Seattle City Council Public Safety & Human Services Committee Special Meeting 81423

Thank you so much.

It is 2 p.m.

It is the August 14th special committee meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee.

I'm Lisa Herbold, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Oh, excuse me.

Mosqueda is present.

Council Member Mosqueda is present.

Thank you.

Councilmember Nielsen?

Present.

Councilmember Peterson?

Present.

Vice Chair Lewis?

Present.

Chair Herbold?

Here.

Five present.

Thank you so much.

On today's agenda we have two items.

The first is a panel presentation from a number of providers and stakeholders speaking about the existing gaps in the services landscape for people using fentanyl.

The second is a briefing from the mayor's office on proposed council bill 120645 to add crimes of knowing possession and use of a controlled substance in a public place and adding a new section to the municipal code.

With that, we will now approve our agenda for today's committee meeting.

If there's no objection, today's agenda is approved.

Seeing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

At this time, we will transition into public comment.

I'll moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

Each speaker will be given one minute to speak.

I will alternate between virtual and in-person public commenters.

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

If you've not yet registered to speak but still would like to do so, we ask that you sign up before the end of the public comment session.

Once I call a speaker's name, if you are using the virtual option, you will hear a prompt.

And once you hear that prompt, we ask that you press star six in order to unmute yourself.

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

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

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

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

Once you have completed your public comment, please disconnect from the line.

And if you plan to continue following this meeting, we ask that you do so via Seattle Channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

We have 31 people signed up for public comment.

14 of them are virtual and 17 are in person.

And looking for public comment to continue through about 2.35 p.m.

And I'm going to move forward calling on the first speaker.

The first person that we have signed up, I'm going to do in-person public commenters first.

It's Carolyn Malone, followed by Faye Lopez.

One minute is insufficient, so I'm going to face reality.

I brought a poster of perpetrators, Seattle police, who violate my civil rights, my personal rights, my privacy.

Joseph Ellen in my apartment building.

violating me, and each time I speak out, I pay the consequences.

I've reached out to the media and different agencies.

I'm thwarted in every effort.

These are people who work for the city, Seattle Police, and firemen, too, who collude with the police in violating me.

I have a right, constitutional right, to stand in front of the police bunker at Fifth and Cherry.

Because they live in my house, violating me, maintaining surveillance on me.

A woman in your housing passed away from fentanyl.

Pepper spray is in my housing, yet I'm the one treated as a criminal.

I'm not a criminal, not a suspicious person, and I will continue to speak out at the bunker and all around.

Thank you, Ms. Pillon.

Our next speaker is Faye Lopez, followed by, I'm sorry, Faye Lopez, Gazette, Gotsky, sorry, followed by Sean Jackson.

My name is Faye Lopez Gecki and I work for PDA.

This ordinance calls for diversion to services instead of jail and prosecution to help people make progress to get out of their current circumstances and drug use.

This could be a strong progressive framework to divert to services like Portugal, but like Portugal, the framework is vulnerable and will be hollow if the receiving system is weak.

Many of the people at highest risk and having the biggest impact on neighborhoods need long-term case management to navigate multiple systems and services.

Those living unsheltered need a dignified place to stay with intensive case management.

That is what LEAD and CoLEAD were built to do.

But a lot of lead and co-lead funding this year was one-time money, and it's not clear whether either is going to have the resources to match the demand this ordinance sets up.

We can only achieve this vision of this ordinance describes if this piece is set up to respond.

Otherwise, these will be hollow words.

This can work, but we must ensure the resources are there to support this framework.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Sean Jackson, and Sean will be followed by Reza Maharishi.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Sean Jackson.

I'm with a company called Urban Renaissance Group.

We manage our own over 7 million square feet of office space here in Seattle.

My comments today are absolutely in support of passing this public safety measure and supporting additional services for those in need due to fentanyl use.

We support, as I mentioned, support the funding for the treatment of diversion programs.

We recognize this is necessary for a long-term solution.

That said, we all know the public safety issues have been exacerbated by this epidemic.

Believing that tolerance by the community will continue for bad behavior is naive.

People have choices, and in my business, these are choices generally that can be five to 10 years or more.

We are subsidizing retailers.

We have doubled spending on our security and our tenants do not want to return to the office.

We have a building on 4th and Pike that we can't even get a look from anybody leasing space because they talk about the neighborhood.

This is our reality.

Again, we support this bill.

It's a critical step in addressing these issues and we hope you will consider providing additional services for these needs.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Reza Marashi.

Marashi, is that better?

Followed by I believe it's Michelle Hauser.

Good afternoon council members.

My name is Reza Marashi and I'm director of government affairs for Kilroy Realty Corporation and I am also the board chair of the Metropolitan Improvement District or MID for short.

My comments today are in support of passing this public safety agenda item 120654. Like many in Seattle, I'm deeply concerned about the public safety issues that have been exacerbated by the opioid epidemic.

And we know from multiple rounds of public opinion polling that over 80% of Seattle voters believe that restoring a safe and welcoming environment downtown will bring back residents, workers, and visitors, and create the momentum needed to put downtown on a sustained path to recovery.

That's why I believe this legislation is a critical step in addressing these issues by providing much-needed resources for treatment and diversion programs.

To that end, please also make sure that community-based resources that have proven to work well for this population are renewed and expanded next year.

These programs include Third Avenue Project, LEAD, and CoLEAD.

Passage of this public safety agenda item will ensure a healthy, vibrant downtown for all.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Michelle, and it begins with an H.

Thank you.

In cursive.

My name is Michelle Hasson, and maybe unlike some of the folks here, I'm actually a resident of downtown Seattle.

Some of you have walked with us on our morning walks with about 15 or 20 other women.

I speak to the issue of safety.

Right now, it feels like we're in something of a public shooting gallery in Belltown and downtown, where we live.

It's our neighborhood.

I just want to, again, like others, support the initiative that will be in front of you.

Of course I do.

My only question is, what's taken you so long?

to do this.

You've had the money, you've had the people to be able to do it, but yet you don't get with the work that needs to be done.

We know, the people in this room, that it needs to be done.

So I challenge you to vote through that initiative, get up out of your committees, and get the work done.

Our next speaker is Nick Jackal, and after Nick speaks, we'll move on to some of our virtual presenters, beginning with Howard Gale.

Hello, council members.

My name is Nick Jackal, and I'm here to speak to the agenda item 120645. I am representing the Downtown Seattle Association and our community of over 1,000 residents, nonprofits, and business members.

We are dedicated to ensuring that a vibrant, downtown.

We are dedicated to fostering a vibrant downtown that benefits everyone.

Seattle is grappling with an escalating public health emergency, the drug crisis.

Urgent action is imperative.

Seattle's overdose deaths surged by an alarming 72% from 21 to 22, soaring to 342 fatalities to 589. Passing this measure stands as a pivotal step towards tackling the drug crisis, catering to those in dire need of services and treatment.

It's pivotal for rejuvenating our streets and public spaces, fostering a full recovery for downtown.

This legislation represents an approach to public safety that our communities deserve by providing a compassionate and effective approach to handling drug-related issues.

As this measure goes to a vote, please also make sure that community-based resources that have demonstrated successes are renewed and expanded.

Those programs include the Third Avenue Project, LEAD, and CoLEAD.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you.

Next speaker, moving virtually, or moving to the virtual speakers.

Next, we have Howard Gale, and Howard will be followed by Karen Geelan.

Howard?

Good afternoon.

Howard Gale with SeattleStop.org.

Proposed Council Bill 120645, like the bill that preceded it, still has a fatal flaw.

You want to trust the current city attorney and the SBD to not do what is in their history and nature, namely engage in racial bias.

In 2020, the SBD commissioned an independent audit that revealed continuing racial disparity in both SBD stops and in the use of force, with force used against black people over seven times higher per capita compared to white.

Policescorecard.org reports that the SPD is in the bottom, the bottom 4% of major city law enforcement agencies when it comes to the racial disparity in drug arrests.

Even the federal court monitor has begrudgingly admitted this problem persists and stops in detentions and use of force.

Until you stand up an alternative to SPD for dealing with people facing crippling addiction, until you create drug courts and create a jail that doesn't promote suicide, this bill is unworkable and unconscionable.

It is grotesque to punish those suffering from mental health and addiction problems and not first punish yourselves for failing to provide accessible services to well over 90% of those people who desperately need them.

Please, don't put the cart before the horse.

This is worse than that.

You're placing a cart on a hill and hoping that those with punitive impulses, the SPD and the city attorney, won't send it careening down the hill.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Karen Guilan followed by BJ Last.

My name is Karen Gilena, and I live downtown and walk extensively downtown.

I urge the council to adopt this bill to bring us in sync with the Washington state law.

I do see one problem in the newly written bill, though, is that it seems to be hamstringing our police department into what they can and can't do.

There's all kinds of language about whether they're doing harm to themselves or harm to others.

By definition, taking the drugs that are on the street right now is harmful to the people that take them.

And by definition, doing open drug use on the streets invites drug dealers, which invites gang wars, which invites shootings, and causes public damage in all cases.

So I definitely support using caution in getting people into help and using diversion tactics, but we cannot hamstring the police by insinuating that it does exist.

people should be allowed to be on the street, because then if they need help, they'll be more available to people.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is BJ Last, and BJ will be followed by Julia Buck.

My name is BJ Last.

I'm a Ballard resident.

In last week's Finance and Housing Committee meeting, Council Members Nelson, Peterson, and Lewis talked about cutting city services in the name of removing duplication and finding efficiencies.

Today, those three Council Members are supporting a second attempt at the new war on drugs bill even though it will require the city to build out expensive new infrastructure that duplicates what already exists at the county level.

Their hypocrisy would actually be amusing, except for the fact that the new war on drugs bill will kill people.

The proponents of the bill have been crystal clear that its purpose is to arrest more people.

Jails kill.

Washington state jails kill more people than the United States.

People released from jail are 40 to 120 times more likely to die of drug overdose and incarceration decreases the life expectancy of both everyone locked up and their loved ones.

Police contact with the community also kills.

As the Seattle Times reported in May, SPD accounts for 11% of all homicides in Seattle since 2015. If council members want to help, they should actually fund things recommended by the King County Heroin and Opioid Task Force back in 2016.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Julia Buck, and Julia will be followed by Paige Killinger.

Good afternoon, Council.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide comment.

I am concerned that the $20 million worth of funding is now in jeopardy.

The $20 million worth of treatment funding is in jeopardy.

I think it aids it.

Of course, this money wasn't actually new money for treatment.

This was $20 million over 20 years, $1 million per year of treating the addiction crisis.

And so I am very confused.

It has at all different from the previous bill that the council did not pass.

I am also very concerned that this bill does not appear to do anything new in terms of treatment.

It's the same carceral thing we've been trying for 40 years now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Paige Killinger.

And Paige will be followed by, moving back to in person, Anthony Peterson.

Hello, my name is Paige Killinger, and I'm a social worker with the LEAD program here in King County.

Most of our clients that are in the LEAD program are referred to us through diversion names.

And I wanted to speak to some of the work that diversion programs allow and allot for our society's most vulnerable citizens.

Through diversion and long term case management that is client centered, meaning that we the case managers have no We have no wants, we have no push, we have no guide about what our clients get out of the program.

It allows for the clients to find their voice and autonomy in a system that normally is extremely punitive, specifically to black and brown citizens here in Seattle.

Through long-term case management, our people are allowed to find, to stand up for themselves, to have autonomy, and to decide what they want the rest of their lives to look like here in King County, and to be members of society that they want to be.

Through diversion, it allows people other options besides doing the same thing over and over again and being looked over and being said, all of these people need help, but to actually give them assistance to find their own voice here in our society.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Again, moving back to in-person public commenters.

And just a comment, I do notice that some folks who are signed up for the panel are also signed up to testify.

You don't have to, but if you are intending, okay, great.

Thank you.

Anthony Peterson will be followed by Dwayne Turon.

Hello, council members.

My name is Anthony Peterson.

I am a supervisor for the Metropolitan Improvement District.

I am a product of the consequences of drug use and there being consequences for my actions.

I was a heroin and meth addict for 10 years.

But because of those consequences and diversion programs that are available, and they are available, I was able to get the help that I needed.

And now I'm extremely successful and continue to want to help others.

I strongly urge the council to pass this ordinance and these updates so these people can get the chances that they need and so that people can be safe outside as they walk down the streets.

Right now, people don't feel safe walking down the streets at all.

I was approached by a man from Cleveland and asked me, how do you do it?

And he was talking about rampant drug use and open air drug market that Third Avenue has become.

So, and he's from Cleveland, is what he said, and they have a bad rep. So I please urge you all to change this.

This legislation is addressing these issues, and it will provide downtown to be clean and cared for.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

Next person signed up is Dwayne Travon, it looks like.

We're good?

Okay, moving down to Lars Erickson.

Good afternoon, Council Members.

My name is Lars Eriksson.

I'm the Senior Vice President of Public Affairs and Communications for the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.

On behalf of our 2,500 members, I would like to extend our gratitude to the Mayor, Council Members, City Attorney's Office, Seattle Police Department, and the many community leaders for their hard work and collaboration that created the public safety legislation before you today.

I believe we all share a vision of first helping individuals experiencing a crisis connect to the services they need.

When you consider your vote, I ask you to please act in the best interest of our community and pass the legislation.

During a special legislative session in May, many of our state legislators demonstrated leadership to ensure there would not be a patchwork of laws related to open drug use and possession.

With those state laws in the books, it's important that states pass the conforming legislation.

This bill is an excellent example of an all-of-the-above approach that the community members deserve.

Please move forward with urgency.

Seattle voters and the regional business community are behind you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Lou Bond.

Thank you so much.

Lou Bond with the Melbourne Tower, beautiful 10 story terracotta office building at 3rd and Pike.

First of all, I really applaud the city council and the mayor's office for all the hard work that has been going on.

I think we're getting closer, but we're not there yet.

I want to also give a shout out to to TAP, the Third Avenue Project, to Code Lead and LEAD.

I think those have been valuable assets that have been helping the community.

But we need to get the next distance, and this is this new ordinance that the mayor's forwarding to all of you.

I think it needs to be passed.

We also need to provide that treatment center for those folks that are trying to get off the streets.

We need to get them off the streets.

There has to be consequences to bad behavior, and these guys can't help themselves.

This is the last mile.

These are the folks that haven't taken up the help and the services that are being offered to them, and we need to provide that support.

So let's help the Third Avenue Project lead and co-lead.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Moving back to some virtual speakers, we've got Alice Lockhart, and Alice will be followed by Sabrina Villanueva.

Hello, Council.

I'm Alice Lockhart.

Thanks for this opportunity to speak.

Council members, study upon study tell us that arrests for drug use under this bill will at best leave arrestees at higher risk of overdose with diminished financial and personal resources and with increased need for social services.

We know we're facing a really, really tough budget season next month.

If this bill were to pass, Council would be asked to fund its implementation in the same breath with calls to cut the very social services it will stress.

We can expect that implementation of Council Bill 120645 will come at the cost of things we all hold dear, climate resilience, transportation and building electrification, Vision Zero parks, and particularly real help for those who need it most.

I live on Aurora, where folks will be swept north from this bill, I have no doubt.

I'm not scared of them.

I'm scared of what this bill will do to them.

I urge your no vote on this inhumane and fiscally irresponsible bill.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next virtual commenter is Sabrina Villanueva, followed by Molly Somerset.

Hi, good afternoon.

My name is Sabrina Villanueva, Senior Director of Property Management for Clay's Properties, and my comments are in support of passing this public safety measure.

I manage a handful of properties in downtown Seattle, including the historic security building on 3rd Avenue, and I speak on behalf of the many small businesses, tenants, and employees that are trying to make a living and come downtown every day and are trying to run and operate small businesses.

I believe that this legislation is a critical step in addressing our much needed attention to public safety in downtown.

But we also want to make sure that there are programs that will support this, including the Third Avenue Project, LEAD, and CoLEAD.

So I hope that's a consideration that there's the actual resources to make this happen.

And I personally worked with all of these programs and seen the positive impact.

So thank you for your consideration and have a good day.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Molly Somerset, followed by Meredith Roth.

Good afternoon, Public Safety and Human Services Committee.

I'm Molly from the Unceded Land and Waters, the Duwamish and Coast Salish Peoples District 3. Please vote no on Bill 120645. I urge you to reflect on the name of this committee, Public Safety and Human Services and how this bill does not align with the goal of the committee.

This bill will increase prosecutions for drug possession, increase jail population, increase racial and classist disparities in arrest, jail time, and overdoses, reach out for support, and fear prosecution.

Criminalization does nothing to promote safety.

This bill is designed to disproportionately target people experiencing homelessness due to the Public Use Clause.

Instead, we should be reallocating our time, energy, and funding to ensure everybody in the city has access to food, housing, and health care, which is the foundation of public safety.

That is how downtown and other parts of the city will be safer.

Vote no on returning to a failed drug on wars.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Meredith Ruff, followed by Latanya Sevier.

Meredith, if you're with us, can you hit star six, please?

There you go.

Perfect.

Thank you.

I am urging the council also to vote no on this bill.

There is no such thing as progressive incarceration.

There is no such thing as a progressive drug war.

Not only that, but what you are proposing simply will not do what you say it's going to do.

It is not going to help treat anybody.

The only thing that this bill will do is move people from one place to another and they will come back or other people will take their place.

I go downtown all the time.

I also work downtown for all of the particularly white folks who are commenting about how they quote unquote feel unsafe.

I challenge you to think about the difference between feeling unsafe and being unsafe and what this bill would do to make our unhoused neighbors and drug-using neighbors actually unsafe because you are promoting more contact with the police which could easily lead to one of their deaths.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our last person who's showing up as present remotely is Latanya Sevier.

If there are more folks who show as present, we'll go back to that list.

But for now, we're going to hear from Latanya Sevier, followed by Malika Lamont.

And Latanya, can you hit star six to unmute yourself?

Latanya, if you can hear me, can you please hit star six to unmute yourself?

All right, we'll try one more time.

Latanya Sevier, if you can hear me, can you hit star six to unmute yourself?

You're next speaking.

Can you hear me?

Yes, perfect.

Thanks.

My name is Latanya Sevier.

I'm a black, queer, non-binary renter in D2.

I'm also someone who has been impacted by the war on drugs.

I've had two of my immediate family members profiled, targeted, and imprisoned due to racist classes drug policy that we all know decades later does not work.

I'm calling to ask each and every one of you to reject the proposed legislation, Bill 120645, that would expand the city's criminal code to prosecute drug possession.

and public drug use.

We all know from decades of evidence that incarceration does not prevent overdoses nor give people the help they need.

City adoption of this law would increase overdoses, deaths, and racial disparities in arrests, jail time, and overdoses.

This proposed bill will bring us back to regressive and racist war on drug policy instead of moving towards evidence-based, effective, and more compassionate approaches.

Do not take us back 50 years to a failed war on drugs.

defund the police, defund the city attorney's office, and reinvest those funds into systems that make us safe and provide access to treatment and support that does not involve individuals with guns.

Thank you.

Our next speaker in person is Malika Lamont and Malika will be followed by Bybe Morgan.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, my name is Malika Lamont, and I'm the Director of VOCAL Washington, Voices of Community Activists and Leaders Washington, and we also house the Council of Expert Advisors on Drug Use.

The part of this ordinance that we support is the call for diversion to services instead of jail and prosecution to help people make progress to get out of their current circumstance and issues related to their chaotic drug use.

However, what will make this Something that is impactful is whether or not there's funding to go into the increase of services that we know work, models that have been designed to work with this population, CoLEAD, LEAD, and the Third Avenue Project.

Most of the people that we're concerned about need more than a short turnaround crisis response.

And so we're asking as Volcal Washington for those interventions to be funding.

Please make sure that they're matched by the receiving system to provide support.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is Bybe Morgan, followed by Stone Lavin, I believe.

Hi, my name is Bybe.

I'm a disability rights advocate in the Central District, and I work with the homeless people there, and I do volunteer work, and I fucking love it.

This is a fresh coat of paint on the same violent policies you proposed in June.

I'm not going to mince words.

Voting yes on this policy is aligning yourself with white supremacy and fascism.

Like I said last time, voting yes on criminalizing drug use is also exhibiting antisocial traits because it's knowingly harming people and engaging in a belief system that says some people can be treated like rodents and cockroaches.

Please, if you support this bill, don't just, you know, listen to what I say, maybe take it in.

I urge you to step down and seek emergency mental health care because you are not fit to lead if you have an unaddressed mental health issue.

If you have antisocial traits, you need to seek rehabilitation, just like the drug people that you're trying to criminalize.

you need help too.

Have a nice day.

Stay safe.

Thank you.

Our next signer signed up is Stone Laven.

Is that Stone Laven?

Is that right?

Okay, thank you.

Okay, so the first, I would say the main cause of the drug addiction problem is the poverty.

Like honestly, like if you're not one of the spoiled generation X adults that were born in the 60s and 70s, you're never able to establish even a middle-class career making $50,000 a year.

As a young adult born in the 90s, the best kind of job I can get is an entry-level cook job or maybe a security worker or something like that, the smallest minimum wage pay.

And that's the heart of all this drug addiction, because what happens is young adults, they start smoking weed and drinking alcohol because paying gas and paying insurance and tabs and all these little hidden fees.

You can't get anywhere without dropping a couple bucks.

Yeah, honestly, the price of living is insane.

And the gas pricing, you go down, give her this tab, crap.

Yeah, it's ridiculous.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

The last person that we have signed up for in-person public comment is Dan Godfrey.

My name's Dan Godfrey.

I work at REACH as a lead screening and outreach coordinator.

I've been doing that for two years and in that time have collaborated on dozens of diversions with SPD, Burien, and the King County Sheriffs.

I've seen individuals arrive at many outcomes from diversion, but can tell you that no small number have arrived at better, healthier circumstances for themselves and for their community.

Through services, many have arrived to better management of behavioral health, access to housing, reduced substance use, and more positive community engagement.

Diversion is a data-driven process and a hopeful vision.

The impact of this ordinance will depend not just on the diversion itself, but on the architecture of services available to those diverted individuals.

Our city needs continued investment in treatment, assorted forms of housing, day centers, health hubs, and more.

Please continue to advance the vision of this ordinance by enhancing the systems that will rely on it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Going back to virtual, testifiers, we've got somebody who was previously shown as not present who is now present.

So, we'll hear from Reed Olson next, and if the status of any of these other not-present people changes, we'll take those speakers.

But otherwise, it looks like Reed Olson might be our last public commenter.

Reed.

Hello.

I'm calling yet again to urge City Council to vote no on this bill and not criminalize public drug use.

What Seattle needs is investment in care and housing.

I feel like this has been the same bill, something cruel that does not value human life, that is wrapped up in a bow.

with hollow promises that will not actually protect or improve the livelihood of the people you're claiming to help.

As an earlier caller said, I would implore you to think about what feeling unsafe versus actually being in danger.

I think further in contact with the police is incredibly dangerous and you're ignoring the real reasons people become houseless in the city.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That is the last testifier that we're seeing, both in person and online.

So with that, we will end our public comment period and move into the items on our agenda.

Will the clerk please read in agenda item number one, and as he's doing so, please take a seat at the table.

Thank you.

Agenda item one is panel on gaps in the services landscape for people using fentanyl.

Thank you so much, Mr. Clerk.

As folks are taking a seat at the committee table, just a couple of introductory remarks.

Really appreciate everybody being with us here today.

As described, this is a panel discussion intended to highlight the gaps in the diversion and treatment services landscape for people using fentanyl.

or other controlled substances.

This discussion is designed to be on a separate but parallel and critical path to the second item on the agenda, the piece of legislation intended to address the so-called Blake fix.

Several presenters, we've got 10 people presenting, a total of 60 minutes on this agenda item.

So in the interest of time, we ask that you introduce yourself before you speak.

Normally I would do a round of introductions, but rather than doing that, let's just move right into the presentations with each presenter speaking themselves, introducing themselves before they speak.

The PowerPoint presentation will show who is speaking at any given time.

Our first presenter is, appreciate everybody who's able to join us today, but our first presenter is under the weather and presenting virtually.

And really appreciate the availability to present and turning it over to Dr. Kotarski.

Thank you.

Hi, thank you so much.

My name is Dr. Sin-Katarsky.

I use she, her pronouns, and I am the Medical Director for Purpose, Dignity, Action.

So I've heard a few people say PDA.

I wanted to just clarify.

Purpose, Dignity, Action is our name.

And I'm also the Interim Program Director for the COLEAD program.

And today I just wanted to speak a little bit about, first I'd like to just name a little bit about what CoLEAD is for those who may not have heard of it before.

But CoLEAD is at its heart a diversion program that is specifically working with those in our community who are at the intersection of criminal legal involvement, homelessness, and substance use disorder.

And our program helps people come inside and we wrap services around them while they are with us in order to help them stabilize.

And then with that stabilization, we work to try to help them get to permanent housing options.

So in that In the course of that work, our staff have experienced and have so much expertise at this point in really recognizing the gaps in the services landscape for people using fentanyl, which is the title of why we are here today.

So I'm just going to speak a little bit about specifically about the gaps that we have in healthcare.

So one of the things that I have noticed is that when we speak about options and what it is that we should do or what we are going to do, referral to treatment is always a big one.

And specifically, I think it's imperative that we simultaneously recognize that our healthcare system woefully underserves people who are experiencing all of the things that I just named, being right at that intersection of homelessness and being drug users or having substance use disorder or other behavioral health conditions or mental health conditions, any combination of the above, Unfortunately, accessing health care can be difficult for most, and it can be nearly impossible for some of our most vulnerable.

And I'd like to just give you a bit of an example.

I could name many, but I'll I'll try to be a little bit succinct.

I do wanna give you an example of a participant that we had recently who desperately needed some medical attention, was about chronic history of substance use and did name wanting some support at getting better.

But what we found with this person was as he attempted to get that care, he was turned away.

turned away from hospital.

Our staff had to re-engage him, work with him in order to try hospital again, where then he was triaged, fortunately.

However, at triage, he was denied care.

On further inquiry, we learned that he was denied care.

Essentially, our opinion at this point is out of stigma that it was for drug-seeking behavior or some other attempt at a secondary gain.

The most important part that I want to emphasize here is that we then learned when he was finally on third attempt admitted with significant support from not only our staff, but including even legal support in order to ensure that he was seen and admitted.

He was determined to be at end of life and in dying.

This is a person who was dying.

Unfortunately, he then again was going to be discharged.

and with no care plan other than a return to street.

Coley did intervene one more time, and we were successful at being able to get him back to hospital so that this person could, at a minimum, have the dignity that any and all of us would ask for when we are dying, which is to be provided care enough to be comfortable and safe and not literally out on the street dying alone.

I may get a little choked up.

I tend to do that with regards to people that I work with because I care.

And I just wanted to share that with you to really land the impact.

When we talk policy, we are talking about something that is going to affect somebody's life.

These are people.

These are human beings that we are talking about.

So I think it's important that we name that and we honor that when we make decisions.

The gaps in services, as I mentioned with healthcare, some of it is that we are not quite ready with healthcare with regards to comprehensive treatment plans, not just for fentanyl.

I know we are speaking about fentanyl, but more specifically, it's not just fentanyl.

It's a little bit broader than fentanyl in that fentanyl is not always even alone in the substance that's being used.

we are really facing a new climate of polysubstance use of synthetic drugs.

And so the tricky part with that is not knowing which synthetic drugs are going together.

So, and some of you may have heard of other substances like fentanyl and xylosine.

And when we start to see these polysubstances together, and sometimes people don't know that they're taking them, they think that they're taking one thing, but it could be something else, it can become incredibly risky.

which, as I've heard other people mention, with that life-threatening risk of overdose.

But it has evolved so quickly that while we have some emerging paths in medicine for hope for treatment, it is not as perfect as everyone might hope, right?

You think you could go in, you get a bed, you get treatment, you come out okay.

And we've seen time and time again that that's not really likely true for most people.

But what does work?

What works, and I really do think that this is known, is that we have to treat the social determinants of health if we want people to be able to be successful.

It's rarely a single attempt.

It's often, it may take time, it may take repeated attempts, but in Securing social determinants of health, including food and housing and connection to community, is where we really find that success for our participants.

And I think it is the recipe that we are looking for.

And so as we move forward, I just really wanted to name that and and emphasize the importance that programs, as other people have said, programs that are designed to work with people and have shown themselves as fruitful in the outcomes that we're looking for, like LEAD, TAP, CoLEAD, that we are keeping these types of social services in mind as we make policy and as we move forward in order to make the decisions to get the outcomes that we are looking for.

Thank you so much for inviting me here today.

Thank you.

And before we move on to the next panelist, just laying out my hopes for Councilmember questions.

If you don't mind, as you have them, make note of them, make note of to whom you want to direct your question.

If we could just hold the questions to the end, that would be great.

Okay?

All right.

Let's move on to our next panelist.

Hi.

Is this thing on?

Yes, it is.

Hi, my name is Johnny Busque.

Hi, council members and community members, and thank you for having me here.

Like I said, my name is Johnny Busque.

I work for PDA, co-lead, as a participant support specialist supervisor.

I help oversee a team of talented case managers and work directly with people experiencing chronic homelessness, some complex mental health issues, and substance use disorder.

I witnessed the havoc that the fentanyl and meth epidemic has wreaked on our community on a daily basis and am myself in recovery from opiates, meth, and cocaine as of the last 5.5 years.

I am personally invested in the work because the clients I work with and me have a lot in common.

In 2014, I was a low-level drug dealer that sold small amounts of drugs to support my habit.

I was arrested in the downtown area after selling $40 worth of crack to an undercover police officer and was accepted into the LEAD program.

Instead of going to jail, I was given the opportunity to get my life back on track, and I utilized this support, regaining my independence and addressing the barriers that kept me from doing so.

Now I work for the org that helped save my life.

How can we as a community help people in this population?

Our community, our brothers, our sisters, our sons, our daughters, our friends, our relatives.

We can meet them where they're at.

We can help them identify the barriers and have the resources available to be able to help them because we can say what the problem is all day, but if we don't have the money to back it and the places to be able to do this thing, then how are we going to do this thing?

Many people don't have anybody to connect them to the resources they need in order to reduce recidivism and access the resources that can save and change lives.

As of now, the need far exceeds the resources available.

And if we're really going to make a difference, we really have to make it easier to access resources and address the disparities that this population face when accessing these resources.

in comparison to people that aren't homeless.

Right now, COLEAD is only able to serve a small amount of people in a temporary lodging setting, giving them access to intensive case management and wraparound care when there are thousands of people, our community, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, that are literally dying trying to fight for an opportunity that they don't have.

Nobody says I want to grow up and be homeless, hooked on drugs, selling my body, stealing and selling drugs to meet my very basic needs like food, shelter, you know, that kind of stuff.

And how do you expect somebody to be able to pull their bootstraps up when they don't have a place to lay their head, when they get treated like crap at the hospital, when they're dying and they're being treated like they're seeking drugs?

How do people come back from that?

Well, the answer is connection.

The opposite of homelessness is connection.

And we need those connections.

The Housing First model supports this transition in a way that makes it doable.

Having a steady place to lay your head gives people the opportunity to become stable and access the resources that support support stability and reduce recidivism.

As soon as participants are placed into co-lead lodging, case managers start to connect them.

Connect.

In the two years I've been working for co-lead, I've seen countless people come in and collaborate with our legal team, case managers, and other staff to help resolve legal issues, get started on medically assisted treatment, and transition into permanent housing.

I believe some of these people would have died without our support.

Some may have escalated on their trajectory of criminal behavior and committed even more serious crimes without our support.

How do I know?

Because they told us, this program saved my life.

Why do I believe it?

Because I am them.

In a program like this, the LEAD program, saved and changed my life.

Because I got opportunities that I didn't get before.

CoLEAD has purchased a lot of phones for our participants to utilize, to run DoorDash and other apps like that.

to gain temporary legal employment as an alternative to committing crimes.

Program participants have come up to me on numerous occasions and said, I haven't shoplifted since you guys got me this phone.

For them, it's reduced recidivism by 100%.

Many of the people we serve have very serious health conditions such as HIV and hepatitis C and won't go to the doctor because the way they've been treated, because they're homeless and because they do drugs.

When trying to navigate the disparities this population faces when trying to access ongoing health concerns, having a fierce advocate like a case manager and sometimes even a lawyer to fight for you can literally make the difference between living or dying.

Co lead and lead program are great sources resources that are making a difference But we need to be able to expand greatly in order to address this public health crisis on a scale that is our reality It didn't happen overnight or without cost and it won't go away overnight or without cost We're definitely We need to have the financial resources available to make these things accessible for our community members.

Partnerships.

The partnerships between the case managers, lead legal team, and prosecutorial liaisons function as a single unit and are committed to keeping our community safe, reducing harm to the people committing the crimes, and giving them access to the kind of support that promotes stability and reduces recidivism.

How do they do this?

They meet people where they're at, identifying barriers and seeking creative solutions and alternatives to arrest.

We know from the last 40 years that we're not gonna arrest our way out of this, and it's costing, I don't know, at least billions, I would imagine, on a national scale.

So definitely time to do something different.

For some people, Sorry.

You're doing great.

How do they do this?

They meet people where they're at.

For some people this might look like having a person diagnosed with severe PTSD that smokes weed go to a doctor to get a medical marijuana card to petition the court for their probation to be amended to allow this medically assisted treatment and therefore not ever getting another probation violation for what they have in their medicine cabinet.

I can go on and on with examples because these people are brilliant.

and are forever coming up with nontraditional solutions to traditional problems.

So I just thank you for having me here.

And I just want to say six years ago, I was homeless, walking around downtown, running into targets, stealing stuff, not paying taxes, and costing the system a whole bunch of money.

But because somebody gave me a shot, instead of trying to send me to jail over and over again, which did not work for the 30 plus years that I was in and out of jail, I'm here today and I'm able to help other people and in turn help myself in That's making the community better so other people need that shot Thank You Johnny oh Let's be Do I need to push anything or can y'all hear him out?

There we go Well, hello, everyone.

My name is Faben Fakadu.

I work at Evergreen Treatment Services REACH as the housing director.

As we all know, housing is a human right.

And in the wealthiest country in the world, some of our most vulnerable population can't access housing.

And with an ordinance like this, we know, and history has taught us, that our jails will be used as a tool to disappear folks through a temporary and harmful manner.

Today we're talking about people who use drugs who live outside.

But let's be clear that there are many people who use drugs who won't be surveillanced in the same way because they have a home.

First step, we need to bring people who are using drugs inside.

Let's expand a health hub model that offers people safe spaces in various neighborhoods to come inside and access care and support for housing and treatment navigation.

Let's expand access to enhanced shelter models like the ALOA, the Bridge, and CoLEAD, who offer tremendous on-site stabilization support to people coming in off the streets.

Next, expand housing for people matched to their continuum of need.

We need more transitional housing, recovery housing.

We need additional permanent supportive housing.

We also need to ramp up services embedded within permanent supportive housing, such as occupational therapy, nursing support, and mental health support.

Let's reduce barriers to accessing group home assisted living for people who are not yet in active recovery.

Increase investments in, excuse me, increase investments in in-home care.

Currently, DSHS contracted providers often step out of the work when it comes to serving folks who use.

REACH has had to reduce our caseload to compensate for the lack of available harm reduction oriented in-home care.

Often due to cognitive impairment, serious mental illness, substance use, or all of the above, many of those we serve who are most frequently arrested would benefit from more intensive on-site support.

We are in desperate need for group homes or assisted living type housing models that are tailored to the needs of drug users and invite people in, even if not yet in active recovery.

Even those who do not meet sobriety and income requirements for this level of care, the current process for accessing such services is lengthy and complex, with access limited to those who are sober and insured, and with wait lists that are sometimes years long.

Cognitive impairment is high among those frequently arrested and often overlooked or not considered throughout legal proceedings.

The jail does not test for cognitive impairment.

Among familiar face clients frequently arrested who have been evaluated for cognitive impairment, most range within the moderate, impairment category, which indicates a need for intensive support that is largely unavailable and inaccessible in King County.

For example, the assessment for someone with the moderate range indicates 24-hour supervision and structured living environment, such as group homes and assisted living, to assure safety, identify and remove potentially dangerous objects, and assist with problem-solving challenges in their environment or daily routines.

Higher level living skills required abstract reasoning or pre-planning such as managing medication, money, organizing time, and maintaining health should be completed by another person.

Some other points I would like to quickly mention.

There is a high bar for housing.

The ID requirements for housing authorities, such as obtaining state issue IDs and Social Security card and benefits, are very labor intensive and serious barrier for people with behavioral health conditions, even when they have support.

Incarceration over 90 days deems people who are otherwise living on the street ineligible for many housing resources as they are no longer considered homeless by HUD's definition of chronic homelessness.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate you identifying specific housing barriers as well.

Very helpful.

Hello, my name is...

Can you hear me good?

My name is Brandi Flood.

I'm the Director of Community Justice at Evergreen Treatment Services REACH.

I direct our LEAD program reentry and our recovery navigator funding that helps us expand LEAD into other underserved areas.

I know you guys have heard it a lot.

I gotta say it again, we know the war on drugs has never helped anybody.

It's been a vicious cycle of putting people in and out of the jails over and over and over again.

That system fails to change behaviors or meet the basic needs of people who experience homelessness with compounding behavioral health issues.

We've been here before many times by different names in Seattle.

Prolific offenders, familiar faces, and now we have high utilizers.

We know that longer periods of incarceration do not generate results, as one-third of people within Washington state prisons return to prison within three years.

Johnny Bousquet just eloquently talked about that from the heart.

We know that this doesn't work.

The trauma that people experience during incarceration should not be understated.

Prisons and jails expose people to violence and are intended to punish, inflict shame, isolate and impede people's ability to care for themselves physically, economically, and socially.

We know that this foundational elements of jail are in fact the core drivers of violence itself.

Here in Seattle, the War on Drugs nationally and the Prolific Offender Report of 2019 and High Utilizer List of 2022, locally, we made it clear that any attempt to fix the problem of repeat offenses and more incarceration does not work.

This public use ordinance will only do more of the same thing.

It will not help people change harmful behavior by forcing them into a harmful place over and over again.

We cannot treat harm with harm.

And so just some things to think about, just a couple stats of the unintended consequences for arrest related to drug possession, particularly for people with severe mental illness.

This is an area that LEAD, CoLEAD, REACH in particular are dealing with in our Third Avenue project, in a lot of our neighborhoods.

We're not thinking about this slice of the population that is very difficult to serve, and there are not a lot of adequate resources for them.

Around 29% of people experiencing homelessness have both mental illness and substance use disorder.

About 17% of people in jail have serious mental illness.

More of them also have co-occurring substance use disorders.

For people involved in the criminal legal system, people with both severe mental illnesses and substance use disorders are at higher risk of multiple incarcerations.

And then lastly, people with mental illness are more likely to be incarcerated for longer periods of time compared to others charged with similar offenses.

They are also less likely to be approved for probation or parole.

People with both a mental illness and substance use disorder are also more likely to experience recidivism.

And so I throw all those stats in there to really talk about the slice of the population that we're experiencing of men in particularly.

If we're going to divert, we have to divert to resources that are built with an equity lens.

So you have to help the most marginalized people in that system.

And so we're struggling with a group of men that have chronic drug users.

Many have experienced a lot of foster care system issues, generational substance abuse and incarceration, their own incarceration, long-term incarceration.

history of sexual trauma, extreme behavioral health issues.

And these men typically have a trauma response that results in rage and anger and violence just about how that trauma impacts them.

And those are unacceptable in our society.

Anger and rage is unacceptable, right?

So most organizations here in Seattle have barred some of these men from services due to their behavior.

And most don't have the staff resource to even support clients that way.

So if we're going to divert to what, not only do you have to have the resources, you have to have the resources to support the staff, to support some of the most vulnerable people in our city.

A lot of these men in particular are black and brown men and a lot of our veterans who, from being incarcerated for so many years or serving in the military and being incarcerated, their maladaptive behavior turns out to be violence and rage when they were responding to daily triggers that they experience.

I've been in deep conversation with Michelle Conley, our director of integrated care outreach, Tara Moss, co-director of CoLEAD, and Shavonna Gaylor, the clinical director of CoLEAD.

And in that conversation where we're talking about what can we do differently, as sometimes CoLEAD and LEAD is their last stop and the only organizations that will work with them.

And one thing she said is that a profound example of their response being similar to that of maybe a young girl that has the same issues, but she might cut herself.

It looks different.

These men have experienced some of those same traumas, but their maladaptive behavior comes out in rage and violence.

These are the things that WDC is seeing on the street when they're trying to deescalate.

And so we need to invest in diversions and other homeless services programs with that equity lens that is well-resourced and well-managed and a lot of support for our staff.

Lastly, one of our supervisors, Paige Killinger, our South End Lead Program Manager who works in Soto, Rainier Beach, and Rainier Valley, She also talks about not waiting to the last resort to help some of these black and brown men.

They're referred to us after being skipped out on every other program because their violence just sends them to jail.

And so by the time we're able to get them in lead and co-lead, they have so many points that our prosecutors don't want to work with them.

Their trauma and criminal history.

is so profound that we can't find a lot of services to work with them.

And so we need to create these resources for the most marginalized folks in this group.

It took several, several years for this harm to happen to these folks.

It's going to take several years and comprehensive and layered approaches to get them back on track.

And so we know what works.

Phoebe talked about it just now.

Housing and navigation to linkage, access to health care, treatment linkage, access to income and benefits.

Like Johnny said, I'm an employed citizen.

I can pay citizens.

I'm not running in and out of Target stealing.

We have to give people legal employment if they're going to make meaningful connection.

and community.

And we have evidence-based models that work.

Results from the King County evaluation of the VITAL program reports that 70% of program participants reduced their number of jail bookings.

60% of program participants reduced their number of emergency room visits.

Why have we not scaled up programs such as VITAL to do this work?

Why is it still in a pilot phase when we know this works and needs to be well resourced?

We need more health hubs for people to go post-overdose.

REACH and COVID and WDC, I think we do a couple reversals three, four times a day, and there's nowhere for people to go post-overdose.

That's ridiculous in a city that is this rich.

And so just thinking about this ordinance for diversion, you have to make sure it's well-resourced, programs are scaled up, they're comprehensive, and they have an equity lens where we're serving the most marginalized people within that population.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, council members and community members.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak on behalf of WDC and the TAP project.

My name is Dwayne Trahan.

I'm a supervisor for We Deliver Care and the TAP project.

What we have found, WDC, is that consistency and love with these participants and human beings is One of the best things that I've seen in my life, because a lot of these people think that everybody's given up on them.

And we're boots in the ground.

We call ourselves truly the first responders, third avenue superheroes.

These people have lost their way.

These drugs take away your humanity.

And they just lose all sight of life.

And all they're worried about is chasing a high, or really just chasing a high.

WDC is down there seven days a week, 16 hours a day.

The only time we're not down there is in the late night hours.

Some of the successes.

that we've had with WDC thus far since last September or November, I think we went officially on the ground.

We've overturned 100 lives.

That's 100 people that would have been in a grave site, but we revived them to go back home or to walk again or to breathe again.

We have gotten eight people thus far into detox.

We really just got the detox resources really dialed in here lately.

We've gotten 17 people housed through COLEAD because the people, as she said, we get the bottom of the barrel people, the people who nobody, everybody's given up on.

And by the time they get to, by the time we're getting to them, it's the last result for them.

We continue just to love on these people and show them that they care.

And we're able to do things with the love and consistency that we show.

We're able to move people.

We're able to de-escalate situations with a cigarette and a snack pack.

Something very simple.

But because they respect us and they see us every day, they listen to us.

We're able, if we're in the area, we're able to divert a lot of things from happening downtown.

We've also had a success with reconnecting people with their families, missing people, just families coming from out of town and seeing a gray vest and asking us what we do.

And we tell them what we do and we've been had successes of getting people connected back with their lives.

The thing that we would need, WDC would need, and I'm pretty sure everybody at this table would agree with me, is that the lack of services of getting these people connected into housing, it's just a lot of red tape, a lot of red tape.

When these people are out here in these streets, some people, seven years, five years, 10 years, 12 years, they're gonna have a criminal background.

They're gonna have it all because their life is in the streets.

And it's so hard and disappointing to be able to tell somebody, well, you got denied because you had this, or you got denied because you had this.

And it's almost like having a family member, and you got to deal with their trauma.

You take on their trauma because you're down here with them every day, and you see what they go through.

And you know their heart is really good because you can open up to some of these people, and they open up to you.

And these are real people.

They have real stories and real powerful minds, but they're just addicted.

We need the wraparound services.

We need what we can get.

WDC has proved that this thing can work along with all these other organizations sitting at this table.

This thing can work.

We just need what we need for it to work.

I'm not a long talker, and that's pretty much all I can say.

All I can say is I was a part of the problem back in the 90s.

I sold drugs down here in downtown Seattle.

I went into drug court, and I successfully completed drug court because I'm like him.

I was made up in my mind that I couldn't sell drugs because I'm tearing up my community.

I left here and went to Tennessee for 17 years, and I changed my whole life.

I had to snatch myself up out of the situation.

But all these people, they can't snatch themselves out of the situation.

They need their crutch.

They need us.

They need every single organization at this table to be able to be funded so that we can get them to the places they need to be.

That's all.

Thank you.

Thank you, brother.

Good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Deontay Damper, pronoun he, him, his, and I am the Community Organizer for Vocal Washington.

That's Voices of Community Activists and Leaders, where we seek to bring political power to community members that have been impacted by HIV, the war on drugs, homelessness, mass incarceration, mass incarceration, and...

oh, actually, that's what I got, okay.

I knew that there was more, right?

But as we talk about community partnership, as we talk about community, I think it's really important that the council and community knows how important partnerships are through this fight.

and we are in a fight to save our community members.

So when you hear a vocal, please think of Khalid.

When you think of Khalid, please think of Reach, because we all work in the same space to make sure that we are part of the community compass to give community members that access.

One of the main things that we try to do, at Vocal is we wanna make sure that we are engaging with community members, why they are going into some of these sites.

And when we say, go in there as community engagement, let's not just talk about how we got here, let's talk about the policies that are coming in here that are impacting you.

Let's unpack that.

And then, what we do then, in turn, we bring in those representatives from their district.

By the way, you are all invited there, as well, when you have time, to come and talk to them about what they see.

what they see the community compass looks like for them.

You know, since we've been in there, we've actually had 100 community engagement meetings and listening sessions at the COLEAD sites, as well as Treehouse, Hobson House, Impenu.

Some of those spaces are where people are newly displaced.

We've had at least 10 candidate forums.

I say candidate forums, so we'll see y'all in November.

But we had 10 candidate forums, and a lot of those questions were curated by community members of the lived experience.

We've also done two rounds of King County research about impacts and policies that impact our community folks, such as them.

And I am also, and when I say that, what we also do is we also compensate those community members because they are experts.

So we compensate them for their time.

I am also the program...

Program Manager for Communal Expert Advisors on Drug Use, also known as CEDU.

And I would take up a lot of time and talk more about CEDU, but we actually have a representative here today that will talk about that a little bit more, so I will pass it off to Rachel.

But before I pass it off to Rachel, I do want to thank Councilmember Lewis and Herbold.

Two years ago, we seen what the fentanyl crisis was doing to community members.

We seen it happening.

We knew it was going to happen.

Along with them and other people of lived experience, along with other city council representatives, along with other state representatives, the first of its kind, we created the Opioid Emergency Innovative Recovery Task Force, where we were able to give out executive recommendations around housing, Housing, access to care, treatment, post-treatment, which we don't talk about, and still, here we are here.

So I hope that when people do get an opportunity to see some of the work that we thought of two years ago, and I wanna thank y'all because it's still a part of the community compass, and we are already pushing that out with some of the people from SEDU.

So here's a representative here.

I'll give you my friend, Rachel.

My name is Rachel and I'm a member of Sedu and Vocal Wah.

I'm a person who came from a broken family with no support from relatives.

And I have used substances in a way that was necessary to survive the trauma that I experienced after my whole world unexpectedly crumbled around me after I was involved in a motor vehicle accident that was the result of domestic violence.

I was left with a broken arm, leg, pelvis, and ribs.

I had hardware put in my arm and I have a chain holding my pelvis together.

And I was unable to walk without assistance.

I felt judged by the hospital staff and because of my history with substance abuse, and when I was discharged, I was told I could recover at a family member's house, only to have them throw me out in the dead of winter and freezing temperatures, forced to pack all my worldly possessions in five suitcases I could barely carry, with no car, no phone, and my emotional support animal in tow, and not sure where I was going.

I felt so much shame and fear and I never had experienced homelessness before.

I lost all my possessions the first couple days and I was so traumatized I didn't speak for weeks.

Life on the streets was very unsafe and degrading for me.

I've been the victim of a violent robbery in which my nose was broken so badly that it required plastic surgery so I could breathe.

I was sexually assaulted, taken advantage of, and I've been exploited, being so vulnerable on the street and too embarrassed and afraid to ask anyone for help.

What turned my life around was a lead and co-lead who treated me with kindness and understanding, didn't judge me, and they were the first people I had encountered who had empathy for me, who were willing to help me without any expectations.

I was, it was the first place I felt safe after four years of struggling, going from place to place, Everyone I crossed paths with tried to take advantage of me.

It was so nice to receive support to attend medical appointments.

I had my orthopedic trauma surgeon tell me that my arm was a cosmetic procedure.

And so having somebody to attend my medical appointments and to try to get my surgery scheduled means a lot to me.

I have been able to get away from the person who is abusing me.

It's been great to interact with people who motivate me to live a healthy life, who are positive influences on me, who I can look up to and strive to be a better person as I begin the long, hard journey of recovery.

and transitioning back into, once again, becoming a productive member of society.

The people from CEDU, have been very helpful, and my life is better now.

I am treated like a person with value.

I don't have to degrade myself to get my most basic of needs met, and I'm thankful that they were around to help.

Without them, I don't know where I would be.

I'm involved in vocal, WA, and SEDU, and I've found my voice to be able to advocate for myself and others.

Please support programs that work.

It's saved my life.

Thank you.

In closing, that's just a prime example of how a community compass can work.

We just heard organizations such as CoLEAD, CoLEAD Reach, and the LEAD programs, as well as CEDU and VOCAL.

It's more than just putting them into a space of where they get housed.

It's making sure that they have a full-on wraparound access to care, access to community, and you just seen with Rachel here, above all else, their voice.

Thank you.

Can I say something about jail?

I have a lot of friends that go to jail all the time, and a jail is just a place where they learn to commit crimes and get away with it.

They basically, it's like every friend I've ever had that's gone to jail always comes out just a better criminal and more angry, and it's not good.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmembers.

My name is John Ehrenfeld.

I'm the program manager for the Mobile Integrated Health Program of the Seattle Fire Department.

Mobile Integrated Health is a collaborative between Seattle Fire and the Seattle Human Services Department.

We serve generally underserved and vulnerable adults throughout the city of Seattle with a primary focus on behavioral health, substance use disorders, homelessness, extreme poverty, aging in place, and similar conditions.

We operate our HealthONE mobile response unit, and within the last month have piloted a new post-overdose response and follow-up team that is doing work really in the fields of the downtown core, responding to people who have had an overdose.

And so I was asked to join this panel today to talk briefly about just some of the The gaps and the barriers that we are seeing that we are experiencing in our role is sort of an emergency service in the field.

This is obviously a curated list.

The list is extremely lengthy, but I want to focus on just a couple items right now.

As of this week, we are in Seattle fire responding to approximately 110 overdoses per week or overdose-related calls per week.

And those are just the ones that we're aware of.

So the volume right now is overwhelming.

We are many times higher than we were at this point, you know, several years ago.

So the volume is huge, it's crushing it, it's creating, I think, a tremendous amount of stress and burnout for, obviously, the clients and the patients first and foremost, but everyone in the response ecosystem right now because of the gaps.

Specific to fentanyl, you know, just for sort of educational purposes, Fentanyl is generally metabolized very rapidly.

It is in and out of the bloodstream very quickly.

And what that does is it creates a very pernicious cycle where people will feel that they are going into withdrawal much more frequently, and so they have to use again.

And so even people who are are highly motivated, interested in treatment, interested in resources, often can't accomplish that because of how quickly they're getting that horrible feeling again and have to keep using.

So it creates this very pernicious cycle.

And then on the flip side, fentanyl is also slightly more likely to be deposited in the fatty tissue of the body, meaning that when some of the post-overdose drugs are used, they're going to feel overdose or withdrawal symptoms much longer down the line.

So it really is a unique entity that we're fighting.

So, I think that's a really good point.

I think that's a really good point.

I think that's a really good point.

Shelters, and again, shelter options are often few and far between, and particularly shelters that can take older clients, clients with mobility impairments, clients with chronic medical issues.

Post-overdose receiving centers, again, are really emerging as a best practice in the field right now.

We do not have one in Seattle, and I hope that soon that that will be rectified.

But generally, for people who are medically stable but just need a place to connect with medical workers and social workers after an overdose, We don't have that right now, it's a huge gap in our system.

I think another general barrier that we encounter is that, especially for people living on the street, there's a hierarchy of needs to which they have to attend.

So again, even people who are highly motivated to seek treatment, to seek recovery, by virtue of living on the street, you have to attend to certain needs first.

And that is often going to be, you know, food and shelter and basic safety.

And so the ability to engage meaningfully with us about things like, you know, getting started on medication-assisted treatment is often not realistically feasible for them in the moment until a certain baseline level of stability has been achieved.

And attaining that is often a really significant barrier.

You know, and I think that, you know, sort of a corollary to that or part and parcel of that is the time factor.

So, you know, we in Seattle Fire, you know, we respond very rapidly.

We go into overdoses right now.

Lights and sirens will be there generally within three to five minutes.

But it takes a long time to establish trust.

And many of these clients, you know, are very traumatized.

They're very vulnerable.

They have had very many negative interactions with many appendages of officialdom, whether that is, you know, fire or EMS or police or hospitals, social workers, APS, CPS, the foster care system, you name it.

And so what's essential is establishing trust before we can offer these services.

It's very, very difficult to do, you know, you know, on the side of the road in the alley behind Third Avenue in 10 minutes or even half an hour.

And I think we've seen very clearly that some of our colleagues here in reach, in lead, and we deliver care who we've been working with, you know, that to me seems like a very proven model because they often have more time to engage.

So that's, it's a substantial barrier.

And we have also seen our work in HealthONE in general, that the follow-up visits are really critical.

You know, again, it's so hard to achieve lasting results in just a single encounter on the street.

Those follow-up visits are really where we make the most difference.

Several of my colleagues have mentioned as well, the emergency departments, they are completely underwater right now.

And I think often, you know, even when the social work staff there are legitimately trying their best, I think because they are so overfull right now, They have to have a very narrow focus on medical triage and on very rapid discharges, and then often somebody don't have the ability to do the nuanced trauma-informed care, the connections with recovery services, and informed discharge planning that ideally they would be doing if the ERs were less full.

You know I again we I think we talked a lot about fentanyl right now And that's obvious because that's really sort of the eye of the storm But there are so many co-occurring things that we're seeing on the street We are seeing a tremendous number of people who do not endorse being opioid Addicts or having an opioid use disorder they are primarily meth addicts users who are taking meth that is contaminated with fentanyl.

Treatment options for meth are often very difficult.

Same with severe persistent mental illness, people who have PTSD or traumatic brain injuries.

So a lot of this is all wrapped up together.

It's very rare to have just a plain, simple, clear-cut interaction on this.

I think we also do need more access to suboxone, both suboxone and methadone.

The literature on them is extremely clear.

Both of them reduce mortality in opioid use disorder by approximately 50%.

We have some very good clinics, but again, at 7 p.m., my team is really going to struggle to make that connection.

So I think both field-based suboxone and more clinic-based suboxone is really needed.

So at any point, you know, we in FHIR are happy you know, to try to work in partner.

We really see ourselves as sort of a bridge to the real experts at the table here.

And thank you for making the time today.

All right.

Now we're going to move to a virtual presenter.

Director Wheeler-Smith.

Hello.

Greetings.

Hello.

Thank you for joining us.

Thank you.

Council Chair Herbold and the Public Safety Committee panelists and community members.

I don't want to just repeat much of what you've already heard as folks on the panel and community members have so eloquently spoken just about the opportunity for a variety of robust practices that already exist, but really just need to be stabilized and bolstered and supported and expanded.

I appreciate the opportunity really to be able to hear so many different perspectives as the goal, I believe, has to be to unpack and explore what I would call some of the rising tribalism that exists and the division that I would say drives our institutional organizational and individual practices and political discourse away from what I would call healthy outcomes.

And so this really is an opportunity for us to think about how do we bridge collectively across our differences in a way that moves us to understand the work necessary to widen the circle of human concern.

If we're honest about what we're facing, I would say even with the best intentions, this is going to fall disproportionately on BIPOC communities and other over-policed communities, and particularly Black folks.

There are huge racial disparities in drug arrests nationally and in Seattle.

And I think there are lessons from our dysfunctional history and dysfunctional journey, as almost all of the policies that have been proposed as solutions have been detrimental to the progress of many BIPOC communities, especially the black community, when we think about whether we're talking about redlining, urban renewal, planned shrinkage, the war on drugs.

So as we think about the power of policy, which is never neutral, it either increases or decreases disparities, we have to commit to organizing systems and structures that allow us to really increase agency for the persecuted and prevented groups, and ensure that those groups are at the table, allowing us to create what I would call cooperative systems of co-creation, where we get more people into the decision-making spaces.

As it stands, the proposal is extremely underfunded for treatment, housing, and other services that are proven to work, as you've heard, again, from so many panelists and folks who have spoken.

What we do know is this is gonna drive up court costs, prosecution and public defense and jail costs, and all of those entities are already stretched in, in part because of the end of community court, and we know that there's a looming budget deficit.

So as this moves from theory to practice, we need comprehensive strategies that acknowledges the entirety of the ecosystem, the ecosystem that's sitting around that table, and normalizes the construction of multiple perspectives That doesn't result in after the fact equity reports where we commit to doing better the next time.

How can we build this into the front end in order to build a healthy future?

We have to divest from past strategies that have proven ineffective.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Director Will Smith.

And then going back to, I believe, our last in-person presenter.

Hi, I'm Shannon Kelly.

I am a public defense social worker.

The first thing I would like to say is that coerced care is not care.

Coerced treatment isn't ethical care.

We have a lot of great service providers here today, and I want to speak a little bit more towards the prosecutorial side of what goes on.

So when somebody gets arrested and goes to jail, and the city attorney decides to prosecute a misdemeanor, a judge holds somebody in jail.

What often happens is, you know, the court, in their infinite wisdom, decides that somebody needs treatment, regardless of, you know, what this misdemeanor crime is.

It could be theft, it could be, you know, misdemeanor assault, it could be criminal trespass.

The court says, you need treatment.

And then what happens is, myself, my colleagues, get to work to try to assess people to see if they are eligible for treatment, if they can go into treatment, inpatient treatment, which is incredibly difficult to do.

Incredibly difficult to do.

And I'd like to just like tell a quick anecdote of something that happened recently for a client of mine in which, You know, the court determined this person needed substance use treatment.

This person had very high medical needs.

And so I worked for several months to try to find somewhere that this client could go to treatment.

There is not a what we call the ACM level of care, the highest level of care, or a second highest, 3.7, which is where somebody needs intensive medical care while getting their treatment.

There is not that type of facility in the entire state of Washington.

So this client who had very high medical needs but needed substance use treatment had no options to get care.

What happened after this client sat in jail for four months, the city prosecutors dismissed his case.

He sat in jail for four months for no reason and ended up getting released to the street with no care.

Every time somebody comes into the criminal legal system, they're pulled back many, many steps.

They're pulled away from the service providers that they already have connected with, if they have connected with service providers.

They're given a list of things that they have to do that they cannot do for many, many reasons, whether that be they have, you know, mental health care needs that they need to get, medical, you know, a list of reasons that, you know, having a prosecutorial lens, it doesn't coincide with medical care and substance use treatment.

So yeah, that being said, I think that, you know, I see every day I have clients that I love who, We know they're not getting the care that they deserve and need because of these harmful practices of picking people up, putting them in jail, and letting them languish there.

Yeah, so thank you.

Before I open it up to my colleagues, I just want to thank each and every one of you for the work that you're doing to serve people in need, as well as to build power among low and no income people who are directly affected by substance use disorder, homelessness, mass incarceration.

and the work that you do to try to create more just and healthy communities.

We know that the services that you, each of you, provide have to be part of any community safety continuum.

And the advice that you provide I think is really essential to us as we look at some very large gaps in our current system.

Gaps that already exist that we risk.

um, exacerbating, um, with actions that do not consider, um, the needs of folks that you have shared with us in your stories.

Um, not just your, your stories about people that you've helped, but your own stories, um, of your, of your lived experience.

So, um, really appreciate that and, uh, take, take with much appreciation your counsel and your wisdom and your experiences.

And for those of you who have prepared your remarks in a written fashion, it would be great to receive them.

Um, as we further contemplate, um, the mayor's proposed ordinance, which we'll hear, hear more about next after we take some questions from council members, um, so that we can start to think about how we can better address some of the gaps that you've, you've, um, identified.

Um, first person, um, I, oh, I saw Council Member Nelson's hand up.

I see it's down now.

I didn't know how that got up right now.

I will, that was a mistake.

Okay, no problem.

Council Member Peterson, I think you're next.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

Thank you all for being here and all the work you do.

Just in terms of the agenda item for gaps in service, I guess today we don't have the benefit of our City Council Central staff here to give us the whole ecosystem that exists.

So, I will just signal that I might see central staff out there.

I'd be interested in also knowing about, you know, the status of other organizations that do hard work like you do, DESC's King County Mobile Crisis Team, and how the interplay with the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, just to sort of get the whole and other organizations to get the whole ecosystem.

And in terms of the fire department and HealthONE, I understand, you know, you're not, HealthONE is not available 24-7, correct?

So the DESC mobile crisis team is 24-7.

So just sort of understanding the, even the gaps in hours that, these services are available would be helpful.

So I'll hopefully before the budget season we can get information on that.

Thank you.

Councilmember Peterson, just a little bit in response to that.

I got a little nervous so I didn't get to everybody but when we think about the health hubs and things that we kind of organically do but they don't really exist.

We work with places like Aurora Commons, who has like a, it's an office, but they operate it like a day center.

We work close with Tiny Houses and Colete, well, we mentioned Colete, but The Bridge, with Catholic Community Services.

Those are some of the other organizations that work with some of the folks that nobody else wants to serve anymore that we partner with a lot to make things happen.

And gaps often don't only mean the existence of an agency that provides the services, but as you say, Council Member Peterson, the time of day or the sufficient funding to fill the need.

There may be an organization that provides services along this continuum, but they don't have sufficient funding.

So we, in committee last week, we actually got sort of a landscape of the continuum of services in this area.

But that landscape does not go that sort of next step of, you know, it names the type of services, but it doesn't take that next step of figuring out how well it's meeting the need.

And I would imagine that part of your question about hours of availability, prompted by a piece in the Seattle Times over the weekend.

We do know that in that instance, had the person seeking the assistance for the person on the street called 988, there would have been a person to answer.

988 is not only for suicide watch care in this instance, as I think you mentioned, Council Member Peterson, even if that had been on a Sunday, it would have been possible had, after an assessment, this person been determined to be eligible for services, that that person could have received the services of DESC's mobile crisis team, even on a Sunday.

We know that The shortcomings sometimes for some of 911's response services are people's lack of knowledge of their availability, but they are there to answer calls seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

And that instance that we all read about over the weekend is one that theoretically, again, dependent on availability and capacity, theoretically DESC mobile crisis teams could have responded.

Moving on to, and we do have Council Central staff with us.

They will be coming up with Director Meyerberg, and so if we have other questions that are prompted by the discussion that we're having here that we want to make sure that Central staff does some follow-up once they're at the table, we can ask them as well.

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you so much, Chair Herbold, and I want to thank the panel of folks that I work with on a regular basis.

It's just great to see everyone around the same table.

I know that we have a lot of work in front of us and there's a lot more that we can be doing as a city and as regional governments to support the work of everyone who's here.

I want to start by asking some questions to Dr. Katarsky joining us remotely.

We had a report in my committee a couple of months ago talking about the some of the impacts of the work toward the latter half of the Just Care work that we were doing through the PDA.

And one of the outcomes that I thought was really striking was the enrollment in health insurance component of that work.

And I wonder if you might remind the committee or remind the public a little bit how that was accomplished and what the long-term ongoing impact of those enrollments have been in confronting some of those core determinants of health that you were discussing in your presentation.

Yeah, sure.

Absolutely.

So the answer to how that was done is painstakingly.

Um, essentially, when it comes to enrolling in in health, we're basically talking about Apple health.

So, in Washington state, Medicare plans is predominantly going to be Apple health and the.

It, I do want to emphasize that it's, it's not a simple process.

It takes case managers, numerous attempts to work with people in order to get them access.

So, enrollment, and then generally starting through getting their provider 1 numbers, and then getting the, and then from there with the insurance plan, they then need to.

need to have their insurance cards, and there's often a lot of barriers, including needing to utilize their medical portals in order to get their ID cards.

And so once all of that is done, so the team did that, we do that with everyone who comes in, and we were successful with many, with regards to the report that you're referring to for the Just Care.

Why that's so crucial and so important is because without that, without that card and with them, those numbers, that card, their only recourse is hospital.

Their only recourse is hospital because if they attempt to go to an urgent care center, they may be asked for ID, definitely would need an insurance card, or they'd have to pay the fees, which, you know, approximately $200-$300 just to be seen.

If they attempt a community care clinic, similar things can happen.

Mostly the issue with community care clinics, some of them are really great at also trying to support getting access to insurance.

It's usually the delay, so sometimes weeks to months before they could be seen.

And when they receive their health insurance, they are assigned, the MCO assigns them a primary care home.

So for example, if they're assigned to one of our, let's say NeighborCare, NeighborCare is a wonderful community health service provider, then they are now able to call and get that appointment scheduled.

Without access to that, they inevitably wind up using the hospitals for everything from primary care, non-urgent primary care health issues, up until things that may be more urgent.

But It is very difficult for the emergency rooms to be able to manage that.

And it is often traumatic and harmful for people to use the wrong level of service for the type of care that they need.

Does that answer your questions?

No, it does.

Thank you so much for laying that out.

I thought it was important for this conversation because a common theme was access to care.

One of the big barriers that we have is a lack of access to insurance, lack of access to documentation for a lot of people who do not have IDs.

And I just really appreciated the extremely high success rate of that one particular effort that we worked on where that was a huge, I mean, I think it was something like a 90% plus enrollment rate or something.

in that ballpark.

You can correct me if I'm wrong on that.

Yes.

But, you know, change like that I think is what we really need to see to continue to make progress and break down those accesses to care and just really appreciate that work.

Yeah.

I just would like to say one more thing.

The landscape has changed since then.

So we were in the pandemic at that point, and there was essentially considered like a freeze on anyone being disenrolled or unenrolled from their plan.

That has now changed.

So it actually is going to take even more.

We've enrolled our folks, but we anticipate many people may be not even aware that they are going to lose their coverage, that they may lose their coverage because that holds during the pandemic has now ceased.

And the way that they would know is often through either contact, could be an old number, could be if you have no address, snail mail may not get to you.

And if you're not on computers or accessing email, you may not get the email.

So people may not be aware that they're actually going to be losing their coverage.

So that is one of the things that our teams are working on now is making sure that we are checking and doing the due diligence to maintain coverage.

And likely is something that's going to need to continue to occur or else we could unfortunately have you know, more and more people lose their coverage, which is what we saw that did happen before the pandemic more as well.

It was more common.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Turn it back over to you, Madam Chair.

Sure.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much.

Can you hear me OK?

Yes.

Okay, excellent.

Thank you so much.

Thanks to Council Member Herbold for coordinating such an impressive panel.

I wish that facts and lived experience could constantly rise to the top of this conversation that we're having.

I wish that the data and history on past approaches would be centered in our discussion as we move forward on this.

And I'm hopeful with the experiences that you've all outlined here today at the table, the data, the facts, the public health approach that you've outlined and articulated so clearly with being the people directly on the ground and having their direct connection with the community that we know needs access to additional public health intervention strategies, additional harm reduction approaches and the resources necessary to scale up the services and the programs that you've articulated.

I hope that this helps center our discussions moving forward.

So thank you again for sharing these experiences, especially thanks to the folks who have shared their lived experience with being traumatized by existing systems and articulating how if we invest in the right programs and the right diversion strategies, we can correct these past harms and wrongs.

So thank you, first and foremost.

I did also want to ask a question about some of the past policies.

We know that in the second half of 2020, the city moved, we shifted from solely an arrest-based referral model to a primarily community-based referral model.

And that was done in partnership and with the leadership of LEAD, given the experience that you had with wanting to serve folks and respond to what the client's lived experience was.

So thank you for making that shift to members of LEAD and the leadership.

And thank you for recognizing that it doesn't need to be a police as the primary point of entry to lead.

Can you talk a little bit about how this shift from solely an arrest-based referral model to a primarily consumer-based referral model has impacted your work and impacted the work of your clients' lives?

I'll try to answer that question, Council Member Mosqueda.

That was a great shift for the LEAP program and the COLEAP program.

And particularly, I do, you know, appreciate arrest aversions from law enforcement, but they were kind of arresting the people that they wanted to see in the program.

When we switched to community referral, we actually got to work with a lot of very vulnerable people, a lot of black and brown folks, a lot of folks with severe mental illness, a lot of folks that their behaviors are deemed as violent instead of traumatic responses and triggers.

And so with the community referrals, we got to really work with the slice of the population that nobody has ever served.

For some of these people, they have been in and out of prison and jail for over 20 years and have never had any type of case management service.

How are you in the same, a ecosystem of service right here in the heart of Seattle, and everybody has bypassed you.

And so that community referral has opened us up to a lot of other spaces, and I'm excited about what we're going to be able to do in the Rainier Beach, Rainier Valley area, and deepen our work in Burien and West Seattle and White Center because of the community referral process and other fundings that allow us to stretch in those neighborhoods.

Thank you.

Council Member Muscata, anything further?

Nothing further, thanks again for coordinating this impressive panel and to all the people who've spoken today so far.

I appreciate all the work you do.

Thank you.

Council Member Nelson.

Thank you very much.

So thank you very much for coming out today and talking about your programs.

On August 8, this committee got an update from leadership of LEAD and CoLEAD, which will receive $29 million of funding this year.

17 of that is from Seattle.

And I don't know if the other funding is from is Seattle dollars passed through other agencies, but suffice it to say that's the broad number.

And in today's conversation, the main gap I heard from PDA subcontractors is resources.

So I'm interested to know if there are different things that would be paid for with more money, because I think we all have to have a dose of humility and recognize that we need to expand our toolbox and perhaps our approaches to addiction, to the fentanyl crisis, to take it to the next level in making a difference to all of us as we work together.

So I appreciate PDA leadership's support of the legislation to align with state law on possession and public use.

I understand that there are some differences of opinion amongst its subcontractors.

Maybe offline I could hear more about how that works.

But I wanted to touch on two things that I heard.

I heard mention of inpatient treatment.

And I agree 100% that we need more of that.

And we need to remove barriers to that service.

There are facilities that do offer inpatient treatment.

I know because I went to one.

But the Medicaid spots are exceedingly limited, which is why I think that we need to get creative and contract directly with those facilities while we're working to enroll more people into Medicaid and expand our capacity in this region.

So I'd like to continue that conversation with people who know on the ground where, when you finally build trust and presumably you're talking to people about potentially getting into treatment, what are some of the spaces that some of you have been successful in getting people into, because I think that we need to know more about that and encourage other facilities to be more open, let's say.

And then when it came to, somebody mentioned low barrier housing, access to low barrier housing is an issue.

And I know that that is a problem, but what I don't hear a lot about is the need for sober housing.

And I know that people going into recovery, that's a choice.

I'm not trying to talk about coercing people.

But for the people that do want to go into recovery and stay in recovery, they are asking for sober housing options.

And so I'd be interested from your knowledge, your wealth of knowledge, working with folks, if you have come across, what places you've come across of that do offer that.

So that's in my mind for as the resource that we have that I might not be aware of.

So.

I can't really speak to primarily I can't really speak to the fact...

you were asking about sober housing access to folks?

Um, and...

Sober, affordable, subsidized housing.

Okay, okay.

Never mind, you can take the question.

So, what we...

our approach is harm reduction and trauma-informed, client-driven care.

So, what we do is we meet the people where they're at, and not everybody goes to treatment, not everybody wants to go to treatment, and also, um, Not everybody will benefit from treatment.

What we want is resources that will be sustainable to be able to promote long-term change.

And the science says that compliance-based models do not support long-term change.

So forcing somebody into doing something because somebody else says that that worked for them, it's not always going to work for somebody else.

So what we want to do is really meet people where they're at and see, identify the barriers that are impeding their progress to being stable, and then work with them to navigate those barriers, meeting them where they're at.

And the majority of the time when people are actually put in those sober living spaces, people deal with so much stigma, where even if they do end up relapsed and they don't get access, some people have to be voted into certain sober living housing.

So some of those things could be, and that happens so much more to black and brown folks.

It happens so much more to trans and non-binary folks in our community.

So I'm sorry why I stopped.

It's because you even asking the question was a little triggering, too, because it's like, We are in a community right now where we have to be able to meet.

A part of that community compass with leadership and community is learning how to meet people where they're at, and finding enough grace within our own space, especially somebody else that's also been in recovery.

And you also had a space to be able to get equitable treatment, I mean, to get treatment for yourself, right?

But most of our people that have Apple Health don't get the same, great access to treatment that you receive, right?

Yeah, that's the problem I'm focusing on.

Right, right, but to swing it back, when we're talking about sober living in our communities, we just wanna just make, I just, I'm more so, we are more so focused on meeting people where they're at, if that answers your question, sorry.

Council Member Mills, it's, yeah, and Council Member, we can answer a little bit of that.

I'll say a couple things and I'll pass it over to Phoebe, because we do use a lot of our LEAP funding and we house people in sober housing.

Our role is to center around that person.

What that person wants for treatment, we don't choose that.

That's how we use harm reduction.

Whatever they want and it's going to get them to where we go, we're going to set that up for them.

Just a couple of things in terms of funding, like we're not here, well, we're not here asking for more money for our programs.

We're asking for more money for robust programs all around.

And so, you know, right now, if I have five people walk into my office right now and say I actually want inpatient treatment or I actually want sober housing, it might take me a month to get that set up for them.

And so when I talk about the whole architect of our system, about what services I'm supposed to connect people to, that's why we're here.

And so when I talk about jail might not be the best place for people, I do believe in the fact that using diversion is better than sending people to jail, but you're diverting into what an adequate resource.

Phoebe's our housing director.

I'll let her speak to how we use our funding to support people in sober housing.

Yeah, like Brandy mentioned, we have a lot of people that we support into clean and sober housing.

And as you mentioned, there's not a lot of subsidized clean and sober housing, so we just pay it in full for them.

And as a continuum, and so if the funding did run out, it would cause a problem for a lot of folks that we are supporting in clean and sober housing.

And with the clean and sober housing that does exist, that is subsidized, they're full to the brim.

And unfortunately, when we even talk with our clients around recovery, And whatever it may be, their first question is, like he mentioned here, they have to have their basic needs met, right?

So they're thinking about where they're going to sleep, their safety, how they're going to access food.

So once our clients receive some sort of housing or enhanced shelter, then we can start talking about recovery and sobriety and different measures.

But even if they're ready for that, sometimes those spaces just don't exist.

Got it.

Thank you.

Does that answer your question?

It does.

And I just want to be absolutely clear, I was not talking about not meeting people where they're at.

I was referring to the subgroup of people who are where they're at is wanting to, you know, expand their recovery and maintain it.

Yeah.

Same page.

Yeah.

Diversity of housing is necessary because we're meeting people where they're at and people are at different stages.

Right.

I'd just say one more thing in answer to that.

What I was talking about when having more resources available, I meant that there are literally thousands of people out in the Seattle area that don't have access to the kind of resources we provide.

And we are only able to provide on-site services for around 200 people, and then also aftercare when they get into the community.

temporary lodging for a very limited amount of people that in the need far exceeds what we have the capability to provide.

But if we had more physical locations and more staff, then we would be able to accommodate those needs on a higher level, which is what's really out there.

Thank you for that clarification.

Absolutely.

And also what we're seeing from the front lines, WDC is we're putting people in detox centers every day.

But the problem is, when they get out of these detox centers, they don't have anywhere to go.

So they go right back to using, and you're just getting pushed around the corner, pushed around the corner, pushed around the corner, pushed around the corner, pushed in the alley, pushed around the corner.

They just go, because they don't have anywhere to go.

Because like she said, the housing is so tied up in red tape, and it takes so long to get people into housing, it's just like, By the time they get to housing, they're all, I can go, I could sing a song.

I don't want to obscure that point, which is about where do folks go on a more permanent basis.

But I was interested in what you said that you're doing at WDC, doing a lot to get detox services dialed in.

What's happening that's different that is allowing you to get more people into detox?

So when we first started out, we really didn't have access to detox centers, right?

So here in the past few months, we really got a good connection to detox centers.

And really, one of those centers came out of outside of the network, right?

And just getting these people there.

But like I said, they go.

Some of them don't complete it.

Some of them do complete it.

But when they get out, there's nowhere to go.

There's just nowhere for them to go.

And they just go right back to what they're doing.

John sees it.

John's out there with me.

When he can get out there and he sees the same, there's just nowhere to go.

Nowhere to go.

Wasn't Finland was able to solve homelessness by providing people with housing and not making them jump through a bunch of hoops while, you know, especially people that have been through homelessness and drug addiction and trauma and all that, wasn't, weren't they able to do that with just, providing the housing and not having them have to work to get the housing because people that don't have those kind of problems have problems, you know, completing these kind of things.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, I think your point is well taken.

Our housing funding policies for the city of Seattle are largely focused on housing first policies, which mean the type of housing with very, very low barriers.

And your observation is correct that folks who are able to get into low barrier housing are very, likely to be successful in their housing, stabilizing their housing long term.

And so the, I think the experience that you're talking about in places like Finland is an experience that we would also experience.

The issue is less about whether or not we support a housing first policy that has very, very low income housing.

It's whether or not we are building enough units of that kind of housing.

The reality is, is the people who do get into that housing, whether or not they're in Finland or here in Seattle, Washington, are about 95% likely to stay housed a year after they access their housing.

And these are people across the board that have deep underlying needs, whether or not it's behavioral health, mental health, substance use disorder, physical disabilities, a large gamut.

And so I think the city is really committed to funding that kind of housing, but also recognizing the point that Councilmember Nelson is making is that some people do self-identify as wanting sober housing, and just glad to hear that in your philosophy of meeting people where they're at, that that also includes helping folks navigate to get that kind of housing if that's indeed what folks want.

So I know we have a lot of passion in this area and there's no shortage of work to do.

Again, appreciate your being here, sharing your stories.

Do need to move on to the next item of the agenda.

And again, if you have your prepared comments that you wanna send on over to us, it'll be a good resource for us to return to in the upcoming weeks.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for having us.

All right, absolutely.

Thank you so much.

Mr. Clerk, you want to read in the next item?

Agenda item two, proposed council bill 120645, an ordinance relating to controlled substances.

Adding the crimes of knowing possession of a controlled substance and use of a controlled substance in a public place.

Amending section 128.09.020 of the Seattle Municipal Code and adding a new section 3.28.141 to the Seattle Municipal Code.

Thank you so much.

As folks are taking the table here, just want to thank.

Andrew Myerberg from the Mayor's Office for joining us, and Greg Doss and Asha Venkatamaran of Council Central Staff.

The bill before us today, it does have a bill number.

It's Council Bill 120645. It will be on the introduction and referral calendar at the City Council's meeting tomorrow, where the City Council will vote on the referral of the bill, meaning they will vote on the decision of sending the bill to this committee for formal review.

It has not yet been introduced now.

I appreciate that the executive is joining us, even though the bill has not yet been introduced, and also appreciate that Council Central staff have not yet prepared a memo.

It is not customary for Council Central staff to prepare a memo for a bill that hasn't been introduced.

So for those of you asking for a memo, that's sort of where we're at.

If it was a piece of legislation that was not introduced that was council initiated, might be a little bit different because it would be a situation where council central staff had been working alongside of the council member leading up to its sort of non-introduction status.

But we will be expecting And I'm saying expecting because council central staff has informed me that we'll be getting more information from them before the end of the end of the week before council goes into recess.

Again, also want to appreciate the fact that the mayor's office has taken a nuanced approach in this proposal for how to actually implement the authority that was granted by the state legislature.

and appreciate the delineation of how the authority is proposed to be used in practice when deciding whether to pursue diversion of arrest and providing clear, practical direction to officers for how to properly use this authority.

Also appreciate the inclusion of several findings about overdoses in the recitals and sort of recognizing the city's commitment to not repeat the errors of the past and work to have the implementation of the ordinance balance public safety with the well-being of individuals using controlled substances that I'm quoting from the recitals in the ordinance.

as an indication of the city's commitment and recognition of the need to balance both of those important public safety and public policy objectives.

With that, I'll hand it over to the table.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair Herbold and council members, and thank you again for having the mayor's office here today and for the presentation that was put on earlier.

Really interesting and great to see all those experts here at the table.

So I'd like to briefly just take a couple of minutes to discuss the process that led to the draft ordinance that's before the council to outline some of the key aspects of the ordinance and then to touch base on our next steps.

In April of this year, Mayor Harrell issued Executive Order 2023-004 addressing the fentanyl crisis.

This EO established a task force and set objectives for new treatment and services geared towards addressing the high rates of overdose and addiction in Seattle.

After the first attempt to codify the public use and possession law did not pass, the mayor launched the task force, including appointing 24 members who represented the spectrum of city government and other key stakeholders.

The mayor's office subsequently divided the 24-member task force into three subgroups.

The first was to evaluate a successor to community court.

The second was to look at our treatment and service delivery systems.

And the third was to look at our diversion systems.

This is very, as everyone knows here, this is very complex work with no simple answers.

And we expect that the efforts of these subgroups will continue over the next few months prior to issuing recommendations on some of our system gaps.

The mayor further held several meetings with the task force discussing the parameters and characteristics of a prospective ordinance and seeking guidance from the group.

The robust discussions at these meetings coupled with numerous conversations with other stakeholders ultimately informed the ordinance that was transmitted by the mayor's office to the city council.

The proposed ordinance was guided by four core determinations.

First, the use of synthetic narcotics and opioids on our streets is one of the most significant public safety and health challenges that faces the city, and urgent action is needed.

Second, the vast majority of individuals who openly use and possess controlled substances are suffering from addiction, and understanding and addressing their needs rather than arrest and incarceration is the most effective way to positively change behavior.

Third, while all use of synthetic narcotics and opioids poses a health threat, we want our police officers to focus arrests where the threat is directed towards others.

Fourth, in most situations, diversion, whether pre- or post-arrest, is the preferred course of action.

The proposed ordinance seeks to address all these core determinations through a first-of-its-kind emphasis on diversion programs and a balanced framework that seeks to connect users to services while keeping residents safe in public places.

So I'd like to briefly discuss the threat of harm standard that's set out in the ordinance.

This standard differentiates between individuals who pose a threat of harm to others and those who only pose a threat of harm to self.

The standard mirrors the practical thought process that officers ordinarily apply in the field when deciding whether to make an arrest and both allows for and encourages officers to exercise discretion.

In the ordinance, the executive is clear that the time the standard is applied, probable cause has already been established.

The standard is a means to guide officer decision-making.

It is not a new element to be proved at a criminal trial, and it's not a defense to a criminal prosecution.

Where individuals pose a threat of harm to others, which will be defined in SPD policy, arrests will be appropriate.

However, where an individual poses a threat of harm only to themselves, the executive believes that there are better options available than making an arrest.

This doesn't mean that officers should do nothing.

To the contrary, officers will be expected to offer resources and outreach services to the individual and to closely coordinate with LEAD, REACH, We Deliver Care, and the myriad of other programs that are part of the city's public safety framework.

To this end, officers are encouraged to use diversion regardless of the outcome of their threat of harm determination.

Connecting an individual with a caseworker with whom they hold trust and who understands how to navigate through the city's systems will, in our opinion, lead to the best outcomes.

However, the executive remains clear that such a decision will be within the discretion of the officer and will be fact specific and individual dependent.

The fundamental goal of this ordinance and the executive's overall approach to the synthetic opioid crisis is to increase the proportion of individuals suffering from addiction who seek and accept treatment and services.

Currently, and this is proven out by data and research, only a small percentage of individuals who are addicted to opioids seek and receive treatment.

And this is based on a number of factors, including high barriers to seeking treatment, the lack of treatment availability, and the reality that our system is simply not at scale to deal with the scope of this crisis.

The executive's work is focused on building and expanding our systems, from post-overdose centers to day centers, from mobile medication delivery to easily accessible harm reduction services, from contingency management to increased emphasis on social workers and case workers maintaining relationships and momentum towards treatment.

Since transmittal of the ordinance, the mayor's office has worked very closely with central staff and council members, and we are appreciative of the collaboration and we're available to answer questions however needed.

We continue to work on and finalize the executive order that will inform SPD's policy on use and possession.

And as we do so, we are trying to be respectful of the council's process.

We understand that there's going to be a lot of deliberation and discussion around this bill.

And we want to hear those concerns as this information may inform the final direction that we take in the executive order.

The Seattle Police Department is currently working on a policy surrounding the enforcement of this law if it is passed.

And this will include guidance on diversion.

And we expect, and we cross our fingers, we expect for the policy to be finished in mid-September.

Again, like I mentioned before, the three subgroups of the task force are continuing to meet and will do so for the foreseeable future.

Council Member Peterson, to your point, some of the pre-work that we're doing right now is that we're working with public health experts and diversion experts, including some of the folks that were at the table here today, to map out these systems, to understand what are our gaps.

And the purpose behind that work is that we wanna sit down at these meetings and to have a roadmap so that we're not spending the first few meetings reinventing the wheel and speaking the same language.

So, we're happy to share those charts and those maps with you and central staff and the rest of the council members, because we think it's going to help guide our work and help us realize what we need to do to make these systems more cohesive and more whole.

So, to close, on behalf of the mayor, I want to thank, again, Chair Herbold and the rest of the council members here, as well as the numerous city and other stakeholders who contributed to the creation of this ordinance, and I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you.

I'm looking to entertain questions that Council Members may have of Director Myerberg before moving on to Council Central staff to talk about some of the process-oriented issues.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

Just to set expectations so I've got about seven questions for Mr. Meyerberg and I'll start off with some subjective introduction if I may.

Okay so thank you for being here and I'm really glad central staff is here because I know there'll be some work to do after this.

So I know we all view the recent history differently, but my take is that more than two months ago, on June 6th, this city council had the opportunity simply to incorporate the state government's compromise on hard drug possession and public use.

Instead, by a vote of four to five, a slim majority of this council chose to vote no on Council Bill 120586, sponsored by me and Council Member Nelson and requested by our city attorney.

Personally, I believe the council should have incorporated state law into our Seattle Municipal Code.

And then if some council members and others wanted to add policy or funding, they could have done that shortly after adopting the ordinance.

But now, it seems Seattle is missing a mid-August deadline for the state legislation.

And because nearly all city legislation has a 30-day implementation delay, we're now more than a month behind the rest of the state.

because our city attorney is not able to prosecute under these misdemeanors until we put it in the Seattle Municipal Code.

Fortunately, our mayor stepped up in mid-June to start this process to forge a legislative package to which a majority now has a second chance to say yes.

And for me, the key to success could have simply been the additional $27 million that the Harrell administration found for services and capital.

Today, we have not only the newly found money, but also a proposal that contains substantial complexities added to the state government's compromise, potentially making Seattle an outlier for a reasonable tool available To law enforcement.

So instead of incorporating simply the state law in a Seattle Municipal Code Which is the standard this proposed legislation to add some entirely new Sections or a new section section three point two eight point one four one.

So I've got questions about this these subsections because they're new and just want to get comfort with these new concepts on harm.

And then I have a question about the reporting elements.

Big picture, I trust the mayor to use his authorities as our elected chief executive to implement an appropriate policy without the need to embed new terms, which I view as relatively vague, potentially micromanaging mandates.

into our Seattle Municipal Code.

I'm concerned that'll, again, make us an outlier in the state of Washington.

So let me better understand these subsections E and F.

So, and then I want to ask a question about the funding.

So, Chair, if it's okay, I'll ask the question.

Can I just go back and forth with Mr. Meyerberg just to quickly get through the,

I will defer to you whether or not asking one at a time and getting an answer, or asking them all at once, and maybe getting answers to some and others later, which is the most efficient way to move forward.

Okay, I think it'll make sense if I just keep going.

So the subsection E, threat of harm to others, and then there's subsection F, threat of harm to self, And just to, you know, for the viewing public's benefit and for clarity, I just want to read these into the record because there's a lot of inks spilled about these sections and will be, so I just want to get them out.

It's just a few sentences.

So threat of harm to others, when considering making an arrest for knowing possession or public use, officers will determine whether the individual through their actions and conduct presents a threat of harm to others.

This determination is based on the totality of the circumstances and the officers training and experience.

SPD policy will identify factors to guide officers when assessing the threat of harm presented by the individual.

The threat of harm standard governs officer decision-making and is not an element of the crime to be proved during the prosecution of possession or public use offenses and cannot be used as a defense at trial.

And then subsection F, threat of harm to self, when an officer determines there is probable cause, to believe public possession or public use of a controlled substance has occurred as described under this section 3.28.141 and the user does not pose a threat of harm to others.

The officer will then make a reasonable attempt to contact and coordinate efforts for diversion, outreach and other alternatives to arrest.

An officer will not arrest in this situation absent articulable facts and circumstances warranting such action A determination of a threat of harm will govern officer decision making and will not be an element of the crime to be proved during the possession or prosecution of possession or public use offenses and cannot be used as a defense at trial.

Just wanted to get that out there for clarity.

It's pretty brief.

So the questions I have are related to some of these terms in here.

So regarding the probable cause, that's on the threat of harm to self.

So is that a standard that's used now?

Or is it reasonable suspicion that's the standard?

Yeah, that's the first question.

So reasonable suspicion would be the standard to effectuate a Terry stop But if you're making an arrest it's gonna be based on probable cause and so what what we're saying in this ordinance and And I agree that a lot of ink has been spilled over our concept that I think the at least from these experts perspective We don't think is overly complicated and what we're what we're articulating here is that?

In every scenario where an officer engages in law enforcement activity, every scenario, an officer makes a determination not only on whether or not there's probable cause to arrest, but even when there is probable cause, whether or not an arrest should occur.

So officers don't arrest every time they've determined probable cause.

Generally, what officers will do is officers will engage in a determination in their minds to say, what is the necessity to make this arrest?

What is the necessity to take this action and to incarcerate someone or to book them into jail?

So, in all the scenarios that we're talking about, whether someone's posing a threat of harm to themselves or to others, probable cause, that baseline determination has been met.

So the person is using drugs on a public street.

They are possessing drugs on a public street, knowingly.

That standard is done.

There's probable cause.

An arrest could occur.

What we are saying as the executive is we're making a value judgment, and a judgment that the mayor's made based on him balancing his need to maintain as the chief executive public safety for the city, as well as his personal experience with the war on drugs as a Seattleite, an African-American man growing up in Seattle.

And from his his opinion, his framework, his history, what he believes is that where someone presents a threat to other, an arrest is appropriate, where if someone presents a threat of harm only to themselves, there's a better option than arresting those individuals.

So the threat of harm solely looks at officer decision-making.

It looks at the decision that an officer is going to engage in in every single scenario that they look at to decide whether or not they're actually going to take the action to put handcuffs on someone and to take them to jail.

So, I'm not sure if I answered your question, but that's the framework that we're operating under.

That's helpful because my next question was about under the threat of harm to others subsection E, it does say the threat of harm standard governs officer decision making.

So, is that a legal term of art, threat of harm standard, or is that just?

The threat of harm, I mean, I don't know if it's a legal term of art, I mean, the threat harm standard is what we're saying will be fully called out in SPD policy and training.

So we're trying to be cognizant of the fact that we don't want to be overly didactic in the ordinance, and we're not going to be.

We're going to put this in policy and training.

However, the mayor felt it very important to differentiate between the circumstances, to not, as we've heard from our group of experts today, is to not criminalize situations where someone is using drugs but not presenting an active threat to others.

And again, I want to be really clear, it doesn't mean, maybe this is another question, it doesn't mean that we stand aside.

It doesn't mean that we take no action.

And there could be a situation, again, where we do take action, where this is an individual who may only pose a threat to others, but officers have contacted, to self, I'm sorry, but officers have contacted them three times before.

Or an officer reaches out to their lead caseworker and the caseworker says, you know what, you really need to transport them to the crisis solution center.

And the way to do that is in handcuffs.

So again, we're leaving this open to officer discretion, but we are setting a value statement in the ordinance, and that's the differentiation between the threat of harm standards.

Okay.

So then, officers, is this an additional Is this a change to their scope of work now, so it's something they'll have to be trained in and learn, or you're saying this is what they essentially already do, or?

Obviously, anytime you draft a new policy, you're going to have to train to the policy.

So the short answer is yes, of course, there'll be training.

However, this is a decision point that officers make every single day, not just for use in possession offenses, but for any offense.

They're always gauging the necessity, the need to arrest someone, and the why, right?

So officers, again, I mean, there's many restrictions both on the jail and other places as to who can be booked, right?

So officers are constantly making decisions as to who can be arrested and when to make arrests.

So we are amplifying an existing decision-making paradigm that officers already engage in, and we will put more guidance and policy, and we'll have to train to that policy.

Okay, just a couple of more questions.

So if somebody is, if the officer observes somebody using the drugs, but they're not a threat of harm to others at that moment, if the drugs kick in, then the officer leaves and they cause harm to others at that point, is the city somehow liable for that?

Does this create a liability for us if we don't enforce the state law, but yeah.

I would defer, I mean, I'll have to defer to law on that question.

I mean, I don't think that there's any duty that's presumed in this ordinance that would practically create a duty to prevent future conduct that the officer can't predict.

But again, you know, if the person is in public, is on a city street, is near, you know, there's all these factors that officers will consider, again, as instructed by policy and training to evaluate this decision point.

But an officer won't ever have perfect information and can't predict the future.

But we're going to give them enough tools to make the right decisions and to have resources to call in folks that can help them, right?

I mean, it's not just going to be officers reaching these occasions.

It's going to be reach.

It'll be lead.

It'll be we deliver care.

It'll be John Ehrenfeld's, you know, HealthONE team.

There's a lot of other actors and players that will be part of this expanded system and this expanded approach.

I mean, the law enforcement only approach does not work and cannot work.

We just don't have enough officers and it's not the right way to approach it.

So we have to approach it from a broader spectrum, and that's what this ordinance seeks to do.

Last question.

So when I'm talking to officers in the field about this concept, I guess there is a concern that it is an additional layer of complexity and standard that would be put on them.

Some of the feedback I also get is that the King County Jail, currently their booking policy is very restrictive.

It creates a lot of frustration when officers see a crime committed, they bring somebody into King County Jail, and then the jail, which is run by King County, is refusing to book them.

And so I'm wondering whether there have been discussions with King County Jail to You know, we have a contract with them, so it's mystifying to me why King County doesn't allow our officers to book people who are brought in.

And I'm, you know, to the extent that the subset of those they interact with under this ordinance, if they have to bring them in, will King County Jail just turn them away like we hear stories about them doing now?

So to respond to the first question, you know, I'm sure that there are officers that will, you know, complain about any new standard.

There's many policies that govern officer conduct, but I think the vast majority of officers will understand the reason for this and will Understand that this again is not you know, it's it's it's not asking them to reinvent the wheel It's asking them to do what they already do.

It's just gonna be more clear about it in policy and When we do put something like this on the books It is important to be clear in policy and to be clear with officer actions With regard to your second point, I know that there are ongoing conversations with the jail.

There have been for the last, you know, two years about booking requirements and who's going to be booked and who's not going to be booked.

And obviously, there's a lot of factors at play there.

There's staffing in the jail.

There was COVID for a long time.

But those conversations are ongoing.

But, you know, in a perfect world, I just want to be clear.

Very rarely, I think, do we want these cases to get to that point, right?

In a perfect world, we would not be booking very many of these arrests at all in jail.

I mean, the idea would be...

would be diverting them, whether pre-arrest or post-arrest, to some sort of another system that can get them on medication, that can put them in line for housing, that can find out what is making this individual tick and how do you help cure the behavior that's causing the harm.

Some people will be booked and certainly folks that have other crimes associated with their conduct, open warrants will be booked, and that falls within current restrictions at the jail.

But those conversations are ongoing, and we'll provide more information when we have it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Councilmember Lewis is a co-sponsor.

I see you are in the queue here.

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Director Meyerberg, for coming here this afternoon to talk through this bill and its unintroduced status, and really appreciate your work over the last couple of months cobbling this together and working with a number of stakeholders.

on the policy that is within this new proposed ordinance and the complementing executive actions that Mayor Harrell has in mind.

Just to jump into the origins of the standard, my interpretation of this has been since ultimately these actions are discretionary on the part of the executive branch and how they want to exercise them, As a council endorsement of the preferred course of action that Mayor Harrell is putting forward to make a difference on our streets and for the public health of the community.

And really appreciate the personal attention, personal leadership that Mayor Harrell has brought to the table.

in really crafting this policy in collaboration with a very broad group of stakeholders.

But I guess I would ask Director Meyerberg if you think that that is a fair representation of this, that this gives the council an opportunity to publicly support Mayor Harrell's executive actions, Mayor Harrell's public leadership, and put us in a position to endorse an executive plan of action to make progress on this issue.

I think that is a fair representation, and again, as I said earlier during my prepared remarks, we really thank the work of the council members, particularly those that sat on our task force for being engaged in these conversations that helped inform the direction that we went, and it was very much a collaborative process, and we appreciate the assistance.

My understanding is this ordinance and the related language is supported by Chief Diaz based on the release that we sent out in our work in the task force.

Can you confirm if that's the case?

It is.

My understanding from reading some public remarks is that the Seattle Police Union has actually also endorsed this ordinance and by extension the language that's within it.

Is that also true?

And that's our understanding as well.

And that through this work that we've done with the Public Defender Association and other organizations that have been at the table, there were supportive statements from Lisa Dugard and Tara Moss upon the release of the ordinance on a lot of the feedback and experience that they brought to shaping it.

And can you confirm that statement of support as well?

That's correct.

Thank you.

I don't have any additional questions right now, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Nelson.

Thank you very much.

So, you know, I just want to be, not to mention the elephant in the room, but it is true that, you know, we're, Council's taken some hits for not taking action today, but I do have to note that it's been months and months since this is, since legislation has been before us, first in April when I sponsored legislation to make public use a simple misdemeanor, and then we put forward simple conforming legislation, which failed, and it's been two months since that.

So, I'm glad that we're finally moving forward, so, and getting another crack at conforming to state law.

So, my question has to do with some of what was already mentioned by Councilmember Peterson.

But first I need to say that I've been clear that whatever law we pass must conform to state law and I will oppose any attempts to interfere with the city attorney's prosecutorial discretion and or the mayor's authority to define the policies by which his officers will make arrests.

And so this legislation itself, however, does insert those policies directly into the letter of the law itself, first in Section 3A by reference to policies and executive orders that we haven't seen yet, and then in Section 3E that's been read to us by establishing the threat to harm standard that will govern the officer's decision to make an arrest.

But we don't yet know the threat of harm that will be defined.

So my question is, when will we get those policies in that executive order?

Because I'm asking myself, presence of other people and children, distance from small businesses, on buses, or other users in front of a bus stop.

So those are some of the things that I'm hoping that will come forward before we actually vote, because it's One of the concerns that I have is that we could be voting on a law that refers to external policies which could bind how this law is enforced.

So my first question is simply on timing for that.

So as I mentioned earlier, the policy we expect to be developed ideally by mid-September is what we've been discussing with SPD, and they are working on it actively right now.

With regard to the executive order, again, our position is just like we're discussing at this table today is to hear some of the thoughts of the council as we continue to finesse and finalize it.

I have offered to council members, and I'll do it again, I'm happy to sit down Discuss the substance with council members in anticipation of the votes But I think we are still finalizing the document and we're we don't have a timeline on release yet But we'll discuss with the mayor and we'll get back to the council Thank you, and you and I have spoken a lot so I assume that I

what we have spoken of has already been conveyed.

I have always said that I think that a simple, straight up, conforming legislation is simpler to enforce.

But moving on, I'm also wondering how including the threat of harm to others' standard as a condition of arrest will play out in real life, because I was wondering if it creates a rebuttable presumption that the defense will then exploit as grounds for dismissal.

So we're not talking about during the trial, but before the trial.

Because how will officers prove that they believed or knew harm to others was occurring, And then how can the threat of harm govern an officer's decision to arrest but not be used by defense in an allegation of bias policing because we're talking about the judgment that led to the decision to arrest.

And I've asked central staff these questions as well.

So, and presumably they're, yeah, speak with our lawyers too, so.

Central staff has been thinking these questions through and I've discussed it with central staff as well.

So, from the perspective of the mayor's office, to answer both questions, first, we have tried to be as clear as we possibly can that the determination of the threat of harm is after there's been a decision on probable cause.

So, simply stated, the criminal conduct itself has already occurred.

The offense has occurred, meaning someone has used or possessed drugs on a public street.

The threat of harm standard is a standard made after that fact.

So in any sort of a civil lawsuit after the fact, or in a bias policing complaint, the fact that there was probable cause would be a defense to that.

But the reality is that a bias complaint could be filed on any policy or any actions by an officer.

And I'm not sure the threat of harm standard creates any more liability or risk on behalf of the officers.

Again, with regard to prosecutions and the criminal defense, We have been clear in the ordinance that it is not an element to be proved in a criminal trial.

Would an enterprising public defender try to make it so?

Potentially.

But I'm not sure how we can be any stronger or more clear with what our legislative intent is from the executive side.

And certainly if the council comes up with ways to strengthen that or to address your concerns, that's their prerogative as far as the review process goes in the bill.

And again, this is all because probable cause has already been established.

And so the fact that probable cause has been established means that that is in itself protecting us from any claims, whether civil or criminal defense claims, that the wrong decision was made in the officer using their discretion.

And that's certainly in line with the executive's perspective.

And I should note that we're all on the same page here, that not everybody who is using drugs in public should be arrested, and that officers will use, and already do use on all these other laws, their discretion.

And the question is simply, do we include the exercise of that discretion within the law itself, or just defer to the policies as set forth elsewhere in the executive order, et cetera?

And again, just to put a fine point on it, this is legislation proposed by the mayor.

The mayor, in all of our deliberative process, thought about this a lot.

This was something that was very important to him that went into the legislation and it was something that resonated with many of the stakeholders we spoke to across the spectrum.

Again, it is within the council's prerogative to review the bill, to make amendments to the bill, to have these discussions, and we welcome that discussion.

But the executive feels strongly that this is the right thing to do, and it's the right language to have in the bill.

Yeah.

And then, if I may, one last thing.

I just want to say that I learned a lot going through these conversations because I learned that the act of arrest doesn't automatically mean a booking.

The act of arrest means an officer approaches someone and perhaps takes them to the precinct and says, let's hook you up with a diversion partner or something like that.

So it is an opportunity for entry into diversion or treatment or a different choice, obviously, so.

And we'll have some clarifying language, I think, coming forward that makes sure that it is understood that in those instances where somebody needs to be taken into custody in order to deliver them, The warm handoff?

Yes, yes, the warm handoff.

That that is not considered, that is not discouraged under the threat of harm to self-standard.

Right.

And that is also in the state law.

Absolutely.

Great.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Council Member.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I have a few questions, if I might.

Mr. Meyerberg, will this bill be coupled with funding to support sufficient expansion and sustain diversion programs?

We know that the budget's being proposed here in about a month.

And what we heard from all of the panelists this afternoon was that to the degree that there is funding available for diversion and referrals, it has to scale up to meet the volume of these new referrals.

It seems important that the resources be sufficiently invested into the alternative strategies so that people are not being given a false promise that there will be divergent strategies if we don't have those resources.

And where will that funding come from?

Is it going to be coming from the public safety side of the budget, given there's other important investments that we've made across the budget and the expected gap that we see in revenue and expenses?

So I will have to defer to Deputy Mayor Washington and other colleagues on the scope of funding that will be going to the LEAD and COLEAD programs.

What I will say is not only will it be a question of funding, but it's going to be a question of prioritization.

And certainly we have already spoken to LEAD and to REACH about prioritization and appropriately addressing these cases to make sure that, again, there are no false expectations out there.

But in addition to diversion, I think as we've noted, we have identified around $27 million of funding for other systems that complement our diversion systems.

So, for example, operational funding for harm reduction services, operational funding for the HealthONE system.

capital funding for what we hope to be a post-diversion center, and other systems that will look at addressing the root causes of what's causing behavior and what's causing people to use narcotics on the street.

So we feel like those investments, which are new investments coupled with our existing investments, will create a better, more holistic system to deal with these issues.

But certainly, I can look into the other funding question, as I'm sure you will, when the budget is proposed.

Thanks.

I'll continue with my questions if I may, Madam Chair.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Meyerberg.

And I think earlier you may have said that SPD will be defining threat of harm standards.

Will the threat of harm standard mirror what is currently in Washington case law?

No.

You can tell me more.

So we're not adopting a legal standard from another unrelated provision in case law.

We're going to be setting out the standard and the behavior that would set the threat of harm in SPD policy.

OK, thank you for.

The short answer on that, and I'll look into that a little bit more with central staff.

And I'm interested in seeing what those differences are.

I think we know that Washington State case law requires a person, a reasonable person, to foresee the statement being interrupted as a, quote, serious expression of intent to inflict bodily harm upon or take the life of another individual.

in the State v. Knowles case.

So I'll look into further analysis, I suppose, between the executive and the central staff analysis that we will see soon.

My second to last question, Madam Chair, is why is threat of harm to others explicitly stated not to be an element of the crime the state has to prove?

Because it's a decision that influences officer decision-making, not whether or not a crime has occurred.

Okay, and my last question is, if a person is determined by SPD to present a threat of harm to others, does section F imply they will not be eligible for pre-arrest diversion?

What about pre-charging or pre-trial diversion as well?

I guess I don't understand the question.

If someone is presenting a threat of harm only to themselves, the idea is that we would offer, via SPD and other resources, diversion and other alternatives to arrest.

It may be the case that they would be arrested insofar as they would need to be transported to somewhere in a secured capacity, but They wouldn't be going through the judicial system if they weren't placed under arrest.

So maybe I'm misunderstanding your question.

Yeah, sorry.

I'm actually asking about threat of harm to others, so not just to themselves.

No, I mean, I think even in a threat of harm to others scenario, the idea would be that diversion is a preferred outcome.

So whether that's pre-arrest or post-arrest diversion, a warm handoff, whether at the scene or at a precinct to a caseworker would be preferred, and that's something that lead and SPD already do on a regular basis.

And if that didn't occur and the individual was booked into jail, they would still be eligible for any sort of diversionary systems, whether, you know, currently contemplated or to be created in the future.

So, but we're not a pioneer on those diversion systems in this ordinance.

We're solely looking at the point of arrest.

And just to point to a place in the proposed ordinance where we are trying to clarify that, but perhaps we're not doing a good enough job, is under 3.28.140D.

It states diversion, treatment, and other alternatives to booking are the preferred approach when enforcing the crimes adopted under the section consistent with the statutory authority of 2 ES2 SSB 5536 sections 2, 9, and 10. Sections 2, 9, and 10 address the expectation for diversion, treatment, and other alternatives to booking.

Thank you.

Thanks, Madam Chair.

And thank you, Mr. Meyerberg.

We will look forward to additional conversations and most importantly to the daylighting of the proposed budget in just over a month.

So thanks for flagging that.

And thanks again, Madam Chair, for the panel that articulated the need for those comprehensive resources to really ensure that there's successful diversion models.

I see Council Member Lewis, your hand is up in the queue and I understand this is a new set of questions or comments.

Yes, thank you madam chair in some of the other periods of questioning with colleagues.

There were some questions about the timing of the release of the executive order.

I similarly, you know, I'm interested in getting more clarity on the timeline of releasing it.

My understanding, and I do find this line of reasoning compelling, is it makes sense to sequence executive actions, finalizing those executive actions on the final contours of the ordinance.

So can can you confirm director Meyerberg if that is the case on?

Thinking on the timing of the releasing of the executive order that is our thinking and you know just in the last few weeks We've had a lot of robust conversations around the ordinance and what it will look like so Again, we want to be respectful of the process that we're engaged in right now.

So you just said ordinance Do you mean the executive order exactly?

I'm sorry

Yeah, and are these provisions that come in the latter half of the ordinance around threat of harm to others and threat of harm to self, are those fairly representative of some of the components of the ultimate executive actions, including the executive order?

Yes, there's also a section that will focus on data collection, which the mayor discussed, I think, in his work group meetings, as well as other language around diversion and some other guidance for officers.

Thank you.

Um, given, given that level of advanced transparency, um, that we have in the ordinance that's been promulgated, uh, and the process and work that we've done as part of the fentanyl task force, um, I would put on the record that, um, I would be willing to consider this ordinance as early as our September 5th full council meeting, um, which would require some changes to, um, uh, introduction referral potentially, but given that this additional executive action is going to be, has been foreshadowed within the ordinance, within the fentanyl task force work that we've been doing over the past two months, and given that it has been foreshadowed that the executive, the additional executive actions would ideally take place after the final passage of the ordinance that had been foreshadowed.

I'm putting on the record my interest in considering at that date.

But I would like to, now that I've raised that, hear feedback from Council Central staff and hear feedback from you, Director Myerberg, on what your thoughts on that timeline are, because I'm obviously just speaking for myself and not for the entire committee or the Council.

If it's okay director Marburg, I'm gonna ask council central staff.

I think it's very Integral to our council process we I think know that the Mayor is interested in swift action by the council given Statements as recently as Friday on the status of the bill given that it was not introduced to the council for the introduction referral calendar last week, knowing it will be on tomorrow, the IRC that we will be voting on.

It is proposed to be referred to the Public Safety and Human Services Committee.

And in what you suggest, Councilmember Lewis, I think, as you rightly state, a decision to send it directly to full council for a full council vote.

on September 5th will not allow for another committee discussion, and I think that's a good place.

Not trying to shut you off from the conversation, Director Meyerberg, but I would most like to hear from Council Central staff on how that would affect process.

Asha Venkatraman with your Council Central staff.

At the moment, if you do introduce and refer tomorrow to the Public Safety and Human Services Committee, most likely the consideration of this bill would happen on September 12th, and then the full Council vote, assuming that that bill is voted on as amended September 12th, assuming there are amendments, would happen on September 19th.

If you were to change, as Council Member Lewis indicates, the referral to full council, then September 5th would be the next time you were able to vote on the bill itself, but without a committee hearing.

Our current plan is to hopefully have a memo out on this introduced version of the bill later this week, and then, assuming this would go to committee and not straight to full council, have an amendment deadline that week of September 5th.

So we could prepare those and consider them at the September 12th meeting so that you all have the opportunity to vote on those amendments and then vote on the bill as amended on September 12th for that September 19th council committee meeting.

So if you did want to refer it straight to full council, we'd have to do some change in that timeline.

but it would probably involve work during recess over the next two weeks to get amendments crafted, vetted by the city attorney's office for us to do the work of drafting and then get those ready in time for then a full council vote and the amendments would have to be voted on then in full council itself.

Thank you.

Before I entertain additional questions from council members, is there anything else on the process side of things that you wanted to take this opportunity to let us know about?

Not at the moment.

Thank you.

Great.

Council Member Nelson.

This is about the suggestion about it going directly to full counsel.

And again, I am impatient to get this moving forward.

So for example, on last Wednesday, August 9, I think it was, we received a letter from the Department of Public Defense stating their staunch opposition to the proposed legislation and asking that it be amended to grant quote, to grant Seattle Municipal Court judges the authority to divert cases for treatment.

And this is likely to be illegal because the power to create a judicial diversion program is vested solely in the state legislature under Article 4, Section 1 and 12 of the Washington State Constitution.

and the Seattle Municipal Court Jurisdiction and power is derived from the legislature per RCW 3520. So this is why we shouldn't workshop our criminal code because it took two years for the state legislature to fix Blake because of competing interests and the intense scrutiny and interest of the body politic in getting something done.

If we do, and I'm sure this isn't going to be the only amendment, and so I just am putting it, parking that there, that we're gonna need to balance discussing this and potentially other amendments with urgency.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

Council Member Peterson.

Oh, thank you, Chair Herbold.

Yeah, I think the timing depends a lot on amendments.

And so, I had a question about the funding.

So, as I understand it, the Harrell administration found about $27 million and is looking at $7 million for capital and $20 million for services.

Would that be allocated through a request for proposals, which I'm a fan of, so that we could get the best proposal, have it competitive, and get what we need to do the best work?

Or is it a direct award that you're envisioning?

So the seven million in capital will be an RFP process.

So we, the mayor's office, again, in collaboration with stakeholders and largely based on what you heard here today, there are certain types of programs that we want to fund with that capital money.

So for example, a post-overdose stabilization center.

So somewhere for people to go after they've overdosed to be stabilized and put on medication.

expanded facilities for case working, for medication delivery.

Those are the types of things that we're hoping to fund with the capital money, but we will go through a competitive process for that.

The operational money, and it's $20 million, but believe us, people have mentioned, it's spread over a number of years.

The money will be allocated in part to some existing programs that we've been working with that we believe are successful, to the HealthONE program for expanding their overdose response and their case working components, and then will be put towards some of the centers that will be funded with our RFP money.

So those centers are going to need operational costs, so we're trying to allocate, pre-allocate money for those operational costs.

But we very much will want to be responsive and on the same page as the council when we do these, when we make these investments and we'll provide as much information as we can up to that point.

Thank you.

Thank you.

One more question on the reporting you mentioned.

So there is a section in the ordinance or the proposed ordinance about reporting, but that's mainly about the arrest record.

So I just want to.

I know in Portland, Oregon, they experimented with some decriminalization, and it didn't go well, according to several reports.

And they had some before and after information, which I think was helpful.

So you had mentioned some additional reporting, systemic reporting you're interested in.

So I just want to signal my interest in that as well.

And maybe that's something that should be in the ordinance.

So the mayor, within the executive order, and he's said this publicly, is very interested in collecting data on who are we serving, what are the numbers of folks that are addicted to drugs and are using drugs openly, and are the programs that we're funding working to reduce those numbers and reduce overdoses?

also within all the other programs that we're going to fund, they'll have their own metrics of success and theories of change.

So hopefully those together will create a window that shows whether what we're doing is working.

And if not, we'll give us enough information to help us pivot.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Skada.

Sorry, I have a sick kiddo here at home.

a second here.

I'm going to try and do a task here.

One second, Camila.

I just want to chime in here on the concept of an expedited timeline.

We have no idea what's going to be in the proposed budget.

We're not receiving the proposed budget for at least five weeks.

We have heard repeatedly today from the panelists and members of the community that we need to ensure that there is sufficient funding for diversion programs in order for this to not be a, quote, false promise.

So I wanted to emphasize the importance of having this conversation coupled with the proposed budget for 2024 at least.

I also want to offer some clarity.

I heard somebody say that we, quote, found $27 million, and from all assessments that I've heard, uh, we have no indication of where the $7 million that was found is coming from.

We know that there's 20 million.

We know that there's 20 million coming from the fentanyl settlement, but again, that's paid out over 18 years.

And that's, you know, less than a million dollars a year over 18 years doesn't even begin to cover what we know is being asked of us from our partners at LEAD.

We need millions of dollars for this upcoming budget to ensure that they can better serve the population that they intend to serve and who need services now.

In 2024, we approved a budget that would help us close the gap.

for last year, but there would be a gap of $7 million going forward that we need to fill.

Now we are looking at federal funds, and thanks to our congressional representatives for those dollars that they're trying to put forward.

But I don't even know if, for example, the LEAD contract is going to see funding scaled up for next year, let alone the ongoing funding that would be needed year over year.

So is there any additional information that can be provided to us about the scale of the investments annually

And where the seven million dollars came from director meyerberg if I could handle part of that question.

Thanks.

I do definitely am interested in hearing from you about uh, whatever information you can provide maybe not about what's in the 2024 budget, but uh, maybe um how council members can Get some reassurances that the funding necessary to Implement this ordinance in a way that is consistent with how we're saying it's going to be implemented.

We'll do so but Councilmember Skater as it relates to the seven million dollars that you're referencing that is And I've got a slide deck from the Human Services Department.

I did receive a pre-briefing on this since I am going to be taking a the legislation related to the Human Services Department's five-year consolidated plan.

You had offered me the opportunity, because of your full committee meetings, to hear that legislation.

And one of the things that that legislation will do is it will identify community development block grant dollars in several departments throughout the city that those funds, if not expended, they have a nine-year, a period of time of nine years that those dollars are required to be expended.

And so not only is this going to be addressed in the upcoming five-year plan that we're going to be hearing in September, again, which is really good news to get some certainty around those funds without having to wait to go through the budget process.

But the five-year consolidated plan will identify how, because the federal government requires it, will identify how we're moving funds from one department that has CDBG allocations to the Human Services Department to fulfill the needs as identified for the post-overdose recovery center that the executive is working to stand up.

So again, those are capital dollars for capital purposes, and I'm happy to sort of pass on to you as well the slide deck that I received from human services department last week and it was within the context of preparing for the five-year plan legislation that is coming to my committee instead of yours later in September.

Director Meyerberg.

I'm not sure that I have anything to add.

I think that's that is where the capital funds are coming from.

We when we look at the opioid settlement money I think we look we at least our initial estimates is that it's about $1.4 million a year over the course of the settlement.

And obviously that number, as you know, Council Member Muscata, fluctuates depending on the term.

But, you know, and obviously that's not the only, I don't want to make it seem like that's the only investment we have in this space.

I mean, certainly we do invest in We Deliver Care and the Third Avenue Project and other public health investments and in other areas that that either directly or indirectly contribute to helping solve the problem that we're faced with right now with fentanyl.

But of course, there are still things to fund and there's gaps.

And as part of our process and the work that we're doing, we're looking to, again, understand our systems well enough to know what those gaps are.

And all the people that were here today, virtually all of them that were at the table here today will be part of our work group to do exactly that.

and to make recommendations on what we're missing and what's the level of funding that's needed to fund these six to scope.

Follow-up questions, Council Member Mosqueda?

Thank you for the follow-up.

Also, thank you, Council Member Herbold, for taking the CBBG funds.

I will also note that, you know, the importance of having the fuller picture of what is invested to ensure that the diversion programs are adequately staffed is the ongoing concern that I have.

So the capital dollars are one thing, but the ongoing funding that's going to be necessary to serve people and meet people where they're at, as the panel continued to talk about, is incredibly important.

A $6 to $7 million per year gap that entities like LEAD are facing next year alone make me want to see where the investments are coming from before policies move forward that would double down on the services and program line of support that we've offered to community members who are dealing with addiction to prevent them from going into the criminal justice system so that we know that there's adequate funding.

And until we see that full budget proposal in September or without access to additional information beyond the CDBG capital grant funds, I don't think we have that assurance.

So I just wanted to flag that as council members are considering weighing the policy before the funding is actually fully known to round out our conversation that we've had with our first panel today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I too would welcome some additional reassurances prior to the council's vote on this legislation for what we can expect for the mayor's proposed budget for 2024. But understand that this is not the time to do so.

So with that, not seeing any additional comments or questions.

Just want to kind of close out that we will be taking up the IRC tomorrow.

The plan had been that with the council break for the last two weeks of August, the next available meeting to hear the legislation would be after the break.

and making a full council vote possible on September 19th.

Considering something else in the place would require an amendment to the IRC, which, again, will be taken up tomorrow afternoon at 2 o'clock at our full council meeting.

Explain what you just said.

It's been referred, but...

We are going to be voting on the introduction referral calendar tomorrow.

Right.

And the introduction referral calendar says on the calendar itself where the bill is going.

Right.

If Councilmember Lewis, for instance, is interested in taking up his suggestion that it go directly to full council, on the 5th of September.

That would require an amendment to the IRC that we will be voting on tomorrow.

Thank you.

All right.

Great.

All right.

Seeing no further comments or questions from either folks at the table or council members here, the next Public Safety and Human Services Committee is after the break, scheduled for Tuesday, September 12th.

If anybody anticipates being absent for that from that meeting we ask that you get in contact with my office.

And before we adjourn I'm just checking to make sure there are no additional comments.

Not.

Madam Chair.

Council Member Esqueda yes.

Thank you.

I just wanted to ask I had a handful of questions for central staff.

I was anticipating that they might be next and we were going to go extra long which I was prepared for but should we just send those directly to central staff and copy the chair.

I think that'll work.

Okay, we'll send those to you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

The time is now 5.10 p.m.

and we are adjourned.

Thank you.

Recording stopped.