Seattle City Council Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development & Arts Committee 5/14/19

Good morning, and welcome to the May 14, 2019, meeting of the Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development, and Arts Committee.

It is now 9.36 AM.

I'm Lisa Herbold.

I'm the chair of the committee, as well as council member representing West Seattle and South Park, District 1. On our agenda today, we have public comment, and the items of business following public comment include a report from the city auditor on a second phase of ongoing review of the city's handling of hate and bias crimes.

Then we will follow up that briefing with a discussion and possible vote on a piece of legislation that we have been working on since I believe it's summer 2018. I don't want to repeat that error.

And then we will have a discussion and vote on the lifting of a Seattle Public Utilities budget proviso on the Ship Canal water quality project.

And we will have an initial discussion with the appointment to the Office of Economic Development, Robert Lee, and review some of the answers to questions that the council provided and the answers that he provided in response.

And then finally, we'll wrap up the meeting with a update from the Office of Economic Development on our ongoing efforts to develop and implement a legacy business program.

So with that, I will approve the agenda and move into public comment.

Thank you, Newell.

We've got two folks signed up for public comment.

And Noel will keep time, you have two minutes, and he will let you know when you have a minute left, when you have 30 seconds left, and when your time's up.

So keep your eye on him, please.

We have Dennis Saxman, followed by Damon's, I believe it is, Dearzon.

Dennis.

Hello, I'm Dennis Saxman from Capitol Hill, and I'm here to speak in favor of the malicious harassment reform.

And it's just that I think you should add some proviso or provision that city officials will be held to a higher standard.

Because I'm in a situation now with the city department.

I've filed two grievances, and it seems to be getting worse.

I've had disparaging comments made about my race, my gender, my sexual orientation.

I'm astounded.

I've been told that this this person said I've spoken with numerous city departments who said you are a serial complainer who never has anything constructive to offer and your office knows that I got 2,779 more people on the UDP program based on my activism and I got this council to change city policies so that HIV positive people were qualified for housing.

I have been in this program for nine years with the city.

I cannot believe the way the harassment has stepped up in the Department of Neighborhoods of all places in the P-PATCH program.

And I'm just putting the city on notice.

I think your city officials should be held to a higher standard.

And it's really hard to figure out what's going on because you know how people love to dissemble in this city.

And I am really fed up.

Thank you.

I'm sorry you're having these experiences.

Thank you for testifying.

The second person signed up to testify.

Again, I believe it's, correct me please, Damon's Derizon.

My name is Dimester Ramzan.

I came before this committee a couple months ago.

I had asked for some follow-up, and I still haven't gotten any follow-up regarding some of the issues I'm experiencing.

Thankfully, one of the things that is here today might actually help in the long run, and that's the new hate crime ordinance.

I've experienced discrimination at the hands of city contractors and in city housing in a lot of ways.

And it's been very hard feeling like I'm being ignored a lot of the times when it comes to these issues.

I've called, I've come in person now again for now the third time on this specific issue, hoping to get some attention and some assistance.

And it's really kind of disheartening when it comes down to feeling like you're being ignored.

when you're being Dismissed and you're not really being heard and I know hopefully you know with some of the the City Council seats coming up that maybe they'll pay attention a bit more since it's getting closer to that time So I'm asking you if you can you know commit to follow up more on some of these issues regarding civil rights discrimination harassment, but particularly this committee and Working with me.

You know to work on some illegal actions by City contractors and hopefully resolve some of the issues and

There's several staff with the Office of Civil Rights in the room today.

The council isn't the enforcement body, but we would love to put you in touch with the folks who do enforce our civil rights laws.

So I'm sorry for that not happening before.

Thank you.

All right, moving into the items of business.

Agenda item one is review of hate crimes prevention, response, and reporting in Seattle phase two report.

I'll see you right there.

Thank you for joining us.

Let's start with introductions.

Lieutenant Michael Keba, I oversee the Homicide and Assault Unit and oversee the biased crime investigations.

Fantastic.

Thank you all for being here today and thank you for this really, really important ongoing body of work.

And thank you for, in particular, SPD's collaboration with the City Auditor.

As mentioned, this is an ongoing body of work.

It dates back to a time when I was not on the council, led by council members Licata and Rasmussen.

And I think the value of the auditor's recommendations combined with the implementation of those recommendations by SPD is part of what has brought us here today.

So again, I really appreciate that.

Who would like to kick off?

I'll just very brief introduction and I want to thank you councilmember herbal for asking our office to do this work I think it's really important work and with the events in the country and The increases in at least reported hate crimes.

I mean, it's just a good a good thing to focus on nowadays.

So I want to thank you for your leadership role in asking us to do that work.

I just want to remind the viewing audience that if they want to see our report, you can go into our website at www.seattle.gov slash city auditor and this report that Melissa will be talking about is there.

So without further ado, I'd like to turn over to Melissa Aldison, the auditor in charge of this project.

Thank you.

This is the last phase of our audit of hate crimes in Seattle.

And before I start, I just wanted to acknowledge the people that we worked with on this project, particularly Detective Beth Waring from SPD, Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Mike Hogan from the King County Prosecutor's Office, and then the City Attorney's Office.

These people do really important work for the city in combating and prosecuting hate crimes in Seattle, and we appreciate the time that they spent with us on this project.

Also, shout out to my colleagues, Claudia Groshader and Jane Dunkel, for their collaboration.

So this slide shows the five things that we're going to talk about today.

First, we're going to look at hate crime statistics, then prosecution data, then a geographic analysis of hate crimes in the city, then we'll review some results from a survey that we did, and then finally look at a couple of recommendations related to data tracking.

This graph shows reports of hate crimes and hate incidents in Seattle.

Council Member Herbold, you requested this audit because hate crimes have increased in the last few years, and we can see that increase very clearly here.

The colors on each of the bars represents the three different kinds of categories that SPD uses to track hate crimes.

Malicious harassment is there at the bottom, also called hate crimes and bias crimes.

And I'll use those terms interchangeably.

In the middle are crimes with bias elements, and those are crimes that involve bias, but bias was not the root motive of the crime.

And then at the top are non-criminal bias incidents.

Those are incidents involve bias, but no crime took place, and that's usually in the form of derogatory or offensive comments.

Now, we don't know how much of this increase is because of an increase in the community's willingness to report these crimes or how much is actually an increase in crime taking place.

We know that SPD, particularly Detective Beth Waring, has done a lot of outreach to immigrant communities and other groups.

Also, Officer Jim Ritter has done a lot of outreach through SBD's Safe Place program to the LGBTQ community.

So there very could well be an increase in willingness to report.

But then also we know that in major cities in the United States, they've seen an increase in hate crimes.

Also in the state of Washington, there's been an increase in hate crimes as well.

So it's possible that this increase is due in part to both of those reasons.

This graph shows the top four offense categories, and by that I mean the underlying crime that took place, since a hate crime is essentially another crime, like assault or vandalism, that has a bias component.

And so here we can see that assaults accounted for the largest offense type.

And within that category of assaults, a racial bias was accounted for the highest percentage.

And then of that, crimes against African-Americans were the highest.

So can you help me understand how that 524% corresponds with the previous slide, which looked like a, it looked like crimes, unless assault, Which of those four categories are considered crimes on the page?

Right.

This includes all three of the previous categories that you saw on the previous slide.

So of those four categories, which of those four categories are considered crimes?

Included on the last slide in the category.

Oh.

a malicious harassment, which is a crime with a bias element.

Right.

Or motivated by bias.

Yes.

So if I'm understanding your question, it would be assault, harassment, and threats would be considered crimes.

All right.

Correct.

Correct.

All right.

And then this last graph shows the top four bias categories for the time period that we looked at.

And then we can see that crimes with a racial bias accounted for the largest number.

And then also, again, crimes against African Americans were the highest within the racial bias category.

So I also wanted to mention that the data that we used for the last three graphs is all publicly available on SBD's website.

It's updated about once a month.

It's fairly granular, and it is interactive.

And it has enough data in it to answer the most common questions that one might have regarding hate crime reports.

And also the result of a prior set of recommendations, the fact that there is this public-facing dashboard.

Not that you guys wouldn't have implemented something like that before, but it is part of this ongoing body of work.

Transitioning to prosecution data, unlike SBD's Bias Crimes Dashboard, we did not find that prosecution data was as easily accessible.

We wanted to follow the path of hate crimes through the system to see what the end result was.

And so to do that, we had to review case records for all of the cases that were referred for prosecution within the period of our review.

And this is mostly King County Prosecutor's Office data, as most of these crimes were prosecuted at the felony level.

So the 398 number at the top are the total number of hate crimes that were reported to SPD, and we can see that SPD referred about a third of these.

And then moving down at the end, we see that there were 37 convictions of malicious harassment.

And though 37 is a long way from the 398 reports that SPD started with, there are many factors, like most crimes, that can affect the prosecution and the ability for prosecutors to prosecute.

This can be related to evidence, even the ability to identify and locate a suspect, because we know a lot of these crimes are interactions between strangers.

It could be related to witness participation and then victim participation as well, because hate crimes can be very traumatic to victims.

They may not be interested in prosecuting.

So of the 398 SPD reported cases of malicious harassment, do we have information that, so all of these cases have an underlying crime?

in addition to the bias element.

Do we have information that shows of the 398 cases, how many prosecutions for the underlying crime occurred?

I'd be interested to see how that tracks, whether or not what's dropping off is the malicious crimes prosecution, or if the entire charge, including the underlying charge is dropping off as well.

Yes, that's a very good point.

In our population, we only looked at crimes that were referred or prosecuted as malicious harassment.

So it would not have captured crimes that were marked as malicious harassment by SPD, but then referred under a different crime category.

I'm not sure I understand that answer.

Is it true that the 398 cases here have an underlying crime associated with the bias element?

Yes.

So of those 398 cases, what percentage of those received convictions for the underlying crime, not the malicious harassment charge, but the underlying crime?

Well, the data that we looked at were crimes that were referred as malicious harassment, not as another crime.

So the way that would include, for example, it would include an assault, but it wouldn't have been referred as assault.

It would have been referred as malicious harassment.

And Melissa, I don't know, just jumping in here, that 87 number, because I know some that were prosecuted as malicious harassment, I know there were some that the prosecutors actually decided to convict the person, but not on the basis of malicious harassment, right?

Didn't some of those change in mainstream?

And maybe Detective Waring can offer some insights on that.

Yeah, I had a couple of clarifying questions, but also a comment.

So the 398 number that we see up there, that represents all cases that could possibly meet the statute.

Oftentimes those are cases where we have no suspects and no leads.

So just because they land in that category and they're categorized that way does not mean that they're solvable, basically.

And the other question that I had for you, Melissa, is oftentimes, you know, we may have a case that does not go over as a malicious harassment because ultimately upon full investigation, we don't actually have probable cause for that particular charge.

So sometimes those go over as a harassment, as a threat, as a malicious mischief, any number of other crimes.

Because we may not, we may lack probable cause, right?

And my other question is, so were those included?

And my other question is, with your numbers, when you talk about cases being prosecuted as malicious harassment or accepted for prosecution, are we talking about cases that include not only those malicious harassment cases, but also those cases where they've actually been charged with a different, more applicable crime?

Does that include cases where they've pled guilty?

Does that include cases where, you know, a malicious harassment charge may have, you know, may have taken a plea on an assault?

So there's just a, there's a lot of, There are a lot of outcomes I think that I want to know if those were also addressed.

Yes, that's absolutely correct.

It does get a little complicated and there are a lot of outcomes and we tried to simplify it here but in doing so we lose a little bit of the nuance of that process.

So in the second bar there where it says 10 of these were referred as another crime, that represents the 10 cases for that period that SPD referred not as malicious harassment, as a different crime, and then the prosecutor's office decided to prosecute as malicious harassment.

The challenge for us is to prove the motivation or the intent of the offender.

And when you deal with the state level charges, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, other applicable state charges, there's no counterpart in the municipal court system law department to charge those.

So then if you sent it over, there may be a bias motivating factor in the underlying crime that would have to be addressed at sentencing.

And the prosecutors have a way of doing that.

And I'm sure that happens more often than not.

Okay.

Thank you.

So for all the reasons that we discussed, you know, given the complication of this data, we can't look at these results alone and evaluate how the city is handling these crimes.

Justice, for the viewing audience, if you go to page 9 of the report, there's some text there about cases that are referred for prosecution but are not accepted, you know, and there are a whole, there are a lot of reasons why that occurs.

We make three recommendations to SPD, the City Attorney's Office, and the King County Prosecutor's Office related to improving the quality of and access to prosecution data.

And I just want to mention that these are abbreviated versions of the full recommendations, which are in our report.

And the first is for SPD to improve how they document which cases were referred for prosecution.

In their old records management system, there were some limitations on how they could display that information.

And so now that they're implementing a new system, they have the opportunity to make that improvement.

The next recommendation is for SPD to document the reasons why cases were not referred for prosecution.

So this would help give the city reasons behind the two-thirds of cases that don't ever make it to the prosecutor's office.

And then the last recommendation on this slide is for the City Attorney's Office and the King County Prosecutor's Office to publish prosecution data.

They'll need to make some changes as to how they document it in their system, such as including bias category and some other fields.

But we believe that providing prosecution data and summarizing it on a regular basis would provide value to the agencies involved in this work and also be of interest to the public.

Should, since there's a recommendation that SPD document why hate crimes are not referred to prosecution, should we also have a similar recommendation for the prosecutor side, both county and city, for documenting why in those cases that, or in those instances that cases are referred by SPD, why the prosecutor might not take them?

My understanding is that SPD and the City Attorney's Office and the King County Prosecutor's Office collaborate very well on that part of the process.

There are not very many declines that we saw, and our understanding is that the Prosecutor's Office would return back that information to SPD as a feedback loop so SPD knows why the case is not going to move forward.

So then is the idea, again, this is, some of these recommendations are about transparency and having good information available to the public and advocacy groups about why certain cases, as well as victims, aren't taken.

So should it be instead, SPD should document why hate crimes are not referred for prosecution and why in those instances that they have been referred, why they weren't prosecuted.

I'm just, I feel like there's, we're missing a piece there that's really important.

For the public?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's very fair, yeah.

May I also make a comment about recommendation number two?

Absolutely.

We do document why crimes are not referred for prosecution.

We have codes that indicate why a case was closed if it wasn't assigned.

These investigations can be complex.

So we do document that.

Oftentimes, it's in the detective's report why a case took a particular track.

Almost always, if a suspect is arrested or a detective is assigned to it, there is a reason.

It may not correspond to a button or a code, but it's there.

So is the recommendation I get that you do document the reason for why not prosecuting.

Is the recommendation though that those reasons sort of be teased out of the reports and publicly reported in a way that is digestible to the general public?

I think that it would be real cumbersome to do every single case in that manner.

However, we do a biannual report and we do report out to the chief of police and it's a public facing document.

The thing that people have to recognize is that sergeants assign cases based on solvability factors, the severity of injury, the impact to the community, and they determine which cases to pursue.

A lot of times it's on the willingness of the victim to go forward, right?

And they're participating in the criminal justice system.

Existing witness statements, statements by the suspect, video, physical evidence, and the law and the filing standard really weighs heavily on our ability to send that charge over.

And jurisprudence requires us to make sure we have the elements of the crime.

We can't just send everything over.

That would be subjecting someone to a malicious prosecution and we can't be in that situation.

So we have to have solid cases that are winnable.

I get that.

Does the City Auditor want to make a little bit of clarification based on SPD's response to that recommendation?

Yeah, what I would just say is in reading Chief Carmen Best's response, written response, which can be found in the report, we were pleased that the Police Department is going to try to do everything they can to provide more information to the public about, you know, that funnel explaining why it goes from 398 to 37. And I know part of this had to do with your system, the Mark 43 system.

I believe that the police department is switching to the records management system.

Hopefully, we'll be able to help in that regard.

So, and, but I know as the detectives are pointing out, you know, things get really complicated when you get in the weeds and, but we're going to continue to follow up on this recommendation to see, you know, what happens with it.

So, that would be my comment.

Hopefully, you know, we can work out some of the technical details can be worked out so that it can be as transparent as possible to the public.

Thank you.

The police department has really appreciated participating with the city auditor's office through the phase one and phase two of this review, particularly as it gives us an understanding of what The underlying concerns might be to have a little more understanding of what the decisions that are made.

In our outreporting to the public, it's easier to look forward and maybe improve the product going forward than spending many hours going backward.

I believe, although the focus here wasn't on underlying crime, but statistically, there's a far more numbers of cases prosecuted and charged and convicted based on underlying crime than there is the actual malicious harassment charge itself.

That's the thing I was trying to get a little bit of a handle on.

Absolutely.

Understanding your sort of on the ground experience and being able to compare those numbers.

Right.

And I'd like to mention that we have no reason to believe that that one-third number is a bad thing either.

And so hopefully, you know, we, our recommendations, we try to provide more information so that in the future we can better understand what, you know, if that's an actual good place to be, if one-third is what it is because of the different barriers to prosecution.

The third body of work that we did was a geographic analysis of hate crimes in Seattle.

And we contracted with Dr. Tim Thomas from the University of Washington to analyze hate crime data.

And what he did is he took SPD reports of hate crimes and hate incidents, he combined it with census data, land use data, and neighborhood racial data to understand how hate crimes are concentrated in the city.

His full report is attached to our audit, but I'll just highlight a couple of his findings here.

This is a map of South Seattle.

The dots are hate crimes and incidents.

And the background colors of the map represent the different land use zones in the city.

And we can see clusters.

Here we go.

We can see clusters along California Avenue here, along Delridge, and then over here, Rainier Avenue South.

Dr. Thomas found that about half of hate crimes are occurring in mixed use and multifamily zones.

And he thought this was significant because these two zones are typically located next to each other.

And as we can see on the map, they tend to fall along major streets and transit routes.

Related to that, when we looked at prosecuted hate crimes, we found that almost a quarter occurred on a bus or at a bus stop.

So we know that that's an area that we should be aware of.

Dr. Thomas told us that these high traffic areas, where people are living in apartments or going shopping or riding transit, sees a lot of interactions between strangers and diverse groups, and that could lead to more hate crimes.

The other finding I wanted to mention from Dr. Thomas' analysis is related to neighborhood racial diversity.

This is a map of North Seattle, and the background colors represent the racial makeup of different neighborhoods in the city.

Dr. Thomas found that hate crimes are happening along the edges of racially diverse neighborhoods.

And so that would be where two different colors on the map meet up with each other.

The exceptions to this are in dense parts of the city, like Ballard here and Greenwood and the U District.

But in less dense parts of the city, that's where Dr. Thomas saw this bordering effect.

So his full report is in an appendix of our report and Dr. Thomas said he's happy to come present to council in more detail if there's interest.

Yeah, I think this in itself is a fascinating topic.

I'm really glad that we were able to find somebody to do this work.

And I feel like I'm not sure whether or not the recommendations of the city auditor addresses any of these particular findings.

But I know my interest in asking for this work to be included was really to begin a conversation or maybe continue one that SPD has already been having about how to use this information to do hate crimes related enforcement prevention targeted in areas that are identified as at high risk because of these socioeconomic factors colliding.

I think it's really interesting work and my original request about this was related to the changing demographics of communities.

So communities that maybe were once predominantly people of color, whether or not we see more activity there or neighborhoods that were once predominantly white neighborhoods, whether or not we see activity there and whether or not We really need to strategize our policymaking to consider the impacts of development on these really heinous acts in our city.

I want to thank you, Councilmember, for inviting this review.

It's really important.

And when you talk about neighborhoods, I think the one factor, too, that affects everywhere in the city are the social dynamics of mentally ill or chemically addicted folks.

And so this is one category and other crime categories as well, where at least on a monthly basis, there's more than 40 percent of the offenders who we identify that have those those challenges.

And so We know that if they're chemically addicted, or mentally ill, or off their medications, they're acting out.

And it's not an excuse for the behavior, but it is an underlying factor that we have to consider when we talk about resources and community response.

Thank you.

Council Member Bryant.

I really appreciate these maps and the analysis.

On the surface, it feels like the living situations are driving some of these interactions, but the situations we described that are maybe triggering these things are the exact, you know, line up with the plans that we're trying to encourage for the city, right?

We want to see less segregation in our city as opposed to more.

We're certainly doing a lot more mixed-use types of development, and so, Assuming that we will continue down that path, which I see no reason, I still think there's a lot of benefit to all that, and recognizing that as the demographics of neighborhoods change, what we see is that hate crimes go up.

What are the things that we should be doing to become that city we want to be without putting a ton of people at risk?

And I heard one thing saying that there's a disproportionate amount of these are happening from certain segments of the population.

for other conditions, and so we have an ongoing body of work to do to make sure we have the support and the treatment for folks that are, you know, the 40% you identified.

But are there, does the research talk about, like, you know, as, you know, even in places that are, that historically have been very white or still very white, but we also know the demographics are changing throughout the country, including these neighborhoods.

you know, what should we be doing as a community to recognize that these tensions may come up and how do we act and respond to that and how do we, you know, how do we look at these, I mean, that to me signals that these bars are going to continue to increase if our development patterns continue the way that we're designing them to continue.

What are the interventions that we can do to turn them around?

Yeah, just from our perspective, what we were focused on here, Councilman O'Brien, is information because, and you need information first to see if you have a problem, you know, and then once you recognize or identify the problem, then you can think about the interventions, you know.

So I don't think our office is really in a, well, I'm going to defer to Melissa if she's done any literature research that might touch on some things that could be done, you know, to address the situation that you've described.

or leave it to SBD to see if they have any ideas.

But I think, you know, what we really try to focus on is like, do we have a problem?

And you've made a really good observation, like, you know, as we get more dense and we embrace density, we may see more of these situations that Dr. Thomas's research has shown us.

So what are we going to do about it?

Because it makes it more probable that we're going to have these issues.

I'll just mention from Dr. Thomas' report, he has some thoughts and theories from research as to why we might be seeing some of these patterns.

But he acknowledged that more work would have to be done in order to confirm if the reasons behind those clusters that we were seeing.

And then once we understand those reasons, then we can maybe focus on shaping prevention efforts tailored to address those.

And just with regard to prevention, one of the things I want to point out about those graphics is that we're talking about crimes that occurred over a period of, I believe it was four years, correct?

Four or five years.

One of the challenges that we have for prevention in this particular category of crime, if we isolate it, is that the frequency of crimes occurring within a compressed time span or in the same location are actually very small.

That was a request that I had of our crime analysis unit, and I received a report back that indicated, you know, throwing more police officers at this particular type of crime in this particular area wouldn't actually prevent crime.

So I think, you know, one of the things to put in perspective, however, is a lot of the hot spots that we're showing are hot spots where we have lots of other types of crime, where additional enforcement is occurring.

And I, you know, I also want to point out our level of enforcement, when we do get a malicious harassment crime, I believe is I think three times the national average.

If I'm not mistaken, I think you indicated it was something like 12% and I think we're at like 30, 35. on our average.

Right.

I believe what you're talking about is the percentage of perpetrators that were arrested after a malicious harassment case.

So with respect to those types of crimes, I think we're doing a good job of following up with the reporting that we do get.

And our reporting rates are very high, certainly compared to other jurisdictions all around the country.

One of my goals in this position that I'm in is to ensure that we're getting the maximum amount of reporting that we can get, which is tough because one of the things we know about bias crime statistics is it's almost always the tip of the iceberg.

And when I'm doing these, you know, all the data collection and aggregation and analysis that I do, I'm looking for holes.

I'm looking for places where, you know, I'm hearing anecdotally that we're having additional crimes, you know, groups targeted in particular.

And I'm comparing it to our rate of reporting.

And I'm really trying to tailor our outreach to ensure that we're reaching those populations that might be less likely to report.

So if there are things that we can do to prevent crime, or if we have a particular offender that we can hold accountable, I want to make sure that we're doing that.

Detective Waring in her position as a biased crime coordinator has done a lot of outreach to the immigrant community and non-speaking people, and that way, they understand how to report and what's important to report.

And she's also opened up a door to our victim population that's homeless and including Mary at Mary's Place and doing some intervention work there.

And I believe that has also contributed to the reporting.

Fantastic.

Thank you for that proactive work that you're doing to reach those communities.

And our bigger program, our Safe Place is well known and that's kind of spread throughout the country.

So Detective Jim Ritter and And that effort has really taken hold here in Seattle as a way to protect potential victims.

Council Member Wright.

Like so many of the problems in our society that ultimately end up on the police department's radar, they're created upstream by so many different areas where we're not doing the good work that we need to be doing.

I want to just acknowledge that I really appreciate your efforts to help us get this data.

And obviously, when there are individuals or hotspots and the police can do things to, you know, help minimize the exposure folks are having, that is, you know, outstanding.

We want to figure out ways to support that.

But I'm also really interested in looking forward to think about what are the things, what are the broader things we can do.

You mentioned there's a tip of the iceberg.

And I look at these numbers and, you know, the absolute numbers, you know, for a city that's, you know, three quarters of a million people, you know, aren't, you know, I don't know that it's massively changing things from just these numbers.

But I imagine that there's a lot of other things that are happening in our community that maybe don't even rise to the level of crimes, but are still discomforting to individuals.

And how do we, as a city, you know, I'm really interested in what are the types of interventions we can do to recognize that as our city changes, as demographics changes, people from around the world come here with different cultures and backgrounds, how do we get along together?

And if we can figure that out better, we'll have fewer crimes, because there'll be fewer incidences that hopefully rise to that level.

But it will also, in the process, just hopefully make our city a much more welcoming city and limit other tensions that show up in different ways throughout our community.

And so I'm interested.

I appreciate, David, your comments.

that what we've done to date is really try to understand what the data is telling us where it's going.

And I feel like there seems to be a pretty clear trend.

And there seems to be some analysis that shows what we think is maybe driving that.

And I'd be interested in figuring out what the city can do to put some resources into or on our work plan to understand, okay, now that we understand what's going on, what are the things that we should be thinking about?

How do we get, you know, if there are best practices out there that we can, or programs we can implement, let's replicate those.

If it's like this is kind of a new field and we need to find some people to do some research to help inform some things you might want to try, let's figure out what that is too.

The fourth body of work that we did was to survey community organizations, asking them about their views on hate crimes.

We had 53 organizations participate, and this included advocacy organizations, faith-based organizations, service providers.

And from their responses, we had three main takeaways.

The first is that hate crimes are a big issue and that some people are not reporting them.

About half of the organizations that responded to our survey said that hate crimes are a significant issue to the people in their community and the people that they serve.

And most of them said that they knew someone that had been a victim of a hate crime within the past six months.

And 35% said that at least one of those hate crimes that they were personally aware of was not reported to SPD.

And then at the bottom of this slide, we list the most commonly reported reasons for not reporting a hate crime.

So as it relates specifically to those reasons that are listed here, I feel like our community has done things both as far as policy and as far as resources to provide support to victims to try to ameliorate some of these issues.

For immigration status, SPD does a great job of letting it be known that it is the law of the city.

Police officers do not ask about immigration status.

We have victims support organizations that help provide some assurances and the support necessary to, you know, not guarantee that somebody isn't going to be subject to retaliation, but to lessen the likelihood of that.

You know, again, as it relates to translation services, what are we not doing that we need to be doing?

Because I feel like we have knit together a bit of a framework for support for more people to come forward, but it's not landing home with people.

I mean, that's, you know, 19 of the organizations surveyed know people that were victims and did not report a crime.

That's significant.

Right.

I should mention that, as Detective Warren mentioned, with hate crimes, there will likely always be underreporting.

There will be some people that do not feel comfortable reporting to law enforcement.

And so perhaps in those instances, we as a city should provide other ways for people to report those crimes through community organizations, through maybe other departments.

So I think that The survey that we did and the results from that show that there are opportunities for us to do more and perhaps in a different creative way.

Yeah, and I would just say this is like a lot of complex public policy issues.

You just got to keep working on it.

You're never going to get, I mean, it's going to be rare to get perfection, but just keep working at it.

I know Detective Waring spent a lot of time in the community talking to communities that traditionally may have been resistant to reporting to law enforcement.

I think you just got to, SPD has to just keep doing that.

The city has to keep doing it.

Office of Civil Rights has to say, everyone has a role to play and we just have to keep working the problem.

I'm just interested in particular on the immigration status piece.

Did you find that of the 19 organizations, of those that said that they knew victims who did not report a hate crime because of immigration status, were those organizations aware that SPD in investigating a crime and talking to a victim of a crime does not about immigration status?

Were those advocacy organizations aware of that?

Because if those advocacy organizations don't all universally spread that to the folks that they work with, then that seems like a really good place to start.

I'm not aware if they were aware of that.

But again, getting that message out, I guess, you know, the more that's repeated about public official in this forum and other forums, you know, just keep trying to get the message out and hopefully people respond.

The second theme from our survey that we saw is that some people can be especially vulnerable to hate crimes.

Organizations frequently mentioned people with disabilities, people who are homeless, people who have limited English proficiency, and people from immigrant communities as having an increased risk of being a victim with also increased barriers to reporting to law enforcement.

So for example, eight of the organizations that responded to our survey were aware of an anti-disability hate crime occurring within the last six months.

But in the past seven years, SBD has only received 10 reports of anti-disability crimes.

And we know from the U.S.

Department of Justice that people with disabilities are two and a half times more likely to experience violence.

So this is definitely a population that should receive particular attention.

People who are homeless can also be vulnerable.

And in Seattle, reports of anti-homeless crimes have increased from four in 2017 to 17 in 2018. And then finally, people from immigrant communities were mentioned as being targeted.

And as you mentioned, Council Member Purple, despite SBD not ever asking about a person's immigration status, it was still listed as the top reason for not reporting.

The last thing I want to highlight from the survey is that many organizations requested more help from the city in combating hate crimes.

And I'll just mention a few of these on the slide here.

People asked for a better understanding of the reporting process and what is involved.

They asked for follow-up information on how reports get resolved.

tips on how to prevent hate crimes, how to respond safely if you're a witness or if you're being victimized yourself, how to recognize a hate crime, those things.

And then also support for victims that may be hesitant to report because of fear of retaliation of the offender or fear of revealing private information about themselves.

Much like we have for victims of domestic violence.

Is there a potential for somebody within the police department working for you, Detective Waring, to act as that role, as victim's advocate?

Yes.

Actually, out of the Homicide and Assault Unit where I work, we have two excellent victim advocates that get quite a workout, actually, on these biased crimes cases.

They do a really good job of making sure that our victims are aware of crime victims' compensation resources, you know, that they can not only get medical bills paid, but that crime victims' compensation can also cover things like counseling.

So, you know, one of the things I also try to do in these cases is to problem solve.

A lot of these cases happen in housing, DESC housing or SHA housing.

And sometimes that means making a couple of calls to case managers to see if we can't get people apart, enable a victim to move away.

or relocate an offender.

So we do definitely utilize our victim advocates in this role, certainly.

Okay, thank you.

So as we've discussed earlier, we know SPD does a lot of outreach, but still we wanted to include a recommendation that addressed the three themes that I mentioned from the survey, and that's shown on the slide here.

And then finally, we include a recommendation on evaluating hate crime efforts.

As I mentioned earlier, we can't look at any one metric, like hate crime reports or prosecution data, and see how we're doing as a city.

So we recommend looking at other sources of data, other metrics, combine them together, and we can use that to evaluate how we're responding and prosecuting hate crimes.

And in our report, we have a list of possible metrics that the city could use to do that.

And I think that it's like any performance measures, you know, if you just rely on one, it's like statistics, you know, they can always lie.

So if you have, you know, several measures, you may get a more accurate, more nuanced story.

And then the fifth and final section of our report has two recommendations related to data tracking.

As I mentioned earlier, SPD is implementing a new records management system and so they have an opportunity to just make a couple improvements.

The first is to make a policy around managing cases in the system instead of using hard copy files or other methods that could make it difficult to have accurate information and reporting.

And then the last recommendation is for SPD to formalize and document their policy on recording hate graffiti, just to make sure that it's included in their online bias crimes dashboard.

Any other thoughts, folks from SPD?

No, I would just have to add that our overall goal of improving community response and department response to hate crime is always at the forefront.

Before I forget to say, I wanted to thank the auditor's office for the comprehensive review and for the council for inviting it.

It's an important dialogue.

So on behalf of Chief Carmen Best, I thank you for the discussion.

Yeah, thank you.

I really appreciate, again, the work that SPD has done and increased their attention to this issue, hiring detective Waring and instituting the dashboard, and look forward to talking with you about your needs as it comes to moving forward on implementing some of these recommendations.

One other point before we close, there was an item from the last audit that I know I kept asking you about and there were some problems moving forward because it related to the need to have a convener.

This is, you know, We are not in isolation here in Seattle with this rise in hate crimes.

It's happening nationally, and it's happening in our state.

It is our state that has seen the greatest increase in the last reporting period.

And one of the recommendations that you'd made in the last report was to have a regional convening.

And I know we didn't move forward on that because there was some question about whether or not I think it was Department of Justice office, a local office that would be focused on this was even going to exist anymore.

I don't recall whatever happened with that, but I think it would be important to identify.

If they're not there to be a convener, I think it would be really important to identify somebody else to be that convener.

I mean, perhaps that's the State Human Rights Commission or some other statewide body.

So that's another item I really would like the city auditor's support in moving forward.

And again, Council Member Hurdle, we'll be following up on all the recommendations that have not been closed.

In fact, we're going to be issuing our annual recommendation follow-up report, I think, tomorrow.

But once we have a recommendation, we always follow it until it comes to an end.

I'm highlighting this one because I think it's on me.

It's a way to hold myself accountable to take that one to the next level.

We'll touch base with you.

Thank you.

Really appreciate your work.

Thank you.

Item 2, Noel.

Agenda item 2 is Council Bill 119288, an ordinance relating to the city's criminal code, removing the separate crime of malicious harassment and creating a special allegation of hate crime motivation and amending section 12A.06.115 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Thank you.

And Sponge, do we have anybody else joining us at the table?

I only have two names.

Okay, great.

And do we have somebody from ADL here as well?

Okay, sounds great.

Let's do a round of introductions, thank you.

Good morning, Council Members.

Kelly Harris, Criminal Division Chief for the City Attorney's Office.

Asha Venkatraman, Council Central Staff.

Good morning.

I'm McKenna Lux from the Council on American Islamic Relations.

Thank you for joining us.

Who would like to kick us off?

We've had a few discussions about this bill over the last several months.

Maybe, Asha, do you want to give us a quick overview?

Yeah, absolutely.

So we're discussing this council bill, which was heard for the first time in this committee last year.

in June of 2018, and we had discussed the proposed changes that this would make to the crime of malicious harassment.

What the bill proposes to do is to, well, to start, the crime of malicious harassment itself is essentially the intentional and malicious act of property destruction, assault, or harassment because of a person's perception of another person's protected status.

And I'll go through those different protected classes between the state and the city, but essentially, The state protects classes including race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, and mental, physical, and sensory handicap.

The city, and that's at a felony level.

The city prosecutes misdemeanor level offenses against the remaining classes, protected classes that the city protects but the state does not protect, which include homelessness, marital status, political ideology, age, and parental status.

So what this bill proposes to do is a couple things.

First is to change the crime of malicious harassment to a special allegation of hate crime motivation.

which essentially means that instead of having to prove property destruction, assault, or harassment, in addition to proving that it was bias-motivated, now the special allegation can be added to the underlying crime, so the allegation itself is easier to track.

The second change would be to remove the element of malice from the misdemeanor crime.

As it currently stands, both the felony level and the misdemeanor charge require proof, require that the city attorney, excuse me, not city attorney, the prosecutor prove beyond reasonable doubt there was both intent and malice.

This bill would propose to take out the element of malice, which would then allow the city council to add back in protected classes that the state currently protects, but the city does not.

And so those are the main tenets of the bill itself.

And then there are a variety of amendments that I can go through in further detail.

So I'm currently on page two of the memo, if that's helpful.

If you can follow along, thank you.

So as I mentioned, in restructuring malicious harassment as a special allegation, what this will change is the ability of the city attorney's office in terms of the elements they have to prove for a crime.

And so even as it currently stands, if the city attorney's office were to charge malicious harassment, and they didn't succeed in proving each one of those elements, then the person would not be convicted of malicious harassment.

In changing the structure to a special allegation, the city attorney's office could still charge property destruction, assault, and harassment, and then add in the special allegation of hate crime motivation.

If they were unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the special allegation existed, excuse me, If they were unable to prove the special allegation, the person could still be convicted for the underlying crime of property destruction, assault, or harassment.

And just to restate, these are crimes that there is, this is a charge that there is an underlying crime for.

Yes, that's correct.

The other implication of changing to a special allegation structure would be that currently the sentencing range for assault and harassment and property destruction are all within the wider sentencing around misdemeanors, which is 364 days in jail or up to $5,000 of penalty.

It's not often that that maximum is reached in just an underlying crime of assault, harassment, or property destruction.

And so if the recommended sentence for those crimes was on the lower end, adding the special allegation in would mean the city attorney's office could ask for a higher sentence within the range of the misdemeanor limitations.

The second item that I described was removing malice from the requirements that the city attorney would have to prove.

And as I described, the reason that the state and the city's malicious harassment laws are different is because an act can't be charged as a felony and as a misdemeanor.

It could be interpreted as being serious enough to reach a felony level charge.

or not serious enough and be charged as a misdemeanor, but both of those charges can't be made.

And so in changing the elements of the misdemeanor crime, it means that the charge could be made then at the misdemeanor level.

And though that's a technical change, it allows for the third change in the bill, which is to add back in all of the protected classes that the city protects rather than just the classes that the city exclusively protects.

So we're adding in the classes that, right now it only covers the classes that the city exclusively protects.

And now we're adding in the classes that the state protects.

Yes, yeah.

And so in adding back those protected classes, essentially what that means is that when, when SPD has a crime that they believe is a biased crime that is less serious, more misdemeanor level crime that is based on race, color, religion, the remaining protected classes, as it currently stands, they could refer that crime up to the King County Prosecutor's Office.

But if the prosecutor's office doesn't believe that that is at a felony level, the city is unable to charge that crime as an associated hate crime.

So they could still charge for something like property destruction, assaultment, harassment, but they couldn't charge it as an actual hate crime.

Adding back in this level of these protected classes would allow the city attorney's office to prosecute these crimes as hate crimes themselves.

And so the issue that we're trying to solve isn't that King County doesn't see that there's merit to the hate crime allegation.

It's that it doesn't rise to what they consider to be the legal standard necessary to be a felony or the crime to be a felony.

And so they would kick it back to the city attorney's office.

And as it stands now, the city attorney can't prosecute on that added charge of malicious harassment.

Right.

They could prosecute the underlying crime, but not with the added element of bias.

So that is the bill as proposed.

And there are a variety of proposed amendments.

The first is just adding in some recitals that incorporate the findings of the city auditor's phase two report on bias crimes, which include the large percentage of increase in reports of malicious harassment crimes, crimes with bias elements, and then non-criminal bias incidents.

Just for definition's sake, malicious harassment is when the criminal act itself is motivated by bias.

Crimes with bias elements are criminal acts that involve bias, but we're not necessarily motivated by the bias itself.

And the non-criminal bias incidents are essentially offensive biased comments.

The second set of amendments is updating some terminology.

As it currently stands, the city law refers to mental, physical, and sensory handicaps, and this would change that terminology to disabilities, which is the more up-to-date term used.

And again, this is to reflect changes that were recently made in state law.

Yes.

The state legislature just passed Engrossed Substitute House Bill 1732, which made a couple changes.

It renamed the malicious harassment offense to a hate crime offense, but it also updated that terminology from handicap to disability.

Incidentally, serendipitously, this is one of the items that, separate from the track taken on the state law, that advocacy organizations came to us early on in our discussion and asked us to make an adjustment to.

So I'm glad we're all doing it together.

The third set of amendments would broaden the scope of the city attorney's authority in that currently, as the law stands, the malicious harassment only covers property destruction, harassment, and assault.

Restructuring to the special allegation would allow the city attorneys to apply the special allegation, excuse me, to just those three.

crimes, but this amendment would broaden the scope of that to allow the city attorney's office to apply the special allegation to all misdemeanors or gross misdemeanors.

The intent is to be able to add the special allegations to crimes that are closely related to assault, harassment, or property destruction.

things like phone harassment, unlawful use of a weapon to intimidate, stalking, cyber stalking.

And so that would allow this, the application of the special allegation, but technically it would allow the city attorney's office to apply it to any misdemeanor.

That's good to hear.

We have heard from, again, folks in the advocacy community about concerns about SPD and law enforcement in general, not specifically SPD, but the criminal justice system and their ability to address cyber-stalking bias crimes.

So it's good to hear that maybe some of the tweaks that we're making here might help with that.

The fourth set of amendments refers to sentencing condition or diversion requirements.

So essentially this new subsection would direct the court to require as part of those that the person that allegedly commits the offense participate in a program, a course of training, some kind of community service that educates the person about the negative consequences of hate or bias crimes against the victim and the victim's protected class.

It could be waived if the opportunity itself is unavailable or impractical or the court waives it for good cause.

It's not entirely clear what currently exists in the community in terms of those programs or trainings, so it may be worth reaching out to communities most impacted to determine whether those programs do exist, what potential investment might look like to be able to further that kind of work.

transformational programs in some other jurisdictions and I've been in ongoing conversations both with organizations external to the city as well as folks within the city about what we can do to support the development of some sort of a restorative justice program that is really focused on the harm that's done to victims and to offenders around bias crimes.

Thanks.

I just note the one additional thing here is the requirement for this kind of specialized sentencing doesn't necessarily replace a sentence of a fine or incarceration.

It could, it's just the judge's discretion as to what that sentence is.

The fifth set of amendments adds in a reporting requirement and asks that there is an annual report from the city attorney's office that reports the special allegations that are filed, including data on the demographics of both the defendants and the protected class status of the victims.

And then lastly, there is a severability clause added in to ensure that even if one part of the bill is found invalid, the remaining portions of the bill will remain valid.

And then one more just technical set of amendments is just updating the dates from 2018 to 2019 in the bill itself.

I really appreciate the work that was done to part of the ordinance that often doesn't get the attention it deserves, and that's the recitals.

The recitals, I think, really tell the story for the need to to assist the city attorney in addressing what they're seeing as an unaddressed need.

And maybe, Kelly, could you talk to us a little bit about, I want to, I should have started off saying this, thanking the city attorney's office for bringing this issue to me in the first place last spring.

Do you want to talk a little bit about the perspective that you're bringing to this work?

And thank you for allowing us the opportunity to come in and bring this to you.

I know this is something that City Attorney Holmes has been pushing for for a while and wanted our division to concentrate on.

And part of what I was explaining to him was we were Our hands were tied when it came to certain types of cases that we were charging.

A lot of the cases that we get, because we weren't allowed to have the same protected classes that the state used, we could only charge that underlying offense.

So when we track that case, we see it as an assault.

We see it as a property destruction, but we don't know once it enters our system that it had that hate crime element to it.

And I know there was some discussion in the last session about being able to track those cases through the system.

There's a hole there if we can't track that.

And this new legislation would allow us to track those cases that we get either sent to us directly from SPD because they don't rise to the level of felonies and either because the underlying offense doesn't rise to that level or the ability to prove malice in that situation is more difficult.

We get those cases, and when we get them, it falls into a black hole in terms of how it's designated.

Now, the case will get prosecuted as an assault or as a property destruction, but we just don't know about that hate crime element.

And this allows us to both track that better, and it allows us to kind of focus our recommendations and our sentencing recommendations to the root cause of that underlying offense.

So that's why we hope to partner with some community groups to have, just like we have the domestic violence designation and the sexual motivation designation allows us to send people to certain types of counseling or certain types of groups that they can work through those issues.

In order to get at the underlying.

In order to get at the underlying cause of the criminal offense.

So one of the reasons why we kind of put the brakes on this last summer is because of concerns from folks in the civil rights community that although, you know, 100% of the victims of hate crimes, 100% of them are members of protected classes.

Some offenders are members of protected classes as well.

And so we kind of wanted to use information that we received from the city auditor to get more of a of a sense of that.

We wanted to do some more granular research of the types of cases that we've seen.

And I appreciate, Kelly, the hours of time that you've spent with Detective Waring, poring over individual cases in order to, again, get a handle on what it is that we're looking at.

Can you speak just sort of generally to the concern, I mean, and I appreciate your willingness to report on the results of prosecutions under this new allegation.

Well, I shouldn't say new allegation because it's an existing allegation, but only for certain protected classes.

But can you just talk a little bit about how your office intends to address the concerns that people have about furthering disproportionality in our criminal justice system?

Well, one, I think the reporting requirement that we included in the bill will allow us to track that much better just to see if there's going to be some disproportionate effect on the way we use this special allegation.

I don't think that it will show that there is a significant change because these cases are cases that are going to be filed anyway.

They just won't have, prior to the bill, would not have the special designation.

So I don't see a reason for there to be an increase in those levels of disproportionality.

We would just be able to track what kinds of cases those are better.

that there is evidence of disproportionality on the underlying crimes that are being prosecuted that exists.

What you're explaining is this isn't going to increase it.

As it relates to the findings in the audit for the county's prosecution, correct me if I'm wrong, Newell.

This is the county's prosecution of hate crimes, correct?

They found that 85% of offenders prosecuted are men, 77% are white, and 19% are black.

So there is clearly disproportionality there.

But again, 100% of the victims are members of protected classes as well.

I'm interested to see what we find after some time with this.

But I'm also really interested in lifting up our ability to support new programs that really work on healing our communities and can be, I think, really game changers for these issues nationally.

So I'm hoping that we can all work towards developing, again, some restorative justice programs focused on particularly this area of the criminal justice system.

And it's one thing, too, in the audit that I wanted to point out that it was close to a third of those cases were, the victims were African-American.

Even though those numbers are disproportionately African-American being charged on those underlying offenses, the victims in the vast majority of these cases are African-American.

We do recognize that that disproportionality does exist as something that we're going to look at and track, but we also don't want to lose sight of the fact that the victims of these cases are also people of color.

McKenna, do you want to share with us, you were a really important stakeholder on recent changes that were made at the state level.

I would love to hear your perspective why these kinds of laws are so important in these particular times that we're living in today.

Absolutely, and thank you so much for all of your efforts on this issue and with this legislation.

Our chapter, like many other community-based organizations and advocacy organizations across the city and country, have been witnessing disturbing trends of increases in harassment, intimidation, and violence over the last several years.

CARE National in 2017 recorded a 17% increase in anti-Muslim bias incidents as compared to 2016 and a 15% increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes over the same period.

And so we are really here to encourage and support action that our city can take to address and fight hate crimes in Seattle and serve as a model for the rest of our country.

At Care Washington, we're seeing hate manifest itself in many different ways.

We're seeing the consequences that this has on school bullying with children as young as five years old routinely being called terrorists at school.

We're seeing the consequences when Muslim families are walking around in their own neighborhoods and told to get out of their town, told they don't belong there, or worse yet, we've even seen instances where people are punched in the face when extending a welcome to a new neighbor.

We've also been observing these increases in our own chapter here in Washington.

In 2017, hate crimes and hate incidents comprised 12% of all the reports that we received.

And last year, that went up to 15.5% of all cases that we received.

And again, this is mirroring trends that we're seeing from other organizations and agencies, including the FBI's report that in 2017, 17% of all reported hate crimes in Washington State were incidents where victims were targeted due to their religious identity.

And even in Seattle, we're seeing that we're not immune to such violence.

And in the same report from the FBI, 234 hate crimes were reported in Seattle, which doubled from its previous recording.

We strongly believe that we have a responsibility to protect and support our neighbors and fellow human beings.

We owe it to the Muslim women who we've been working with who ride the bus to work and are attacked because of their choice to wear a hijab while others stand by doing nothing.

We owe it to the Muslim student who was attacked in her parking lot who we worked with when a man poured gasoline on her and tried to light her on fire.

We have a responsibility to shift our culture away from accepting this as normal and pursue justice for the victims of hate crimes.

We in Seattle and in Washington pride ourselves on our passion for social justice and commitment to creating a more equitable society.

And we're hoping that our city will build off of the momentum that we've been seeing at the state level with the passage of the House Bill 1732, which demonstrates commitment to supporting diverse communities by calling hate crimes by their true name, as you were mentioning, and through their creation of a working group where they will work with different government officials and with community-based organizations to research and advocate for best practices to prevent hate crimes, increase reporting, and hold offenders accountable.

And we strongly believe that our city's leadership also should work with community-based organizations to create these best practices and increase our confidence in the reporting and prosecuting processes for hate crimes.

We do acknowledge, as you were mentioning also, that our criminal justice system disproportionately impacts communities of color, and we want to make sure that any legislation does not contribute to this trend.

And we support the proposed ordinance's focus on restorative justice for that as well.

and also urge that it's done in collaboration with community organizations like the other aspects of the legislation as well.

We also support the City Auditor's recommendations to increase training for SPD to better recognize, identify, and prevent hate crimes.

to improve coordination and documentation for hate crime referrals, and to increase transparency in hate crimes prosecutions and further support reform efforts to ensure that hate crimes charges are sought and applied accurately and evenly.

I thank you so much for having us here today.

We're really, really interested and excited to work with you on this ordinance and on more efforts that we can do in the future to ensure that our city is accurately and effectively addressing hate crimes.

Thank you so much for taking time out to share with us your advocacy across the state on this and your successes, and really want to involve your organization and the voices of the people that you represent and their lived experiences in working on implementing not only this policy should we enact it, but also the recommendations of the city auditor.

Thank you.

Council Member O'Brien, do you have any questions or thoughts?

No, I just appreciate the thoughtful work that you've led on this and all your contributions to this.

It seems like it's the right thing to do to move forward and try this out.

I think from my understanding from your information, there's a lot of upside to us making these changes and we can continue to monitor to see if there's anything we're missing.

Thank you.

Well, I think I should first move the substitute.

So moved.

Second.

All those in favor of the substitute, vote aye.

Aye.

None opposed.

None abstaining.

Great.

I just want to, before moving on the motion itself, want to refer to a letter that we received from the mayor's office this morning.

And she urges us to consider and move quickly on the bill.

makes the point that we all have today that Seattle and the cities across the country have seen an increase in hate crimes.

And it's important that we, as a city, make our position clear that we will stand against and we will protect our residents and visitors from bias-motivated threats, harassment, and violence.

And she, you know, speaks to these issues as the first openly gay U.S. attorney, having experience bringing hate crimes prosecutions against those who attack Sikh neighbors and work to protect a range of civil rights.

And she's also reached out to me as, you know, an advocate for her own community in urging us to act on this legislation.

So it's important to not only have the support of the mayor, but have her advocacy and her own lived experiences.

And so I wanted to take a moment to lift those up as well.

All right, nothing further I will I need a council bill here lost track of all my pieces of paper Thank you.

I will move passage of council bill 1192 88 second all those in favor vote aye aye None opposed abstaining.

This will go on to full council on Monday Thank you everybody for all your work on this and there's much more to do I Just couldn't find it

Agenda item 3 is Council Bill 119515, an ordinance relating to Seattle Public Utilities, amending Ordinance 125475, which adopted the 2018 budget, lifting the proviso in Section 8 regarding expenditure of funds appropriated in the combined sewer overflow budget control level for construction of the Ship Canal Water Quality Project Storage Tunnel.

as Seattle Public Utilities has completed 100% project design and has met the requirements for reporting to the City Council's Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development, and Arts Committee.

Thank you, Noel.

Quick round of introductions, please.

Brian Goodnight, Council Central staff.

Mami Hara, Seattle Public Utilities.

Keith Ward, Project Executive.

Fantastic.

Who would like to start us off?

All right, Director Hara.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak here about the Ship Canal Water Quality Project.

We've completed, as you know, the 2018 city budget.

contained a proviso that required SPU to obtain council approval to proceed with the tunnel component of the Ship Canal project after we had completed 100% design.

We have completed the requirements of the proviso and we're here to request approval.

of approval to proceed and Keith will present information about the five major construction projects and the tunnel package.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Yeah, just before we move on, the council placed a proviso on not the entire project, but the element that we're going to hear about today, which is specifically limited to the tunnel.

We've been receiving updates, and no spoiler, but I think we've got some pretty good news.

Great.

All right.

OK, thank you.

So as Mami said, today I'll be providing a brief project overview, and then I'll spend most of our time discussing the storage tunnel design, construction package costs, and risk management.

So the Ship Canal Water Quality Project is a storage tunnel to reduce combined sewage overflows into waterways.

The project will improve water quality by keeping an estimated average of 75 million gallons of polluted stormwater and sewage out of Salmon Bay, Lake Union, and the Ship Canal each year.

In 2013, the city signed a consent decree with the U.S.

Department of Justice, EPA, and the Washington Department of Ecology about combined sewage overflows into the waterway.

And this is a shared project with King County.

They also have a consent decree.

The project will address five of the City of Seattle's outfalls and two of King County's outfalls.

And we have a joint project agreement with the county, which includes a cost split of about 65% for the city, 35% for the county, and there are some costs that are not shared.

So this project is addressing the five combined sewage outfalls for the city.

And in 2018, shown here on the right, they represent about 84% of the city of Seattle sewer overflow volume, which that year was about 54 million gallons.

Once operational, this project will provide a significant water quality benefit to the region.

This is a plan view of the project.

The project includes a 2.7-mile long, 18-foot, 10-inch diameter storage tunnel from Bowerd to Wallingford.

Construction is in the five neighborhoods shown here, including five drop shafts to take flows from the existing pipes into the tunnel.

The tunnel will slope back to the west to the Bowerd site, where we'll have a pump station.

And then we also have a second tunnel, an eight-foot diameter conveyance tunnel between the Fremont and Queen Anne site underneath the ship canal.

Our design and construction schedule is critical to project success, and this shows our design and construction schedule for our five major construction packages, which are shown on the left.

These packages are in various stages of design, which are in light blue, and construction in dark blue.

The orange line shows where we're at today.

And the purple line shows our construction complete regulatory deadline when the entire system must be operational by the end of 2025. The red star shows our current projected date to complete construction.

So we're in good shape to meet that deadline.

And our first major construction package, the Bowerd Early Works Package, shown on the first row is in construction.

So overall, our schedule shows that we're on track.

Today I'm here to focus on the storage tunnel construction package, which is row 2 shown here, and we've just completed design and the project begins pre-construction later this year.

So the storage tunnel design is 100% complete.

This is the project's largest construction package.

It includes the 2.7 mile, 18 foot, 10 inch diameter storage tunnel, which is shown in the blue here on the bottom of this graphic.

It also includes the five drop shafts in our five neighborhoods that range from 10 to 80 feet deep, or 80 feet in diameter, includes three conveyance projects to connect into the existing system.

And it also includes that second tunnel that I talked about between Fremont and Queen Anne.

So all those elements are shown in blue, which that's part of that package.

The package does not include our Ballard conveyance project.

our Bowerd Pump Station Project, and our Wallingford Conveyance Project, which were the other three projects shown in that earlier graphic.

So almost all of the project is underground.

Shown here on the left is the drop shaft in Queen Anne on the south side of the ship canal near Seattle Pacific University.

During wet weather, it brings flows from conveyance pipes to the eight-foot diameter tunnel underneath the ship canal and into the storage tunnel.

It is 85 feet deep and 25 feet in diameter.

It includes pipes that run through the eight foot diameter tunnel and into the Fremont shaft, which is shown on the right.

The Fremont shaft has an inside diameter of 40 feet and an inside depth of about 100 feet or 80 feet or eight stories.

The purpose of this shaft is to get flows from Queen Anne and the Fremont conveyance systems into the storage tunnel, which one runs right next to it.

and include safety systems for our staff, including stairways, lighting and ventilation.

Our current project cost estimate is $570 million with a 70% confidence, and we discussed this cost estimate in our previous visit to Corrado in March.

And some of the good news is previously when we came to you last year, our confidence on that same budget was about 65%.

So we're improving our confidence.

And just to clarify that confidence at 70% is that the likelihood that cost will be at or below the estimated cost of 570 million.

And again, what was it last time?

It was 60%?

When we were here in spring of last year, it was 570 million at a 65% confidence, and we've moved upward to a 70% confidence.

And this is the largest, this is the biggest part of the overall project as well.

So we can hope that with a high confidence rate on this element, we may be getting to a point soon where we have a higher confidence rate on the entire project as well.

Exactly.

Yeah, and one of the, and now I'll just kind of get to that is when, well, so if you see here, actually our estimate on the storage tunnel, our engineer's estimate is 218 million.

And so when the bids come in for that we already have the early works project that's in construction and the storage tunnel, at that point, we'll have bid prices for about 80% of our overall construction costs.

So our uncertainty on those costs goes down dramatically.

And I should just, I should correct what I just said, because this is the confidence rating for the entire project, not just the tunnel.

Yes.

We went through this before as well.

So that's still, it's, that's great news.

And we've, we're in the bid process now.

Yep.

And so we should have some more information relatively soon.

Yeah, and I'll get to that schedule in just a second.

So this estimate was built through our cost reconciliation process and with our engineering team's cost estimating expertise.

We've had this reviewed by outside experts and have benchmarked with other agencies as well.

And we've also done significant contractor outreach to promote competitive and inclusive bids.

So here's the schedule we were just talking about.

This is our 2019 schedule for bidding and pre-construction processes on the storage tunnel.

We completed our 100% design in January, which is the first milestone on the left.

We began our advertisement process with the bidding community on March 6th, and we expect to open bids on June 12th.

And after evaluation, award the contract in July.

Opening bids, as I said, is an important milestone for the project.

We'll execute the contract in August or September and expect to provide notice to proceed with the construction in November of this year, at which time the contractor will begin mobilizing, most likely at the Bowerd site, because they'll need to put in, start installing a deep shaft there in order to start the tunneling in 2020 or so.

So that'll be the first element.

They may also start work at some of the other neighborhoods.

And any predictions on whether or not bids are likely to be coming in around the mark, or is it just too soon to tell?

That's the next slide.

Perfect.

Great.

So, you know, we're constantly managing uncertainties and risks to reduce them, and this is a key task for our project managers and management team.

So, uncertainties, just to clarify the difference, uncertainties are things that will happen.

We're going to get a bid.

And we just can't predict how much they will happen.

Risks are things that may or may not happen.

So for the storage tunnel bids, there are specific uncertainties and risks that I want to accent here.

We're uncertain about where the bids will come in.

They may be higher than the engineer's estimate.

But over time, our engineer's estimate has been trending downward.

So the difference between our 100% estimate and our 90% estimate was about $10 million lower.

We could have issues with contractor quality, design issues and bid protests, or bids could come in above the engineer's estimate uncertainty range.

But I really feel very good about the advertisement to date, and that goes in line with how we expect bids to come in.

We've had over 100 contracting individuals attend our two bid walks.

We've received a lot of good questions about the overall package and continue to get those.

None of these questions have found fundamental issues with the design.

And these really help us also when we go into construction, we look at issues, changes during construction and things.

So we're really looking forward to opening bids in June.

We can't predict the outcome, but feel good that those bids will come in within our budget.

And do we have a sense of how many contractors there are out there that are capable of such a large project?

out there that would be capable across the U.S. or specific to our project?

Specific to our project.

Sure.

We believe that based on, you know, we're looking at who has signed in as a prime contractor, we believe that there are somewhere between five to seven contractors or teams evaluating the project and the bids.

And there are contractors that are, as you say, forming teams to make themselves more competitive to be able to do the whole body of work.

Yes.

And there's also significant outreach with these contractors within the local subcontractor community and also women minority business-owned firms becoming part of those teams as well.

That's been part of our effort is to help link them all together.

And we also have goals related to those areas for the project as well.

And I'm assuming that those goals track closely along the priority hire policy that the city has for not just WEMBE utilization, but also the use of apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeship programs.

Distressed areas as well, yeah.

So on this project, we have the city's project labor agreement that we're utilizing and those conditions are part of that as well.

All right, thank you.

Sure.

So lastly, we're pleased to present the Ship Canal Water Quality Project Storage Tunnel 100% design to you in fulfillment of the proviso.

As we move into construction for the next six years, I'm looking forward to working with you about the ups and downs of construction and ultimately celebrating when this work is preventing sewer overflows or combined sewer overflows into our waterways.

We'll continue to communicate with you on a regular basis about this important project through our semi-annual reports, and by presenting to you at key milestones, which are shown here.

And the tunnel construction is scheduled to be completed in 2023?

2023. The tunneling will be done sooner, but there's still work on some of those drop shafts.

And breaking ground for the tunnel when?

Mobilization will occur late this year.

We expect, actually, excavation, starting excavation of the tunnel shaft in Bowerd right after the new year.

Council Member O'Brien, any questions?

I'm going to work on this.

Yeah.

Big project.

And I really want to express my appreciation for all of the pre-bid work that you've been doing.

I think it's been critical, the outreach that you've been doing, answering folks' questions, recruiting folks, putting together those teams, or encouraging those teams to be put together.

I think we're going to see it pay off dividends, that work that you've been doing.

And I have a much.

greater, deeper understanding for how, when we do that work on the front end, it really impacts our ability to meet our marks, which is really important.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Any other questions?

I will, so again, we are voting on legislation that will lift the proviso that the council placed on the tunnel prior to, after completion of design and prior to releasing funds for construction.

And the bill before us would lift that proviso.

And so, I will move Council Bill 1195.15.

Second.

All those in favor, vote aye.

Aye.

None opposed, none abstaining.

This will go on to full Council on Monday.

Thank you and congratulations.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Item 4 is Appointment 03 or 01-345, Appointment of Robert Won Sung Lee as Director, Office of Economic Development.

Hello.

Greetings.

Sorry that we're running late, but thank you for sticking it out with us.

That's kind of how this committee rolls.

Can we start off with introductions, please?

Okay, thank you.

I think we're going to have someone from the filibuster so you can be properly introduced.

Apparently you're a little ahead of schedule.

Mr. Fong's a little late.

Thank you.

Greetings.

Welcome.

Thank you, council members.

Absolutely.

Ready?

Yeah, yeah, go right ahead.

Let's jump into introductions.

Mike Fong, Mayor's Office.

We are here to discuss the Mayor's nomination for the Office of Economic Development.

And since Senior Deputy Mayor Fong, you are here to present Mr. Lee, I will just hand it over to you.

Great.

Thank you, Council Member.

I'll be very brief and turn things over to Director Lee very shortly.

First of all, just wanted to acknowledge we are extremely pleased and excited to be able to present to you Bobby Lee as our nomination for the next director for the Office of Economic Development.

Director Lee joins us most recently having served in a very similar position for the Office of Economic Development for the City of Portland.

Prior to that, he had worked under two gubernatorial governors administrations in Oregon, Governor Kitzhaber and Governor Brown working on a range of initiatives associated with essentially cutting red tape through government bureaucracy for businesses.

Prior to that, he worked in the private sector for several years and prior to that was part of the senior leadership team for one of the largest workforce development organizations in the Portland Multnomah County area.

We are really excited about the experience that he brings to this body of work and look forward to engaging with you over the next couple of weeks with his leadership and approach for the Office of Economic Development and hope that he can be confirmed as quickly as possible and get to the important work that we share for our city.

So with that, Council Member.

Thank you.

So I'm really excited that you want to do this work.

I'm excited that you want to do it for Seattle.

I've already seen you out in community, and in community in particular in my district, your participation on the Mayor's Public Safety Walk and your engagement with business community stakeholders there.

Just share with us your experience and your interest in helping Seattle go to address some of the challenges that we have in supporting our business community and supporting the development of the priority sectors for the city.

while doing so in a period of great growth and making sure that we're not leaving people behind.

Thank you.

And thank you, Councillor, for joining us.

No, that's exactly right.

If you look at the macro socioeconomic indicators here in Seattle, it's clear that the economy is just extraordinary.

And it is the knowledge-based economy that's really taking hold and that has really improved the per capita income, the median family income.

The numbers are pretty clear.

Seattle is doing extremely well, especially from the Great Recession that we faced, and that is similar.

for many of the cities on West Coast and Portland is the same.

The challenging part is while we're faced with incredible prosperity, poverty is growing at the same time.

And it's that paradox that we need to solve, and that is the purpose of OAD's role.

And that paradox exists because there are multiple different economies coexisting at the same time while middle class job is eroding away.

And so we'll get into more details down the road once I get situated, but that is a growing concern that I have and many of you have, and that you're seeing prosperity and poverty growing at the same time.

And there are different theories around that, but we won't get into the specifics.

But that should be the focus of OED.

And so inclusive economy really is a central component of the mission of this department and the vision of the mayor and many of you.

Going door to door, it's pretty clear from the neighborhoods that I've seen, Chinatown ID, Capitol Hill, Pioneer Square, South Park, Georgetown, downtown, Ballard, Waterfront, Fremont, the businesses there are very, very concerned about their future.

From the global competition, e-commerce industry, The livability challenges and access to capital issues are really pressuring small businesses in ways that we've never seen before.

And so you hear those issues loud and clear.

So our office role is to provide different scenarios and solutions to addressing those issues in the new economy.

So I'll leave it at that and open up for questions.

Thank you.

I want to thank Council Member Pacheco for joining us as well.

Your appointment has generated a lot of interest from Council Members and I recognize that it has also created a bit of work for you because that interest was demonstrated in the way of a lot of questions that were shared with you last week that you very quickly responded to I really appreciate your efforts there and want to highlight the fact that I have Distributed the answers to your questions To council members, but we will also be making them available online for the for the public to report so Given the fact that I hear that you're interested in having a deeper conversation about the causes of this paradox that you identified, What are your ideas for making sure that in light of that reality, regardless of the causes, what we can be doing more to protect and protect our business owners as well as preserve our businesses that are owned by communities who do this work in areas that are rapidly gentrifying?

Well, thank you.

The problem statement to me is the economy is constantly evolving.

And so when you have a service-based economy and knowledge economy coexisting at the same time at the same place, what we're noticing is that the middle-wage jobs are eroding away and there's tremendous pressure for small businesses.

And so the question is, when the economy is continuing to evolve, what is the constant?

What holds Seattle to be Seattle?

And a lot of it is our legacy businesses, is our urban environment that's exciting for our workforce, the young talent moving in.

So urban design, the urban experience, the excitement within the urban environment is really driving talent to move here.

That's driving the economy.

But there are trade-offs to that.

And that is that as young people with talent moving in, it raises the cost of living and the cost of the land price.

And all these things are starting to rise.

And so the cost of running small businesses is enormous.

So the role of OED really should be about addressing those issues, and there are many ways to do it, but I'll just highlight four for right now.

One is making sure that neighborhoods are supported and their commercial corridors are supported.

So having an economic development strategy that's neighborhood-based is one of our strategies.

Second is small business technical assistance.

Third is workforce development, making sure that people can compete in the new economy.

And fourth is targeting key industries that have propensity to invest in local small businesses and hire from diverse communities.

And so those are the four elements.

And I want to encourage my colleagues to ask questions if they have them as well.

Take a pause if anybody has.

I do.

First of all, I really Appreciate the chance to meet with you.

It's always great when we steal someone from Portland to come up to our city to carry on some great work.

You said it, not me.

But there are a lot of similarities between Seattle and Portland, and I think some expertise that you bring from there will be great to see.

And I also really appreciate your framing of the kind of fundamental challenge that you see.

For the office and frankly, I think that fundamental challenge really underlines a lot of work We're doing across the city in all departments this rising prosperity and at the same time rising poverty and this disconnect of what you know It used to be the American dream is turning into some nightmare of sorts in our streets On Monday, which was yesterday, I guess we had a special budget meeting and the auditor reported some data It covers some different time periods.

But one thing that struck me is was median household incomes, this is going back to 2015, was 70,000, just over $70,000 on average across the city.

American Indian or Alaskan Native was $26,000.

If you're black or African American, $30,000.

I mean, the massive racial disparities.

We know that the median income continues to go up.

On average.

We're seeing that on our affordable housing work with housing where You know, we talk about, you know, who is this, you know, what is this unit, who is this unit going to be affordable to?

And we say it's affordable to someone earning 60% of average median income.

If that income is going up, but it's not spread equally.

It just makes even our subsidized housing more and more out of reach of low income households because they can't keep up with the rent increases that they're facing that it's subsidized but still hard.

I'm curious, very progressive city, certainly strong in tech for a long time.

You look at the demographics of who has access to those tech jobs and we're a pretty poor job.

So, you know, any ideas you have on how to crack that open and make the, you know, the career of the future for so many folks actually available to a broad spectrum of the population?

That's right.

Well, you're absolutely right on.

I just had my staff do some analysis.

I didn't print probably as much as I should have, but I'll just kind of point it out to you.

I'm sorry.

It's clear that knowledge jobs are the dominant jobs here in Seattle.

The middle ways jobs, like manufacturing, is way behind in terms of national and regional average.

I mean, when I say way behind, it is way behind.

Sorry, wages or percentages?

These are actually gross regional products.

It's like GDP at the local level.

And so it's clear that if you look at the behavior of our economy here in Seattle, that knowledge jobs are really booming, while middle class and low wage jobs, low wage jobs actually going up too, but the middle wage jobs are eroding significantly.

So elsewhere in the country, the type of jobs that folks, that we talk about as a blue collar worker has access to, these are living wage jobs.

That's right.

And other communities are more diversified, and we have this gap in our system, and so folks that don't have the knowledge to participate in the knowledge sector only have the low-wage sector to participate in, which they can't survive on.

And that is the paradox.

And so yesterday I had a meeting with the mayor on the industrial land conversation as an example.

Industrial land is supposed to produce middle-wage jobs, the blue-collar jobs.

But the land mass is eroding, and there's a lot of temptation to flip those lands for other uses, for knowledge jobs, to be frank.

And so those are the type of strategies that we need to focus on in alignment with the mayor's vision around protecting industrial land.

Another strategy is a commercial, affordable commercial space program.

This is something that I worked on in Portland.

I was the sponsor of the very first affordable commercial space program.

The tools here in Seattle is different, or the state of Washington compared to Oregon.

And so I'm learning this as I'm transitioning.

So your tools are going to be different.

So we have to be more creative in how we approach our public dollars and how it's invested.

But my goal is to provide all of you with different scenarios on how we address the middle class jobs issue and affordability for commercial space programs as a way to address this issue.

In terms of skill set issues, You all have passed a great ballot measure to invest more in workforce training.

That's certainly going to help.

We need to do a lot more of that because education really is the best way to create self-sufficiency for the emerging workforce.

What are the opportunities to partner with the employers, especially the larger ones that have the potential to bring someone in at a you know, an entry-level job but move them up over the course of their career into a highway job and make sure, you know, obviously this is not just on them.

We need to be providing the base, the housing, the transportation, the access to education.

But so often I find government, you know, you hear stories of government that comes out with an idea of how we're going to turn this around.

And you meet all these people at their graduation ceremony.

They're so excited.

And you meet them a year later, and they're like, yeah, no one hired us.

Those jobs weren't there.

You hear the other side, too.

And there's some great programs at Seattle colleges where they're getting people into manufacturing jobs, welding jobs, those types of things.

But is there an opportunity for the tech industry in Seattle to step forward and show some leadership on not just recruiting the best people from around the planet, but creating opportunities for folks right here in our own community to come up.

Absolutely.

I had extensive discussion with the mayor and Mr. Fong on this issue, and that is inclusive hiring of local talent.

Now, the argument that's going to be made from the demand side is that the supply side is not producing enough knowledge workers.

Therefore, they have to recruit from outside.

H-1B visa and so forth.

I've been in the high-tech business, so I've been right in the middle of this.

So what we have to do is make sure that our education system is in alignment with the future demand of workers and incentivize the demand side to hire locally.

Whenever we build roads, stormwater systems, anything that benefits those employers, there should be a community benefit agreement.

that they would hire locally.

And also, once they are in the door, that they have accelerated upward mobility opportunities through incumbent worker training programs.

And so those are the kind of workforce development program that we need to really focus on.

But the key thing is that our education system is demand-driven.

so that it makes sense once you graduate, you can actually get a job.

So the medium-sized and large businesses, they have to be in alignment with that strategy, and there's community benefit programs that I've started here, actually in Portland, called Portland Means Progress.

And that's an initiative to get private sector hire locally and invest in small businesses locally.

And so those are the type of strategies I'm hoping to unfold.

So it's sort of an economic development version of priority hire.

That's right.

Some people call it first source hiring agreements.

And as a result, then you get benefits and investments in their infrastructure and so forth.

So we're leveraging that investment for local hires.

And public works projects.

Exactly.

We've done outstanding work.

changing the path for folks in the construction industry, largely in the trades, which is good.

There's not enough of those jobs to lift the people we need up out of poverty.

But that's fascinating.

I'm intrigued.

I mean we have we have multiple sectors that we focus on for a reason, right?

It creates a healthy economy when you're not investing completely in a single sector, but it also diversifies your workforce as well and across across different incomes, and it makes it so that you're not losing your middle class.

And so, if we could be more intentful, not just about saying that we have these sectors, but about really investing in them and creating those pathways.

But not just, it's not just about creating pathways, right?

It's also, as you say, about creating expectations for employers to hire out of those pathways.

Yeah.

Council Member Pacheco?

Thank you for being here.

So much of what you spoke about this morning, the state has driven a lot of investments and made some changes.

The Washington State Opportunity Scholarship, the Career Connect Washington initiative.

But one of the other initiatives that the state passed was the repeal of, or support of I-1000.

And so, I'm curious to kind of get a little bit more of your understanding of just how you see the Office of Economic Development in trying to empower communities of color or in small minority-owned businesses as well.

Yeah.

The R-1000 is, I'm sorry.

So,

There was an initiative several years ago called I-200, and it restricted the state's ability to have affirmative action programs.

Recently, there was another initiative to undo it called I-1000, and rather than having it go to the ballot, our legislature, in its wisdom, decided to enact it.

And so now we can look at using race and other factors related to people's protected class as a consideration in making hiring and contracting decisions.

Thank you for the clarification.

So when we apply equity lens to economic development programs, we have to ask who benefits from these programs.

And if you look at the model that I worked on in Portland, at least 70% of our investments went to small businesses owned by people of color.

If you look at the cluster industry programs that we had in Portland, we target medium-sized and large-sized businesses owned by people of color.

If you look at workforce training programs, it's by far probably 85% from underserved communities.

And so with limited dollars that we have at OED, we really should be asking ourselves who benefits from these programs.

And that is we need to make the investments towards underserved population.

And that's the direction I intend to take with OED.

Thank you.

One of the things that often comes up within the context of the city doing the work that the voters have asked us to do with the passage of various levies, public works levies, particularly as it relates to transportation projects, the impacts that large transportation projects have on small, in some cases, vulnerable business districts.

Can you talk a little bit about your approach to helping those communities be resilient, but also acting as an advocate with the capital departments that have a responsibility for delivering these projects?

Absolutely.

Thank you for the question.

For small businesses, foot traffic is a lifeblood.

So anytime we invest in public works project and we're stepping on the oxygen hose for the small businesses, it's our obligation as a government to also provide solutions.

The question is, how do we generate the capacity to do that, and how do we do it?

And there's a couple options.

One is in Portland, we passed a 1% construction tax to support small businesses, technical assistance, and workforce training.

In other words, every time you have a public works project like the one you talked about just prior to here with the Stonewater system, 1% of that funds go to build capacity for underserved neighborhoods who have small businesses so they can mitigate the constructions that is coming down the pipeline that's going to affect their bottom line.

The second thing is on your construction improvement programs, CIP programs, there always should be a line item.

on outreach and small business mitigation.

And so that type of capacity should be sprinkled throughout all of our public works program so that we have the capacity to address this head on.

That would be some of my suggestions.

But this has got to be an ongoing program and not a one-off.

And that's why Portland passed a 1%, it's called COEP program, 1% tax.

It's just like 1% arts.

It's 1% of constructions so that we can address these distressed small businesses as a result of these construction projects.

rather than being surprised and being, oh, we have to do something about this and build it into the project development because it is a given that there are going to be impacts.

So we have to plan for it.

So this is the first of two discussions.

We're going to be bringing you back at our next committee meeting as well after the other council members might want to join us next time after having a chance to review your really thorough and helpful responses to the questions that we've put to you.

I anticipate a vote in the next committee meeting, but unless there are other questions, we are, as we usually are, behind time.

It's my fault.

But I would love to move on to the next and last agenda item which we'll have.

Actually, I'm still here.

Yes, Director Lee is still at the table with us.

Great.

Thank you for your time.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Agenda item 5 is Legacy Business Program Update.

It's a good transition actually.

I imagine that.

It must be somebody who wrote that agenda, Noel.

Thank you.

Greetings.

It's like writing a screenplay, every agenda.

I know, yeah.

He just really crafts the narrative, winds us through that.

The whole thing is like a production, right?

It's almost like he's been doing this for years.

The stormwater with the public works.

Fantastic.

I'll go ahead and open this up.

Ali, is that okay?

Can we just do the quick round of introductions for our viewing public?

Sure.

I'm Michael Wells.

I'm a small business advocate with the Office of Economic Development.

Ali Panucci with Council of Central Staff.

And I defer to the chair.

Yeah, I would love it, actually, if it's OK if Ali could just quickly give us a thumbnail sketch of where we've been and how we've gotten to where we are now.

And then acting Director Lee, you can take it away.

OK.

Great, thank you, council members.

I'm going to, as I'm talking, I think the memo that the Office of Economic Development prepared wasn't attached to the agenda, and my memo sort of speaks to that, so I brought copies for the committee members.

I think I have enough there.

So I wanted to just first sort of provide some background on the investments and decisions and policy direction council members have made in preparation of creating a legacy business program.

So over the last three annual budget process review processes the council has added resources to the office of economic development's budget to support a legacy business program in the hopes of both helping to support these businesses long-term presence in the city as well as to recognize their contribution to the the culture, to the history, to the fabric of our neighborhoods.

So in 2017, this was first brought up through the budget process under the leadership of Councilmember Herbold.

$50,000 was added to OED's budget to conduct a study to help inform a scope and definition for implementing a legacy business program.

So that work included interviews, looking at case studies, looking at the City of San Francisco's program and provided some framework for development of a legacy business program.

In 2018, resources were added to provide consultant and staff resources to design and implement a legacy business program and develop technical assistant tools.

And in last year's budget cycle, $110,000 was added for the 2019 budget to really get the ball rolling and implement the program to develop and launch a nomination and selection process, develop a marketing and branding plan, and to promote technical assistance tools, which have been designed specifically for legacy businesses, in addition to looking to other community organizations to partner with to provide financial assistance or other supports for legacy businesses.

And then in addition, the 2020 endorsed budget included $60,000 to support the ongoing program needs for a legacy business program.

So all of these investments have resulted in several studies and have informed the ongoing development of this program.

including development of key technical assistance strategies.

OED will go into more detail about some of the tools and some of the pieces they're working on.

But I just wanted to highlight sort of the number of steps council has made over the last several years to get this program off the ground.

And then following OED's presentation, I have some policy questions council members may want to consider.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Appreciate the background.

Acting Director Lee.

Okay.

Well, as Ali mentioned, the 2017, the Legacy Business Study was completed.

That was a foundational piece.

And then from there, the Design and Implementation Report and the Outreach Report was completed.

And now we're on the implementation mode.

That's the phase that we're getting into, and there are really three components to this.

One is succession planning.

What we found out, and this is a program that also exists in Portland, and so we call it something different.

We call it a long-term property owner program.

The tools are different through tax increment financing, so it's a little bit different from Seattle, but that's the program that I oversaw in investing on legacy businesses.

But succession planning is a big part of this.

because folks are retiring and the next person that's coming on board might have different vision and different approaches.

So that transition is an important transition in preserving legacy businesses.

And then of course the lease agreements are a big part of this as well.

And the last part is marketing and branding of these legacy businesses to provide more foot traffic.

Because that is the key for many of the small businesses.

And so those are the three different dimensions as part of our implementation.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Michael, unless you have any other questions on the intro.

Just curious, how do you define, how did you define your version of legacy businesses in Portland?

Yeah, I think we, if my memory serves me right, I think it was at least 10 years.

I think that was a range, but we also prioritize legacy businesses that are owned by women and people of color.

So it was another criteria as well.

And they also have to be geographically located in certain parts of the city.

So it's not a citywide program.

Super helpful.

Thank you.

You bet.

Thank you, Acting Director Lee.

It's a pleasure to be able to work on this program as a former owner of a small business that would have been a legacy business in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

It's been a real pleasure to try and be able to rise these tools to the discussion around small business support and survival tools in the city of Seattle.

So as Director Lee indicated, we have focused our initial work, after the many studies we've done on the program, on technical assistance education tools.

The two tools that were primary in all the studies we found were both succession planning and a commercial lease piece.

So we have worked with Wayfind Legal Service to come up with a commercial lease toolkit.

It's a very thorough, simplified legal document for people to understand their leasing options.

While we're not advising people on leasing options, we are trying to educate them about the best possibilities.

And with the displacement...

the tensions in communities around Seattle.

We know that education around rights and abilities in terms of leasing, in terms of finding new locations, are of utmost importance to many long-term businesses.

So we have created that toolkit, which we have now turned into an infographic to take out to the community for easier We've created with Killer Infographics a really kind of great, I'll pass around a copy, very simplified version of this that will direct people back to the full commercial lease toolkit.

We will also be including one-on-one consultation with those.

We're creating the toolkit in language.

So we've started with Spanish, simplified Chinese, and Vietnamese.

We will be using culturally competent outreach folks to go out to the legacy businesses to talk through these options.

Now that we have this under our belt, we'll be able to produce the same product for succession planning toolkit.

And right now, the real estate issues rise as a priority for education for legacy businesses.

But we are just beginning now to start on the marketing and branding piece of the program, which is a little more fun, perhaps, than the legal pieces of the program.

And so we are beginning to contact marketing firms about the possibilities of what we could do.

Those possibilities include an online directory or map to legacy businesses, certainly branding, social media campaigns.

We're still determining what a lot of those factors will be.

education and technical assistance and marketing and branding the way we've begun the work.

And we're looking forward to adding elements to all of those pieces as we go along.

We've already had other issues of interest around education for small businesses come to the table.

The real estate conversation, I think, is where to start the education tools.

And the marketing and branding will offer the kind of support through our department.

working with professional marketers to really tell the story of the importance of the legacy businesses, the importance in our economic story, as well as our cultural story in Seattle.

So it's good work.

We're pleased to be doing it.

We do have some complications with some of the services we are available to offer, as Bobby has pointed out, given our state constitution, but we are working with that to find the best means that we can.

Back on the secession planning piece, a question for Acting Director Lee, just because, again, you have some experience running a program like this in Portland.

What was your experience with doing secession planning to people who, because, again, businesses that are loved close for lots of different reasons.

And sometimes it is not.

as simple as, oh, we're being pushed out because the rents are going up.

In some cases, it's because there's a business that's been in the family for a long time, and the owners are aging, and perhaps their heirs are not as interested in running the business.

As it relates to succession planning, there are some options here that include things like transitioning to cooperative ownership, or tenancies in common, or nonprofit structure, or community-owned crowdfunding.

Do you have success stories where business owners did not necessarily want to continue, wanted to retire, but somebody else kept the dream alive?

What's interesting is that because the tools in Oregon is fundamentally different than the options, the financial tools that you have in Seattle, we didn't have a succession planning function.

I see.

TIF financing can be only used for capital improvements.

And so one thing I like about this approach is the fact that you added in that dimension.

So there's a pipeline of owners that will carry on the legacy, if you will.

And frankly, I wish we did that more in Portland.

So that's one thing about this approach that I do like.

But the tools were fundamentally different, and so we didn't have a way to fund that element.

I will say to your point, Council Member Herbold, it's very accurate.

There are lots of different reasons that businesses close.

One of them, sometimes the heirs may not be interested in continuing the business, but there are other models.

If the business is well serving the community, we're looking at cooperative ownership.

You know, in London, the best pub program, more than a pub I believe it's called, is about community ownership.

So that when businesses go up for sale and the community says, no, you can't take our pub away, The community actually has a mechanism with which to purchase that land and business.

There are, that's not something that we'll be looking at, but there are other models and there are other ways of transitioning to business.

I can again speak to my own experience as the successor to Barbara Bailey at the bookstore that we owned.

We were a family business.

It was a different family model than traditionally is looked upon in a family business model, but we made it work in a way that supported that business and that community going forward.

And so we want to be able to support folks to do that too.

So even if there is a lack of interest on particular blood family relatives, if the community and there's ownership there, then we want to have tools available for those people to continue.

I'm remiss for not noting your own personal experience dealing with these exact issues around ownership.

So thank you for reminding me.

It just makes me a little more happy that you're at the helm on this one.

Yes?

I'll just add, even though the tools are different, what we did is we used our affordable commercial space program to actually attract the legacy business into those programs.

So once we master lease a building, then the criteria for taking over the affordable commercial space is for businesses that's been in the community for a long time.

So that's another way to address this as well.

So as it relates specifically to some limitations that we have or we can get creative around supporting the capital needs of some of these commercial spaces, I do want to highlight the fact that We do receive or we have in the past, it's unclear whether or not we're going to continue to receive them, but we have in the past received new market tax credits that this last round we've earmarked for commercial improvements and properties that are designated as legacy businesses.

We've also talked to folks who are CDFs who actually have, access to funds that don't have the same restrictions.

And I think one of the work plan items that we've lifted up is how to create agreements with those organizations that are already supporting small business, how we can create a link with the small businesses that we identify as needing support to the resources that they have available.

Yeah, and I will be drafting a memorandum of understanding for Director Lee on exactly that issue.

We want to make sure that we offer, that we make sure those services are known to the community.

Sometimes it's as simple as making that contact.

So if we can lift that up, all the better.

If we could just, with the time we have, shift the conversation to part of this effort that I'm really excited about, which is the designation and nomination side of things.

And I appreciate it's sort of a chicken or the egg.

OED has been focused on developing tools for legacy businesses.

While I've been encouraging also that we develop a designation and a nomination process as well, but I appreciate that they've been appropriately pushing back because you don't want to designate a legacy business without having something to offer them.

Because as I've been reminded by small businesses, they don't just want another sticker in their window.

That's true.

They've made that quite clear.

In front of you, you'll see what we have, nomination and designation scenarios.

One piece we would like to point out that in the marketing conversation, we will be looking to our marketing professionals that we bring in under contract to help us think about this as we see this as a primary marketing tool in the program.

But there are different scenarios for which we could raise these names.

We believe that starting with the neighborhood business district support organizations is the best way to do this work.

So we'll be turning to our many partners across the city in neighborhoods, business improvement associations, chambers of commerce, merchants groups, and then in neighborhoods where those organizations are less solid or perhaps there's less capacity, OED will be stepping in to help with that.

We're imagining a system where we see a first round of nominations coming directly from those folks so that we're hearing specifically from neighborhoods and communities about the cultural institutions that matter in their particular district.

We don't think a top-down approach on that is a good idea.

We know that every district has its own unique personality, its own unique history, and we want those people to be able to raise that to the surface.

I think once we have that and a list of nominations from each district, then the question is, who is making a decision on those final determinees to receive the products we're looking at?

We have a couple of different possibilities.

One is the Mayor's Small Business Advisory Committee, which was formed just a little over a year ago now.

made up of 27, I believe, former small business owners from all around the city, different sectors, different neighbourhoods, different ethnicities and cultures, genders.

The other would be a city council at this committee or a larger city council vote.

Or it could be a mayoral vote.

It could live within the Office of Economic Development.

There's the possibility of a public vote.

That's not our highest recommendation, only because we have some questions about selection bias, about, you know, multiple voting, those kind of things.

The things that come in play when you're talking about that kind of public vote.

So those are the options we're looking at at the moment, but we will be looking for some guidance from our marketing professionals to help us make that final decision, too.

Great.

It looks like you're heading out.

You have to run.

All right.

Allie had some policy questions for us to give some direction on, but maybe she can swing around with you.

Yeah, I can follow up.

I think there's an opportunity here as they're moving into the development of the nomination designation program for council members to provide some guidance on how you think the community should be involved in the nomination and selection process, how the council should be involved, so I can circle back and we can follow up with the office to provide some guidance and continue to work with them as they move through the process.

fantastic all right thank you so thank you for highlighting those opportunities I think the best way to address and thank you for asking for our our feedback on this part it's a really important element and it's important to get it right it's also important to me to make sure that that these decisions are being made, or these recommendations are coming up through the neighborhood business districts, but it's also really important to me to figure out how to give a voice to the patrons of the businesses, because sometimes It is the patrons who are the strongest advocates for those businesses.

And so trying to figure out a way to incorporate their voices.

This whole notion of a legacy business program came not from a business owner, but from somebody who has studied these programs in other cities and has documented the loss of legacy businesses in our city.

And it's really important to, to emphasize I think that our legacy business program is not simply about the number of years that you've been around, but it's about the value that that business has to a community and to our roots and serves as a sort of a bridge to our culture.

And that is going to be different from neighborhood to neighborhood.

So.

I appreciate that opinion.

I appreciate that.

It's not about number of years.

It's about the connection to the places that they operate and do business in their own communities.

Great.

All right.

Well, thank you.

I appreciate it with that.

Meeting's adjourned.

Thanks.