Seattle City Council Community Economic Development Committee 22720

Well, good afternoon, everyone.

It is, this is the February 27th, 2020 meeting of the Community Economic Development Committee, and that committee will come to order.

It is 2.08 p.m.

I'm Tammy Morales, chair of the committee, and I'm joined by council members Lewis, Herbold, and Sawant.

Before we begin, we will now approve our agenda for our committee meeting.

So if there's no objection to today's agenda, it will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

At this time, we have no public comment.

Okay, very well, we'll move on.

We have three items on our agenda today.

First item of business is the appointment of Annabelle Backman as member of the Seattle LGBTQ Commission.

Lakeisha, would you please read the item of business into the record?

Appointment of Annabelle Backman as member Seattle LGBTQ Commission for a term to April 30th 2020. Briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Great.

Ms.

Backman, do you all want to come on up?

Thank you.

You want to do a short introduction and get started?

That sounds great.

Thank you.

Annabelle Backman is a software engineer specializing in digital identity and security.

She has seen how small changes in decisions can introduce significant unintended effects and impact different communities.

She brings these skills to the various organizations that she participates, among them the 43rd District Democrats, where she's the chair of the technology committee.

She's endeavored to leverage her privilege to advocate for equitable solutions to hard problems that include and support the LGBT people, people of color, indigenous people, and people with disabilities, and all others.

Annabelle brings perspective and experience to the LGBT Commission, and she is excited to help guide Seattle towards policies and programs that work for everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you, council members.

I'll continue that.

Briefly, it seems to me the most important pressing question is why am I here and why should I be here?

In large part, I think the answer is because I can be.

Because I I'm fortunate enough to be one of the people who has the time and resources and energy capacity to participate and to show up and to be engaged in programs like this.

Unfortunately, many of the people whose voices we most need to hear don't have that.

As I said, I am privileged enough to have gotten through life such that I'm in a place where I have that despite having to deal with the fact that we are in a transphobic society, homophobic society, ableist society.

My hope is that since I have that capacity, I can leverage it and use it to get other people's voices to the table.

That's what I hope to do here.

I hope to be able to work with all of you to ensure that their voices are getting heard, their stories are getting heard, and their faces are being seen.

Thank you.

I'll start.

Thank you for your application and for being willing to serve the community.

But I would like to know from you just a little bit about how you learned about this particular commission.

As a former human rights commissioner myself, I know that it's an interesting opportunity.

So I'd just love to hear about what brought you to this position and this decision.

Sure.

Thank you.

On that note, I will take the opportunity to thank former co-chair and current still commissioner, Jessie Murray, for bringing this opportunity to my attention.

She and I are, she has recently resigned from the 43rd District Democrats Executive Board, but we served at the same time.

She brought up at one of our meetings that the commission had a lot of open seats that it was looking to fill, and I I asked her afterwards and she got a big grin on her face and said, I'm so glad you're going to be on the commission.

So I'll thank her for bringing the opportunity to my attention and inviting me to apply and see if I can help out.

Great.

Any questions for Ms. Beckman?

First, thank you for your willingness to serve.

You're highly recommended by the Commission itself.

And thank you to the Chair for being willing to bring forward a holdover appointment from my time as the Chair of the Committee with oversight here.

And just really glad to sponsor your time with the Commission.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Great.

Well, in that case, I know there's an official something that needs to happen here.

So I will move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointment 01508. Great.

Those in favor of the recommendation of the committee confirm appointment 01508, vote aye.

Aye.

There are no appointments.

The motion carries and appointment 01508 will be forwarded to the March 9th City Council Committee meeting.

And you are welcome to join us at that meeting if you would like, but you are not required to be there.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

On this first step.

Great.

Thank you.

Okay.

Our second item of business is relating to the AIDS Memorial Project.

Lakeisha, would you please read that into the record?

An ordinance.

Sorry, if the presenters want to come on up, that'd be great.

An ordinance relating to donation funds from non-city sources, authorizing the director of the Office of Arts and Culture to accept a specified donation and to execute, deliver, and perform corresponding agreements for and on behalf of the city, amending Ordinance 12600, which adopted the 2020 budget, changing appropriations to the Office of Arts and Culture, and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

Hi.

Do you all want to go ahead and introduce yourselves and we'll get started?

Sure.

My name is Rosette Royale, and I'm the story gathering consultant for the AIDS Memorial Pathway.

Good afternoon.

I'm Calandra Childers.

I'm the deputy director with this Office of Arts and Culture.

Hi.

I'm Jason Plourd.

I'm the project manager for the AIDS Memorial Pathway.

Great.

Ashley Megatron, Council Central staff.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Great.

So I think I'm going to kick us off here and just give a little bit of an overview of the project.

So I'm really pleased to be here to talk about this partnership that's been many years in the making.

In 2016, the city adopted a budget that had a line item of $75,000 that would help a planning group to come together around the AIDS legacy and memorial.

And through that line item, We worked with private consultants.

We worked with the Museum of History and Industry and a number of other community members to scope, scale, determine location, civic purpose, and timeline of this project.

A community advisory group was brought together and we worked with them to identify a site.

That site is the northern end of Cal Anderson Park and the public plaza on the Capitol Hill Link light rail station.

and we began a relationship with the developer who's been an eager participant in the project.

Through further allocation in city funding in 2018, the Office of Arts and Culture and Seattle Parks and Recreation were able to dedicate funding to the AIDS Memorial Pathway Master Art Plan.

We commissioned artist Horatio Law to develop an art plan for the whole overall project that spans both public and private property.

That plan was funded both through city funding and through the private fundraising of the independent group.

And then as a continuation of that plan, we've been able to commission artists to develop artworks that will go onto the property in accordance to the master art plan.

Today we're here to seek your approval to accept funds that have been raised privately into the city so that we can do the fabrication and installation of those artworks and accept those artworks into the city's civic collection.

And I think this is a pretty unique partnership.

It's not one that we've entered into before.

But I think it's a really great example of being really responsive to community members coming forward and saying this is really important to us, and how do we prioritize making this happen?

And then that community actually doing quite a bit of independent fundraising that we're able to leverage as a city.

So I'll turn it over to you, Jason.

Okay.

So I'll give an overview of the project.

I know some of you have had this information before, but this will just be a quick review.

There we go.

As Kalandra mentioned, the project is due to complete in this year, 2020, and the location is over the Seattle Capitol Hill Light Rail Station and the north edge of Cal Anderson Park.

It's been several years, or a few years, that the committee has worked together.

We have some of our steering committee actually here in the audience today.

Michelle Hasson, our chair, and Jeff Tsukuma here to cheer us on.

So the committee that was formed did a search for the appropriate location, and this is the area that was that happened to work out.

And being at the heart of Capitol Hill was great because it provides a deep cultural and historical connection because this neighborhood has a history of being a center for the LGBT community, but also was the locus of King County's AIDS epidemic.

Oops.

There we go.

The AMP developed three goals, and funding was worked both, was collaborative funded by government and private donations.

The three goals are to create a physical place for reflection and remembrance, to utilize technology to share stories about the epidemic, and to provide a call to action to end AIDS, HIV, stigma, and discrimination.

One of the components, so we'll talk more about the physical locations, but also wanted to mention that the story collection goal has been happening for over two years now, and Rosette has been leading those efforts to collect recordings from people in the community around their experiences with HIV and AIDS and also developing a picture of the history that we experienced in this region.

Those stories are going to be shared online through our website, but they'll also be shared through some digital component to the AMP as well, an augmented reality component that we're working on, so that people will have access to these stories from a variety of means.

Are we able to go to the video now?

Okay, let's do that.

So actually, let's have Rosette talk a little bit about that, the story collection part of that, and we can share some of that.

Sure, so I have been working with AMP for two years about now.

And my job really has two phases, you can think of.

The first phase was funded by a grant from the Department of Neighborhoods, the Matching Fund Grant, and that was to collect stories from black and brown people talking about HIV and AIDS and how it impacted their lives in the region.

So I wound up speaking with about 25, 26 individuals, got 60 hours or so of material, really moving, compelling, heartbreaking and heart-lifting stories about HIV and AIDS in the region.

It was really beautiful work.

And so now we're moving into phase two, and we're still going to be working with the black and brown communities, but also reaching out to immigrant communities and ASL communities, trans communities, as well as helping to reframe the white narrative.

That's by speaking to white women about how HIV and AIDS is in impacted their lives, lesbians working with queer men during the early days of the epidemic.

So really casting a wide net, I'll kind of think of it as a big, broad tapestry of all different voices giving us this wonderful story, moving, truthful story about HIV and AIDS in the region.

So that's...

one part of the AIDS Memorial Pathway.

So I've spoken to a lot of people, and we're just gonna show three minutes or so of some of the people that I've spoken with over the past few years.

We will definitely play that in the panel discussion afterwards.

Great.

Yeah, I mean, it's really been, it's been fantastic work and it has It's been wonderful to work with people in the city and to have support for a project like this.

I think when I tell people that it happens, that they often, I think half the people are shocked when I say that, really?

Like you're getting money from the city?

This is so great to do a project like that.

And I think to know that the city supports something that helps to elevate the voices of all people.

And something that will be around and have permanence in a city is really important to many people who feel so often overlooked and have to deal with stigma on a day-to-day basis.

So, it's been great.

And not just stigma, I mean the fact that people are still in healing.

Yeah.

I mean that was the thing that was really apparent to me. in the presentation that I was able to view is that it's not just about what happened, it's about what people are living with still today.

And that's why I think it's so important to incorporate these stories into this physical artwork.

I think it really brings that home to people when they're experiencing the physical art.

Yeah, that it's not just the past, but it's also our present.

And it also asks us how we will deal with our future together as people.

Eric's going to make the magic happen.

Would you like to just speak, Jason, and we can come back to that?

Yeah, we can do that.

Should we just go back to the PowerPoint?

Yeah, I was going to go back to the PowerPoint.

Yeah, that's fine.

Is that OK?

And then we can try and show this later, or do you think that you know what it is?

Not right now.

OK.

But we'll make sure that we share it with everyone so you can see it later.

That'd be great.

Thank you.

We have a link to this on our YouTube channel that we can share as well.

You can go right now if you want.

Oh, sure.

Okay, Asha's gonna brief us a little bit.

Okay, so in terms of the way in which this will work in the public art program, what this council bill 119739 will allow the city to do is to accept almost $750,000 from the AMP and their fiscal sponsor, which is the Seattle Parks Foundation.

And so those funds are being split into what will eventually be executed through three contracts to the artists that have been chosen to install the artwork this year.

And so the three artists are Christopher Jordan, who's planned to design the centerpiece artwork, which I'm sure you all have more detail about, a design practice called Civilization, which will design artworks that connect the different areas of the installation, and then lastly, a $340,000 contract to design artwork for the vent tower that's on the plaza, and that will go to Horatio Hong-Yan Law.

In terms of the, did you wanna do the master art plan piece?

I can if you want.

Sure, go for it.

That was a really great summary, thank you so much.

What you're referring to is laid out in the master art plan that was developed in 2018, was completed in 2019, that lays out the physical location of the amp and where the pieces will go.

Just as a note, the total budget for the entire project is $2.9 million.

We've raised over $2.4 million for it currently.

The aspects of the AMP, there are three major segments of the project, centering on remembrance and reflection, celebrating creativity in life, and honoring community courage and resilience.

And there are different artworks connected to those aspects.

This is a really recent and also great overview of the project.

The artwork of the AMP, there will be four distinct art zones through this space.

The centerpiece artwork, which was just mentioned by Christopher Paul Jordan, The Connecting Artworks, which you can see in the center and to the left, top part here, designed by Civilization.

The Community Room Artwork, which will be in a private space in the Capitol Hill Housing Building, but visible to the street, to John Street, because the room is all windows on the street side.

And then the Cal Anderson Park artworks, which will be on the northeast edge of Cal Anderson Park here, and you can see three different stations that were proposed and recently passed through the PAC, the Public Art Advisory Committee, those three pieces there.

So the AMP has done a lot to work with the Office of Arts and Culture to select these artists, to start the commissions, and to go through the design phase, which is why we're now ready for the city to take over with the fabrication and installation, and eventually accepting into the collection.

And Jason, if you don't mind me jumping in there, just to clarify, the community room is not one that will come into the city's collection because it is in a private space.

And so we really were focusing on the ones that were publicly accessible for the public art program.

Exactly.

OK.

As I mentioned, we were at the end of the design phase for a lot of these pieces.

The furthest along, the first commissioned artist and the one that's furthest along is the centerpiece artwork, and this is an image of that centerpiece artwork developed by Christopher Paul Jordan.

There's a little bit of an artist statement here.

The piece is really not going into too much detail here, but they form an X, but basically it's a positive sign on its side.

In some ways, that's to sort of dispel this dichotomy of HIV positive and negative as being separate and really realizing that once one person is infected with HIV and AIDS, we all are.

We all have to deal with with this epidemic.

And the X symbol has a lot of meanings for love, for banishment, a symbol of the unknown, explicit things we're not supposed to speak about in public.

The sculpture is really talking about galvanizing ongoing action and refer to spaces which have witnessed our gathering and connections across time.

And as a young black artist, the statement ends with the note that in a country where 50% of black gay men are projected to become HIV positive in their lifetime, the speakers call us into connection, hospitality, care, celebration, remembrance, activism, and support.

And that's sort of a view.

You can see a little bit of other pieces that have been suggested for the plaza here as well, the connecting art pieces, which are using protest signs as an explicit connection to the history of HIV and AIDS.

And then this slide is here just to show that we've been doing a lot of work over the last couple of years to engage multiple artists.

We had temporary artworks last year that, again, we did in partnership with the Office of Arts and Culture so that we can engage the area in different communities and using different art forms rather than just, you know, sculptural public art.

But there were some graphic design elements here.

performance elements, dance performances that were used throughout the area to really connect with folks and let them know about the AMP.

Thank you.

I have so many more questions.

So as somebody who's on the Board of Health, just that last statistic about 50% of gay men anticipating to become HIV positive is something that it feels like is preventable.

So this would be an important part of helping us understand that message, that there's work to do to make sure that people's health is protected as well.

Yeah, and that's one of the things that the artworks are doing, not only as Council Member Herbold mentioned, talking about things that have happened in the past, but maintaining a visible presence and reminding people that HIV is still with us and the things that people can do to stop it and protect themselves.

So it is very much a call to action, just being there, being a visible presence in our city, which is why I think it's so important for us to do.

Council Member Selwyn.

Thank you for today's presentation and also I've been at your previous presentations, I think in Councilmember Herbold's committee last year.

One question I had was how much do you see the AIDS memorial project, obviously it connects to the current, sorry.

Just testing the video.

I'll just finish asking my question and then we can.

So how much, obviously as you all correctly said and as Chair Morales pointed out, the AIDS memorial is not only a memorial but it's also about the current struggle that our community members are experiencing.

and that it connects to the present day as well.

How much, just sort of expanding that a little bit, how much do you think this will also connect with people's thinking about the overall healthcare needs experienced by the LGBTQ community?

Especially today, what's very prominent is the healthcare needs of the trans community and access to medication and procedures that are affordable And, you know, there's some struggles at so many levels to achieve that.

And how it relates to the need for Medicare for All, because something like Medicare for All especially benefit the trans community and the LGBTQ community.

Do you see this coming up in your conversations as well?

You know, I don't know specifically, you know, we'd be addressing issues like that.

I think that there's definitely a partnership between those issues, like talking about the realities that folks are facing with HIV today that Rosette is bringing up in the videos that are being created.

I know he's doing a lot of outreach to specific communities to ensure that like voices are heard and that multiple perspectives are included.

One of the components of the AMP is working with an augmented reality, extended reality overlay, and we really feel like that is a great component to the physical artworks that can allow people to access more information.

So with their mobile phone, they might have an interactive experience with the physical artwork, but then there could be a link to finding out more through one of the resource partners that we have.

So there's definitely a lot of connections to that, though we haven't really talked about explicitly moving forward any political agenda through the memorial.

But I think I can say that, you know, we have a list of some 30-some-odd people that we're about to approach to do more interviews for this second phase.

And I was just speaking to someone a couple hours ago, a black trans woman who has done decades of work around HIV and AIDS in the region.

And so we were talking about health care and sort of what that means for trans communities to have access to full health care and what that would look like.

and how that's been an impediment for so many people like her and her life and people who look like her.

So, and she's one of the people that I'm thinking of having a nice sit down with for this second phase.

So I can imagine that those things will come up.

So, you know, when I think what's happened so far is that sometimes an idea may be spoken by someone else, but then when I sit down with someone in front of a camera, they start talking and it just comes out again.

So I have a feeling that this is already like in the air and that it's going to be voiced by certain people even without me asking us an explicit question about it.

Do you want to try the video again?

I think that worked out.

Thank you, Eric.

so-called boyfriend, eventually became sexual.

After the fact, he then came and told me, oh, by the way, I said, yeah, he says, I've got it.

I said, got what?

He says, I got it.

I'm like, what is it?

You know, duh.

And he says, I got AIDS.

I said, AIDS?

He said, yeah.

I'm supposed to be medicated, but I don't take any medication.

I said, well, why didn't you tell me before?

He said, I already thought you had it.

I said, why would you think I already had it?

Because I live in my car?

He said, no, everybody's got it.

I have to reintroduce myself to myself and reintroduce myself to people.

I'm okay with going to go get my meds.

I'm okay with letting my job know, hey, this is what's going on, but I'm okay.

Like I was, I've been okay with stating like I'm positive.

In the black community.

The church is it.

That is the cornerstone.

That is the place where people traditionally and historically have gone to seek refuge and care and support.

But for people that were living with HIV, dying of AIDS, they neither could go to the church, nor would the church come to them.

They couldn't stand up and publicly announce that they had they were HIV or that they had AIDS or they would be further ostracized and people died of shame.

They could have lived, but they died of shame.

You can live with HIV.

This is not a death threat any longer.

You have to love yourself though in order to do what you need to do.

How you need to show other people where they can go.

I've been helped by so many different people since I've been HIV positive that there were things that they helped me with I didn't even know I could get.

So I'm really kind of glad.

I keep telling people, the Lord let me have HIV so that I could help somebody else along the way.

And I do want to mention that I know this wasn't captioned here, but everything, all the content that we put on our website and our YouTube channel are captioned so that if folks need to watch this again, they can.

Thank you.

That was powerful, thank you.

Can I ask about some of the other pieces that are in here?

So there's, going back to the monolith serpentine and lambda, these are part of it also, right?

That's a piece that's been put forward by Horatio Law.

Can you talk a little bit about what these look like?

How big are they?

What do the symbols mean?

Yeah.

So, like I said, these were just approved, so I don't have a lot of that information in the PowerPoint.

But the concept of those park pieces, one of the main inspirations is a poem through a compilation of poems around HIV and AIDS.

that refer to when a friend of theirs died, it was like the sky cracked and pieces of the sky fell down to the ground.

And so he's using that as an analogy with these large glass pieces that have fallen into Cal Anderson Park.

One of the shapes is a singular shard that's a monolith that's about eight to nine feet tall, about 24 inches wide, and then four to six inches deep.

The second piece is what is kind of described there as a serpentine shape, and it's really three fragments that are just kind of lying on their side in the park.

And then the third one is a lambda shape, And it's these two pieces that have been broken apart but are actually supporting each other, holding each other up.

So there's symbolism there, of course, but then the lambda in particular is a symbol that had been used for the gay community for many years.

It's about a catalyst for change, making positive change.

And...

And there's other references to that shape as well.

It's actually a Chinese character for person.

And so there's a lot of different meanings around that.

Those are all, the length of them are all about that same eight foot by 24 feet wide, four to six inches thick in each of those components.

And the intent is to have them illuminated from the inside so that there's sort of a glowing presence as well.

Okay.

So this looks very exciting.

I do have a question though.

Sorry, I'm trying to find my notes.

We have funding coming to the city to pay for the fabrication and installation.

We don't see anything about the maintenance of these pieces.

So can you talk a little bit about what the anticipated operating costs are or maintenance costs would be?

For how long I know there's expected legislation coming or contribution coming for that, but we don't have any details, right?

Right.

Thank you Yeah, so whenever the city accepts an artwork as a gift we also look for maintenance funds because we're responsible for maintaining these works in the long term and generally what we look to is a approximately 30 year lifespan of something living out in the public and And we're looking at anything from what might erode because of weather to something that might be tagged frequently to any other sort of materiality that might need to be replaced that we're just familiar with because we maintain other artworks.

So we have a arts conservator on staff and she's taken a look at these specific artworks and sort of done a projection over the next 30 years of kind of what it will take for us to be able to make sure that these artworks will stay looking good in the public space.

So we've estimated $400,000 for the set of three over a period of 30 years.

And so we have an agreement with the AMP and the Parks Foundation.

That money is part of that section that is still to be fundraised.

And so that is why we're not bringing it forward in the legislation at this time, but we are anticipating it by the end of the year.

By the end of this year?

By the end of this year, yes.

Okay.

So given that, I think what I'm going to propose is that we amend this to wait until we have a little more detail on that so that we can be clear about what the parameters are around that and when that funding will come in.

Is there, does anybody have questions about that piece of it, the operating costs for the maintenance?

So the idea would be that we would not vote on the ordinance that would accept the funds?

So I would make a motion to amend this to accept the donation but proviso the execution of contracts until we have more information about that.

Shall I just read the amendment?

I would feel much more comfortable with that approach as opposed to another approach that would delay acting on the legislation to accept the funds.

So let me read my proposed amendment and then we can have a conversation about that.

So I would move to amend Council Bill 119739 to accept the donation, but proviso execution of contracts pending inclusion of provisions regarding the cost overruns, potential cost overruns, donation of funding for ongoing conservation activities, or other issues council members may be interested in.

I'll give you a minute to think about that.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Council member, could I just note one thing?

Yes.

So the, you're correct in that we would accept the donation in the private proviso, the execution of the contracts.

I just note, I would, it would be lovely if I could run that language by the law department and then have it added in when this goes to full council.

So we'd make the amendment there, just because I don't have the language in front of me.

Okay.

If that would be acceptable.

Yeah, I mean it seems like including language like or other issues council members might be interested in makes it a proviso that might be impossible to respond.

Subject to a lot of things.

Yeah, okay.

I can draft that language and circulate it to you all by tomorrow.

Okay, so we will do that.

So I will withdraw that motion.

I'm supportive in principle.

Okay.

Could I ask a clarifying question?

Yes.

If we were to develop a contract with the Seattle Foundation that just outlined the expectations, would that meet the needs that you're laying forward?

I would think so.

I mean, we just don't have the information right now about what the costs are, what the expectation is for when that funding would come in, and what the plan is for maintaining these.

I mean, we've got public art all over the city, so we know that that is a real thing, maintaining that.

We just want to make sure that we understand exactly how that would happen.

So if you're able to do that, I think that would probably address the issue.

Great.

Thank you.

Just a clarifying question.

Are you seeing that as a different amendment, an amendment that just basically says these are the commitments that will be in the contract?

An amendment to the current contract?

No, it would be just a different amendment to the ordinance from what the chair is proposing and that that amendment would just simply say these are the agreements that we have with these other entities and those agreements will be reflected in the contract in the future.

Is that basically what you're talking about?

If that would be acceptable, I might just propose something.

If it would be, if it is feasible for you to get the council members that information between now and next week, then it may not even require an amendment.

If you're satisfied with the information that comes, we could just pass the bill out.

Incorporate it in that way.

Yeah.

Okay.

So we will be in touch with you soon.

Sounds good.

Okay.

In that case, we will just move to passing the bill.

And so.

Okay, sorry, I'm just reading the notes.

So I move then that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 119739. Second.

Thank you.

Those in favor of the recommendation vote by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, so the motion carries and Council Bill 119739 will be forwarded to the March 9th City Council meeting.

All right.

Thanks.

So, yeah, thank you very much.

We're looking forward to seeing all of this in Cal Anderson Park.

Thanks very much.

Thank you very much.

Have a good day.

Okay, our final item of business today is a presentation by OED.

Lakeisha, will you please read that into the record?

OED's Workforce Development Investments and Program Briefing and Discussion.

Okay.

Hello there.

Y'all come on up.

Hi.

How's everybody doing today?

Welcome.

So if we could do a quick round of introductions and then get started, that'd be great.

Thank you.

I'm Bobby Lee, Director, OED.

Matt Houghton, Workforce Advisor.

Good afternoon.

I'm Nancy Yamamoto.

I'm the Workforce Development Director at OED.

Hi.

Sasha Gorovitch, the Youth Employment Advisor.

I'm Sarah Shearer, and I'm the Manufacturing and Maritime Advocate.

Great.

Thank you.

Go for it.

Okay.

As I understand it, thanks for allowing us to be here.

This is really exciting.

As I understand it, you wanted an overall sort of overview of our program, as well as the manufacturing and maritime, some insight into that particular industry.

Sure.

So we have the work that you do around workforce development.

We know that in our industrial lands, there are lots of conversations happening.

really interested in understanding how we can support young people in our city, but also just folks in general who are unemployed or underemployed and getting better access to these kinds of programs.

Great.

The thesis that we are trying to address is that the economy is evolving in a way where on average it looks good, the economy is booming, but when you look at the data and break it down by race, geography, and education level especially.

And there are other indicators you can look at.

And you'll see that as the overall economy is moving, actually poverty is also going up at the same time, particularly for underserved communities.

And so the paradox, if you will, where you have this binary economy, where you have growth but poverty growing at the same time, is the paradox that we're trying to solve at OED.

And a big chunk of the effort around trying to address that is through small business technical assistance, especially those who are owned by people of color and immigrant population, key industry strategies, workforce development, and neighborhood economic development.

And you were at one of the events on the neighborhood economic development yesterday.

Today's focus really is around workforce development, but they all collectively serve to address this growing paradox that we're trying to address.

So the, as the economy has evolved over time, and if you look at our grandparents and what the economy that they were part of, which is production and manufacturing economy, we have really evolved into a knowledge economy, especially here in Seattle.

And in the knowledge economy, as many of you know, it really requires a lot more education if you want to thrive in that sector.

And so over time, if you were to compare from 2001 to 2019, you can see how demand for college degree has really escalated over time as the economy is evolving.

And if you look at the population growth here in the last 10 years in Seattle, which was about 20%, many of the folks coming in are knowledge workers with college degrees.

And so that contributes to this binary economy that I talked about before.

And if you break it down by race, then you can see how in the eight years after high school graduation, in terms of attainment of higher education, when you look at that by race, you can see how the attainment looks like based on race.

So as the economy is moving more and more towards knowledge-based economy, by race, you can see how the attainment level between different groups are being, over time, is evolving, and that's contributing to this binary economy.

And the next slide, this came out of a few months after I arrived here in Seattle, I believe, on the Seattle Times.

Actually, they did this comparison, and it's just really astounding how in one city you can have such the income disparity based on race.

$105,000 and $100,000 a year.

versus for African Americans, 40,500 a year.

I mean, that is just tremendous income disparity that Seattle is facing.

And we predict that actually that disparity, unfortunately, will only grow.

And there's a variety of theories as to how and why.

We won't get into that too much today because we're focused on workforce development, but our concern is that this paradox will only become more exacerbated over time.

So we changed our mission at OED, and our focus was really on inclusive economy.

We believe that this binary economy is contributing to social ills, and we need to put all of our resources supporting those that are being left out as the economy is evolving.

And what's interesting, if you look at the basic facts, I won't go into all the details here, education certainly plays a role But people of color are being left out is the bottom line when you look at demographics, unemployed population.

And so in summary, the health of our economy on average looks really just remarkably positive.

But underneath it all, we have some serious challenges ahead of us.

With that, I'll turn it over to Nancy.

Do you want to?

Oh, I think you have the...

Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

I skipped one.

Can I ask a question before we move on?

Yeah, please.

Sure, go ahead.

I always feel like language can be really powerful in being able to describe our challenges.

And I think we should think about different language about our economy so that We can say something else besides our economy is growing or booming or something that's accurate, that paints a picture because we don't have that language right now.

And if we don't have that language, then we don't have a way to express the problem in a way that everybody can wrap their arms around and then get in a position where we're problem solving around a common, it's really, it's, you know, the fact that there is this perception that A growing economy means an economy that everybody's benefiting from.

So it's great that you're saying we want an inclusive economy, but what do we want to, what do we call the kind of economy we have right now?

Yeah.

Not inclusive.

Yeah.

Council members, I want.

Good point.

Thank you.

I was going to say we call it capitalism.

Which basically describes exactly what you're saying, this concept that, this assumption that we have that growing is better.

And certainly in the case of climate catastrophe, I think that is very much called into question.

Yeah, I do think this perspective that we have to constantly be growing, we just know that that is not sustainable anymore.

Sorry, I interrupted you.

Oh, no, no problem.

You said it correctly.

Just to, it's sort of related to the concern that Council Member Herbold expressed to sort of our, the parameters in the framework itself decides what perspective we're putting forward.

So a couple of points.

One is, and this is related to actual data.

I mean, I don't disagree with you about the slide you have where And I don't know where you have this from, but I'm presuming it's correct data that 2001 jobs, the number of jobs that required a college degree and the ones that did not compared to current time.

I do think though that we have to go beyond something like this to also recognize that across the board, younger people, the people who are in, you know, seeking jobs now or have just entered the job force, you know exactly where I'm getting at, are paid less for the same work.

And I think that needs to be drawn out separate from the fact that, yes, if you are a tech worker at Amazon or Google, yes, you're getting paid really good wages.

But that describes a very, very small proportion of our young people.

And certainly we are also facing this problem where you have data only for Seattle and a lot of working class people have been pushed out of Seattle.

So it doesn't even reflect the actual problem in some ways and that's not your fault.

It's just the fact of the data.

So many poor people have been, lower income people have been pushed out into the wider region.

But I do think that it's still true even within Seattle that even if you have a college degree, you are actually having a low-wage job, and you're saddled with student debt, and so overall, and this is the historical anomaly, right?

I mean, unfortunately, the way the capitalist economy is going, the younger generation now, as you know, is the first generation in America's history, which is going to be overall worse off than the previous generations.

I feel like that should be reflected as well.

And then one thing, can I say, and I know that this might sound I'm not sure myself whether we should do anything about this or not, but I do feel sometimes that it actually doesn't help.

the cause of having an inclusive economy if we characterize manufacturing jobs as not knowledge-based?

Because I really do think that, as a lot of people have been saying more recently, low-paid jobs, I mean, the jobs that are called low-skilled, they're not low-skilled, they're low-paid.

Because yes, there's obviously a skill differential and we're not trying to pretend that all work is the same, requires the same kind of intellectual challenges and all of that, but there are other kinds of challenges.

I mean, when you talk to retail workers at Macy's, for example, yeah, they're not writing code for software, but it is challenging nonetheless because it presents other kinds of challenges.

The amount of patience you have to have, the amount of physical stamina you have to have to be on your feet all day, you know, challenging sort of, having a level emotional whatever response regardless of what interactions you have.

All of that, you know, service sector workers when you're waiting tables, I just want to make sure that we don't unwittingly have sort of a lower sort of viewpoints about that.

Thank you very much.

As a former waitress and bra-sizer at a department store, I can tell you that is not easy work.

Sorry.

Thank you.

We agree with all of you.

Should I go ahead?

Yeah, go ahead.

Yes.

Okay, so thank you for the opportunity to talk about our workforce development programs and hopefully Our presentation will answer some of your questions and address some of the issues that you raised today.

So, what we wanted to do today is to give you an overview of our Workforce Development Program.

We, there is a team of three.

Myself, Matt Houghton is our Workforce Development Advisor and Sasha Gorovitch is our Youth Employment Advisor.

We do a lot of work that is really focused on connecting our residents, particularly low income and underrepresented residents to our economy.

And so we think about economy in a neutral way.

It's really about where is the labor market demand and how can we make sure that our residents are connected to family wage jobs in our community.

So as part of our work, we do a lot of partnership with OED's key industry teams where we do focus on sectors.

Sarah Scherer is one of our staff members on the team.

We also do a lot of work with our regional partners as well as our city partners in doing a lot of work coordinating effort across the city.

And we'll go into a little bit more around those details.

So when we think about our workforce priorities for 2020, we really think about it in two different categories.

One is really centered around youth and the other is centered around adults.

For our youth portfolio, our objective is to make sure that young people in the city have what we call a window into our economy so that they understand where the opportunities are and how their educational experience is relevant to those jobs.

And Sasha will talk a little bit more about the strategies in those areas.

In the adult space, we're really focused on continuing to invest in education and training for communities that are particularly underrepresented in our economy.

and who need additional skills and training to be able to connect to our economy, particularly in those key sectors where there is a growing demand as well as an opportunity for family wage jobs.

These priorities include investments in organizations, like the Ingersoll Gender Center, Port Jobs, Seattle Jobs Initiative that support job seekers.

We also have partnerships with the Seattle colleges to improve access and completion rates amongst our low-wage working adults.

And then thirdly, we do a lot of work with business and labor around joint training strategies.

So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Sasha to talk a little bit more about our youth employment strategies.

Thanks.

So as Nancy mentioned, our youth strategy is really focused on what we call career-connected learning, which is to provide more opportunities for young people to access career experiences that really range from exposure, meeting people who look like them, informational interviews, networking, job shadows, internships, all the way up to apprenticeships and entering the labor market.

We know that most young people are exposed to the jobs that they see around them, their families, their teachers, but we really want to make sure that all young people have the opportunities and the information and the access to explore the careers that interest them, and so they know how to prepare for it.

They know what classes to take, what after-school activities to pursue, and what their education pathway might look like.

It might not be college for everyone.

So in 2019, we launched our first ever Career Connected Learning Grant.

I presented, we did a racial equity toolkit on the grants a couple months ago, and this strategy really came out of that toolkit.

OED used to run a massive internship program, but we heard from communities and from young people that They're on a spectrum of readiness.

Some of them are not ready for internships or don't know what internship they want to pursue yet.

And they need more exposure or practice talking to professionals.

And similarly, a lot of our employers are kind of on the same path.

Not all of them are ready to host interns.

Not all of them are ready to host young people.

And so we look at this as a way to work with employers, too, and to build up their readiness to start taking on young people.

So in 2019, we funded nine organizations, two projects at Seattle Public Schools, one at the Seattle Colleges, and the rest at our partners like Rewa and Vietnamese Friendship Association, Computing for All, Goodwill.

We're expecting to serve about 700 young people through that.

We don't have all of the data yet on who we're serving.

Their projects spanned from last summer and then summer aligned to the school year.

So we can get back to you on the final numbers, but we believe it'll be about 700. A priority for our grants are to serve youth of color, low income youth, immigrants and refugees, opportunity youth, youth experiencing homelessness, and LGBTQ youth.

And one thing I really wanted to mention about these grants is that through that racial equity toolkit and talking to the providers and young people, what was really great about it is that the activities were proposed by community.

So instead of the city saying, here are some activities that make sense, For you, they really worked with their local employers, their young people, and proposed activities that made sense from them.

And that was evident in the proposals we received.

They really spanned the spectrum of what would work for the young people.

And so it really fit their needs of what those young people were experiencing at the moment.

We're also partnering with the mayor's office, DEAL, and the Seattle Colleges to support the Seattle Promise students connect to summer internship opportunities.

OED, as I mentioned in the past, has done a lot of work with internships.

So we're formally partnering with the colleges this year to expand that opportunity.

Sasha, can you talk about how and whether these internships are paid?

Yes, so they're all paid.

The Seattle Promise Jobs and Career Pathway internships are paid by the employer.

So they're at the minimum wage that the employer is paying.

And then through our grant program, some of them applied for stipend or wages, or they use additional funding to cover that.

OK, good.

And for this program, is this external to the city opportunities, or is this to?

This is external to the city.

External to the city.

Yeah.

And can you just, like, how many employers are participating?

That's a good question.

I don't know off the top of my head.

I think last year we had 7 to 10 employers.

And how many students?

This year the goal is 50 students.

OK.

Yeah, I mean if there, I know that the Office of Economic Development has put time and effort in trying to cultivate those employer opportunities.

Can you just talk a little bit about how you see that work happening and moving forward?

I know you touched upon it above.

and the workforce priorities that it is a priority to increase more participation, but.

Yeah, so I can touch on it on the next slide actually.

So there's a couple different ways that we engage with employers.

And one of them I really want to mention before I forget is that we don't necessarily are providing it, but we partner and fund some of the organizations that are providing equity training for employers so that they're really ready to host young people.

and people that might not traditionally work in their pathways.

So that's really important to us is to really cultivate and work with employers who are ready.

So we partner with our key industries team to work with those employers.

And then we're investing in different sector-based organizations who have the relationships with those employer communities so they can do some of the employer recruitment and employer training on behalf of that.

So one I was going to touch on, we're partnering with our friends at Arts for a cultural and creative internship program.

We're funding Northwest Folklife, who's doing our employer recruitment, employer training, and cohort building for the young people, and placing young people at internships.

I remember the Small Business Advisory Council was also tasked with identifying things that the city could do to help employers take more interns.

Is that what you were talking about?

Yeah, so small businesses and nonprofits are an area that we really love to place young people at because they provide a lot of those small experiences where young people can get a lot of hands-on work.

But with small businesses, we know that the cost is hard and the time it takes.

It's not just the cost of hiring an intern, but somebody who's supervising and coming up with those tasks.

And so some of our partners fundraise to cover the wages for small businesses and nonprofits to increase that.

And what I heard from the small business survey that we did to hear that was that internships are a little bit harder for small businesses.

They're really looking for full-time employment.

And so we're trying to come up with some strategies and work with them when they do have that need is connect them to the training providers who are training in that specific area.

And I think that's really key is connecting them with the folks who are doing the training to create the pipeline.

I think I'm the last council member on the council now who participated in the visit to Hamburg.

And every employer, even sole source employers use interns.

And it's just part of what they do because they all see it as useful regardless of what sector they're in.

It's useful to create that job readiness.

They see it in their own best interest.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so we try to partner with small businesses in other ways, too, like job shadows or tours, so that young people know that that's an option for them when they're ready, whether it's working for that small business or maybe one day starting their own small business.

We really want to expose them to that and, you know, work with the employers who say, this might not be my talent tomorrow or in a year, but it might be in five years.

Yeah, Bobby.

That's right.

The national statistics, and you hit it right on the nail, is that 67% of interns actually end up becoming full-time workers for their boss.

And so it really is a pipeline strategy.

And some people find that statistics to be surprising, but that's the national figure that we use to justify our investments and internships.

The second part is a broader strategic question that is, that we really need to be intentional about, and that is now in public, in the Seattle public school system, the minorities are the majorities now.

And so in a workplace environment, we really have to make it inclusive, otherwise that experience can also backfire.

And so we want to be much more intentional about working with employers to make sure that the workplace environment is culturally acceptable and appropriate.

So that's a big part of our priority.

The second thing is, and this is a broader strategy, is if we don't find a way for the future emerging workforce, which are more diverse, to become part of middle class, then we won't have an economy.

So we have a big macro issue that we are trying to address with little bit of money that Sasha is running with.

But at a broader level, that's the issue for me at OED.

I'll leave it there for now.

Thank you.

I'm going to turn to you, Matt, for the adult workforce portfolio.

Before we go to adult, can I ask one more question?

Sure.

I'm sorry.

So there's a bunch of folks in South Park who are working with the port on developing I wouldn't call it, I guess, it's not a skill center.

It's more an alternative school, much like aviation school, but specifically for the maritime industry.

And it looks like this thing is moving.

And what can OED do to help in that endeavor?

You're getting Sarah really excited now.

She spent all night trying to answer that question.

Do you mind if we just finish up Nancy's part?

Because Sarah will be talking about that.

We're gonna dive deep into one sector, and that will be one of them.

Before we get there, so there's a lot of, my name's Matt Houghton, and I'm kind of Sasha's counterpart in this, in that I work with adults, and there's a considerable overlap at times, but maybe it's good to think about the main difference is that adults don't have the time necessarily to explore careers, right?

Time is their enemy of the poor, and they need, as little training as they can to become relevant in a labor market.

We like to think of that as an on-ramp to a career, right?

What is the least amount a person can learn?

to be valuable to an employer in a growth industry.

And that's kind of our overall strategy is building those on-ramps into growth industries.

And that requires, you know, partnerships with both the employer to make sure they have wraparound services and that the training they get is relevant to the employer.

So, if I could dive down, I think, is there, oh, we don't.

Do you want to go to this one?

Yeah, I love that picture.

Just to show you, this is one program that's Grow Higher, which is a program we're working on with Seattle Jobs Initiative right now in partnership with Swedish.

The first three cohorts were just for Swedish.

And what this looks like is, 60 participants have gone through this so far.

Most of these people, this is their first job in the country, and they're all getting, they go through a four-week training, intensive, and they get jobs at entry level in the hospitals, mostly at Swedish right now.

Though the last cohort, well, let me back up.

So almost all these individuals get employed right out the door, and then, They're represented, so they become part of the SCIU healthcare training funds.

The issue is they're represented, but they don't become eligible for a year.

So we are currently working with the training fund to research what happens during that year and how we can increase retention until they are actually represented.

or till they can actually get those benefits.

But this last cohort, which was just yesterday, was awesome, full class.

And there we had Children's and Kaiser, too, because they were like, we want in on that action, right?

Because these are individuals who otherwise wouldn't have been able to navigate how to get the job, who you talk to, how you do the digital application.

And we kind of package all that for them.

So we're really looking forward to growing this further and operationalizing it in the, for the, with the employers.

It's called Grow Higher, yeah.

Go back to the brief, thank you.

And it's focused on healthcare?

That's the sector.

So we typically, you know, old workforce development was about just getting somebody a job and saying, see you later.

We want to make sure that if they get into a job, it's part of a growth career that's going to get them benefits, that's going to have them get a living wage.

So it's a lot harder to do.

And what's made that more difficult is that, you know, as Seattle becomes more and more exclusive, all the people who could afford to leave have.

And so a number of the people that we end up working with are even more barriered than they were before.

This is at a time when education is more and more expensive.

So there's a lot of things working against us to try to get the people the skills they need so they can be active participants, right?

So another project I want to mention where the ironworkers pre-apprenticeship so Seattle jobs initiative actually does recruitment and wraparound for pre-apprentices who are interested in becoming ironworkers and this is a partnership with the ironworkers union they.

So these are individuals who we've run now, 30 individuals have gone through the pre-apprenticeship, and then they are getting trained at North Seattle College's new apprenticeship training program.

Those are individuals who are typically more barrier than an average pre-apprentice, but our success rate is higher, by about 7% than an average pre-apprentice.

So the iron workers are really psyched about that.

They're running a cohort every month out of North Seattle College, so that's pretty exciting.

What's that one called?

That's the iron workers pre-apprenticeship.

And then another one I wanted to mention was that it's a growing partnership we have going on with the Millionaires Club.

And again, this is, so in that, if you're familiar with the Millionaires Club, so there it's a drop-in milieu.

Those are homeless individuals who, you know, their first job is usually in-house, helping just clean up and serve food.

Their next job would be day labor.

And that's about as far as their services have gone historically.

So they're working with our partner, Seattle Jobs Initiative, to think about what is the career path after day labor, right?

It's kind of, they're calling it like a stage three, stage three career path, right?

Like what's that next step so they can actually start working?

And there's a number of other programs we're working in, but I wanted to mention, given the limited time, too, is that we also do things around program support.

So we're, I think Bobby was mentioning the changing economy.

We didn't get to talk too much about the next economy, what happens when 5G happens.

the network economy takes place.

Right now, digital literacy is already a basic skill, right?

It's not just about math and what you can read or write.

If you don't have digital literacy, you're not going to succeed.

And so we've started a partnership with Seattle Public Libraries, the WorkSource system, DSHS, the Immigrant Affairs, Let's see, and then Do It.

Yeah, David Keyes at Do It with their digital equity group.

And what we're trying to do is figure out a way to standardize a digital literacy assessment.

Oh, and the Seattle Colleges is there as well.

What would a digital literacy assessment look like that's standardized that helps make sure that we get the person to the right level of intervention to help them increase their literacy, so it would be a pre-post assessment.

It's a very tactical, you know, outcome that we're looking for, but really the intent there is to start understanding each other's operations.

These are all drop-in milieus that operate in each of these organizations, and we want to, over time, have more of a collective effort to make sure people are getting the right level of service.

So I could go on.

There's a lot of other programs, but I'll just leave it at that right now.

Well, so I don't know if you're the right person or not, but when we're talking about pre-apprenticeship programs in particular, one thing that we've talked a lot about in our office, and I don't know how to make this happen, but You know, we talked about Hamburg and in European countries where this is just part of the culture, having this kind of entry through with starting with younger people.

So we have a running start program in the city, for example.

So how do we take that model and help people connect who are juniors or seniors in high school into a pre-apprenticeship program and create this expectation that if you start to think that maybe college is not going to be your path, you have another option to start thinking about sooner so that there's something interesting and, you know, future looking for you.

So anyway, that's something that we're.

Absolutely.

You know, one thing to consider in Europe is that, you know, another difference is that between 60 and 7% of their public education system is funded by the private sector.

Okay, so we don't have that level of influence here.

I mean, that's, and so that was built in their culture 200 years ago.

And so, you know, we're always trying to leverage public-private training partnerships.

And I could send you some research we did on that to demonstrate, you know, to try to figure out what is that sweet spot to make that happen where there's a tipping point between the payoff for the private sector, like they don't have to do as much recruitment, and they get higher retention rates with, you know, quality students or trainees who are coming, who are trained up in the public sector.

But that, it's, We've never really gotten that to a huge scale.

We're starting to, so GrowHire is an example.

We're going to, our goal is to operationalize that so that the hospital is actually the one paying for that service, right?

Well, they're getting there.

Can I just, it would be good also to maybe focus on industries that most likely would be drawing talent from places outside of Seattle.

If you focus on this model on the industries that aren't necessarily hiring people from here, but that we have a lot of people moving here to take.

I think that would be, I think, very useful in dealing with some of the macro issues that Director Lee identified about our economy.

We have a lot of people who are ready to earn high wage jobs moving to the city, pushing out people who are not ready for the job.

That's when I focus on those industries that are doing, that are drawing those employees.

I mean, healthcare is great that way.

I mean, the CEO of of Swedish and the CEO of Kaiser both have said, you know, we need to make sure the community is part of our workforce.

They're actually stepping up.

But you're right, I mean, generally when people say we want jobs and then there's a policy around that and job creation happens, all those jobs go from out of state people because there's no training dollars to make sure the people who live here get the skills they need.

That's the missing ingredient.

If there's not an investment made in the skill development, you're not going to get the people who live here.

It's not just about job creation.

You're right.

Right.

I think Sasha wanted to say something about that.

Yeah, just on the youth front, two pieces.

One of our grants that we funded this year was to the Seattle colleges, and they were doing what we call tri-trade events.

And the last one was at Georgetown, South Seattle College, and about I think it was about 80 young people went to visit all the skilled trades, and the feedback from that was, wow, I had no idea.

I didn't have to go to college, or I didn't know I could do this.

I want to do more of this.

So we do try to expose young people to the opportunities that they have in both the youth apprenticeships, pre-apprenticeships, and then full-time apprenticeships.

And then the second piece is the state just passed the Career Connect Washington initiative that we're now aligning our grants to.

And the last piece in that continuum ladder is called Career Launch.

And it's mimicking apprenticeships.

It's aligned classroom training, on-the-job work experience, employer partners, articulated from high school to college credit.

And so there's a big push in the region for more programs like that across the sectors, not just skilled trades.

And like I said, when we release our grants in 2020, we'll also use the same language and encourage that.

We funded automated technician youth apprenticeships at Seattle Public Schools this year, their first one.

I would love to talk with you about how to make sure that the young people in our D2 high schools know about these opportunities.

Yeah, definitely.

And we do want to talk a little bit more about our sector work to touch on Council Member Herbold's point.

But before we do that, I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about our efforts to build regional alignment around workforce development.

And so in addition to our direct program investments, we also coordinate with other regional stakeholders, including King County.

the Port of Seattle, the Workforce Development Council, and the Local Workforce Investment Board around strategies to create a stronger, more responsive system so that we are better aligned to the needs of job seekers with employers.

and so that we can address systemic equity gaps in our who receives and benefits from services.

So this has been a multi-year effort that centered really around four goals.

One is establishing a strong regional workforce development vision and plan.

We're embarking on that work this year.

I think it goes to Councilmember Herbold's point around communication and how we talk about workforce development.

I think we oftentimes talk about it in a deficit-based way, which is really not the way to engage both the people that we want to support as well as employers.

Secondly, we're working to create a strong backbone entity to coordinate regional effort and address systemic needs that are required in the system that includes needs around common data and performance measures, braiding funds and program alignments so that we can scale and improve workforce services that are received by our residents.

The third is to ensure that community has an ongoing leadership role and a voice in the design and implementation of workforce development strategies.

that also provides real-time feedback on performance.

So rather than a one-time engagement, really thinking about the structures for ongoing participation and leadership in the system.

And then finally, creating and coordinating industry that includes business and labor around participating into the workforce development system.

So turning to, I want to spend a little bit more time talking about the health care sector because it has been such an important focal point for us and for this regional partnership, which established a health care industry leadership table this past year.

And the purpose of that was to have Leaders in the industry coalesce around joint action.

So one of the needs that they identified was the gap in knowledge for young people in our community around the opportunity for health care careers.

And it was called a Chart Your Path to Healthcare Career Event, where over 450 middle and high school students attended.

They were able to talk to health care practitioners in the field and also learn about the education and career pathways that are available to help them meet their goals.

And there is such excitement and interest in this that we've been asked to host two more events.

That's great.

The Healthcare Leadership Table also provides a forum for sharing and replicating best practices.

So one example around an apprenticeship model is the Kaiser Permanente Medical Assistant Apprenticeship Program that launched last year, which provides apprenticeships with the opportunity to earn and learn at the same time.

and that lowers barriers for access for those who are unable to participate in traditional training pathways.

So the goal for this year is to identify two additional leadership tables.

We haven't yet identified what sectors those will be in.

We do know that we want to make sure that there is a strong commitment to hiring locally.

and that there is a good pathway to family wage jobs.

So we also develop and implement strategies to prepare individuals in key sectors.

So there are certain key sectors in our community that are important to our region, both in terms of our continued economic growth, as well as a long history and identity that's tied to the region.

And most importantly, create opportunities for family wage jobs.

And each of these sectors are supported by an OD staff member as part of our key industry teams.

And because workforce development is such an issue across all these sectors, we partner very closely with them in developing workforce development strategies.

So the first sector is the creative and network economy.

I don't know, Bobby, if you want to say anything there.

We kind of went through your slides.

Yeah, it's anticipating with the modernization of the telecommunication system, it's anticipating that AI and other automation will continue to play a bigger role.

So we're targeting sectors that allows people to thrive in that economy without being replaced by machines.

And so that is one sector that we're focused on.

Yeah, and so some of the strategies that are being developed there are the creative economy, youth pilots that we are launching with arts, as well as the digital skills assessment partnership that we are forming with Seattle Public Libraries and our Department of Information Technology.

Another area where we have a focus is in technology and media.

We do have a staff person there who is very much focused on impact hiring and how to diversify that industry.

And we are also looking at how the technological advances in transportation and electrification will have workforce implications and how we could start building a workforce that will be ready to take advantage of those occupations.

And then finally, we have our industrial and maritime sectors, which Sarah is here to talk about.

We have already made an investment in the Youth Maritime Collaborative to provide youth with more exposure into occupations and career options in that sector.

and are also doing some work with the Seattle Public Schools around that.

So I'm going to turn it over to Sarah to talk more about the industrial and maritime sector.

Sarah's new actually to OED.

Could you just give a highlight of your background just at members of the council?

know your background a little bit.

Sure.

So I have been in the maritime industry for 30 some odd years.

And have everything from sail ships to work in safety to doing quality management, risk management, all kinds of different things.

And my last job, for the last four years, I was the dean and director of the Seattle Maritime Academy.

So I worked with Seattle colleges creating pathways.

In fact, I actually started the Youth Maritime Collaborative with the support and collaboration of the Port of Seattle.

Thank you.

We wanted to give you a little bit of a deep dive into one of our key industries, which is manufacturing and maritime.

Just one of the things that you guys have talked about and that we find is that people just don't know that these industries exist and that there's fantastic living wage jobs that have low barriers to entry.

So a little bit, this is just from Sodo, and from distilleries that are making single malt whiskeys to Solstice, which is cannabis.

In Sodo alone, there are over 50 cannabis companies.

There's Filson.

which is Clothing and Ruggered Gear.

They were founded in 1897 and they supplied clothes for the gold rush.

There's a neon company that started in 2004 and they do everything from regular neon signs to public art to interior signs and exterior signs.

And the owner now realized that there's no one teaching this skill, so he's actually created his own neon sign training program so that he can have his own pathway.

And that's just that creative nature of a manufacturing.

There's also Washington Chain and Supply.

They started in Soto in 1888 as scrap material, and now they have shifted over the years and changed hands, but they're chain manufacturing for the waterfront, and the seaport and they're located, they love being located in the Manufacturing Industrial Center because they can supply the port of Seattle as well as being near Ballard for all the ship fishing industries to things like candles.

So the manufacturing industry It's very economically diverse.

And there's in your appendix, there's data that really has a lot of information.

But there are great living wage jobs.

And as we were talking about, we want to focus on getting black and brown folks and women into these industries so they can be successful.

So in the data, it basically shows that there are more jobs in whiter industries, and on average, they get paid more.

And there's fewer jobs in more diverse industries, but on average, they get paid less.

So we want to try and change some of that.

And overall, the manufacturing industry is 65% white, compared to the total of King County, which is 66% white.

Go ahead.

Director Lee, my favorite slide, it's not in this deck, but can you just summarize it?

It compares the percentage of the growth product of the city for manufacturing here to other cities.

And we are a manufacturing city, but it doesn't look like it by the numbers, right?

So it's called a regional growth product, like GDP, but regionally based.

And one of the things that makes those data meaningful is when you actually look at multiple different points over time and look at the change.

certain industry within Seattle has really boomed in the last 15 years and became, it's really knowledge economy, high tech.

It has really become a dominant player in a way that is so dominant, it's actually, it makes everybody else look small.

So in the old days, in the manufacturing and production economy, Boeing jobs were like the high numbers.

But now the manufacturing numbers, they maintain relatively the same, but other industries has skyrocketed.

Now they look small.

So the behavior of the economy has really shifted over time in a way that's a little bit too disproportionate.

Right, and what was compelling to me about that particular side, though, is it compares Seattle to other cities, and if you have a vision of what a healthy economy is, it's across sectors, not heavily based in a particular sector.

That's my point, is that we're too dominant in one area.

And we need to balance it out.

And manufacturing, because of the low barrier to entry issue, allows that inclusive economy agenda to be actualized if we can balance that part out a little bit more.

But right now, it's a little bit too skewed in one area, and that's part of the concern.

And that's actually creating the inequity.

Thank you.

Yeah, go ahead.

So with the low barrier to entry and the meaning that there's lots of apprenticeships that Seattle colleges already support, there's programs that you can get a welding certificate in six months.

You don't have to have that bachelor's degree to be successful.

And if you look at the wages here, the range is $44,000 to $182,000.

And the average is, I mean, in that one company, even for the ones that above average representation of color, it's $93,000 a year.

So we talk about trying to get folks an awareness to get into jobs that create a career rather than just a job.

This is one of them, and we can't let that go.

What OED is doing particularly in this arena is they're supporting AJAC, which is the Aerospace Joint Apprenticeship Committee, Youth Apprenticeship.

They've helped establish Building Sciences Program at South Seattle College.

They've helped establish the Industry Industrial Manufacturing Academy.

They've done, we, I guess, sorry.

Support tri-trade programs, which we just talked about in manufacturing and building trades.

They fund port jobs, which helps get jobs in the trades and the transportation logistics and aircraft manufacturing at the airport.

Our port is, and our airport is one of the fastest growing airports in the nation.

Supporting the Harbor Island welding program that's co-located at Vigor Shipyard.

And that is a great example of a good public-private partnership that we would want to emulate in the future.

Helping establish a diesel mechanics program at South Seattle College and helping establish a vehicle maintenance program at Shoreline Community College.

So lots of good work in the manufacturing area.

So the maritime industry is my bailiwick, obviously.

There are six main sectors.

So you've got boat building and ship repair and maintenance.

So that's new construction of vessels as well as maintenance and repair.

You've got the recreational boating construction and recreational boating in general, which includes recreational marinas, retail boat dealers, waterborne like scenic sightseeing tours.

Then you've got the commercial fishing industry and the seafood processing.

People don't realize, but 50% of the fish that's consumed in the United States, those ships are home ported right here at Fisherman's Terminal.

So supporting food systems.

Then there's the maritime logistics and shipping, which is all of the deep water and shallow water port movement, inland freight, refrigerated warehouses, storage.

This includes longshoremen.

Passenger vessel or passenger water transportation, which we all think of as just the Washington State ferries, but there's commuters with the walk-on ferries, the high-speed ferries, visitors, cruises and Argosy, things like that.

Then you also have the Marine Maritime Support Services, which are everything from environmental firms, naval architecture, construction firms, law, accounting, marine education services, et cetera.

So the maritime industry is really, you have to think of it as an ecosystem because it all relies on one another.

And if they have to, the ships and the vessels need the shipyards and the architects and the suppliers and the warehouses and the manufacturers all together supporting them.

And we have this amazing history here and this natural deep water port that most cities don't have.

And we tend, I think the society as a whole in our community don't really realize that they're connected to the maritime industry.

But if you eat fish, if you've taken a ferry, if you wear clothes, if you have electronics, you're connected to the maritime industry.

So everybody is connected.

So why it's important for us to, why do we care?

Now these are statistics for Washington, but the maritime industry in Washington is a $37.8 billion industry.

It provides 69.5 direct jobs.

The average wage of the maritime worker is 55 years old.

So in the next 10 years, we're gonna have a mass retirement which will equal upward mobility.

In fact, the Washington State Ferries today, the folks that work on those boats, 50% of their workforce is eligible for retirement today.

So we are reaching kind of a crisis mode here in Seattle as a state, as honestly as a nation.

If we were to deploy for a war, hopefully that wouldn't happen, but we are 8,000 mariners short to support a national deployment.

So it's not just a Seattle problem or a Washington problem.

There's stuff going on everywhere.

So supporting these living wage jobs, the average pay is about $67,000 a year.

And we are the most trade-dependent state in the US.

We are the gateway with this beautiful geographic natural port.

So, we at OAD, we've been supporting the Youth Maritime Collaborative, which this year is in coordination with Launch 206, which is an internship program from the Seattle School District.

So, we're hoping to get more internships from public-private partnerships with the maritime industry.

They funded Seattle Goodwill's Youth Maritime Program, which started two years ago.

They took their youth year-round program and made it into a maritime program for awareness and preparedness.

And they brought me on board.

So 30 years experience in my connections, trying to get these employers, part of my job is to support them in getting the employers.

We were just talking about industry coming to the table with finances and helping.

That's part of my job is to talk to these folks and get them to the table so that we can start talking about what they need, including Well, I'll go in that in a second.

But the pathways to success don't need a bachelor's degree.

And these are two main industries in Seattle that have a long-term history that we can help get people, young people and adults, into these jobs in a short amount of time.

So one of the things we've been doing in this strategy is the mayor pulled together the maritime and industry strategy stakeholders process.

This is the actual location that we're talking about.

So these are the manufacturing industrial centers.

You'll notice that on the left-hand side there are many regional centers of manufacturing or maritime, but we're just talking about these two specific places that are what's called the Bin Mic, which is Ballard Inner Bay, and then the Duwamish Mic, which includes Soto, Georgetown, and South Park.

So the stakeholder group includes one citywide group and then four neighborhood groups.

The four neighborhood groups are Georgetown, South Park, Ballard, Inner Bay, and Soto.

The citywide group will have seven different meetings.

The four neighborhood groups will have four meetings each.

And so far, we've had two sets of the neighborhood meetings in each neighborhood, and we've had three sets of meetings in the citywide group.

And most of the issues that have come up, the dominant issues, have been workforce issues.

We need more people.

More people need to know about these.

They need skilled workforce.

They need to diversify.

Transportation issues.

How do we get these workers that we need to the jobs in an effective, efficient manner?

And from an environmental standpoint, how do we get less single-use cars on the road, and we can get folks there to reduce emissions, affordable workspace and housing.

If people are going to be working, we have a lot of folks that work in this part of the industry or in middle-wage jobs that can't live in Seattle anymore.

So we want to make sure that they can live and work in potentially in the same place.

There's public safety issues that are coming up, of course, with the homeless camper situations in the industrial areas, as well as pedestrian safety and infrastructure changes.

And then, environmental issues, particularly in South Park, have come up.

And then, land use is obviously the main issue that's gonna be talked about, and the horse trading that's gonna have to happen.

But that's not the whole process.

The point was to try and make strategies that we can have middle-wage jobs and land use is just a tool to help us do that.

So the deliverables, it went from November through August.

It'll go into this summer.

There was a vision for the industrial and maritime lands, which is envisioning 10 to 15 years out in the future.

One of the other deliverables is a neighborhood vision of how that neighborhood would want to see their maritime and manufacturing area.

The principles, the mayor came up with five different principles that all of this work has been the lens that people have been looking through.

policies, they're going to be making recommendations on what policies and programs we could be doing to help support whatever this vision is.

And then there's citywide actions and local actions that would happen in each of those neighborhoods.

That's where we're at.

We're happy to come back and give you an update once this is all finished up, but there's a lot more to do.

Great, so I have a few questions for you, a couple related to this, but before I get there, we've talked a little bit about the Workforce Development Council and the previous slide also showed Tacoma.

And so can you talk a little bit about the relationship too with the port and especially this port partnership as it relates to workforce development?

Sure.

So the port itself has an alliance with Tacoma.

So it's called the Seaport Alliance.

And they have that going on.

I don't know exactly what, from the port's perspective, what they're doing with Seattle and Tacoma for workforce.

The Port of Seattle definitely has a workforce development program and partnership.

I'm hoping with me being on board that I already have a relationship with the port, not that we didn't before, but I think that relationship will get stronger so that we can do some of that.

Councilmember, is there a particular issue you wanted us to follow up on?

Well, I just I'm as a new elected official talking with the new Port Commissioner and he is Sam Cho is also very interested in economic development.

So we've had some kind of offline conversations.

I just didn't know if there was any sort of formal

And to go to Councilperson Herbalt's comment about the high school, so I've been talking to Ryan Calkins for a couple of years about that in my former role, and they are moving forward.

There is a potential for Looking at that being located in South Park in collaboration with SPU And we're working Sasha and I have been working with SPU to see how we could Help figure out some of that from a community perspective.

Okay And then if if you go to the that industrial lands strategy The calendar, yeah.

So I'm still trying to understand a little bit about how this is unfolding.

But one thing that I noticed on this is the, for May, policy recommendations and EIS alternatives.

So my understanding about the EIS process is that it's related to a particular project, but I don't see any particular project identified there.

So is that just kind of a placeholder?

They're kind of doing the EIS They're beginning to pull together the things to do the EIS, kind of on the side.

But they're waiting for us to get to that policy level and what some of the recommendations will be so that we can know if we did nothing, here's what it would look like.

If we did these things that you ask us, to potentially do, what would it look like?

So they're in the process of kind of gathering all that data and this next step in at least the neighborhood part, we are to the places where they're gonna start proposing policies and program changes.

And then in the city part, they're a little bit further behind that piece.

So we're not quite on this timeline, but this is the most recent one.

That doesn't answer your question fully, and I'm happy to give some more information.

Yeah, no, this is talking a lot about policy, and the EIS, as I understand it, is about a particular, say, development project.

And if nothing's been identified yet, I'm not sure what we're assessing.

Why don't we follow up with an email?

Yeah, OK.

OK, that was great.

Thank you.

Is that it?

Yes.

That's all you're doing.

Do our council members have any other questions?

Okay, so I do have lots of things.

I'm excited to follow up with you on different programs, opportunities.

Oh, so I did have one more question, which you started to talk about, and then I think I interrupted you.

But what do you need?

You were talking about, you know, at the, you had started talking about opportunities for upward mobility and launch 206. And then you were starting to say, you know, what we could really use is, and then I interrupted you.

I don't remember what I was saying.

But I can only say, you know, support to get the industry to help us supporting.

One of the things that's not happening particularly in manufacturing in maritime is making space for the next generation.

And so I've been trying to do that in my role in other places.

getting people to offer these internships and to participate in the work that Sasha and the workforce team is doing with trying to get community service organizations and youth serving organizations into the industries and the employers to help them be prepared because they won't retain these folks if they don't know how to be with them because the maritime industry is inherently white male in this particular area.

That is not true of the maritime industry as a whole, but it is here.

Okay.

Great.

Well, thank you all for your time and your information.

I look forward to continuing to hear from you and this, we have an open door policy, so the open-ended question for me is what can we do to support your work and to make sure that we're scaling these programs and supporting really the work you're doing to try to get people into good paying jobs in the city.

So if there are no further questions, then the committee, this concludes the February 27th, 2020 committee and we are adjourned.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

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