Seattle City Council 12142020

Good afternoon, colleagues.

The December 14th, 2020 meeting of the Seattle City Council will come to order.

It's 2.05 p.m.

I'm Lorena Gonzalez, president of the council.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Sawant.

Here.

Strauss.

Present.

Herbold.

Here.

Juarez.

Here.

Lewis.

Present.

Morales.

Here.

Mosqueda.

Present.

Peterson.

Here.

Council President Gonzalez.

Here.

Nine present.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Colleagues, we're going to have to do some administrative stuff here before we dig into items of business.

First up, the suspension of the rules.

As I mentioned this morning, the council rules are silent on allowing remote meetings and electronic participation at city council and committee meetings.

To continue participating remotely, I will move to suspend the council rules through January 19th, 2021. As I mentioned this morning, that would bring us up to date in terms of the renewed proclamation issued by Governor Inslee related to Open Public Meetings Act and its applicability to government agencies, including the city of Seattle.

So if there is no objection, the council rules will be suspended to allow remote meetings and electronic participation at city council and committee meetings through January 19th, 2021. hearing no objection, the council rules are suspended, and city council and committee meetings will be held remotely with council members participating electronically through at least January 19th, 2021. Okay, presentations.

We have one presentation this afternoon, and that is going to be presented by Council Member Herbold.

You are recognized in order to address the proclamation and to allow council members an opportunity to ask questions or make comments before I ask if they would like to have their signatures affixed on the proclamation.

So again, we'll have Council Member Herbold address the proclamation, hear any questions or comments if there are any, and then I will ask the clerk to call the roll to determine which council members' signatures may be affixed to the proclamation.

So Council Member Herbold, please.

Thank you so much.

This proclamation is in recognition of the bravery creativity and abilities of the Seattle Fire Department and a collective group of individuals who were able to come together to create a national model for community testing which has been replicated across the state of Washington.

Since June 5th 2020 Seattle's four community test sites have administered nearly 500,000 COVID-19 tests.

and Chiefs Goggins is here to accept the proclamation on behalf of those named.

And I would like if it please the council to read the proclamation as follows.

Whereas Seattle Mayor Jenny A. Durkin, Deputy Mayor Michael Hwang, and staff Julie Klein and Leah Tavioli immediately recognized the need for widespread community testing and worked with local health officials to drive policy to implement test sites within the city.

and whereas Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins and Medical Director Dr. Michael Sayer led the way in having the fire department take on this new role of serving the community by obtaining approval to have EMTs and paramedics conduct COVID-19 swab testing, and whereas President of Firefighters Union Local 27, Kenny Seward and Deputy Chief Chris Deline provided ongoing administrative and union support for firefighters working at test sites.

And whereas Acting Captain Brian Wallace and Sarah Smith led the charge to stand up and oversee two drive-up and two walk-up test sites and have done exceptional work to continue the management of the sites.

And whereas Human Services staff, Dory Towler and Hannah.

Coaston hired and onboarded 104 temporary fire department employees to serve as registration techs at the sites, and Lieutenant Matt Anderson, Lieutenant Mike McCaslin, Lieutenant Moreland Malvo, Lieutenant Chris Cornett, and paramedic John Luffingwell stepped into the role of initially training and supervising uniform and civilian staff at the four sites, and fire department paramedic Becky Matthews oversees the notification group responsible for contacting people who have tested positive, and Fire Department and Services Division Director Sheila Kelly and Julie Matsumoto with FAS, Everett Spring, Ryan Kennedy, Mark Miller, Paul Spivey, Don McDermott, Nonila Mike Wong, David Straub, and Melissa Mixon all insured the personal protective equipment, testing site supplies, signage, and site construction needs were met, and is also responsible for ensuring sites are ready to operate during the winter months.

And FAS Real Estate Services Karen Gruen, Lane Kubel, and Richard Embry secured leases in record time for the Aurora and Soto sites.

And FAS Purchasing and Contracting Presley Palmer, Julie Salinas, David McLean, and Pam Tokunuga facilitated ordering all of the supplies.

And FAS Customer Service Bureau answered thousands of calls from the public about the testing sites.

Mayor's Office Camarilla Hightower and SFD communication staff worked closely with Seattle King County Public Health to announce the opening of sites and ensure the community was made aware of who should seek testing.

The coordinated translation of key testing information to reach Seattle's non-English Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs speaking population.

And the civilian registration techs at SFD and the AMR emergency medical techs and paramedics have also worked so efficiently to test upwards of 6,500 people per day at the four sites.

And Seattle's four community test sites have administered nearly 500,000 COVID-19 sites.

Now, therefore, the City Council proclaims Monday, December 14th, as the day we recognize the unprecedented and unwavering efforts, creativity, commitment and dedication demonstrated by the fire department who surely saved countless lives in our community that would have otherwise been lost this year during the COVID-19 global pandemic.

We thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold, for that introduction and those comments on the proclamation.

Colleagues, I do want to ask if there are any questions about the proclamation.

We're going to take questions only right now before we call the roll.

After we call the roll, we'll go ahead and ask if colleagues have any general comments about the proclamation.

So right now, we're just going to reserve.

Sorry.

Nadia is pulling me to the side here.

So right now, we're just going to reserve this opportunity for questions.

Any questions about the contents of the proclamation before we call the roll?

OK, hearing no questions, will the clerk please call the roll to determine which council members' signatures may be affixed to the proclamation?

To warrant?

Yes.

Strauss.

Yes.

Herbold.

Yes.

Juarez.

Yes.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Mosqueda.

Yes.

Peterson.

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez.

Yes.

Nine in favor.

Thank you so much.

So all nine signatures of all nine council members will be affixed to the proclamation.

Colleagues, now, of course, I'm going to move to suspend the rules in a moment to allow Chief Scoggins to address the council and accept the proclamation.

But before I do that, I did want to open it up to the full council to see if there are any comments from council members.

before I go ahead and suspend the rules to allow Chief Scoggins to accept the proclamation.

Any general comments?

All right, hearing none, we'll go ahead and move to suspend the rules.

So if there's no objection, the council rules will be suspended to allow Chief Scoggins to accept the proclamation and provide brief remarks.

Hearing no objection, the Council rules are suspended.

Chief Scoggins, welcome to today's City Council meeting.

It is our pleasure to recognize you in order to allow you to provide us brief remarks in acceptance of the proclamation developed by Councilmember Herbold.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Council President Gonzalez, Councilmember Herbold, members of the City Council.

On behalf of the men and women of the Seattle Fire Department and all of our partners and well, you named quite a list of partners and it really takes that type of list to really make this go.

I proudly accept this proclamation on behalf of the Seattle Fire Department.

When I roll it back to last March and we start walking down this road with trying to figure out how to understand how the disease was spreading in the department and we started testing our own firefighters.

Never would I have thought nine months later we would be really running these community test sites.

Today is another milestone.

We're going to hit about 475,000 today.

And that's a really big milestone for the department.

Over 16,000 people have tested positive since June 5th.

And we have contacted every single one of those people.

and giving them clear direction.

That's the Becky Matthews name that you mentioned.

She actually leads that team.

You know, the brainchild of acting captain Brian Wallace and the team of names you read off has been absolutely incredible.

The partnerships with Local 27 and President Kenny Stewart and our mayor giving us guidance and direction on what we needed to accomplish.

A couple of partnerships that weren't mentioned, the University of Washington, partnering with them early on and they're doing all of our lab work.

The parks department at the Atlantic City boat ramp.

Seattle Public Schools starting off at Rainier Beach High School.

And over in West Seattle, we have had so many partnerships, but our team, our firefighters, our over 100 temporary employees that we've hired have really been doing just an amazing job in support of community.

And it really ties to who we are as an organization and our why is we're here to serve.

So thank you for recognizing the men and women of the Seattle Fire Department, and we proudly accept this proclamation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chief Scoggins.

I don't know if you sent out the troops here, but just as you were wrapping up your comments, there's a ladder truck that just showed up outside my house.

There we go.

Thank you so much, Chief Scoggins, for being with us this afternoon and for those remarks.

But more importantly, thank you to all of the men and women of the fire department for all the tremendous work they've been doing.

I have personally visited the testing sites multiple times throughout this period of time as a as a as a sort of prophylactic measure, not because I've been symptomatic, but because I think it's important for the testing to be periodically done as one of the many factors you take into consideration about whether or not you are infected or not, and really have been impressed with the care and the compassion expressed at the testing sites and have also been really impressed with just the sheer magnitude of the organization that has to unfold at many of the testing sites in order for it to feel comfortable and calm and like a good experience given the discomfort of the actual test.

So appreciate all the work that you all have done over the last several months, and I know that there's much more work that will continue into 2021 and beyond.

So thank you so much.

Okay, colleagues, are there any additional comments?

Council Member Perlbold, any closing comments?

No, I just appreciate having the opportunity to do this.

I give the updated numbers every week in council briefings and just wanted to do something extra special to make sure that we are all together recognizing your important work.

So thank you again to you and everybody at Seattle Fire Department and your partners as well.

Great.

Thank you so much, Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Esqueda, I did see that you raised your hand.

Would you like to make some comments?

I just want to thank Chief Scoggins, your entire team, President Stewart, if he were on the line with us as well.

I know you and your members have put uncountable hours into the response this year, both in terms of the crisis of COVID, but we also know that you have generously shared hours with other states who've been experiencing high numbers of forest fires due to climate change, and you are also on the front line.

really helping provide immediate service to those who are living unsheltered.

And that's not part of what you all signed up for, but you are our incredible team that is part of a network that's providing first responder services.

Doing this all at the same time that you're taking care of those in the midst of a pandemic is just incredibly appreciated.

Council Member Herbold.

has been tremendous to lift up all of the work that you do every single week as the Chair of Public Safety.

And I just wanted to say thank you both for the work that you do to keep our city safe and all of your support that you're offering to members of IAFF 27 as well.

So thank you from all of us to all of you and your membership and your leadership team.

Just really proud of the work that you do in this city.

All right, colleagues, last call.

Any other comments?

Okay, hearing none, we're going to go ahead and close out this portion of the agenda and give our sincere thanks to Chief Scoggins for taking time out of his busy schedule to be with us for a few minutes at the top of the afternoon to accept the proclamation on behalf of the folks over at the Seattle Fire Department and others.

So thank you so much, Chief Scoggins.

Okay, colleagues, we're gonna go ahead and move through the other portions of business on our agenda.

Next up is approval of the minutes.

The minutes of the city council meeting of December 7th, 2020 have been reviewed.

If there is no objection, the minutes will be signed.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are being signed.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the minutes?

Adoption of the referral calendar.

If there is no objection, the proposed introduction and referral calendar will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, The introduction and referral calendar is now adopted.

Approval of the agenda.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is now adopted.

We're going to move into public comment at this time.

We're going to go ahead and open the remote public comment period for items on the City Council agenda, introduction, referral calendar, and the Council's 2020 work program.

I want to thank everyone for their ongoing patience and cooperation as we continue to operate.

this remote public comment system.

It does remain the strong intent of the City Council to have remote public comment regularly included on our meeting agendas.

However, as a reminder, the City Council reserves the right to end or eliminate these public comment periods at any point if we deem that the system is being abused or is no longer suitable for allowing our meetings to be conducted efficiently and effectively.

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

The public comment period for this meeting, rather than being 20 minutes, will be 30 minutes.

We do have approximately 42 or 43 folks signed, sorry, 45 folks signed up for public comment today with almost everyone showing up as being present.

We do have a rather full agenda, so rather than doing, but we also want to hear from as many folks who took the time to pre-register today as we can.

while still allowing for plenty of time for us to do our business.

So instead of doing 20 minutes, I'm going to ask that we do 30 minutes.

So if there's no objection, the public comment period will be extended from 20 minutes to 30 minutes.

Hearing no objection, the public comment period will be extended to a total of 30 minutes.

Each speaker will be given one minute rather than two minutes, given the volume of speakers signed up.

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

If you've not yet registered to speak but would like to, you can sign up before the end of public comment by going to the council's website at seattle.gov forward slash council.

The public comment link is also listed on today's agenda.

Once I call a speaker's name, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt of, you have been unmuted, will be the speaker's cue that it is their turn to press star six and then begin speaking.

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

As a reminder, your public comment should relate to an item on today's agenda, the introduction and referral calendar, or the council's 2020 work program.

At about 10 seconds, the speaker is going to hear a chime.

That chime means that you have exactly 10 seconds left to wrap up your comments.

If speakers don't end their comments at the end of the allotted time, your microphone will be muted to allow us to call on the next speaker.

Once you've completed your public comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line, and if you plan to continue following this meeting, you can do so on Seattle Channel or one of the listening options listed on the agenda.

Okay, folks, public comment period is now open.

It is 2.25 p.m.

So we will go until 3.05 p.m.

I think I got that right.

And again, if you are going to address the council, you will hear the automatic prompt of you have been unmuted.

You need to press star six after you hear that prompt.

and then we will be able to hear you.

I may need to periodically remind folks of that particular idiosyncrasy of Zoom, but that's not a problem.

Okay.

First person is Howard Gale, followed by Castille Hightower, and then Daniel Kavanaugh.

Howard.

Good afternoon.

Howard Gale, District 7, commenting on police accountability.

Council President Gonzales, during this morning's council briefing on the participatory budget process, you made a very important point.

You said that what is happening with this process is similar to what was done in 2015 in developing the equity and environment agenda.

You said that the city, quote, intentionally handed over power to the community.

It allowed community ownership of decision making.

It was a paradigm shift for the city to say, we are going to not just impanel community experts to give us advice.

So I ask, in policing, where the greatest and most dangerous power imbalance lies, why cannot the council recognize the same need to cede power back to the community directly for community oversight of policing, instead of continuing with the old paradigm, as exemplified by the Community Police Commission and the OPA, handing over decision-making to bodies that are selected by the city and cut off from the community?

Next up is Castille Hightower, followed by Daniel Cavanaugh.

My name is Castille Hightower with the Justice for Herbert Hightower Jr.

Movement.

Over the summer, the mass movements for racial justice and police defunding flooded the streets with over 26 million demanding change.

As a result, seven council members of Veto Proof Majority Mind You plan to defund SPD by at least 50% and reinvest millions in Black and Black communities.

including mental health.

Since that time, not only has the Council, with the exception of Council Member Tawan, continually betrayed those promises, are now considering $5.4 million in additional funding to SPD, a payment in blood for the million egregious abuses witnessed by thousands of the activists at the hands of SPD during the Justice for George Floyd movement, a slap in the face for those like myself who have had loved ones ripped away from them, like my brother Herbert Hightower Jr., killed by SPD while experiencing a mental health crisis.

You have a choice to do the right thing.

Not tomorrow, not the day after, but right now.

and vote no on this supplemental budget.

Staying with their constituents in Seattle and the activists in India all experienced violent police oppression simply because they fight for what is right.

I want to thank CM Sawant for staying consistent and I urge the rest of you to do the same.

Next is Daniel Kavanaugh followed by Preston Sahabu.

And again, as a reminder, you have to hit star six after you hear the prompt.

There we go.

We can hear you now.

Go ahead.

OK.

My name's Dan.

I'm a renter in Seattle and a member of Socialist Alternative.

And I really agree with Castiel Hightower's comments.

And also, I really strongly support the resolution that's up for a vote today, which correctly stands with the millions of farmers in India who are protesting against the new privatization and exploitation laws by by Modi and the BJP.

You know, Modi's new laws are a massive handout to billionaires and multinational corporations who are going to become wealthier at the expense of the most vulnerable.

And one of these billionaires who will directly benefit is Mukesh Ambani, who's like, he's like the Jeff Bezos of India.

And I think, you know, I'm one of the volunteers on the tax Amazon movement this summer when we won the historic Amazon tax victory against Jeff Bezos.

And I think working people in Seattle have a stake in standing with the farmers in India, winning a victory against the billionaire class in India.

So I really strongly support the resolution from Council Member Sawant.

Next up is Preston, followed by Satvinder Kaur.

Hello, my name is Preston, and I'm a member of Socialist Alternative and also UAW 4121, which represents thousands of academic student workers at the University of Washington.

I'm speaking on the resolution on solidarity with the farmers and workers in India.

Now, once again, the farmers and workers are resisting Prime Minister Modi's right-wing government.

Their struggle against privatization is against their billionaire class, just as our union fought to tax Amazon and the richest man in the world.

These are the same fight, and I strongly support the resolution to build international solidarity.

Also, strongly, I support Council Member Sawant's amendment supporting the January 8th general strike in India.

Strikes and solidarity actions are essential to build a fighting labor movement.

And my own union defeated Trump's deportation of international students with protests outside ICE offices.

And we know that Modi and his government can be defeated in much the same way.

So I strongly encourage the council to support Council Member Sawant's amendment supporting the January 8th general strike.

as well as the South Asian activists who are mobilizing.

Thank you.

Next up is Kent Council Member Sethwinder Kaur, followed by Laura Lee Sturm.

Council Member.

Good afternoon, Council President and Honourable Council Members.

I'm speaking in support of Resolution 31983, My name is Satvinder Kaur, I serve on Kent City Council, and I want to thank you for your support for farmers peacefully protesting in India.

I'm grateful to you for responding to my emails and texts so quickly and getting this resolution on your agenda.

As you probably know by now, 250 million farmers and laborers are on the streets of Delhi protesting to get these unjust laws repealed.

During the time of a global pandemic, our uncles, brothers, mothers, sisters, and children are on the streets not caring for their health.

We have been trying to get media's attention to the largest protest in history.

We have lost at least 25 individuals fighting for their livelihood.

I have family members participating in this protest regardless of their deteriorating health.

As mentioned in the resolution, these bills will deregulate the sale of crops, dismantling minimum support price, removing restrictions on purchase of land by corporations, bypassing

Thank you so much Council Member for calling in.

Sorry about the time cut off there, but thank you so much for your cooperation, your partnership and for reaching out to so many of us personally to make sure that we understood the issue.

Really appreciate it.

Next up is Laura Lee Sturm followed by Daniel Wang.

Hello.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Lorelei Sturm, she, her, and I'm a constituent from District 3. I am here today to show my strong support for the proposed resolution to stand with farmers in India.

Today marks the 19th day where millions of farmers have come together to protest new agriculture laws from Prime Minister Modi.

So we really need to look at these protests as an attack on labor and an attack on the humanity of the people of India.

People are risking their lives to fight for their right to feed others.

They're in the streets every day, cleaning up after the protests, feeding poor children on the streets of Delhi, providing medical support to the police who attacked them.

These farmers really are not asking for much.

They just need support so that they can go back to work and afford to feed their own families.

It honestly kind of hurts that this is even something we need to organize around.

These laws will expand the wealth of billionaires at the expense of the most vulnerable.

It shouldn't even have to be a debate.

So we need to stand in solidarity with India's labor movement and support this resolution, as well as the amendment to the resolution.

Thank you.

Next up is Daniel Wang, followed by Tejas Devanu.

Hi, I'm a student in District 4 and a member of Socialist Alternative.

I'm calling because today the Council needs to join Councilmember Sawant and vote no on the supplemental budget that is retroactively increasing funding to the SPD by almost $5.5 million.

It's like you're covering the cops check now for all the money spent on repressing, tear gassing, and flash bombing the Justice for George Floyd movement.

We didn't get the 50% defund of the SPD we were promised.

It is unacceptable now to walk back on that promise even more.

but i'm also speaking in support of the resolution three one uh...

ninety three co-sponsored by someone in this data stands with the millions of farmers in india protesting new agricultural laws that would estimate what little protections they have and sell them out to the interest of big indian agriculture millions of protesters continue to march towards new delhi and face the same kind of violent police repression the justice for george floyd movement did but the struggle continues india's major loot labor unions are calling a general strike on january eighth in a massive show of solidarity across india's working-class And council members should vote for someone's additional amendment to this resolution in support of that.

As you might have heard, the council office is also organizing with South Asian activists on January 8th, a car campaign.

Thank you so much for calling in.

Next up is Tejas followed by MNJot King.

Hi, my name is Tejas.

I'm a member of Socialist Alternative and UAW 4121. Like others, I strongly support the resolution in solidarity with the millions of farmers in India fighting back against the Modi government's new exploitative farm bills.

As a socialist and union member in Seattle, I think it's vital for working people everywhere and those who claim to represent marginalized people and labor to concretely stand with the farmers and workers in India.

In January, Council Member Sawant brought forward the crucial resolution against Modi's anti-Muslim anti forced citizenship laws, which we as socialists fought for together with other South Asian activists.

A historic general strike has been called for by the Indian working class on January 8th.

And I strongly support the amendment to the resolution from Council Member Sawant in support of this mass action.

I urge all council members who stand with labor against these unjust laws to vote yes on this amendment and vote no on the supplemental budget, which would give the SPD an additional $5 million Yet another attack on the justice for George Floyd movement.

Next up is speaker number 10, Amanjot King, followed by, I think it's Shou Amer, speaker number 11.

For the record, my name is Amanjot King, and I'll be addressing the resolution in support of the farmers in India.

King County has a strong tie to the Sikh community.

It makes significant contributions to our cultural fabric, economy, and county at large.

In the Sikh faith, a religious minority of a mere 2% of the population in India, Seva, which means selfless service, is a fundamental principle.

Even after facing police brutality, protesters feed themselves and the larger Delhi population through a free Sikh community kitchen called Lungar, even so far as providing meals to the security forces that once harassed them.

I'm a Sikh, a Punjabi, and a proud Washingtonian.

Sikhs in King County play an integral role in serving our community.

from arranging meals from the frontline workers who are reluctantly fighting COVID to distributing hundreds of meals safely to the homeless population on a weekly basis.

Learning from the farmers in India, I hope that our great state shows the rest of our country that we are united and can heal the divisive hate through compassion and empathy.

I urge you to take a lesson from Sikhi and our personal experience of corporate greed and condemn the violence against the farmers who are peacefully protesting and continue to uphold the vows of compassion.

Thank you so much.

We're going to go ahead and move now to speaker number 11, Shou Amer, followed by Kayla Newcomer.

And I have Stu Didiot and Myri Delaney, who are signed up but not present.

So Stu and Myri, if you are listening, now would be the time to call in.

Speaker number 11.

Hello, my name is Zoe Amer.

I'm a lifelong Seattle resident and a member of Socialist Alternative.

I strongly support the resolution that's up for a vote today in solidarity with millions of farmers in India, as well as Council Member Sawant's amendment supporting the January 8th general strike, protesting against the new privatization and exploitation laws by the regime of Prime Minister Modi.

The new laws that push privatization and strip farmers of the protection of ensuring a minimum payment for their harvest is like taking away the minimum wage and claiming it's a good thing that workers can now be forced to take a job that pays $5 a day in 2020. As the city that first passed the $15 minimum wage and the Amazon tax after immense efforts by volunteers like myself and Council Member Sawant's office, We should be proud to support the striking farmers and workers in India, and ashamed to do any less.

Join us in Seattle on January 8th at 3 p.m.

for a caravan in solidarity with the general strike.

Additionally, I urge all city council members alongside Sawant to vote no on the supplemental budget.

The SPD can pay for their own over time.

Okay, next up is Kayla Newcomer, followed by Prashant Nima.

Kayla.

Hi my name is Kayla Newcomer.

I'm a resident of District 6 and a master's student at UW Seattle School of Social Work.

I'm here today on behalf of Youth State Council Member Lewis for sponsoring an 800K supplemental COVID-19 amendment to the Q4 supplemental budget that will ensure youth care is able to keep all three of our engagement centers Orion and South Lake Union, UDYC and the University District and South Seattle Shelter and Rainier Valley open 24-7 to support youth and young adults experiencing homelessness in King County.

A huge thank you to the Finance and Housing Committee for your unanimous support, and to all of you for helping young people have continued access to 24-7 safety and support through this pandemic.

We urge you to pass the proposed amendment today.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you for calling in, Kayla.

Next up is Prashant Neema, followed by Jaspreet Singh.

And Prashant, if you're with us, you'll want to hit star six so we can hear you.

My name is Prashant.

I'm a supporter and volunteer for Coalition of Seattle Indian Americans, and I have been in Seattle area for the last 20 years.

I'm speaking today asking the council to vote yes on Resolution 31983, including the amendment proposed by Councilwoman Sawant.

The current Indian government has continued its war on the working class since the last time we urged you to pass the historic resolution against NRCCA.

The resolution went on to be historic.

The new farm laws are under the same series of laws and policies that are aimed at hurting the working class to enrich the Manid upper urban caste Indians.

The farm bills will leave farmers at the mercy of big Indian crony corporations that have been monopolising industry after industry due to their proximity to the governments in power.

The Washington farmers should be concerned as well as this is a continued race to the bottom for agriculture globally with 600 million enslaved agriculture labourers.

So I strongly support this resolution.

Thank you for calling in.

Okay looks like Jaspreet Singh who was speaker number 16 is now showing is not present.

If you call back in we'll make sure to call on you.

So we're going to go ahead and go down the list here.

Next up is speaker number 17 Manpreet Kalra followed by Emily MacArthur.

Thank you.

My name is Manpreet Kaur Kalra.

I'm a Seattle resident in First Hill.

I would like to share some thoughts in support of Resolution 31983. India claims to be the world's largest democracy, but with that title comes the responsibility of ensuring the rights of your constituents.

These rights include the right to protest without fear of being brutally beaten, tortured, or killed.

It requires fair reporting, not government-controlled narratives.

It also requires listening, allowing the farmers, those who are being impacted, by these ordinances to have a seat at the decision-making table.

I humbly request the City of Seattle stand in solidarity with the farmers and push our outside pressure on the Indian government.

Because if we look at history without the eyes of the world watching closely, Prime Minister Modi will do what he does best, destroy and violate the human rights of those who stand in his way.

Next up is Emily MacArthur, followed by Hattie Rhodes.

Hi, my name is Emily MacArthur.

I'm a renter in District 2 and a member of Socialist Alternative.

Like many who've spoken today, I wanted to support the resolution standing in solidarity with the struggling farmers in India.

I also strongly support the amendment to the resolution from Council Member Sawant in support of the January 8th general strike in India.

That's because striking is the best tool that working class people have to win important gains like this fight.

The strike action will involve not just farmers, but hundreds of millions of students and members of India's mighty labor movement.

This solidarity is absolutely necessary to defeat these new unjust laws.

I urge all council members to vote yes on this amendment.

I also ask working class And the other council members, union members, and the community asked us to join us January 8th at 3 p.m.

for a car caravan rally that Council Member Sawant is organizing alongside the South Asian community and labor unions in solidarity with the general strike that day in India, because international solidarity is how we get the goods.

Okay, next up is speaker number 19, Hattie Rhodes, followed by Star Wiley.

Hello, city council members.

My name is Hattie Rhodes.

I am the site coordinator for Georgetown Tiny House Village.

Today, I would just like to take this opportunity to say thank you.

Thank you for supporting the villages Seattle has.

Thank you for having the will and courage to support opening three more villages in the next year.

I have seen firsthand how these villages have provided a safe and secure environment in uncertain times and allowed so many people to regain their dignity and stability.

The support you have for the tiny house villages matters.

It makes a difference in the lives of people that often feel forgotten and ignored.

So once again, thank you, and I look forward to advocating for more villages in the new year.

Have a good day.

Thank you for calling in, Hattie.

Next up is Star Wiley, followed by Srian A. Hello, my name is Star Wiley, and I'm a renter in District 7 and a member of Socialist Alternative.

I urge you all to please join council members to want today in voting no on the supplemental budget, and I also strongly support the resolution being voted on today, as well as the amendment to the resolution.

Hold the line, stand by your promise, and the 26 million people that took to the streets in peaceful protest last summer, many that were tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed.

You have made small but significant cuts to the belittled police budget this year, and it would be very disappointing and counterproductive if you don't vote no on the supplemental budget.

I strongly support the proposed resolution that is up for vote today, We need to fight back against political repression by police everywhere and build powerful international solidarity with the millions of farmers in India protesting against the new privatization and exploitation laws.

I also strongly support the amendment to the resolutions from council members in support of the January 8th general strike in India.

Okay, next up is Srijan A.

followed by Sujatha Ramani.

Hi, my name is Shriyan, and I'm a volunteer with CSIA.

I'm speaking today asking the Council to vote yes on Resolution 31983, sponsored by Council Member Mosqueda and Sawant, including the amendments proposed by Council Member Sawant.

The current Indian government has always used flowery language to tilt wavering opinions to favor their inhumanity.

They did it last year with CINRC by saying it helps estranged Hindus abroad.

They did it again in the summer when they idealized a teenager, Jyoti, who was forced to pedal a cycle for over 1,500 miles along with her father as a result of their unplanned lockdown, and so much more.

They are desperately trying to do it again with the Indian farmers, but have taken on the working class of India, making this the largest protest in human history.

I urge the council to stand with the farmers leading this.

I also urge everyone to join us.

Thank you.

Next up is Sujatha Romney followed by Jo Wall.

Hi.

Can you hear me.

We can hear you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Sujatha.

I'm a volunteer with the Coalition of Seattle Indian Americans.

I am speaking today asking the Council to vote yes on Resolution 31983, including the amendment proposed by Council Member Sawant.

Let me tell you about the robber barons of India, also known as the architects of the Farm Bill.

Mukesh Ambani, chairman of the Reliance conglomerate, reigning robber baron of India, strong arms the Indian government to put operational costs of exploration and mining so that his petrochemical business can run a profit.

Strong arm the telecom regulatory authority to force all other telecom companies to service Reliance customers for free, thus bankrupting all of them in the process and becoming a market leader in just five years.

He owes the most amount of unpaid debt from government funding, practically owns the Indian government.

Gautam Adani, real estate and infrastructure baron.

It is not surprising financial analysts have called Gautam Adani as Modi's Rockefeller.

Thank you.

Next up is Joe Wall, followed by Stacey Johnson.

Hi, this is Joe Wall.

I want to give you some comments on your bill that concerns so-called grassroots lobbying.

I listened to your discussion last week.

I would suggest that we're getting encumbered by inappropriate terminology.

What you're getting at is there's direct lobbying right at the politicians and indirect lobbying, which is at the people as a sort of a bank shot in pool to get legislation.

What I'd recommend is that you update your definition of lobbying to include your own words, making expenditures, presenting a program to the public, et cetera, et cetera.

And then update the reporting section 2.06.030 Bravo to encompass expenditures towards these indirect lobbying efforts.

I would remove all references to grassroots lobbying because in fact, the ordinance will encompass small time operations.

Thank you.

Next up is Stacy Johnson, followed by Sinsath Shamir.

Hello, my name is Stacy Johnson, resident bookkeeper at Georgetown Tiny House Village in District 2. I'd like to sincerely express my appreciation to the City Council for continuing to support Seattle's Tiny House Villages during this car wreck of a year, especially Personally, I don't know where I'd be without the tiny house villages.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you from the cockles of my soul.

Thank you.

Thank you for calling in today.

Next up is Sinsath Shamir followed by Khan Hassan.

Hi, my name is Sinsath.

I'm a volunteer with the Coalition of Seattle Indian Americans.

I'm speaking today asking the Council to vote yes on Resolution No. 31983, including the amendment proposed by Councilwoman Savant.

Three farm laws were recently passed in India in the Parliament by the current BJP-led government, leading to worldwide protest in support of millions of Indian farmers who oppose these bills.

These legislations, while being in the name of farmers, they are meant to facilitate the corporate businesses of agri-corporations and real estate sharks.

These new farm bills, they do nothing to help the poor farmers who have faced droughts, floods, and low crop yields, who are forced to sell the land to these businesses at an extremely low cost, and are then rendered landless.

The farmer suicide in many states in India have already been high, and I'm afraid that these bills are going to make the situation worse.

I also support the Jan 8th car rally that is organized to show solidarity with the general strike that day in India.

Thank you for calling in.

Next up is Khan Hassan, followed by Chris McDaniel.

Good afternoon.

My name is Khan Hassan, and I'm part of Coalition of Seattle Indian Americans.

I'm back here at Council after last February's international world famous anti-CAA and RC Resolution 31926 by Council Member Shama Sawant was passed by City Council, so thank you again.

Now the same fascist anti-farmer government of India is hell-bent on destroying farmers by adopting anti-farmer law just to support few big corporates who finance millions of dollars in the election campaign.

It is disturbing that every year thousands of farmers commit suicide in India due to non-payment of debt.

Now the peaceful protesting farmers are labeled as terrorists.

I urge the Council to vote yes on Resolution 31983, sponsored by Council Member Shama Sawant and Council Member Mosqueda, including the amendment proposed by the Councilwoman.

Thank you for calling in.

Next up is Chris McDaniel, followed by Amarjeet Singh, and then Reena Sikum.

Chris?

And Chris, you'll need to hit star six so we can hear you.

One more time.

There we go.

Looks like you're unmuted, so go ahead.

Alright, looks like we might be having some difficulties with Chris.

His technology.

How about that?

Here we go.

Yep, we can hear you go for it, Chris.

OK, my name is Christopher Kendall.

I live in Georgetown, Pinellas Village.

And I just like to thank you for funding this place.

And it could be actually to continue You know, I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm just waiting for a place for me to move to.

I've got income now and just need some place I can afford on my disability.

Thank you.

Thank you for calling in today.

Next up is Amarjeet Singh followed by Reena Sekom.

Good afternoon.

My name is Amarjeet Singh, and I'm a resident of Kent, Washington.

I'm here to provide a very brief comment on the resolution supporting farmers' protest in India.

Given the limited time limit, I'll just be speaking on why the farmers are protesting.

The Indian government hastily passed three farm bills during the COVID-19 pandemic.

These laws are designed to privatize the agriculture sector, benefiting large corporations at the expense of small farmers.

Among many issues, these laws lift the price protections and deny farmers legal recourse through the court of law.

The farmers of India are small.

They're poor, fragmented, and with little education, limiting their bargaining power against the large corporations.

This will lead to predatory practices and eventually farmers losing their land and their way of life.

Thank you for calling in, Amarjeet.

Next up is Reena, followed by Farzana and June.

Hi, thank you very much.

I'm calling in support of the farmers and for the general strike.

These laws are corrupt.

They're about a transference of wealth to the top.

These laws are not about liberalizing farming.

They're about corrupt mechanisms driven by greed and cronyism.

If India wants to be a world leader, they need upward mobility of the poor.

One of the things that this law is going to do is they're going to get rid of the ration markets, which is where the poor people go to get food.

If the ration markets are not there, where will the poor people eat?

They will not eat, they will die.

The second thing this law will do, it will push a minority group, the sick community, into poverty.

If they are in poverty, where will they go to get food?

They will not have food, and they will die.

Everyone touts America's economy.

When America's economy was the strongest was when the middle class was thriving.

We need to stand up to these billionaires creating wealth inequality throughout the world.

And if we don't, we will see democracy fall and society get thicker.

I understand this is happening in India and it is not the problem of Seattle.

But we are seeing citizens rise up and we need to support all of the citizens all the world's championing democracy and American.

Next up is Farzana followed by Novajot Kiyok.

Hello.

Can you hear me.

We can hear you.

Go ahead.

My name is Farzana Anjum and I'm a volunteer with the coalition Seattle of India.

I strongly urge Seattle council to pass the farm resolution in support of Indian farmer and vote yes on the resolution 31983 including the amendment proposed by councilwoman Sawant and councilwoman Muskuda.

With these three laws, these three farm laws in India that are being protested by millions of farmers worldwide, it is important for you at the city council to know a favored neoliberal corporation run by Indian oligarchs.

The three farm bills are termed as death warrants for the farmers.

They are not meant for the welfare of the farmers, but for the benefit for the corporation.

Ambani's are the nannies, are billionaires, and coach brothers like figure in India who are deeply anti-labor and are not known for their fair practices and are deeply anti-environment as well.

How can Indian farmers trust these people?

I strongly urge capital city council to pass the farm resolution in support of Indian farmers.

Thank you.

Thank you for calling in.

Next up is Novit Jhok, followed by Sasheen Moseley.

Hello?

Yep, we can hear you.

Go ahead.

Hi, my name is Navi.

I am a King County native here to ask the council to vote yes on Resolution 31983 in support of struggling and oppressed farmers in India.

19 days ago, hundreds of thousands of farmers from Punjab peacefully embarked on a 221-mile journey to India's capital to post-agriculture loss.

Along the way, they have been met with harmful water cannons, tear gas, and barricades, yet they continue to persevere.

They are tolerating this violence because they don't have a choice.

Going back home is a death sentence.

In the dead of winter, farmers occupy the streets of Delhi because they know what's at stake.

It's simple.

No farmers, no food.

Punjabi farmers, mostly Sikhs, at the forefront are targeted by misleading terrorist narratives, pushed by the Indian media, controlled by both the billionaire who will profit from agriculture bills and infamous extremist Hindu political leaders, a narrative that has been seen in America countless times, a narrative that you have all fought.

As Washingtonians We know intimately the terrors of neoliberalism and privatization.

Supporting the farmers in India means supporting your Washington farmers.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up is speaker number 33, Sashin Mosley followed by Barbara Finney.

Go ahead.

So Sasha, I see that you're unmuted, but we still can't hear you.

Okay, try star six one more time.

It looks like you're unmuted.

I can't hear speaker number 33. Let's circle back to speaker number 33. Let's go to Barbara Finney next.

And then we will try, we will try Sachin again.

Go ahead, Barbara.

Hello, my name is Barbara Finney.

I live in D5.

I'm a union member of AFG and a delegate to the MLK Labor Council.

I'm speaking in support of the resolution of solidarity with farmers protesting in India, in support of affected members of Seattle's South Asian community, and an important amendment brought by council members who want that state solidarity with farmers organizations, trade union federations, and student unions in India, organizing for a general strike on January 8th, 2021, to unite the movements of oppressed peoples, demanding the restoration of protections for small farmers, increasing minimum wage, ending privatizations, and defending the rights of religious and ethnic communities.

I urge you to vote for this solidarity.

Thank you.

Thank you.

OK, let's go back to speaker number 33, Sachin Mosaleh.

Let's see if we can resolve our tech issues here.

Okay, star six, so we can hear you.

Okay.

Hi there, can you hear me?

We can hear you now, success, go ahead.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Sachin.

I'm a volunteer with the Coalition of Seattle Indian Americans.

I'm speaking today here to asking the Council to vote yes on Resolution P1983, including the amendment proposed by Councilman Sawant.

I'm standing in solidarity with all farmers and especially with my Sikh brothers and sisters.

These anti-farmer laws directly impact the farmers in India, and it will enable big corporations to legally rob their lands.

More than half of India's working population comes from the agricultural sector.

The average Indian farmer makes $140 per month.

Of these 260 million workers, many solely rely on farming to put food on their own table and roof over their own head.

Stop the privatization and please vote on 31983. Thank you.

Thank you for calling in.

Next up is Sumit Kaur, followed by Reba Bakshi.

Hello?

Yep, we can hear you.

Go ahead.

Hi, my name is Sumit and today I'm speaking, asking the council to vote yes on Resolution 31983, including the amendment proposed by Councilwoman Sawant.

The three farm bills passed by the Indian Parliament are an attack on farmers, consumers, and most importantly, an attack on our democracy.

Before these three bills were passed, no farmer groups were consulted regarding the bills.

There were no time given for discussion.

of the bills prior to vote, and when the opposition parties expressed the need for discussion, the press, the camera stopped broadcasting these proceedings.

The Modi government has been pushing these bills in an inappropriate way to enable large agriculture businesses to operate freely at the cost of poor farmers and consumers.

It is a complete shutdown of democracy.

I urge working people, union members, and communities community activists to join us on January 8th for a car rally to support the Sikh community and the Southeast Union community as a whole and the labor unions in China.

Thank you so much.

Next up is Reba Bakshi followed by Peggy Hodes.

Just a reminder to our speakers, after you hear the prompt, if you've been unmuted, you'll need to press star six for us to be able to hear you.

Okay, Reba Bakshi is who we are looking for next, followed by Peggy Hodes.

IT, do we have Reba Bakshi on the line?

Can you hear me?

We can hear you now.

Go ahead, Reba.

Oh, now we can't hear you.

We could hear you, and now you have disappeared on us.

So maybe hit star six one more time.

OK.

Can you hear me now?

Yep, we can hear you.

Go ahead.

All right, so requesting the council to vote yes in resolution for even 983, as well as the amendment.

I'm not going to repeat what the speakers prior to me have said in terms of how there is no recorded evidence and the farmers were not consulted.

But the robbery conducted by the goons, Fadani and Ambani, in cahoots with the Modi government, has become so brazen now that they do not even want to hide and try to legalize their autocracy through bills such as the Farmers Bill and earlier CA and NRC.

It's becoming tiresome for us as well to appear before you to highlight the problems happening in the supposed biggest democracy in the world.

But I have a hunch that this is not the last time we will be doing this.

We will use the council's strength and voice to garner more support worldwide to curb the steady decline of India's democracy and therefore set an example to other dictators.

So again, I also urge other people here and your union members to spread the word, all the activists to join a car rally on January 8th at 3 p.m.

give us further support.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, we are at time for public comment today.

We only have, let's see, one, two, three.

We have six more speakers, so that's six more minutes.

So with your indulgence, I'd like to just go ahead and complete the list since we've made it this far.

So if there's no objection, I'd like to extend the public comment period by six minutes.

hearing no objection, we'll go ahead and extend the public comment period by six minutes, which will allow us to get through the complete list of those individuals who pre-registered and are currently showing up as present.

Next up is Peggy Hodes, followed by Neelam Khaki.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Peggy Hodes, and I'm a Nicholsville founder and a longtime volunteer with homeless people.

I'm speaking first in support of the resolution in solidarity with the Indian Farmers Protest.

This is 100% the right thing for the council to do.

And I said cocky.

I'd also like to thank you for adding Nicholsville self-managed tiny house villages to the city budget.

I want to speak up against sweeping Cal Anderson Park, which was posted today while recognizing that the council as a body has attempted to stop the sweeps.

You may not be aware that there's been a support group called Capitol Hill Community Center in the park.

24-7 for five months, providing tents, sleeping bags, food, and other necessities.

The public has continued to use the park during this time, as you can see by visiting there yourself as I have regularly.

Of all the places to sweep, this should be the very last one.

There shouldn't be any, but this should be the very last one on the list.

Please demand a halt to this cruel and particularly unwarranted sweep.

Thank you.

Thank you, Peggy.

Next up is Neelam, followed by Alice Lockhart.

And again, as a reminder, you'll want to hit star six after you hear the prompt that you've been unmuted.

There we go.

Hi, can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Oh, good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

My name is Neelam Khaki.

and I'm asking the Council to vote yes on Resolution 31983, including the amendment proposed by Councilwoman Sawant and Councilwoman Masuda.

I urge the Seattle City Council to pass the Farm Solidarity Resolution, co-sponsored by Councilwoman Kusama Sawant, in response to the new farming laws implemented by the Indian government.

Farmers in India typically work on average a landholding of less than an acre, unlike in the USA.

The new laws will cause extreme hardship and economic instability to the farming community, to the advantage of large, powerful agricultural corporations.

This in turn will impact all of India with food shortages created by an artificial neoliberal market, despite there being a supply of farmed products.

This could potentially lead to global hunger crises, since the same corporations can increase prices or create artificial shortages on grain imports.

the countries outside of India.

We can draw parallels between these.

Thank you for calling in.

Next up is Alice Lockhart followed by Gurinder Atwal.

Good afternoon, Council.

I'm Alice Lockhart speaking for 350 Seattle.

You haven't heard from me in a while because our sister organization, 350 Seattle Action, I spent a few hundred dollars on the federal election, and as a result, I've been immersed in federal election reporting instead of doing my usual work as an activist.

And so, as you might imagine, I was deeply concerned to hear in this morning's council briefing that the council may impose additional reporting requirements on grassroots organizations like ours.

I shared the news with other 350 Seattle leaders, and they were likewise aghast.

These new requirements will be a bother for us, but they will be particularly burdensome for newer, smaller, less privileged community organizations.

I'm also deeply worried about how the complaint process for reporting will effectively paint a target on the backs of grassroots groups.

350 Seattle asks that the council members vote in favor of council members to want amendments striking the grassroots component of the lobbying legislation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Let's see, next up is Gurinder followed by Sonia Sarai.

Hi there, my name is Gurinder Atwal and I support the resolution in favor of the 250 million farmers peacefully protesting in Delhi for the regime of Modi government to take back the three black laws passed against the farmers.

Not only are these laws unjust, but were passed in the most unorthodox way and illegally by the Indian government.

The farmers' peaceful protests from the state of Punjab and neighboring states to Delhi was met with police brutality and military brutality, including tear gas, baton charges, and water cannons.

While the government officials were blinded by corporate greed, sit in their warm homes, the farmers are sleeping outside on the roads in the cold rain and inhumane environments, just wanting the government to provide a minimum wage for its hard work and not have their land up for grabs.

As the mass media sits quietly and chooses not to portray the largest protest in the world's history, farmers are serving langar, which is free food, to anyone and everyone who is in need, including the police and military who used unjust force to stop the peaceful protest.

We ask for you to vote yes on this resolution and support the millions in India and around the world who stand in solidarity with the farmers.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up is Sonia Sarai, followed by Gagan Xand.

Hello, my name is Sonia Sarai and I strongly support and urge the council to support the resolution for standing in solidarity with the farmers in India.

These three laws were passed unconstitutionally and didn't go through the proper channels to get passed.

If the Indian government can do this with the farmers, imagine what they'll be able to do in the future as well.

The Indian government supports corporate greed and this harms the livelihood of farmers in Punjab and throughout India.

Farming land is sacred and has huge religious and cultural importance to our farmers.

And eventually these laws that are passed will allow major corporations to take away this land from farmers, which is unjust and unfair.

There has been very little media coverage which needs to change to bring awareness to the largest peaceful protest in history.

Thank you for calling in today.

And our last speaker is speaker number 49, Gagan Tind.

Hello, my name is Gagan Tind.

Hello, my name is Gagan Tind.

I'm from Belltown.

I support Resolution 31983. Indian farmers have been protesting the Indian government's three new laws since September.

These unjust laws will drastically change the systems in which the farmers get paid.

The farmers have already been affected by decades of policies that have harmed them in numerous ways.

Tens of thousands of farmers are attempting to peacefully assemble and voice their concerns in Delhi and have been met by Indian security forces who have brutally cracked down on their expressions of democracy, including media blocks and distortion.

Farmer suicide rates are at their highest.

One Indian farmer commits suicide every 30 minutes.

And COVID-19 has only made the situation worse.

I strongly support Council Member Kashima Selwyn's resolution.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you so much for calling in today.

Colleagues, this does conclude our public comment period for today's meeting.

So we're going to go ahead and move into items of business at this time.

First up is payment of the bills.

Will the clerk please read the title into the record?

Council Bill 119979, appropriate amendment to pay subject claims through the week of November 30th, 2020 through December 4th, 2020 and ordering payment thereof.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

I move to pass Council Bill 119979. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to pass the bill.

Are there any comments?

Hearing no comments, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill?

Sawant?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosqueda?

Yes.

Peterson?

Yes.

Council President Gonzales?

Yes.

None in favor, none opposed.

The bill passes and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf.

Agenda item one.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record.

Agenda Item 1, Council Bill 119966 relating to the legal representation of Mayor Jenny Durkan and judicial proceedings concerning a recall charge.

Paying expenses necessary to defend Mayor Jenny Durkan in those proceedings and ratify and confirming certain prior acts.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

I will move to pass Council Bill 119966. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to pass the bill.

Colleagues, as I mentioned this morning during council briefing, this is an ordinance that relates to the legal representation of Mayor Jenny Durkan in the judicial proceedings concerning.

the recall charge, which has now come to a conclusion.

As you'll note from the fiscal note, the summary of the fiscal note notes that the total cost of the legal defense is $240,000, and so that is what the fiscal impact is of this particular bill should it pass.

So this bill is being proposed consistent with the same statutory framework that was in play and up for consideration by the full council on September 15th when we considered and passed the same piece of legislation related to the legal defense of council members who want related to that recall petition.

The only difference being, of course, just timing.

In this instance, we know what the results of that petition are and what the total fees are for the judicial proceedings.

So, happy to open up the floor to hear any other comments from anyone else.

Any comments?

Council Member Sawant, please.

Thank you, President Gonzalez.

I will be voting yes on this item because I support the right to a legal defense for all.

Members of the public will know that I have completely opposed Mayor Durkin's political actions, her systematic but all too unsurprising opposition to the Amazon tax to fund affordable housing and the Green New Deal, her administration doing the bidding of telecom corporations and blocking any progress on municipal broadband, which is so urgently needed, and especially the actions against the Black Lives Matter movement, which, while carried out by the police, lie at the doorstep of her administration because the police department reports to the mayor and the political establishment.

Under Mayor Durkin's watch, Seattle police targeted ordinary people with tear gas, rubber bullets, and other weapons in brutal repression of the movement.

However, this vote is not taking a position on Mayor Durkin's actions.

It is about the right to legal representation.

And we have to be very careful about the precedent that is being set for working class elected representatives who simply could not afford large legal expenses while corporate politicians could easily afford it.

If we do not set a crystal clear precedent that legal representation is a right regardless of your ability to afford it, then it would end up creating a dynamic where only big business representatives like Durkin would effectively have access to legal defense in the future.

For that democratic reason, I will be voting yes on this bill for legal representation, but I want to be very clear that I continue to be opposed to what Mayor Durkin has done in relation to the Black Lives Matter protests and working people in our city.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

And of course, colleagues voting for this bill or against this bill is simply taking a position on whether or not legal representation is appropriate under the state statute that allows for an elected official to request this legal representation and to have their legal costs covered.

It certainly is not a vote on anything other than that issue.

Okay.

Are there any other comments on the bill?

Hearing no additional comments, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill?

Warren?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosqueda?

Yes.

Peterson?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Nine in favor, nine opposed.

The bill passes and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf?

Okay, agenda item two.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record?

Agenda Item 2, Council Bill 119969, relating to the City Light and Seattle Public Utilities Departments temporarily removing the charge of interest on delinquent utility consumption and utilization accounts, superseding several sections under Title 21 that authorize and require the collection of interest on delinquent utility consumption and utilization accounts, and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

I move to pass Council Bill 119969. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to pass the bill.

Council Member Peterson, you are the sponsor of this item and are recognized in order to address it.

Thank you, Council President.

Colleagues, as I mentioned this morning at Council briefing, Council Bill 119969 would extend our forgiveness of late fees on utility bills during the COVID pandemic.

We adopted this policy earlier this year and then extended it with Ordinance 126182. to provide this financial relief from both Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities.

But that ordinance expires in just two weeks.

So today's council bill would extend this utility-related COVID relief for another six months.

It's important to note that this relief policy does reduce revenue to the utilities that we own and operate, but I believe it's worth it during this unprecedented pandemic.

While we're seeing a spike in COVID cases, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel with the approval of a vaccine.

and we'll learn more about the financial impacts of COVID on our utility enterprises next year when we discuss their strategic plans and future rates.

This legislation is consistent with the goal of keeping rates low, and I encourage your support.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Are there any additional comments on the bill?

Hearing no additional comments on the bill, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill?

Sawant?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosqueda?

Yes.

Peterson?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Nine in favor, nine opposed.

Thank you.

The bill passes and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf.

Okay, moving along to the committee report for the Finance and Housing Committee.

Will the clerk please read Agenda Item 3 into the record?

The report of the Finance and Housing Committee, Agenda Item 3, Council Bill 119977, amending Ordinance 26000, which adopted the 2020 budget, making appropriations from the general fund for public assistance during the COVID-19 civil emergency, and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts, all by three-fourths vote of the City Council.

The committee recommends the bill pass as amended.

Thank you.

I will recognize Council Member Mosqueda as chair of the committee in order to provide the committee report.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Madam President.

This ordinance will expand our relief to local businesses and particularly workers as the governor's extension of the business restrictions continue until January 4th.

I appreciate that this is a piece of ordinance that was introduced by Council President Gonzalez, co-sponsored by myself and Council Member Morales, and in partnership with the mayor's office.

We know that half of the allocated funds in this proposed ordinance here will go to supporting our smallest businesses, and half of the amount will go directly to workers within the hospitality industry at large.

From the data we've received so far, we know that 85% of the businesses that have received assistance from the City of Seattle have been able to go to employers with 10 or fewer employees, and over 60% of those applicants are from BIPOC communities.

About 29% represent the restaurant and bar industry, and there is still such a huge need, so we're really excited about this piece of legislation in front of us.

I really appreciate the committee's support of the amendment that we brought forward in consultation with Seattle Restaurants United and Unite Here.

We knew that there needed to be additional flexibility for small restaurants and bars to have the ability to have non-monetary relief, such as permits for outdoor dining.

and clarification that the $2.5 million in flexible direct cash assistance can go to workers in the hospitality industry impacted by this crisis to meet ongoing basic needs and that there's much more needed.

So looking forward to working with all of you and making sure that there's additional relief at the city level as we continue to urge our congressional partners and work in partnership with our state partners to make sure that there's additional assistance in hardest hit industries.

Thank you very much, Madam President.

Thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda for those comments.

I, if I can, would like to make a few comments as well.

And I know that Councilmember Morales is also a co-sponsor of this really important additional relief.

So I just wanted to say, you know, I've talked a lot about this bill already in council briefing and in committee.

I just want to say that this legislation really does represent the fact that the city of Seattle is taking swift action to address the ongoing needs of small businesses and workers impacted by COVID-19.

by the COVID-19 economy and the related restrictions.

An additional $2.5 million will be given to small restaurants and bars that will support the ability of our Main Street businesses to keep their doors open and workers employed.

Another $2.5 million in direct cash assistance will go to hospitality industry workers.

And that means that thousands of families can remain housed and fed through the winter months.

The hospitality, restaurant, and bar industry has been hardest hit by the COVID economy, and these year-end investments will provide much-needed relief ahead of a very tough winter.

Many of you know that I'm lucky enough to consider myself a family member of the restaurant and bar industry.

My husband has been in the service industry for almost 20 years, most of that time here in the city of Seattle.

Our home has also not been spared by the impacts of COVID-19 and the related economic impacts and restrictions.

So to me, it's really important for us to have these strategic targeted investments to the service industry and the hospitality industry, which has been hardest hit by many of the restrictions and by this pandemic.

And so I really want to thank I want to thank councilmember Morales for her willingness to create space at the last minute in her committee to allow a hearing on this bill.

I want to thank councilmember Morales for her ongoing and steadfast support and championing of the needs of our diverse small businesses and entrepreneurs across the city.

And I want to thank mayor Durkin for her willingness to to allow us to collaborate between the branches to identify $5 million to meet and to create the bridge between now and the new year when we might be able to take some more significant action and provide additional relief.

So thank you to everyone, and also thank you to Vee Nguyen in my office for working really hard on this legislation, and to Breonna Thomas, my chief of staff, for also lending her talents to development of this legislation and creating lots of agreement here.

So thank you, colleagues, and looking forward to having your support here.

Any additional comments on the bill?

Hearing no additional comments on the bill, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill?

Sawant?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Warren.

Aye.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Mosqueda.

Aye.

Peterson.

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez.

Yes.

Nine in favor, none opposed.

The bill passes and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf.

Okay, moving along to agenda item four.

Will the clerk please read the short title of item four into the record?

Agenda item four, Council Bill 119971, authorizing in 2020 acceptance of funding from non-city sources.

The committee recommends the bill pass.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Council Member Esqueda, you are the chair of this committee and are recognized once again to provide the committee's report on this bill.

Thank you very much, Madam President.

Colleagues, item number four on today's agenda, we talked about quite a bit this morning.

This is related to the federal grants that we are accepting.

There's a number of important federal grants that are accepted at the end of the year, each year.

There has been a document that was circulated this weekend by Greg Doss from Central Staff, and we appreciate all of the work that they did over the weekend to help answer questions that stemmed from the robust discussion in our committee meeting on Wednesday.

One of the things that you should also note in addition to the questions that we have submitted that resulted in 11 page response document is that Director Noble has sent a letter today to make sure that if there are any additional questions that those get answered before those 2021 allocations are spent.

And that's an important commitment from the CBO office, from Director Noble, that he has sent this letter to us, which you all should have received just around 2 p.m.

today, to make sure that any additional questions, specifically as well related to Homeland Security grants, do get answered.

As Council Member Strauss discussed this morning, there was a long conversation on Wednesday's meeting.

And I do have additional concerns and questions that I will be submitting.

Folks are asked by Ali Panucci and Greg Doss that if you do have additional questions that are not yet answered in that 11-page document, please make sure that you send your questions by Wednesday at noon so that central staff can coordinate with the CBO's office to answer any additional questions.

I want to make sure, though, as Vice Chair Herbold did during our committee last Wednesday, that folks know that there's a number of really important grants that are included in the overall bill as well, and we want to make sure to move those forward to accept those grants.

With that, I will be voting yes, and the committee voted five to zero, recommending passage during full council today.

Thank you very much, Madam President.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda, for that excellent report.

While multi-tasking.

Well done.

Are there any additional comments on the bill?

Council Member Strauss and then Council Member, you want to go to Council Member Herbold first?

Okay, Council Member Herbold and then Council Member Strauss.

Thank you.

I also want to make note of Budget Director Ben Noble's commitment in the Budget Committee meeting to do more work with the Council prior to the the development and submittal of grants that may be of concern to the council.

An example of the work that this council has done around funding sources that are of concern relate specifically to legislation in 2017 that the Council adopted.

You might remember that that year I proposed to create a new section of the Municipal Code prohibiting Seattle Police Department participation in the U.S.

Department of Defense 1033 program.

That allows cities to transfer excess military equipment to civilian law enforcement agencies at no cost.

This was a particular program that we had received concerns about.

And in response, the chief had decided to no longer participate in that program.

And then we sort of solidified that policy decision of Chief Best with this particular ordinance.

I would suggest that our ongoing efforts to take a look at some of these grant sources might result in a request from the council to the department to no longer participate in some of these grant sources.

But I think that is really important work and I appreciate that we need to do moving forward.

And I appreciate that we have a commitment from the budget director that we can take a deeper dive in the future before these grants are sought.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, and thank you also, Chair Herbold.

I also want to thank Director Noble for your letter.

Your letter, as well as the conversation that I had with Greg Doss and Ali Panucci, have resolved the concerns that I have for today, and I will be following up with additional questions.

Um, as per your letter has requested, I really just want to thank you, Director Noble for sending that along and working with us in an expedient fashion as well.

Again, thank you to Dr Fisher and Angela Sochi and Greg for all of your work answering the 11 pages of questions over the weekend.

Thank you, Council President.

And I will be voting yes.

way to bury the lead, Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you so much, colleagues.

Are there any additional comments on the bill?

All right, hearing none, I just want to thank the Chair and Councilmember Strauss and Councilmember Herbold for their good work on getting as much information about this as we can.

Lots more to do, always, particularly as it relates to oversight issues.

So really look forward to the opportunity to continue to engage in that work.

That being said, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill?

Solant?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Moraes?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Rosmera?

Yes.

Peterson?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Nine in favor, nine opposed.

The bill passes and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf.

Item five.

Will the clerk please read the short title of item five into the record?

Agenda item five, Council Bill 119970, amending ordinance 26000, which adopted the 2020 budget, including the 2020 through 2025 capital improvement program.

The committee recommends the bill pass as amended.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Council Member Esqueda, you are recognized in order to provide the committee's report.

Thank you very much, Madam President.

Colleagues, this is the quarter four supplemental budget that amends appropriations to various departments and budget control levels, including the capital improvement projects.

This is ideally intended to be a bill that shrews up any additional costs and helps to tie up any loose ends before the calendar year concludes.

This helps to ensure that there is a balanced budget at the end of each year.

Ideally, quarter four is to be technical in nature.

However, the proposal that we received this year from the mayor included a request for SPD for an additional for additional spending authority.

The council, as you know, this summer passed a resolution that tied to our summer budgeting process stated the following.

The city council will not support any budget amendments to increase SPD's budget to offset overtime expenditures above the funds budgeted in 2020 and 2021. So Council Member Herbold, as Vice Chair of the Budget Committee and Finance Committee, and myself, we have introduced an amendment to do just that, to hold the line, to make sure that there are consequences for an overspend, which is a managerial decision, and to make sure that we are looking across these two budgets to accomplish the goals in the resolution.

This is accomplished both by the amendment that is included in this bill for your consideration today.

Again, thank you council colleagues who were part of the Finance and Housing Committee who included this amendment.

And is also being accomplished by the bill on the introduction and referral calendar today, sponsored by Council Member Herbold and myself, which I discussed this morning.

Madam President, if it pleases the President, I would like to defer to Vice Chair Herbold to talk about this, and I will offer some comments in closing before the vote, if that pleases the President.

Absolutely.

So Council Member Herbold wants to go next.

Council Member Esqueda, you will have the last word on the bill as we close out debate.

But for now, let's hear from Council Member Herbold and colleagues.

If anyone else would like to make comments on this particular bill, please do let me know.

Council Member Herbold, then followed by Council Member Solano.

I'm going to pass it over to you, Amanda.

Thank you.

So as Councilmember Mosqueda mentioned, we are co-sponsoring an amendment that ensures that the budget process never ends.

Yeah, so this amendment adds a new section 13 expressing council's intent to take additional action in 2021 to reduce the police department's 2021 appropriation authority by at least $5.4 million.

This is reflected in the introduction and referral calendar today with new Council Bill 119981. And it's going to be referred to the Public Safety and Human Services Committee early next year.

As Councilmember Mosqueda mentioned, passed by the Council in August.

We made a statement that the City Council would not support any budget amendments to increase the Police Department's budget to offset overtime expenditures above the funds budgeted in 2020 or 2021. We expressed the Council's intent to reduce the Police Department's budget in phases and increase funding for community-led research and participatory budgeting.

The three appropriation increases in the fourth quarter supplemental.

total $5.4 million, and there are three items that make up that $5.4 million.

$1.6 for separation pay, $1.9 million for FEMA reimbursement, and that is specifically overtime associated with police officers who are staffing staffing some of our COVID testing sites.

And so there's a anticipation that there will be FEMA reimbursement for these costs.

And 1.9 million for parental leave.

The connection to overtime for that one is when officers go on parental leave, The department cannot simply hire new officers to fill in for that short period of time, and so that's when they bring folks on overtime.

Each of these is connected to use of overtime and backfilling work.

As I stated in committee last week, I don't see myself as a person who is rigid even given the statement that was in the council resolution about overtime and the intent to not increase funding for overtime.

I might have been willing to consider some additional overtime.

If it wasn't for the fact that I do believe that there is still a lot of work that the department needs to be doing right now in real time to address the allocation of overtime.

Not connected to the three items that I mentioned earlier, but really overtime connected to to staffing the protests that we have been seeing for many, many months now.

We are still seeing large numbers of officers deployed for very small numbers of protesters.

And I want to just make note that back on October 31st, Chief Diaz announced via the SPD blotter that SPD was changing its approach to demonstrations.

including, I quote, recognizing that the visible presence and appearance of officers at a demonstration can impact crowds, can impact interactions with the crowd, and that reducing the department's presence when safe and feasible was a goal.

And I applaud that stated changed approach to demonstrations, but in In just five days after this statement went out on November 4th on Capitol Hill, there appeared to be what looked like almost 100 officers present at a demonstration of 20 to 30 people.

We heard public comment last week in the Finance and Neighborhoods Committee that even last week, large numbers of officers are continuing to show up at protests of small groups.

So, you know, I recognize that overtime management reports are being sent to all bureau chiefs, sworn commanders, and civilian managers every month, and that these reports contain detailed information for all employees who work overtime in the prior month.

But I think we need to not just review the overtime after it's approved, we need to be really looking at the decision making associated with the approval.

We know also that the budget director I think the council is in a position to do more to control overtime.

I just want to note that on a broader level, part of the problem here is that the council has not received regular ongoing updates about SPD And so to bridge this information gap, the council adopted two actions in adopting the 2021 budget.

First of all, we're going to be receiving, we have requested, we are going to be receiving monthly reporting on overtime use.

And that will allow the council to really keep an eye on how overtime is being deployed in an effort to do necessary course correction in future deployment of overtime.

Secondly, the council has requested that SPD provide monthly fiscal reporting beginning in January 2021. This reiterated a request made during the summer supplemental process, and I think Again, we are going to be looking on a monthly basis, the, the spending of of the larger overall spending of the department as well as over time for the department.

I think we also need to think about.

What we are what our expectations are to reduce the 2021 budget authority beyond beyond this action here today to consider what specifics we might we might need to really focus on.

in these monthly reports, whether or not that's total spending to date, by budget control level.

And I look forward to working with council members and central staff to have more discussion, not only about how we want to use this information, but how we want to receive it in a way that will make it most usable.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Okay, I have Council Member Sawant and then Council Member Morales.

I will be voting no on this supplemental budget which gives Seattle...

Council Member Sawant, it's a little hard to hear you.

Sorry, I'll keep this.

Is that better?

Yep, we can hear you now.

Thank you.

I will be voting no on this supplemental budget which gives the Seattle Police Department an additional $5.4 million to fund the extra overtime that they have used abusing and intimidating the Black Lives Matter movement.

Every city department is allocated a budget at the beginning of the year and those are the funds they have available to do whatever they need to do.

Here we are in the last council meeting of the year.

The same year, we had a historic Black Lives Matter movement, a year in which under pressure from the street heat, the Democratic establishment made sweeping promises to defund the police by 50%.

We now hear the police have spent $5.4 million more than their budget, $5.4 million that did not belong to them, and they're requesting retroactive permission for these millions in taxpayer money that they have stolen.

They have taken this money in order to abuse the Black Lives Matter movement, spending millions in overtime to fill the streets of Seattle with tear gas and other weapons.

And they have taken this money for personal enrichment with individual officers amassing hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime pay.

Imagine a car thief who tells you that if you just retroactively give them your car, then they will not have stolen it.

And the Seattle Police Department does this almost every year to the point where the council even passed a resolution in the summer, which was mentioned, pledging to say no if the police make this request at the end of this year.

Now is the test.

Will council members hold the line or yet again backfill the already bloated police budget with renewed pledges to hold the line next year?

Unfortunately, in the Finance and Housing Committee last week, council members on the committee unanimously voted to approve this police funding this year, while pledging to take it from next year's budget.

But what does it mean to take the money from next year's budget if council members prove that they have no intention of holding the police to that budget?

What if the police go over their budget by $5.4 million again in 2021?

Will the council hold the line then or push it back another year?

What if they go over by 20 million in 2021 or 50 million?

What will make the council members more willing to hold the police to their budget next year, given that this year, the council already took the extra step of passing a resolution, a year in which we had the largest street mobilization in US history, pledging to hold them to their budget.

Does the council need to pass two resolutions in 2021 saying no, but for real this time?

In committee public comment, community organizers demanded the council, quote unquote, hold the line.

This is not holding the line.

It is moving the line back a year with no guarantee that it will not move again and again and again.

Of course, the reality is it's not about lines or promises or resolutions or even the goodwill of elected officials.

It is about the power of the movements on the streets.

At the height of the Justice for George Floyd movement, council members promised to defund the police by 50%.

A couple of months later, that was reduced to just a couple percent and a promise not to add that funding back at the end of the year.

And a couple of months later, here we are.

The lesson for our movements is we must depend on our own strength.

We have seen also how with the receding of the street movement, the City Council Democrats just approved nearly $200 million in cuts to other departments like housing and community services.

I want to raise one additional part of the supplemental budget that is particularly insidious.

There is funding from the U.S.

Department of Homeland Security to fund something called the Fusion Center.

I have voted no on supplemental budgets in the past because of the Fusion Center funding.

The Fusion Center is the place where the Seattle police and the FBI share information about protesters so that protest movements like Black Lives Matter can be charged with federal crimes.

It was similarly used against the anti-war movement at the height of the Iraq war.

So this is nothing new.

I will be voting no.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, next up is Council Member Morales, and then is there anyone else who would like to make comments on this bill?

Okay, Council Member Morales, and then it doesn't look like, I haven't seen anybody else indicate that they want to speak on the bill, so if that remains the case, we'll have Council Member Mosqueda close out debate.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

I'm going to be honest and say I am very conflicted on this bill.

You know, I understand there are many departments that need to have their year end items covered and I do want to thank Councilmember herbal.

for walking us through all of the measures that we passed in order to help us keep closer tabs on the SPD budget from now on.

And I also wanna be really clear that I don't support the notion of covering SPD overtime, even if we're reducing authority next year.

I really think it is outrageous that SPD continues to disregard this legislative body and the efforts made to rein in to rein in their overtime expenses.

Despite this body's expressing its intent over two budget processes this year, the interim chief submitted a request to cover additional overtime for activities that Judge Jones has deemed out of compliance with our accountability measures.

If any other department manager had overspent their budget by $5 million, especially on any activities that a judge has deemed in contempt of court, we would not hesitate to hold them accountable.

So I am as frustrated as I know all of my colleagues are on this issue.

If nothing else, it demonstrates to me that our search for a new police chief will need to include a thorough vetting of their financial management skills and their commitment to a reduced role for police.

in our community safety.

As I said, I understand that there are other year end, other departments whose year end work is sort of in the balance here.

And so I am, I am, I am conflicted and frankly, not prepared yet to figure out what I'm going to do.

But I do want to express my frustration with this continued problem.

And my hope is that the measures that we've passed will allow us to be in a very different position next year.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

OK, just checking in one more time.

Anyone else have any comments on the bill?

Hearing no additional comments on this bill.

Council Member Mosqueda, I'm going to hand it over to you to close out debate with some final remarks.

Thank you very much, Council President.

Thank you, colleagues.

Council Member Morales, I'll just pick up on the last comments that you made.

I am, too, also conflicted by this, wanted to bring forward an amendment last week that would have stripped these pieces.

We heard loud and clear from the law department and the executives team that The funds that are being basically held back that are needed for this allocation include things like paying for leave, federally reimbursable expenses for emergencies, and separation pay.

But those are managerial decisions, right?

Those could have been paid first.

Instead, overtime was paid first.

Then council was asked to basically fill the coffers.

So in lieu of us having additional tools in the last week here of the 2020 cycle, the amendment that council member Herbold and myself introduced on Wednesday, which clearly articulates our frustration and concern with this process.

And the amendment coupled with the piece of legislation introduced today, effectively immediately in 2021, we will be able to, if acted upon, reduce the 2021 SPD budget.

by the proportional amount, because if the tools that we currently have at our disposal are to not allow for, sorry, limit us and do not allow for us in theory to be able to hold back on that $5.4 million, then it needs to be taken out of the 2021 budget.

If I can, Madam President, I just want to read from the piece of legislation introduced today.

The council has reason to believe that SPD would have sufficient appropriation authority to cover the $5.4 million had it not overspent its overtime budget, due largely to over-deployment of officers during the largely peaceful protests in the summer of 2020, including the deployment of officers that exceeded $10 million in overtime costs in less than 60 days.

Specific examples of the type of response that we saw during those days included An unarmed elderly person with a cane being pepper sprayed and slammed down to the ground by an officer, an eight-year-old child getting pepper sprayed in the face, a bike cop literally riding over a person's neck, and an officer putting their knee on someone's neck.

We also heard, as Councilmember Herbold talked about, large number of officers who continue to be deployed to respond to a relatively small number of individuals over the last few months.

And this seems to be in contradiction to what we had heard from our police accountability partners, specifically Mr. Myerberg, who talked in his summary in Council Member Herbold's committee about how the sheer presence and the type of force that was being shown in response to the protest was escalating situations and the recommendation that if it were scaled down and officers were to be responding in different ways and in smaller force, then there would be less of a need for that type of response from the officers.

And I think that the lack of follow-through on that recommendation continued to escalate the cost.

The legislation also says the council anticipates that there will be salary savings in SPD's budget to achieve achieved in 2021 due to higher than anticipated attrition, which has already occurred in October.

And as I noted this morning, we found out on Wednesday is occurring as well in the numbers we're receiving in November, and we anticipate that that trend will continue in 2024 December as well.

So the amendment commits to and the bill follows through on that commitment to reduce SPD's 2021 appropriation authority, offsetting the increased authority provided in 2020 and make sure that we're increasing the funding for community-led participatory budgeting work called for in Resolution 31962. This is the tool that we have at our disposal right now in this moment to hold the line.

This is how we are making sure that there are consequences for overspending the authority already authorized in the budget.

And I equate this to going to a bank.

For those who have been able to purchase a home or for even those more than half of Seattle residents who are renting, you wouldn't go and purchase something that you didn't have the funding to buy and then go to the bank later and say, oops, I overspent.

that wouldn't fly there.

It's not flying for other departments and we have to use the tools that Councilmember Herbold commented on and I talked about in the last committee meeting as well to have even more specific language in each BSL, in each line item in our budget so that we have greater understanding and control over how these dollars are being spent.

This is part of the story.

This is part of the narrative in the wake of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor's murder in making sure that we as a council for the budgetary documents that we have control over in the wake of those murders have made sure that we're not only not increasing, but we're now holding the line across 2020 and 2021. So it's not a matter of, you know, saying that this will be dealt with next December.

In fact, the bill's already been introduced.

It will be heard in early January.

I wanna thank Council Member Herbold for her foresight to request regular reports.

And I think that this gives us all an opportunity to think about the type of information that we would like to be seeing on a monthly basis as those reports come in, so that we, and any future council, is never in this position again, and that we have greater transparency, not just for our budget-making process, but for the city at large.

I look forward to working with all of you over the next year to make sure that we have greater tools at our disposal to continue to hold the line and continue to move forward on our efforts to expose and have greater accountability, transparency, and further scrutinize the spending so that on the managerial side, which council has a responsibility for as well, we don't continue to see over allocation of overtime funding and that We expect all departments to stay within those budgets, especially though our Seattle Police Department's budget in the aftermath of our SPD inquest that we launched this summer.

I appreciate that we've had a long conversation on this at today's meeting and in last Wednesday's meeting.

And I do also wanna reiterate to folks that there are a number of other important technical fixes and items within the quarter four supplemental.

It's not all just about that, but we did, I think for good reason, wanna spend quite a bit of time explaining to the council and the general public the way in which this piece of legislation, the added amendment, the bill that was introduced today, all go hand in glove to make sure that we are following through on those commitments.

Thank you, Madam President.

Okay, with that, colleagues, I am going to go ahead and officially close out debate on this particular council bill.

I'm now going to ask that the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill.

Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-Karen Hollweg, OSBT-K

Thank you, the bill passes and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf?

Okay, item six.

Will the clerk please read the short title of item six into the record?

Agenda item six, Council Bill 119973 relating to affordable housing, authorizing a loan of up to 1 million in general funds to community roots housing.

The committee recommends the bill pass.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Council Member Mosqueda, you are recognized in order to provide the committee's report on this bill as well.

Thank you very much, Madam President.

This legislation authorizes the Mayor and the Director of the Office of Housing to execute a loan agreement with Community Roots Housing, formerly known as Capitol Hill Housing Improvement Program, in an amount up to $1 million using general funds appropriated to Finance General in the city's fourth quarter supplemental.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impaired Community Roots Housing from being able to collect the revenues needed, including commercial and residential tenant rents, resulting in a loss of operating income of approximately $3.2 million in 2020. Capital Roots Housing has taken action to mitigate this loss, however, a shortfall of approximately $1 million remains.

As a reminder, as discussed in committee and this morning, Capital Roots Housing is a public development authority of the city.

It is not eligible to apply for COVID-19 federal assistance such as the Payroll Protection Program, or PPP, authorized by CARES Act at the federal level through Congress, which would have helped tremendously in addressing the current shortfall.

In light of that information and in recognition of the critical role that Community Roots Housing has in the city of Seattle to make sure that folks have affordable housing, accessible housing, and that there is supportive housing, I think that it is prudent that the city does act to allow for this loan to go forward.

Really appreciate the role that Community Roots Housing and our housing partners at large have played with making sure that folks not only have access to housing during, quote, normal times, but especially during a global deadly pandemic.

We have to have homes in order for people to avoid contracting and spreading COVID, and this is a matter of life and death.

Thanks to Community Roots Housing for the work they've done in the past, and I'm supportive of this legislation.

It did pass the committee 5-0, and I encourage the yes vote today in full council.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you so much, Council Member Busqueda.

Are there any additional comments on the bill?

OK, hearing no additional comments on the bill with the clerk, please call the role on the passage of the bill.

So want.

Yes.

Strauss yes.

Herbal.

Yes.

Juarez I. Lewis yes.

Morales yes.

Mosqueda yes.

Peterson

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Nine in favor, nine opposed.

The bill passes and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf?

Okay, committee reports, the report of the Governance and Education Committee.

Will the clerk please read the short title of item seven into the record?

The report of the Governance and Education Committee, agenda item seven, Council Bill 119967, relating to the 2018 Families, Education, Preschool and Promise Levy, amending the levy implementation and evaluation plan adopted by ordinance 125807. The committee recommends the bill pass.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

As chair of the committee, I will provide the committee report and then open the floor to comments.

Colleagues, I did have an opportunity to explain and describe this legislation to the full council during this morning's council briefing.

This is legislation that is designed to temporarily modify the FEPP levy implementation and evaluation plan that has been previously adopted and approved by the city council.

These modifications will allow the Department of Education and Early Learning some additional flexibility as they continue to modify their programming and services.

in the context of COVID-19.

We did have a robust presentation by the Department of Education and Early Learning in my committee last week, where they described how the flexibility will roll out in context of early learning, K-12, and the Seattle Promise.

Lots of good stuff there in the Seattle Promise, for example, there will be flexibility allowed for students who are part of the cohort for Seattle Promise to to continue to attend part-time as opposed to requiring full-time attendance.

That's one of the changes there.

in the K through 12 space, there'll be additional ongoing flexibility in light of and in response to the fact that children are remote learning as opposed to learning on site.

And for early learning, there will be additional flexibility, particularly as it relates to tuition related to those who are looking for child care services in the early learning space.

So those are just some highlights.

There's other additional details included in the ordinance.

and really appreciate deals proactiveness in terms of seeking this now so that they can begin to modify how they're going to roll out the operational plan for these funds in the 2021-2022 academic year.

Their planning starts in earnest here very shortly, so looking for swift approval of this gives them a long ramp to be able to prepare and to engage stakeholders to get this right.

So the committee did consider this and unanimously voted to recommend that the City Council pass this council bill.

Are there any additional comments on the bill?

Hearing no additional comments on the bill, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill?

The want.

Yes.

Strauss.

Yes.

Herbold.

Yes.

Juarez.

Aye.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Mosqueda.

Yes.

Peterson.

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Nine in favor, nine opposed.

The bill passes and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf?

Okay, colleagues, item eight.

Will the clerk please read item eight into the record?

Agenda item eight, Council Bill 119968, relating to lobbying regulations, expanding lobby regulations to cover grassroots lobbying with campaigns, correcting topographical errors, correcting section references, clarifying regulations, and making minor amendments and amending chapter 2.06 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

The committee recommends it will pass Council Members Gonzalez, Juarez, and Strauss in favor, and with an abstention from Council Member Mosqueda.

Okay, as chair of the committee, I will provide the committee report and then again, open the floor to comments for folks on this particular bill.

Give me just a moment here.

Okay, sorry, I'm pulling up my notes here.

Okay.

Colleagues, this bill comes to us from the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission.

It was transmitted to my office last December.

That's December 2019. But between my maternity leave and responding to the multiple crises that is 2020, it has been some time before we could take this bill up.

So this bill has been in the queue for approximately one year now.

It had been the hope of the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission that this bill would have actually passed last year or early part of this year so that they could spend most of the year implementing and doing outreach on this bill.

But be it as it may we are here now and have an opportunity to take this bill up.

I do take a lot of pride in our good governance and transparency measures that the city of Seattle However, our lobbying regulations is one area where we can see some improvement.

Chair Nicholas Brown of the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission noted at committee last week that absent these regulations, there has been a large amount of money being leveraged to lobby and influence legislation.

On September 21st, The Seattle Times reported that there were groups spending thousands of dollars on targeted social media ads that reached nearly 500,000 users to influence the public about budget changes.

And we still don't know who is behind this effort to influence city policy.

That is related to indirect lobbying in particular.

If this were a traditional campaign or a candidate, we would have transparency and disclosure requirements.

So this has long been a gray area without any transparency.

And I believe very strongly that it's time to bring transparency to that body of that area of our lobbying regulation and work that happens.

I believe this legislation is good for transparency of the who and the resources being used to influence policy and investments or divestments across our city.

It brings us into alignment with disclosure requirements at the state level through the three parts of this bill.

And with my amendment, it would clarify membership communications to address any potential concerns related to how organizations communicate directly with their members.

I want to thank Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission and Wayne Barnett in particular and all of his team for bringing this legislation forward for council's consideration before the end of this year.

And again, this bill effectively does three things.

The first thing is it would require disclosure of disclosure of lobbying communications between lobbyists and department directors and their deputy directors or their direct reports.

It would also require that lobbyists disclose any financial relationships or other kind of relationships they may have with political campaigns, whether it be for elected officials or ballot measures.

And then lastly, the last piece is related to indirect lobbying, which would require sponsors, i.e. people who are organizations that are paying for the indirect lobbying, not the people who are actually engaging in the lobbying, not members of the public, but those sponsors who are effectively footing the bill to encourage members of the public to lobby council members for a particular position.

It would require those sponsors who spend $750 in one month or $1,500 in a period of three months to file disclosures with Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission to disclose both those lobbying efforts.

funding sources and also the expenditures that they have made in that area.

I'm happy to address my amendment in particular that would, again, make this council bill more consistent with the state's law on lobbying activities by exempting internal membership communications.

So, functionally, what that would mean is, if you are a member of an organization, sending an email about an issue or action to another member of your organization.

That activity would not be counted as part of activities for that would that would require disclosure to Seattle ethics and elections commission.

So similar to our state law, the amendment two that we will consider in a moment does not currently define what membership is by design, but it's my understanding that the Seattle Elections Commission intends to engage in a rulemaking process that it will include stakeholdering and further community input to better define what membership means.

Lastly, I'll just end by saying that I want to thank some of the organizations that we've engaged in my office for giving us their input and asking lots of really good questions, including the Seattle Human Services Coalition, who flagged some concerns for us last week and gave us a very long list of questions to answer that we were able to answer.

My understanding is that the membership exemption amendment that we will be discussing and considering later as part of this legislation does address the concerns by the Seattle Human Services Coalition at least.

So I will end my remarks there and am happy to now call for any additional comments.

Well, actually, I think what I have to do now is we have to consider the amendments first, according to my script.

So we're going to go ahead and do that.

I move, I'm sorry, I'm now going to acknowledge Councilmember Swann, who I understand has an amendment.

Councilmember Swann.

Thank you.

I move Amendment 1, as sent over email, removing the restriction on grassroots organizing, which is removing the section of this bill regarding what the legislation calls, quote unquote, grassroots lobbying, which, unfortunately, some council members are calling indirect lobbying, but make no mistake, this is about the grassroots.

As I mentioned this morning, this bill makes three updates to the lobbying rules.

Two, I support, but the third regulates what the law calls grassroots lobbying.

This is not lobbying.

This is not professional lobbyists paid to talk to elected officials.

This is grassroots campaigns that organize communities to make their voices heard.

The rule requires any grassroots campaign that spends at least $750 in a month to have to disclose its expenditures, donors, and aims.

In my view, this turns transparency on its head.

When I think of transparency, I think that elected officials need to be transparent to the public.

This bill requires the opposite.

It requires the public to give their information to elected officials.

Essentially, this is the political establishment demanding to know all the organizing details of ordinary people or any small group of ordinary people or any movement making demands on elected officials.

In committee, council members even complain that they get contacted by the public and they don't know whom to blame.

Alice Lockhart of 350 Seattle said it correctly when she said that she and the 350 Seattle leadership are all equally aghast at this attempt.

And so I share those concerns.

I'm extremely concerned that this will create a truly chilling effect on genuine grassroots organizing.

It will be easy for astroturf organizations and corporate advertising campaigns to make these disclosures, but for genuine grassroots movements, that will not have professional accountants or treasurers, this paperwork will become, frankly, impossible.

Imagine if this legislation was on the books during the Justice for George Floyd protests.

During those protests, hundreds or even thousands of people donated to many community organizations, organizing marches and making demands like the city council should defund the police.

Renting the sound system for a single rally can cost more than $750 depending on the size of the protest.

Let's push the protest organizers in an impossible position.

It is technically possible to track down the donor information of everyone who donates over $25 at the protest, But it requires that to become the major focus of the organizers, who are generally volunteers and working people themselves, and who should be spending their energies on the rally itself.

Of course, it's not the intention of the SEC to penalize genuine volunteer grassroots organizers who are unable to collect all the information required.

But the enforcement of these regulations would largely be complaint-based, just like other SEC regulations.

And I would guarantee that there are plenty of Trump supporters and right wing people across the country who would be ideologically motivated to file complaint after complaint against movements in Seattle.

My office has talked about this legislation with Wayne Barnett, executive director of the SEC.

I really appreciate his time walking us through it.

But the reality is There are several questions that have no answer yet that are really fundamental to the impact of this legislation on genuine grassroots campaigns.

If there's a protest on an issue, at what point does it meet the definition of grassroots lobbying?

If it's all about a specific bill, that could be straightforward, but what if it's an issue like defund the police?

What about Black Lives Matter generally?

Unlike election campaigns, which have a clear start when campaign staff can be trained by the SEC, movements grow organically.

There is no clear start moment for campaign staff to be trained by the SEC.

So how will volunteer organizers be made aware of their responsibilities?

How should volunteers track donations thrown in the buckets at protests, which is a common strategy for grassroots fundraising?

There are no answers to any of these questions yet.

And I understand the concept for These rules is more around corporate advertising campaigns, like when the soda industry runs ads against a sweetened beverage tax.

But the sad reality is that it will create a chilling effect on community organizing by burying them in red tape.

And the disclosure will be easy for the corporations.

They already have accountants and batteries of attorneys to make it trivial for them to complete the paperwork.

And it will be the volunteer organizers that will be penalized.

Finally, I also understand that this language has been taken word for word, almost word for word, from the state laws regulating grassroots campaigns targeting the state government.

However, the state regulations are the last place I would look for advice on how to create a welcoming environment for grassroots organizing.

Olympia is notoriously inaccessible to ordinary people, not necessarily because of this rule particularly, but I think the disregard this law will have for grassroots organizing is emblematic of that problem.

The amendment my office has prepared, and I thank central staff, Liz Schwedson, for getting it ready rapidly, would cut from the bill the entire section on grassroots campaigns and would leave the other two issues taken up by the bill unchanged.

If this amendment fails i will be voting no on the bill as a whole not because i object to those other two issues but because on balance without this amendment the bill would be an attack on grassroots organizing and would not on balance benefit ordinary people and we need to be clear mass movements have been the source of every progressive change in the history of this country including the recent developments like the $15 minimum wage and the Amazon tax.

I'm not surprised that the political establishment is so eager to gather the information of grassroots organizers because movement building succeeds.

I also reject the false dichotomy that has been presented that when Council President Gonzalez spoke to this in the briefing this morning, she said that this does not affect people who call in or email the Council, it only affects organizers.

Well, because our movements are only successful when we get organized.

It's as simple as that.

So essentially, the Council is saying that you're fine if you call or email as individuals, which often has zero impact, on political outcomes unless you're a CEO or a wealthy person.

But if you succeed in getting organized enough amongst yourselves to be effective as ordinary people, then the political establishment wants to know who you are and what you are doing.

I think we need to understand that that's what's going on.

Finally, socialists and rank-and-file labor should remember the McCarthy era, the Red Scare, the Black Lists, the political establishment demanding the information of genuine grassroots organizing, has throughout history been used again and again to attack the mass movements of regular people.

And if the council approves this law, it will be just another step towards really creating hindrances to grassroots organizing during critical movements in future struggles.

I urge council members to support this amendment.

And as I said, if it fails, I will be voting no on the bill as a whole.

Colleagues, any additional comments on Amendment 1?

I would just say really quickly that I do oppose Amendment 1, and I think that it's unfortunate that there's been such a mischaracterization of what the indirect lobbying portion of the underlying bill actually does.

There is nothing in the council bill that is before the city council that would in any way, shape or form, lead a reasonable person to conclude that folks who engage in protest movements or organizing work would suddenly become lobbyists under this particular legislation.

I think the bill is pretty clear in defining who a lobbyist is.

It talks about how a lobbying entity is a law firm, consulting firm, public relations firm, or other similar organization that engages in lobbying through its employees or agents.

It defines a lobbyist as any individual who lobbies for compensation, except individuals who might be reimbursed for minor incidental personal expenses related to that lobbying.

It defines a lobbyist employer as any person who employs or compensates a lobbyist or a lobbying entity for lobbying to promote the person's interests.

So again, this particular legislation is specifically targeted towards those individuals who are professional lobbyists.

There's nothing in this bill that targets organizers as we know them to be.

In fact, this simply says that if there is a lobbyist who is compensated for the lobbying activity, And those lobbyists are sponsoring public campaigns to influence legislation at the city council or at the city as a whole, whether through direct communication to council members, indirect communication to council members or the mayor's office or their directors, department directors or those deputy directors, then they are simply required to disclose that activity and their expenditures related to those activities.

Again, we are taking a careful approach here through Amendment 2, which we'll discuss if this amendment fails.

If this amendment passes, then Amendment 2 will not be on the table because Amendment 2 would amend the indirect lobbying portion of the council bill as passed out of committee.

But Amendment 2 makes very clear that this does not cover any communications from organizations to their members.

And that was an important, that's an important amendment to respond to concerns from nonprofit organizations and other small organizations who don't want to be put in a position and shouldn't be put in a position to have to communicate, to have to disclose every time they send out an email blast, for example, to their member list around a particular issue.

So I will go ahead and leave.

Oh, OK.

Sorry.

Go ahead, Councilor Mosqueda, please.

Thank you very much, Madam President.

I did abstain on this vote in committee, and I think that the concerns that I had are addressed by the amendment that your office is bringing forward to address the underlying concern about engagement with various members and making sure that grassroot grassroots lobbying and those organizations that provide that vital service can clearly see that that is not only prohibited permitted activity but encouraged as we want as we seek to get information directly from individuals affected by policy decisions.

So thank you Madam President for bringing forward your amendment because that is being brought forward today.

I am not going to be supporting this amendment um, that we're currently discussing, but we'll be supporting your amendment to your bill.

Um, and that addresses my concerns.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Customer was good.

And I appreciated the back and forth we had in committee that was about about that particular issue and was happy that we were able to work with Some organizing folks and organizations and community to make sure that we could bring forward that membership exemption, which does exist in state law, but unfortunately, haven't made it into the base city bill.

So I think this is an improvement on on the original bill as it was introduced.

So.

Okay, right now we are considering Amendment 1, which is the amendment as sponsored and proposed by Councilmember Sawant.

Hearing no additional comments on Amendment 1, we're going to go ahead and ask the clerk to please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment 1. Sawant?

Yes.

Strauss?

No.

Herbold?

No.

Juarez?

No.

Lewis?

No.

Morales?

No.

Mosqueda?

No.

Peterson?

No.

Council President Gonzalez?

No.

One in favor, eight opposed.

The motion fails, the amendment is not adopted, and the bill is before the council.

I will now move to amend Council Bill 119968 as presented on Amendment 2, which was recently distributed.

Is there a second?

Thank you so much.

It's been moved and seconded to amend the bill as presented on Amendment 2. As sponsor of this amendment, I'll go ahead and just recap really quickly, because I know we've been discussing it, what it does.

So Amendment 2, again, would make Council Bill 119968 more consistent with the state's law on lobbying activities by exempting internal membership communications.

And again, this amendment would, with this amendment, the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission will be tasked with a public process in defining membership.

This can look like a number of things, like dues paying, being a voting member, electing leadership.

And by not being prescriptive in the legislation at this moment, we will allow SEEC some flexibility in how they define this in their rulemaking process with the benefit of having public input.

So again, colleagues, I think that this Amendment 2 does address some of the concerns that we heard through additional engagement and conversation in committee around how, excuse me, how organizations who have memberships are going to be able to continue to communicate with those members without being subjected to cumbersome disclosure requirements in the new lobbying regulations.

I do believe that this amendment does address those concerns with the understanding that there will be a period of six months in 2021 where the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission is going to engage in public education and additional community public input processes.

And then the Director Burnett indicated to us in committee that they are looking at taking a compliance first approach here.

So they're not looking to have this be a got you kind of piece of legislation.

They want to encourage compliance and they want to educate folks in how to comply.

And that's the approach they're going to take as they go through initially implementing this particular component of the bill.

So with that being said, I would strongly encourage folks to support Amendment 2 as an improvement to the bill as introduced and discussed in the committee.

Are there any additional comments on Amendment 2?

Council Member Morales, please.

Thanks.

I do have several questions.

I'm going to try to lump them together and see if we can do this quickly.

So I have a question about, you know, we've been working lately, especially with a lot of coalitions.

And that are kind of a mix of organizations that are mostly volunteer based and some organizations that do have staff that have a paid staff to help with some of their work.

And so I'm wondering what this means for coalitions.

And I think this is related, but also trying to understand if there is a distinction between how nonprofit organizations would be impacted by this and for-profit organizations that might be coming to council with things that they're trying to do.

That'll be question.

Yeah.

On the last point around for-profit and non-profit, the lobbying regulations as a whole don't distinguish between whether you're a for-profit or a non-profit.

It's about the status of the person who is doing the lobbying.

So there's several triggers if you look at the underlying bill that really sort of walk through what what the first threshold is, are you a lobbyist?

If you're not a lobbyist, meaning that you're not paid to engage in lobbying behavior, then nothing else matters.

Nothing is going to change for you.

But if you meet the definition of lobbying and being a lobbyist, then you have to register as such.

And if you engage in sponsoring campaigns for $750 a month or $1,500 over a period of three months, then that means that you would have to disclose your lobbying activity along with your expenditures related to whatever public campaign you launched to influence legislation.

So there isn't a distinction in terms of if you're for profit.

It's not about the issue or the content of your speech.

It's about it's about whether or not you meet the definitional criteria of lobbyists and the expenditure requirement necessary to to to rise to the to.

to the next level.

There is, we did specifically for, because we were concerned about how coalitions work together, that's part of the reason why we reached out to Julia from the Seattle Human Services Coalition to ask her specifically if she had any concerns around the indirect lobbying portions of this bill, understanding that she has a very large coalition of organizations who come together to to request particular outcomes, and so we did receive some responses from Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission that were related to how do we address some of those particular concerns, and I'm pulling it up now.

Give me just a minute.

Okay.

So some of the primary concerns really related to how they use their mailing list, which was a primary form of how coalitions engage with each other and how they activate people who are part of those mailing lists.

And so with the exemption with communications with members, which is this amendment, then people who have the capacity to, for example, vote for an organization's director or who pay dues, etc. would not be subjected to the indirect lobbying requirement.

Without this amendment, it would trigger disclosure requirements for even coalition organizations.

So I'm happy to share this email with you after the fact.

There are probably about a dozen questions that were posed by Julia that we had Wayne answer that we then shared the answers with Julia about.

But I think it also is important for us to remember that when we're talking about presenting a program, according to Seattle Elections Commission, really traditionally what that means is using things like paid social media, paid billboards, or other means of paid communication to encourage people to contact their elected officials and urge them to either support or oppose a piece of legislation.

So again, if a coalition is is meeting the expenditure requirements, is communicating outside of their membership list, and meets the definition of lobbyist, then they would be required to file a disclosure that would include expenditure disclosures.

Thank you.

So that probably answers my next question then, which is that we do I hear often from some of our most marginalized communities, formerly incarcerated, sex workers, folks who are undocumented.

And so in order to make sure they are protected, well, that was my concern.

But it sounds like if they're not registered as a lobbyist or wouldn't fall under that definition, then that's sort of a moot point.

anyway.

Right, right.

Yeah is are you a lobbyist enga lobbying work?

Um, and the required minimal amount the disclosure.

So even l than 750 a month or less in the three month period wouldn't be required to do disclosures.

And so, again, I think this is a new framework.

It will be a new environment of disclosure, similar to the laws that we passed for the Clean Campaigns Act in early January of 2020. And SCEC is committed to making sure that they engage in public education and in rulemaking to make sure that they are not creating a chilling effect for organizing work, that this is really about who's paying for public influence campaigns that are at sort of a higher payment level.

So this legislation is not intended to, nor does it, I believe, prohibit ongoing efforts of people to continue to organize within community to do outreach to either support or oppose legislation that the city council is considering.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any other comments or questions on Amendment 2?

Hearing no additional comments on Amendment 2, will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment 2?

Laurent?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosqueda?

Yes.

Peterson?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez.

Yes.

Nine in favor, nine opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries.

The amendment is adopted and the amended bill is now before the council.

Are there any additional comments on the bill as amended?

Council Member Sawant, followed by Council Member Mosqueda.

Actually, I need a minute to gather my thoughts, so can I go right after?

Sure.

Council Member Esqueda.

Thank you, Madam President.

Just very briefly, I want to also thank Wayne Barnett.

My understanding is that they are going to go through a pretty robust community engagement process.

I think you mentioned that, Council President.

We discussed it on Wednesday.

And just to reiterate, you know, for ongoing concerns that individuals may have, or organizations may have, there's going to be a six-month process to fully have conversations with community.

I started my line of questioning when the draft bill came over to ask, you know, how has this been received by various stakeholders and community organizations, our grassroots partners, and I look forward to hearing more about how the upcoming six months goes, and I know that folks are not shy about continuing to let us know how legislation that we've passed is being implemented.

And if there are unintended consequences, I think that we have shown time and time again, a willingness to continue to make improvements.

And I'm really optimistic with the amended language that has been included today that some of those initial concerns that we heard have been addressed.

Thank you, Council President, and your office for the work that you did with immigrant rights groups, low-wage worker organizations, environmental groups.

I know you've reached out to a handful of folks, human service provider organizations, to make sure that you were getting some feedback.

So thank you for that work, and it makes me optimistic about this six-month conversation to come, and looking forward to report backs.

Likewise, Council Member Mosqueda, thank you so much for those remarks.

Council Member Salant, and then if anyone else wants to speak, let me know.

And then Council Member Kerbel, we'll call Council Member Salant.

Thank you.

As I stated during the amendments, this bill with the restriction on, quote, grassroots lobbying, end quote, is not something I can support.

I am disappointed that Council President Gonzalez continues to falsely claim that only paid lobbyists are affected.

This is not true.

The definition of quote-unquote grassroots lobbying states, quote, any person who has made expenditures not otherwise reported by a registered lobbyist, end quote, and goes on.

So it's not what the council president is saying.

I also want to point out that the council heard from grassroots campaigners in public comments stating that it will have a chilling effect on grassroots organizing.

Why would council members pass a law and claim that it will not chill grassroots organizers right after hearing from grassroots organizers that it will have a chilling effect.

So I will be voting now.

Council Member Herbold, please.

Thank you.

I just want to speak to my belief and my hope.

And as Council Member Mosqueda mentioned, we can revisit this issue.

But I really believe that the reporting requirements to register are not onerous.

should not result in the kinds of outcomes to true grassroots lobbying that some people might have some concerns about.

And I think that the concerns are far, far outweighed by the harm that this bill seeks to address.

And from my perspective, that harm is the allowance of dark money to be used without any disclosure.

Many of you remember that last year there was a paid lobbying campaign against the payroll tax legislation.

It turns out that the chamber had noted that they had funded it, but they were not required to disclose this.

This, I think, is much more, this lack of disclosure is much more corrosive to our democratic values and our institutions than the burden that this disclosure requirement will place on sort of what we traditionally think of as grassroots lobbying.

The term grassroots is used in Washington state law and I don't think it's the clearest term for describing this activity for public understanding, but in practice, it has the same effect of disclosure requirements.

in cities like Los Angeles, where they define lobbying activities to include seeking to influence the position of a third party on municipal legislation or an issue related to municipal legislation by any means including but not limited to engaging in community public or press relations activities.

I think it's very important that our regulations be content neutral.

But in being content neutral, I don't think the outcome is going to be a neutral outcome.

I think the outcome is going to be a much more robust disclosure of those in positions of power with access to great amounts of resources to our democratic decision-making.

And that's really why I appreciate the proposal of the Ethics and Elections Commission bringing this forward and the work of Council President Gonzalez in bringing this forward.

So thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold, for those comments.

Really, really appreciate that additional texture.

Thanks a lot.

Colleagues, any other comments on the bill as amended?

Okay, well, colleagues, I'm gonna go ahead and close out debate.

I wanna thank you all for the consideration of this particular bill.

I feel really strongly as indicated by Council Member Herbold that the benefits of having this kind of lobbying regulation within The City of Seattle far outweighs the burden and the potential hardship of disclosure and do trust that Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission will work very hard and diligently to make sure that folks understand what the new framework and environment is and how to work with folks who are going to be potentially required to engage in this disclosure to actually successfully do so.

I also don't want to lose sight of the fact that this bill does have two other really important components to it besides the grassroots lobbying or indirect lobbying, I think is a much more appropriate term, which is additional disclosure for lobbyists who work on political campaigns for elected officials or ballot measures and requiring those disclosures to happen.

In addition to that, making sure that we are including disclosure requirements for lobbying that occurs directly to department directors or their deputy directors or their direct reports.

We know that a lot of policy is driven at the department level at the City of Seattle, and I think that's an important transparency requirement as well.

On balance, I think there's a lot of good things in this council bill that will increase good governance and transparency at the city and really appreciate your consideration at this late hour of this bill as amended.

So with that being said, will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of the bill as amended?

Council member Sawant?

No.

Strouse.

Yes.

Herbold.

Yes.

Juarez.

Yes.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Mosqueda.

Yes.

Peterson.

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez.

Yes.

Eight in favor, one opposed.

The bill passes as amended, and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf?

Okay, folks, we are now at item nine.

Will the clerk please read item nine into the record?

Item nine, resolution 31983, expressing the Seattle City Council's solidarity with farmers protesting the passage of farming bills in India and in support of affected members of Seattle's South Asian community.

Thank you.

I will move to adopt Resolution 31983. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to adopt the resolution.

Council Member Mosqueda, you're listed as the prime sponsor and are recognized in order to address this item.

Thank you very much, Council President.

Colleagues, this is a continuation of this council's commitment to continue to stand with folks who are rising up and expressing our solidarity with those in India fighting back against changes that continue to come down, especially on some of the most vulnerable residents and workers in India.

After hearing with workers and members of Punjabi community on the Friday introduction and referral calendar, the resolution that is in front of us was published expressing Seattle City Council solidarity with farmers protesting the passage of farming bills in India and in support of the affected members of Seattle's South Asian community.

Over the course of the last few weeks in India, over 250,000 farmers, workers, and their allies joined in what is believed to be the largest organized strike in world's history.

These workers are protesting three devastating deregulation agricultural bills that were passed by the Modi government in September.

These laws deregulate the sale of crops, allowing private buyers more power in a marketplace that has long been incorporated and supported by government subsidies.

Farmers worry now that these pieces of legislation could devastate their prices and their livelihood.

Farmers have said, including through reports on Democracy Now and the link that I sent around, as you also saw from CNN, And in Time magazine, it's been widely reported that farmers say that these neoliberal policies are a boon to corporations and roll back key labor and crop price protections that could have a deadly impact on the livelihood of farmers.

farming is the leading source of income for the population of India.

This will leave farmers at the mercy of big corporations who will, in effect, drive down prices and could result in huge losses for farmers, effectively handing over farms to private corporations.

Farmers, farmers unions, and the community who are supporting these farmers have said that these changes made by the bills passed in September will put them at risk for losing their businesses and land to large corporations.

60% of India's populations rely on agriculture as their main source of income, and the plight of farmers in India affects us here in the city of Seattle.

The city of Seattle, as well as the country and the world, rely on India and their farmers.

India is the leading exporter of Basmati rice and the world's largest milk producer to the global market.

We want to make sure that the production that is happening in states like Punjabi, in places like Haryana and Delhi, where farmers are protesting, that their voices are heard and that we stand in solidarity with their efforts across the world.

Farm workers have had a long history of organized protests, from the United Farm Workers here in the United States to Farm Workers of India.

Now, we continue to want to show support for those who are helping to put food on the world's table and who are themselves often struggling to put food on their own table.

We also want to show solidarity with what is believed to be the largest demonstration in world's history.

As farmers marched on the country's capital of New Delhi, they were met by violent response from the Indian government.

Water cannons were used in freezing cold temperatures on mostly elderly men in their 50s, 60s, and 70s.

and they experienced violent response via tear gas, again deployed during a global deadly pandemic that affects the respiratory system.

The police put up barricades with barbed wire, dug 10 by 10 trenches in the nation's highway to prevent farmers from reaching the nation's capital.

Please take a look again at the sources that we sent around over the weekend and much of the local and national news to bring attention to the workers in India and the farm workers who specifically stood up and shown a tremendous amount of courage in the face of opposition and repression from the government.

I want to thank specifically Kent council members Satwinder Kaur for bringing this resolution with the Punjabi community to our attention.

They in Kent are working to pass a similar resolution.

And as I noted this morning, the Kent mayor has sent a very strong statement of solidarity as well for the farm workers in India and appreciate the solidarity to our sister city in Kent for their work on this and their upcoming action in January.

The South Asian community, specifically the Sikh community, has been organizing local protests to bring attention to what is going on in India and have been working to pass resolutions in other cities as well.

I'm honored that we are able to bring this forward today, that it has been able to grab the attention of all of us in the city of Seattle to continue to show our support with the farmers in India.

And we'll continue to support our colleagues across this country to bring greater attention to this issue and stand up against violent repression and support the farmworkers.

Appreciate our congressional partners who we are also calling on to help support farmworkers and to oppose the repression that they've experienced.

I look forward to working with all of you to continue to call attention to the issues that these farmworkers are demanding justice for.

And again, I wanna thank council members to want.

as a co-sponsor of this and also for your earlier actions this year, starting in February, to bring attention to this issue.

As folks have said, this is the latest iteration of attacks from that government.

So we stand in solidarity and want to make sure folks here in our community, especially South Asian community and Seattle and the Sikh community, Punjabi community, know that we see, hear, and support the protests of farmworkers in India.

Thank you very much.

And thanks again for your co-sponsorship, Council Member Sloan.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Council Member Sawant, I know you have an amendment that you'd like to put before the city council, but before you do that, I wanted to offer you an opportunity to make general comments, if you'd like, as a co-sponsor of the resolution.

Yes, I would like that.

Thank you so much, President Gonzalez.

Good afternoon to everybody who's watching this, members of the public, our community members.

Namaste, satsriyakaal.

Greetings and solidarity to the hundreds of South Asian community members who have been in touch with my office over the last week and whom I've spoken to personally in the last weeks with a burning sense of urgency to fight the injustice being faced by the farmers and workers in India.

Thank you, Council Member Muscata, for bringing this forward.

I'm honored to co-sponsor this resolution on behalf of my sisters and brothers and siblings in India.

India's government, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his reactionary Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or the BJP, have introduced three new laws in September that will dismantle the bare minimum protections or regulations relied on by millions of small farmers for survival.

One of the new laws, for example, would repeal the minimum support price, which is a publicly mandated price floor, a minimum price at which the government promises to buy produce from small farmers as a measure of basic economic protection for them.

I also agree with Reena Sekhon, who said during public comment that the ration card system allows the multitude of poor people and working people to access grain, cooking oil, and other basic food needs at affordable prices.

I personally have childhood memories of getting rice at the local ration shop in Mumbai.

Dismantling the ration system would be a ticket to mass starvation and increased malnutrition.

Yesterday morning, my staff and I joined hundreds of Sikh students and other young people at a protest action near the Space Needle in solidarity with the farmers in India.

As an elected representative of Seattle's working people, And as someone who grew up in India and was politicized and radicalized by the understanding of how global capitalism and imperialism have led to continued impoverishment of the Indian masses and the masses in the neocolonial world as a whole, I was proud to join the protest rally yesterday.

As myself and other speakers at the rally said, the new laws are going to directly further enrich the already obscenely wealthy billionaires like Mukesh Ambani, who is India's richest man and is like the Jeff Bezos of India, and Gautam Adani, both of whom are among the 40 richest people in the world.

Farmers and agricultural workers make up 60% of the country's population.

A 2018 study found that more than half of the farmers in India were in debt, and this was before the current pandemic and deep capitalist crisis.

More than 20,000 farmers in the country have died by suicide just from 2018 to 2019. And as the resolution says, over 360,000 since 1995. Farmer indebtedness has been a major factor in these suicides.

The protests have made world headlines and have led to solidarity actions by South Asian immigrant communities, and especially by the Sikh community globally, including right here in the Seattle region, as well as in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

These solidarity protests have even forced establishment politicians to speak publicly in support of the farmers' protests, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and a member of the Australian Parliament.

I really agree with the community members who testified in public comment today, who said that the overwhelming majority are facing a race to the bottom globally, and unless we fight back, we are at a loss.

I agree with those who said in public comment that they fought with us for the $15 minimum wage, and we have direct stake in the farmers in India winning their demands.

The Indian government has inflicted brutal repression against the farmers and the protesters, with police using batons, water cannons, and tear gas.

But as the farmers have said, the police are using tear gas against us, but we were already crying.

At this point, the protests have sustained for nearly three weeks.

This is remarkable.

The protest actions have selected multiple transportation and commuting choke points, with hundreds of thousands of protesters blocking roads and squatting on railway tracks.

The farmer protests are also noteworthy in the level of preparation they carried out before launching the actions.

For instance, farmers interviewed at the Delhi actions say they are prepared enough to be able to sustain the action for months.

The protests also have an impressive degree of coordination between the actions in metros such as Delhi and Mumbai and the actions in rural areas in the individual states.

They have organized shifts, with some attending the protest actions and others tending the land.

Women's committees have helped with providing food.

or as our Sikh community members testified, longer every day for the thousands of activists.

The protests have not been short of food even for a day.

This level of organization and confidence is one of the reasons why the farmers are not intimidated despite the brutal tear gas and water cannons used against them by the police.

Of course, such organizing is not the result of some clever top-down management based on ideas of business unionism.

Such a level of preparation can only be achieved by first building the political conviction, solidarity, and cohesion among hundreds of thousands of oppressed people, the rank-and-file farmers, strengthening the clarity that we have to fight together against the ruling class, that it will be a long and hard fight and will involve significant sacrifice, but that it is worth doing precisely because that is the only way we can successfully push back against the gross injustices faced by the overwhelming majority under this bankrupt system of capitalism.

It is this type of solidarity that is enabling the protesters to spend night after night in the cold winter in northern India on the back of trucks and tractors.

This is the kind of organizing needed for any serious strike action by the labor movement anywhere, because big corporations and the capitalist state have all the wealth and the resources to wait for protests and strikes to grow exhausted and demoralized.

Yesterday, at the request of the South Asian community members, my office initiated a petition to urge President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to make a public statement in solidarity with millions of Indian farmers protesting privatization, poverty, and indebtedness.

Members of the public can find a link to it on my social media accounts and on our council office blog.

Nearly 350 people have now signed the petition just since last night.

And as a number of the speakers in public testimony said, my office alongside the South Asian community organizations, the Sikh students organizations, and labor unions is organizing a car caravan rally on January 8th in solidarity with the general strike in India which is going to be extremely important because it is this kind of solidarity among workers and farmers that can really put the Modi regime on the defensive, on the back foot.

And we need escalating tactics like this in order to ensure that we don't get complacent and that we win our victories.

I'm also proud of the track record of my Socialist Council office.

in helping to build international working class solidarity, which is crucial for the global fight back against capitalism, as was mentioned before, just in January or February this year, I know it feels like an age ago.

I also kept thinking it was last year, but it just this year.

My office brought forward the resolution against Modi's anti-Muslim and anti-poor citizenship laws, which South Asian activists and socialists fought for together.

And we saw the Modi, pro-Modi supporters, the bhakts, the sanghis who came here and spoke in such divisive, deeply right-wing language.

Last year, we brought forward a proclamation condemning the repression by the Modi regime in Kashmir.

In August 2014, my office sent a public letter in solidarity with the oppressed people of Palestine calling on Obama, then President Obama, and the members of both houses of Congress to condemn the bombardment and violence by the Israeli regime in Gaza.

When the City Council passed a resolution from my office in February opposing Modi and the BJP's citizenship laws, we made Seattle the first city to take a position.

Since then, Five additional cities have done the same, with San Francisco being the sixth city to pass a resolution in July.

I wanted to end my general comments by echoing the slogan and adding another slogan of the movement.

The movement has said, Kisan Ekta Zindabad, which means farmers stay united or long live farmer unity.

But I think as we head into the January 8th action, which is absolutely crucial for hundreds of millions of workers who will be on strike alongside the farmers, along with the student movement, we have to also raise the slogan, which is long live the unity between farmers and workers.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Okay, we're gonna go ahead and consider amendment one now that we've heard general comments.

So before we open it up for any additional comments on the underlying resolution, there is an amendment that was circulated previously today, consistent with council rules.

So I'm gonna go ahead and recognize Council Member Sawant for that motion of amendment one.

Thank you.

I move Amendment 1, inserting the following sentences.

Section 3, the Seattle City Council stands in solidarity with the farmers' organizations, trade union federations, and student unions in India, organizing for a general strike on January 8, 2021. to unite the movements of oppressed peoples, demanding the restoration of protections for small farmers, increasing the minimum wage, ending privatizations, and defending the rights of religious and ethnic minorities.

We heard from a number of ordinary people today in public comments, specifically from the Sikh community and also the broader Asian community.

And every single person of those spoke in favor of this amendment because The protest movement has already shown enormous strength, having lasted nearly three weeks with an impressive degree of organization and political strength.

However, it would be fatal if we got complacent.

The movement has to escalate in order to force the Modi regime to concede to the movement's demands.

The Modi regime will keep trying various divide and conquer tricks to try and break the back of the movement.

For example, labeling Sikh farmers as terrorists.

they will keep trying these tactics.

If they don't succeed in that horrendous effort, then the regime, the super wealthy and big business will simply try and wait out the movement, wait for protesters to get exhausted and demoralized.

As members of the labor movement like myself know, we have seen this happen And we know that when we are fighting the bosses, we need to have tactics that will escalate the struggle and put increased pressure on the bosses to force them to concede to workers and unions demands.

So it is absolutely crucial that the trade union movement in India has announced the general strike for January 8th.

The call for the general strike as I said, is being supported by 100 farmer organizations, 10 trade union confederations that represent hundreds of millions of workers, union members, and student organizations.

The unions are demanding the restoration of protections for small farmers, increasing the minimum wage, establishing pensions and social security for workers, ending privatizations, and defending the rights of religious and ethnic minority.

To understand the potential impact of such an action and why I am urging council members to support this amendment, we should know that the Indian trade movement has carried out three general strike actions recently.

One in January 2019, one in January of this year, and a third one just weeks ago in late November.

each of those general strikes has been the single largest general strike in global labor history.

The one in 2019 was the largest in global labor history and the one in January this year was the largest and then now The one that happened in November was the largest.

The last two general strikes, including the one in November, brought 215 million work union members out, not 250,000 people.

And so these are absolutely massive.

These are earth shattering actions.

And I think this is exactly the kind of earth shattering action that we need.

in order to be able to combat the hundreds of billions and indeed trillions of dollars that are facing the poor farmers and workers at the hands of the billionaire class.

So I really urge council members to support this amendment.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Council Member Sawant has made a motion to put Amendment 1 before us.

Is there a second?

It's been moved and seconded to amend the resolution as presented on Amendment 1. Council Member Sawant, you have already made comments about Amendment 1. So I'm gonna go ahead and open it up to the floor to see if there are any additional comments on Amendment 1. And as usually is the case, Council Member Sawant, you will have the final word on Amendment 1. But for now, we're gonna go ahead and open up the floor.

Any additional comments on Amendment 1?

Council Member Strauss, please.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Council Members Mosqueda and Sawant for bringing this resolution forward.

I will be supporting the base resolution.

Since public comment, Council Member Satwinder Kaur from Kent, who brought this resolution to our city council for consideration, called me to ask what other public commenters were speaking about when discussing section three, as she had not previously been aware of section three.

She, from my communications and my phone call with her just in the last number of hours, it is her preference to retain the focus of this resolution on sections one and two.

And for those reasons, I will not be voting for this amendment, although I support this resolution and everything that is brought forward.

Thank you, council members.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Any additional comments on amendment one?

Okay, hearing no additional comments on Amendment 1, Council Member Sawant, any closing remarks that you'd like to make before we take up the vote on this amendment?

Yes, I appreciate Council Member Strauss.

I completely disagree with Council Member Strauss for not supporting this amendment and also the reasons he stated.

I think they're quite stunning.

But I do appreciate that Council Member Strauss was open about why he was going to vote no on the amendment.

And I think that's a rare instance of where it can become clear to members of the public why certain things are happening.

in the halls of government.

But unfortunately, nobody else has spoken to it, so I'm not sure what to make of it.

I do appreciate Council Member Herbold's seconding of my amendment so that we can at least have a discussion.

But I think that it is extremely important to recognize that regardless of what ethnicities elected officials may have at the end of the day that the test that we have we as an ordinary people have to put them to is are they standing with the ordinary people of whatever issue is is at hand or are they standing with the establishment and I think it's very telling that at least according to what Councilmember Strauss has said, and I'm assuming that other Councilmembers or whoever other Councilmembers share that position, I would say that it is deeply unfortunate because it is not the question of one elected official, even if they may be from a certain community.

dozens of people from the same ethnic community testified in public comment saying that they wanted you to support that action.

And they had their own words to describe why they think it's important, because they understand that this action has the potential to greatly escalate the struggle, which the farmers and the workers understand the need to do.

They understand that they need to build unity, which is why there was a general strike in November by the workers in solidarity with the farmers, because they understand that Actually, they not only strengthen the farmers movement, they strengthen their own movement and that the struggles of oppressed peoples are interlinked.

And so I just want all the ordinary people, community members, Sikh and South Asian community members to understand what is going on here.

At the end of the day we have to observe if politicians are doing the bidding of other establishment politicians or are they actually listening to community members who one after one after one came and said that they want the city council to support this amendment.

So I will of course be voting yes on this amendment and I still urge council members to vote yes on it.

Thank you.

Okay, I'm going to close out debate on this particular amendment.

So let's go ahead and have the clerk call the roll on the adoption of Amendment 1. Warren?

Yes.

Strauss?

No.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

No.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosqueda?

No.

Peterson?

Council Member Peterson had to leave, unfortunately.

Council President Gonzalez?

No.

Four in favor and four opposed.

Okay, the motion fails for a lack of majority one way or the other.

So the amendment is not adopted.

We're not gonna move to consideration of the resolution.

And I think we've had a lot of debate on it.

Are there any additional comments on the resolution as proposed.

Council Member Mosqueda, please.

Thank you very much, Madam President.

So I want to be really clear as well that the folks that I'm hearing from, including members not only that have been elected, but members who are working directly with the Punjabi community and Punjabi community at large who've been asking for this, I think that folks want to send a clear message about what is currently happening in India, a message to the congressional delegation.

And for me personally, that does not mean not wanting to support a general strike.

I think that there is going to be another meeting and more opportunities for us to continue to show solidarity with the general strike, but I want to make sure that I'm following the lead of the Punjabi community who's been reaching out and asking for the specific language in the resolution today.

I will be making sure that we're pushing out information about the general strike.

I know that folks don't come to a strike easily.

This is often the last line that gets the last line of effort to try to make sure that messages are being heard.

We know time and time again that these farmers have tried.

They have tried to negotiate.

They have protested.

They have put their lives in harm's way, both because of COVID and because of the ongoing repressive attacks from the police and the government being exposed to very cold temperatures and water cannons.

their life is on the line.

So we know that they have done everything they can.

Personally, I support the general strike.

I'll be putting out messages from our office in support to make sure that folks know how to participate in the caravan.

Thank you very much, Council Member Sawant.

But in following what the Punjabi community has asked for today, which is a very clear resolution specific to a national message across the globe.

I am very excited about this resolution.

I think it's an unfortunate sort of conversation about who we're following, but I don't think that those two things have to stand in isolation.

We can send forward this clear resolution today and also stand in support of the upcoming general strike, which I plan to do, and I plan to send out messages from our office.

So I just want to make sure folks hear directly that this is Absolutely something that I am interested in doing in support of those who have reached out initially.

Very happy to have this resolution passed today.

And that says, and that said, I'm also going to be supporting the call for the general strike.

I know that that is not a decision people come to lightly, often the last line of defense when thinking about the strategies.

in front of us, and it takes a huge act of courage to do so.

So, personally, I wanted folks to know where we were at, but wanted to stand in solidarity and follow the lead of the Punjabi community who's been reaching out to our office.

And more information forthcoming, obviously, on that first week of action in January.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Council Member Sawant.

Thank you.

I totally agree as a member of the labor movement myself that it's not easy for workers to go on strike.

It is a very difficult decision because it requires tremendous amount of sacrifice.

There's a lot of uncertainty.

There are lots of twists and turns because bosses or in this case the Modi regime and the billionaire class will not give in easily.

In fact, they will, in fact, try to wait out the movement as much as they can.

And so during the strike action, it requires a lot of resilience, a lot of strategic and tactical political clarity for the workers and continued solidarity for them to not be able to, for the strike to not be broken.

But I'm not sure what is being achieved by this council not supporting this uh, by not supporting the amendment for the strike action because they have already declared the strike action.

So when we agree that it's not easy for them to do this, so we, that means that it has been, uh, it has been an extremely hard and long and hard road for them.

So they've already declared the strike action.

I'm not sure how it helps to fight for the general strike by sending a message of, well, this is not what the Punjabi community wants.

I also don't agree, unfortunately, with the idea that not having the clause for the general strike support is somehow following the lead of the Punjabi community.

It's not some homogeneous community.

We heard from dozens of Punjabi and Sikh working people today and dozens more and hundreds more have, you know, have spoken in different ways, not just today, that they are supporting this strike action and they wanted the city council to also support it.

Absolutely agree that we all should be supporting the January 8th action.

I appreciate Council Member Mosqueda, you expressing support for the action that we are organizing.

And I wanted to call on everybody, all the ordinary people, members of the public who are watching this.

Let's make sure we organize a massive, massive, historic January 8th, 2021 car caravan rally in Seattle at 3 p.m.

I'm not saying the location yet because we are going to decide the location and let everybody know.

But my point is that it is – let's make it a massive and successful action, and let's stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with the masses in India who are struggling for a better world.

Thank you.

MODERATOR Okay.

With that, we're going to go ahead and close out debate here, since the sponsors have spoken last on this particular resolution.

So will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of the resolution?

want?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Yes.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosqueda?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

The resolution is adopted and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf.

Other business, is there any other business to come before the council?

Council member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Madam President.

I would like to first thank all of you as well.

Council President, you said thanks to everyone this morning.

I want to say thanks to you for stewarding us through a really tough and challenging 2020. And I appreciate the stewardship that you have provided.

I also want to thank my office and including Aretha has been working on this resolution that just passed today and her presence at the rally at the Seattle Center as well yesterday.

And all of the work that our team has been doing between Aretha Farideh and Lori, our intern, we got through 20,000.

emails just specific to the budget in the last few weeks and really they're going to continue to come from our office as we endeavor to get responses back out to everybody and look forward to working with all of you on various issues coming up in 2021 and I want to say thanks for all of your hard work this year on the budget.

I know that we took a lot of your time and your family's time and your community's time to work with our budget process here and through the committee deliberations that were very lengthy at times.

So thank you very much.

Thanks to central staff, our entire team, and I look forward to working on more with Andrew on housing coming up and Sejal on workers' rights.

and we're putting on health issues and Aretha on everything related to community safety and Lori who's just been tremendous in our office on how we're responding to constituent inquiries.

I just want to say thanks.

As per usual, Council Member Juarez, I couldn't get away with not doing it.

Madam President, I'd like to also request to be excused on January 4th.

There we go.

There's the city council business.

All right, there's been a motion for Casper Mosqueda to be excused on January 4th.

Is there any objection to that?

I object.

Better not.

I want to thank her before I object.

Okay, I'm going to take that objection in jest and assume that there is no actual objection.

So Council Member Mosqueda will be excused for January 4th, 2020. Is there any other business to come before the Council?

All right, colleagues, this does conclude the items of business on today's agenda.

This is our last regularly scheduled marathon city council meeting for the year of 2020. Our next regularly scheduled city council meeting is on Monday, January 4th, 2021 at two o'clock p.m.

I hope that you all have a wonderful evening.

We are adjourned.

See you all in 2021.