivery, providing meals, providing food to folks who wanted to shelter in place and to reduce the risk of transmission of COVID-19.

recognizing that council passed a temporary emergency ordinance and noted that provision of pay sick leave would quote alleviate the economic pressures to work when conditions are not safe.

while sick and spreading illness.

That ordinance went into effect in July.

So we've have now July of 2020. So we now have coming on three years of experience in our office and implementing it.

And for the regulated entities, three years of experience of them building their compliance and really working with in complying with the law.

Those rights will, as noted, sunset on April 30th.

And so we are certainly on a timeline.

As noted, those laws apply to food delivery network companies and transportation network So they're no longer subject to the temporary ordinance real quick highlights of what our office has done to implement those to that temporary ordinance.

We've had a number of sort of outreach and education activities, including fact sheets translated into 9 different languages webinars available on our website and detailed question and answer documents.

That really goes into that.

from a hiring entity standpoint.

We've provided a significant amount of technical assistance to the public.

We have a social media campaign, newsletters, and coordinated outreach activities centered around International Workers Day as well.

We've also trained our contracted partners, the organizations that we fund to do outreach in the community on the ordinance, provided that support also to our business partners, and created an industry cluster group, what we call an industry cluster and provide information back to our office.

In terms of enforcement, we've had about 215 worker inquiries on this ordinance, 11 resolved investigations that affected just shy of 21,000 workers.

So this ordinance has been effective.

It is creating benefits for many, many workers, and our office has been able significantly.

And even though this ordinance The policy rationale and the need for it really extend beyond the pandemic context for the reasons that you addressed, Chairman Mosqueda, and just for the simple fact of, you know, all workers should have access to paid sick leave for numerous reasons.

And in fact, researchers and counselors previously highlighted this in their findings have found that mandatory paid sick leave policies in U.S. cities, including Seattle, clearly and significantly reduced the rates of influenza-like illnesses.

And I do want to just pull out one finding in the introduced legislation, which I think sums up the sort of intersectional policies that this addresses.

And that is that providing paid sick leave creates more stable and productive workforces, enhanced public health, improved family economic security, with benefits to workers, their families, network companies, and the community as a whole.

So that's sort of the But to your point about the implementation costs, I'll just sort of highlight those quickly in any new labor standards legislation that our office implements.

There's typically 1 time costs.

Of to get it out the door, so to speak, in terms of.

creating outreach and education materials, creating required notices, costs around administrative rulemaking, and then there's ongoing costs.

So the one-time costs in this instance are about $45,000, and ongoing costs of fixed hard costs are far less, closer to $10,000.

We did assess that we would need one additional staff member to implement this.

scope, which I know Karina will address in more detail.

So we have a single staff member request as well, half of the year FY23 and then ongoing one staff member, a full staff member going forward.

That's all I have and happy to answer any questions.

Excellent, thank you.

Well, let's go ahead and have Karina walk us through the presentation and then we will take questions and Karen, if you're available to stay, if there are questions, that'd be great.

Brianna, same extends to you too, if you have the availability to stay, if there's any questions.

I wanna turn it to Karina Bull and Karina, do you have the capability to tee up your, Presentation, or did you need us for that?

Okay, thank you.

I hope to do it.

Okay, great.

And then let me just say, thank you once again to create a bowl for all of her time and due diligence with going through the details of every aspect of the legislation.

I should note that.

Sajal Parikh from my staff shared with me that Karina had noted that this is one of the most detailed and time intensive pieces of legislation that you've worked on.

So I really appreciate your work, both on this legislation and in 2020. I hope it's okay that I shared that.

I just want to make sure that folks know how much time you have taken to go through all of the aspects of the legislation.

And thanks again for walking us through the changes in front of us and the stakeholder feedback.

I know we had a few public commenters on this legislation who are bringing up issues related to application, excuse me, the accrual and how to access those benefits.

So I think your presentation is going to be very helpful with clarifying some of the ways in which the policy could be applied.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you for those kind words and good morning to all the committee members.

Karina Bull with Council Central staff.

I'm going to click the button to share my presentation.

Great.

It's working and maybe just presentation mode.

Yeah.

All right.

Excellent.

Excellent.

Thank you.

All right.

So this, this is quite a comprehensive policy.

It's a lot to go over in a short presentation.

So rest assured that.

This presentation along with the memo and a comparison chart are all available on the agenda for future reference as well.

To begin, this bill would essentially make permanent what was temporary.

We've heard that from many folks this morning.

And network companies would provide app-based workers with paid sick and safe time to care for their personal and family members' health conditions or safety needs.

OLS would continue to enforce it, and it would be effective on May 1st, that there would be no disruption in coverage of those food delivery network company workers that are already covered by the temporary ordinance.

Just a quick refresher on the timeline.

We've heard it verbally.

Here it is in written form that the temporary ordinance went into effect in July of 2020. And at the end of this month, those benefits will expire.

This legislation is ready to become effective on May 1st.

And on January 13th of 2024, that is the date that the app-based worker minimum payment ordinance will go into effect.

Commonly referred to as pay up.

And that is a pivotal date for many of the provisions in this ordinance.

And so one of them, which I will go into soon, is that is the date when this expanded network company coverage will go into effect.

That is mid-January.

Paid sick and safe time.

We've heard it already.

It's for out-based workers.

It's for out-based workers to take care of their family members.

It covers health conditions, and it also covers safe time needs.

Now, this ordinance, as I said, is largely the same as the temporary one.

However, there are some substantive revisions regarding coverage and pay, and then a handful of other revisions as well.

For coverage, the workers and the companies that would be covered are expanded from food delivery network companies to all app-based workers that are also covered by that minimum payment ordinance.

TNCs are not covered because they are exempted by that state law as well.

So as far as the universe of what these type of companies are, they're gonna be all of the on-demand delivery companies, whether they're delivering food, laundry, on-demand car washes, et cetera, all of those sorts of companies are going to be covered.

There's also some network companies that facilitate pre-scheduled offers that will be covered.

And these aren't marketplace network companies, which I'll get to in a minute, but these are companies that are in that area in between on demand and marketplace network companies that still exert a fair amount of control over the workers that are accepting their offers.

So, for example, food delivery, and I think on demand delivery is kind of easy to understand the customer places.

An order for on demand delivery of laundry or a restaurant item and the worker goes and picks it up and then brings it to the customer's location.

There are some network companies that are offering shifts or jobs to workers that the workers choose that the customer has placed an order for separately.

So.

That could be a worker who's looking at a large variety of things that they could accept.

For example, putting together a dishwasher for 2 hours, it would pay X amount of dollars or putting together a piece of furniture for perhaps 3 hours and that would require or that would pay X amount of dollars or take a shift at a restaurant that they don't typically work at.

So, for those sorts of network companies, they would be covered by this.

I hesitate to name a company without doing the full deep dive research, but one that might be covered could be handy as a touchstone.

Now, marketplace network companies would not be covered by this ordinance.

They are also not covered by that pay up minimum payment ordinance as well.

These companies let customers and the workers, where the customer chooses the worker, and then they work out the details of the kind of job that the worker is going to perform.

So my analysis is that Rover would be a marketplace network company that would not be covered by this legislation.

And as we already mentioned, transportation network companies would not be covered as well.

Now, according to my analysis, and this is not comprehensive at all, I was able to identify at least 12 food delivery network companies that would be covered by the temporary ordinance.

And immediately I could already identify at least double that amount that would be covered by the APES worker minimum payment ordinance, which would be the full breadth of coverage going into effect in January.

I imagine that there are many more and this is a growing industry.

So I imagine that there will be more and more companies covered by the legislation as time goes by.

Coverage dates, May 1, that is when this ordinance would go into effect.

Food delivery network company workers would experience no disruption in their benefits.

And in mid-January, that is when all of the app-based workers would be covered by this legislation.

Accrual and use.

Accrual would be one day of paid sick and safe time for every 30 days worked that include a work-related stop in Seattle.

So what that would mean is that if there is a driver who perhaps picks up or accepts the order when they're in Tukwila, but then drives into Seattle to go to a restaurant or go to a store and then delivers it in Seattle, that entire day would count towards their paid sick and save time accrual.

It's a very simple and low barrier way of accruing the time and also understanding what the time is.

If that worker accepted the order in Tukwila, drove into the city to go to the store to pick it up and then delivered it back in Tukwila, that day would have one work-related stop in Seattle.

It would still count as a day that would trigger PSST accrual.

Okay, great.

Oh, sorry.

Let's let you finish and then we'll take a question.

Okay, the last point on this slide is how workers could use the recruit leave and they could use it in 24 hour increments, daily increments.

So what that would mean is that a worker would contact the network company and request use of their leave.

And from that point forward to 24 hours, they would not be working.

And then they would be paid for a full day average daily compensation, which I'll get into in a moment.

They could request it for consecutive days of use as well.

And they would be eligible to use the paid leave if they had worked in whole or part in Seattle in the previous 90 calendar days.

You know, Council Member Herbold, you are up in the queue next.

Do you mind if we do the next slide because it dovetails on the payment calculation just to kind of combine the full picture of what pay might look like?

Sure.

I had a question about accrual, but I can hold my question.

Okay, let's do that just to make sure that we sort of see these two slides in tandem.

Do you mind doing payment?

And then we'll come to Council Member Herbold.

Yes, so a payment is average daily compensation.

It's a similar idea as what was in the temporary ordinance, but the parameters of it have changed for this permanent version of the paid sick and save time requirements.

it would be the daily average of compensation for each day worked in whole or part in Seattle in the preceding 12 months.

So that counts every day that the worker has worked for the network company, even if there wasn't a touch point in Seattle.

The idea is to incentivize workers to use their paid sick and safe time, not to have to do the complicated round of math to figure out what days may have been covered, what their payment's going to be.

It's any day in the average of any day worked in the preceding 12 months.

It would include earnings inside Seattle and outside Seattle.

And as of mid-January, when that minimum payment standard goes into effect for these workers, tips would not be included in that average day daily compensation.

However, for the eight months in between May and mid-January, tips would be included on the premise that in that time period, the food delivery network company workers don't have a minimum pay standard.

So tips are going to be included to more accurately reflect what they're earning and to bump up their incentive.

To use the paid leave and a rate of average daily compensation would be recalculated every calendar month.

And that way workers would have a static amount of paid sick and safe time pay that they could rely on and know for a full calendar month of what they would be earning if they used it.

Thank you.

Okay, let's go back 1 slide and council member herbal vice chair.

Please go ahead.

Thanks so much.

So I appreciate that there appears to be a tiered phasing in of these requirements.

And I think I understand the basis of that phase in for the FNCs.

The issue is that this is a benefit that under the COVID era ordinance folks were already receiving for that group.

And so we want to offer seamless coverage and the sort of infrastructure already exists for that group of workers in a way that it doesn't for the other app-based workers.

But one thing I have a question about related to the accrual rate is, well two, One, my recollection of the COVID ordinance was that there wasn't an accrual rate.

There was like a bank of sick time.

There wasn't a need to keep track of accrual according to hours worked because people needed to be able to take leave.

Sooner than there would have been time to accrue.

So, people, there wasn't a recruit accrual rate but instead there was like a bank of, of time or time was just granted I'm not quite sure I understand how it worked then.

How did it work then?

Two, how did we come to this accrual rate for this ordinance?

Because I did hear folks in public comment having questions about sort of how we came to the accrual rate.

And then three, if there wasn't an accrual process for the old ordinance that is being replaced with this one, do the app-based companies have the infrastructure in place to begin to track accrual moving forward.

All right, thank you for all those questions.

I've written them down if I'm free not to sorry.

Well, first of all, I wanted to thank you for highlighting the reason for the delayed effective date for those for the full breadth of app based workers beyond just food delivery network company workers until mid January.

And it is exactly for the reasons that you stated that getting paid sick and save time up and running in 30 days happened when this was And during the early days of the coven emergency now, there's some more time that council or the city can grant to those companies to get all those systems into place.

And they would have about 8 months to do that.

Next, I think what you're referring to about the bank of leave is the temporary ordinances.

front-loading requirement so that it was both.

Companies were required to choose an accrual method of front-loaded paid sick and safe time and then in addition to that and the effective date of the ordinance accrue one day for every 30 days worked as well.

So this happened in the early days of the pandemic and it was the policy or the The policy decision was that workers needed paid sick leave immediately.

They couldn't wait 30 days to accrue time.

They needed it right then and there.

And so companies could either choose to front load five days into the workers sick leave bank that they would get to keep in addition to whatever they accrued in real time, or the companies could choose a front loading method where they would go back to October of 2019 and base it on the actual, I think, number of days worked.

And so that's what I think you're referring to.

That is not included in this legislation.

The FD&C workers would get to keep whatever they had previously accrued and any app-based workers newly covered in mid-January would begin from zero, which is more similar to employees who are beginning a new job.

They begin from zero unless the companies want to front load that time.

Here, the network companies can choose to front load the time if they choose as well.

And then how did, How did how did we get to this accrual rate?

A lot of or many aspects of this paid sick and save time policy are based on requirements for large employers under the paid sick and save time ordinance for employees.

And so, as a refresher for folks that paid sick and save time ordinance for employees.

apportions the amount of paid leave that workers accrue and how much they get to retain from year to year based on the size of the employer, small, medium and large employers.

On the premise that a small employer may not have the resources to provide the same amount of sick leave as a large employer.

A large employer is defined as 250 or more employees worldwide.

And so a large employer is required to allow a cruel of one hour for every 30 hours worked carry over of up to the 72 hours, which is nine days.

So under this ordinance, a network company is considered quote a large employer so That's why there's carryover of up to nine days.

That's why one day of PSST for every 30 days.

It works out to roughly the same amount of number of days accrual as an employee.

So, for example, if an employee worked full time, they would accrue about 8.6 calendar days or 72 hours.

of sick leave.

Under this legislation, if an app-based worker worked every weekday of the year, 52 weeks in a year, they would accrue about 8.6 calendar days of sick leave.

So they would be using it in a daily increment rather than an hour, but it's roughly the same.

And so that's how we got to this accrual rate.

And so just to say it out loud, so it just simplifies it for me.

It is based on the same accrual rate for regular employees under the 2012 PSST for large employers.

In a nutshell, correct.

question of use.

Does the PSST for regular employees allow partial, not full-day use?

It does.

Like a four-hour day or?

It does.

Yes, it does.

And employees can use it, I believe, just tapping into my memory banks, but they can use it in the smallest increment of time that an employer tracks time.

So it can be used down to a very short period of time.

Go ahead.

Just wondering, so, but that's not, we're not replicating that model in this proposed bill.

Correct.

This proposed bill is a full 24 hours.

It's daily use because it is accrued in a daily amount.

The policy decision was to equate a day with 24 hours.

It could be that a day could be considered a different amount of time, eight hours, half a day is four hours.

But the way it has been introduced is that a day is 24 hours.

Also wanted to point out that the reason why accrual is not based on hours worked is because it is much more difficult to track the hours worked by these app-based workers.

Even with the engaged time definition that's used for the minimum payment ordinance, even that amount of time doesn't fully capture the amount of hours that these workers are actually spending to get their job done.

For example, it doesn't include the waiting time of delivery drivers waiting to accept an offer.

It doesn't include all the time that a worker works outside of Seattle.

So I think that's helpful to think about as well.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Council member and then thanks for all of those questions.

I wanted to circle back to that last point that was just raised and also would invite if you have anything additional to add, but the way that I thought that I understood the accrual was that if we were to do.

the sort of calculation as requested or as discussed this morning, it would yield less money in worker pockets.

Can you talk about the denominator in terms of the hour calculation and whether or not the two examples that were given, 30 or 40 hours, would yield more money in workers' pockets or less?

Yeah, I can start on that.

Yeah, just thinking about some of the public comments that were made earlier, a few thoughts to offer there.

I think if this policy was sort of being designed from the get-go as a new policy, thinking creatively about different accrual methods would really make a lot of sense.

the context we're in because there has been a temporary ordinance that has been in effect for almost three years and that many companies are complying with already.

So I'll get to your specific question in just a minute, but I did want to just raise that sort of aligning with the statewide sick leave for TNC drivers on the surface makes a lot of sense.

But as far as I'm aware, there's only one company that would be covered by both policies.

So again, it would make sense in that context.

However, there's many companies that are covered only by this policy and have been complying with the temporary policy for almost three years.

Our sense is that a switch in accrual method would require a switch in their compliance mechanisms, probably a staff and financial investment for them.

And then with any new labor standard a company has to comply with, there's often compliance failures, which means that workers don't get the leave that they're entitled to or the benefits they're entitled to.

And it also results in increased is a heightened kind of caseload going to us.

And the flip of that is we also have to adjust to a new accrual method and accrual calculation.

So we have that spin up time as well.

So just wanted to highlight those kind of differences.

In terms of the alignment and the accrual with the state sick leave, what's interesting is The state sick leave accrual method is based on...

Sorry, let me back up just one minute.

Any hours worked accrual method, which is what the employment sick leave is based on, it's also what statewide sick leave is based on, you really have to think carefully about what is defined as working time and what is hours worked.

In the state sick leave bill, Working time is time with a passenger, time that you're driving a passenger to their location, to their destination.

The engaged time definition that's used in pay up, and that I understand that folks maybe are interested in here, is not equivalent to that.

So it does not align with that state proposal.

to a restaurant, picks up the food, and goes all the way to the customer's location.

Because that's a larger amount of time that is covered and you take the total compensation, divide it by the time to get the payout, you actually end up with a lower amount of payout for workers.

The decision about what is the appropriate amount and whether that's the right policy that difference, one, just to evaluate the difference, and two, to just evaluate the idea of aligning with statewide sick leave, as I understand it, may not be achieved by this concept.

So the efficiencies, I think, that were perhaps part of the policy rationale may not actually be the same as conceived of.

Thank you.

We may have some more questions about that going forward.

I want to keep us going on the presentation.

And I also want to just thank the city budgets office, Director Dingley and her team, her teams.

We are going to have the American Rescue Plan report out for 2022 at our meeting on Monday.

So thank you for your flexibility there, because this is going a little bit longer.

And we want to get into the details.

So let's continue with your presentation, Karina.

All right.

Thank you.

Next part of the policy to discuss is what's referred to in the legislation as an accessible system.

This is something that was already required in the temporary ordinance and has been built out in this proposed version.

Workers shared that they had a really hard time knowing how much paid sick and safe time they had available to them, how to request it, how to trust and or verify.

that the amounts of leave that the company was showing to them and the pay that would be owed to them for using the leave was accurate.

And so in this legislation, the OLS director would be authorized to issue rules defining the reasonable criteria requirements of an accessible system that would be available to workers via a smartphone or via an online web portal.

So again, there was already a requirement for this accessible system in the smartphone or on the online web portal.

In this legislation, the OLS director can, may discretionarily decide to build it out.

And for example, the reasonable criteria could include requirements to provide notice of rights on that accessible system, clear instructions and procedures.

It would require or could require timely responses to a request to use paid sick leave.

There were reports of workers sending a request to the network company to use their sick leave and then not hearing anything ever.

And so it was unclear to that worker, could they stop working for 24 hours and still get paid?

Had anyone received this message?

Did they need to go somewhere else?

So the accessible system could help define the guidelines for a timely response.

Transparent information on days worked and earnings so that the worker could maybe check back with their receipts that they will be owed under the payout minimum payment ordinance that shows how much they earned and what days they worked.

And any rules defining this accessible system would go into effect no earlier than mid-January, giving companies time to develop the software, the systems to provide this information, and again, aligning with the effective date of that payout minimum payment ordinance.

Other requirements in the legislation are at least monthly notification of the accrued used and available amount of paid sick and save time available to workers with their rate of daily average daily compensation is again equipping the worker with what they need to know to understand their PSST rights and how to use it.

Uh, carry over there will be some workers who have some accrued and unused paid leave at the end of the year.

And this requirement would require the companies to carry over no less than 9 days of that unused to leave to the following year.

Separations from work, again, these items, notification, carryover, separation from work, they're all included in the PSST ordinance for employees as well.

Workers who left the app-based, who left app-based economy for a year for that particular network company could come back to work a year later and still have all of their PSST accrued in their bank available for use.

If they were deactivated, they could come back to work and their sick leave would still be there.

Consistent with other labor standards, network companies would be required to provide workers with a notice of rights.

They would be required to retain records for three years, and they would not be allowed to retaliate against workers for exercising their rights.

For example, asking about their PSST, perhaps reporting that the accessible system wasn't working.

All of that workers would be able to do without retaliation.

Workers would be able to cancel a shift or to cancel a job if they got sick in the middle of it and without the companies imposing a fee for that or maybe reducing the number of offers given to the worker.

Enforcement would be office of labor standards.

As we know, they would be responsible for rulemaking, outreach, education, company wide investigations of remedies up to treble three times the amount owed and they've shared with us the cost for implementation.

Workers would also have a right to bring a lawsuit individually or on a class basis.

As far as next steps, it sounds like this will definitely go to next Monday.

I think the salient point to know is that council would need to consider and vote on the legislation on March 21st or 28th in order to get it into effect by May 1 so that the benefits that FD&C workers have will not be disrupted.

And that concludes my presentation.

Thank you, Karina.

Okay, colleagues, I see some hands.

We're going to turn it over to Councilmember Peterson first.

Good morning, Councilmember.

Good morning, thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you for this presentation.

Really appreciate, Councilor Mosqueda, you setting the groundwork for us today and noting the collaboration with the Harrell administration to get this to us in a timely manner.

My question, I think, might be for central staff, and you can get back to us later if you if you want, but I'm curious as to what I'm generally supportive of this and just want to learn more information.

which Seattle-based employers would be impacted by this legislation?

Thank you for that question.

I am not aware of which Seattle-based network companies would be covered by this.

I think we know through the development of the payout policy that Rover is a locally-based network company that is considered a marketplace network company that would not be covered by this because it does not cover marketplace network companies.

But I'm I'm not familiar with Seattle based apps that would be covered.

That might be something that knows about.

Karen or Brianna, would you be familiar with any Seattle based network companies that could be covered by this legislation?

Yeah, I think we'll have to get back to you on that.

Certainly we've thought about which companies are covered, but haven't done that additional analysis of which ones are founded or based here.

Okay, that would be really important to me and certainly maybe that stakeholder was already done, but it's not knowing that they were physically based here, but what we're doing to impact our own Seattle-based companies would be important for me to know.

So thank you.

Any additional questions or comments?

Yes, Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

I just want to signal my interest in, much like we did in pay up.

I just like to signal signal my, my interest in, I believe you share it much like we, we didn't pay up, making some commitments to our.

marketplace workers, marketplace app workers, so that they are not left behind.

And much like for for pay up and minimum compensation, when the marketplace apps were stripped from that legislation, there was a an amendment offered to to make a commitment that we would work with stakeholders and workers in that area to extend minimum payment to them.

I would appreciate the opportunity to express a future commitment to do so in that area as well.

that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you very much, vice chair.

I'll come back to that as I talk about next steps as well with the possible amendments on the horizon but really appreciate your leadership on including the marketplace workers and let's continue to have that conversation quickly before this

So I generally have some reservations about taking temporary emergency legislation and making it permanent on an expedited timeline when this is really a doubling of coverage.

It seems like Karina said that there were 12 and now there are double that that will be covered by this.

So It does.

So we have to really look at the details here.

And I wanted to know, what are the pros and cons for workers of using a daily accrual method instead of an hourly accrual method?

Because the state legislature passed laws covering TNCs that use an hourly.

and we've heard from drivers that use multiple platforms that this would be easier for them.

And I hadn't even thought about the issue of partial days, four hours versus eight hours or whatever.

So I just wanted to know, and I asked this in our briefing, Queen and Brianna, if there were any calculations, because also getting to your point, Chair Mosqueda, this puts more money in the pockets of workers, which is great.

And I'll note that the, network companies themselves are supportive of this and nobody's questioning that.

I just want to understand why hourly instead of day, what does it really mean for for the workers here?

OK, so did you have any.

Any data about what about that?

Sure.

Is that a question for me?

No, it's it's mostly it's it's it's it's prompted by your statement, but I'm just wondering if there is any What have you got on that?

Great.

Well, one thing.

What are the pros and cons if we're if we're doing hourly here, but at the state level, it is great.

I mean, daily here, but at the state level, it is an hourly accrual method.

Thank you.

I heard your question.

I think it's similar to the question that I teed up as well and that Karina and Karim spoke to.

Before I add to that, Karim or Karina, did you wanna underscore the points that you made about the pros or the cons of the accrual mechanism with this proposal compared to the state as you just described?

Yeah, so I have, I guess what I'll call some headlines.

of some challenges and some opportunities.

And then I'm happy to go into a deep dive into any of them.

And I understand that Karim has actually done some calculations.

So it's that would compare the day versus the time or something.

He's done the math, which perhaps you could share with us Karim.

But as far as the headlines, the challenges of adopting the accrual and compensation method under the state system for TNC Drivers is that it would be significantly slower accrual because it would be based on, I guess, an engaged time, which is more restrictive than the time covered by this legislation.

There would be less pay, less carryover of accrued unused paid so it can save time to the following calendar year.

Large network companies would be treated like small employers because the state system for TNC drivers adopts those baseline requirements for small employers.

So it's one hour accrued for every 40 hours worked, where for large employers, that would be one hour for every 30 hours worked.

Less carryover would be five days instead of nine days to the next calendar year.

More work for the food delivery network companies that aren't also already covered by that state system, which I believe only one food delivery network company would be covered.

More work for workers to relearn the accrual and compensation method, and then more work for Office of Labor Standards and their enforcement and outreach.

Having said all that, I do see some opportunities.

There would be more flexibility for workers in using their paid sick and save time because it wouldn't require a full 24 hours of not working.

So if a worker did have a two-hour doctor appointment or a four-hour doctor appointment, they could use their sick leave and go back to work for the rest of the day, so I see that as an opportunity.

And OLS could have more of a chance to combine their outreach and enforcement because it would all be, it could be based on engaged time if that was the source of hours worked that were covered.

So there'd be more opportunity to coalesce that.

So that's my headline assessment of the two.

Karim, did you wanna talk about some of the calculations that you've developed?

Yeah, I'll do a quick headline recap as well.

And I think that the main point is that, you know, the, the idea of an hourly pool method, I think, in isolation is something really worth digging into and thinking about.

But in the current context where we have a applying with and using a daily approval method that I think changes the context, at least something for the committee to consider.

And then I think, Karina, you mentioned this, but my understanding of the policy rationale for a daily is that hourly approval method really depends on what is working time.

And with this sector, that is not as simple as, with employees who show up at work, and then working times when you're at work, and it ends when you leave.

Folks are going in and out of work relationships very quickly in succession.

They have periods in between where they may not be delivering, but they're doing something that is tied to their work.

And so there's a myriad of issues there, which the daily approval method effectively avoids, and you have a way to provide sick leave without kind of getting mired in, in those issues.

As for the, you know, what is the, the calculations and how does it work out for workers, I do want to preface that.

Very exact calculations are really difficult because the data for how much folks are working in these different time periods is not public, right?

The companies who are regulated have much of that data and it's generally not shared.

So it's really hard to have very precise and thorough analysis on this.

As a just high level calculation, the way the state sick leave is define as hours work, which is time with a passenger.

Because engaged time is a different amount of time.

It is not just time delivering the sandwich or the whatever it is, the grocery order.

It is also the time driving to that location.

That's a larger amount of time.

So when you take total compensation and divide it by that, that definition of working time, you will get a lower payout for workers.

And so what Karina is referring to is I cooked up an example of if you have $200 of compensation and 10 hours of work under the statewide method, 10 hours of passenger time, under the state method, you'd get a $20 payout.

Under an engaged time definition, if you assume, let's say there's four hours of additional time getting to the pickup location, So 14 hours of working time, $200 of compensation divided by 14 would result in a lower payout of $14.29.

That's just an example to illustrate that there's different working time definitions.

And when you divide total compensation by different working time definitions, you get different payouts.

Exactly how it would work really depends on a much more detailed data analysis, which is not public information.

We can't really analyze it.

Okay, and I asked because I'm just a follow up if I may, when you when my staff and I were briefed on this.

It appeared that there would not be a difference because the amount of time worked would be averaged out over the month.

And so it didn't really matter if it was a full day or an hourly because the payout would be based on the time actually spent.

Working per day, and if there's a drive per day, then then that counts as a day.

So, I just understood that there would not be a difference.

Anyway, go on.

Well, I'm sorry.

Well, there, there would be a difference in.

Comparing, I guess so, I guess there's 2 things, or maybe 3 things there is what would the pay be comparing if at least workers.

Had the same accrual and compensation method as a state TNC driver.

They app based workers would make less than what a TNC driver would make under this because more time is covered.

That's what Karen was getting to my analysis was that.

The way that average daily compensation is calculated would.

Almost always result in more pay than average hourly compensation again, because of this very or more restrictive definition of engage time average daily compensation covers any work that the worker did in the, in the previous 12 months, regardless of where they did it as long as there was some touch point in Seattle for any of those days to be covered and.

I think what maybe you're referring to in the average daily compensation is that under that calculation method, if a worker only worked a couple of hours and then wanted to use a full day of sick leave, it's their pay would reflect that they only worked a couple of hours.

That would be their, if they only worked a couple of hours every day, that would be reflected in their average daily compensation.

They wouldn't be paid for, if they earned on average $30 an hour, they wouldn't be paid $240 for a typical eight hour day.

Instead, their average daily would be like, all right, every day they make about $60, because they work two hours a day, and that's what they would get paid out for their paid sick and safe time.

So that might be, what you're referring to.

Does that help clarify?

Yeah, I mean, my thinking is this.

If it's a wash, either method, then what is easier for workers who use multiple platforms or are negotiating state versus city?

That's because if it doesn't matter, the actual payout amount under either one.

Anyway, that's what I was driving at.

So thank you very much.

Thank you.

And I might ask for a few scenarios maybe to be circulated to the committee.

I don't think it's a wash.

I think the analysis that I've seen is under the state policy, there is actually only one platform that the state policy covers versus all of the different types of platforms that are currently being covered by our temporary paid sick and safe leave ordinance.

So if we think about it from like the employer perspective or the hiring entity perspective, there's more apps compliant with Seattle's ordinance currently under the temporary ordinance The second thing is that I think the from from the application or the hiring entities perspective, they're already complying with our existing temporary ordinance.

So we wanted to ensure that there was greater.

I think that was a compelling message.

I think it's helpful though to have councilmembers look at some of those scenarios that were just explained if possible.

The second thing I would say, and I know we have to move on with our programming here, but it was noted that this is a doubling of who's covered.

I just wanted to clarify as well.

Under this ordinance, we're talking about extending the temporary policy for especially the food-based delivery drivers so that they don't miss a day of paid sick leave between now, and when the temporary ordinance expires at the end of April.

So between April and mid-January of next year, the application of this policy would only be for those food-based drivers.

And then we take the definition of workers on app-based platforms or gig workers that was used within the pay-up legislation that Councilmember Herbold and Lewis passed, and we harmonize to expand paid sick leave to that definition of workers under that ordinance.

So that's where I was talking about the harmonizing of who's covered.

And there would be more people who are workers on app-based platforms covered, but it's already a policy decision that the council has made to extend worker protections to that sector and a broader sector of workers under the minimum compensation standard that's been applied.

through the ordinance that was passed into policy already.

So it's two-part.

First, we're making sure that the food-based drivers don't miss a day, and starting in April, that that work continues, or that coverage continues.

And then starting in January of next year, then we expand sick leave to the same category of workers who use app-based platforms that the pay-up legislation has already extended coverage to.

I wanted to just wrap us up and let folks know that if you do have amendments, as Karina Bull noted, and as we've talked about over the last now three weeks with this legislation that's out there, we are hoping that you send those over to Karina Bull by the end of the day.

She can work with you, obviously, on the concept, but we want to make sure that those concepts get to her before the end of the day.

We also want to make sure that folks have on their radar participating on Monday.

It is 9.30 meeting.

It's a special meeting to make up for that first week of March, and we will consider any amendments and the legislation at that time.

I will be following up with colleagues because I am very interested, as Councilmember Herbold is as well, in continuing to expand the ways in which we could contemplate covering additional workers that are currently in the marketplace.

As she noted, she and I were both supportive of including workers who are on marketplace platforms in the minimum compensation ordinance.

Well, ultimately, that did not get included.

I would be very interested in working to see what type of analysis could be done so that we could tee up I'm happy to share that with colleagues in advance.

So again, we look forward to having this discussion on next week and we will have a briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you to everyone, Brian and Thomas from the mayor's office.

Hello.

Thank you, Karen.

Thank you for and your whole team at Office of Labor Standards and Karina from Central South.

Thank you for your ongoing work on this much more to come.

Okay, great.

I see essential staff is with us for the second item on the agenda and we will go ahead and move on into that.

I wanted to make sure that we sent a message as well to Miss Maxie to make sure that she knew we were going into this.

So if we haven't already done that, let's go.

Hello, team.

I see folks from SPD on the line here, because we may have some questions for the folks within the Seattle Department of Transportation, excuse me, wrong department, Seattle Police Department, as we talk about some of the grants that are in front of us today.

I also wanted to ask my colleagues, how much time you have on your calendar?

Because I think that in staff meeting, in the LA staff meeting, we noted that this might go long, but how much time do you have on your calendars?

Thank you for bearing with us.

And while they look, Madam Clerk, could you please read item number two into the record?

Agenda item number two, Council Bill 120527, an ordinance relating to acceptance of funding from non-city sources for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Vice Chair Herbold?

1215. 1215, fantastic.

Council Member Nelson, flexibility?

Council Member Nelson?

Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to decide if I can move that down.

Okay.

Council Member Lewis, I see you off mute.

Yes, I am flexible, Madam Chair.

All right.

Well, we appreciate it.

And Council Member Peterson, are you flexible?

I see a nod.

I know folks are very busy.

So thank you.

All right.

Well, speaking of flexibility, thank you to this panel of central staff members and Seattle Police Department members.

Thanks for being here with us today.

We know that it is always urgent to get the grant acceptance ordinances in front of us and to move them out quickly.

We do have a few questions, I'm sure, related to Council Bill 120527. And wanted to make sure that we had the experts in the room to tee this up.

So, as folks know, the grant acceptance ordinance helps allow for the city to receive grants or private fund donations from various agencies and organizations allows for us to make sure that they are.

the city.

The city has received grant awards and opportunities for funding sources that were not anticipated in our budget last year.

This legislation helps us square in separate ordinances throughout the year.

And this ordinance contains that grant-related requests, spending adjustments to the adopted budget received in first quarter.

I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to central staff we have with us, Eden Cicic and Greg Doss from central staff.

Thank you as well for your patience and being with us.

And we have invited partners from the Seattle Police Department to be here with us, given that some of these grants will allow SPD to obtain, among other things, new vehicles.

And the department has identified ways in which these vehicles will be used that council members may have questions about.

So we wanted to make sure that you were here with us as well.

So thanks and welcome to everybody from SPD.

I really appreciate your generous time with us today.

So we have Greg Dawson, Eden Sissick, and then we also have Heather Marks, Eric Barnan, and Assistant Chief Todd Kibbe.

Okay, well, I'll let you introduce yourself.

Sorry about that.

Please go ahead, Central Staff.

Thank you.

I'll start us off.

My name is with Council Central staff and to build off of chair was gated introduction.

This briefing will be focused on Council bill 1, 2, 0, 5, 2, 7, the 2023 grant acceptance and appropriation ordinance, which provides authority for city departments to accept an appropriate expenditure of great revenues from non city sources.

I'll provide a high-level overview of what's covered in the memo that was distributed last week and earlier this week.

And Greg will provide a summary of the Department of Homeland Security grant for SPD before we go into discussion.

I would like to extend another thank you to SPD Assistant Chiefs Todd and Eric and Heather, Director of Strategic Initiatives, for joining us this morning.

And while Greg and I will cover the briefing presentation, they're here to answer any questions related to SPD grants.

Um, so I'll try to be quick with all of this for the sake of time.

So, um, as a quick background and process summary, and in prior years, the appropriation of grants, um, was authorized via supplemental appropriations ordinance while grants were accepted through a separate, um, grant acceptance ordinance.

Um, this year, council central staff in partnership with, um, law department and city budget office.

created a standalone grant acceptance and appropriation ordinance to streamline and improve grant legislation processes.

And again, for the sake of time, I won't go into further detail, though particular benefits of this are covered on the first page of the memo.

So Council Bill 120527 is the first comprehensive grant acceptance and appropriation legislation transmitted by the Executive in 2023, authorizing City Departments to accept and appropriate the expenditure of $30.2 million from external funding sources.

I will also note that staff has reviewed all of the proposed grants and hasn't flagged any areas of concern.

For the grants that would be accepted as part of this bill, and approximately 57% of that 30Million dollars is funding from the Federal Highway Administration for various programs.

And that's itemized in table 2 of the memo.

And we've got a 2.9Million dollars in funding from Department of Homeland security for.

And I'll let Greg provide some additional context for these.

Thank you, Greg Doss, Council Central staff and here today to talk about the Homeland Security grants.

There are a number of these grants in this ordinance.

There are a total of about 5.9 million in Homeland Security grants.

But I'm only going to focus on a subset of that funding, the subset that Edan just addressed.

And that subset is going to be about $2.7 million.

Those are the Homeland Security grants that are provided by the Homeland Security Department under the UASI program.

And UASI stands for the Urban Area Security Initiative.

This is a federal grant program that funds the city's ability to prevent, protect, and respond and recover from acts of terrorism.

This is a program that in the past members have expressed interest in reviewing at a finer level of detail, and so that's what we're going to do today.

We're going to talk a little bit more detail about that $2.7 million.

Out of that, or 2.9 million, sorry, out of that amount the fire department is going to get 1.15 million and they're going to spend their funding on a number of different projects.

They're going to spend their funding on a structural collapse training, an aviation drill training, and the purchase of heavy rescue equipment.

They're also going to buy Class 1 and Class 2 CBRN suits, rescue task force body armor, and methane gas detectors.

And if you have any questions about what those things are, if our If our city partners at SPD can't answer the questions I will get them to the fire department because I am not sure what some of those things are myself, but I, we will tell you about in more detail the SPD funding.

That funding totals about $1.72 million, and SPD is going to spend its funding in one of two ways.

They're going to spend about a million of its funding on ongoing costs and administration that will include grant managers, program costs, and ongoing support of the Washington State Fusion Center.

They will also spend about $700,000 or so on a number of projects that will be purchases for self-contained breathing apparatus kits and the running of a critical infrastructure cyber incident tabletop exercise.

funding some community and safety ambassadors at the Office of Emergency Management, and the $400,000 purchase of a rescue vehicle system, which is a bulletproof bearcat, as it's known, armored vehicle for transporting and protecting officers in active shooter events.

And so that's sort of a summary of how the UASI terrorism funds are going to be spent.

And at that high level I would go ahead and make SPD available for any questions that you may have.

Also noting that there is attached to the staff report a presentation that SPD put together that in more detail describes each of these projects.

And it also describes the process by which SPD participates in picking these projects on a regional basis with our UASI partners around the region.

And so, ready for questions, Madam Chair.

Excellent.

Let's go to our Public Safety Chair, Council Member Herbold.

Thanks, just two quick questions.

I know when this grant has come before us in the past we've had lots of questions about the support for staff positions at the fusion center, and we have approved.

that funding in the past and I just want to understand, is this an expansion of staffing for the fusion center or is it just maintaining the same positions that we funded in the past?

I'll turn it over to one of our SPD chiefs, Chief Kimme or Chief Pardon to answer.

Good morning, council members.

In response to your question, Council Member Herbold, we are not adding SPD capability to the Fusion Center in the sense that we're adding new positions.

We are down a couple of analysts.

And so we are basically, we keep trying to hire new positions, but they're not new FTEs.

They're just simply replacing people who have either retired or moved on.

So we are not enhancing our ability to Fusion Center.

We are just mainly maintaining it and then replacing those who have left.

Okay, so we, I think last year, supported a certain number of FTEs in the same sort of grant process, and this is just sort of re-upping for this year.

This is just an extension of that, yes.

Okay, thank you.

And then a similar question about the Bearcat.

Is this an expansion of the number of these types of vehicles, or is it a replacement of an existing vehicle?

So this is a replacement of an existing vehicle.

The department currently has two such vehicles.

One of them is at the end of life.

It's about 20 years old.

These vehicles are, well, they're about 18,000 pounds.

They're very heavy, very hard on equipment.

So it's basically at the end of its life.

And so this is a replacement.

The new vehicles are much more enhanced.

vehicle and I can go into those details if you choose.

But no, this is a replacement for what we have now that's at the end of life.

Thank you.

I might have an additional question about the bear cap.

That's it for now.

Of course.

Okay, great.

Anything else from central staff?

All right, well, I want to thank the folks from SPD.

Apologies for the late link being sent to you, but you sent us a PowerPoint presentation.

So we have that linked on our agenda, and you are welcome to walk through that if you'd like to provide additional context, or if that was just for background, that's fine, too.

We can go to questions, but you put a lot of work into that, so we want to make sure that you get the chance to walk through it if you'd like to.

I'll defer to Chief Barden specifically about the bear cap.

He'd like to talk about it.

Uh, yeah, I, I just like to emphasize that the bearcat is a rescue vehicle.

It's strictly a defensive, uh, uh, tool.

There's nothing offensive about it.

Um, it is simply, uh, an, an enhanced, uh, uh, PPE.

It, it protects our officers as they are engaged with some of the most critical and, and difficult and life threatening uh, circumstances that we face, uh, the vehicle can be, and has been you utilize to rescue not only officers, but, uh, individuals that are in harm's way, uh, from an armed, uh, suspect.

Um, and, and, uh, there are a number of examples in Seattle alone, uh, nevertheless across the country where the vehicle has unequivocally saved lives.

And so it's a critical tool for our officers as we ask them to respond to and intervene in life threatening circumstances.

That's helpful.

I know in the briefing that my team had with the SPD staff, it was mentioned that there's only one Bearcat vehicle that SPD currently has, which is at the end of its life, and that the new addition would result in two total Bearcats, one new one and one which would be largely maybe shelved, given that it's at the end of its life, so one total.

So could you comment a little bit more about Whether or not there's a desire to have more or a third one at some point.

And also something that helped me understand this and you just mentioned it was that the bear cat is armored, but not armed meaning again, defensive only.

And cannot be used for offensive attacks, given that there's some concern out there from folks about when they see this vehicle.

Some folks have seen it in the past.

It raises a lot of concerns about what the capabilities of this vehicle are.

So would would just offer that those are 2 helpful things in the briefing that we had and I see central staff has their hand to maybe as a clarification.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair.

I just want to clarify.

In the briefing with your staff, there may have been a bit of a miscommunication that happened, and I apologize if it did.

The situation is that there are two Bearcats now, as the chief explained.

One of them is 20 years old, and it is out so often for maintenance that they don't have regular use of it.

And in such a case, they really only have regular use.

How can I put this?

Guaranteed use of one of them.

So in terms of guaranteed availability, this would give them guaranteed availability of two.

and so I think it was that conversation that maybe led your staff to conclude that there's only one.

They do have two, they're replacing ones, they would have two, and I apologize about the confusion.

Okay, thanks.

Council Member Herbold, additional questions?

Yeah, I just am interested to know more about the sort of shared understanding around the policy for how this vehicle is used.

I've heard on one hand that it is a defensive only vehicle that would not be used at certain types of events, but I've also heard that it might be deployed at a stadium event if there is a concern about likelihood of violence.

I've also heard that it might be deployed at a protest event If, again, if there is a credible indication of violence that might involve weapons.

And when I've inquired with SPD there is actually there is no written policy and for the police department policy is, I think, more than just a term of art, it's.

There, you know, it's hundreds of pages of really important documents that give guidance to the department that the department is giving guidance to itself around expectations.

And I'm wondering whether or not it might be possible to develop a written policy to just further clarify, like, you know, when would you actually use this this particular defensive vehicle in instances where, you know, it it it's not a, you know, a SWAT incident or a siege incident where there's an actual there's more of a perception of a likelihood of the need as opposed to, you know, there is a law enforcement incident where somebody is barricaded in a building and, you know, those types of active events, but more of a concern that something might happen.

I just, I feel like additional clarity about that would be really helpful.

Thank you for that.

Yeah, we definitely like to have policies written down so we can point back to them.

Is there any additional comments that you all have from SPD?

And again, I want to thank you for the background that you provided in the PowerPoint presentation that's very detailed about the why you use them.

I think that Council Member Herbold's question and request for additional clarification on when and how they are deployed written down is really helpful.

Could you elaborate anything else you'd like to share?

new work to be done in the near future here.

So I would like to address a part of Council Member Herbold's comments there.

So as part of a, this is purchased again through the Urban Area Security Initiative, which is essentially an anti-terrorism type of grant.

And throughout the UASI region, it's been recognized that Seattle could possibly be the target of something like that.

And so Having the Seattle Police Department with a full-time SWAT team, which is the only one in the region, having access to a vehicle like that does give us the ability to cover any event.

So in terms of like stadium events that you mentioned, Council Member, just because we have it, we're using it, doesn't mean it's going to be front and center in front of the event.

We'd be staging it, you know, blocks and blocks away.

Just in the event, something would happen.

So a lot of the deployments aren't necessarily.

I would call them active deployments of it.

Yes, we have a driver in there and they're ready to go, but they're just basically waiting for.

Unfortunately, waiting for something bad to happen.

There's really no other way to put it.

And so, yes, they may be deployed out in the field, but they're not actually engaged in whatever it is. that's happening.

They're just staged a little ways off.

And so that'll be the primary, I think, method that we would use it for anything other than the barricaded or the siege type ones that you mentioned.

But again, yes, it's something that we can work with our policy and get something written down for you.

Thank you.

It has been mentioned to me that we are following best practices, but again, it would be, it's great to know that, but understanding what those are, I think is helpful to everybody.

Thank you.

Of course.

Thank you.

that.

Thank you.

Any additional comments on that request specifically for written policy?

Okay.

I might put a and I'll come to the question in a second Councilmember Nelson I want to echo that additional point to see if I'm going to go to councilmember Nielsen

Councilor Musqueda, Madam Chair, if I might.

The department doesn't have an existing policy right now in its manual, a formal policy.

The uses that Chief Kimby just described are uses that they sort of deploy under normal circumstances.

He, they could provide you with that list, but I think that's I just want to differentiate that that's different from what Councilmember her bold is is talking about which would be creating an official policy.

I have some flexibility.

And if there are other, you know, policy documents that the department refers to, you know, the Homeland Security best practices or something like that, I think if that exists, it might suffice.

short of developing a new policy.

So let's try to keep talking about this between now and Monday.

Great.

And I'm seeing lots of nods from the partners at SPD.

So thank you for that.

And thanks for the flexibility.

I think I agree, you know, bulleted summary is helpful now.

And then hopefully that will tee up a more formal policy discussion later.

But I think that would just be helpful to have in hand.

Council Member Nelson.

Yeah, and you can add this to the bulleted summary.

I was just wondering what other jurisdictions get to use this?

It's not just Seattle right great or SPD.

Yeah.

No, yes, you're correct.

So basically, like I said, this is a reason why a region wide resource.

Our, our team routinely goes to into King County goes to Bellevue can respond to things up north and shoreline and things like that so All the teams work cooperatively together and depending on staffing and everything else, it does have a capability of going to other cities, other jurisdictions again under the grant.

Part of the checklist is it's a region wide asset and this would certainly fall into that category.

Okay, excellent.

Any additional questions.

online here.

Okay, well this has been very helpful.

Thank you for the PowerPoint presentation.

This is much more detailed information in the PowerPoint if folks haven't had a chance to look at that.

I will be on standby and feel free to email the full committee or directly to us and we can just Distribute the bulleted summary that you might be able to pull together relatively quickly based on the existing practices that you lean on.

And we will look forward to having this for a final vote on Monday at our next committee meeting.

Okay.

Thanks to central staff.

Thank you to SPD.

And we'll see you possibly on Monday if you have the time and we will be cautious not to keep you waiting too long again.

All right, colleagues.

Thanks so much.

We're going to move on to the fourth item of business because our team from the city budgets office has been gracious to present on Monday.

Madam Clerk, if you could read item number four into the record.

agenda item number four council bill 120529 an ordinance relating to the organization of city government clarifying the structure for charter position of the director of finance for briefing discussion and possible vote excellent thank you and speaking of flexibility thank you director dangly for um

We look forward to that presentation next meeting.

Thank you as well for your work on this ordinance in front of us.

of summarizing the legislation in front of us, which is intended to resolve a conflict between provisions in the Seattle Municipal Code and the Seattle Charter.

Currently, the Seattle Municipal Code states that the Director of Finance, quote, shall report to the Director of Finance and Administrative Services, end quote.

This legislation clarifies the Director of Finance is appointed by the mayor, confirmed by the council, and allows for FAS Director to delegate specific finance functions to city finance.

As Deputy Director Panucci mentioned, this is an initial step of a longer process that the city is going through with the city's budget office, finance, and forecasting functions.

And so it's an ever-evolving structure that will continue to formalize.

Thanks for your work with central staff, the team at CBO.

Really appreciate the work that you've done with our central staff team and Director Dingley and William Chen from the city's budget office for all of your work.

I'll turn it over to Director Dingley.

Great, thank you, Chair Mosqueda, and good morning, Council Members.

It's a pleasure to be here with you.

I'm Julie Dingley, and I have the pleasure of serving as the Director of the City Budget Office.

So as the Council Member very accurately described the legislation in front of you, this is somewhat of a quirky technical issue that predates all of us.

We're really seeking to change to whom the Finance Director reports in the City Code and to provide organizational clarity in the process.

So really, why am I here?

So let me just make sure we can get the presentation up on the screen real quick.

I'm able to share if that's helpful, Council Member.

Do you mind, Julie?

Give me just a moment.

Okay.

Sorry about that.

All right.

Great.

We can see it.

Okay.

Excellent.

So as the The former finance director departed the city last year, he highlighted an anomaly in the Seattle's in Seattle's municipal code.

This director of finance is a charter position, one of the very few charter positions that exists.

But the current Seattle Municipal Code has the position reporting through the director of the Department of Finance and Administrative Services, or FAS.

In most peer cities, the finance director reports directly to the mayor or to the city manager, whichever they tend to have.

So this conflict presents two primary issues.

The first is that running an accountability function such as finance within an operational department's chain of command can introduce the potential for conflict of interest.

We're not saying that there has been issues in that space, but it has the potential to have conflict of interest.

So shifting the oversight of this role from the FAS director to the mayor will help avoid that conflict.

Further, as you know, we have not yet identified the permanent replacement for our former finance director.

We have a great and wonderful acting director Jamie Carnell in that position at the moment, but we haven't filled that spot permanently.

Our executive recruiting team has reported that the finance director is currently a very difficult position to fill in the industry, understandably, lots of high demand for that role and clarifying the reporting structure here is going to make Seattle, a lot more competitive.

The last thing we want is to have to explain quirky authority in the code.

So this legislation.

is going to make small changes to the SMC to clarify that the city's finance director reports to the mayor instead of the FAS director.

And it's going to rename the finance division of FAS to the Office of City Finance to just, again, make that boundary clear.

The Finance Director will continue to be appointed by the Mayor and confirmed by the City Council.

The Office of City Finance will continue to be supported in administrative functions by FAS, so this does not reorganize any functions or programs at the Department.

There will not be operational changes felt by city employees or members of the public.

This will not lead to additional costs to the city.

So it's really just cleaning up this, again, quirky technical issue that predated all of us and hoping to make this change and appreciate your support and happy to answer any questions that you have.

Excellent.

Thank you, Director Dingley.

Colleagues, questions?

Comments?

Council Member Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Just for the public, could you explain some of the typical duties of the finance director?

Aren't they approving the issuance of municipal bonds, for example?

And would this make the position more political rather than technical?

But perhaps you don't have a choice because of the way the charter is.

This will not make the position more political.

this appropriately elevates the office and keeps the code and the charter being consistent between the two.

So the finance department or the city finance director has many very important responsibilities.

They oversee treasury, for example, and we have payroll, and we have the bond issuance, as you mentioned, many, many others.

And they importantly, they have accounting functions.

And those accounting functions have, right, we rely on our accountants to keep us all honest and keep the books clean.

And so you want to make sure that there's no possible opportunity for an operational department to to change what those numbers could say.

For example, that has not happened.

We have no evidence that that has happened, but we want to make sure that that conflict of interest is not there anymore.

I guess it's a good question.

I guess the way that I was viewing this as well, Council Member Peterson, was it actually allows for greater transparency on what the finance functions are for both us as council members, members of the public, et cetera.

I also think that it'd be helpful, Julie, if you could comment a little bit.

The council member asked a question about whether or not the finance director approves bonds, but could you just elaborate a little bit more on the role that DEMPAC plays in ultimately making decisions about bonding?

Yes.

So we take And we should have a separate conversation about and happy to bring everybody up to speed on like the real technical details of this.

But the city's debt director sits within what will hopefully become the Office of City Finance.

And they come up with recommendations on how we should what our bond issuance should look like.

They do presentations to Our bond Council and and the bonding agencies or the rating agencies that give us our ratings to then figure out what rate, we will get in the market for our bonds they bring those recommendations through impact.

and I apologize, I'm not gonna be able to say what DMPAC stands for in this moment.

Let's say Debt Management Policy Advisory Committee, I believe.

Yes, thank you.

And DMPAC is made up of executive side and council representation, and that committee votes on a recommendation to the council that then comes through you all to ultimately vote.

Any additional follow-up questions?

Okay, good question.

All right, colleagues, well, I don't have any additional questions.

I know, Director Dingley, you commented a little bit about some of the broader work that's going to happen to really try to actually expand upon the goal here, which I think is greater transparency and streamline.

we're going to continue to work with you to make sure that we're providing some of our finance services under your leadership.

I am excited to hear regular updates on how that's going, but I know that this is a much larger conversation, so we will hopefully schedule some time before the upcoming budget to get that overview from you as given that this is one element of that.

I do not have any additional questions, and I would entertain a vote on this today, given the structural change that's being suggested here, the collaborative work between central staff and CBO.

I feel comfortable moving this forward today.

Okay, I'm seeing some nods in the room.

Colleagues, I move the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 120529. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you very much.

It has been moved and seconded.

Any additional comments?

All right, I'm hearing no additional comments.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the passage of the bill?

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Council Member Lewis, could you hear the clerk?

Yes.

Sorry, I did not go through the first time.

That's okay, Madam Chair Mosqueda.

I. I'm sure that that is five in favor.

None opposed.

Okay, great.

The motion carries.

The vote is unanimous.

Thank you.

Council colleagues.

We will make sure that the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the March 21st Seattle City Council meeting.

That's next Tuesday for a final vote.

Thank you very much.

Director Dingley for being here with us today and for seeing this up with central staff as well.

All right.

It's only noon, folks.

I'll get you out of here for the afternoon.

Apologies for the extra time that might not have been on your calendar.

Appreciate it.

And we may ask for a little bit of extra time on Monday, too, if you would be so kind to grant us that.

We do have for next week's meeting a follow up on the paid sick leave legislation from today for any additional amendments and vote the grant acceptance ordinance.

And we look forward to the follow-up materials from SPD, but anticipate a vote on that next Monday.

We will have an ARPA summary of the last year's expenditures and cash on hand.

And then one item that we want to make sure to get through as well is the MFTE, the Multifamily Tax Exemption Sunset Date Extension for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

And we will make sure that if you haven't already received and overview from central staff that each office has opportunity for that or from our staff as well.

Aaron House is absolutely up to speed and knowledgeable on this issue as well.

An extension of the existing policy that would carry us over to 2024 for more detailed policy discussion on that.

So an extension is what would be in front of us.

Those are the four items for next Monday.

Colleagues, we will go ahead.

and adjourn, seeing no additional hands, and I'll see you on Monday at 9.30.

Thanks for making that time available.

Take care, everybody.

The meeting is adjourned.