Seattle City Council Briefing 5/18/2020

will come to order.

The time is 9 31 a.m.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Lewis.

I think we're still waiting for the.

Let me start again please.

Sorry about that.

Councilmember Herbold.

Councilmember Juarez.

Here.

Councilmember Lewis.

Present.

Councilmember Morales.

Here.

Councilmember Mosqueda.

Here.

Council Member Peterson.

Here.

Council Member Sawant.

Here.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council President Gonzalez.

Here.

Eight present.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Really quickly, on approval of the minutes, my last time we were here together in council briefing, my script incorrectly referenced adopting the May 5th council briefing minutes.

Just want to clarify that we were actually adopting and did in fact adopt.

the May 4th council briefing minute.

So I apologize for any confusion for the public or for my colleagues on that small error.

So we will now move on to the adoption of minutes.

If there's no objection, the minutes of May 11th, 2020 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

President's report.

I'm going to go ahead and dispense with the president's report today since we have a full agenda.

I am going to go ahead and quickly introduce our first briefing item, which is a state legislative session update.

I'd like to introduce, of course, our colleagues over at the Office of Intergovernmental Relations who are going to give us their sign-and-die report of the 2020 Washington State Legislative Session.

This briefing will include important updates about changes to the state's budget in the form of vetoes by the governor that have occurred in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic crisis.

The 2020 Senate report was included on the published council briefing agenda for this morning, colleagues, so you can follow along.

along there and the public can also follow along there as well.

We are slated to hear from our intergovernmental relations team until 10.05 a.m.

So what I'm gonna ask is that colleagues that we allow OIR to go through the entirety of their presentation and reserve your questions till the end.

So let's, I think that has worked well in past presentations, so I imagine that we're all going to have a lot of interest in this particular subject matter as we should.

Again, hold your questions until the end of the presentation and I'll make sure to call on you as soon as we're done with the presentation.

So let's go ahead and kick it off.

I imagine, Lily, you're going to get us started, so I'll go ahead and hand it over to you.

I will.

Have I successfully unmuted?

You have.

We can hear you.

Great.

Thank you, Council President, Council Members.

Lily Wilson-Kodega, Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Relations.

I'm going to do intros for our team as well.

Today I am joined by Cheryl Schwab, OIR Deputy Director, as well as Robin Kosky and Quinn Majewski, our state relations team.

And although the HEROES Act or what we've been calling CARES 2 did pass the House Friday evening, given that legislation will not be taken up by the U.S.

Senate and the timeline for the next congressional package will likely be pushed out later in May or early June, we are here today before you specifically to report on our state legislative action with our state team.

And although there is no clear timeline for a special session at this point, we will continue to update you all as we learn more from leadership and our Seattle delegation as that timeline evolves.

And today we will begin with just kind of an overview of the format, a report from Robin Koski, our state relations director on the state capital and operating budgets.

developments around the OPMAPRA extension and she may also have additional details on special session given how quickly things can change over the weekend.

Quinn Majewski will then provide a transportation budget overview and after that, time permitting, we know we are gonna stick to 10 o'clock, we will do a brief review of your sine die report which you all have, highlighting some of the outcomes on council's policy priorities from the past session, the areas of education, the environment, general government, housing and healthcare, public safety and transportation.

And with that, I will turn it over to Robin Kosky, our State Relations Director.

Good morning, everyone.

It's really nice to be here with you.

I will admit that the end of the legislative session seems like quite a long time ago.

But uncharacteristically right now, we are in a very active time and are engaging with our delegation, you know, like Lily said, thinking about the special session coming up.

So the Signing Day report was submitted to you a few weeks ago, and I just want to pause for a brief moment to thank our lobbying team.

You hear from us, the city staff, all of the time, and we've chosen to not have our contract lobbyists come up and provide updates, so you haven't been seeing them as often.

But they are on the ground in Olympia helping us all of the time, covering lots of different issues.

And those are Rebecca Johnson, Cody Arledge, Wyatt Arledge, Pam Crone, Nancy Sapiro, Jennifer Ziegler, and Jay Manning.

And so I just want to extend some deep gratitude to them for all the work that they've done to help us and help the city get their legislative priorities this year and in past.

I wanted to start out by actually taking a moment to celebrate a big win for the city of Seattle, and I wanted to hand it over to Quinn to discuss the block the box legislation, especially since we're not getting to celebrate very much these days.

So Quinn, if you could just give the details of that, I would appreciate it.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you, Robin.

And thank you, council members, for having us digitally present this morning.

I did want to highlight one significant win, which is the automated enforcement legislation, which did pass.

From the outset, I do really want to thank the work that was done by a number of folks within the city, in particular.

Chief Scoggins from the Seattle Fire Department, as well as multiple representatives from Seattle Police Department in speaking to the benefits of this legislation, as well as our partners in this effort, in particular the folks from Rooted in Rights who did some really significant and profound advocacy around this issue.

So just from the outset, wanted to call out those efforts.

The legislation that was passed is a pilot program that for the next three years will allow the city to enforce blocking the box and transit lane violations through automated enforcement cameras.

It's limited within the city.

This is largely in line with the update that we gave during session.

It didn't ultimately change towards the tail end of session terribly much.

It's limited to the greater downtown area.

SR 99 and the West Seattle bridge, but also the low bridge, which will be particularly useful as we continue to work through the impacts of the West Seattle bridge closure.

The transit lane violations are not limited to any specific number of locations, but The enforcement of blocking the box is limited to 20 locations within that geographic area.

The legislation goes into effect on June 11th, but for the remainder of this year, all violators will receive a warning with no monetary citation.

So monetary citations will begin January 1st, 2021. The citation amounts are limited to $75.

The, any revenue that's generated beyond the cost of operating, maintaining, and implementing the program, 50% will be retained by the city, 50% will be remitted to the state.

The city's portion must be spent on improvements to accessibility and equitable access to transportation, in particular ADA improvements.

and in terms of implementation, there is a work group that has been set up with SDOT and SPD that is beginning to work through some of the implementation processes and procedures.

So I expect you'll hear from them sometime later this year.

And I do also wanna make a special note to thank Council Member Strauss for coming down to Olympia and testifying multiple times on this effort.

So thank you for your work on that issue.

Thank you very much, Quinn.

Now I'm going to move to talk a little bit about the supplemental operating budget.

And, you know, as we said, there were many vetoes.

However, one area of the budget that was not touched at all by the governor's veto pen was the housing and homelessness budget.

There was a $60 million increase for shelter capacity that was included in the budget.

$20 million of these funds and an additional $10 million from the disaster response account are being allocated to counties for the COVID outbreak emergency housing grants.

That money has already gotten out on the street, and the county had received $10.7 million of those funds.

The city actually was involved in helping the county scope, and that was a requirement of the legislation, what the money would be used for.

And I will get back to everyone to see exactly how that money is being allocated.

That information we don't have right now, but I have asked the county to provide that to us.

There was also $40 million for the Housing Trust Fund in the capital budget.

There was $15 million for the Housing and Essential Needs Program and an additional $420,000 to extend the HEN program to pregnant women.

There was $15 million in the budget per year, so it's a recurring expense for five years for permanent supportive housing operations and maintenance.

And then there was a $5 million pilot program to address the housing needs of extremely low-income seniors and people with disabilities in high-cost counties, and King County is, of course, one of those counties.

As far as the vetoes go, there were $235 million total vetoed for 2020, and then an additional $210 million for the next biennial budget.

Some of the things that were unfortunately vetoed, I do think that the governor didn't do this very lightly.

I think he was disappointed that he needed to do this, but felt it was what needed to happen for the fiscal health of the state.

education, counselors in high poverty schools and paraeducator training.

The $50 million that was included in the budget to address the climate crisis, postpartum Medicaid coverage was also cut.

There was a big reduction in the funds to expand early learning instead of $13 million, $15 million, it's only $2 million, so $13 million was vetoed.

In the end of the Sine Die report, we included a list of all of the vetoes just so that you could get an idea of the scope of them.

And there were many, many areas of the budget that were impacted, so it wasn't as if the things that the city cared about were the only things that were targeted.

And then the C-PACER program, because I know that is an issue that this council has been interested in.

The governor vetoed the $46,000 that was in the budget to implement a statewide program, stating that it was not sufficient of a resource to actually get a program started.

But the counties may still implement.

And as I understand it, there's the coalition that supported the legislation is working on getting a toolkit together so that it'll be easier for counties to get that going, get the program going all over the state.

And also just wanted to note that the capital budget was quite small this year, but that was also, there were no vetoes in that at all.

That was accepted in total.

So now I'm going to hand it back over to Quinn to discuss the transportation budget again.

Thank you, Robin.

On the transportation budget side, you may recall that even before all of the coronavirus crisis emerged, the state was in a rather negative budget situation due to the impacts of I-976, despite the ongoing legal you know, debate about the initiative.

The state's response was to treat I-976 as law, and as such, the transportation budget began with a $457 million deficit.

They were able, through the budget process, to ultimately do a good job of mitigating and addressing that shortfall.

They did this through a combination of capturing project underruns, so cost savings in existing transportation projects, some fund shifts that were able to mitigate the impacts to the multimodal account, and some fund balances and other reserves.

Ultimately, the transportation budget was largely intact and made a few select investments.

It unpaused the projects that the governor had put on pause after the passage of the initiative.

I will note that that is a different and distinct pause from the The current positive is occurring due to the public health crisis.

It added 25 million for the Alaskan way viaduct and six.

that we have a local interest in here in the city, and that funding is necessary to keep them on track and on schedule.

It did reduce the direct distribution of gas tax revenues from cities and counties by about 10 million, the local impact of which will be about $260,000 per year.

And then finally, I will note, although this is not a direct impact to the city, it is something that we have an interest in.

It assumes 7.1 million in cost savings by requiring Sound Transit to pay what the state believes is the full cost of collecting the car tab values for the Department of Licensing, which is effectively a cost shift from Department of Licensing onto Sound Transit.

That was 7.1 million.

In terms of vetoes, I want to note there were no substantive vetoes of the transportation budget, but the governor did veto a statement of legislative intent saying that the projects that were identified were intended to be funded and completed.

And in that veto message did make a specific note that based on the combined impacts of I-976 in further years, which are expected to be significant, more significant than this budget, as well as the ongoing decline in revenues related to that there may be delays or cancellations of projects that are made at his executive discretion.

So there's no specific veto, but we will need to monitor the impacts because there may be projects that are delayed or canceled.

So that's the general overview of the transportation budget.

As I mentioned, the impacts of 976 are expected to grow next year, that'll be a shortfall of 684 million, and there's a significant decline in revenues in gas tax and other revenues that are coming into the transportation budget so.

Although the chairs and the governor were able to more or less mitigate the impacts this year, the budget picture for next year is significantly worse.

Thank you very much, Quinn.

I'm going to, well, first I just want to touch briefly on House Bill 2965, which was the $200 million in funding for COVID-19 relief.

I'm not going to talk about that a lot because we did mention that in our last briefing, but just wanted to remind everyone that that did happen and that the city received a $13 million allocation from that fund that the budget office is working on with the executive in terms of how that money will be used.

We did work really hard to get it to be fairly broad so that we could use it in budget areas where we were not going to get FEMA reimbursement or we didn't think there would be other things to pay for sort of as a place to fill in the gaps.

And I think it's going to be effective in doing that for sure.

As far as special session goes, you know, I think that, of course, I'm sure everyone realizes that the state is suffering from the same kinds of budget impacts that we are at the city.

So there's lots of concern about the state budget, of course.

Friday, I understood from one of the members of our delegation that the revenue forecast in June is going to be a bit worse than they expected.

So sorry to be the bringer of bad news, but unfortunately that is the case.

And as Lily said, you know, we are not sure.

We do think that there will be a special session.

We're just not sure exactly when it would be.

It could be as early as June.

It also could be in August or maybe even possibly later in the fall.

I do think that the scope of the special session will be rather limited.

You know, it won't be, it will be things that I think are very directly related to COVID and also things that are related to the budget.

I think that they'll, you know, make it very short.

And so, you know, I think that puts us on notice that, you know, we should be doing our advocacy and checking in with our delegation ahead of time, which we are already actively doing.

I did want to talk a little bit about the Open Public Meetings Act.

I know that that is a very high concern to this council.

We're working with other cities because obviously this is an issue that's shared by, you know, just about every city in the state and also with the Association of Washington Cities.

They have asked and we have in coalition asked for a new proclamation that would expand the business that could be conducted by council.

And we're also working on a legislative approach, part of which could be done in the special session and part of which may be longer term.

And it looks like it may be time for a more comprehensive revision because it actually hasn't been touched since 1983. So we are looking into how we might do that.

But I think that's a longer term kind of thing that might be the 2021 legislative session.

We're also closely watching progress on the undocumented worker relief fund, which would provide assistance to undocumented workers who aren't eligible for unemployment insurance through community-based organizations.

Director Vu from the Office of Immigrant refugee affairs and I participated in a call last week with the governor's office and the broad coalition that includes One America, ACRS, Economic Opportunity Institute, Unemployment Law Projects, many labor unions, and many other organizations.

It's quite a broad coalition, which is really wonderful.

And, you know, the governor said that he would take a look at what authority he had to create such a fund and whether legislative action was necessary.

And he did promise to get back to the coalition sometime this week about what his thoughts were.

So we're looking forward to that.

And then there's also a look to look at more permanent changes that would change the unemployment system to provide wage replacement for undocumented workers that's more extensive than a worker relief fund.

There's also a proposal that AWC and representative Paulette are working on that would create revenue flexibility and new revenue options for cities.

These include flexibility on the criminal justice sales tax, the lodging sales tax.

the affordable housing sales tax, REIT, levy lid lifts, inter-fund loans, and also some flexibility around audits.

And then AWC has also adopted a legislative agenda for the special session, which Councilmember Mosqueda participated in that meeting.

And that would also include revising the 1% property tax cap and tolling and suspending certain permitting review and approval requirements to make it easier to get some projects underway.

And then finally, the other area that they're looking at is FEMA reimbursement.

The state had originally said at the beginning of this crisis that they would pay the 25 percent that FEMA normally pays 75 percent and they would pick up the tab for the extra 25 percent.

they've now realized, given the scope of this crisis, that they do not have the budget authority to do that.

So they're probably going to include a proposal during special session that would seek to provide additional funds to cities and local governments, and they would cover either the whole 25% or perhaps half of that 25% so that there would be less financial liability on the cities.

I wanted to talk briefly about recovery.

You know, I think while we're still in the middle of the crisis, you know, we at the city are starting to look at recovery.

The state is doing the same thing.

The governor has has appointed three different you know, task forces.

One is on public health and the health care system being led by Department of Health Secretary John Weisman.

One is on economic recovery being led by Commerce Director Lisa Brown.

And then there's a social supports group that's being led by Department of Social and Health Services Secretary Cheryl Strange.

The Senate is also looking at recovery, and they have announced a bipartisan economic recovery work group that's charged with making recommendations on recovery.

It's going to be chaired by Senator Frock from our delegation, which is great news, and the vice chair will be Senator Becker.

Senator Saldana from our delegation is also on the committee, and they are going to have their first meeting in June.

Those meetings will be public, probably just like this on Zoom, so we will be able to watch what happens.

There's also some slightly more informal groups that are being managed by the senators.

There's a business and nonprofit group that Senator Mullett will chair, a people's work group that is focused on how to support people on the individual level being chaired by Senator Kaiser, an economic investment and trade group being chaired by Senator Hasegawa, and then a stimulus and revenue stability committee being chaired by Senator Rolfes.

So, I don't know, Lily, if you think we should shift to the Sine Die report to go through the details.

I know we only have maybe 10 minutes left, so I'm wondering if we should go to questions now.

I think that makes sense.

Just maybe I'll defer to the Council President, Council President Gonzalez.

We could do brief highlights.

It'll probably take us just a bit over four minutes, or we could hold that and open it up for questions.

I will defer to you on that.

I think just in the interest of time, because it is 956, and I imagine that my colleagues have many questions, and we do have the sign-and-die report that we could read through carefully, I would suggest that we go ahead and pause here on the presentation and allow council members to begin the process of getting you in order to ask questions about what you have presented on orally already and any other priorities or questions that we might have looking forward into 2021 or a potential special session.

So if that's okay with you all, I think colleagues We should begin the process of identifying who has any questions or comments for our OIR team.

For those of you who are on video, if you can signal by raising your hand, I'll call on you in the order that I see your hand go up.

And if you are on the phone only, if you can ping me or use the chat function on Zoom to just let me know that you have a question, I can put you into the queue.

So I've seen Councilmember Mosqueda, Councilmember Herbold.

Anyone else interested in asking a question or making comments at this point?

Okay, great.

So I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to Councilmember Mosqueda first, and then we'll hear from Councilmember Herbold, and I may also have some questions and comments after my colleagues.

Well, good morning.

Thank you all so much for all of your work in Olympia.

And I know it was just two or three days after Saini died that we then had the proclamation around COVID.

So I know you have not been able to really rest as you needed to after session.

Thanks for all your work.

Robin, you mentioned that there was really no cuts to the housing and homelessness programs.

I know that the folks from our delegation advocate very strongly for $13 million to potentially purchase a hotel.

That hotel was purchased by King County.

And I do believe that the city still has $13 million that we can access.

Can you talk a little bit more about whether you know the status of where those dollars are at?

My understanding is that mid-March we actually received those already.

Any concerns about the $13 million since the county used it for the hotel, which is great, but I just want to make sure that we know where the $13 million is at the city level still.

You know, I do think, you know, it ended up working out pretty well, given that, you know, all of the, it was actually, I believe, the Department of Social and Health Services that ended up purchasing the hotel, but they were all used for, not the hotel, it was a long-term care facility that had been taken out of use.

So that all of the money went to the same purpose for COVID-19 relief.

So I think overall, that's really good.

I think, you know, the budget office is working really hard to make sure that the money gets used as effectively as possible so that we're not using this very flexible resource to pay for something that could be you know, paid for by a less flexible federal resource.

So that's what's taking a little time to kind of fill the correct hole with the money that we have.

And I do understand that, you know, we're looking at spending the money on, you know, housing related uses, potentially hygiene facilities, additional money to support shelters and permanent supportive housing who are experiencing additional expenses.

I believe that the executive is going to finalize that proposal and should communicate with you all hopefully sometime this week or next.

So that's coming very soon and you know I do think we are very grateful to our delegation.

I think you know we are the only city that received a direct allocation of that resource as of yet so we do feel very grateful that that happened.

Thank you so much.

We'll go ahead and head over to Councilmember Herbold for her questions and comments.

Thank you.

I just want to restate the request that I have made of OIR over the last couple weeks as it relates to a special session.

I would like, should that happen, or maybe now in preparation for that likelihood of that happening, for OIR to work with us in developing a legislative agenda.

I know it's a really resource-intensive effort, and we don't have to do a legislative agenda the same way we've done it for regular sessions.

But I do, with, you know, with the development of a resolution and council passage, but I do think we should work to try to organize ourselves in such a way where we are identifying for the city of Seattle what the top priorities are.

a process light version of a legislative agenda for a special session is something that I would request OIR to consider working with us to develop.

Thank you.

Councilmember, I just wanted to give you a quick update on some of the policy priorities that you've identified.

We are doing some follow-up with the appropriate legislative committee members both on revenue and some other issues that other council members have identified.

So we are going through that process now and just, you know, kind of managing expectations around what the budget will look like is certainly a goal of ours today.

However, there are a lot of policy changes, particularly around the OPMA and PRA issues that we definitely understand the need to focus on.

So that is in the works and we're working, I think it's Newell who is helping us with that scheduling with the finance committee members now.

Yes, and I think we discussed many of the highlights of what we would include on that legislative agenda by what council members have indicated to us are priorities for them.

But please let us know if there are other issues that you're hearing about that we haven't discussed with you, and we're happy to include those.

And I think we'll just kind of have to play it by ear, dividing between what ends up on a special session legislative agenda.

agenda and what kind of gets pushed into the 2020, depending on what we're hearing from the legislators at the state level.

Thank you so much for that question.

Colleagues, anyone else have any questions for members of the OIR staff?

Okay, I just wanted to thank the OIR team for their work and collaboration with my office and the law department around the issues related to OPMA.

I have had an opportunity to, for several weeks in a row, have verbal conversations with members of the governor's executive team on a weekly call check-in that I and King County Council President Claudia Balducci have with them.

have reiterated once again, my request that an advocacy that if the governor's proclamation 2028 is going to be extended, that it be modified in order to take into account the realities of how we need to operate as local government.

And the reality is, is that we do expect that the requirement of remote meetings is going to continue into the foreseeable future.

And as a result of that, can I think reasonably anticipate that the governor is going to continue to renew the authorization for remote meetings for all local governments and public agencies.

And again, you know, we need to make sure that we can continue to not only be responsive to the COVID-19 outbreak, but also to the lasting effects of the public health emergency and related economic impacts.

That is something that I have directly communicated to the governor's office, not just as recently as last week, but as early as April 21st in communication via the law department with the general counsel for the governor's office specifically requested that the governor look at modifying the proclamation to again allow this city council and others to address not just matters necessary to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak.

and lasting effects of the public health emergency, but also the related economic impacts, which we are all seeing statewide, countrywide, and across the world are real.

And we need to be able to be responsive to those in a way that's consistent with the Open Public Meetings Act.

And so long as the proclamation 2028 is so strictly worded, It really does put cities like the city of Seattle at a disadvantage in terms of being able to be nimble and responsive to the needs that are emerging and that have been existing, that we really need to continue to advocate and work with our partners around the Association of Washington Cities and others to make sure that they understand why this is such an important important continuity of government issue and needs to be addressed in a manner that accurately reflects how technology is used these days and how technology will be a necessity in order to continue to meet public health orders and directives and minimize the exposure by people who come into our city hall or other places of public access to coronavirus.

I just want to appreciate the work that you all have done to date.

I know you all have shared my letter in communication with the governor's office, with the Association of Washington Cities.

They have indicated that they are going to continue to be supportive and also encourage similar changes to the proclamation as the governor looks at potentially extending that into June.

So I think this is just such a top priority for so many local agencies, including the city of Seattle.

And I just can't emphasize enough how important it is for us to not just be able to deal with COVID-19 issues, but non-COVID-19 related issues that existed well before this pandemic in a way that is going to be consistent with the Open Public Meetings Act and But those are sort of the shorter term needs, obviously.

And as you've all flagged, the longer term needs are going to be around how does the Open Public Meetings Act need to be modified in sort of a more sustainable way, given that it has not been reviewed since 1983. And obviously we live in a very different world, in a very different digital world since 1983. And so I think it is, important for us to ask the legislature to take a reasonable look at the Open Public Meetings Act to account for how we access information and how we access public spaces in this day and age that is separate and apart from public comment.

Again, I think those are important priorities for me, and I think they're shared priorities amongst the members of the city council, and certainly I've heard the same from folks over at the Association of Washington Cities.

And so I think this is a good opportunity for us to, again, modify that rubric in a way that is just much more realistic to how we access information in this day and age.

And I just wanted to note the governor's office has been very responsive to that request, as has AWC.

And just to recognize Council Member Mosqueda has been doing a lot of work kind of internally within AWC and her leadership role there.

So I think that relationship is going to be critical moving forward, given some of the some of the dynamics in the legislature that are presenting some obstacles for us currently.

we will continue to prioritize that moving forward into the special session.

And I just wanted to add that I talked to AWC as late as Friday afternoon, and they were actively working on it on our behalf.

Yeah, I really appreciate that.

And I know Council Member Muscade and I have been talking about her opportunity and ability to sort of use her role on the board to build bridges there and continued collaboration with the AWC around those points.

I've really appreciated that they have been so receptive.

And again, in my conversations with the governor's office, I feel like they've been also receptive and understanding of what the complexity is.

I think that there is also an acknowledgement that unfortunately this issue has become very to be very political amongst the state legislature, and that presents some difficulties in terms of the requested flexibility and need to be more flexible in Proclamation 2028 when and if it is extended into June.

Councilmember Silva?

Councilmember Sawant?

what economists are now confirming is absolutely going to be the worst crisis since the Great Depression.

But I also think that legal opinion is not definitive about this.

Dmitry Glitsin, one of the labor attorneys that we did a press conference with last week, has said very clearly that the governor does not have the authority to tell the city council what to legislate and what not to legislate on.

But I'll be speaking about that a little bit more later on.

But right now, for the legislative team, I have a specific question.

I think that's a really good point.

I think that's a good point.

a prolonged nature of the crisis we're heading into.

What explicit conversations are happening to actually avoid austerity, like, you know, concretely avoiding it?

Because, you know, the Seattle Times, of course, reported recently that in April, actually, and this was and I expect that there will be more things along these lines.

In the near future, but has already announced budget cuts, one related to climate programs, the other to quote the Seattle Times article, it says the single biggest cut in fleas veto next hundred and 16 million dollars in new money to 2023 for school counselors.

in high poverty school districts.

Obviously, you know, the state legislature has already been criminally underfunding public schools.

We certainly don't want to see more cuts in public school funding, but also in funding for other social needs, which I think is, it's inevitable because of the I just wanted to share in relation to this question, one of the most recent papers from the International Monetary Fund, which is not politically aligned in any way to the social agenda that I support.

But it's interesting that they are recognizing what a deep crisis we are heading into.

And one of their papers on their blog just from a few days ago says that while the pandemic is having an adverse effect on almost everyone in society, policies need to pay specific attention to preventing long-term damage or scarring to the livelihoods of the least advantaged in society.

And they are recommending, I don't have time to read the whole thing, but they are recommending specific policy measures like public works programs to offer job opportunities, funded by progressive tax measures, and other financial and fiscal policies to prevent austerity.

So I was just wondering, what are legislators saying?

And if there are specific statements that legislators have made.

Thank you.

Councilmember Sawant, while I don't have any specific statements for you from individual legislators on this, what I will assure you of is that, you know, our Seattle delegation in particular, many of those folks are, you know, have leadership roles in the progressive revenue conversation.

And I think at this stage, Everything is nothing is off the table.

There is a lot of kind of unknown right now in terms of what the revenue forecast will look like.

So legislators will have more clarity in June.

And then I think they'll probably have to look at what types of progressive revenue can fill the hole or attempt to fill the hole.

And because of the ambiguity right now, we haven't seen any specific proposals, but please do know that that conversation is an active one, particularly within our Seattle delegation and a very high priority.

So absolutely hear your concern on that.

We'll continue to prioritize this issue as well and keep you updated as we find out more.

Thank you so much for that.

Colleagues, any other questions or comments for the team before we go ahead and transition to our next agenda item?

Okay, looks like...

No one else has any questions or comments, so thank you so much everyone from OIR for being with us this morning.

Really appreciate your ongoing work in this space and look forward to some follow-up on some of the issues that were flagged and discussed this morning.

Also just want to say, again, I don't think anybody has said it out loud yet, but well done on the Ban the Box legislation.

Very, very exciting.

Hard fought.

legislative effort and in a period of time where all of us are looking for unity and good news and a moment to celebrate collaboration and the good fruits that that could yield, I really just want to say thank you for your ongoing effort on our behalf to get that across the finish line.

And thanks to all the state legislators who were so tremendously supportive and also dogged and diligent about finally getting that over the finish line.

So thank you so much for that.

And with that, we'll end on a good note and say thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your week.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for having us.

Thank you.

Of course.

Thank you.

Okay, colleagues, we're going to go ahead and move along our briefing agenda.

We're just a little behind about 10 minutes, but hopefully we'll be able to make up some time here.

We are going to go ahead and transition into agenda item four, which is a presentation on Council Bill 119793, which is the paid sick and safe time for gig workers legislation.

Colleagues, as you know, in lieu of being able to have committee meetings and in particular to respect the sort of need and sensitivity around bringing essential workers to City Hall more than necessary, we are integrating some conversations into council briefing that are related to COVID-19 or are routine and necessary pieces of legislation.

So this bill is only on the introduction referral calendar this afternoon and Council Member Mosqueda's office request who is a prime sponsor of the legislation requested We are going to have a little bit of time on the Council briefing agenda in order to have a transparent conversation about what this Council bill is and to do that early on.

This is just for discussion.

We have Karina Bull from Council Central staff who will walk us through a presentation.

First, I am going to, there she is.

But I'm going to turn it over to you, Council Member Mosqueda, to introduce a little bit more this briefing topic and to make some introductory comments about the legislation that is, again, on today's introduction and referral calendar for action in the future.

So with that being said, I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to you.

Thank you so much, Council President.

And do let me know if I start to freeze again.

Sorry about that.

Just as we were coming to this agenda topic, Zoom froze for me.

So thank you for filibustering.

I will just want to provide some context to the bill in front of us, and I'll look for any text messages in case I start to freeze again.

Colleagues, I want to frame today's discussion in light of two headlines from this morning.

The first is from NPR, the National Public Radio.

headline this morning talked about how app-based drivers and many service workers do not have any access to sick leave.

These are folks who are currently in harm's way right now.

They are delivering our food and grocery stores.

Some of us may have family members who are working as app-based drivers, and our loved ones, neighbors, and colleagues need to have access to sick leave in light of COVID.

They also this morning talked about how this year's influenza is going to be even worse than past years.

And we've got influenza coupled with COVID.

They called it a very dark winter coming.

The second headline comes from Democracy Now!

this morning.

If folks listened to Amy Goodman, they would have heard her first headline that she read talking about how this is going to be a real call for leadership.

We need to have leadership in this time as the dark winter is coming and we don't have sick leave for all workers.

The bill in front of you provides a sick leave benefit to the very workers who've been left out of the sick leave structure in the past.

This legislation, I would posit, helps answer the question, where is the leadership?

Thanks to Karina Bull for being on the line with us to walk us through the legislation and for all of your work.

I wanna thank Sejal Parikh, who has been working on this sick leave policy for almost since the very beginning of March.

and intense stakeholder engagement with folks from not just the worker side, but also the app-based delivery side.

And we have, I think, put together a piece of legislation as of last week that really meets any of the concerns and questions from the app-based side and also meets the goals and hopes from the worker side.

So this is truly a collaborative effort that is in front of you in terms of the introduction and referral calendar.

and the presentation will walk through.

Just for a bit of background before I turn it over to Karina, Seattle passed and implemented the paid sick leave policy for employees eight years ago in 2012. Simultaneously, over the last year, workers have increased by 15% with independent contractors representing about 16% of the population.

Council Member Mosqueda, you have frozen up on us.

There you are.

Sorry, you froze up on us for about 30 seconds.

I just wanted to make sure.

Thank you, I'll continue.

Many of the workers who are in independent contractor status don't have access to paid sick and safe leave.

Some of the apps do offer sick and safe leave, but it should be noted that in many cases there are barriers to accessing that sick leave.

For the workers that we heard about this morning on the headlines that are left out of sick and safe leave, we truly want to make sure that there is access to sick leave during the time of COVID.

We need to make sure that workers who've been deemed essential have access to sick leave, and especially for folks who are interacting with Seattle restaurant owners, grocery workers, and the general public, to make sure that everyone is safe.

Can you still hear me?

Okay, I'm seeing thumbs up.

Not providing them with sick leave means that workers will be interacting with members of the public when they are sick, and that shouldn't be an option as we plot our road to recovery.

And workers won't be able to take time off when they experience domestic violence, which is a critical element of the safe leave component.

And we also know that there has been a rise in domestic violence given the COVID situation, which has created isolation for many families across this country.

So paid sick and safe leave is a vital protection for everyone that the city should have.

It doesn't suffice just to have higher wages that we appreciate, that many of the unions have been able to negotiate $2 in hero pay or hazard pay.

That's important.

Vacation time and paid family leave is critically important, but we have to make sure, especially when there's a public health crisis, that paid sick and safe leave are available to every worker, including independent contractors.

I want to just share with you one piece to frame it up for Karina.

I've had the opportunity to work on this policy over the last two months and share a little bit about a story from Carmen.

She's a driver from Grubhub.

She says, now that people are hungry and hiding within their homes from the virus, I'm suddenly essential, she says.

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

This is why we need sick leave.

I was sick with the extreme flu symptoms in March.

Although extremely weak, constantly coughing, and having trouble taking a full breath, I kept working as a delivery driver.

because it was my only source of income.

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

I lost my opportunity to earn an income.

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

I work as much as possible, but there are days where I only make enough to go on for the next day, plus put gas in the car and grab a few groceries.

I do not live paycheck to paycheck.

I do not live day to day.

I live order to order.

I do not know how I will financially recover.

I'm still experiencing waves of COVID symptoms.

At times, I am not able to work.

With sick leave, I could not have tried to work when I was so very sick and possibly spreading the virus.

With sick leave, I would have stayed home.

With sick leave, I may have recovered faster.

So I leave that as a framing for why this conversation is so essential right now.

and perhaps I'll turn it over to Karina to walk us through the PowerPoint presentation, Council President, that she has provided to us.

Yes, thank you so much for that introduction, Karina.

I think you have a presentation, so I imagine that you're going to share your screen with us and walk us through the presentation, so take it away.

Okay, thank you so much.

This is Karina Bull.

I'm on Council Central staff and I'm going to take a few moments to share my screen.

And I just need to do, I believe, one more item.

So you don't see all these notes.

Karina, I asked you, we don't see the notes right now, so you're fine.

Oh, great.

OK, thanks for that feedback.

It looks great.

OK.

So as Councilmember Mosqueda introduced for everyone, this legislation at its heart seeks to require hiring entities defined as food delivery network companies and transportation network companies to provide the gig workers working for them in Seattle with paid sick and safe time.

And this paid leave would allow such workers to be able to care for their personal and family members' health conditions and safety needs.

This presentation today will take listeners and watchers through the main components of the legislation and there are a fair amount of them, but many of them will be familiar to people because as Councilmember Mosqueda noted, the paid sick and safe time for employees has been in effect for closing in on eight years and this legislation was closely modeled on the PSST as it is called for employees with some modifications to reflect the work experiences of gig workers.

So as a refresher, paid sick and safe time again pretty much the same for gig workers as it is for employees, would allow a worker to use this paid leave for themselves or for a family member for diagnosis, care or treatment of a physical or mental health condition and also preventative care.

And then there also is the very important safe time leave, which is able to be used to obtain services for domestic violence when a family member's school or place of care is closed, and when the hiring entity has reduced or discontinued operations for a health and safety reason or has been shut down due to an order of a public official for a health emergency reason.

Coverage is food delivery network companies and transportation network companies with 250 or more gig workers worldwide.

And that threshold for 250 or more workers worldwide aligns with the threshold for coverage for a tier three large employer under the paid sick and safe time for employees ordinance.

So there is some parity in that respect.

And then the gig workers are those who are working for these hiring entities and who are being treated as independent contractors and so therefore have barriers to accessing this paid leave.

Here you see the definitions or an excerpt of the definitions for these hiring entities.

It's notable that the food delivery network company is for such companies that are delivering from four distinct kinds of places.

and those places are eating and drinking establishments.

food processing establishments, grocery stores, and then a facility that may or may not be open to the public that is a place where these companies can go and get the items that are going to be delivered to customers.

And so this is not by any means an exhaustive list of the kind of companies that would be covered by this law, but some examples include Uber and Lyft for the TNC companies, and then for food delivery network companies, Instacart, DoorDash, Postmates, Amazon Fresh, Uber Eats, TaskRabbit, GoPuff, Grubhub.

Again, just a sample of those, but it gives people an idea of who this would cover.

Gig workers are those who are working for those companies.

And then the payment for this PSST would be paid on a daily basis, and it would be determined on a what's called an average daily compensation that is a term developed for this legislation, and it would be a daily average of compensation that the gig worker had earned in the past.

And then that way, when they use this paid leave, they could be earning what they could have earned had they actually gone to work.

And that daily average compensation is comprised of what they were paid for providing services, bonuses, commissions, as well as tips.

The daily average would be for the highest earning calendar month since October 2019 or since the gig workers commencement of work.

And then the amount would be recalculated every calendar month to reflect adjustments in earnings.

But always the worker would be paid the highest earning calendar month of that time period.

for the fact that the economy would still be recovering during that time period and that people are still getting sick during that time period.

So it would be the right to accrue and use pay sick and save time until six months after the end of the mayor's civil emergency or a concurrent civil emergency.

So what that would mean is that If the mayor's civil emergency ended, but the governor's state of emergency was still in effect, then accrual and use would end six months after the end of the later terminated emergency, which might be the governor's, in that example.

Accrual would be different depending on when the gig worker started working for the hiring entity.

For those who began working before the effective date of the ordinance, hiring entities would have two choices for how their gig workers would accrue.

And one of them would be accruing one day of paid sick and safe time for every 30 days worked beginning on October 9th of 2019 last year.

Or instead of going backwards in time and figuring out retroactively how much, looking at records to see how much each good worker the hiring entities could choose just to load up all gig workers accounts with at least five days of paid sick and safe time.

And then from that time forward, they would accrue one day for every 30 days work.

So the way that this is drafted, it gives hiring entities a choice on how they want to begin accrual of paid sick and safe time when the ordinance goes into effect.

And then for gig workers who begin work on or after the effective date of the ordinance, they would accrue one day paid sick and save time for every 30 days worked.

So what that means is that over the course of the year, if a gig worker is working five days a week, they would probably accrue somewhere around nine days of paid sick and save time.

They're working every single day of the year, then they could accrue as much as 12 days of paid sick and save time.

And that lines up pretty well with the large employer paid sick and save time for employees.

rate of accrual.

An important piece to mention is that a gig worker's ability to accrue, pay, tick, and save time to figure out what their payment's going to be, is all based on their work in Seattle, but it's where work is performed in part or in whole in Seattle.

So what that means is that any day that a worker has a delivery of a food item, or shopping in Seattle, or picks up a passenger in Seattle, or drops off a passenger in Seattle, that counts as work in Seattle, even if it were five hours of their eight-hour day and the three hours were elsewhere.

The idea is that whenever there is a touch point in Seattle, that is going to trigger a cool, a pace that can save time.

It's going to trigger the calculation for figuring out their average daily compensation.

The use of paid sick and safe time would be available to eligible workers upon their request.

Eligibility is whether or not they have worked in Seattle within 90 calendar days before their request.

As I've mentioned, they need to use it in daily increments.

And similar to the paid sick and safe time for employees, hiring entities can ask for verification that the sick leave has been used for a legitimate reason after it's been used for more than three consecutive days.

That verification notably cannot ask for a diagnosis or any information on the nature of the condition.

And the legislation does have a provision in it that mirrors the Office of Labor Standards emergency rule for paid sick and safe time, which is that during a public health emergency, hiring entities can not require a healthcare provider's note.

Other requirements of that legislation are that hiring entities need to provide notification, at least monthly, of what the gig workers' average daily compensation rate is, how much paid sick and safe time they have available.

Carryover, hiring entities must permit gig workers to carry over at least nine days of accrued paid sick and save time to the following year.

And then if a gig worker is not working for a period of 12 months or less, whether it's due to involuntary or voluntary inactivity or deactivation, they have the right to retain all of their accrued paid sick and save time.

And all of these provisions are present in the existing paid sick and save time ordinance as well.

As a standard with all of the City of Seattle's labor standards, gig workers must be given a notice of their rights, hiring entities must keep records for three years, and retaliation is prohibited.

Enforcement of this legislation would be by the Office of Labor Standards.

There also would be a private right of action.

And remedies could be unpaid compensation three times that amount if the director decides that it's warranted with penalties payable to the group party, civil penalties and fines.

And at last, the duration of this.

would be that it would be automatically repealed without subsequent action by counsel, according to these dates that you see before you.

So it would be the later of whatever civil emergency is in effect right now, whatever one is terminated last, or December 31st, 2023, whichever is latest.

So three years after The reason why the legislation is going out for three years beyond when the gig worker has the right to use and accrue their paid sick and safe time is because that time is needed.

Those three years are needed for the Office of Labor Standards to be able to investigate claims of noncompliance and for these hiring entities to keep the record so that Office of Labor Standards can conduct their investigations or perhaps it could be a private right of action that needs to do discovery.

So the next steps for this legislation are that Council members can think about and request amendments this week up until Wednesday at noon.

That is the request.

And then next Monday, there's an opportunity for full council to vote on this legislation.

And that is the end of the presentation.

Thanks for listening.

Thank you, Karina, for that presentation.

Colleagues, any questions or comments or either the prime sponsor or Karina.

Council President, may I offer just a little bit of additional context?

Sure.

Thank you.

I want to just say for folks, we have We have been working deliberatively with many people in the community.

As you saw on slide five in Karina's presentation, we engaged and received input from platforms such as Postmates, DoorDash, Lyft, Uber, Uber Eats.

I want to thank them for their time.

Also, through SAGE L3, my chief of staff, we have been involved in the same level of conversations with folks from the worker representation world, from Teamsters, 117, Working Washington, MLK Labor, USCW 21, and at the national level from experts such as Center for Popular Democracy, Center for Law and Social Policy, and the National Employment Law Project.

I want to thank the mayor's office as well, through Office of Labor Standards, who's been involved in all of these conversations from the very beginning, seven weeks ago.

We were thinking about introducing something at the beginning of March, as I mentioned, and over the last seven weeks, we've been working to keep the mayor's office involved in those conversations.

When we approached them and told them we were talking about, we're thinking about sick leave, they said that they would love for us to work on this while they work on parallel protections for gig workers, and really, I think, understood how intricate the conversations were going to be, and I think Sejal Parikh has offered, or has shown that those deliberative conversations really led to this collaborative piece of policy in front of us, and just want to say thanks to Karina Bulligan for walking us through that.

Our hope is that we get feedback from all of you by noon on Wednesday if you have amendments, and always appreciate your feedback and thoughts.

Great, thank you.

Thank you for that additional information.

So I see Council Member Peterson has raised his hand.

And again, colleagues, for those of you who are on Zoom via the video chat function, if you can raise your hand and let me know if you have any questions.

for those of you on the phone, I think it's just Councilmember Juarez, if you have a question, send me a little message to let me know that you have a question.

So Councilmember Peterson, the floor is yours.

Thank you.

Good morning, colleagues, and thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda, for introducing this, and it's really impressed by how much due diligence has been done to this point with all those stakeholders, business, labor, mayor's office, who have to implement it on the executive side.

I have a question for you.

either give us an additional week to look at it, you're asking for amendments in 48 hours essentially, and just trying to manage how we have additional time to review this so that our staff isn't working through the night reviewing it.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

I will comment on the timeline, and I'm not sure if others have thoughts about that as well.

We did get this onto the introduction and referral calendar on Friday, so it has had the chance to be on the official list.

So we're not walking anything on today, just want to make sure folks know that.

Second, we definitely would love your feedback, and I think our intention was really to have tried to introduce this one or two weeks ago, but given the intricacies of it, wanted to make sure that we got all of those questions answered.

So we do have Karina and Sejal as policy experts in case your staff want additional help walking through the details.

You know, if the Wednesday noon deadline is not workable for your office and you want to have more conversations, happy to do so.

At this point, our hope would be to move this forward with the council president's approval for next Monday's full council vote with the recognition that we're already now, you know, two and a half months into this crisis.

And as you heard the story of Carmen, Folks are making these impossible decisions about losing wages or going to work sick.

And when our economy starts to open up a little bit more, as early as next week, I think that we're going to see a spike in the numbers as has projected before they start to go back down again, cross your fingers.

And so I really want to do everything we can to get the policy out there.

But, you know, our office is definitely interested in answering any of the questions that you have with the hope that we can do this by next Monday.

So I appreciate that this is a complex set of laws.

I really do appreciate that Council Member Mosqueda and her staff and Council Central staff spent quite a bit of time working through some of the issues.

I also appreciate that we're all working remotely.

I'll just say that I think in my conversations with Councilmember Mosqueda's office, you know, we understand that they have a very strong interest in having full council action on this next Monday.

I think that it is a very dense bill, and so having spent a little bit of time with it over the weekend, and so can understand that there may be some council members who would want a little bit more time.

So my suggestion would be that we continue to aim for I don't know if there will be a final council action on this upcoming Monday, but I think that depending on how many amendments and questions we see from you colleagues, then I think that there could be an opportunity to, in conversation with the prime sponsor, discuss whether we need a little bit more time to work through some of those issues.

We certainly appreciate that there's a sense of urgency around making sure that folks have access to these benefits, but we also want to make sure that we have a quality piece of legislation, and I don't think anybody's suggesting that we sacrifice or compromise on quality for the sake of expediency.

So let's sort of see how this week goes in terms of flagged issues, questions, and potential mandatory work.

I will stay in close contact with Carina from Council Central staff on that issue and with the Prime Sponsor, Council Member Mosqueda, to see if we need to adjust based on the volume of response that we get from you all.

But this conversation today was intended to be sort of a first conversation.

to make sure that you colleagues were all paying attention to this particular bill, because it is an important bill that is directly responsive to the COVID-19 crisis as it relates to this segment of workers.

And because we know that it is a complex issue, we wanted to make sure that you all had an opportunity to, again, that public conversation now.

So Council Member Skate, I know I hadn't had an opportunity to talk to you about that particular approach.

So, you know, please, I'll hand it over to you to see if you are amenable to having just that little bit of flexibility this week.

Thank you, Council President.

Yeah, I want to reiterate, our office is very interested in working with everybody who has any questions.

I know Karina is steeped in the policy details, given we tried to mirror as much as we could off of the existing sick and safely block, but recognizing that the app-based work style is different, we tried to think really creatively with workers and those platforms on how a sick leave could be applied.

So helpful, it's helpful.

We can talk about some of that background one-on-one with the various offices.

And Karina, I know she is very available and I want to thank her for her due diligence to be with, working with us over the last seven weeks.

If you have questions that can't get answered, obviously our intent is to try to pass this with as many questions answered, and the draft that your offices received as well was on Thursday.

It was on the INR calendar Friday, and do hope that over the next few days we get the chance to answer any questions that folks have.

We can be flexible on that Wednesday deadline with the goal of trying to share any amendments with our council colleagues.

That was what that deadline was for.

But of course, Council President, if it doesn't seem like we're able to get there and we need to wait another week, We can do that at your direction, and with that, I do hope folks reach out to us and to Karina to answer any questions.

Hopefully, we can get this passed on Monday.

I would just, again, I completely understand the sense of urgency around this, and so I don't want to suggest that we derail the unnecessarily delay or derail the timeline, because I know there's been a lot of background work on the issue already.

So I do want to sort of just be sensitive to the fact that we are working under very different circumstances, and this is an important and significant worker protection bill, and I want to make sure that that quality, high quality is maintained, which I believe it will be.

So I want to encourage you all, colleagues, to pay a little bit more attention to this bill this week and get it through.

And I will say that I have received requests from at least two colleagues, Council Member Mosqueda, for an additional week to be able to thoroughly review the bill.

So I think there's some work that needs to be done here to make sure that folks feel comfortable with the contents.

and that they have their questions answered.

So happy to connect with you offline, Council Member Mosqueda, on some of those administrative issues.

We don't need to sort of hash those out here, but I think I saw Council Member Sawant raise her hand.

Okay, so Council Member Sawant, we'll go ahead and hand it over to you.

Thank you.

Of course, needless to say, strongly support this legislation.

And in fact, we're really interested to figure out how we could codify this and make this permanent.

Absolutely, gig economy workers should be included in paid sick and safe time.

And the paid sick and safe time itself should be strengthened further as we go along.

But right now, my question was specifically if Karina could go a little bit more on how The enforcement of this bill could work because, you know, Uber, for example, as a corporation has just as an example, has refused to follow Seattle's labor laws in the past.

I mean, just flat out, you know, has refused to let itself be accountable.

And unfortunately, the city has failed to enforce them.

Like, for example, sharing the driver list for union rights bill and so on.

And we know that enforcement of labor laws is as important of a piece as establishing the law in the first place.

We know how crucial that is.

So I was wondering if you could go into that a little bit more.

And then I just wanted to also say for the record that this is exactly a good example of why we cannot have austerity in the city budget.

For example, any cuts or even hiring freezes to the Office of Labor Standards will directly result in a detrimental effect to workers because the enforcement is important for workers actually to be guaranteed the law.

Yeah, so for enforcement, I'll begin by saying that this legislation reflects the standard enforcement authorizations and procedures of the Office of Labor Standards, which is part of the reason why it is such a long piece of legislation.

I think there's 18 or 20 pages, which are just devoted to legislation.

And so Office of Labor Standards would be equipped to have all of their tools at their disposal.

in order to enforce this legislation, including the ability to develop and issue rules.

And this legislation does have language added to it to reflect that rules would need to be issued quickly.

And so Office of Labor Standards is given the authority to identify existing rules that might already be in the book for paid sick and safe time that went through extensive stakeholder process both eight years ago and less than two years ago when the legislation was amended to reflect the statewide standards as well.

And so that will enable OLS to be nimble and to quickly be able to start doing outreach for this law and to begin enforcing it as well.

The office, this legislation also has a provision in it that allows the director of Office of Labor Standards to designate a daily penalty or a daily amount of unpaid compensation in the event that In the course of an investigation, the respondent, the hiring entity, is not providing records on a timely basis, or maybe the respondent provides so many records that they're in a way that the Office of Labor Standards cannot analyze in an efficient, quick manner.

If that were to happen and the OLS could not determine the precise amount owed, Office of Labor Standards has the authority to say that every worker would get $150, that that would be the automatic assumed rate of compensation that would be owed to the workers.

And the director could just say, that's how much is owed.

I imagine that the office might also be porting over their existing rule that says it's estimated that workers use about 30 hours or so, that would be translated to days of paid sick and save time a year.

So they could just multiply 150 towards the automatic amount of number of days per year.

And that would enable the Office of Labor Standards to make these assessments quickly and efficiently to get money to workers sooner and to use less of the resources as well.

I do.

Please, thank you.

Thank you, President Dulles.

Thank you for your response, and I really appreciate that.

I do have a specific follow-up, not so much related to the legislation, but under discussion right now, but about some of the things you said about how easily or how effectively the Office of Labor Standards can carry out enforcement.

And I would look forward to an ongoing discussion with the executive and with the Office of Labor Standards on this.

And my staff will follow up with you on this.

I've already asked them to do this.

But my concern is, I mean, you use the word nimble.

And I'm extremely concerned that, I mean, If we are not to have sort of a pure fantasy about being nimble and if we are actually going to do this, then I think we are in a very difficult situation because the Office of Labor Standards Enforcement Office is currently understaffed with open positions and a hiring freeze.

And right now, workers filing complaints can expect a six month delay before their cases can be heard.

So it's a very concrete question.

How can we do enforcement when we don't have the staff to do it?

And I would appreciate maybe a follow up conversation just about that aspect of it in the future.

And just also just a note to the city council that maybe we should discuss that as well.

Great, thank you.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

Oh, no, no, you didn't.

I was thinking that Karina would say something in response, but that's fine.

We can have a discussion.

But because I think it is a concrete question of how would we do enforcement when they understand.

Yeah, so what I will say is that recognizing everything that you have just said is that this legislation gives the Office of Labor Standards all the tools that they legislatively need in order to be efficient and be quick with this legislation.

And that is in addition to whatever other resources they might need.

So this law does more to assist them in that effort than other existing laws do.

So I just wanted to point out that this law was drafted in such a way that recognizes that OLS needs as much support as it can under the law in order to enforce this kind of legislation.

Um, Karina, I have a quick question around that sort of dovetails from the issue that just flagged around in enforcement.

I think.

I think Council Member Sawant's points around sort of the broader issue of how do we do enforcement with and on at least some of the companies that will be covered by this, who have historically not been very forthright with anything related to their business model.

But I think my question is, and I appreciate that particular concern, because I think that's a real practical issue in terms of implementation.

But the other thing that I have related to that is, I guess, a little bit more process oriented.

So you mentioned in your presentation that the director's rules will be issued as it relates to this particular law.

And I think that's on page 12, line 18 of the legislation.

But it's not, and you also mentioned that it's expected that it would be done quickly.

I guess I'm just, I wanna get a better sense of what quickly means and what conversations have been had with the Office of Labor Standards related to their capacity and ability to be able to implement rulemaking quickly.

Yeah, well, I certainly won't propose to answer on behalf of the Office of Labor Standards.

But what I will say is that they were very active in the development of this law.

And they did voice the need for the legislation to support them when this law goes into effect.

And so for that reason, whereas typically legislation might not define as many terms as this legislation does, at OLS's request, this legislation defines things in the law that might otherwise be left to rules.

And so OLS contributed to that process.

So that's one way that rules can happen on a faster timeline than as if the typical way for labor standards is that there is a vast array of terms that would need to be defined in rules.

And then also On page 12, the reference to the director rules again gives OLS the ability should they choose to use it to reference already existing rules for this legislation and that that delegation would have the force of law and so they could do that through issuing a rule that says.

that the paid sick and save time rules chapter 70 apply to this gig worker legislation, or they could do it as simply as a question and answer guidance for hiring entities and workers as well.

So these are tools put into place to support Office of Labor Standards, recognizing that they don't have as, that their capacity is limited in this situation right now.

Okay.

So it doesn't sound like, so it sounds like we are trying to resolve some of the time realities and capacity realities of OLS.

OLS's rulemaking process by not leaving as much as we ordinarily would to the rulemaking process, but that still leaves some things in the ordinance that would still be subjected to rulemaking, right?

There would be some things that OLS would want to look at, and maybe they would want to define separately because they haven't been addressed in the paid sick and safe time rules for employees.

So that certainly could be the case.

And to the greatest extent possible, this draft is trying to to bypass the need for that, but there still might be issues that arise later on.

And again, want to emphasize that the ability for the director to designate that daily amount, $150 a day, which is a little bit more than minimum wage times eight hours.

that specific amount was added to the legislation in order to allow OLS to issue a final determination quickly and also to not haul them through the process of the back and forth of asking for records that maybe are being delayed or wading through records that are very overwhelming due to the organization or lack of organization or the sheer volume of those records.

And does the director have to issue rules before enforcement begins and before this law goes into effect?

Or is the ordinance drafted in such a way that the director has discretion to implement rules Um, as we go along sort of more iterative, if you will, thanks.

Yeah, thank you for that question.

So the legislation is drafted where the director has discretion to issue those rules.

The implementation of the legislation is not conditioned upon.

Issuance of the rules that that is an important component of the law and also the.

Office of Labor Standards already has a full body of rules on enforcement.

It's called Chapter 140. And so that is something that they could reference for how their investigation process unfolds and how they collect information and interact with workers and with hiring entities.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

Appreciate it.

And then really quickly on the I think it's in section .030B where it talks about, kind of lightly about sexual assault.

And I just wanted, when we had conversations offline, Karina, I had a specific question around what, how this law sort of dovetails with confirmed deactivated cases as a result of sexual assault allegations.

And the language in the ordinance isn't super clear to me, so I just wanted to have you point me to the language that you indicated addresses that issue specifically.

Yeah, so earlier we had discussed that workers are allowed to use their paid sick and safe time when they are deactivated, which is a very important feature of this proposed legislation because sometimes if a worker is requesting pandemic assistance from their hiring entity because of COVID-related reasons, that hiring entity can actually automatically deactivate them out of concerns about COVID before receiving confirmation that they have COVID.

Maybe it's a family member that has COVID.

But in those situations, while they're waiting to hear from the hiring entity, if they even qualify for the hiring entity's pandemic assistance, which they may not, depending on the verification that they are or are not able to provide, in those situations or in other situations when they're deactivated, the worker would be able to use this paid leave, this paid sick leave.

and save time.

And so in the very original thoughts about this legislation, it mirrored the Transportation Network Company Deactivation Rights Ordinance, which said, which allowed TNCs to immediately deactivate drivers without the two weeks notice in situations where there were allegations of egregious misconduct, including at a minimum allegations of sexual assault.

So in the initial days of this drafting, that requirement was ported over to paid sick and safe time, which would mean that if a driver had been alleged of egregious, had been alleged to commit egregious misconduct and then deactivated because of that, they wouldn't have the right to use their paid sick and safe time if they've been deactivated in those situations.

And then upon further reflection and hearing from Office of Labor Standards that having the capacity to develop rules about what types of conduct would rise to the level of egregious in those situations, that they might not have capacity to do that on a fast timeline.

And thinking about also that that component was added in the other legislation as a as a safety concern, not wanting to have drivers driving when they had been alleged to have done something like sexual assault, which is different than accessing paid sick and safe time.

So in consideration of those two things, the different type of safety concern, the drivers wouldn't be driving, they would be accessing paid leave.

And also the fact of OLS's capacity to do rulemaking, that provision was lifted out for this draft or for this proposal.

Okay, I want to think about it a little bit more from a policy perspective.

It doesn't feel appropriate to me to effectively a driver who's been verified, who's been deactivated on a verified allegation of sexual assault to get paid to be on that leave after being you know, sort of reasonably accused and confirmed that the deactivation was, in fact, because of that type of egregious behavior.

So I just, from a policy perspective, that feels wrong to me, but I want to get a better understanding of how this would work in this in this space, I just feel really strongly that if there is a verified case of deactivation based on sexual assault allegations, that I'm not sure that it would be appropriate to nonetheless allow access to paid sick and safe time.

And so just to be clear, the original draft didn't say verified.

So the different ways of looking at it, and so if there's interest in changing that, the original draft said allegation, and so if it's been verified in some way, then that would be a different situation than what was originally contemplated as well.

Well, I'll be happy to chat with you and the prime sponsor about that a little bit more, but I think this is an important I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point.

You probably have some, Sue, I saw you kind of doing the pondering look as well.

So I'm just going to go ahead and put that question to rest that you asked earlier, Council President and Council Member Peterson, and welcome an extra week if folks want to walk through additional questions.

I know that it's an important policy for folks to really know the ins and outs, and as you can tell, it's a detailed piece of legislation that we've offered in front of you.

I do know that you share that sense of urgency, every single one of you, and appreciate the ask and the request, Council President, but just wanted to follow up with you on that so there wasn't a question hanging over us for next week.

Right.

I do appreciate your flexibility with that.

As I mentioned, I had already gotten a request from at least two council members for a little bit more time with the bill.

I don't think it's a nefariously motivated extension request.

I think it's just a desire to want to make sure that the policy is well understood and that we have a good sense of how we are going to move this policy forward.

You are on mute, Council Member Herbold.

This question I have has been triggered by this particular piece of legislation, but I suppose it could be a question for other bills as well that have financial impacts.

So we have our standard fiscal note and you know under normal circumstances the focus on financial impacts to the city and looking in into future budget years is not so much of a problem because often when we pass laws in mid-year there's some flexibility within departments budgets to pay for implementation and enforcement activities that may not be budgeted within the current fiscal year.

In this instance, when answering the question, does the legislation have other financial impacts to the city of Seattle that are not reflected in the above, The answer is yes, this legislation would establish an implementation enforcement role for OLS and an appeal role for the hearing examiner.

Additional resources to support these activities may need to be considered in the mayor's 2021 proposed budget and future budget deliberations.

I really wanna flag that I have been seeking with the help of council central staff, additional information from the city budget office about the departmental submittals for mid-year budget cuts and legislation that the council is acting on now I think really underscores that need for that information.

Council Member Sawant is correct.

We don't want austerity budgeting.

We don't want to tie the hands of important departments like the Office of Labor Standards by not adequately funding them.

to enforce these new laws that we are passing to address the immediate health impacts of the COVID-19 crisis.

Likewise, the City Department of Construction and Inspections in their role in enforcing tenant laws.

So I really think it's important that we think of this fiscal note as a tool to find out what the costs are associated with implementing and enforcing emergency legislation.

And I don't think it's sufficient to simply say that we may need to consider additional resources in 2021. If we are making considerations about making cuts to budgets this year, we need to know, I believe, what the fiscal impacts of the bills that we are passing now for this year are.

And so I would request that the central staff work with CDO in continuing to get the information that I've requested as it relates specifically to the individual departmental submittals for cuts, as well as, as long as we are in this place of passing emergency legislation that is effective immediately, getting additional information about the financial impacts to our legislation in this budget year, in the 2020 budget year.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

I know that you, as the chair of the budget committee, have been engaged in a lot of background conversations, both with council central staff and with the city budget office around this year's budgeting process.

I do want to be respectful of your role in that area and want to provide you an opportunity to respond if you are, if you have a response.

My only response is I think that the concerns are shared.

We are very interested in getting that type of detailed information, have made similar requests to the executive, and are working through another process, hopefully with central staff, to be able to get information in real time, especially as we hear about supplemental budgets or know that there's potential cuts on the way that are being proposed.

not being implemented necessarily.

We want to know what the background detail is.

So I think that the concerns are something that we've raised as well.

And I know that that's not necessarily related to this bill, but perhaps the other central staff folks on the line could weigh in.

Council President, I know this is something that you've raised as well.

So we're all, I think, in the same bucket, Council Member Herbold, in wanting and asking and creating structures to ensure that we get that type of information in advance.

Great, thank you.

Colleagues, any other questions or comments on this particular council bill?

Okay, looks like we have exhausted questions.

Let me double check my phones here to make sure.

It looks like nobody else has pinged me asking for an opportunity to ask questions, so it does look like we have exhausted the questions.

So I'm going to go ahead and thank Karina for being with us this morning and for your work with Councilmember Mosqueda on this bill.

And Councilmember Mosqueda, unless you have any closing remarks, I'm going to go ahead and move us along.

Okay.

Thank you so much, Karina.

You're welcome to disconnect from the Zoom call at this point.

Really appreciate your work again.

Okay, colleagues, we are going to go ahead and move into our last agenda item, which is, as usual, a report on today's city council actions and council and regional committee work.

And I'll call on council members as established by the rotated roll call for city council meetings, which In this instance, excuse me, in this instance for today will be Councilmember Herbold, followed by Juarez, Lewis, Morales, Mosqueda, Peterson, Salant, Strauss, and then I will be called on last.

I also want to note that we have Amy Gore, Tracy Ratzliff, and Jeff Sims, all from Council Central staff, who are on the call today to address any questions about legislation and potential amendments that may be considered later today during City Council's full meeting, so I just want to make sure that you all know that they are still on the line, patiently awaiting to hear your questions about any legislation.

As usual, colleagues, now is the time to ask substantive questions about policy issues that you may have with any items on this afternoon's agenda that is slated for full action.

Council Central staff will not be available to us live.

during the full council meeting.

They are available to us now to answer any questions that we might have.

It is now 11.15 a.m.

I'm hoping that we can make it through this report in no more than 30 minutes so that we can conclude at 11.45 a.m.

this morning and get on with our preparation work for this afternoon.

So really appreciate your all being respectful of each other's time, and hopefully we'll be able to get through this very, very quickly.

So with that being said, I'm going to go ahead and start calling on folks.

The first council member up is Council Member Herbold.

Thank you so much, Council President.

President Gonzalez, no items from me on the full council agenda.

No meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee on today's full council agenda.

A few announcements I'd like to make.

Just a reminder, folks very likely have read recently that there is a new public health directive to begin wearing face coverings today.

You can find more information at kingcounty.gov forward slash masks for more information.

The guidance is that people wear masks inside and outside in places where social distancing is difficult.

You can actually find directions to make face masks at home.

at the King County website.

Again that is kingcounty.gov forward slash masks and these directions are helpful to people who don't sew as well.

One important point to make People who have disabilities or who would be in danger from wearing face masks are not required to wear them.

And public health has been very clear that as it relates to enforcement, we're not asking the public to police their neighbors.

We're just asking each person to wear masks if they're able to protect each other.

And I think it's really important to note that so many of the public health orders that have come down since March are public health orders that have been effective and successful because of our shared appreciation and appreciation for the health vulnerabilities of our neighbors and our desire to care for one another.

And I believe that we will see high compliance in King County for this new public health order for for wearing masks precisely because we do care about our neighbors.

Other items coming up today.

Last Thursday, there was a letter circulated in support of a federal, what's called a build grant for the East Marginal Way border project.

My office circulated this letter last Thursday with the hopes that we could get signatures on the letter at full council today.

The council signed a very similar letter in February for a separate federal grant.

The interest that I have in this project is that it's a critical connection for bike commuters from West Seattle to ensure that they are separated from traffic.

And with the closure of the West Seattle Bridge through at least the end of 2021, the corridor will be increasingly important.

as freight uses the lower bridge to West Seattle as well.

The project itself will incorporate safety and reliability in the movement of people and goods in this industrial maritime area.

It'll support freight loads by rebuilding the roadway.

It'll promote efficiency through signal modifications and intelligent transportation systems.

and it will improve safety by better separating non-motorized modes from freight traffic.

The grant application is for $20 million.

The SDOT capital improvement program listing indicated that SDOT was considering approaches for full funding.

The earlier federal grant application was for $13 million, and the Port of Seattle is also contributing $5 million to the project.

So I hope you will join me in signing this letter today at full council.

As far as things that came up last week, I participated on Thursday in a webinar with the mayor for West Seattle.

As you can imagine, there was a lot of interest in the progress around efforts surrounding the West Seattle Bridge closure, but we covered a lot of other topics as well, focused on the city's response to the COVID-19 crisis.

I will be having office hours on Friday, May 29th, between 3 and 6 p.m.

You can email Alex Clardy to sign up.

That's alex.clardy at Seattle.gov.

Of course, consistent with the COVID-19 Open Meetings Act and stay at home requirements, we will be holding these office hours virtually.

Finally, I just want to highlight there is some really useful coverage in the Seattle Times today regarding the modes of failure memo released by SDOT recently.

The conceptual modes of failure memo has been prepared by WSP, SDOT's structural consultant.

It uses an analysis and modeling to determine how the high-rise bridge could deteriorate should it reach failure.

It is not a prediction for failure.

SDOT does not believe that it is a science-based or data-informed approach to try to predict the odds for if and when the scenarios discussed in the memo might occur.

They don't believe that it's actually possible, given the science that's out there.

The goal of the analysis is to identify all the possibilities, and by identifying all the possibilities, that allows us to prepare for those possibilities.

The memo itself helped, even though it was only released last week, the earlier draft versions of the memo were used to inform SDOT's emergency response plan.

that was released a couple weeks ago now, and it uses modeling of potential cracking scenarios in order to define perimeters of a fall zone, as well as build in an additional 75-foot buffer in all directions to really maximize the area in which we are preparing for safety.

There are a number of proactive steps in the memo to prepare for and even more importantly, prevent the worst-case scenarios.

And SDOT has been working diligently on those nine steps.

I will leave it there.

It's really helpful and good information to have.

We have a lot of work to do.

As it relates specifically to what we're focused on right now, I just want to highlight that one of the nine items is to repair the bearings at pier 18. And just a reminder that last month SDOT used emergency contracting authority to fast track the selection of a contractor in order to do that work.

the bridge.

We are not going to fully repair the bridge, but the work that SDOT and the design team are doing now allows us to ensure that we are preserving the integrity of the bridge to the highest possible extent to keep all viable options open.

With that, I'm done.

Okay, I am not seeing or hearing any, so we will go ahead and move along.

And next up is Councilmember Juarez.

Good, can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Great.

Let me just first start off quickly thanking Councilmember Mosqueda and you, Council President, and listening to Councilmember Peterson's request.

The one-week extension on Council Bill 119793 for being so flexible and cooperative in this very complex legislation for that.

I just wanted to say thank you.

So, colleagues, last Friday, I circulated a letter of support for the three Sioux Nations of the South Dakota tribe.

That would be the Cheyenne River Sioux, the Oglala Lakota, I'm sorry, and Rosebud.

You should have a copy of that letter in front of you.

I know it's been posted.

The letter is dated today's date.

In the letter, as it's noted, on May 8th, Governor Kristi Noem South Dakota issued a demand that Lakota Nation tribal leaders must remove security checkpoints that they had set up to prevent the spread of COVID-19 onto their reservations.

Chairs of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Obella Sioux Tribe, and the Rosebud Tribe have all issued statements declaring these highway road checkpoints were established on native land for travelers in response to a growing concern over the fast-paced nature of this virus.

Currently, there are no plans by the three nations to take these checkpoints down.

Consequently, the South Dakota governor is now threatening to file a lawsuit based on the premise that these checkpoints are interrupting the highway system, even though the checkpoints are on tribal land.

We are experiencing COVID-19 impacts and indigenous communities are experiencing this virus at a disproportionate rate.

Tribes are already facing a chronically underfunded and understaffed health care system.

have been exercising their inherent tribal authority, a duty, and a right to protect their people and loved ones and neighbors.

As you know, any government, they have a duty and responsibility to protect the health, safety, and welfare of all its citizens and residents.

And that's what these tribes believe that they are doing.

The letter stipulates the City of Seattle recognizes tribal sovereignty and that we, the City of Seattle, accept that indigenous sovereigns can choose and have chosen to chart their own path of infection prevention in accordance with the unique needs of their land and people.

The decision of one government can most definitely impact the lives of others outside its jurisdiction.

I command and support the tribal leaders of the Lakota Nations for their policy measures which protect all the lives on their land.

I just want to add that in us doing this letter that this is a true act of allyship.

a word that we use a lot these days.

This is supporting tribal government on a government-to-government basis in a most critical time.

I've had an opportunity to speak and be in contact with the chairs and their respective representatives.

This weekend I had an opportunity to speak to the chairman of Cheyenne River, that'd be Chairman Frazier, Chairman Julian Bear Runner of Oglala Lakota Nation, Lakota, I don't know why I keep saying that wrong, I know how to say it.

Chairman Rodney Bordeaux of Roseblood Sioux Tribe.

And before I end I just want to say that I want to give a huge hands raised to Nagin Kamkar our policy advisor who turned this letter around who worked with three tribes and their leadership lawyers one governor one city council and the mayor's office the Seattle Indian Health Board and community.

And she got all of this done in under 48 hours.

As I said I spent the weekend on the phone with these particular chairs and their leadership and their lawyers and all of them are singing her praises but also they wanted me to share this morning with our Seattle City Council and our mayor their thanks and immense gratitude and appreciation from the Pacific Northwest to South Dakota to support tribal sovereignty and their right to protect their people.

So with that I hope that you will join me this afternoon to sign onto the letter.

My last update I read this morning is that the governor of North Dakota is not going to change her mind about these coronavirus checkpoints, and the tribes are not going to remove the checkpoints.

And one of the things that struck me, and actually in a more painful way, is that the tribes are amazed at the state's focus on checkpoints when they need assistance and have been asking for assistance.

and have requested test kits, personal protective equipment, and more hospital beds on the reservation and have been ignored, but the state of South Dakota is more concerned about checkpoints and that the tribes are stopping traffic.

And the tribe's response is that they are not stopping essential traffic.

In fact, Chairman Frazier shared that 99.99% of the people stopped or maybe stopped for a minute or less.

And all of the deliveries of gas, food, medical supplies, of course, are getting into Indian country and beyond.

So with that, I'll move into what we have.

There are no items for the Public Asset and Native Communities Committee on this afternoon's council agenda.

I want to give you an update on the parks report.

On the social distancing ambassador program, we continue to see overall compliance of park users in practicing safe social distancing.

and park visitation over this last week was significantly lower than the prior assessment.

Again, I'll email my colleagues an updated chart after council briefing.

Data shows foot traffic is heaviest in parks near bodies of water, which makes sense due to the nice weather.

Quickly, Swedish Hospital operated a COVID-19 mobile testing unit last Friday at South Park Plaza.

Today, the emergency food distribution World Vision and Seattle Parks and Rec staff will distribute boxes of food and supplies outside Garfield Community Center to families in need.

The boxes can feed a family of five for one week.

In regards to the shelter program, from May 6th through the 12th, we accommodated an average between 12 to 30 people at Miller Community Center, the capacity is 50, and between 30 to 37 people at Garfield Community Center, and their capacity is 50. Starting Friday, May 8th, We opened the youth shelter operated by the Human Services Department and Youth Care at the Southwest Teen Life Center.

The maximum shelter bed capacity is about 14. Child care.

Enrollment for the summer child care program began on Tuesday, May 12th.

Every currently enrolled child has been registered for the summer child care.

For the reporting week of May 6th through May 12th, Dale Parks and Rec serve the highest number of child care slots at 155, totaling 333 since the start of the program.

Bitter Lake, Meadowbrook, and Queen Anne community centers serve the highest number of child care slots.

Many parents reported that they work for health care, finance, grocery, and the grocery sectors.

So let's move on to community centers.

The project to build a new Green Lake Community Center and Evans Pool continues despite the pandemic and current stay-at-home orders.

On Wednesday, May 13th, 155 people attended and participated in a virtual public meeting.

Previously, more than 2,000 people participated in the survey about the project.

So that's good news.

Green Lake, like Lake City Community Center, were slated for demo in the last report that came out from Parks about four years ago.

I shouldn't say actually slated for demo.

They were suggested that these were the oldest and needed the most work.

And if there ever was going to be an opportunity to build community centers, those two would be first.

Last Friday, May 15th, Seattle Parks Department announced the opening of additional space at Greenwood Park, located in North Seattle.

I should add that Parks purchased this acre, this 0.1 acre property in 2013 to expand Greenwood Park and provide additional open space for the community.

The project incorporates accessibility features in compliance with the American with Disabilities Act, ADA.

It features a wood arbor connection to the pea patch, a hillside slide into the play area, picnic area with barbecue and skate element.

Of course, due to the COVID-19, some of these amenities will not be fully available, so the park is open for walkers to pass through and recreate safely.

We are in continued discussions with parks on uses for golf courses, other non-golf course uses, I want to thank Superintendent Agare, who's been phenomenal in working with our office and looking at what those opportunities are.

District 5 News, a big thank you to Food Lifeline for all their hard work to provide food to families in need.

They arrived at Northgate last Thursday to provide boxed meals.

In addition, my office met with the Refugee Artesian Initiative, RAI, started by Ming Ming Tun Edelman.

located in D5.

They're on a mission to provide sustainable work for refugee and immigrant women.

If you remember Council Member Gonzalez, we met some of these women at Literacy Source a couple years ago when they graduated.

This transitioned from crafting home goods to sewing PPE face shields and cloth masks for first responders and essential workers.

Since March, the organization has trained and employed five more women, some who are earning their very first paycheck in the United States.

Some are even signing up their husbands to sew.

The organization has sewn 8,000 masks for the city of Seattle for folks who cannot afford masks, and 10,000 masks for King County Metro to ensure that our drivers are protected.

A huge thank you to RAI and Ming Ming.

They are amazing, amazing group, and we are really lucky to have them in our city.

Last Wednesday, May 13th, I met with members of the North Seattle Service Coalition Some of you may remember that we had given them money in the budget about two years ago, and they produced the study of the social service and human service organizations in the North End and what the needs are.

As I shared, the coalition represents human service organizations in North Seattle, but services many groups beyond, including South Seattle.

The meeting was regarding assessing needs for those organizations during COVID, and we're looking forward to receiving some survey data as soon as this week.

And President Gonzalez, I don't know if I should do this now or if you want me to do it too, but I will be requesting to be excused from council briefing and council meeting on Tuesday, May 26. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

The request to be excused can be done as part of other business in our full council meeting this afternoon, so I appreciate you flagging that that will be part of this afternoon's agenda.

Thank you.

Of course.

Any questions or comments on Council Member Juarez's report?

Okay, I'm not seeing or hearing any, so thank you, Council Member Juarez.

I want to continue to thank you for your leadership on issues related to tribal country and Native Americans generally.

I have really appreciated your partnership and your leadership in that space.

I've been following that issue in South Dakota and in other places across the country, and I'm really proud that we have somebody on our city council who is advancing those issues and representing those issues well in a very collaborative way.

So thank you so much for your ongoing leadership in that space.

Well, I should add, Council President, and thank you for that.

They did threaten to pull together a caravan, so they were all going to South Dakota, just so you all know.

You might want to mark that on your calendar.

I appreciate that.

Okay, folks, we're going to go ahead and move along now.

Next up is Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Madam President.

I will be brief today.

A couple of quick announcements related to the Select Committee on Homelessness Strategies and Investments.

I want to thank Council Member Morales for bringing some legislation forward that we will be discussing in the committee as soon as practicable.

I had originally intended to try to discuss that this week, but due to other scheduled committee meetings, that might be difficult.

So I'll be working offline.

with the Council President's Office as well as Council Member Morales to work on its time to have a full and robust hearing on that legislation.

And I want to thank Council Members Mosqueda and Swant for bringing that forward as well.

Tomorrow morning, as was teased in social media today, There will be an announcement from the Third Door Coalition on Homelessness, a group of small business owners, service providers, and academics dedicated to the protection and expansion of permanent supportive housing to meet our massive crisis of homelessness in King County and the City of Seattle.

And I'm proud to be participating, along with Councilmember Piscata, in that announcement tomorrow morning with Professor Sarah Rankin, among others, who will be discussing the plan that the Third Door Coalition will be announcing.

The bullet points that were teased on social media, so I feel comfortable sharing them here now.

The plan will address supporting efforts to close the supportive housing gap that we currently see between the demand for permanent supportive housing and the lack of adequate supply.

It will address costs of scaling that permanent supportive housing, as well as different cost drivers and how cities and municipalities and the state can work to lower those cost drivers to make it even more efficient and effective to build more permanent supportive housing.

And also, the initial outlines of a funding framework to address the programmatic goals that they are laying out.

Definitely follow Third Door Coalition on Twitter and social media and stay posted on that announcement tomorrow.

I really do expect this will be a game changer and very helpful in our actions as a council to confront this issue that was a big issue before COVID.

It's a bigger issue than ever now.

And I really applaud the work that Third Door is doing, and I'm very proud to be part of their announcement tomorrow and to work with them on implementing this plan.

Additionally, on Thursday, May 21st, there's going to be the first meeting of the King County Regional Housing or Homelessness Authority.

And I will be attending that meeting along with Council President Gonzalez.

I look forward to having that first meeting, which was originally supposed to be in March.

I'm glad that we are doing it on a virtual footing instead of delaying any further.

For reasons I just mentioned, the crisis of homelessness remains urgent and making sure we can work with our regional partners to address it.

is critical, so I look forward to that first meeting and seeing how we can continue to move forward and set up that regional framework for responding to the crisis.

Last week, I had another great meeting of the Audit Committee meeting.

Those meetings continue to be public so members of the public can tune into them.

Those resources are linked on my website and I think we will come out with some good recommendations later this summer as a result of that work.

I had several rounds of in-district meetings on Thursday and Friday with constituents all over District 7 on a myriad of different issues, and I really just want to do another shout-out to encourage folks, go on my website, sign up for those in-district office hours.

I really appreciate hearing feedback on what this council is doing and what the priorities are for my neighbors all over District 7. I had the great privilege of appearing on Tuesday of last week in a meet-and-greet on Zoom, happy hour meet-and-greet with The Urbanist, where we had a really good conversation on the evolving conversation around Seattle Greenways street closure proposals, pedestrian and bike improvements as people start going back to work, conversations around realizing Vision Zero and making sure that those transportation priorities remain a priority in a climate of increasing uncertainty around the budget.

And that was a really good exchange.

I would encourage everyone else here who hasn't had the opportunity to do a virtual happy hour with the urbanists to pursue it.

It was a very good conversation.

Otherwise, I don't have anything else to report this week and I look forward to another week of service here on the council where a lot of very interesting conversations around the challenges we face to help our neighbors experiencing homelessness will be discussed and fleshed out.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis for that report.

Really appreciate it.

Any questions or comments for Council Member Lewis on his report?

Seeing and hearing none, we're going to go ahead and move along.

Council Member Morales is next, please.

Hi, good morning, everybody.

I hope everyone had a nice weekend.

Let's see, we have a special committee meeting of the Community Economic Development Committee scheduled for Wednesday at two o'clock.

We'll be having an initial briefing and discussion on Council Bill 119779, which will establish a new university district business improvement area.

We'll have proponents of the BIA coming as well as central staff and the Office of Economic Development will be at the meeting to describe the proposal.

The next meeting for that process will be on May 27th at 9.30 and the committee will hold a required public hearing per Resolution 31944 and discuss any proposed amendments that come before the committee at that time.

This afternoon, we'll be introducing Council Bill 119796, which will formalize the city's current informal emergency encampment suite policy and run it through a public health lens.

I think everybody knows that as a former Human Rights Commissioner, I've had some deep skepticism about this practice in the city.

And so we've been working on different sweeps legislation in some in some way really since we started in January in order to help limit the widespread pandemic here why a potential wide-scale spread of COVID-19 and other communicable diseases particularly in our homeless community we're really trying to focus the legislation we had been working on to to be able to talk about this right now.

So given this the encampment removals that are happening that happened in Ballard, we know that there are encampment removals planned for this week too in my district.

We thought it was really important that we bring this legislation forward.

I do want to thank Council Member Sawant for co-sponsoring.

I want to thank Council Member Mosqueda for co-sponsoring and for really helping us shape this so that we can stay within the parameters of the proclamation.

Thank you for your strong support on that, Council Member Mosqueda.

Last week we also did ask the HSD director Jason Johnson for information about how the navigation team was planning to conduct referrals during this process in anticipation of the encampment removals.

We have not received answers to those questions.

All of us just received an email as well from the community police commission indicating that they had similar questions about what was planned and their questions have not been answered yet either.

So I will ask one more time in hopes that before the removals begin tomorrow, we get our questions answered.

I will say that I visited the sites over the weekend.

I found about 80 tents between the two areas that are being looked at, one on King Street and one on Weller.

So we know that there are at least 80 people who need somewhere safe to go if they're going to be dispersed this week.

So I want to know how many spaces are available for these neighbors?

Where are they?

How are they?

How many are tiny home villages?

How many are non-congregate shelters?

How many are for men or women or for couples?

I also want to know how it will be decided who gets offered which space.

So in other words, what is the matchmaking process to make sure that people who are being dispersed are referred to an appropriate location for them?

And finally, I want to know what resources are being used to ensure that the NAB teams are following CDC guidance for only dispersing homeless neighbors if there are individual housing units available.

We, so my expectation is that we get answers to these very important questions to help us understand how our public resources are being used to move people around, especially in light of the coronavirus.

Two things for the district.

Last week I toured Georgetown to see the traffic impacts on the community as it relates to the West Seattle Bridge closure.

Georgetown, as you may or may not know, has about 1,200 residents in the neighborhood, but there are 29,000 jobs in Georgetown.

And so even just without people coming through the neighborhood to come downtown to work, There's a lot of activity happening there and the neighbors are very concerned about the health impacts, the traffic impacts of having potentially, you know, tens of thousands more people coming through their neighborhoods.

So we will be continuing to work with SDOT to make sure that there are some mitigation strategies in place.

We also had a town hall with folks in the Mount Baker neighborhood to hear from them about issues that they are looking at.

Some of you may know there's an accessible Mount Baker project.

There's some infrastructure projects that are planned around sort of what I think of as the gateway into the Rainier Valley.

And so we want to make sure that whether they are housing projects or commercial projects, that we are centering the voices of our community members and making sure that we're doing that in a way that is equitable.

I also did hear from several folks over the last week about the stay healthy street closures.

People are really excited about this, excited to know that there are more opportunities to get out and ride bikes or walk.

There are a couple of places in District 2 where people are concerned about the particular street chosen.

So we will be following up with SDOT about making sure that there is still equitable access to community centers and and that seniors especially aren't negatively impacted by these street closures.

We will not be having district office hours this Friday.

This was supposed to be the weekend of my son's bar mitzvah.

We have had to postpone that but it is still his birthday weekend so we are taking Friday to, I don't know, figure out what we're going to do while we're all stuck at home together.

So that is my report for District 2. Thank you.

Thank you for that report.

Council Member Morales, any questions or comments on that report?

Okay, seeing and hearing none, we'll go ahead and move to, oh, there we go.

Yeah, no, I was trying to move slowly to allow people an opportunity to raise their hand.

I had my hand raised, but my video was awesome.

Yeah, I know.

We are still falling victim to technology.

So Council Member Verbal, the floor is yours, please.

Thank you.

I want to thank Council Member Morales for bringing forward this piece of legislation related to encampment removals and codifying some of the practices that the executive claims it is following during the COVID-19 crisis.

I want to also thank Councilmember Lewis for agreeing to hear it in his committee.

You know, I want to flag that a number of us under Councilmember Lewis's leadership back in April, April 3rd, following our last Select Committee on Homelessness meeting, We proposed to the executive a non-legislative approach of...

Lisa, we're losing you.

Sorry about that.

My internet connection is unstable.

Can you hear me now?

Yeah, it's better now.

Okay, good.

And so the letter sent to the executive back on April 3rd was proposing a way that we could work together, the council and the executive, in a way of providing sort of our policy preferences on a number of sort of levers that could be adjusted for the encampment policies that the executive currently uses that came out of the committee discussion.

We, to my knowledge, have not received any response to this April 3rd request to work in partnership with the executive on developing this new policy.

I think, as everybody knows, I have been, for years now, hesitant in passing legislation related to encampment removal policies out of a belief that it is the executive's responsibility to manage public land.

But given the fact that the executive has not responded to our requests to work on a revamped, non-legislative administrative policy, and given that there seems to be continued I am looking forward to working on this piece of legislation.

I wanted to share that perspective and that frustration of really sincerely and genuinely.

Let's do it again.

I think we got most of what you said, Council Member Herbold, there towards the end.

Sorry, we seem to be having a little bit of difficulty with your internet connection.

That's okay.

I think you got the point.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

And also just want to confirm and reiterate again, we know that this bill as introduced has gone through the enhanced review process for legislation.

and have received feedback from the law department that it is consistent with Proclamation 20-28.

I want to thank Councilmember Morales who spent a little extra time with the law department making sure that the legislation was complied with.

in compliance with Proclamation 20-28.

As a result of that compliance and as a result of the importance of this legislation and the significance of it in terms of impacts citywide, we have decided to refer that bill to the Select Committee on homelessness issues that is chaired by Councilmember Lewis, and I know that they have a regularly scheduled meeting next Wednesday, May 27th, and will rely pretty heavily on the bill sponsor and Chair Lewis to figure out what the work plan schedule will be for this particular legislation.

So I just want to make sure that as we are, want to make sure that colleagues, as we are continuing to move an inch towards June, that you all are sort of hearing from me that that will mean that we will have some level of reintroduction of items that go to the appropriate committee for consideration.

We will have some recommendations coming out of the city clerk's office here pretty soon that sort of give us all a clearer guidance on those issues, and I look forward to having a conversation with all of you about that in the coming months.

But I'm gonna go ahead and just make sure that you all, for now, know that this is being referred not to full council, but to the Select Committee on Homelessness for additional legislative and committee work and working sessions consistent with Proclamation 20-28.

So, Council Member Peterson, do you have a question?

Please.

Yes, thank you for referring that to committee.

This bill on encampments I.

I'm glad that Councilmember Morales is asking those questions of the Human Services Department.

And I appreciate Councilmember Herbold's comments about what we talked about a few months ago.

I'm very interested in understanding how the obstruction is defined and how that's being implemented.

I am a little bit concerned about legislating that.

I want to make sure that we're not, the bill doesn't We have a lot of work to do to make sure that we don't inadvertently authorize encampments in city parks, for example.

So I just want to look forward to digging into that.

And thank you for sending it to committee so we can do that.

Thank you, Council President.

There is one item today from the Finance and Housing Committee for your consideration on today's school council agenda.

That is Council Bill number one, which is Council Bill 119791. This bill appropriates the $1.4 million in federal grants related to COVID-19 emergency response to go to HSD for the purposes of shelter redistribution and de-densification with the intention for these funds to be used to get individuals into ideally non-concrete shelters for people experiencing homelessness and at risk of contracting COVID.

We appreciate the ongoing conversation that we've had with members from the executive team, especially Director Van Noble, and we understand that there are additional federal dollars that will be coming down for our consideration next week or the following week.

While 1.4 million is not a lot of money, we did hold back this amount in the CDBG funds that we authorized in a piece of legislation a few weeks ago.

The intent here was to hold back the 1.4, to have conversations about strategies to de-densify shelters, identify places for people to go that would be in less congregate settings, especially given the public health guidance that encourages us to consider safer spaces, non-congregate shelter spaces, for folks who are at high risk for COVID due to their age or underlying health conditions.

I did hear a significant desire from many who work with the homeless population for funding to go to staff pay, PPE, cleaning services, food services, so that all of the dedensification work could be appropriately staffed and implemented for the CDC guidance.

While 1.4 million is not a lot of money, I think it does help to begin the conversation that we do hope will be added to in the future weeks when we see additional federal dollars.

As folks know, the previous categories of funding that we looked at included CDBG, ESG, home funds, etc.

These were all part of the CARES Act funding, which had a bunch of different funding buckets.

Some of that could be used for rental assistance and some could not.

There were smaller amounts that were more defined based on existing programs.

So the concern at the time was that the CARES Act funding did not have the ability for us to maybe be more flexible down the road with dollars and trying to get folks into additional assistance, for example, through rental assistance.

We have learned that the Corona Relief Fund, which is $130 million, authorized under the CARES Act, did not go to all municipalities, but we did find out that we are able to now use the CRF funds for additional assistance to go to rental assistance.

So that should help us not have to make the Sophie's Choice between rental assistance and de-densification issues.

We really appreciate the ongoing conversation.

We know that there's going to be more federal funds from the executive and wanting to make sure that we did emphasize and do as much as we could at this early date to get folks into appropriate housing and de-densification strategies.

The 1.4 in this legislation would go to a host of different de-densification strategies, though it's not extremely prescriptive.

We are hoping to have ongoing conversations with the future dollars about how we can get more funding into pay for staff, PPE, cleaning, food services, and other safe housing options for those who are living unsheltered.

While the $1.4 million is not a ton of money, we are hoping that this, combined with future funds, will really make an impact for those individuals who are needing de-densification efforts and that we get funding from the Corona Relief Fund, $130 million, as much as we can out to the rental assistance programs.

And one again, thank folks at United Way who have also provided feedback over the last few weeks.

As we know, we want rental assistance to get out the door as much as possible, really trying to look both at prevention from falling into homelessness and helping to assist those who are currently experiencing homelessness during this public health crisis.

So as of right now, colleagues, the intent is to move that piece of legislation forward.

And again, I want to thank Director Noble for engaging with us and the various departments for their ongoing conversations.

There are no other items from today from the Finance and Housing Committee on today's full council agenda.

I just want to say a few comments about the bill that Council Member Morales just spoke about.

Really I think the intent here is to follow the CDC's guidance a few months ago prior to us working remotely.

I know Council Member Morales had a bill, I had a bill, a number of us were looking at ways to potentially respond to the COVID crisis, given that we knew we had the third highest number of folks who were living unsheltered in our city, in the entire country.

Trying to be proactive in responding to some of those concerns that we knew were coming with a communicable disease like COVID was really important.

We put that effort on hold, I think as many of you have talked about, with the hope that the commitment to not relocate folks would help in the interim and I think given the CDC's guidance and working with a handful of stakeholders across the city, it was clear that folks really desired to have a public health amendment to our current guidance under the COVID emergency so that any health-related concern that was cited first triggered coordination with public health and to ensure that there was an appropriate public health response to the degree that a public health crisis could not be mitigated or resolved, then we looked at individual rooms and temporary housing for folks who are currently living outside.

Just wanna underscore the CDC guidance has clearly said that, oops, I think I'm phrasing again.

Can you hear me?

Okay, I see now.

The CDC guidance has clearly said that it's very concerning if folks are currently living in encampments, if a sign gets posted that says that there's going to be a removal, people do tend to disperse into the community before removal teams come or the navigation teams come.

And I think the questions that Councilmember Morrell has asked about the capacity at shelters is an important one.

But even with the posting of the signs, we know that that can have the unintended consequence of causing people to disperse into the community, and we really have to prevent that, especially with the deadly communicable disease.

COVID is very different from HEPA.

HEPA, you can vaccinate people.

HEPA, you can help treat by doing public education, hand-washing facilities, etc.

If we're concerned that anybody has potentially shown symptoms of COVID or at risk of spreading COVID, We really want to make sure that we're doing everything we can in a preventative way to not create the unintended consequence of having people disperse into the community.

So this is, I think this is a hybrid bill that really attempts to try to get at these emergent public health issues.

And I want to thank the folks from the community who've been working with unsheltered populations and raising the concerns around how do we get more public health guidance in the criteria.

So thank you Councilmember Lewis in advance for the conversation.

I know this has been a conversation you've been really having at various levels as well and hoping for some clarification on the administrative side as we look at this crisis continuing for a few months.

Lastly, colleagues, I want to let you know about a forum.

We alluded to this at last week's meeting.

We are going to have an economic forum tomorrow, Tuesday, May 19th.

starting at 11 a.m.

If you don't already have a calendar invite in your inbox, you should.

We are also sending this out via our social media alerts for economic form and would like to make sure that folks have the chance to join via YouTube or a live stream.

We are also If you are interested in participating, I know a few council colleagues have said that they are interested in participating on the Zoom line due to OPMA.

We have to have limited numbers, so thank you, Council Member Sawant and I believe Morales, and if there's another one or two council members, I think maybe one more can join us.

You're welcome to just let us know, though, so that we don't violate OPMA, but others can definitely watch.

We're going to have the opportunity for folks to submit questions to two panelists.

We're going to have a panelist of economic experts who are coming to us from across the country.

We're going to have Misha Werschel, the Executive Director for Budget and Policy Center, Lenore Palladino, Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Policy at UMass, Derek Gruen, Executive Director of Front and Center, Shahr Habibi from In the Public Interest, a presenter from the Economic Policy Institute.

And then in terms of the crisis that is COVID and the pressing local needs, we'll have Michelle Thomas from the Director of Public policy and advocacy at the Washington Low-Income Housing Alliance, Colleen Echo-Hawk from Chief Seattle Club, Sean Van Eyck from Pro-Tech 17, and Beto Yarce from Ventures.

The theme of this forum is to look at the economic realities.

created and worsened by the crisis that is COVID.

So much of what we talk about is responding to the immediate public health crisis.

We also know that there's an economic crisis on the horizon, wanting to have a better understanding from the national to the local level on how this public health crisis is going to exacerbate existing inequities in our system and create additional economic hardship.

That is the focus.

So it's really from the perspective of getting prepared for the future budget and what we potentially have to deal with in terms of decreased revenue and increased need.

Thank you all for letting us know if you're interested in participating.

We want to have these conversations with the public at large as we think about the headlines that we hear every day about how this public health crisis is creating greater economic crises on the horizon, and that too could lead to public health concerns where people can't keep their job or afford a roof over their head or food on their table.

Thank you all.

If you haven't received the flyer from us, you should shortly.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda, for that report.

Again, I'm going to, I'm going to, we are halfway through here.

I'm going to reiterate a plea for brevity because it's been two hours and 45 minutes.

And I want to acknowledge that we have gone well over time for today's council briefing.

If we could work together to try to get through this as quickly as possible, that would be great.

Okay, so next, any questions or comments for Councilmember Mosqueda's report?

Councilmember Herbold, please.

Thank you.

I just want to flag the fact that although the legislation that Councilmember Mosqueda has on today's agenda was originally proposed as a way of spurring a conversation with the mayor's office around sheltering as a particular model of de-intensification.

The language in the legislation itself only requires that the funding be used for shelter redistribution and de-intensification.

It does not require the specific model of de-intensification.

Council Member Herbold, we're not able to, you're breaking up on us quite often.

Maybe you can try again.

Sure, how's it now?

That is better.

All right, I'm sorry, I know you're trying to get through this.

I just want to flag that the legislation in the bill only requires that the funding be used for shelter redistribution and de-intensification.

It does not require that those funds be used in a way that is non-congregate care shelter redistribution and de-intensification.

I also want to flag that the federal funds and the commerce funds that will be coming later can be used both for rent assistance as well as the purposes that this bill proposes.

We could have allocated these dollars to rent assistance and waited for funds to come later to serve this purpose.

But instead, we're doing the opposite.

We're going to move forward with legislation to fund shelter redistribution and de-intensification, and we'll use funds in the Commerce and Federal funding later to pay for the rent assistance funds that we had planned to, or the mayor had planned to allocate when she proposed this legislation.

But it is really important because I know the public is looking at this conversation around hoteling as a method to do de-intensification.

I just wanna, I don't want people to think that by passing this legislation, we have accomplished The goal that I think is still a goal of this council is to encourage the executive to embrace the idea of funding hotelling as a model of de-intensification rather than funding more congregate care facilities to de-intensify shelters.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's correct.

I'll be, I'll be careful with my wording this afternoon too, because, um, I think it's important to note that there is future funds coming and we want this to sort of be an indication.

Uh, I'll stop council member, um, or council president, but yes, council member Kerbel is correct.

And I appreciate that.

Um, great.

Thank you so much.

Any other comments or questions, uh, for council member Mosqueda on her report?

Hearing and seeing none, Council Member Peterson, the floor is yours.

Good afternoon, colleagues.

There are no items from the Transportation and Utilities Committee on today's agenda.

We have also canceled our committee meeting that would have occurred this Wednesday, May 20. This week, I'll be meeting with neighborhood restaurants in District 4 to hear about the experiences of small businesses as we move closer to Phase 2 of reopening our economy.

Regarding technology, the committee I chair is called Transportation Utilities Committee, and there's been a lot of attention on transportation.

bridges, transit, and also with utilities, including the recent completion of an audit and expansion of our discount programs during the COVID crisis.

My committee also includes technology, and the COVID crisis has exposed some disturbing disparities with access to technology in our high-tech city.

I believe technology, access to technologies is a social justice issue, and I plan to focus on this issue and share some thoughts on it in the near future.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson for that report.

Are there any questions or comments on Council Member Peterson's report?

Hearing and seeing none, we'll go ahead and move along.

And next up is Council Member Sawant.

The floor is yours.

Thank you, President Gonzalez.

Good morning, everyone.

I think it's good afternoon, everyone.

There are no items on today's City Council agenda from the Sustainability and Voters' Rights Committee.

The next meeting of the committee is scheduled for a special time this Thursday, May 21st at 6 p.m.

over Zoom.

On the agenda, we will be discussing the tax Amazon legislation proposed by Council Member Morales and myself to fund immediate COVID relief, and then public jobs, building affordable social housing, and a Green New Deal, which is an essential part of the recovery from the COVID emergency.

Next, we will hear from grassroots renter organizers discussing the movement for a full suspension of rent, mortgage, and utility payments, and also importantly, how they can get organized to fight evictions, organizing their buildings to fight evictions, which will very likely, there will be a massive wave of evictions, attempted evictions, once the moratoria are lifted and once the immediate crisis of the pandemic has been ended.

This item will include district reconstituents who are tenants of buildings that are owned by very wealthy individuals, but are managed by the megacorporation, Cornell and Associates, and hopefully we can learn lessons from how they have effectively gotten organized.

My office held a press conference last Friday alongside labor attorney Dimitri Glitson, who pointed out that telling city councils what topics they may or may not legislate on is not one of the governor's emergency powers.

I'll just quote Dimitri's words, quote, The governor has attempted to exercise the emergency power to prevent local government from doing their job, which is to evaluate and enact legislation.

It's actually a little shocking, and it's also clearly legally unsupportable if you take a look at the statute that gives the governor emergency powers, RCW 4306-220.

The governor has a lot of power to prohibit things in the interest of preserving and maintaining life, health, property, or the public peace, but telling city council what topics it can and cannot legislate about, what kinds of topics it can and can't have a public meeting about is clearly not necessary to help preserve life, health, property, or the public peace," unquote. However, even if he did have the authority to do that, the argument that the legislation to fund COVID relief and jobs recovery does not meet the requirement of being necessary to respond to the COVID-19 public health emergency, does not pass even the common sense muster, that excuse is only reasonable to big business who do not want to pay the taxes and to their political representatives. According to big business, it's never a good time to tax them for social needs. Even the worst recession since the Great Depression. And even though the tax is an extremely modest one, only on the top 2% of the corporations. I'll quote Dimitri Glitz and further quote, the argument that a virtual meeting violates the Open Public Meetings Act, OPMA, is simply not right. The purpose of the OPMA, of course, is to make sure that the public has access to and is able to observe agency meetings. In this case, is able to observe the city council. And as we all know, a meeting being streamed on Zoom that can be watched by thousands of people provides more public access than a traditional meeting held in City Hall that only People that can get off work, get downtown, and deal with parking can actually attend. No one can plausibly say that a virtual-only meeting breaches the OPMA. It precisely accomplishes the goals of the OPMA, and no court has ever even hinted that you can't have a virtual meeting. In fact, the Attorney General admits that all kinds of public meetings take place virtually by telephone or now by Zoom throughout the state. That is routine," unquote.

Having said that, of course, I support every effort to make changes to the governor's proclamation to enable municipalities to carry out work in the interest of ordinary people, though our movement is, of course, not going to remain stalled in any way.

So we will meet on Thursday at the Sustainability and Renter's Rights Committee at 6 p.m.

All council members are warmly invited to the committee, and I encourage you to join me in demonstrating that council does have the legal ability to take up legislation to meet the needs of working-class people.

Leonard Palladino, economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst with research expertise in fiscal policy and corporate stock buybacks, published an article last week and she spoke actually two weeks ago at our jobs press conference where we announced the very promising projections of job creation from our Amazon tax plan.

I suggested that she be invited to the forum Council Member Musqueda's office is doing tomorrow and I really appreciate Council Member Musqueda's office inviting Professor Palladino to speak at the Economic Forum.

This article from Professor Palladino, published in Barron's magazine, is titled, Seattle is considering an Amazon tax.

It is a model for taking back fiscal power.

And I'll just briefly quote from the article.

It says, in the aftermath of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017, federal corporate tax collection dropped sharply.

In the absence of reform at the federal level, states and cities should fairly tax corporations in order to avoid catastrophic austerity which would destroy jobs and prolong economic suffering well after the public health crisis has been resolved.

It is crucial to understand how a period of booming corporate profits left workers of these same corporations vulnerable to a loss of income.

Over and over again, major American corporations earning record profits have fought off efforts to raise wages of their lowest paid workers to a decent salary.

The need to make record shareholder payments was a common justification for squeezing employee compensation.

Corporations spent $6.3 trillion on the unproductive practice of stock buybacks in the 2010s.

This prioritization of increasing shareholder wealth all over over all other uses of corporate funds is a prime driver behind the increasing concentration of wealth among a very small segment of American households.

And that was a quote from the article.

I encourage everybody to read it.

But as I mentioned earlier, even the IMF is predicting a long term, as they call scarring to the livelihoods of the most vulnerable workers and is recommending public works programs that expand job opportunities and public tax progressive tax revenues, both of which are key features of our Amazon tax legislation.

As Council Member Morales mentioned, I'm really happy to co-sponsor the legislation on today's introduction and referral calendar to restrict the sweeps of homeless and campers during the COVID-19 emergency.

As I've said many times, the sweeps are inhumane and ineffective.

They cost millions of dollars a year to move homeless people from one street corner to the next only with fewer belongings and greater desperation.

those resources would be far better spent on affordable housing, tiny house villages or other services so that people actually have somewhere to move to and can have a faster transition to home and actually a transition to housing.

Our movement has been saying for years that suites are inhumane and ineffective and unfortunately Many efforts by the people's budget movement to move legislation have been blocked by council members in 2017 and 2018 and last year.

I hope those efforts will continue.

I'm happy to be a co-sponsor of this legislation.

It's a temporary restriction of sweeps.

during the COVID emergency which is obviously an important time, a crucial time to stop forcing homeless people to perpetually move.

However, we should also be clear this does not settle the question of sweeps and I hope council members will support making these extremely minimal restrictions on the sweeps permanent after the emergency.

Also on today's introduction and referral calendar is legislation that has prepared for my office to extend the zoning protections to prevent the destruction of Seattle's remaining mobile home parks.

Thank you to Councilmember Juarez for agreeing to sponsor this legislation.

The residents of the Halcyon Mobile Home Park have requested that the City Council extend the temporary zoning restrictions that have protected them from displacement over the last couple of years.

Councilmembers who were around the last few years will remember their moving public testimony, and the Council passed temporary zoning protections to provide time for the executives to do the analysis required to make those or other zoning protections permanent.

Unfortunately, That has not happened.

And so we will need a council bill for that temporary extension.

The legislation does require a public hearing.

It's my hope that we can hold that public hearing during the council meeting next week and then vote on this.

on these protections the following Monday, June 1st.

If there is not enough time to have the public hearing next week, then we should hold it at the council meeting on June 1st.

Given the standard 30 days for legislation to go into effect, that timeline will allow this extension to become law just before the current zoning protections are set to expire.

on July 10th.

And last but not least, my office is bringing forward legislation to amend the Seattle Municipal Code to allow for electronic petitions and electronic signature gathering for candidates and petitions.

We've been looking into this and we have heard from the attorneys and the National Lawyers Guild that Seattle has authority as a first-class city to set its own standards for petition and signature format.

and therefore has the authority to allow for an online format for petitions and signatures.

The COVID crisis, with the appropriate social distancing requirements put in place, additionally present extreme barriers to candidates and campaigns.

It's essential that the city adopt measures that support and strengthen democracy.

Therefore, in addition to the electronic petitions and signature gathering aspect, my office will also be looking into other measures to reduce barriers to democratic rights and potentially presenting other legislation in the weeks ahead.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant for that report.

Are there any other questions?

Oh, Council Member Lewis, please.

Thank you, Madam President.

I just have some comments on the report, if that would be in order at this time.

It is.

Now is the time for any other council members who have questions or comments on that report to do so now.

Well, thank you, Madam President.

I just wanted to respond briefly as a member of the Committee on Sustainability and Renters' Rights.

I appreciate and respect council members who want a sense of urgency in the inequity of our tax code and the need for new revenue to address a lot of the problems that we're facing.

I have informed her office, and I'm stating here today, that I'm not going to be attending that committee meeting.

to respond to the arguments that have been raised by Councilmember Sawant and Dimitri Glitzen.

I don't think there's any dispute that there's an argument to be made, and Dimitri is certainly making it.

Tim Eyman and Clint Didier are making similar arguments about the extent of the governor's authority.

Those are working through the courts.

There are arguments to be made.

I think it just comes down to how much personal risk we as a council and we as individuals are willing to face in really resting on those arguments, which I don't find compelling and don't believe a judge would find compelling in this state.

On the other end of the spectrum, the advice that we have received from Governor Inslee, Attorney General Ferguson, the Seattle City Attorney's Office, the council president in her memo that she distributed to all of us, the overwhelming majority of this council, including all of the lawyers on this council, has been a different analysis.

I just want to remind everybody, too, that we are open to individual violations of the OPMA.

I think that we are on notice, having received guidance from our lawyers in the Seattle City Attorney's Office, as well as having received the letter that was distributed last week by Council President Gonzalez of the city's analysis of the OPMA, which I personally concur in.

I think that given that notice, we would be particularly vulnerable to participate in activities that have been deemed to not comply with that analysis.

I will not be attending the meeting.

I just want to make that clear for the public and for my colleagues.

Thank you.

I just want to clarify for the benefit of all councilmembers and for the public that that's not how our council rules work as amended.

It has to be members of the committee that attend or don't attend in order to satisfy that quorum requirement.

even if non-committee members attended the committee meeting, if those council members are not members of the committee.

it does not resolve the quorum issues as required under our council rules.

So I just wanted to just clarify that for the record in terms of the council rules, given that there's been some inaccurate information pushed out to the general public about how our council rules work in relation to establishing or not being able to establish quorum.

So I just wanted to make sure that we're all on the same page as it relates to that particular component.

Thank you.

I don't agree that any inaccurate information has been provided.

I have not implied anything about quorum in any way.

In fact, since I don't agree with the legal assessment from the city attorney's office and the legal assessment that you all seem to be buying into, for me, that's not an issue.

I see this politically.

I hope that the council members who are are truly interested in pushing for progressive revenues and who have any, who don't agree with that legal assessment, which I don't agree with, will show up.

And for me, it's not a question of quorum.

That's a council rules question.

For me, it's a political question.

Who decides to, which elected representatives decide to come to this meeting in order to Make it clear that this is important that the, you know, not stalling, not allowing the movement to be stalled is important, and that boycotting city council meetings is not an option and that we should come so you know ultimately it's every elective representatives choice.

And I'm certainly not trying to make that choice for anybody.

You all have to make that choice for yourself.

But I don't agree in any way whatsoever that any misinformation was provided.

In fact, the misinformation has been all from the political establishment playing the smoke and mirrors game that somehow this will be illegal when there are so many examples of other legislation moving forward where similar arguments have been made that housing is essential for recovery, jobs are essential for recovery.

These words are in the findings for the and design review legislation that, in fact, Councilmember Resolution that Councilmember Lewis himself brought forward.

So again, these are political opinions.

These are not legal assessments.

And I would also quote from the Stranger article in which the reporter, Natalie Graham, says, I asked Lewis if he could point me to where he got that analysis.

Lewis reiterated his point while adding the law code and using a bit of Latin, but did not point out anything specifically and the stranger says nowhere in Inslee's proclamation does it say that the governor has that power.

So again it's how you read it and since there is no agreement on that I think it's a question of opinion whether you decide to come or not, but I certainly reject any idea that any misinformation came from my office.

And I will end by saying that I'm not surprised that the political establishment agrees that we cannot talk about taxing big business because it's absolutely massive opposition.

It's not for nothing that the Wall Street Journal has published two editorials against this.

I mean, Wall Street Journal is a bastion of the capitalist class that is based in New York City.

Why are they concerned about something small like this?

Because they know it can actually have a snowballing effect, just like the $15 minimum wage victory that we won from the movement had, where other cities will be inspired, because austerity is staring cities and the states in the face.

So, you know, you can make your choice.

I see, excuse me, I see Council Member Lewis has raised his hand, so please feel free.

yes thank you madam president just to correct the record on a quote in the stranger peace uh...

i just wanted safer for members of the public and members of the committee that has been updated uh...

the uh...

the bit of latin as as natalie put it uh...

was actually our cw forty three point oh six point two two zero g uh...

no sorry to g which is the r c w that i believe conveys the governor that power uh...

i did talk to natalie and she did update the story that is quoted in full there so i did just want to uh...

clarify that for the listening public uh...

obviously uh...

that interpretation of my response to natalie was something i wanted to correct given that i think it is important and i think it is something that the public should be engaged in and looking into on this discussion of the OPMA.

Sorry, I just realized that I was on mute.

I apologize for that.

So thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Any other comments or questions for the report by Council Member Salon?

Okay, great.

We're gonna go ahead and move along, because I feel like we've had lots of conversations, both in a very extended executive session on this issue and multiple times in open public sessions.

So we will go ahead and continue to move through the agenda for today.

And so let me pull up the roll call for this after.

the next person up is going to be Councilmember Strauss.

Please, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Council President, and I know over the last several weeks I've been working on some technical difficulties, so if for some reason I am splicing in and out, just let me know and I will switch over to my phone, which I also have ready to use.

There are no items from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on the introduction referral calendar today.

and there are two items from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on today's agenda.

CB 119790 and Clerk File 314426 both approve a subdivision located at 12522 15th Avenue Northeast in the Pinehead neighborhood.

This subdivision would divide one lot into 31 lots.

The hearing examiner issued a preliminary approval last year, and it is our role to confirm that the developer has met the applicable conditions I have been advised that they have met the applicable conditions, and we will be seeing this bill at full council today.

I have a few other updates.

I'll try to make them quick.

Last week, I did join the Green Lake-Wallingford Safe Streets meeting to answer questions about our two categories for Stay Healthy Streets.

We have the first 20 miles that have been rolled out and these residential streets were previously selected through a public engagement process.

SDOT is now shifting to engaging community partners and making them permanent.

We also have the keep moving streets, which also restrict through traffic at some streets near popular parks, one being West Green Lake Way, which I have mentioned that we've already been working on making improvements to.

These locations were selected in partnership with the Department of Parks and Recreation.

These restrictions are intended to be temporary and as DOT and parks consider temporary status moving to more permanent.

public engagement will occur.

My office has also began working on making restaurant streets.

As we know, restaurants will be reopening and need additional space to serve their customers.

They may be limited with their indoor space.

So I've already received a number of requests for restaurants to use right-of-way to operate their restaurants.

We'll be following up later this week with more information Just first blush at it, it seems very reasonable to open some streets up from Friday to Sunday to restaurants in, you know, there are locations throughout Fremont, Green Lake, and Ballard.

We know Ballard Avenue could be one of these locations.

And so I look forward to bringing more updates to you later this week.

Last week, I also participated in a panel with councilmember, King County Councilmember Jeannie Cole-Wells with the Ballard District Council.

It went very well, and I would direct anyone to look at that live recorded town hall-like panel that is still online from the Ballard District Council.

And my team's excitement for preparing for it, we will be scheduling a town hall shortly.

and I look forward to meeting with the residents of District 6 through a town hall.

We also met with North Seattle Services Coalition, like Councilmember Juarez, and looking at what services that they provide.

I look forward to working with my North Seattle colleagues to ensure North Seattle Services Coalition is able to receive the resources that they need required to meet the needs in the North End because the needs in the North End look different than other parts of the city and there are still significant needs.

Also yesterday was Sintendomai, 17th of May, which celebrates Norway's independence from Sweden.

Ballard hosts the largest celebration of Sintendomai outside of the country of Norway.

And this parade was canceled, which was very hard for many of us Ballard residents.

A little bit about St. Nemai.

This is a non-military celebration as the union with Sweden was dissolved in 1905, and that's when true independence occurred, while the Constitution was signed in 1814. So nearly 90, 89 years after the Constitution was signed was when true independence came to be.

And so this is a moment of excitement and solidarity with neighbors to really celebrate independence through the Constitution, not fighting any war or military action.

Ballard's sister city is Bergen, Norway, and This was a parade that I walked and biked in as an Adams Eagle in elementary school.

And as an adult, it's a celebration I can count on seeing almost everyone I know.

It's truly an annual reunion.

While I'm disappointed that we weren't able to meet in person yesterday, I'm already looking forward to next year's celebration.

I continue to have constituent meetings, and I want to thank the residents of District 6 who have taken time to discuss the issues they're experiencing in our community.

I hear you, and I'm continuing to use the power of my office to improve our district.

This week I will continue to have constituent calls and so if you would like to meet with me on an issue I'd love to chat with you.

Just circling up from other council members updates I'd also like to thank Council Member Juarez for your work on the Green Lake Community Center and the letter that you are circulating this afternoon.

I will join you in your caravan.

Thank you Council President.

Thank you so much Councilmember Strauss for that report.

Are there any questions or comments for Councilmember Strauss?

Okay, hearing and seeing none, we'll go ahead and move on to my report.

I have one item for today's full council meeting.

That is a resolution that appears on today's introduction and referral calendar.

The full city council will consider this resolution, which my office worked on in partnership with Council Member Mosqueda and immigrant, sorry, immigrant community leaders this afternoon.

The resolution was circulated on Friday afternoon before 5 o'clock p.m.

Consistent with our enhanced review process for legislation, the law department reviewed this legislation and found it to be consistent with Proclamation 20-28.

Colleagues, this resolution will call on Governor Inslee and the state legislature, as you'll hear in an amendment, that we are proposing to create the Washington Worker Relief Fund to deliver much-needed emergency assistance to our undocumented neighbors across the state of Washington, including here in the city of Seattle.

We have seen the federal government dole out trillions of dollars in assistance.

While I wish more of those dollars were going to people, to actual people and not corporations, the sad reality is that not a single dollar will benefit undocumented workers, many of whom are deemed as essential workers.

The Worker Relief Fund, if created, would help provide desperately needed assistance to immigrants that were intentionally left out of the system.

This resolution, at the request of immigrant community leaders, urges the governor and the state legislature to do A couple of simple things.

One would be to create a Washington worker relief fund through the governor's office with an initial allocation of at least $100 million to be administered by community-based organizations to provide emergency economic assistance to undocumented Washingtonians during the COVID-19 pandemic.

pandemic crisis.

And secondly, it would request that the governor's office work with caucus leadership to create a system that will provide wage replacement protection to workers who lose their jobs and are excluded from the current unemployment insurance systems, including undocumented workers, in order to protect public health and support workers and their families during Washington's economic recovery.

I want to send out a huge thank you to One America, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network, Latino Community Fund, Entre Manos, and many other organizations who are really leading this work across the state and have always been leaders in this space.

I am so proud to be able to advance this resolution this afternoon.

As the daughter of immigrant parents who early on immigrated to this country as undocumented immigrants and worked as migrant farm workers in Central Washington State, I understand and appreciate how important these public benefits are to the sustainability of our immigrant families.

And I think we have a very unique opportunity here to urge the state of Washington to look at a statewide system to really address these critically important needs for undocumented immigrants in our state who are just truly suffering.

And some of you may have looked at the Seattle Times coverage on this.

I want to thank Daniel Beekman for his attention to this particular issue where he highlighted a worker he referred to as Victoria who has resorted to, along with many of her neighbors, making and selling tamales in community in order to try to make up the wage loss that she has experienced as a result of losing her restaurant job, which was obviously in response to the governor's order for non-essential businesses to close.

So we know that there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people in the same situation as Victoria across the state.

and really think it is critically important to meet the needs of this population in particular.

So I will have more to say about that this afternoon.

We will be joined in full council during public comment by folks who are directly impacted and would benefit from this Washington Worker Relief Fund.

That will be done in a language other than English.

So for those folks who are going to call in this afternoon to provide public comment in a language that is not English, we're going to provide those folks with four minutes of public testimony, two minutes for the testimony, and two minutes for translation.

I just think that that's such an important part of making sure that we have language access and equity in our public comment process.

So I appreciate your all's indulgence as this afternoon we received some public comment from non-English speakers about the critical importance of this resolution and the statewide effort around the creation of a Washington worker relief fund.

Next, just wanted to give a few announcements related to education.

Wanted to make sure folks understood, were aware that in the early learning space, the Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families has announced that COVID-19 grant applications are now available to child care providers.

All licensed child care providers that serve children can apply for funds to support their business needs and expenses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

If you are a City of Seattle deal funded child care assistance program or Seattle Preschool Program or Seattle Preschool Program pathway provider, then technical assistance is available to you through our Department of Education and Early Learning.

Folks can email deal at education at Seattle dot gov to ask for technical assistance and being able to access those state grant dollars for our child care providers here in the city of Seattle.

Also wanted to make sure folks knew that the opportunity and access request for information funding process through the Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy is also now open.

The first technical assistance session is scheduled for today from 2 30 p.m.

to 4 p.m.

via Microsoft Teams platform.

You can find more information about how to sign up for that on my Twitter page at CML Gonzalez with a Z or you can go to deals website at www.seattle.gov forward slash education.

So really I'm hopeful that folks will take advantage of this opportunity to learn more about how to get funding for the early learning and broader education needs of kids throughout our city.

That is all I have for my report.

I do know, I think Amy Gore is still on the line.

She has held on till the very, very end.

And Amy, is there anything you want to add about the resolution that I just described at the top of my report, including the amendment?

No, I've got nothing else to add to that.

Thank you.

Well, thank you, Amy.

I know Amy worked really hard on this resolution.

And again, we ran the resolution, as I mentioned, through our enhanced review process of legislation and received the green light from the law department as it relates to its compliance with Proclamation 20-28.

So that being said, I don't have anything else to report.

Is there anything else for the good of the order?

Okay, seeing and hearing none, colleagues, I really wanna thank you for your stamina, if nothing else, in getting through today's council briefing.

It is now 12.46 p.m.

That is the last item of business on our agenda, so we are adjourned and I will see you all at noon.

I mean, sorry, 2 p.m., 2 p.m.

See y'all later.