Seattle City Council Public Safety & Human Services Committee 4/26/22

We are now recording.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning.

The April 26, 2022 meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee will come to order.

It is 9.31 AM.

I'm Lisa Herbold, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Vice Chair Lewis?

Sir?

Council Member Mosqueda?

Present.

Council Member Nelson?

Present.

Council Member Peterson?

present.

Chair Herbold?

Here.

Five present.

Thank you so much.

So on today's agenda we will hear, let's see here, five items.

The first will be an appointment to the CPC, the Community Police Commission.

The appointment has been referred to full council and a vote has been scheduled for next week's meeting.

This is a council appointment but one that is recommended for our consideration by the Community Police Commission.

And again, we are not voting today because it is being referred directly to full council.

We will vote on that next week.

But we wanted to have a chance to hear from the the applicant.

We'll also be hearing a presentation from the city attorney's office on the criminal case backlog.

We'll be hearing a quarterly report on Seattle Police Department staffing.

discussion of resolution 32050 for police officer hiring incentives sponsored by Council Member Nelson, and a council bill that I will be introducing to request that the Seattle Department of Human Resources amend personnel rules to provide hiring authorities, including but not limited to SPD, with greater flexibility to pay for moving expenses for new hires and to lift the proviso, the SPD salary savings proviso, to allow for these moving expenses to be funded for police officers, other employees, and to hire an additional recruiter.

Next up, we would hear the Seattle Police Department's presentation on gender-based violence investments.

And then finally, we'll have an issue identification briefing on the payoff legislation.

Central staff will walk the committee through a memo, which includes 25 separate issue areas And this item is on the agenda for presentation only.

Discussion time will be limited and no votes will be taken.

So now we'll move towards approving our agenda for our committee meeting.

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

Hearing no objection today's agenda is adopted.

This time we'll transition into public comment.

I will moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

Because of the number of speakers signed up to testify this morning, each speaker will be given one minute to speak.

I will call on each speaker by name and in order, which they registered on the council's website.

If you've not yet registered to speak but would like to do so, you can sign up before the end of the public hearing by going to the council's website.

This link is also listed on today's agenda.

Once I call a speaker's name, you'll hear a prompt.

Once you've heard that prompt, you need to hit star six.

to unmute yourself.

Please begin speaking by stating your name and the item which you are addressing.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

Once the speaker hears that chime, we ask that you begin to wrap up your public comments.

If you do not end your public comments at the end of the allotted time provided the speaker's mic will be muted after 10 seconds to allow us to hear from the next speaker.

And once you have completed your public comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line if you plan continue following the meeting we encourage you to do so via the Seattle channel or on the listening options listed on the agenda.

And with that as mentioned I will be calling on speakers two at a time so listen for your name.

Our first speaker is LaKeisha Farmer and LaKeisha will be followed by Howard Gale.

LaKeisha welcome.

My name is Lakeisha Farmer.

I am the Public Affairs Director for Working with Washington in Support of Pay Up.

This process has taken over two years.

There's so much to say.

But since I only have a minute I want to cut to the chase.

We need this policy because it is critical to raising up a largely Black, Brown, and immigrant workforce.

I'm seeing companies waving around concerns from some small businesses of color.

We refuse to be pitted against them for the benefit of large corporations.

Marginalized workers who depend on these apps shouldn't be excluded from basic protections, and small businesses deserve to not be mistreated, and people who depend on these apps deserve accessible resources.

This can only happen if the payoff is passed for people's dignity and these large corporations use their profits wisely, just like we are all required to do.

And in case you're wondering, everyone deserves this basic right.

We are against any amendment to exclude gig workers like dog hired helpers who have been advocating since the beginning.

I urge you to move forward to eliminate subminimum wages for gig workers by passing pay-ups.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Howard Gale.

Howard will be followed by Peter Condit.

Howard.

Good morning.

Howard Gale, commenting on our failed police accountability system.

Friday of this week will mark the second anniversary of the SPD killing of Shawn Lee Furr.

shot to death by the SPD while holding his infant daughter.

The next few weeks will mark the third anniversary of the SPD killing of Ryan Smith and the second anniversary of the killing of Terry Kaver, both black men experiencing a severe mental health crisis while wielding a knife.

Both of these men were killed within seconds of the police confronting them.

All these killings were routinely deemed, quote, lawful and proper, unquote, by our so-called police accountability system.

Yet today, instead of discussing how to make police more accountable, This committee will discuss how to incentivize more police to operate under a failed system of accountability.

I congratulate and support the Seattle Human Rights Commission for breaking through the council's indifference to police accountability by voting overwhelmingly to seek amicus status in the federal court case, which has gone on now for 10 years and failed to bring constitutional or just policing to Seattle.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Peter Condit.

Peter will be followed by Carmen Figueroa.

Peter.

Good morning, this is Peter Condit.

I'm calling on the council to reject hiring bonuses for SBD and instead commit to nonviolent, non-SBD safety strategies.

I myself was assaulted by SBD during a sweep on March 25th of this year.

The violence came when over 15 officers targeted a Vietnamese elder who was in his home after the arbitrary deadline.

The city did not provide an interpreter and the city does not have adequate shelter for everyone they displace.

So a few other neighbors and I stood in the way.

The commanding officer was visibly upset and escalated his threats.

Another officer shoved me to the ground.

I got up and was again met with violence in the pavement.

Other nonviolent people were assaulted too.

Why?

SPD's job that day was to remove people from their homes.

They could not deescalate because then the mayor and those of you listening right now would have had to truly commit to a compassionate plan.

Policing and displacing marginalized community members is a militaristic response to a humanitarian crisis.

You will continue to be complicit in the violence if you continue to give cops more cash.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Carmen Figueroa, followed by Anna Powell.

Carmen?

Hello.

I am Carmen Figueroa, and I am with the Pay Up Campaign.

The industry executives and shareholders have made millions of dollars in personal profit off of my labor and have no intention of investing in me or any of their workers.

Their lobbyists, some of which you will hear from during this forum, will make outlandish claims as to why gig workers should be paid sub-minimum wages.

These lobbyists will attempt to steer the council into ridiculous, superficial, whataboutism debates and demands to delay equity with studies.

They will also ask cleverly worded questions designed to pit minority small businesses against gig workers of color.

The apps have copious amounts of data that they continuously analyze.

Rather than expand pay models, making social economic equality possible for gig workers, the apps use all their data to collapse pay models and transfer more profits to themselves.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Anna Powell and will be followed by Gay Gilmore.

Anna?

Hi, my name is Anna Powell, and I'm the Manager of Government Relations for DoorDash.

We feel strongly that the pay-up legislation deserves more work and careful consideration to better understand its impact before it is passed.

Despite a year of stakeholder meetings, there has been no attempt by the Council to study the impacts of this legislation.

DoorDash, however, estimates that we can expect costs to increase significantly for consumers, including those in low-income communities where 31% of our deliveries are made.

We would expect businesses to lose $74 million and dashers could actually lose $32 million in aggregate earnings next year because of the decrease in orders.

DoorDash is not opposed to an earnings standard and has in fact supported them in other parts of the country.

However this earnings standard calculated at 200 percent of the Seattle minimum wage when using a typical DoorDash in Seattle is simply too high.

We'd be happy to continue discussing ways to improve the pay-up proposal.

Thank you.

Thank you, Anna.

Our next speaker is Gay Gilmore.

Anna, Gay will be followed by BJ Last.

Okay.

Hi, my name is Gay Gilmore and I'm co-founder of Optimism Brewing Company in Seattle.

I'm here to support moving forward on the pay-up policy and passing it into law.

I'm a member of the Labor Standards Advisory Commission, and we have identified this as a top priority for advancing worker rights.

We sent a memo this week to both the mayor and the council saying the same.

And I want to note we're an advisory commission representing both workers, businesses, and the community at large.

But I'm here as a business owner today.

I value fair treatment and living wages for my employees.

Optimism has been tip-free since its founding because we believe that businesses should be responsible for workers' wages and not just the whim of our customers.

Fair living wages are good for my business.

It's good for the whole economy.

You've heard from many gig workers supporting this bill that they are not getting guaranteed living wages.

And as a food business, we are expected to offer delivery to our customers, but I don't want to do business with delivery services that don't pay minimum wage and don't provide basic rights to their workers.

We don't have any insight into what these individuals are making, and they are making their money off the back

Thank you, Gaye.

Our next speaker is B.J.

Last and B.J.

will be followed by Leif Gehring.

B.J.

Hello, my name is B.J.

Last.

I'm a Ballard resident and small business owner.

I'm calling to reject hiring bonuses for SPD and transfer all salary savings to community-driven solutions.

Bonuses for cops would entrench police violence and threaten public safety, and councils should adopt pay-up.

The National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform's 2021 study that SPD should only be the primary response for 27% of the calls SPD currently handles.

This echoes the Center for American Progress and Law Enforcement Action Partnerships 2020 study, which found that only 28.6% of calls handled by SPD should be handled by them.

Instead of working to transfer these calls that is unequipped to handle to the community, SPD has fought transferring calls by insisting on additional third-party analysis that has not materialized and demanding its 2022 budget include a $19 million slush fund for positions it has no plans to hire this year.

Two weeks ago in Ballard, a group of five officers refused to give a homeless veteran 10 minutes to sort through his possessions and threatened to arrest him, despite parks having told the resident he'd have 30 minutes to pack up.

Thank you.

Thank you, BJ.

Our next speaker is Leif Gehring, and Leif will be followed by Kaylee Condon.

And, Leif, we need to hit star six, please.

Are you able to hear me?

Yep.

Perfect.

Oh, here we go.

Okay.

Good morning.

My name is Leif.

I am a former delivery driver for Uber Eats.

I'm here in support of the payout policy.

While the scheduling freedom made the job strongly appealing for several years, I have decided that the drawbacks no longer make it worthwhile.

The standard fare was already low when I began in 2017 and has been effectively cut with inflation.

Granted, Uber has recently been providing us with an extra $0.35 per trip to compensate for inflating fuel prices, but this gesture is not enough.

We need our real mileage costs accounted for, and the best way to do that is by basing mileage compensation on the IRS rate, not an arbitrary pay bump decided by Uber.

Even with this bump, many jobs would leave me with only $3 or $4 after 30 to 45 minutes.

Additionally, the exact tip amounts on Uber Eats are not visible until after the trip has completed, which means that I frequently have to guess if a trip is worthwhile.

Requiring the tip to be visible on each trip would save drivers a lot of time with no negative consequences for Uber, and creating a pay standard would mean we no longer have to guess if we'll make enough to make a job worth it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Kaylee Condit.

Kaylee will be followed by Chris Woodard.

Good morning.

This is Kaylee Condit.

I'm a faculty member at the University of Washington and I'm calling to state my strong opposition to hiring bonuses for SPD.

In 2021 both homicides and 9 9 1 9 1 1 call volumes were down.

Seattle needs to shrink its police department not expand it.

SPD has plenty of staffing as indicated by their ability to send dozens of officers and vehicles to violently escalate sweep operations of homeless people.

If SPD wants to decrease 9 1 1 response times It could easily offload responsibilities.

The 2020 NICJR study found that communities with no police backup could respond to 49% of 911 call types.

These call types constitute 80% of 911 call volumes.

Police have been fighting against the idea of offloading responsibilities and hiring bonuses would reward them for their efforts.

The entirety of SPD's 2022 salary savings could be used for constructive investments such as social housing and participatory budgeting instead of being used to hire more cops.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Chris Woodard, and Chris will be followed by Mackenzie Chase.

Chris, can you hit star six, please?

Perfect.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Chris Woodward.

I'm the business development director at the Alliance for Pioneer Square, located in 7th.

Speaking today in support of a resolution calling for the development of a FPD staffing hiring incentive program to accelerate the hiring of new officers.

I regularly hear from Pioneer Square community members, business owners, residents, that they are concerned about the increase in violent crime and non-violent crime in the city.

should explore all tools to address rising crime levels, including programs to rebuild SPD staffing levels to ensure safety and stability here in Pioneer Square and across the city.

Pioneer Square's ongoing economic recovery requires our neighborhood streets, sidewalks, and public spaces to be safe and welcoming for all.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Mackenzie Chase, and Mackenzie will be followed by Maria Hernandez.

Mackenzie.

Good morning.

My name is Mackenzie Chase, and I work at the Seattle Metro Chamber of Commerce.

I'm here to speak about CB120294 related to app-based workers.

The Seattle Metro Chamber supports legislation to ensure that app-based workers make a competitive wage.

We also feel strongly that the legislation should be carefully drafted to address different industry realities.

The issue is incredibly complex, and is currently drafted would apply to businesses involved in grocery delivery, childcare, and home repairs.

We strongly urge City Council to craft definitions instead of leaving critical decisions for the rulemaking process.

One of the proposed amendments would ask OLS to craft rules to present to Council before passage of the legislation.

We support that approach.

We also urge City Council to study and address unintended harmful consequences, especially for low-income residents.

For example, someone with limited mobility uses an app to get groceries.

That's why we support amendments to study potential impacts on drivers, partner businesses, and customers.

Thanks so much for the opportunity to speak this morning.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Maria Hernandez, and Maria will be followed by Michael Wolf.

And I think we need to set the clock a little differently.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

My name is Maya Hernandez and I work for DoorDash and I support the pay up policy.

My earning for the month of March was a little less than $1,230.

And the cost of working was a total of $671.

I brought home less than $600, which is a lot less of what the applications claim we earn.

Porque el costo actual es de $0.58 y manejamos millas adicionales entre órdenes.

It's urgent for us that we receive payment of $0.73 per mile because the actual mileage cost is of $0.58 and we drive additional mileage between orders.

Y la gasolina sube cada día que voy a llenar el tanque.

and the gas continues increasing its cost every single time that I go to fill up my tank.

Me ha decepcionado ver que la Cámara de Comercio de Latinos en Seattle está en contra de la política pay up.

I am disappointed to see that the Seattle Latino Chamber of Commerce is against the pay up policy.

Thank you so much, Maria, and thank you as well to our interpreter for your services.

Much appreciated.

Next, we have Michael Wolfe and Michael will be followed by Adrian Papermaster.

Michael.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Michael Wolfe.

I'm the executive director of DriveForward.

And I want to start by saying immediately that DriveForward does support the creation of a minimum earning standard for gig workers.

We've had discussions with you about our objections to some of the methods in which this bill enacts that standard.

We would encourage continued dialogue around these issues, especially around the issue of setting the rate as a per-trip method, as that would, in our opinion, create an artificial cap at minimum wage of earnings.

And we believe gig workers should always have the opportunity to earn more than minimum wage.

We also would like to see this bill split into two bills, one dealing with the marketplace companies and one dealing with the delivery companies.

Even our own research, a survey of delivery drivers last year, showed that some drivers earned less than minimum wage.

And this is why we support creating a minimum wage with these changes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Adrienne Papermaster, and Adrienne will be followed by Ariana Laureano.

Adrian, can you hit star six for us?

Hopefully you can hear us.

Adrian, we need you to hit star six so we can hear you.

Okay.

I'm going to try one more time.

Adrian, there you go.

Perfect.

Oh, hello.

Sorry about that.

Good morning.

My name is Adrian Papermaster.

I'm a member of the Transit Riders Union and a customer on gig delivery apps like Instacart, DoorDash and Uber Eats.

I'm here to urge you to pass the payout policy.

I'm a survivor of acute leukemia and the treatment that saved my life left me with chronic pain, fatigue and lowered immunity.

It's not safe for me to drive, and often I don't have energy to shop and cook my own food.

Gig delivery is vital for me to get food and stay safe, and I see delivery workers as part of a helping profession.

Sometimes I feel guilty for relying on these apps, and I'm concerned about how companies treat delivery workers.

I've heard lobbyists argue even today to counsel that raising pay for delivery workers could result in higher prices for people like me.

I'm angry that they're using me to make an argument for their financial benefit.

Big workers deserve to get paid a living wage and be treated as valued partners.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Arianna Laureano.

And Arianna will be followed by Alex Orsha.

Arianna.

Hello, this is Arianna Laureano, a formerly homeless disabled trans woman in District 4. I'm calling on the council to reject hiring bonuses for SBD and instead transfer all of SBD's salary savings out of the department's community-driven solutions.

bonuses for cops would be rewarding a failing system of violence.

The executive analysis of the 2021 hiring bonus program found that SPD did not experience an increase in hiring and that hiring bonuses in general have limited impact on retention.

The city ran a hiring bonus program for SPD in 2019 that has never been analyzed either by an independent party or SPD.

to provide the Council with a final report of the program in April of 2020, but they have yet to do so.

It is fiscally and programmatically irresponsible to do another round of bonuses before analyzing the 2019 program.

I can only hope during these trying times, at the very least, we can expect fiscal responsibility to be a part of your decision-making process.

Have a good day.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Alex Worshing.

Alex?

Hi, my name is Alex.

I'm calling in support of the pay-up legislation.

I'm a PhD candidate and watch dogs in my home in District 3 part-time while I remotely work on my dissertation.

For over three years, I've used both the Rover and WAG apps that many pet parents and pet caretakers use to find each other.

For many years, Rover has taken 20 or 25% of the price a caretaker sets for a job, and WAG has taken 40%.

Rover and WAG don't help with pet care after the initial introduction, and no, people quickly stop transacting through the apps, so they take as much as they can.

they think they can get away with in the first booking, which can be hundreds of dollars for longer term dog boarding stays and may mean sub-minimum wages for on-demand dog walkers trying to support themselves from gig work.

A large share of pet care work is now on these apps because of their convenience, which makes it hard for caretakers to get jobs elsewhere and avoid paying the high middleman fees.

Marketplace gig apps that have dominant market positions because of these network effects need to be regulated to force them to have reasonable fees.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We have gone to the end of our public comment period, but I would really like to hear from more speakers.

The public comment period on our agenda is, and according to our council rules is 20 minutes, but if there are no objections, I'd like to suspend the rules to allow an additional 20 minutes for a total of 40 minutes of public comment.

Is there any objection?

Hearing no objection, public comment has been extended.

And we'll move over to Justin Heyer.

And Justin will be followed by Annette Klapstein.

Good morning.

My name is Justin Heyer, and I'm the Director of Government Affairs for the Same Day Delivery Platform SHIPS.

Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to weigh in on item number five, share a little about SHIPS, and respectfully express our concerns.

Our effort-based approach at Shift allows for shoppers to work as little or as much as they want and in a way that suits their individual needs.

This flexibility is something our shopper community values.

It's worth noting that 75% of our shoppers work less than 10 hours a week, and last year shoppers made, on average, between $25 and $35 per hour when factoring in offer pay, bonuses, and tips.

Shopping and delivery app-based work involves many nuanced and complicated factors in order to ensure the system works for both our customers and our shoppers.

This potential law risks economic uncertainty and risks the flexible work opportunities that shoppers in Seattle value.

We respectfully ask that you heed our concerns over this measure as well as those who operate in this space.

Please feel free to reach out anytime if you'd like to discuss any of this at greater.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you Justin.

Our next speaker is Annette Clapstein and Annette will be followed by Tiffany Alvendrez.

Annette.

Hi can you hear me.

Yes we can.

Okay this is Annette Clapston in District 4. I am adamantly opposed to hiring bonuses for SPD which has yet to even comply with the very modest requirements of the federal consent decree which has been in place for over 10 years.

All salary savings should be transferred from SPD to community-based solutions.

Bonuses for police just reward and further encourage police violence and do nothing to increase public safety.

In fact they make us all less safe.

I personally have witnessed bike cops using their bicycles as weapons to smack people exercising their right to peacefully protest, including myself.

And the way they treat me, an old white woman, is mild compared to the life-threatening brutality with which they treat black and brown people.

There have been way too many deaths at the hands of Seattle cops.

It's really pretty simple.

We don't need hiring bonuses because the absolute last thing this city needs is more cops.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Tiffany Avedrez, followed by Trevona Thompson-Wiley.

Tiffany?

And if you could hit star six, that'd be great.

Thank you.

Good morning.

My name is Tiffany Avedrez, and I'm the Western Region Policy Manager for Instacart.

Instacart is opposed to CB120294, the pay affordance in its current form.

As we've previously stated, the proposal before you today is extremely problematic for customers, shoppers, and local retailers who use our platform.

And every member on this committee should be aware that it will lessen demand for the services offered on delivery network companies' platforms.

It'll increase cost for consumers and jeopardize earning opportunities for workers.

We ask council to consider the following amendments to the ordinance.

A city-funded impact study similar to that performed for PNPs under their fair share legislation, removing the current per minute per mile formula, and replacing it with a minimum earning standard of at least 120% of minimum wage, covering only independent contractors and not W-2 employees who are already covered by city and state wage and hour laws.

Instacart appreciates the opportunity to take part in stakeholder meetings and will continue to work with city council members and other stakeholders as this moves forward.

Thank you.

Thank you, Tiffany.

Our next speaker, Trevona Thompson-Wiley, is showing is not present, so we'll move down to Elena Perez followed by Wei Lin.

Elena.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Elena Perez with Puget Sound Stage here in support of the pay up policy.

We believe that all workers should have basic working standards and protection.

That conviction by you and past city leadership and worker rights advocates has made Seattle a national leader in labor standards.

But emerging app-based jobs have put that in jeopardy as gig workers on apps like DoorDash, Instacart, and TaskRabbit are excluded from these standards and being left behind.

Multi-billion dollar gig companies get away with paying as little as $2 a job to the people who do the work.

We have allowed these companies to pay a sub-minimum wage for workers who are disproportionately people of color, immigrants, workers with disabilities, LGBTQ folks, and single parents.

After a year-long stakeholder process, it is well past time to close this loophole in our labor standards.

Raising pay and providing basic protections to our lowest paid workers is key to an equitable recovery alongside the PRO Act.

Please vote to pay pass-up without carve-out.

Thank you, Lena.

Next speaker is Wei Lin, followed by Eric Otto.

Wei?

Hi.

Hi.

Good morning, county members.

My name is Wei, and I work for GOPA.

We need to pay our pass, and we need to pay our pass-by for every job or shift that we do.

Gopal's business can be different a lot based on the time of the day.

We have to wait at a warehouse for orders and sometimes we only get one order in an hour.

Each order only pay $4.

Sometimes that didn't even cover our gas and mileage cost.

Gopal used to be schedule-blocked with a guaranteed rate for every hour on ship.

Their rate was only $16.75 per hour.

That's already below minimum wage, not even factoring our expense.

Now Gopal has taken away that hourly rate hour rate.

We still have the clock in the warehouse and wait, but all we earn is $4 per job.

If the pay is calculated per week, we'll keep paying only $4 per job.

We won't get paid for all the time we work, and we won't have the real transparency.

Gig workers need to know that every single job shift will pay the least minimum wage, but spend the amount cost for the time we spend.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Eric Otto, and Eric will be followed by Raymond Evans.

Eric.

Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you guys today.

I'm Eric.

I've been a Tasker with TaskRabbit in the New Seattle area for a little over a year.

After many years working in the entertainment industry, I found myself in the position of needing quick but solid work opportunities.

TaskRabbit really opened my eyes to the value of what I do.

I never would have assumed that my services were worth what I've been found them to be.

And because I set my own hourly rate, I can be confident that I'm earning what I deserve.

I applaud the City Council's efforts to make sure workers' rights are protected.

I encourage the Council to learn about the differences in companies that will be impacted in the process.

I choose TaskRabbit because it's enabled me to work as an independent contractor, and TaskRabbit has always respected my autonomy.

I choose when I work, where I work, and my hourly rate.

Anytime I take on a new booking, I communicate directly with clients without any interference from TaskRabbit.

As you work on this bill, please keep in mind that I really enjoy it.

the hands-off approach that TaskRabbit uses, and they don't want companies to have or use more oversight in order to follow new rules.

Again, thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Raymond Evans, and Raymond will be followed by Jamie Paschal.

Good morning.

My name is Raymond Evans, and I'm a gig worker here in the Seattle area.

I've worked across all the apps over the years and find that a division in any type of the marketplaces One, we wouldn't want people that have multiple skills or different abilities to be clamoring for one company and everybody at the same time.

It would really kind of undermine service.

It would leave one service overly stocked and overly populated and another almost neglected.

But what's really my concern is that This bill, here we're talking about this in 2022, we're talking about equal pay.

In 1963, there was a voting right established, laws established for the protection of our rights, and here yet we have people at our source of energy that's coming in from another angle to promote an agenda that really is contributing to the erosion of our culture and our society.

It's imperative that, you know, if we're going to continue being Seattle, the Seattle we know there's growing diversity and inclusion and social justice, that the city council is urged to do the right thing and pass the PAMP campaign and ensure that all marketplaces are included.

I close my argument.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is Jamie Paschal and Jamie will be followed by Jackie Morris.

Jamie.

Good morning, Councilmembers.

I'm Jamie Pascal, Director of Civic Innovation Policy for Chamber of Progress, a center-left tech industry coalition promoting technology's progressive future.

Our corporate partners include companies such as Grubhub, Doordash, Instacart, and Uber, but our partners do not have a vote or veto over our positions.

We urge the committee to oppose CB120294.

This is a well-intentioned effort to help delivery drivers and tech service providers afford the rising cost of living in Seattle, But unfortunately, it will lead to a higher delivery and service costs, which in turn, higher costs for Seattle families and fewer orders for drivers and gate workers.

We all want to see livable wages for Seattleites, but because this proposal sets such a high hourly wage, services that help families like grocery delivery, meal delivery, and dog walking will all see price increases in order to afford the increased wages.

Not only will that drive up the cost for Seattle customers, but it will also increase demand for those services.

This will have devastating consequences on our most vulnerable population.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is Jackie Morris, and Jackie will be followed by Vishnu Subramanian.

Jackie?

Good morning Councilmember Herbold, good morning committee members.

My name is Jackie Morris.

I'm the Engagement Director for Drive Forward.

It is my job to keep my ear on the ground and listen to the experiences of various gig workers.

We have just about 2,600 members and several hundred that we have been in contact with and they have been in contact with council members regarding the pay up legislation.

We are supportive and very excited about moving forward with creating labor standards that make it a better experience out there on the road, of course, and finding a way to make a livable wage standard.

The biggest concern from the members is the confusion, the language.

Some parts are ambiguous, and of course, it does include several different markets.

The request is to narrow down the focus to delivery work and to bring the labor standards.

Thank you, Jackie.

Our next speaker is Vishnu Subramanian.

Good morning.

Good morning.

I'm here from SEIU6.

We represent 10,000 workers in our community, including janitors, security officers, and airport workers.

I'm here in support of the pay up policy to ensure gig workers in Seattle are paid at least a minimum wage after expenses with other basic protections.

Youngers and gig workers have a lot in common.

Many of us are immigrants and people of color, and we're too often overlooked, disrespected, excluded, and treated as invisible.

People working the shadows to deliver food and do other good work deserve to be paid at least minimum wage.

They deserve respect, and they deserve to have the city support to address the issues they face.

Passing the pay-up policy in Seattle will advance racial equity, put money into local restaurants and other community businesses, and give 40,000-plus gig workers the basic rights every worker needs.

With a lot of hard work, FDIC has made being a gender a good job.

It's time for Seattle to make gig work a good job, too.

We urge you to support this policy.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Karen Taylor.

And Karen is followed by Michael Coleman, and Michael is showing is not present.

Karen.

Hi, I'm Karen, and I'm a member of the Transit Riders Union, and I'm in support of raising pay and providing other protections to gig workers.

I have chronic pain, and last night when a classmate of mine, when I was online, could see I was hurting, she surprised me with a DoorDash certificate for dinner.

This was so thoughtful as preparing nutritious food often goes out the window during a pain flare.

A hard-working woman delivered it within 20 minutes.

I want her to be able to eat, too.

In this case, I was lucky to have a gift, but often I need to order using my income from Social Security disability.

Why should a CEO, shareholder, or arrogant tech worker who thinks the world revolves around him run away with my SSDI money?

Meanwhile, nobody is properly paying the folks tussling hard to create all the value.

I just went on a date with a hot chaplain who does gig work on the side to support his kiddo.

We bonded over the fact that he's on food stamps just like me.

Why is our government subsidizing filthy rich people to increase their profit instead?

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Michael Pullman, and Michael Pullman will be followed by Penny O'Grady.

Michael?

Hello.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

All right, thanks.

Have you all heard me before?

This isn't Michael, this is Mikey Maelstrom, and I just want to quickly address the thing that I had to address during the press conference, and it's about pay.

They like to claim that they're going to have to raise pay instead of taking $400,000 or $400 million or whatever extra money they're giving to their CEOs and their managers.

I tell you what, they don't really invest in anything in this town.

I have an app.

They can't afford to raise, or they can't afford to raise prices because if they raise prices and somebody's going to come in and undercut them, they already charge restaurants, they already charge the customers, they already make the workers pay for everything.

They don't deserve to charge more money, and they know this for a fact.

I'm most tired of listening to companies come in here and tell us what their employees are making.

I make about $25 an hour because I have a system and I live in downtown Seattle and I work rushes.

You cannot make more delivering than doing what I do.

So I am just tired of hearing this company say about money when they lie, they misrepresent, and they don't deal with us honestly.

Thank you, Mikey.

Our next speaker is Penny O'Grady, and Penny will be followed by Coco Weber.

Hi, this is Penny in District 6. True public safety arises in well-resourced communities, not heavily policed communities.

When we police instead of help, we harm instead of solve problems.

We use words with solutions packed inside them.

The solution to homelessness is home.

The solution to drug addiction is addiction treatment.

The solution to crimes of poverty is alleviating poverty.

Seattle does not need SPD to have more money.

Police don't need bonuses.

Sarah Nelson, you like to refer to news narratives and local media you help create, claiming that Seattle is dangerous.

To get some perspective, I'll reference a women's travel blog.

Seattle is one of the safest cities in the U.S., noting, however, that the U.S. as a whole is ranked 121 on the Global Peace Index, proof that policing doesn't work because the U.S. spends more on policing than any other country.

Council members, remember you represent all residents, not just business interests.

Reject hiring bonuses for SPD.

More funding.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Coco Weber, and Coco will be followed by Taylor Riley.

Coco?

Hello, Council.

My name is Coco, and I'm a District 3 resident and educator who has experienced assaults by the SPD while protesting police brutality with the movement for Black Lives.

Today I ask the council to vote no to hiring bonuses for SPD.

The SPD is still in violation of the DOJ's failed consent decree and continues to murder my black and brown neighbors Seattleites with impunity.

This violent corrupt department should not be rewarded with bonuses but rather should continue to shrink every year as true public safety can only be built with true public safety investments such as DV prevention DV prevention resourcing for families harm reduction services, and on ramps for treatment, health care, and housing.

Please vote no for bonuses for our violent killing police department.

We need true community safety.

Thank you.

Thank you, Coco.

Our next speaker is Taylor Riley, and Taylor will be followed by Anna Williams.

Hi, my name's Taylor and I'm calling on the council to reject hiring bonuses for SPD and instead transfer SPD's salary savings to community-driven solutions.

It would be irresponsible to grant SPD hiring bonuses without analyzing the impact of prior hiring bonuses.

The executive's analysis of the 2021 hiring bonus program found that SPD did not experience an increase in hiring and pay has not been identified as a barrier to either hiring or retention.

At a minimum, an analysis needs to look at if bonuses have any impact on hiring, retention, and performance and should be done by an independent third party.

We also don't need more COPS.

Calls for service were significantly lower in 2021 than previous years.

A 2021 study found 49% of 911 call types could be responded to by community, not SPD.

Instead of hiring bonuses, let's look at what the data is telling us and instead give this money to community-based solutions.

The entirety of SPD's 2022 salary savings should be transferred to the community for investment in true public safety.

Thank you, Taylor.

Our next speaker is Anna Williams, and Anna will be followed by Amarithia Torres.

Anna?

Hi, Council.

I am Anna Williams.

I'm a D4 resident, a homeowner, a parent, a small business owner, and I'm calling you to urge you to vote no on hiring bonuses for police officers.

I am curious what council believes leads people to commit crimes and what actually prevents it.

I don't think crimes just happen out of the blue.

I think the lack of social resources puts people in vulnerable positions, and they cope the best way they know how, given the resources that they have.

Police officers do not prevent crime.

They respond to the crime after the fact.

What does help are things like fully funded mental health services, stable housing, affordable child care, stable work, and strong community support.

I have a one and a half year old, which you may be able to hear in the background, And my whole family for the past two weeks have been in quarantine from COVID.

We've had no child care and have been juggling while working and parenting.

And I can tell you, I was going to lose my mind.

But because of the resources I have available, health care that covers doctor visits, therapy, mental health medications, oh, mama's talking.

I can help you when I'm done.

Stable housing, access to a park, work that I was able to do remotely.

This kept me floating, and I was

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Amarithia Torres, who will be followed by Allison Ford.

Amarithia.

Good morning, council members, and thanks for extending the time.

My name is Amarithia Torres, and I'm speaking on behalf of the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence.

Our membership is made up of over 35 community-based, culturally specific, and BIPOC-led organizations working towards an end to gender-based violence.

I'm speaking today in strong support of increased investments for services to survivors of gender-based violence.

As you likely know, domestic and sexual violence are among the top precursors to housing, civility, mental health challenges, and substance abuse.

Community-based organizations, many of which are BIPOC-led and culturally specific, offer the most effective path to meeting the diverse needs of survivors and can prevent more costly legal, health, and homelessness intervention.

However, even prior to COVID, gender-based violence programs have experienced gaps in capacity that have really made it difficult to meet the acute and complex needs of survivors.

And at the same time, there is a skyrocketing demand for community-based services.

Many programs reporting services are up two to three times since the beginning of this year.

We must ensure survivors get the help they need when they need it.

Thank you, Amarithya.

Our next speaker is Allison Ford, who will be followed by Julia T. Allison?

Good morning.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold and members of the committee.

My name is Allison Ford, and I am the public policy manager for Uber in the Pacific Northwest.

I am calling today regarding the pay up policy with concern for the unintended consequences this bill could have if passed through in its current form.

Uber continues to be supportive of a driver earning standard policy.

However, this bill will reduce access to work opportunities for platform drivers and adversely impact small businesses and increase prices on consumers.

We believe this bill could be greatly improved by further consideration of all of the feedback that has been communicated from stakeholders and further consideration of the policy options that have been presented to you.

We implore this committee to approach this amendment process with diligence and to take the full time to understand all of the impacts.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is Olga Sagan will be followed by David Della.

Hi, my name is Olga Sagan, and I am a business owner in downtown Seattle.

Thank you for extending public comment.

I'm supporting incentives for police bonuses as well as hiring, as well as implementing correct policy and community-based solutions for Seattle.

We need to create accountability and justice for police, as well as support systems for community-based solutions in our beautiful city of Seattle.

We need to have salaries to be competitive across the board, which in return will set up small businesses and diverse residents for success.

As far as gig workers in food industry, please come work for small businesses with fair wages and benefits.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Our next and final speaker is David Della.

David, hit star six, please.

Perfect.

Good morning.

Good morning, council members.

My name is David Della, former council member, District 7, lifelong resident of Seattle.

I'm speaking in favor of Resolution 32050, SPD Staffing Incentives, which is on your agenda today.

I feel that this resolution is important because it addresses a significant shortage in police officers to protect our city.

I support this resolution because it does the following.

indicates the council's support for the development of a staffing incentive program to accelerate the hiring of new officers, and it sets policy direction for a separate ordinance allowing part of $1.4 million in unspent funds to pay for these incentives.

The staffing incentive program will allow us to be more competitive in attracting a good pool of applicants into our police force.

In addition, it will allow us to be more selective to hire exceptional officers that reflects the Ellis diverse communities, preferably multilingual and community-oriented.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much.

That comes to the end of public comment for this morning.

And we'll move into our agenda items.

Will the clerk please read in agenda item number one.

Committee agenda item number one, appointment 02187, appointment of Josie Merkel as member of Community Police Commission for a term to December 31, 2024, for briefing and discussion.

Perfect.

Thank you so much.

So let's see.

First, we're going to hear a few words on this council appointment to the Community Police Commission, given, again, that this meeting happens before the full council meeting this afternoon, where we'll be Um, introducing and referring the bill will be voting next Tuesday at full council.

So we're joined by the Community Police Commission co chair, Reverend Walden and no Aldrich from my office.

I'll first ask that Reverend Walden speak to the work the CPC does, and then I'll ask my staff to present this appointment.

Since this is a council appointment, um, that has been referred to us for consideration by the CPC.

Thank you.

Reverend Alden.

Good morning.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak this morning on behalf of the Community Police Commission.

And it is our pleasure to actually welcome Mr. Merkle to the Police Commission and to help us get the work done.

The police accountability work has been voice amplified by the community.

Um, and, uh, just, just know he's been, uh, he's been uh...

holding that i i'll be in trying to uh...

make sure that we know that he's out there and of course that this is our thirteenth we've been died we were at constituted and that the uh...

under the consent decree and that the ordinance in two thousand seventeen made us apart permanent entity a part of the city government uh...

and uh...

in seattle at the uh...

police commission and we move from for about fifteen commissioners to twenty one Uh, and hoping that that would help us get the work done.

I mean, we are commissioner driven on entity part of the city government that way.

So thank you so much for the opportunity and welcome.

Uh, Mr Merkel, thank you so much for applying.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Reverend Walden.

Um, no.

Do you wanna say a few words about the merits of Mr Merkel Merkel's application?

And then we'll hand it over to Mr Merkel to address us.

Thank you, Council Member.

Joel Merkel has over 14 years of public service working in the U.S.

Senate and the King County Prosecutor's Office.

He served as legislative counsel for U.S.

Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington State, carrying out oversight over multiple federal agencies.

He coordinated with the White House, other congressional offices, and constituent groups in carrying out this oversight, which included complex investigations into the causes and impacts of the 2008 financial market crisis and the development of policy and legislative responses, including drafting and negotiating sections of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Law.

In the King County Prosecutor's Office, he has tried dozens of domestic violence and sexual assault cases, working with victims, many of whom come from diverse and marginalized communities and often struggle with being thrust into the criminal legal system.

He served on an office-wide equity action work group to develop internal recommendations on criminal justice reform and racial equity.

He utilized his policy background from work in the U.S.

Senate to spearhead and lead an effort at the Washington State Legislature to expand drug treatment sentencing alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent crimes, helping to draft the bill, working with stakeholders, and testifying for the legislature prior passage of the bill.

Thank you.

Thank you, Noel.

With that, I want to hand it over to Joel.

Joel, can you speak to your interest in serving as a commissioner on the CPC?

Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold and committee members.

Good morning.

Good morning, Reverend Walden.

Thank you.

I want to first thank the Seattle Community Police Commission and the council for selecting me for the commission.

uh...

seattle is my home and and like everyone on this call i care deeply about our community and the reason i saw appointment to sell community police commission is because i'm very passionate about government service criminal legal reform and community-based oversight and accountability and i'm really excited to bring my professional experiences in the united states senate and as a criminal prosecutor to the commission uh...

and to amplify the community's voice on police oversight and accountability As Mr. Aldridge mentioned, before I became a prosecutor, I served as a legislative counsel to U.S.

Senator Maria Cantwell, and that's where I helped lead her oversight and investigation work involving several federal consumer protection agencies during the 2008 financial crisis.

And we had to consistently battle industry stakeholders to push those agencies for increased transparency, accountability, and ultimately policy changes.

And for the last nine years, I've served the residents of King County as a criminal prosecutor in the King County Prosecutor's Office.

And I've worked predominantly on behalf of victims of domestic violence, sexual violence, and child abuse.

And one thing I'm proud of in my work is the work I did to expand alternatives to traditional prosecution and incarceration.

And that was in 2019 and 2020 when I spearheaded an effort to legislatively expand the drug treatment, sentencing, alternative statute for nonviolent felonies under state law.

I helped draft the bill.

I work with stakeholders.

I testified before the Legislature.

The bill became law in 2021 and is now helping many underserved members of our community access treatment and avoid incarceration.

I'm also proud of the work that I've done with victims of gender based intimate partner violence, many of whom are from vulnerable or underserved communities.

I've seen firsthand how building community trust with law enforcement is essential to achieve justice and equity in our community.

And these cases and experiences have given me a unique perspective on community-based accountability and oversight.

And I just want to thank the committee and the commission again for selecting me.

I'm eager to get to work on behalf of our community and I look forward to the discussion today.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for your willingness to serve.

on this really important, um, commission.

Uh, it's so important to the community and so important to, um, to the work that we are all engaged in to build more trust between police and community.

Um, uh, and and increasing accountability.

Just wondering whether or not my colleagues, council members have any questions for Mr Merkel.

And I'm looking for Burke to raise hands.

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Given that we have a packed agenda, I'm just going to make a couple of brief comments.

I know Mr. Merkel personally and can attest to his extremely strong qualifications and dedication to public service and really looking forward to voting to recommend his confirmation today and then to later vote at full council.

Uh, thank you, Joel, for stepping up to serve and really looking forward to, uh, getting you on the CPC.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council members.

Yes.

Thank you.

Council members.

And just again, to clarify, we're not voting in committee today.

The clerk file, um, has not yet been referred.

That's happening today at two o'clock.

But, um, Joel has been very generous to take some time out to meet with us now because of the difficulty doing that at full council.

So I just want to want to clarify that moving forward and not seeing any other virtual hands or real hands raised.

So again, Joel, really appreciate your willing to serve.

Appreciate your patience.

I know you've had your application in for a very long time, and I'm excited that we'll be able to bring this forward next Monday.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Clerk, please read in agenda item number two.

Committee agenda item number two, presentation on criminal case backlog for briefing and discussion.

Super.

Thank you so much.

So we are joined by City Attorney Davison and by Natalie Walton Anderson, the head of the criminal division.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Um, I think what we'll do, if that's okay, is we'll hear your presentation first and have questions afterwards.

I know we have 20 minutes listed on the agenda.

And so I know I sent a number of questions to you this morning.

I do not expect us to cover them.

I might touch on a couple of them, time permitting, but I'm looking forward to a response at a later date.

With that, I'll turn it over to City Attorney Davison and Natalie Wilson-Anderson for introductions and their presentation.

Thank you so much, Council Member Holwold, for inviting us today, and I apologize for my voice.

I'm under the weather, so I'm working remote.

So my speaking time will be brief so that I am able to communicate, and we'll pass it over to my Criminal Chief, Natalie Walton Anderson.

I want to also thank Council Members for your time and for giving us the opportunity to discuss our plan to move forward on addressing the backlog of nearly 5,000 criminal case referrals that my office inherited at the start of the year.

We are eager to share some of the data that we've mined since I took office that has helped inform this plan, as I know that the Seattle City Council shares our commitment to data and transparency.

At the Seattle City Attorney's Office, it plays a vital role in public safety and the criminal justice system in Seattle.

We are the city's prosecutor for misdemeanors, which makes up approximately 80% of the crime that occurs in the city.

And misdemeanors do matter.

They include domestic violence, DUI, assault, harassment, property destruction, sexual exploitation, and weapons charges.

We also acknowledge that theft and trespass cases matter because simply our laws matter.

Just this past weekend, I heard from two business owners who are struggling to keep their businesses running because of repeated break-ins and thefts.

They are repeat victims.

One small business owner in Belltown who just opened his doors this year has been the target of four break-ins in less than three months.

His business is a repeat victim, now what seems to be like on a monthly basis.

He also now has to choose between replacing his broken window or firing one of his few remaining staff.

Those who have worked overnight have already left for fear of safety.

He can't afford to do both.

Another, a sneaker shop on Capitol Hill, has been the victim of three separate thefts since the beginning of this month.

Cases matter.

These victims deserve to be heard.

This continuing criminal activity cannot be ignored.

When I took office, there were nearly 5,000 police referrals awaiting a charging decision, what we are now calling the backlog.

I want to stress how unusual this is.

While it is unlikely that a city like Seattle will ever have zero referrals waiting for a charging decision, 5,000 is absolutely not typical.

The average amount of time that a referral has been sitting in this backlog is 334 days.

The longest one has been waiting for a charging decision for over two years.

It is unacceptable to ask victims to wait two years to hear whether an individual will be charged with a crime.

A backlog of this size is shameful.

Today, we will be sharing with you some data we now know about the backlog and our plan to clear it moving forward.

Because we need to use the finite pre-prosecutor resources on our current referrals, we've had to determine a prioritization of types of cases that are left in the backlog.

Because of that, my office will be declining nearly 2,000 referrals.

I want to reinforce that we are making this decision because it's the only way we can begin to return real-time accountability to our misdemeanor criminal justice system.

So often justice delayed is justice denied.

Moreover, the longer a case sits unattended, the harder it is to prosecute.

We will move forward and review a majority of cases in the backlog with the expectation that it will likely take until the end of the year to complete.

I will be asking for additional temporary resources through a supplemental budget request to help us finish this work.

I'd like to hand it over to my criminal chief, Natalie Walton Anderson.

She is a phenomenal prosecutor with decades of experience and in therapeutic courts and in mainstream prosecution and is a welcomed leader in the city attorney's office.

Natalie, I'll hand it to you.

Good morning.

Thank you, Anne.

Good morning, council members and council member professional staff partners that helped to host us today.

My name is Natalie Walton Anderson, and I was asked by city attorney and Davidson to be the criminal division chief.

I live in Council District one and I've worked in Council District seven for the last twenty five years.

And I was born here in Seattle.

To start, I'd like to give a general overview of the city attorney's plan to address the backlog.

As the city attorney has indicated, the new administration did inherit a backlog of nearly 5,000 referrals.

And in order to tackle this backlog, the criminal division attorneys will review approximately 300 referrals per month when fully staffed.

Due in large part to resource and staffing of the city attorney's office, our office will have to decline nearly 1,921 referrals, with the average referral having sat in the backlog for 334 days since the date of receipt.

Through the administration's policy changes since January, we've already reduced the backlog by almost 550 cases.

May I please have the first slide?

So this first slide, it's important to start by showing some of the historical background of the numbers of the referrals our office receives from the Seattle Police Department.

As you can see, the number of referrals dropped off significantly in 2020 and began rising again in 2021. The trend on average for the last few years is that the referral numbers increased after quarter one.

And I would anticipate that quarter two and quarter three to be higher than the current quarter based on the historical data that's presented.

If I may please have slide two.

It is also important to understand how the backlog grew to nearly 5,000 cases.

This chart shows the steady growth of Seattle Police Department referrals that make up the backlog from 2019 through today.

At the very end of this chart, it may be hard to see because of the scale of this chart wanting to show the depth in terms of years, or in terms of years and months.

But what we've already begun to reduce the number of referrals waiting for review thanks to the close in time review policy.

Next slide.

As City Attorney Davison mentioned in her opening remarks, misdemeanors are often serious offenses.

For example, we have 971 domestic violence-related referrals that have been sitting in the backlog waiting for review.

There are also 949 assault referrals waiting to be addressed, and these charges are not insignificant.

Here you can see clearly the impact that the close in time review policy that started in February of this year has had on the average time it takes our office to file a case following referrals received from Seattle Police.

It's important to note that there are still referrals in the backlog from 2020 and 2021. So those columns for 2020 and 2021 for full transparency will continue to rise.

Those numbers of 146 and 122 on average the number of days will continue to rise until we actually address and complete the backlog.

However, column 2022, which is the green column, on average from January 1st up until this week, it's taken us approximately 90 days to review those cases.

And since the close in time filing announcement has been made, we will continue to decrease that average of 19. Next slide.

So here's our backlog priority criteria.

Again, as you can see, we are addressing the backlog by prioritizing.

In order to get through the backlog, we must decline theft, criminal trespass, property destruction, and non-DUI traffic offenses.

There are approximately 400 cases in the backlog that have passed the statute of limitations.

Those cases have to be declined because we cannot take action on cases that have passed the statute of limitations.

Our office will prioritize the most serious offenses, all crimes against persons, firearms, and DUI, and any cases involving high utilizers or individuals with three or more referrals in the backlog.

At this time, we wanted to make sure we had enough time for questions.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold for hosting us today.

Absolutely.

We could take the presentation down so I can see everybody and determine who has questions or comments.

Anyone like to share?

Council Member Peterson.

I just wanted to thank the city attorney and criminal division chief for being here today and for going through this data and then coming up with a plan on how to reduce the backlog going forward.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Any other questions from council members or comments?

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Similarly, I want to extend my gratitude, as Councilmember Peterson just indicated, for the city attorney leadership team coming forward with a proactive plan to not only tackle the backlog, but a backlog that has sort of asserted itself over the last five to six years on a fairly consistent basis.

So appreciate the proactiveness in coming up with a plan.

I want to go back to the fourth slide, if possible, if that can be put up.

And I don't know if this would be a question that would be better for City Attorney Davison or Miss Walton Anderson.

But in terms of the outstanding cases in the backlog that are indicated on slide four, there's a fairly significant number of theft and trespass referrals that could potentially be CHOOSE 180 eligible.

And one of my questions would be to what extent CHOOSE 180 diversion referrals might be a component of resolving the backlog.

Certainly it's not going to resolve the entire backlog, but there could be several hundred cases that would be eligible to be resolved via CHOOSE 180. And I just wonder if we could get an update on the extent to which that's envisioned as part of the strategy to move through these cases.

Anne, would you like me to take that question?

That'd be great.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

With regard to Choose 180, Choose 180 is a fantastic partner for the Seattle City Attorney's Office.

And the goal here is to utilize the pre-filing diversion program of Choose 180 for the current cases that are coming in.

And unfortunately, in order to review those cases to see if they're eligible, we would have to comb through them.

We currently have two prosecutors and are hoping to fill, obviously, the pre-filing diversion positions that council is granted us, but it takes time to comb through those referrals and make sure that that those individuals can be eligible for that program.

And we're choosing to utilize the cases that are currently coming in, coming in the property and theft cases to engage with 180.

So none of the cases in the backlog are envisioned as being eligible or or that will be sort of a triaging process going forward to determine if like of a filing deputy find something that might be eligible to go into that category.

Like it could go in there or or is the policy going forward going to be that this universe of cases can't be diverted?

The it's being made a policy decision to decline these 2000 cases.

It doesn't mean that we aren't referring cases to choose 180. We're choosing to do that in real time with the cases that are currently coming in.

So in order to go back and try and divert those cases that we're choosing to decline based on the time that's gone by and the amount of resources that we don't have, we're choosing to move forward and take the cases that are current in time to the outreach efforts by CHOOSE 180 would be, I think, more appropriately used for the cases currently coming in.

Okay, I'll follow up offline on that.

I think I understand the plan going forward, but I appreciate the clarification.

While we're, I think it was on slide six.

Can we just stay on this slide real quickly?

Sure.

Before we move on, thanks.

So can we just clarify that on this slide, the categories, the cases in the categories of property destruction, harassment, trespass, are among the cases that are you're declining to prosecute in addition to about another 400 cases that you can't prosecute because of the, um, statute of limitations.

Is that is that correct?

Council member Herbold.

Thank you.

Just for a clarification, we would count domestic violence, assault, D U I and harassment and weapons charges as cases that are most serious that we actually are reviewing The cases that we are declining are the theft, property destruction, and trespass cases, and non-DUI traffic offenses.

Very helpful.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Lewis.

And is the decision, I think while we're on that point, to just categorically decline the theft and trespassing, or was there any triage of those cases for other factors that might make them more serious and put them into the 3,000 or so cases being considered.

I guess I just, it'd be good to clarify that as well.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

Yes, what we did with the cases that would typically from a policy standard be declined is we looked at whether or not the individuals that would be referred would meet our high utilizer initiative criteria and or they had three or more in the backlog.

And if that's the case, then we would pull those out because there is, I think, consistent contact with law enforcement and they have several in the backlog queue.

And we pull those out to be added to our prioritization to review.

property destruction some of the property destruction cases are also getting declined is that it was there any triaging to those in terms of uh...

that the nature of property destruction the it's sort of goes i guess just to ask both these questions at the same time to be efficient the crimes against persons definition Would that inherently exclude property destruction or are some of the property destruction fact patterns can, you know, obviously be pretty concerning, particularly in cases where the victim, you know, it is like someone's personal property.

I mean, property destruction under any circumstances is incredibly concerning, but I just wonder if there was any triage for certain property destruction fact patterns where there was a provable case particularly against personal property and just wondering if some of those are getting declined.

Councilmember Lewis, thank you again for the question.

I mean these are incredibly tough choices and I think all of us in the criminal division spend a lot of time, especially our one sole victim advocate that handles our general crime cases, handling hundreds, if not thousands, of requests from our property owners and also small business victims who are victimized by these thefts.

And so it's very difficult to be able to decline these cases.

In terms of the criteria of breaking those out, we've identified our High Utilizer Initiative criteria and also individuals who have three or more in the backlog.

With regard to evaluation of the property damage or the ability to review based on the type of conduct, we would love to be able to have the resources in order to be able to not decline.

Unfortunately, we have been incredibly short-staffed, and so we have a limited number of filing deputies.

And we're actually, in terms of this backlog, we're asking for an all-hands-on-deck approach to ask everybody, including myself, to be reviewing cases in order to minimize the amount of cases that we're trying to decline.

And I'd like to add that Natalie's herself and her team, excuse me, again, pardon my voice.

It's extremely difficult decision that we've had to make in this prioritization, but we know that in order to, again, restore real-time accountability for today's property destruction, And for for those types of cases, we have to do this for that backlog.

This is only a historic look back.

This is not going forward.

And so this is just we wanted to make sure people understand the distinction.

This is if a case is set for an average of 334 days, we will.

We are not helping today's issues as well.

So we've had to create that prioritization level.

Natalie and her team have done excellent in this hard task.

So just want to say thank you publicly to her and her team.

Thanks so much.

Just want to again flag that both myself and Council Member Lewis sent several questions Councilmember Lewis sent his probably a week ago.

I only sent mine last night.

I have about four questions, five questions about the backlog, really focused on what the impacts are to our jail contract MOU commitment with King County to maintain an average 80 ADP, the court's own backlog of cases already chosen for prosecution, the jail who has a shortage of correction officers, and public defense case assignments.

So most of my questions about the backlog focus on that issue.

And then I've already sent four questions about the High Utilizers Initiative.

One question I intended to send that I did not, that I'm just going to flag here now, is related to, I did include a question about how you intend to handle cases where people have been declared incompetent on the High Utilizers Initiative list, but my question that I failed to include that I just want to flag now is how you'll handle the list of Trueblood class members to ensure that treating them as high-utilized initiative cases will not conflict with their being currently prioritized for services.

Thank you, Council Member Hubbell.

We do look forward to answering those questions with you and continuing conversation outside the setting.

Thank you for sending those over.

Absolutely.

Not seeing any other hands raised.

Thank you again for being with us.

I realize you're taking Oh, sorry.

Sorry, I had just one.

It's a clarifying question.

Councilmember Lewis.

Earlier, there were comments about the office not being fully staffed.

I thought we had seen in some of the early announcements that the the open criminal division positions had been filled.

Is that just a comment on new hires still being kind of onboarded because it's been fairly recent?

Or where is the office in terms of being fully staffed within the resources currently appropriated?

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

Yes, we are still having people on board and start.

We have somebody starting this week.

We have one more position at least left to fill that we had approximately six people start between my start date of March 1st and through this month.

So the process obviously of training and onboarding those individuals to be fully up to speed takes some time.

So how many outstanding vacancies are there?

We have one more outstanding vacancy for the criminal division and we again do have I believe several positions open for the pre-filing diversion that council granted as well that we have not filled yet.

Great.

Thank you.

All right.

Thanks again.

No further questions or comments.

We'll close out this topic again.

Sorry, council member.

There's one more hand up.

My goodness.

I'm so sorry.

It's OK.

Thank you very much for this information and also for the proactive work that you are doing.

I have questions that I will ask offline.

But to me, this is one part of the chain of our public safety processes.

And so I'm imagining that by speeding up the filing process, we're also then now we have I am wondering about the impacts on, or can the courts accommodate those cases?

Can our partners at the county accommodate individuals that are found guilty, et cetera?

But I will, that is beyond the scope of this discussion, but when you make a change in the system, then sometimes it requires changes in the whole comprehensive system of public safety.

So offline, thank you very much for coming today.

Thank you and happy happy to respond.

We have been in communication with the court and also with DPD about what our anticipated numbers will be and what are what that what that looks like for the court.

I think it's incredibly important to communicate with everybody impacted by this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, much appreciated.

Thank you.

Let's move on to the next item on our agenda.

Will the clerk please read in agenda item number three.

Committee agenda item number three, SPD staffing update, discussion of resolution 32050, and citywide hiring incentives for hard-to-fill positions.

All right.

We're joined for this item by Greg Doss and Ali Panucci of Council Central Staff, as well as Chief Diaz.

Chief Operating Officer Maxey, Brian Maxey, and Mike Fields, the Executive Director of Human Resources at SPD.

We have 30 minutes for this item on the agenda, and we will not be voting in this meeting, so I'll be limiting discussion accordingly.

We'll start off with a presentation by Greg Doss on the first quarter sworn staffing report.

requested by the council as part of the 2022 budget.

After that, we'll move to council member Nelson's proposed resolution and then to the draft council bill that I am sponsoring.

Greg, please proceed.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the committee.

Good morning.

Greg Doss, Council Central staff, here to talk with you today about the Q1 sworn staffing report and Resolution 32050, Council Member Nelson's Resolution on Staffing.

going to start with the sworn staffing report and before I dive into it I have to thank SPD for all the help that they have provided over the last week and a half in providing the data and information for both the staffing report and for the Central staff memo that is posted online that I'll be talking about this morning.

They always provide so much data and are so helpful.

They really make central staff look good, but the information is all coming from them.

So I have to acknowledge that and thank the chief and his staff.

So with that, I'll just dive right in.

So we last talked in January about the year-end sworn staffing.

This is going to be the Q1, so this is going to cover the update between January and March and show how staffing has progressed.

Allie, thank you.

This is the same chart that you have seen before.

And as you can see, the actuals between January and March are not looking very good.

The actual separations are 43 and the actual hires were 13. And that is quite a bit off from what SPD was originally expecting.

SPD was originally expecting to get about, they got about 27 fewer hires.

They were expecting to get 40 and they got 13. And they got about 19 more separations.

They were expecting 24 and got 43. So the hires and separations went very much the other way from what the department was hoping.

In terms of how that worked out annually, when you project that to the end of the year, council central staff, myself, and working with the council's assumptions in the budget, are still projecting that there will be 125 separations.

However, the SPD revised its own projections and is now projecting at least 113 projections or 13 separations.

So SPD is now projecting more separations as well.

And SPD has revised its hiring projections down to 98. They had been hoping to get 125 hires.

And as it turns out, they're going to be getting only 98, they think, so far based on the information that they got in this first quarter.

And so how does that pan out throughout the year?

If you look at the rest of the year, what we see is that at the end of the year, there will be, Ali, go ahead and flip it.

That's fine, thanks.

to the next one.

At the end of the year, we'll see that the number of fully trained officers we had expected when the 2022 budget was written, there'd be 1,145 fully trained officers.

And there would be approximately 1,047 deployable officers.

And what we're gonna find is that there are going to be 1,103 fully trained officers.

and 1011 deployable officers.

And as you can see to the right, the difference between what we expected in the original budget assumptions for the 2022 budget and what we're projecting now based on this latest forecast, we're down in fully trained officers by 42, down in officers in service by 36. The reason the officers in service number is, a little bit lower.

Some of the officers in service that have been out, again, this is a column that reflects folks that are out on long-term leave, folks that are out on family leave or disability or other kinds of leave or are not deployable.

Some of those folks are coming back.

And so that's some good news.

And so that means that the officers in service number is not taking quite as big a hit as the fully trained officers number.

But the big story here is that the average annual FTE, this is the number that the department uses to calculate its sworn salary savings, is going to be off by about 32 FTE.

And what that means is that the department will see About 4.5 million in salary savings available this year.

And I put a range in here for salary savings this year.

I put in between 4.1 million and 4.5 million.

You heard me say earlier that SPD is projecting 113 separations and 98 hires and that the council had projected in its budget 125 separations.

And so it sort of depends on which assumption you take.

If you take the council assumption of 125 separations, you get that higher number of 4.5 million.

If you take SPD's assumption of 113 separations, you get the lower number of 4.1 million.

But either way, obviously, the trend is not particularly good.

And both of the, on the hiring side, SPD and central staff are both using the same numbers that we're assuming that there are going to be 98 hires made up of 80 recruit hires, 17 laterals, and one rehire.

So with that, I'll just stop and ask if there's any questions on the big picture.

Okay, go ahead and flip again Allie.

So going, I think we flipped one too far.

There we go.

Going to how this rolls out into the precinct staffing.

There's a bit of a change this time around in the precinct staffing.

The citywide category to the far left is the community response unit.

This is the unit that the chief stood up.

a little over a year ago that consists of more experienced foreign officers that have transferred into 911 to be able to assist with keeping response times low.

And what has happened here is that this unit has been basically cut in half.

We saw about 54 officers and I believe nine sergeants last time around in this unit.

And now that unit is not nearly as big, but the precincts themselves have more officers growing in them.

I wanna make clear that that doesn't necessarily mean that there is more strength in the precincts overall.

The precinct staffing for all the precincts, including the citywide has gone down by four officers.

So really this is just sort of a reshuffling of the deck, the, the citywide response unit had been responding from the precincts.

And so the fact that they have now been sort of decentralized amongst the precincts or are amongst the precincts in a different way, it doesn't really make a lot of difference from an overall ability for SPD to respond to 911 calls.

the chief can can talk a little bit more about that when he speaks.

But I wanted to make sure that everyone understood that if you're looking just particularly say at north and you see that north has nine fewer officers than it did the last time around, you should also know that some of the city-wide response officers had been working in the north precinct and that that number is now down.

So the officers have been moved around and it's difficult to draw conclusions from this report.

Actually, I might just at this point ask the chief if he wants to comment on that, because I think my comments are probably more confusing than anything else.

Thank you, Greg.

Chief Diaz, that would be great.

And if you could just maybe speak a little bit generally to how deployment decisions are made to the precincts, that would be helpful.

And thank you, Chair Herbold and the Public Safety and Human Services Committee.

So thank you for having us here.

One of the things that DAS has noted that some CRG went back to patrol.

The reason why we sent them back to patrol is there were several precincts that were really understaffed and by putting them back into patrol, it moves up their staffing level.

99.7% of all of our shifts are being augmented right now.

So that's our whole level of patrol is pretty much working some level over time.

And so I needed to make sure that we're trying to levy some of that up.

Our CRG is smaller.

The community response group is allowing us to have some level of proactivity They work on operations from addressing gun violence, shots fired, evening events that we potentially know that could potentially result in some level of violence.

So having a smaller group being able to do that doesn't make it easier because we're covering more and more guns off the streets.

So it is a little bit of shuffling the deck, but it's I'm getting less officers to be able to be a little bit more proactive in some of the longstanding work that needs to be done as well on the streets.

So thanks for that clarification.

So last slide, Ali.

So this is just a comparison of how patrol and 911 response looks over time.

And as you can see here, it's with when compared with the highest point in recent history, September 2020. Patrol is still down quite a ways.

The 911 responders are down by about 130 since September of 2020, and it looks like, you know.

the patrol itself was at a strength of 694 and now it's down to 545 and so considerable loss there and a lot of that is dealing with a lot of that reflects the fact that the beats are now significantly reduced and the specialty units such as the community police teams and the crime response teams are now gone.

So it really back to basics with patrol only focused pretty much now on 911 response.

And so that's the staffing report and I am ready to jump into the staff report, the central staff memo on the resolution.

But before I do that, Council Member Nelson, if the, I'm sorry, questions.

for the chair.

Thank you very much.

This is a question for you, Greg.

Could you go back to that?

The slide where the the two lines show the trends in staffing?

Yeah.

So I'm not a math wizard, but I'm looking at the bottom line.

And for me, what's most important is is how many officers are available to prevent, fight, and investigate crime.

And so from 1,290 down to 968, that represents, if my math is correct, about a 33% reduction in force.

I could very well be wrong.

But I just want to make a preview the discussion about the resolution because it's that number that is important because we're talking about available officers to be out there responding to 9-1-1, but also investigating the crimes that we're most concerned about, guns, drugs, et cetera, that's leading to those 9-1-1 calls when we're talking about lower-level crimes.

So that is my point and my question, because I recognize that the difference between those these two numbers, the number above the line above says 1114 and below it says 968. We talk about leave.

I think that about 114 people are on leave and it's great news that they are coming back.

But a lot of the people on leave are planning on leaving the department for various reasons and they're using up six and vacation time before they actually separate.

Thanks.

Thanks, Council Member.

That is absolutely true.

There is in the staff report, as you know, a breakout, a categorical breakout of the folks that are out on long-term leave, which as you note, is the difference between that 1,114 number and the 968 number.

And as you note, there are folks that are using sick accrued leave.

About 75 of them are on sick accrued leave.

There are about 19 that are on family medical leave, seven that are on parental leave, and then 16 that are on administrative leave, about 26 on workers comp.

So you're right that about half of them or so are on the kind of leave that they might take before they separate from the department.

And that is often a good indicator of of future separations.

Those folks are not deployable now.

It is an indicator of street strength being way down and ultimately it could be that those folks never return or half of them may not return.

Craig, I I heard you say that there was a positive trend on the issue of officers on disability or extended leave.

And I have a note here that the number of officers on disability or extended leave increased from 108 to 176 from September to October of last year after the announcement of the vaccine mandate.

I'm wondering where can I see that trend of some of those officers coming back to work?

The positive trend is the difference between the year-end number that I gave you in the January report, and there were about 170 officers that were out on leave at that time.

And quarter one, the report I'm giving you now, there are 146 that are out on leave.

And so we're better by I'm trying to think what the math is there, about 24. And that is primarily due to, oh, it looks like a reduction about 10 in accrued leave benefits, about 10 in family medical leave, and then a few others here in workers' comps and in parental leave.

Thank you.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you again, Greg, and to Chief Diaz for the initial numbers here.

I do have a question about the data set that was just on the slide.

If we could pop that presentation back up.

The data in today's presentation, Greg, it goes back to August 2020 when SPD had the higher number of 911 responders due to reassignment of 100 officers to 911, therefore making it that the data point as an outlier compared to what we would have normally seen.

So if I look back at some of the presentations that have been provided before, in the March 9th, 2021 presentation to council, SPD's data showed us that if we look at the data going back to 2018 and we compare that to 2019, and if we compare it even further five years earlier to 2014, we see that traditionally We have always had just over 500 officers in 911 response.

So I'm going to cite some numbers and I'm hoping that you can tell me if these are accurate or not from the previous presentations.

If I'm looking at 2014, there was 545 officers.

2015, 549 officers.

2016, 574 officers.

2017, 572 officers.

2018, 544 officers.

2019, 542. So this does, I think, factor into whether or not we're seeing an outlier from the 2020 data versus the five years previous to that.

And we'd love your thoughts about that.

I just also want to note for our committee and members of the public, as a reminder, the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform's 2021 study found, and somebody spoke about this from the University of Washington, a professor who called in, the 2021 study found that 49% of all of our 911 call types, which constitute 80% of the call volume, could be responded to by not a sworn officer.

So t echo what we saw from the Progress and the Law Enf .6% of calls should actually be handled by a sworn officer at SPD.

SPD has acknowledged this, I think, and has acknowledged that in this exact moment, 12% of the calls that we are currently handling could be immediately transferred out of the department.

So the conversation that we're having today about whether or not we have the right size number of 911 officers is relevant.

I just want to make sure that we're looking back to the 2014 data that's been provided, because I saw consistency there, and really question whether or not What we're being asked to do right now in terms of evaluating the right number of officers for the calls is being meshed up with the number of calls that we see from our own data analysis indicating that we don't actually need 911 officers.

And if we just went with the conservative estimate, 12% of our current calls would not need a 911 call.

I'd love to hear of whether or not those numbers are what you recall as well from 2014. And I want to make sure that as I say this, it's clear also that I am prioritizing that someone who needs an SPD officer is actually being freed up to respond, that they're not getting deployed to these calls, that data has shown they don't need a sworn officer with a gun.

Ali, can you flip to the next slide, please?

Council Member Rosca, I appreciate that line of questioning.

make a point here, though, that the 911 response is one part of the picture.

Chief Diaz has moved many specialty unit officers from their specialty assignments into 911 so that we can have a consistent number of 911 responders because the chief has rightfully, with these staffing shortages, realized that prioritizing 911 response, particularly those priority one calls, is incredibly important to our community.

But what we're not seeing here is the number of officers that have been moved off of their assignments, whether or not you're talking about DV and elder abuse detectives, CPT officers.

There's a lot of officers that I don't have the current number, but there's a lot of officers that have been moved off of these specialty assignments in order to keep these numbers of 911 patrol up.

Correct.

And thank you, Council Member Herbold.

So, yes, while our patrol staffing has probably stayed relatively the same level, We also had bike teams, community policing teams, anti-crime teams that were also backfilling and supporting our 911 operations.

We no longer have that.

We've had to move several of the detectives out of their units and put them back into patrol just to keep, because if we don't have an officer to respond to a sexual assault, we're never gonna have the follow-up to be able to investigate it.

So I've tried to make sure that we've maintained our patrol staffing levels, But even as we look at some of the patrol staffing levels a year ago, you should have over half your force should actually be in patrol.

And we were under that.

What we're also finding is that 99.7% of the time we're augmenting a shift.

That means that no matter what officers are having to work overtime just to handle the bare minimum.

And that is really what we're gonna do is create wear and tear.

It creates on our officers.

It creates a whole host of not being able to deal with our own internal trauma because we're, you know, constantly going from call to call to call.

Right now we have.

If I look at the three shifts, 1st, 2nd and 3rd watch, 1st watch and 2nd watcher exceeding their amount of time answering 911 calls and not having what we call downtime to be able to do some community work.

And so that is that right there.

It creates a huge levels of stress on us being able to respond properly.

Our priority one call.

response time has gone up, as well as our priority two calls has actually exceeded over 30 minutes, and our priority three calls is almost over an hour.

So even when people do need 911 services, we're not able to respond in an adequate amount of time.

I see you have your hand up there.

Can we move into the discussion of Councilmember Nelson's resolution?

And I'm sure your questions, Councilmember Peterson will weave into that.

Yeah, and I think that'll be helpful because some of the stuff that is coming up in discussion, I'm about to go over in the resolution.

So Allie, would you mind putting up the first table in the staff memo?

Thank you.

So I'm going to go ahead and speak to the exact issue that the chair brought up and that the chief was talking about.

And when we talk about SPD staffing and we talk about maintaining response times and maintaining patrol numbers, the cost is that It's coming out of transfers that are being made from investigative units specialty units and other units around the department and this is this is just one snapshot of how that looks since 2020 since the hiring or since the separation.

mass separation started.

What you can see here is a count of the sworn in 2020 and the percent of sworn in 2020 and then the count and the percent in 2022. And so if you take just a look at the investigative units here what you can see is that there were 214 officers in investigative units in 2020 and Of course, that's probably spread out amongst all kinds of investigative units, homicide, domestic violence, robbery, etc.

And now those numbers are down to 161 in investigative units.

And as a percentage of all sworn, investigations used to be 16%, and now it's 14%.

One of the other areas that that took a rather large reduction was in specialty units.

There used to be 119 officers and specialty units here you have everything from harbor to canine squat.

Now those officers are down to 33 or 3% of score.

So a lot of the officers that were in specialty units have been transferred into patrol to keep 911 response times as whole as possible.

So this is the kind of impact that that the chair was talking about.

To keep 911 response times as best as they can, the department has been moving officers into patrol.

And as the chief said, they're at a state now where it used to be that 51% of trained sworn officers were in non-patrol positions, and now it's 48%.

And so that that has been a rather sizable effect on the department.

Also, as the chief said, all of its community police teams have been disbanded.

It's anti crime teams have been disbanded and the number of officers that are on foot and bike beats.

If you look back to 2020, there were about 55 on foot and bike beats, and now there's four, so it's it's a pretty significant reduction everywhere else except for 911 response.

And then I'm not going to go into, I had planned to go into 911 response times and into use of overtime to augment patrol staffing, but the chief already did that, so I will.

Does this chart capture both transfers and separations?

This is a snapshot of what the department look like, how many people were in these units in 2020 and how many people were in are in these units now.

So the answer would be yes, it includes both units of individuals who have been transferred to 911 as well as reductions from separations.

Yeah, yes.

Thank you.

Councilmember Lewis.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have a question that I think goes a little bit to something Greg said he was going to address in more detail.

But I wonder, to a certain extent, as we're looking at some of the immediate billeted assignments of officers, if there's a chart somewhere reflecting the number of overtime shifts to augment in certain areas.

I don't see if that's really reflected in these charts.

You know, I'm thinking specifically of things like, you know, the emphasis hotspot focuses on Third Avenue or in Little Saigon, for example, and I understand a lot of that is overtime.

And I wonder where that is reflected in terms of total service hours, which might be distinct from number of personnel, given how overtime is deployed.

So I'm just kind of curious.

The department does keep that data and I can get it for you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm going back to council member Peterson.

My thank you.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

I just want to I really appreciate this additional context behind the numbers because I'm very alarmed at the reduction of the number of officers as well as the difficulty and in hiring new ones just so we can replace the some of the 375 that have left.

And I appreciate the additional context of the fact that even if we're keeping the number of 911 patrol officers relatively steady, as was mentioned, they're working overtime, so it costs more.

I'm concerned about officer wellness and how they're staying healthy and responding appropriately under that exhaustion.

And then moving detectives, community policing officers, and other vital specialty units into 9-1-1 patrol so that there's a reduction in investigations and that community policing is not happening.

And then another point is that Seattle's population has grown substantially since 2015. very much looking forward to this discussion on hiring incentives.

I did want to ask about alternatives.

I believe that we're still awaiting some additional information from SPD on what type of calls could be handled by alternative responses.

But I guess the question for Greg is, do we have any of these alternative emergency responses ready to go today?

The answer to that is no, the city does not have alternative responses for policing available today.

The city has some kinds of behavioral and mental health responses available on, I would say the fire side with its health one program, but on the policing side, those responses are not available yet.

The executive is working on developing those responses, and more specifically, SPD is doing an analysis right now of its calls and trying to determine which calls could be answered by civilians.

Per a request from this committee through the budget, there is a response that is due actually in about February.

four or five days, an update that the department will be providing on its analysis for what type of calls might be responded to by civilians, a first step in that process.

And I believe that they're going to give, the chair is interested in potentially scheduling them for a presentation on May 10.

Thank you.

I'm wondering, I see your hand up Council Member Mosqueda, but I'm wondering if we could pause and allow Council Member Nelson to describe her resolution or if she would prefer that central staff do so.

Just want to not have a lot of discussion debate on the proposals, but let's air them out.

Council Member Nelson.

Well, let me first say that I welcome conversation and debate because this is the issue that has been dominating my time.

So I hope that we can air questions and concerns with this resolution.

But first of all, let me thank you very much, Chair, for hearing my resolution in your committee.

And fittingly, we're discussing it on the day that Reverend Harriet Walden joined us.

because she is the founder of Mothers for Police Accountability, and she wrote, and they wrote a letter to council, I believe it was in January, early February, basically calling on council to hire more officers to address the increasing number of people in the black community that are dying from gun violence.

And so I just wanted to note that sort of convergence because it was that letter that set me down this path.

So three months ago, I took an oath to uphold the charter and protect the health and well-being of my constituents.

And as economic development chair, I set out with a whole bunch of policies for helping small businesses, but responding to victims of violent and property crime has dominated my time, which is why I invited a panel of small business owners to my committee, the Economic Development Committee, to discuss those impacts on their businesses and workers and staff.

That's a separate conversation, but really what drew me to put this forward, this Resolution 32050, was the fact that we are clearly dealing with a public safety emergency, we don't have enough officers on the street to deal with it, and we need to use every tool in our toolbox to accelerate the hiring of our officers to bring up adequate staffing levels in SPD.

That is why I put this forward now.

This resolution does create a, it begins that policy discussion and it does three things.

It states council's support for some sort of staffing incentive program.

And then it states our intent to lift the proviso that was imposed last year on salary and benefits savings in SPD in order to pay for that.

And then finally it states our intention to approve by separate ordinance whatever staffing incentive program comes before us from the executive to actually start this whole process of sweetening the deal so that we can pull recruits uh, and and, um, to begin this six months long process that it takes from application to actually getting hired by the police department.

We have heard about the memo that indicates that there perhaps these incentives do not work.

I have made the point that looking at how many officers were hired Uh, after a two month long, um, incentive program that was imposed by, uh, by executive order by Mayor Durkin is not a good, um, is not a good metric for deciding whether or not staffing incentives work.

After all, every city in our region, the central staff memo says every city except for Spokane has some sort of staffing incentive program.

I have to assume that those jurisdictions are spending that money because they see a value of those incentives.

And so I am calling for in this resolution, not for new money, but to use money already in SPD's 2022 budget for for some sort of staffing incentive program and talked about it being relocation or hiring, whatever.

I trust the SPD and HR and CBO to develop a plan that will be most competitive to meet these needs because we're not doing anything else.

And this is low-hanging fruit.

to fill a need to put more officers on the street, as I said, to fight, prevent and investigate crime.

We heard a lot of numbers today, but the bigger picture is that people are dying.

We've said we want to get guns off the street.

Overdoses are skyrocketing.

We need to target high level drug dealing to investigate that to keep more people from falling victim to addiction and overdose.

And I'm not even talking about all the property crime that I mentioned yesterday in briefings.

So basically this resolution will require additional council bills to lift a proviso and approve a staffing incentive program.

But again, I come back to my point.

Are we happy with the status quo?

Are we fine not doing anything?

I'm not.

And I am responding to the overwhelming support of the public and the people that call and write to my office, the stories that we hear in the press about increasing crimes of all forms that we have not able to address.

And so that is the basic crux of this piece of legislation, was to start a policy conversation.

set the direction for meeting the need that I have just discussed.

So if we don't do this, what else are we going to do?

$4.1 million is a lot of money.

I don't know how else we would spend that and how good would that serve us to meet what I think is local government's first responsibility is to ensure public safety.

For me, everything else revolves around that, the ability to recover from our pandemic and a lot of our other policy goals.

So year to date, per the most recent shots fired.

Homicide events are up, because we've only talked about the numbers of officers.

We haven't talked about crime rates.

Homicide events are up 17% this quarter, with 17 incidents compared to 10 last year in the first quarter.

Shootings are up 138%, with 62 events.

compared to 26 of the previous year.

And these are these are real lives behind those numbers.

And we've got to do something urgently to stop the stop the killing and make our city a safer space for everyone.

So that is the that is the rationale for me bringing this forward, a sense of urgency and a sense that I haven't seen since I took that oath to protect the health and well-being of my constituents and also abide by the section of the charter that says that it shall be maintained adequate police protection in every district of the city.

That is not happening now.

That is the big picture that I want us focused on as we discuss the particulars of my resolution and of what other pieces of legislation that we will be considering today.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

Council Member Lewis, I see your hand is up.

Council Member Mosqueda was in the queue first, though.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Council Member Herbold.

Madam Chair, I'm happy to defer to Council Member Lewis and I'll speak afterwards.

Okay.

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

You know, I appreciate Council Member Nelson raising this discussion because I think all of us can agree that we do have a hiring crisis for the Seattle Police Department.

This council has fully funded police hiring classes for the last several years.

There's clearly a strong commitment from the council majority to make sure there's robust hiring classes available to SPD.

And we've seen those hiring classes fall short.

Council Member Nelson noted in her statement just now correctly that a lot of our peer departments and a lot of the departments in the Puget Sound region have hiring bonuses and have not been seeing the same level of recruitment challenges.

It's also notable that Spokane, I mean, according to a February 2022 article, which, and actually I believe the memo was incorrect.

I think they do have a fairly modest hiring bonus.

I think it's 10,000 for laterals, 5,000 for new recruits.

Spokane has something like 700 applicants for their vacancies.

It's not clear to me that the hiring bonuses are having an effect in the Spokane market for recruitment.

So my question is more since we have the chief and we have some folks here from the department to to ask, or sorry, did they leave Council Member Herbold now that I'm gearing up for this?

Oh, I'm sorry, Chief, I didn't see you.

I didn't see you there.

When we were having this discussion two weeks ago, one of the things I said in that statement was I would appreciate that when we hear from the department at this meeting, to just take the 5,000 foot view of what major cities in the United States are able to achieve net hiring right now.

Because as we look across the country, we're not alone in having challenges attracting and retaining police.

And it's in places with vastly different cultures.

It's happening in progressive cities.

It's happening in conservative cities.

Urban police departments are having a challenge attracting and retaining officers in major cities.

And so I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to hear if the department had particular national models in mind that were looking attractive in terms of what they are doing to attract new recruits and what some of the things were that are working that we could potentially emulate, just to take a little bit of a step back rather than focusing exclusively on one specific thing.

Because my suspicion is financial incentives will probably be necessary but not sufficient in and of themselves.

So I wanted to turn it over to you, Chief Diaz, just to hear a little bit about that.

Yeah, no, thank you for that.

And we want to make sure that we have a competitive economic package that allows our officers to, or allows recruits more people coming, thinking about coming back to the department.

So we look at top step pay, Kennewick, Kent, and Pasco, agencies that are probably less cost of living, actually have a higher top step pay than Seattle.

And in some cases, take less time to get to the top step.

12 of the 13 agencies locally have been surveyed.

They have an education incentive.

Nine of the 13 have a higher incentive, and six of the 13 have a take home car.

So these are things that we have been talking to other agencies.

When it comes to major cities, a lot of major cities have experienced the same thing where Most of their officers aren't necessarily leaving the profession.

They're going to agencies around their area because they're offering some level of incentive as a package to go.

And so that is something that we have to make sure that we're really put into action, a very good economic package.

And we also have to be quick and agile in And because many of these agencies are just making the changes, you know, adjusting things within a very short period of time, and we're trying to navigate our processes.

So, you know, this is just something that we have to be mindful of.

One of the other things that in talking with some of the major cities that people are, as they, people leave to these other agencies locally, they're having less, you know, sometimes those cities have less violence.

they have less things that are going on.

And so there's several things that we are talking to people about.

Number one, officers want to feel valued.

They want to feel appreciated.

And they're also thinking about their own health and well-being.

So when crime is going up and they're having to respond from call to call to call and not getting much downtime, that does put a huge level of stress on them.

And they can go to another agency that is experiencing less of that violence or less of those crimes or less call response.

and interacting with the community more, and that helps them for their own mental state, right?

And so we just have to be mindful of that.

As we talked about kind of the crime, you know, we've had 17% increase in crime, 22% increase in violent crime.

But one of the statistics that really is kind of striking to me is that 56 out of the 127 guns that we've recovered have been used in two or more incidents.

I mean, think about what we're finding is that guns are being used routinely, regularly, like in several cases, not just one case.

We had 41 guns that have been used in four shootings or more.

And so what we're seeing is very similar to what Portland's seeing.

Portland has almost doubled their amount of homicides.

They've seen the double amount of shootings and shots fired.

And so that's where I start to then start to think about how do we actually make sure that our officers have the have the time off to be able to recoup because a healthy officer is going to be have a healthy outcome out in the streets.

And that's what we all want.

We don't want ourselves in a in a some sort of viral situation where an officer is using force and it's not safe for anybody.

Right.

So, you know, it really starts to think about how do we take care of our officers and then how do we have a staff enough officers so we're able to meet the community's needs.

So we're able to investigate the sexual assault.

We're able to investigate the domestic violence.

And these are all very, very trying things for a major city because some of their local agencies are gobbling up that talent that we've accumulated or we built.

But are there particular cities that are outperforming the trend that the department's aware of?

And this isn't a gotcha.

I'm not personally aware of any.

So I was just curious if the department had a specific suite of programs they've seen somewhere else that's working effectively.

I mean, that doesn't mean we can't be the first, but I'm just wondering, you know, yeah.

No, I've, I've talked to San Diego.

I've talked to, uh, you know, Baltimore.

I've talked to other agencies across the country, major cities, and they're all feeling the same, the same effect, even in cities, uh, that have that level of support because there is a lot more scrutiny in this job in a major city.

And so we're just trying to figure out, I think it really comes down to making sure we appreciate our officers.

acknowledge the hard work that they're having to do in the most challenging times.

And then, you know, making sure that we have a competitive economic package that allows us to support them.

And, you know, one of the biggest things for us is I think we have the funds to be able to do it and it's being able to utilize those funds to be able to support that.

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Again, appreciate the conversation here today.

There's a few points, Madam Chair, that I'd like to make, both wearing the budget hat and also a member of the committee here today.

One of the most important things that I think we're dealing with as a city right now is the ability to respond to the urgent crises, plural.

affecting our community across Seattle and trying to make sure that we have both the resources to respond to the wake of the pandemic, what folks need from the shadow pandemic, and to make sure that we're investing in core government services.

One of the things that we've talked about the most in our committee is the need to really protect general fund resources.

SPD's budget is primarily general fund resources.

and as it's been discussed the council's finance and housing committee has spent a lot of time talking about this and there's nice overlap with this committee as well.

The city is currently facing a long-term structural budget issue where the general fund expenditures are outpacing the general fund revenues.

This is not a shortfall in revenue necessarily, it's a gap in how fast revenues are keeping up with the inflating costs of services and the growing population across our city.

So one of the most important things that I think we need to be looking at right now is how we address this gap and ensuring that we have the funding necessary for a robust budget for 2023 and 2024. This is an issue that we're going to spend a lot of time talking about over the next six months, but we have to be both looking at preserving funding and any 2022 underspend such as savings achieved through delayed hirings or any other underspends in 2022 for future investments in our two-year budget.

If the proviso on SPD salary savings remains in place and no other actions are taken to lift or modify the proviso, those general fund resources will continue to be restricted, meaning that the money cannot be spent.

And at the end of 2022, this money will revert back to the general fund and those funds will be assumed as part of our starting balance for 2023. And my concern here is that the resolution and the expenditure that we're talking about mean a reduction in the spending, meaning that they would be taken from other programs and other investments for 2023 and 2024 if passed.

Not only am I raising questions about the importance of our budget deliberations, but I am also raising questions here today about using critical public resources for a possible investment in a policy that has not yet been proven.

And it has been said by some that there's no evidence to the contrary that shows that hiring incentives work.

Well, let me point some of our colleagues to that evidence.

In the recruitment and retention work group final report, the work group did not identify pay as a barrier to either hiring or retention for SPD employees, and they also did not identify a hiring bonus or a lack of a hiring bonus as a problem, nor as a recommendations.

The four recommendations that they made from the work group include a focus on leveraging technological solutions and revised business practices to engage candidates during the hiring process, advance top talent quickly through the process, and extend offers in a more competitive timeframe.

And I know we'll talk a little bit about competitive timeframes and some of the offer concepts in a later part of this discussion.

But there has not been a definitive conclusion that the hiring incentive alone increases the number of people entering into SBD.

SBD has noted, and I appreciate the Chief for highlighting this in the previous Central SAC presentations, that the bonus was an important factor for applicants in deciding whether or not to apply.

But again, the overall number of people who entered into the Seattle Police Department through the program that we saw from late 2020 did not increase as a result of the number of, as a result of the hiring incentives.

So again, I think hiring bonuses are not part of the recommendation that we saw from the recruitment and retention work group and the final report, nor were they part of the report out that we heard in your committee last time, Madam Chair, from the innovation and performance team made up of SPD, Seattle Department of Human Resources, the City Budget Office, and other members of our city family.

And if we say we trust human resources, then let's trust them in what they said to you in the last committee meeting.

The last committee, Human Services, reported out that their report shows that as we have a wave of retirement coming and we have a commitment to social justice and race, race and social justice initiatives through RSGI and the city, let's focus on diversity in our hiring program.

Let's focus on investments in core city services and creating opportunities through apprenticeships and internship programs that were noted.

And let's focus on expanding the conversation about recruiting and retaining diverse talent and what it takes to keep folks staying within the city.

As Department of Human Resources said, offering hiring incentive, and I'm quoting here, is a short-term strategy meant to induce a prospect to accept a job offer.

in King County area and other jurisdictions have been offering similar hiring incentives.

But while some departments in the city of Seattle have observed a clear and positive benefit, this must be weighed against other solutions that have potentially inherent drawbacks and equity issues for both the employer and employees.

They go on to talk about how These quick one-time solutions may not compensate for uncompetitive wages or unsupportive working conditions, for lack of opportunities to develop and relevant skills and experiences.

They talk about how signing votances for newly hired external talent can negatively impact employee morale and employees who are promoted and internally and already working in the job can feel undervalued and unappreciated.

That is the opposite of what I think we should be doing for our city family right now, who've been working throughout this pandemic and who are, like everyone across this country and globe, dealing with the ongoing stress that is created by COVID.

So let's look at what HR is suggesting.

Let's look at investing in career ladder opportunities, recruitment strategies that look at diversity and not just the initial dollars on the one-time front end, but how we can create true opportunities for folks for upward mobility and really build on those recommendations from human resources.

That is where I would like to look with the limited resources that we have.

And again, given the long-term structural budget issues, we really need to look across departments, address staffing shortages, and opportunities for us to create a more stable city core services that may include SPD, but needs to be broadly looked at across our entire city family and not focus solely on an incentive program that does not have the data to back up whether or not that yields outcome intended.

Madam Chair, those are my comments both from the budget wearing hat and also from the concern around data.

Thank you.

I really need us to wrap it up.

We devoted 30 minutes on the agenda for this item.

This was intended to daylight the two proposals.

Council member Nelson, you've asked to come back to committee for a vote at a subsequent committee meeting, and we will have more debate then.

Um, and, uh, we have been discussing this item for 55 minutes now.

So I would like Ali to very briefly daylight the alternate proposal of a council bill.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Herbold, good morning committee members.

I'm Ali Pucci, I'm your council central staff.

I'm going to ask Greg, I think to share his screen to put up the proposal that is a council bill related to council member Nelson's resolution.

So the council member Herbold has a draft council bill that would modify the proviso that is currently imposed on SPD's salary savings in 2022. The modification would allow up to $650,000 of SPD salary savings to be used to offer to pay for moving expenses for new recruits, as well as a new recruiter.

In addition, it asks the Seattle Department of Human Resources to amend the city's personnel rules.

to expand eligibility to a broader range of positions that would be currently allowed to have the offer of moving expenses forwarded to them if the hiring authority determines that they're unable to recruit for those positions in the local area.

So that request would ask for a broad expansion of the moving expenses allowances currently in place in the city's personnel rules, but it also asks the human resources department to prioritize implementing those changes for the Seattle Police Department, police hires, if it would make it more efficient to do that change first and then take up the broader expansion on a separate track.

That's a brief overview.

Council Member Herbold, did you want me to go into more details?

Nope, that's really good.

I just want to say a couple of very short words about my thinking on this bill.

The executive has not recommended a bonus program.

We provided that opportunity to make that recommendation with our statement of legislative intent in November.

The council was concerned about the hiring trend for SPD, and that's why we requested the statement of legislative intent.

Again, the executive has not recommended a bonus program, a traditional bonus program, but they are supportive of looking toward supporting SPD and other departments who are trying to hire, hard to hire, but important to city business positions to pay for their relocation costs.

So I really hope that in the spirit of Mayor Harrell's One, Seattle, we can harness the agreement that many departments, including SPD, are having these challenges, filling positions critical to business needs and challenging to fill, so we can support this bill.

This is a council bill, so it would be implemented in contrast to a resolution that states intent.

So why not vote to act rather than voting on intent?

And just want to also flag that, when this bill does release the council's proviso on police officer hiring, but only for the number of dollars that are anticipated to be needed.

Whereas the, as I understand, there's a little bit of a conflict between the resolutions stated intent and the description of it.

But my concern would be if we were to fully lift the proviso, we would be releasing all of those funds to the Seattle Police Department.

And maybe some of them should stay there as I'm proposing to do, but we need to have a conversation between the department and the council and also considering as our budget chair has mentioned, considering the other demands on the budget.

So I'm really excited to bring this forward.

This is something we can do now and I'm looking forward to having more conversation about it at our next meeting.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Herbold, and I really appreciate Council Member Nelson bringing forward her resolution.

As I mentioned previously, I support her resolution.

I'm also intrigued by the chair's proposed council bill regarding relocation expenses.

I'd be interested in seeing a larger number and getting some analysis from SPD if they need additional dollars than what's in the council bill since there's potentially up to $4 million that could be available.

I'd like to optimize that.

I do appreciate the comments from our budget chair.

It's really valuable.

We're really fortunate to have her on this committee to keep an eye on the budget for us.

I appreciate the concerns about the budget shortfall or gap that we're going to be facing.

I guess the way I'm understanding these incentives is that if they end up not working, I mean, giving SPD this additional tool that other jurisdictions have, and then if they don't work, The money's actually not spent, as I understand it.

So maybe there's a way to give them nine months, up to $4 million, nine months to make it work.

And if it doesn't work, then it can revert back to something else to help with the budget.

But I just really appreciate the robust debate today and look forward to the next committee meeting.

Thank you.

Let's see.

Council Member Nelson.

Thank you very much.

I would like to comment on a couple notes.

I do not see that the development of a staffing program will take away from other needs.

This money is in public safety.

What will it be spent on otherwise given the absolute critical nature of our deteriorating public health and public safety situation and a historic staffing shortage.

So we've got a perfect storm here that needs to be dealt with.

And so I, this money doesn't take away from other things.

It's what I'm hearing is that people want to see, they've got their hands on this money to use for other things.

So that is one thing that I will note.

And I read, so anyway, It was a great question by Council Member Lewis to ask what are other cities doing for staffing solutions, but what was not looked at, and I should have asked this question, are those other cities dealing with the level of separations that we are due to low morale, due to better opportunities elsewhere?

Just last week I spoke with an officer out of the North Precinct who said he signed three letters of recommendation for officers to leave our department and go elsewhere.

And I will note that we keep going back to this two page document.

It does not provide numbers for filling all non-police department positions.

So we don't really know what it will take to meet that policy goal in this ordinance.

So one thing that I will say is that I have read this ordinance, and when I launched on my resolution in a spirit of collaboration, I offered you, Chair, the opportunity of co-sponsoring.

You declined, and we haven't been really working in tandem since then.

And now we have an ordinance that, from my perspective, is overly limiting of the ability of SPD to actually create a program that will be competitive because I don't see how we're going to get to 98 new hires this year if we've only had 13 so far.

So clearly we need something else to get us there.

So again, your ordinance to lift the proviso provides $650,000 for relocations expenses and for the hiring of a new police recruiter.

which is a great thing and very much needed.

That leaves 400,000 roughly for any kind of relocation expenses.

Relocation might be too limiting of, might be a, I'm for that because we have got to bring in officers from across the state.

That's expensive.

It's time between now and the next committee meeting to develop additional amendments to the to the either your bill or my bill or both.

I actually do have.

I would like to close conversation now.

Excuse me.

We have two more items on our agenda and so I would like to close debate.

Thank you.

I actually do.

I'm not I'm sorry with all due respect This should be the job of Public Safety Committee.

And I do have an alternative ordinance that I would like Allie to briefly speak at.

And I am requesting, as the chair of this committee, to move on.

And so with that, I'm closing debate on this issue.

And I am asking the clerk to read the next item in the agenda.

Thank you.

Committee agenda item number four, Human Services Department presentation on gender-based violence investments.

Thank you, Alex.

So we're here with the Human Services Department to present on gender-based violence investments.

I really appreciate you being here and considering the importance of this month, April being Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

I think it's really helpful for you to be here with us to talk about the city's investments in this area.

Let's start with introductions, please.

Thank you.

Tanya Kim, Acting Director of the Human Services Department.

Rex Brown, Safe and Thriving Communities Division Director of the Human Services Department.

Good morning.

Lan Pham, Manager of the Mayor's Office on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault within HSD.

And we want to thank Committee Chair Herbold, Vice Chair Lewis, and committee members for the opportunity to present on this timely and important topic of gender-based violence that I know that we can all get behind.

Next slide, please.

I want to take a moment to acknowledge that April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and must thank Chair Herbold for sponsoring the Sexual Assault Awareness Month and Denim Day proclamations.

And also, just a general thank you to Council for your ongoing support.

The goal of this effort is to raise public awareness about sexual violence and prevention.

Sexual assault takes place every 68 seconds in the United States.

Despite the high rates of sexual victimization, sexual assault is extremely underreported.

Nearly 80 percent of rapes and sexual assaults go underreported according to the United States Justice Department.

In addition, sexual assault disproportionately impacts Black, Indigenous, people of color, and marginalized populations.

Lastly, I wanted to highlight that tomorrow is Seattle Denim Day, and this is a day of recognition that occurs every April, and let me briefly explain the origin of the day.

It began in Italy when a rape perpetrator's sentence was overturned due to the court declaring that the woman had consensual sex.

They blamed the victim because she was wearing tight jeans that could have only been taken off with her help.

The next day, Italian women wore jeans to their workplaces to protest the absurdity of the overturned sentence.

And so in recognition of Denim Day tomorrow, we are asking everyone to wear denim in protest against sexual violence.

I want to acknowledge that we're jumping into this conversation.

It's very serious.

Many of us are impacted personally or have loved ones who have experienced gender-based violence.

And so I just wanted to ground us in this very important agenda item before I introduce and my colleague, Rex Brown, who will walk us through the Human Services Department gender-based violence investments.

Next slide, please.

Thank you.

It's my pleasure to be co-presenting on HSD's work to address ending gender-based violence.

Today, I'll just give you a brief overview of gender-based violence, and Lon Pham will discuss the impacts of COVID-19 on addressing gender-based violence and what HSD is doing through its 2022 Survivor Services Request for Proposal, and additional funding opportunities that exist, as well as take your questions in conclusion.

Next slide, please.

So to frame up this conversation, gender-based violence is an umbrella term that includes domestic or intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and commercial sexual exploitation.

The Seattle Human Services Department invests more than $12 million annually in addressing gender-based violence.

This includes a range of services from prevention and intervention, coordination of services to offender accountability.

The Mayor's Office on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault leads this work through management of contracts with community.

Annually, this partnership with community allows for us to respond and support more than 10,000 clients annually.

I will now hand it over to Lon who will discuss on a high level the impact of COVID-19 on gender-based violence and HSD's response to the changing landscape.

Next slide, please.

Good morning, everyone.

And thank you, Rex.

It's my pleasure to join you this morning to highlight the work of the mayor's office on domestic violence and sexual assault in addressing gender-based violence.

2020 and 2021 was a challenging time for all of us and especially difficult for survivors of gender-based violence.

COVID and social distancing presented critical issues for the Seattle King County community.

To learn more about these impacts and to identify needs and gaps due to COVID, our community members joined us in seven listening sessions in 2021. We learned from them, they comprised of subject matter experts, providers, and community members.

Here on the PowerPoint number five, we have highlighted several key issues noted by the community and providers on the impacts of COVID and social distancing on survivors, agencies, and systems.

I really want to sum it up with about five key takeaways here.

One is that we saw a steep increase in the number of reported domestic violence, sexual assault, and commercial sexual exploitation cases in our communities.

It was also reported that there was an increase in intensity and lethality in DV situations.

There was also a backlog in survivor assistance due to both an increase in caseloads and a decrease in capacity of systems and service providers for numerous reasons.

Regardless, community-based systems providers continue to provide services and pivoted to consistently support survivors both remotely and in person.

There was a need for additional support for both survivors and providers of services.

And in response, the city was able to increase funding for victims and survivors in the form of flexible client assistance, increase funding and capacity for providers in the form of capacity building, And last but not least, continuously connect with systems and community providers to, in real time, identify and address needs and gaps.

Next slide, please.

The 2022 Survivor Services RFP is an extension of this continued support for victims and survivors.

It takes into consideration that providers share what they shared as integral to better support survivors via a no-wrong-door approach.

This approach funds not only one best practice model, but a spectrum of services ranging from mobile advocacy with flexible client assistance, to shelter and housing, therapeutic services, legal services, and specialized services for marginalized populations.

The $10.9 million RFP is approximately 90% of the current investments and will be released on May 20th of this year.

A portion of the fund under specialized services for marginalized populations We'll be prioritizing ending gender-based violence programming developed for and by BIPOC, immigrant and refugees, and other marginalized communities.

Next slide, please.

Here on slide number seven, you can see a timeline for the RFP with contracts starting in 2023. Updates on this RFP process will be shared on HSD's Funding Opportunities webpage as they become available, and those who are interested can go to sign up for our Funding Opportunities email notification list while visiting the site.

Next slide, please.

In addition to the Survivor Services RFP, we are also releasing the Domestic Violence Intervention Project RFQ.

This fund is to select one to 1.5 FTE better intervention therapists to take part in this exciting implementation project.

It's focused on a new model for court mandated better intervention.

This project is one of three such programs in the nation.

It is an implementation project based on Colorado State's differentiated treatment model, which adopts a client center approach, centers on a coordinated community response via a multidisciplinary team.

The funding for this project is supplemented by a grant from the Department of Justice in the amount of $1 million for four years, thus will be funded through October of 2025 with the possibility of extension.

So with that, I'd like to thank you for your time today.

And I will now turn the mic over to Director Kim.

Next slide, please.

And I know that in the interest of time, I'll turn to Chair Herbold to field any questions, but want to just thank you for allowing us to be here to speak on this important matter.

Absolutely.

I want to thank you for being with us and don't at all want to give this critical issue short shrift.

And, you know, the council's interest in supporting survivors and supporting advocates who are doing this critical work is evidenced by some of these investments that were council championed items.

The council added $600,000 to the Seattle Rescue Plan.

for in 2021 for gender-based violence response services.

And in the 2022 budget, we added 1.5 million of general fund dollars to HSD for mobile advocacy services.

And so these are additions the council made because of our concern around the negative impacts of sexual violence.

trauma on adults, youth, and children, including fear and concern for safety, missed work or school, injury, and physical and mental health conditions, including symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

This is really, really critical work.

We have communities that are in crisis and dealing with trauma.

So really appreciate the preview of these investments.

A couple questions on the future funding opportunity.

Is this an expansion of the DVIP project or will it just continue the current level of services?

And then as it relates to the survivor services RFP, wondering, how the city funds or provides legal support for sexual assault survivors.

What type of legal services are eligible for funding?

Thank you, Council Member, for those questions.

So I want to address the DVIP project first.

So this particular RFQ is going to be at same service level.

So the funding from the federal government, it already designated a recipient, which is a partner that we had worked on in applying for the fund.

So that will not be included in the RFP.

That is directly going to our partner organization that we've been working with, which is ACT&T.

But this is going to, the 149 for DVIP will be going up for bid in May.

Do you have additional questions or clarification needed for the DVIP?

Not on that.

Okay, great.

The second one is about the RFP and legal services.

So currently we are working with sexual violence legal services.

So the city invests in about $900,000 in legal support for survivors of gender-based violence.

Of this total, about $150,000 is for sexual assault legal services via a contract with the sexual violence legal services.

And currently they provide a number of key services, including holistic legal representation, limited legal services in the form of an in-depth legal consultation, And then they also have an information and referral hotline.

Super helpful.

I had one other question, but I want to pause to see if my colleagues have questions.

Not seeing any.

I want to just ask if you could touch a little bit about the changing federal and state funding landscape for gender-based violence services.

We keep hearing concerns from our partner organizations about a potential changing funding landscape.

And we did have an amendment to a previous council resolution about federal COVID relief to specifically include gender-based violence services after we had heard that there was an anticipated 25% reduction in the Federal Victims of Crime Act funding allocated for domestic violence and sexual assault services in 2021 and 2022. So what do we know about upcoming changes in federal and state funds for these services And how is the city supporting organizations through those changes or helping to fill funding gaps?

Yeah, thank you so much for this question.

So our office reached out to our grantees, the coalitions and other peer funding partners to provide us with an update on the local and regional funding landscape.

This was sent out on Friday.

And so we're still receiving a number of different responses coming in.

And so far, the responses really coincide with what we heard at our 2021 listening sessions, that although some agencies anticipate potential changes in their current government grants, they're very specific to the organization rather than any changes to sort of RFP processes across the board.

But with that being said, we're also reaching out to county, state, and federal funding partners, and we're waiting to hear responses directly from them regarding any changes in their funding landscape for 2022 and 2023. So more to come on that, but we're still waiting.

Yeah, we're happy to just offer that update to your office or in our one-on-one and always happy to come back to committee as well.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much.

Any closing remarks from our friends at HSD or from council members?

All right, well, not seeing any.

Sorry, Director Brown.

Wear denim tomorrow.

Yes.

You stole my thunder.

I'll double down on that.

Everybody wear denim tomorrow.

Really appreciate you being here and appreciate this really critical work that you're doing to support community.

And yes, tomorrow is denim day, so please do wear your denim.

All right, thank you.

Final item on the agenda.

Will the clerk please read in agenda item number five.

Committee agenda item number five, council bill 120294, an ordinance relating to app-based worker labor standards, establishing a compensation scheme for app-based workers with minimum pay requirements and related standards for transparency and flexibility amending sections 3.02.125 3.15.000 and 6.208.020 of the Seattle Municipal Code and adding a new title eight and chapter 8.37 to the Seattle Municipal Code for briefing and discussion.

Thank you so much.

So this is an issue ID session where council central staff will present to us the various issues that have been identified by council members, by stakeholders that might lead to amendments to the legislation.

And so again, this is a preview of the issues.

We don't need to get down into the debate on the issues.

When we have, after this issue ID, I would expect council members to notify central staff, which amendments they're interested in bringing forward.

And we'll have lots of opportunity both in between meetings, talking to one another, as well as in future committee meetings to debate the merits of those amendments, should they come forward.

So just want to, with that, hand it over to council central staff, Amy Gore, Karina Bull, and Jasmine Marhawa for all of their incredibly hard work pulling together this extensive memo.

Today's our fifth committee conversation since last July on this policy.

And as you've heard me say, we've also had over a dozen stakeholder meetings and council member Lewis and I are continuing to meet regularly with stakeholders in smaller group settings.

So much of the input, which is reflected today in this memo, derives from those discussions.

With that, I'll hand it over to Central Staff.

Thank you, Council Member.

For a quick round of introductions, my name is Amy Gore with Council Central Staff.

My name is Jasmine Marwaha with Council Central Staff.

And my name is Karina Bull with Council Central Staff.

So thank you, Chair Herbold, and good afternoon, council members.

As Chair Herbold mentioned, today we will be presenting on agenda item five, which is council bill 120294. This bill would establish a minimum pay standard and related regulations for app-based workers.

This is the second committee discussion on the topic since it was introduced.

Attached to the agenda is a memo presenting 25 potential amendments that have either been identified by council members or requested by stakeholders.

For this discussion, we're going to walk through several that are of particular interest to council members, but we're also happy to take questions or discuss any additional items time permitting.

Our goal is that the memo and the discussion will explain the impacts and some of the policy trade-offs of potential amendments.

so that committee members can decide which amendments they would like to develop and sponsor.

Please let us know by the end of tomorrow what amendments you would like central staff to draft and have reviewed prior to the next committee meeting.

I don't have a presentation today, but was planning to keep the table that is on page two of the memo on the screen so that the committee members can follow along with the memo and always know where we are.

If there aren't any questions, I will go ahead and get started with that.

So the first potential amendment for discussion is number one, and it is found on page three of the memo.

This amendment would change the definition for engaged time for on demand companies and on demand offers.

As you recall, an on demand offer is one that must be initiated within two hours of acceptance.

As drafted, engaged time for on demand offers begins when the offer is accepted by the worker.

It is intended to reflect that a worker may need to drive immediately to the destination or may be unable to accept other offers before initiating performance.

So this could create a situation in which a worker is paid for time between acceptance and when they initiate performance of the offer.

However, we believe it's unlikely that there would be a two-hour gap very frequently between acceptance and initiation.

because companies will likely not present the offer until as close to initiation as possible and because workers are incentivized to initiate and complete offers as quickly as possible.

But again, this requested amendment would change the definition of engaged time for on-demand companies and offers from when the offer is accepted to when the offer is initiated.

This would likely reduce the amount of engaged time to some degree but the impact will really be determined by the definition of initiate performance.

Currently, that term is not defined in the legislation.

It was anticipated that it would be clarified by OLS through stakeholder engagement and rulemaking.

Therefore, exactly how this amendment would impact minimum pay would depend on that definition.

So as the council is considering the legislation, they might want to amend the legislation as described, It could provide additional clarity by defining what initiation of performance in the legislation means, or they could request or mandate that the Office of Labor Standards define initiation of performance through rulemaking, or they could make no change to the legislation at this point.

Are there any questions about that one?

Just a quick request if I could, Madam Chair.

I'm hoping that you could highlight the number that you're on as you walk through it.

That might be helpful just on the screen.

Thank you so much.

Perfect, thanks.

Great, so if there aren't any questions about that, I will move to the next one.

And I was gonna hop to a table for this one.

Let's see here.

So the second potential amendment for discussion is number seven, and it's found on page six of the memo.

For this item, I did want to show you the table, which is on the screen now.

As you recall, there are several inputs into the minimum payment calculation.

and they are intended to ensure that the minimum payment covers expenses incurred by workers.

They're not necessarily a one-for-one reimbursement of the expenses of each worker, but should generally ensure that the independent workers can afford similar benefits that workers classified as employees enjoy.

As noted in the memo, there has been interest in reducing the inputs to the minimum payment calculation.

This includes reducing the associated cost factor from 1.13 to 1.1, reducing the associated time factor from 1.21 to 1.15, reducing the standard mileage rate from 0.585 to 0.3, and reducing the associated mileage factor from 1.25 to 1.05.

Let's see.

On page eight of the memo is a table that shows the total impact on payment of these changes for several different types of offers.

As shown, these changes would reduce the minimum payment received by workers.

I do want to highlight that changing the standard mileage rate is somewhat different than the other changes that are requested.

First, it would have the largest impact on the minimum payment.

In addition, the council bill as proposed would use the standard mileage rate that is set by the Internal Revenue Department or Internal Revenue Service annually.

Therefore, the legislation does not contemplate any way to change the mileage rate.

If the committee chooses to set a different mileage rate, they may want to change, want to consider how the rate should be adjusted.

in the future to reflect any changes in the expenses covered by the rate.

And also they may want to use a different term to avoid confusion with the sort of generally understood definition of standard mileage rate as being the one that is set by the IRS.

So the options for the council to consider are to amend the legislation to reduce the standard mileage rate to $0.30 with no provision for adjustment or guidance on factors to consider for adjustments.

They can amend legislation to reduce the standard mileage rate to $0.30, but also add some sort of provision for discretionary adjustment by the OLS director with some guidance on factors to consider for adjustment.

The committee could consider amending the legislation to reduce the standard mileage rate to $0.30 with a periodic non-discretionary adjustment, for example, like based on inflation.

The committee could also amend the legislation to reduce the associated cost factor, associated time factor, and associated mileage factor as requested.

Or they could make no change to the legislation.

So are there any questions about that particular request?

or comments?

Amy, you probably made this perfectly clear, but I didn't catch it.

It's not an all or nothing on the dialing of the dial, the turning of the dial on these different inputs.

There could be a mix and match approach.

Yes, absolutely.

And it doesn't have to be that particular reduction.

Again, this is kind of, It's not a specific calculation, therefore the range could be anywhere between what is currently proposed and what is requested on any one of those particular factors.

Okay, so the next one that I wanted to discuss is number 11. So let me pull that up.

Let me make sure you can see that and I will highlight it.

Um, so the third potential amendment for discussion is number 11, which is found on page 10 of the memo.

The council bill as introduced would require that companies calculate the minimum payment for each completed offer.

Um, this requested change would allow companies to calculate the minimum payment per pay period.

Um, and there would be a maximum pay period of seven days.

Um, so basically a week.

So the weekly pay standard is how pay is calculated in California.

And therefore, some network companies already calculate payments in this way.

And so if Seattle used this standard, it would not require any kind of technological or policy changes to meet the Seattle requirements.

However, it could result in the minimum network payment acting as a pay maximum rather than a minimum.

I think you heard some public comment about that this morning.

That is kind of what folks are seeing in California.

In addition, app-based workers believe this change could reduce the opportunity to earn incentives, which are currently made primarily on a per-offer basis.

So the committee could consider amending the legislation as requested or no change to the legislation.

Are there any questions or comments about that?

Council Member.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thanks so much.

So on amendment number 11 here, I was hearing some interest in making sure that there was weekly payouts, but now I'm understanding this to be more along the lines of averaging wages or compensation by an entire week versus the hours worked.

While I understand that there's a reference to California, there's no other worker pool that averages wages over an entire pay period.

They're usually by the pay limit, ideally by the hour.

Is that correct?

I'm not aware of any other kind of app-based standard that is calculated on a weekly standard other than California, but I can look into that.

And you're right that I do think that there can be, when you talk about a weekly pay standard, there are sort of two ways of looking at it.

One is How is it actually calculated?

Is that by week or by offer?

And the request is, again, for the calculation to be by week.

It's not just that they pay out weekly.

Because the payout weekly could be based on, again, a calculation that is per offer.

But yeah, I think just to clarify, this is about the calculation.

not about just when it is paid out.

Um, and I can look for some other examples of weekly payout standards for out based workers, but I'm not aware of any offhand.

Council member Nelson.

I think this Amendment does get at one of my concerns that a potential demand in reduction in demand for drives would impact overall income.

And so I do think that this gets at looking at income based on previous weeks.

And so this was put forward by DriveForward, and they have provided a pretty detailed rationale for this alternative way of figuring pay.

It's very interesting.

DriveForward and Working Washington are trying to address the exact same issue and want to solve for the same issue, but they have different ideas about how to do so.

They are both concerned about creating a floor.

Drive Forward is concerned that the daily standard will create a floor, and Working Washington is concerned that averaging over the course of the week will create a floor.

So we're going to have to put our thinking hats on for that, because it is compelling to me that both advocacy groups have the same concern, but have a different idea about how to address it.

Are you ready to move on?

OK.

So the next item that I wanted to highlight for discussion is number 14. And it's found on page 11 of the memo.

This amendment would remove the tip amount from the list of information that must be provided to a worker as part of the offer presentation.

Just to clarify, it is only required if the company collects that information from the customer prior to the offer being presented to the worker.

This change is in response to a company's concern that providing tip information would enable some workers to only accept offers with the largest tips, which would make it more difficult for other workers to compete for the highest tip offers.

However, given that tips can be a large portion of a worker's total compensation, knowing a tip amount prior to acceptance would give the worker more control over their pay and help them make more informed choices about what offers to accept.

So the council members might want to consider amending the legislation as requested or making no change at this time.

Are there any questions about that?

Uh, thanks.

Thanks so much, Madam Chair.

Um, also, uh, Amy, just a quick question.

I don't believe New York City included this type of policy in their proposal.

Is that correct?

New York City?

I don't believe so.

And just to be clear, New York City hasn't yet implemented their changes.

What they have done is requested that their version of O.

L. S. Develop the policy, so it hasn't yet been passed.

So some of these details um, have not yet been finalized.

Um, and so, but I will double check, but I don't believe that was included in the policy direction, um, given to the department as part of, um, sort of the foundation for the policy that they would be developing.

All right, moving on.

Um, let's see the fifth, um, potential amendment I wanted to discuss was number 16 and it's found on page 12 of the memo.

Um, and the legislation as proposed would require that companies provide a written receipt to the worker within 24 hours.

Um, and it would itemize several things, including compensation, um, tip, engage time and miles and other information about the offer and how it led to the actual wage paid.

Um, so What the requested change would give companies 48 hours to provide the receipt.

So obviously that would help them, um, just by giving them a little bit more time to develop that.

Um, however, on the other side or on the other hand, it might make it more difficult for workers to remember what happened two days before and to correct any receipts or pay that is incorrect.

Um, and so in terms of options for this, um, we stated that the council members could consider amending the legislation as described or not change the legislation at this time.

So the next two that I wanted to discuss are number 17, which is on page 12 of the memo.

and page 18, which is right after it, both items 17 and 18 address marketplace network companies, but would be mutually exclusive as currently conceived.

As we've discussed previously in committee, marketplace network companies are somewhat different than other network companies.

They usually do not intermediate the offer, but instead the customer and worker exchange information on the scope and details of any type of offer prior to the placement and acceptance of the offer.

They also did not monitor offers by location or mileage or time.

And so in response, the legislation defines marketplace network companies and then has a different set of regulations for these companies, which we discussed in committee on April 12th.

So there's interest in exempting marketplace network companies from the legislation.

This exemption would mean that marketplace network companies would not have to make changes to their operations in order to comply with the legislation's requirement.

And I will note that both the companies and the workers are, they both would rather avoid creating more tracking of workers.

And so that is a common goal.

But it would mean that workers performing offers for marketplace network companies would not be covered by any of the legislation's protections, including the minimum payment standard, transparency requirements like the information about the offer prior to acceptance, nor would they be protected by the flexibility standards like the ability to cancel an offer with an offer with cause.

So creating this, another thing I wanted to mention is that creating this exemption could incentivize network companies that currently don't meet this definition to change their operating models to avoid the regulations established by the council bill.

So the committee may want to consider excluding marketplace network companies from maybe like the minimum payment standard or other of the regulations that are most challenging, but maintain some of the transparency and flexibility requirements.

So again, the options are to amend the legislation as requested, amend the legislation to exclude some of the regulations, but not all, or to make no change to the legislation.

Are there any comments or questions about that?

Okay.

So the seventh potential amendment for discussion is number 18 and is found on page 13 of the memo.

This is a second option for marketplace network companies, which would further revise the regulations of those types of companies.

There are three specific changes that have been requested.

The first change is to amend the marketplace network company definition to include companies that are primarily engaged in facilitating pre-scheduled offers rather than exclusively.

and that are primarily facilitating services without monitoring rather than exclusively.

This change would expand the definition of marketplace network companies and may result in more companies meeting the definition.

It would also require more rulemaking by OLS to determine what primarily would mean in this instance.

The second request is to change how engaged time is estimated for marketplace network companies.

As you recall, for marketplace network companies that don't track the time a worker spends performing an offer, the engaged time can be based on an estimate that is agreed to by the customer and the worker prior, excuse me, to offer acceptance.

So, therefore, pay would be based on this estimate rather than the actual time spent working.

This request to change would go a step further and state that the required reasonable estimate of engaged time could be met by listing the range of time and compensation equivalent to at least one hour of engaged time in a 24 hour period.

This is intended to address situations like pet sitting, where there may be time spent either away from the task or when the worker is not completely relieved of duties.

However, it could further diminish the amount of engaged time for workers making it less reflective of the actual time work and decrease the minimum pay for workers.

The third request that I'm kind of putting under this bucket of marketplace revisions is to exclude marketplace network companies from the requirements to provide a weekly summary of offers, like including like pay and other information for workers.

So as I mentioned previously, there is a requirement that there is a, per offer receipt that is sent to the worker after 20, you know, within 24 hours, as well as this weekly summary of those receipts.

And again, this would, the request is that the marketplace network companies be excluded from that particular requirement.

So the options related to this would be to amend the legislation with all or some of the amendments as described, or to not make any changes to the legislation.

or as I mentioned before, to look at amendment number 17 to exclude them completely.

So if there isn't any, are there any questions or comments about either 17 or 18?

Okay, if not, I will now turn it over to Jasmine Marwaha for the next item for discussion.

Yes, thanks, Amy.

So the number 19 is listed in the memo and is a potential amendment that would request that the OLS director develop and present proposed rules to council before passage of the legislation.

Under the Seattle Municipal Code, the OLS director has the authority to issue rules as deemed necessary to carry out the functions of the department.

And in addition to this general authority, the proposed ordinance also specifically mandates or allows for the OLS director to conduct rulemaking to refine and clarify certain aspects of the bill.

My understanding is that council members may have concerns with invoking this authority.

And the options as listed in the memo include to postpone the vote on the bill until proposed rules are provided by the OLS director.

to not postpone the vote, but request that the OLS director develop rules and provide them to the committee before the effective date, and to take no action to not postpone or request those proposed rules.

If there is interest in postponing a vote on the bill until OLS provides proposed rules, there are a couple of things to note.

One is whatever process OLS may undertake before a bill is passed.

I'm not sure if it would officially be able to be a rulemaking process, since there will not be a law where the promulgation of rules would be necessary to administer at that time.

So I have to check with the city attorney's office and OLS but My understanding is that only once the bill is passed, would OLS then go through the official process of promulgating rules, which includes publishing a draft and having a comment period and then filing with the clerk.

So essentially, this amendment might create a preview process and then an official rulemaking process after the bill.

But again, I have to clarify.

with that with law and OLS.

And then there's potentially another option or set of options to consider, which is to identify the areas that council does not want to delegate to the OLS director, and then to clarify the language where necessary in those specific aspects of the ordinance itself or to remove references to discretionary rulemaking authority.

And I do believe some of the other potential amendments address those issues.

Oh, I'm sorry, Council Member, I'm sorry.

Council Member Nelson.

The amendment that was suggested to me by central staff and that I forwarded as my preference was different than the ones provided here.

It was basically council passes the legislation, OLS does its rulemaking, but the legislation cannot go into effect or be implemented until council then approves the rules that were developed by OLS.

That might be a different way of going about rulemaking, but because so much detail is left to the rulemaking, and a lot of companies out there who don't know yet that they will be covered because the rules have not been defined, we will have a chance to surface those concerns and perhaps make tweaks per their input.

Okay, that's something that I will also have to check in with OS and law if it would be something to include in the ordinance itself.

Yeah, thank you.

I think that, unless, are there any other questions I can, or comments?

I believe the next set of amendments is going to be discussed by Karina Bull.

Thanks, Jasmine.

The next amendment is number 20, and it is on page 15 of the memo.

And this amendment would appropriate funding for an independent study of potential impacts of the minimum payment regulations on drivers network companies, partner businesses, and or customers.

So the idea of funding a study, whether it would happen before or after legislation, is not new in consideration of labor standards.

It has happened in the past for paid sick and safe time.

When it was originally passed, there was an implementation study.

It has also happened before and after.

the minimum wage for employees before the minimum compensation standard for TNC drivers and before and after for the secure scheduling ordinance.

And then some labor standards are considered with studies done by advocates or policy organizations and businesses as well.

So as far as considering items to inform a decision on whether or not to have a study, there is the timing aspect, just went over before, after both passing legislation, the participation of stakeholders and whether the study would just be an academic study or whether the city would also engage the full range of stakeholders of drivers and companies and workers and organizations, the administration of the study, what department would do it.

In the past, it has been the office of the city auditor.

It was contemplated in the TNC minimum compensation ordinance that OLS might actually conduct a study.

So that would need to be considered.

And of course the cost, which varies on the breadth of the study itself.

For the TNC fair share legislation, the academic study was about $53,000 and additional money was spent on the outreach and engagement.

The secure scheduling study had a total cost of about $765,000.

for a three part study that included baseline and then two separate years of impacts after the legislation was passed.

So options for considering this amendment would include postponing the vote on this bill to fund a study to examine and model the potential impacts to inform the regulations prior to voting.

Another option would be not postponing the vote and funding a study to monitor the impacts of the legislation after It goes into effect and then use those findings to potentially modify the regulations in the future and then last to not postpone the vote or find a study of the impacts.

Are there any questions on that potential amendment?

No.

Okay, we will go on to the next one, which is amendment number 24 on the memo, and that is on page 18. Determine the funding needed for Office of Labor Standards to administer and enforce this bill.

Currently, Office of Labor Standards is estimating that it would cost $1.2 million in the first year and ongoing to implement this bill.

That would consist of about $566,000 for implementation costs, which includes outreach, contracts with community organizations, translations, et cetera.

and about 670,000 for staffing, and that would be for five distinct positions.

The budget that OLS is proposing is outlined in the memo, so you can see all the different components of it.

With a council vote in May, this would mean that OLS would likely need to start work immediately on this legislation, and so it is unknown right now what portion, if any, of these resources would be needed immediately, or could be considered as part of the 2023 budget.

Currently central staff is continuing to work with OLS to determine if any of these costs can be reduced or delayed and what costs would be prioritized by Office of Labor Standards.

Are there any questions about that particular amendment?

Okay, and then related to that is a potential amendment number 25 which would be identifying appropriate resources for Office of Labor Standards to administer this legislation.

So currently, OLS reports that they do not have the resources to administer and enforce this legislation, hence their cost estimate of $1.2 million.

A central staff is not aware of current general fund resources available to support this expense absent an offsetting reduction in general fund.

appropriations.

So there would be a need to identify resources for implementation of this bill.

Some items to consider would be Office of Labor Standards, civil penalties and fines.

There are civil penalties already included in this legislation, as with all labor standards legislation that could be used to support Office of Labor Standards.

However, right now the practice of Office of Labor Standards is to prioritize directing civil penalties to the worker rather than to the office, and that is both to benefit the worker and also to avoid an appearance that the office is trying to collect penalties for their own benefit.

However, that could be changed so that Office of Labor Standards has mandatory penalties that could go to support their office, or some jurisdictions have Provisions that require the company to pay for the cost of the investigation.

So that would be something that Office of Labor Standards could calculate.

There are a variety of options for using penalties and fines to support implementation.

Another option is the OLS sub fund.

There is an existing law.

It's an SMC 3.15 that establishes a special sub fund to prioritize funding Office of Labor Standards from the city's business and occupation tax.

The director every year sends council what is called a minimum annual contribution where the director says what is needed to support the office's enforcement and outreach.

If the director were to increase that annual contribution, it would mean that the procurations from the B&O tax that are used for other items in the city's budget would need to be reduced.

So that is something to consider if the sub fund is increased.

Another possible idea is a fee on network companies.

The city does impose fees on businesses to fund regulatory or other administrative activities.

The most relevant example would be the tax that TNCs pay per ride, and that covers estimated enforcement and cost of a TNC licensing vehicle endorsements.

and OLS enforcement of the TNC minimum compensation ordinance.

So as far as options to consider, it could be expect OLS to voluntarily use some of their civil penalties to cover implementation costs, mandate that OLS use some portion of their civil penalties to cover implementation, use some of the business and occupation tax to fund, the implementation cost or establish a fee or tax on network companies to cover these costs.

Another, the final option could be to delay action until sufficient resources are identified for implementation.

Are there any questions in that possible amendment?

Just want to thank you, Karina, for identifying some options for us to consider on the funding piece.

You're very welcome and I'm not sure if I mentioned in my discussion of OLS's budget that there is of course the state bill 2076 that preempted Office of Labor Standards from continuing to enforce the TNC driver minimum compensation.

So right now there are two positions that are funded and then there would need to be a decision on what on how to fund those in the future with revenues from that tax.

So I believe that brings us to a close of the amendments.

Amy, do you have anything that you would like to add?

Oh, can't hear you.

Amy.

Oh, yeah.

Still two years in, sorry.

So unless there are any additional questions or comments from the committee, we'll go ahead and thank you for your time.

Given the number of potential amendments, we again request that you please let us know what amendments, if any, you would like to sponsor by the end of the day tomorrow.

So Jasmine, Karina and I will get to work making sure those amendments are ready for a vote during the next committee meeting.

Thank you, Amy.

And one thing that has not been discussed yet as far as a next step, but I'm considering along with my co-chair on this legislation, a request of the committee to join us in a public hearing on this legislation.

I think there's more to be heard from folks.

And I think that would be a useful step to include in our deliberation.

So more to come on that.

All right.

Well, thank you all.

Oh, Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just wanted to thank you and your co-sponsor as well for your work on this legislation.

given that we have three central staff members on the line.

We've done a tremendous amount of work to thank them for their numerous memos because it really has been helpful to see all of the options outlined in front of us.

And also have a little bit of historical perspective on, for example, things like doing finalizing of the policy through rulemaking and noting how often that has occurred.

And for example, in New York, that that's an ongoing process as well.

With something like this where we're trying to help not only provide regulat up and empower workers an transparency and accounta to sit at those rulemakin that I know has been valu in the past as we've tack and so much other importa I'm excited about the options that have been outlined here in front of us and look forward to hearing more council members, excuse me, Madam Chair, about the possible hearing and really, really appreciate everybody who's continued to call in as well.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

And yes, big, big thanks to Amy, Karina, Jasmine and our own staff who have been working really, really hard on developing this legislation and getting us to the point that we're at now.

So with that, we'll conclude this item.

And the next Public Safety and Human Services Committee is scheduled for Tuesday, May 10th, 2022. Do any council members anticipate being absent from that meeting?

Just looking to note that early, if that's the case.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Sorry, excuse me, Madam Chair.

What date are you talking about?

May 10th.

May 10th.

Just trying to do an extra due diligence on quorum.

And you don't have to let me know now.

I'll be here.

Oh, great.

Before we adjourn, are there any other Comments from my colleagues for the good of the order?

All right, not seeing any.

The time is 12.56 PM.

You get your hour break before full council and we are adjourned.

Thank you.