Public Safety and Human Services Committee 41123

The April 11th, 2023 meeting of the Public Safety and Human Service Committee will come to order.

It is 9.33 a.m.

I'm Lisa Herbold, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Council Member Mosqueda, I believe you're on mute.

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Vice Chair Lewis is excused.

Chair Herbold.

Here.

For present.

Thank you so much.

We do see Council Member Mosqueda here, but I will, oh, there she is.

Can you hear me?

Good morning.

Good morning.

Oh, good.

Okay, sorry about that, present.

Thanks so much.

So on today's agenda, we will be hearing four different items.

The first is a series of appointments to the Community Police Commission.

Secondly, we'll be hearing the nomination of Tanya Kim as Executive Director of the Human Services Department.

Third, we'll be hearing a briefing from the Office of the Inspector General on the ongoing assessments in the proposed consent decree agreement on sustained compliance.

And fourth, we'll be hearing the first quarter report update on the development of a new unreinforced masonry program.

With that, we'll move into approval of our agenda.

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

Seeing and hearing no objection, today's agenda is approved.

At this time, we'll move into public comment.

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

Each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

I'll alternate between virtual and in-person public commenters.

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

If you haven't yet registered to speak, but you'd like to, you can sign up before the end of the public comment session.

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

And then once you heard that prompt, please press star six to unmute yourself.

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

And speakers will hear chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

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

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

And once you've completed your public comment, please disconnect from the line, and you're welcome and encouraged to plan to continue following the meeting but please do so via the Seattle channel website or the listening options listed on the agenda.

12 people signed up for public comment virtually, and I'm sorry, 11 of those are virtually and one is in person.

So I'm going to begin by calling the names two at a time, and we'll start with our in-person public commenter, James Lovell, followed by an online commenter, Steve Daschle.

James?

There you are.

Good morning Council Members.

My name is James Lovell and I'm the Development Director with Chief Seattle Club.

I'm an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians from Belco, North Dakota, but born and raised here in Seattle.

Previously, I've worked with Candelia, formerly VFA, REWA, Refugee Women's Alliance, Schools Out Washington and Neighborhood House.

And in each of these roles, I have been a partner with the Human Services Department or HSD.

And I've had the pleasure of working with dozens of HSD staff over the last 20 years.

It is with that experience in mind that I come here to share our support for the appointment of Tanya Kim as a permanent director for the Seattle Human Services Department.

The world of human services can be a challenging and complicated place.

It can also be the center of innovation as it serves as an incubator for initiatives that later become their own departments or even government agencies.

It serves as one of the city's key conduits to communities and the needs of organizations and our residents.

It takes a special leader like Tanya to fully bridge the gaps between our systems, communities, and the people whom we serve.

Oftentimes with government funders, you feel like you have to jump through hoops.

The great leaders like Tanya line all those hoops up and form a conduit for community voice.

Tanya is one of these people.

Tanya has been one of the many powerful voices for progress in our city.

She's been a powerful advocate for community in her 10 plus years at HSD and has always made it a priority to serve those furthest from access and power.

She's helped build stronger systems at HSD and has helped community organizations navigate those systems.

As someone who has led community organizations in Seattle herself, we have always felt like Tanya is a true ally who understands the broad challenges of human services in contemporary urban settings.

There are major challenges ahead of our communities as we grapple with culturally responsive solutions to the housing and homelessness crisis, among others, and we're enthusiastic about Tanya's leadership of these efforts.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Steve Daschle, and Steve will be followed by Kathy Edwards.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Steve Daschle, and I'm the executive director of Southwest Youth and Family Services and co-chair of the Seattle Human Services Coalition.

And as always, following James Lovell is always a challenge because he says things so well.

But I'm here this morning to enthusiastically endorse your decision to make Tanya Kim the permanent human services director.

I've worked with Tanya for over 20 years.

And through all these years, she has demonstrated integrity, empathy, and an innate kindness that are all hallmarks of good leadership.

She has granted unprecedented access to the leadership of SHSC by meeting with us monthly to discuss issues facing the sector.

And we have found her to be a thoughtful partner as we work to address the many challenges our chronically under-resourced system faces.

I don't think you'll find a better candidate for this position than Tanya.

She deserves your support and the city will be better off for it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, Kathy Edwards will be followed by Beverly Graham, Kathy.

Hello, my name is Kathy Edwards and I'm calling into the council in support of mayor Harold's nomination of Tanya Kim.

Also for the Seattle human services department director, I live in district seven and I appreciate council member Lewis's leadership.

Um, and thank you also to chair herbal.

I am president of the board of the Cedar Mare Foundation, a family foundation my husband and I started in 2006. We provide capacity building supports to small nonprofits in the Puget Sound region.

I first knew Tanya as a grant recipient in 2007 when she led a small Seattle community-based nonprofit.

She participated in bi-monthly meetings of all executive directors of the organizations we supported.

Through these meetings, Tanya's intelligence, dynamic leadership, and generosity of spirit stood out and added greatly to the group's interactions.

When we decided to ask non-family community members to join our board in 2014, we immediately thought of Tanya.

She joined our first cohort of community trustees and contributed greatly to our work in creating trusting relationships with community partners.

Tanya spearheaded CDERM's effort to introduce an anti-racist lens to our grant making.

She not only shared her expertise and lived experience, but also relationships with consultants whom we hired to evaluate and reshape the focus of our grant making.

She developed strategies for connecting with communities of color that hadn't previously been represented among our grant recipients.

In short, Tanya was the catalyst for our racial and gender equity work.

and she always functioned from an asset-based framework as a member of our collaborative working board.

My many years of respect for Tanya are a testament to her outstanding leadership, community advocacy, and commitment to service.

I know of no one who's better prepared to become the city's director of human services.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, Beverly Graham, will be followed by Lisa Dugard.

Beverly?

And Beverly, if you could hit star six if you haven't already.

Hi, I'm Beverly Graham, the executive director for OSL, a nonprofit meal provider and food recovery program in Seattle and chairs of the Meals Partnership Coalition.

I'm here today in support of the permanent position of director for Seattle Human Services, Tanya Kim.

Through my tenure with OSL, I've had the privilege of working with and knowing several HSD directors, and Tanya Kim is the best of the best.

She's extremely qualified and responsive.

She is highly respected across the human services community.

This is not an easy position, as I know you are aware.

It can chew people up and spit them out, and Tanya executes it daily with grace and expertise and respectful engagement.

Thank you for agreeing with me and for confirming Tanya as the new permanent HSD director.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, Lisa Dugard, be followed by John Okamoto.

Lisa, if you could hit star six, you're with us.

There you go.

Thank you.

Sorry, I unmuted prematurely.

Good morning.

It's good to be with you this morning.

I too am speaking in strong support of the nomination of Tanya Kim as director of HSD.

I'm co-executive director of Purpose, Dignity, Action, formerly the Public Defender Association.

We are project managers for law enforcement-assisted diversion, Let Everyone Advance with Dignity, known as LEAD.

and operate the co-lead program under contract with HSD.

I've known Tanya in her various roles at HSD for about five years now.

And throughout, she has always struck me as one of the most impactful assets that HSD has.

As the other folks testifying have said, she really has a unique quality of servant leadership both combines strong vision and humility in a way that's quite unusual to find.

She's an exceptional partner and leader.

Adjectives that come to mind for Tanya include constructive, warm, open, accessible, respectful, and principled.

As others have said, she truly respects community-based partners and appears to consider addressing the struggles of those partners.

to both sustain their work and thrive as core to the efficacy of HSD, which is a really important aspect of vision for that position.

She's also assembled and leads a team at HSD, many of whom also demonstrate these qualities.

Tanya clearly sees a lot, and she unquestionably has a strong, clear personal vision of this work, but even more important for the job at HSD She listens to the visions of others and figures out how to incorporate what each can contribute to the mosaic for our community, including ideas that are generated from community.

We're very fortunate that she is here and willing to play this role.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is John Okamoto and John will be followed by Dominique Davis.

Good morning Chair Herbold and members of the committee.

For the record, I'm John Okamoto, a lifelong resident of Seattle.

I served as directors of what is now four different departments, including the Human Services Department.

I'm also a former member of the Seattle City Council.

I'm here to support the appointment of Tanya Kim as a Human Services Department Director, agenda item four.

Ms. Kim is a highly capable, experienced, and a savvy human services leader.

I highly recommend her.

I worked with Tanya when I was the interim HSD director and quickly discerned Tanya's ability to analyze issues and suggest paths to solve difficult issues.

Tanya was and is a highly respected person in HSD and in the provider community.

In that regard, Tanya's experience as a nonprofit provider gives her essential insights in the value and challenges of HSD's vast nonprofit provider network.

I was sufficiently impressed with Tanya that I invited her to join my city council staff.

I thought the experience on the legislative side dealing with policy would be a good addition to her resume.

Exceeded in that area.

Her analytical abilities combined with her communication and diploma skills were a great value to me and will be to you.

Tanya is well-rounded, proven leader in the human services area.

I recommend that your committee fully support Tanya's appointment as the human services director to the full city council.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Dominique Davis and Dominique will be followed by Jen Busia.

Hi, my name is Dominique Davis.

I am the CEO and founder of Community Passageways.

I've been working closely with Tanya.

First of all, throwing my head in the ring for supporting her for this position permanently.

But the work that she's been able to do with community, boots on the ground work, like we are in the mix every single day.

We are in the community every single day.

We are dealing with high level issues and situations in our community on a regular basis.

And she is always ready to roll up her sleeves and step into the mix.

I was super impressed with the way that she communicated with me on a regular basis.

During certain times of crisis, she kept me abreast of information that was going on.

I kept her abreast of information that was going on in the community.

And we've been able to collaborate and build together over these years.

And through this relationship, I look at other government departments and other government entities.

And it's very rare that you can have this kind of communication and open the line and direct line to somebody at the level that she works at.

to where you can get your needs met and she also reaches out to make sure you're getting your needs met and how we can collaborate and work together to solve the problems in the community.

This is amazing to see her finally get her just due of getting into this position and not have to worry about it anymore.

I'm happy for her right now.

I know this is going to happen.

I know this confirmation is going to happen.

I am happy about it and I'm speaking it into existence because I believe wholeheartedly this is who needs to be in that position.

She is the perfect person and she's going to keep rocking with the community the way she has been, and we're going to keep rocking with her.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Jen Musea will be followed by Janice DiGucci.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Jen Musea.

I'm the executive director of the Ballard Food Bank, and I'm co-chair of the Seattle Human Services Coalition.

I'm here to speak in support of Mayor Harrell's nomination of interim director, Tanya Kim, to be made the permanent director of the Seattle Human Services Department.

Tanya has been a strong partner with the Seattle Human Services Coalition.

She leads with integrity and has had a positive impact on our city.

For all of us to solve the challenges in front of us, we need a strategic leader who leads with empathy and compassion, someone who understands nonprofits and the critical role they play in our community, a person that builds relationships with their staff, nonprofits, and community members so that they can listen, learn, and lean into difficult conversations.

an individual that is collaborative, innovative, and works as a partner with nonprofits in our community.

In my work with Acting Director Kim, she has demonstrated all of these traits.

Our work requires us to build relationships with one another.

Her collaborative approach creates space for all of us to have intentional, honest, and sometimes difficult conversations.

This work is not easy.

It requires us to be in conversation with one another, to be in community, to learn, to take feedback, and find solutions.

There are times when we disagree or see different paths forward, and Tanya seeks understanding and works to bridge differences.

She's accessible and works to lift the voices and ideas of our community.

She brings nonprofit expertise and understanding of the issues our city is facing.

Our community is counting on our city and partner agencies to work together to find solutions.

Tanya is a strategic partner who does this each and every day.

Tanya has demonstrated strong leadership as acting director.

I strongly support Mayor Harrell's nomination of Acting Director Kim as the next Permanent Director of the Seattle Human Services Department.

Thank you for moving her nomination forward.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Janice DiGucci, and Janice will be followed by Howard Gale.

Good morning, Chair Herbold and committee members.

My name is Janice DiGucci, and I'm Executive Director of Neighborhood House and co-chair of the Seattle Human Services Coalition Raising Wages for Changing Lives Campaign.

I'm testifying in support of Tanya Kim as the city's next Director of Human Services.

I've known Tanya for many years in her role as Executive Director of Powerful Voices, her membership and participation in the Asian Pacific Directors Coalition, and her many roles at the city.

I have the utmost respect for Tanya's integrity and capability in this role.

And as Interim Director, Tanya has been a collaborative partner with the Seattle Human Services Coalition as we work with the city to conduct the wage equity study, and at the table of funder partners as we consider the findings and next steps.

She has shown the compassion, professionalism, and commitment to equity that we are looking for in a partner for this important work.

The city would be lucky to have such a respected, thoughtful, and collaborative leader in this role.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Howard Gale, and Howard will be followed by Tree Willard.

Howard?

Good morning, Howard Gale with seattlestop.org.

Today, you will appoint three new members to the Community Police Commission, continuing the now 10-year tradition of appointing people to illegitimately speak for the victims of Seattle police violence, but never appoint the people who have actually experienced the serious harm.

As a predictable result of this long history of disregard and disenfranchisement, the CPC has taken to attacking victims of police violence ending any public comment at meetings and has suspended their community engagement forums.

The CPC fears the community.

The CPC has become not a commission for the community, but a commission to police the community.

In its 11th year, 11th, the CPC has consistently eschewed any engagement with the victims of police violence.

CPC has consistently failed to uphold legally mandated duties and has quite ironically fought against accountability for itself while claiming to fight for police accountability.

in the last couple years as cpc is fought against any attempts to have an outside audit and it's what the c l u rights commissions attempt to give voice to those impacted by police violence the cpc remains an undemocratic non-transparent unaccountable body hostile to the community in fact c l's entire police accountability system has fought to exclude the voices of those directly impacted by police abuse and violence despite this council having passed legislation last fall to create a program to give an official voice to those impacted by police violence.

Council members and people within the police accountability system have unrelentingly tried to undermine this program.

With over a quarter of the year now gone, this program has failed to progress, has not produced a single legally mandated report in its first three months, and has in fact been set back via attempts to exclude from decision making the very people this program was designed to serve.

Chair Herbold, You looked us in the eye and stated your support for this program last fall, yet you have, through acts of admission and commission, made sure it will never function as the one and only voice in a city structure that would speak for victims.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Tree Willard, and Tree Willard will be followed by Pat Wells.

Good morning, everybody.

Thank you for welcoming all of us, all my colleagues and me to be a part of the process here.

This is Pri Willard.

I'm the Executive Director of the Seattle Human Services Coalition.

And I too am here to express my support for Acting Director Kim to be appointed as the Permanent Director of the Seattle Human Services Department.

I've been in this role for about eight months now, and it's been a pleasure working with Director Kim and getting to know her.

I have found her to be an excellent strategy partner, a consistent communicator, and a warm and personable colleague, especially being new to my job.

I've really appreciated how welcoming and inclusive she is.

Human service providers have appreciated her background in nonprofit human services work.

As you've heard many of us express already, it's clear that she understands the complexities of our work.

how to successfully run all these programs that support Seattle residents.

And you know we all know how to control that and extend the opportunity and those issues to you all and to all of HSD so that our policies will be most effective.

We really appreciate the values alignment that we experience with her lifting up community voice and undoing racism.

Definitely another asset to our relationship that we celebrate.

Besides being a great candidate for the job, continuity will be an essential support to our work.

Starting fresh, laying new groundwork with yet another director would be yet another setback during a time when our sector is already struggling with the extensive expenses of turnover.

So I think we're really fortunate to have such a worthy candidate who's willing to serve in such an important and demanding position.

And I hope you'll confirm their mayor Harold appointment.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

And our last speaker signed up for public comment is Pat Wells.

Good morning.

I am Pat Wells.

I, um, I'm a, I'm a re retiree after 33 plus years of service at the human services department.

During that time, I worked with Tanya Kim for 10 plus years, even supervising her at one point.

Based on my experience and in agreement with all the other speakers before I strong support Tanya Kim's appointment as a permanent HSD director.

So provide strong leadership based on her commitment to racial justice, working with the community of Seattle, working with the community and for the community and her knowledge of the human services department, which will provide at the last, um, speaker said, a degree of stability that the HSD department has long needed.

Thank you.

Much.

I really appreciate everybody joining us here today for public comment.

And with that, we will move out of public comment and move into the bulk of today's agenda.

Will the clerk please read in agenda items one through three.

Agenda item one is appointment 02505, appointment of Lynn Wilson as member, Community Police Commission for a term to December 31, 2023. Item two is appointment 02506, appointment of Raven Nicole Tyler as member, Community Police Commission for a term to December 31, 2024. Agenda item three is appointment 02508, appointment of Lars W. Erickson as member, Community Police Commission for a term to December 31, 2025. Thank you.

Come join us at the committee table.

Thank you so much.

On this side?

Perfect.

Thank you so much, everybody.

And really appreciate you joining us in person today.

So with us is CPC co-chair, Joel Markle.

And I understand that, Joel, you'll be presenting the appointments from the CPC as well as the two appointments from the mayor and I'm just wondering if you can briefly speak to the work that the CPC does and then present the three appointments.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold and good morning and good morning Council Member Nelson and Council Member Mosqueda.

My name is Joel Merkle.

I'm a co-chair of the Seattle Community Police Commission and as Council Member Herbold mentioned I am here today to introduce three nominees.

to the CPC as well as some background on some of the current work of the Community Police Commission.

And as you each know, the Community Police Commission was created out of the consent decree process with the Department of Justice back in 2012, following the shooting death of Seattle Police, by Seattle Police of First Nations, Wood Carver, John T. Williams, and a series of other events.

And since then, the city has made through the landmark 2017 Accountability Ordinance, the CPC, a permanent and independent community commission as part of the triad of entities involved in the police oversight in Seattle, along with the Office of Inspector General and Office of Police Accountability.

And our vision, the CPC's vision is for Seattle Police and Seattle communities to be aligned in the shared goals of safety, respect, and accountability.

And we work with the community and our accountability partners to ensure that police services in Seattle are rooted in the constitution.

They center justice, equity, and transparent accountability.

There are, as you know, three appointing authorities for the CPC's volunteer commissioners, the mayor's office, the city council, and the commission itself.

Each appointing authority has an equal number of positions on the CPC.

And today the council is considering three candidates for the CPC.

The first is Lynn Wilson.

She is a CPC nominee for the position of a civil rights attorney that's reserved for the civil rights attorney under the ordinance.

Also with us is Raven Tyler, a mayoral appointee, and Lars Erickson, a mayoral appointee.

And I'll start with Lynn Wilson.

And I'm pleased to introduce Lynn Wilson as the CPC's nominee.

to the CPC position dedicated to a lawyer practicing in the field of civil rights.

And Ms. Wilson has practiced law in the area of civil rights for more than 30 years, and she's worked on police accountability issues for decades.

And she focuses on police misconduct, prisoner civil rights, and personal injury law in state and federal court.

She graduated cum laude from Seattle University School of Law and previously worked as a journalist.

Ms. Wilson served on the board of Mothers for Police Accountability for 27 years and on the ACLU Legal Committee for 10 years in the 90s.

And in 1999, she was a founding member of the National Lawyers Guild's Police Accountability Project.

And in 2013, she helped launch the Northwest Police Misconduct Attorneys Group and currently serves as a co-facilitator.

Ms. Wilson brings a wealth of knowledge and experience that will greatly enhance the work of the Police Commission, and we are excited to welcome her as a commissioner.

Raven Tyler, to my right, is an Army veteran.

She served seven years in the United States Army as a chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear officer, and an all-source intelligence analyst.

And prior to her time in the Army, Raven was contracted as an intelligence analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, providing experience in mapping and predictive analysis.

And as an active member of her college's Social Justice Leadership Institute, she worked closely social impact organizations through volunteerism.

And during her undergraduate studies, she was an intern at Unite Here Labor Union where she worked with union organizers to unionize the Baltimore Washington airport workers.

So we're very excited for Raven to also join the commission with that great experience and will be a significant addition to the conversations and work that we do at the commission.

And finally, Lars Erikson, To my right is also he's a Senior Vice President of Public Affairs and Communications at the Seattle Metro Chamber.

He has more than 25 years of experience in public and government relations and communications.

He served nine years as Senior Director of External Relations for the Washington State Department of Transportation.

And in this role, Lars oversaw external and internal communications, government relations, community outreach efforts, importantly, and strategic planning for special projects and liaising with the governor's office and partner agencies.

And during his time at the Department of Transportation, Lars received national recognition for its emergency crisis communications efforts and social media engagement and comprehensive user-focused website redesign.

Lars is also a proud member of the Washington State LGBTQ Commission and served as a volunteer, advance and press lead for the Biden administration.

You know, Councilmember heard this year, the, the CPC has a lot of work to do a lot of very important work to do as you know the city has asked the, the judge overseeing the consent decree to find that it has largely satisfied the consent decree and move into a new transition agreement.

dramatically impact the accountability system in Seattle and the Community Police Commission stands ready to work with Office of Inspector General and the OPA to ensure that SPD oversight and the next SPOG contract lives up to the promise of the 2017 Accountability Ordinance and welcoming these three nominees to the CPC will help us achieve that.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Before I open up a comment to my colleagues on the council, I would like to give each of the nominees an opportunity to introduce themselves and say a few words about why you're excited about serving in this really important capacity.

Thanks, I'm Lynn Wilson.

Thanks Council Member Herbold.

Really appreciate the introduction too.

So I'm really honored to serve on the CPC at this point in my career.

And I wrote out some comments, but I did wanna make one point.

So I have been doing police misconduct litigation for a long time.

And we do have a group of 70 lawyers who do these cases exclusively for on behalf of injured and harmed victims of police accountability.

They collectively do an absolutely superb, excellent job of doing that, and sometimes get multimillion dollar verdicts and settlements on behalf of their clients.

But over the years, what was apparent to me is that it did not change policy.

The cases settle out.

The families get the money.

A lot of times there's a gag order.

They don't change policies.

Sometimes the policies are at issue, but that's just the reality.

The litigation does not do that until we have the DOJ case.

And so my involvement in this is that it's the policy changes that actually impact what happens going forward.

And that's why the CPC is so crucial.

because it's the community grassroots groups that make the changes.

And we have actually seen that happen at our state legislature.

And then with this new creation of this triad of police accountability here.

And that's why I'm willing to serve on this is to focus on the policy because the attorneys do an absolutely superb, excellent, wonderful job representing the victims.

Thank you so much for the appointment.

The CPC, I really appreciate it.

Thanks.

Thank you, Lynn.

And just a note for our viewing public.

The CPC has different categories for representation, and Lynn Wilson is nominated to fulfill the civil rights category.

Good morning.

My name is Raven Tyler, and I'm very excited for this opportunity.

I think that what I bring to the commission is a various intersections that I identify with, namely being I'm originally from Baltimore, and we have our own issues of police accountability there.

And so coming here, following getting out of the Army and being in the community, I also serve on the board of Seattle LGBTQ Center, the Social Impact Center at the YMCA.

And now here, I think that I bring a multitude of perspectives to the table.

And also with my background in the military, I'm a firm believer in getting things done.

I'm not a fan of wasting time and resources.

And I know that there is a way to progress forward in a way that is equitable to the community.

And I think that this will be a great opportunity to bring the voices back.

Just listening to the one gentleman comment earlier, I think that people want to see progress and I'm excited to help progressive forward and see what we can do to bring accountability back to the police and also bring the community back into the conversation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Lars Erickson.

I'm a 17-year resident of Capitol Hill.

And as has been mentioned, Governor Inslee appointed me to the State LGBTQ Plus Commission.

In my role at the Seattle Metro Chamber, I work with thousands of business owners and community members who've expressed their concerns about the public safety crisis in the city.

They also care greatly about reforms in the Seattle Police Department.

It would like to see more training, more on de-escalation and a diverse workforce.

I'm committed to that.

My partner of 13 years is a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Vancouver, British Columbia.

And I see frequently the impacts that having a diverse workforce can help and with the de-escalation training.

Excuse me.

Looking forward to this opportunity.

Thank you for your service and for this opportunity for me to serve.

Thank you, each and every one of you.

Looking to my colleagues to see if there are questions or comments.

Council Member Nelson.

Sure, I often make comments about each person, but I'll just say to all three, thank you very much for being willing to serve.

I have to say that I'm glad that the commission is getting vacancies filled.

You have very important work before you, and so it's really important that there is a deep bank of qualified and really experienced and committed people to this.

Lynn, I received your letters when you write to council on behalf of Mothers for Police Accountability, so thank you very much for your work with that organization.

Lars, I've known you through, in part, your work at the chamber, and Raven, I do not know you, but I will say what might be on the minds of some people.

It might be unusual that we've got a chamber and a veteran here, but it is the Community Police Commission.

And, uh, I, there are about 6.8 veterans apparently living in the Seattle Tacoma area.

The business community is a vital part of our, uh, our city.

And so I have to say, thank you very much for, um, uh, I appreciate that the mayor's appointments have, uh, sought to represent the diversity of our community.

And I thank you for your willingness to serve on this commission very much.

I appreciate it.

looking for our virtual participants, seeing if there are any other questions.

Just want to say back what I heard from each of you.

We in the, what do you want to do as a, as a commission member?

We've heard from, from Raven and interest of bringing the community back into the conversation in a more robust way.

We've heard from Lars, the interest in deescalation and police reform efforts.

And we've heard from Lynn the need for policy changes in our accountability system.

So I really look forward to watching all of you work.

One thing I did want to lift up because of testimony that suggests something other than what I understand to be the case.

And this might be more of a question directed to you, Joel, because you are a current co-chair.

The CPC is currently engaged with a accountability assessment review as required by the the monitor, the consent decree monitor engaged along with the OIG and the OPA.

And there will be, again, a review of the functions and a set of recommendations.

And just wondering if you could just talk a little bit to that, because there seems to be this idea out there that this is not a system that is designed to evolve and improve, and that there's some sort of resistance to that.

And I know that is not the case.

Yes, there is currently an assessment that's underway at the moment, and the CPC has been involved in that assessment when asked.

We've been a happy participant.

My understanding is the assessment of the accountability system itself, of the three accountability partners, you have the CPC, OIG, OPA.

You also have Seattle Police Department, which is not an accountability entity, but it is part of the system as the supervisee.

The monitor, as far as I understand, has been working on this assessment to determine the long-term sustainability of this national model for accountability, this triad system, which is also part of the city and DOJ's court filing, that this is part of what they're trying to demonstrate to the judge, is that we have a robust and a sustainable system and how the city has modeled it in the 2017 Accountability Ordinance.

And as I said, the commission has participated in that assessment.

The individual leading that assessment, Dr. Rosenthal came to a public CPC meeting and we had a public discussion at the commission level talking about all of these issues and we've had also offline conversations.

So we very much look forward to that assessment.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate the laying of the framework for that assessment and I look forward to learning more about it.

All right, not seeing any other comments or questions.

Thank you again for your willingness to serve.

And with that, if there's no objections, I will move all three appointments together.

Council members, I move the committee recommends the confirmation of each appointment 02-505, 20-506, 02-508.

Is there a second?

Thank you, it has been moved and seconded.

I actually, I think I meet my, there's a transposed clerk file number, so I'm gonna do that again.

I move the committee recommends the confirmation of appointments 02505, 02506, and 02508. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you so much.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of appointments 02505, 02506, and 02508. And see if there are any additional comments.

Council Member Peterson, I see your, nope, okay, you're all set, great.

All right, well, with that, it's been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointments.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Or yes.

All right, congratulations.

The appointments will move to the full council meeting on April 17th.

And I really look forward to working with each and one of you.

Thank you.

Please read in agenda item number four.

Agenda item four is appointment 02496 appointment of Tanya Kim as director of human services department for a term to March 1st, 2027.

Thank you so much.

Good morning.

Morning.

We have with us Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington to speak to the appointment of Tanya Kim, also joining us to be Director of the Human Services Department.

Really appreciate you both being with us today.

Wanted to say a few context-setting words about the Human Services Department.

This is one of the largest contributors to Seattle's safety net, if not the largest contributor.

Investing hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to more than 200 community-based organizations and programs that support strong and healthy communities.

The Human Services Department also stewards city resources invested in public health Seattle King County and the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

The department has about 400 employees in four different divisions designed to deliver outcomes for their work to the community.

promote innovation and advance racial equity.

The four divisions are Aging and Disability Services, the Leadership and Administrative Division, Safe and Thriving Communities, and the Youth and Family Empowerment Division.

The person who is tasked with leadership of this very impactful department has no small job in front of her, Acting Director Kim has worked for the Human Services Department since 2010. and has been serving as interim acting director of HSD since September of 2021. She definitely knows the job, knows the challenge, and has already been leading the department through some of the city's most difficult days, pandemic and otherwise.

I really appreciate her willingness to continue leading as a confirmed director.

and just really have enjoyed sincerely working closely with you over these last few years and I'm really excited to see what you do next.

With that, I'll turn it over to Deputy Mayor Washington to kick us off.

Thank you.

Chair Herbold and Council Members, it is my pleasure to be before you today to introduce Mayor Harold's nominee for Director of the Seattle Human Services Department, Tanya Kim.

When I think of Tanya, I think of one word, unicorn.

That's how rare it is to find someone with a background in running a community-based nonprofit, someone who knows the human services department operations inside and out, and someone who is appreciated by her staff and has the trust of the provider community.

She is truly one of a kind, and we found her homegrown from within the department ranks.

just to illustrate the breadth of her experience since joining HSD in 2012. Trying to skip ahead in time.

She came from nonprofit and she served as a Senior Grants and Contracts Specialist, a Planning and Program Development Specialist, a Planning and Development Supervisor, a Human Services Program Supervisor, Division Director for Youth and Family Empowerment, Deputy Director, and now Interim Director since September 2021. Since taking the helm of the department, Tanya has brought stability, a commitment to racial equity, and an outcome-based approach to one of our most essential city departments.

And you don't have to take my word for it.

Before Mayor Harreld nominated her, our office consulted with community stakeholders, some in which you heard this morning.

Each and every one of them supported the mayor's decision to refer Tanya for your consideration today.

Those stakeholders included the Seattle Human Services Coalition, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, Community Passageways, LEAD, the Ballard Food Bank, Southwest Youth and Family Services, the Chinese Information and Service Center, the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence, the Workforce Development Council, and formal council member and HSD director John Okamoto, who Tanya served as both an HSD employee and as a council legislative aide.

Council members, I found Tanya to be a calm, caring, transparent, and solution-oriented thought partner, and someone you want beside you when you're in a jam, just like when she and her team leapt in to support South Park neighbors who had their homes flooded by the King Tide.

I trust that after talking with her today and reviewing her record, you'll agree that Tanya Kim is the right choice to lead our Seattle Human Service Department.

She would be the first council confirmed director in the department since 2018, and I know she would take the responsibility seriously.

With that, I'll turn things over to Tanya to offer her introductory remarks before taking your questions today.

Normally I'm off script, but today I'm going to focus There are additional nerves and really it's a pleasure and an honor to be here.

And so I want to make sure I'm using our time wisely to field your questions too.

I first need to thank Mayor Harrell for the nomination to be the Human Services Department Director.

And of course, Deputy Mayor Washington for your opening remarks and your leadership and example.

And to Chair Herbold, I was here last week, emotional.

I will hold it, keep it together today.

But your leadership, long-time leadership, is a wonderful example, as well as partnership for the work that we do together.

And I appreciate you holding HSD to a high standard and not looking at the acting role as temporary, but really, holding us to that high bar throughout my my tenure here.

Most importantly, I am deeply grateful for friends at HSD.

You know, partners that are employees, as well as our community based organizations that we contract with.

and others who are in partnership in this work.

As you've heard, been over 12 years in various capacities in serving with people alongside with folks.

The Human Services Department for the viewing public offers really three core functions as a funder, as a convener, and as a direct service provider.

As a funder, we invest the majority of our budget, and then this year, it's approximately $250 million in contracts with our community-based partners.

As a convener, we do bring thought partners and policy leaders together to really meet the challenges of our community.

And one example is the Domestic Violence Prevention Council in which Chair Herbold and I co-chair along with Chief Diaz and City Attorney Davison co-chairing that work.

Direct services, it's really also, along with funding, the bread and butter of what we do.

We offer direct services in the form of case management, a popular program, such as the utility discount program and youth employment, as well as crime victim advocacy, which is relatively new.

Those are just an example of the breadth of direct services that we also offer.

As acting, I've really focused, I mean, there's a lot of things that we've been doing, but some of the focus areas that I'm most proud of, frankly, is rebuilding our leadership team.

We are strong.

Some of you have heard, it's not just me that I bring to the table, it's the strong leaders who reflect the community, but also are some of the smartest, most dedicated public servants I've ever worked with.

And forgive me for one of my colleagues, but this is the dream team that I've taken that title.

The other is that it's been so important that we continue to build trust with our partners.

We've had some turnover and there's been some turbulence in the community and around the world.

And so maintaining strong relationships allows us to be in relationship and tackle those problems together as well as solutions.

So, you know, standing up and supporting the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

Standing up a new division within the Human Services Department to address community safety in a really strategic, thoughtful way are a couple examples of things that we've been focusing on.

If confirmed as director, I will continue focusing on building a strong culture at HSD and aligning with Mayor Harrell around excellence, positive relationships, and working to have an organization that is anti-racist.

Second, we're going to embark on, and this sounds nerdy, but it's so important, a strategic planning process.

We have a strategic plan that is pre-COVID, pre-pandemic, and since then, things have changed and expectations are greater.

We need a clear roadmap.

The landscape is complex and it's not simple, and I'm here to partner with you.

Again, I wanna thank Mayor Harrell for his confidence in me, Deputy Mayor Washington.

I look forward to partnering, continuing partnering with council, all members, as well as the committee, and most importantly, my dedication to our employees, as well as our partners that we have today and tomorrow.

And with that, I thank you for considering my nomination and happy to take any questions.

Thank you so much.

Just want to say.

I know you're a person who it's sometimes difficult to hear such wonderful things about your leadership.

But for me, it was really great to hear everybody come out in support of you.

And you are a person that just really exemplifies one of the reasons why I love doing public service and working with the city family, because you are definitely somebody that I've learned a lot from.

With that, I just want to let the viewing public know that there were written questions that were provided to the nominee.

The written questions and answers were circulated to all council offices and the public can find them linked on today's agenda.

You did a great job of answering the questions.

Many of them were submitted by other council offices, myself, and some members of the public.

While I'm looking to see whether or not my colleagues might have any questions, I think maybe I'll just kick us off.

One of the questions that was asked was, what do you believe are some of the biggest challenges that the Human Services Department is facing and how will you tackle them?

Your answers included addressing the lack of permanent leadership and significant turnover and the impact on staff morale, growing substance abuse in the community, growing impacts of sheltered and unsheltered homelessness on people living unsheltered, as well as the community's financial constraints due to a recovering economy.

And I'm also wondering whether or not you could speak a little bit to HSD's ongoing measures to strengthen your financial policies.

challenges and opportunities with regards to the financial policies.

So I think the first order of business was to ensure that we had a seasoned skilled and connected CFO to really be able to take the improvement plan that we were operating under to the next level.

And so we've had wonderful colleagues in the past, but really having that stable leadership to work with our team was really critical.

We had outside consultant work with us to identify the improvement areas.

And it was also during the pandemic.

And so just like many other organizations, we were struggling to maintain staffing levels and also adapt some changes.

And it really does take a really skilled courageous leader to make that transformational change.

And we've secured a wonderful CFO who's been working with her team to do those process improvements.

So there have been some structural changes.

We've increased staffing levels.

Thank you to council for that support as well, because our budget has wildly also increased over the years and is settling now.

We have new While we had written policy and procedures, we've had to adapt and really be clear, more importantly, around the segregation of duties and Frankly, just billing even on time with accuracy to ensure that there was stable cash flow.

And I'm really proud to say that, you know, the team has worked through some sweat and tears.

Hopefully there is no blood.

But I think that we've come a long way.

And this is the first year that we didn't need, for example, And I don't know the technical term of it, but, you know, cash flow assistance, because we've been able to rectify a lot of these longstanding, I mean, wait, these are years in the making.

I think over 10 years in the making longstanding issues that the department has grappled with.

And so whereas in the past couple years, We've had to take out some additional loans and support to keep afloat at year end and so we've been able to turn this around quite quickly.

I will say that what's more important, aside from implementing the improvement plan, it's holding it steady, and the continuity of ensuring that we have the systems in place over the course of the year, it becomes then normalized to do process improvement, to do trainings, and to have the appropriate reporting that's necessary.

So It might not seem exciting or important to the outside world, but as a funder, convener, and a direct service provider, it is imperative that our operations are strong as public stewards.

And so I appreciate the question and the attention that we've been able to give to our operations.

Thank you.

Council Member Nelson.

I'd like to know more about the strategic planning process that you mentioned in your opening remarks, because that really excited me.

You said that HSD's functions are three pronged.

I believe you said funding and convening and direct services.

And that is true.

That's what It's been a lot of time doing, however, my interactions with you over the past year and a quarter have I'm impressed with how you see what's going on in the city and the policy.

I don't know what's what's missing from those three.

I think there should be a fourth one, which is weighing in on, OK, so what should we actually do?

And so I'm wondering if If your strategic planning, will that will that include some forward thinking about, you know, addressing our problems?

I love your question.

I love your question about forward thinking and recognizing the policy work that we embark on.

You know, it's so in preparation for today, there's a lot of reflection, right?

And to come out of a pandemic and to really meet the needs of community, particularly around community safety and being better partnership and being aligned with community has been so important.

But we have been, because of the turnover and because of these emergencies, we have been reactive.

Yeah.

And It's okay to be reactive in times of need.

But it's not sustainable.

And we're now in a recovery period.

And it's our responsibility to, number one, engage community and you to develop a clear vision and a path.

on how we're going to be able to execute and prioritize.

Our budget is relatively large and it's a budget.

We have lots of need and so it's important that we are really clear about what we're gonna focus on in the next few years and how we're gonna measure that.

The other thing that we've talked so much about is stability.

To me, I'm already thinking about my transition.

I know that sounds strange.

But I thought, OK, so I'm serving now as acting.

I'm being considered as permanent.

I'm on my way out.

And what's really important to me is that this department and the community has the stability that it needs in order to succeed beyond one leader or beyond one person's vision, that it's a collective.

And so regardless of the transition, My team is set up really well and the future teams are set up well.

And so to me, a strategic plan is one way in which we can communicate what our priorities are.

We could build our work plans around that.

And then we're held accountable to that work and it won't be stagnant.

It will be a living document.

And we're going to come and hopefully be asked to present at council on our progress.

Thank you.

So much.

Um, let's see here looking to see if there are any further questions.

I do have a couple others, but just, um.

Not wanting to, um.

Keep out others that may have questions from council members.

here but okay so moving on to the line of questioning in in the questions document related to the issue of sometimes the RFP process results in gaps in services and really appreciate that you leaned into the area of technical assistance and the role that that can play.

And you have certainly elevated doing that as a matter of business in your time as leader of the department and really appreciate that.

And that has had really good outcomes and ensuring that we are making funds for services available to smaller organizations that are reaching deep into Different diverse communities throughout our city and that's really, really important.

But I wanted to explore with you the idea of.

Situations where services must be tailored for specific populations in order to be effective.

and how we can make sure that we're not in a situation where, because of our competitive RFP process, where there's a possibility for these critical services that only particular organizations can provide not being funded and creating a services cliff for those communities.

And I'm wondering whether or not there are different ways to design a funding allocation and procurement process that's perhaps not competitive, but still holds organizations receiving funding to meet accountable measures with outcomes that are demonstrated and transparent.

One thing that has been suggested is formula grants that are used at different levels of government and just wondering whether or not you could speak to that as a possibility to explore further.

Again, these are approaches to funding services that there's a formula that is considered And it's it's not competitive, it's intended to make sure that all of the.

all of the different communities that you want to make sure are receiving services for funding for these services are are are addressed and just it's been noted to me as an innovative area that we might want to consider moving into it would like to know your thoughts.

I think the short answer is yes.

How can we improve our processes of investing in community?

Because we're not here, although I recognize that there are barriers to receiving funds, that's not our purpose.

Our purpose is to ensure that the resources are accessible so communities can do their best work, you know, community-driven solutions.

And so anything that can offer improvements, we have to be open to learning more.

and learning the best ways in which we can allocate dollars.

And if that yields then, you know, a way through the formula grants, if they're through direct contracts, if there are spaces where innovation and a call, an open call is warranted, I think having access to different tools for different types of services should should be on the table.

I think what's really important, too, is ensuring that, of course, HSD, I'm responsible for also following the appropriate city codes as well as being transparent with the community on why we're approaching the funding allocation the way in which we are.

And being transparent about the impacts of that.

And so I've had a lot of experience in writing for grants and being a recipient myself, having done the planning work and was leading a request for proposals, as well as seeing kind of the policy impacts that we have just in general, especially more in recent times.

There's always lessons learned.

And so the short answer is yes, I would love to explore different opportunities.

We haven't started our strategic planning process.

We've planted seeds.

We're focusing on work plans and other things.

But this has risen to the top, the way in which we're doing our funding processes.

I will also say what's risen to the top is the way in which we're monitoring contracts because it's the full cycle.

And so when there are organizations who are struggling Our go-to can't be punitive.

It really needs to be a place of how do we partner to strengthen your organization and at the same time balancing accountability and being okay and transparent and doing the hard work to say when there are organizations who are not delivering on their performance metrics so we can free up those dollars for other evidence-based programming.

And so it's the full cycle that we're going to be looking at.

All right, well, those are the questions I had for you today.

And just again, pausing to see if any of our remote participants have virtual hands raised.

Not seeing any.

I'm going to go forth and move the nomination.

So, with that committee members, I move that the committee recommends the confirmation of appointment of time to Kim as director of the human services department.

Is there a 2nd?

2nd?

Thank you.

Has been moved and 2nd to recommend confirmation of time Kim as director of the human services department.

Are there any additional comments?

I have one.

Go ahead.

Now is when I just say thank you.

I appreciate you being willing to stay on.

The continuity of your experience, knowledge, understanding, and commitment to the city is important right now.

And so I enthusiastically support this appointment.

And in addition to thanking you for your willingness to stay on and really lean into the permanent leadership role, I wanna thank also everybody involved in the confirmation process.

And if you could please extend my thanks to Mayor Harrell, I'd appreciate that as well.

With that, I will, the clerk, please call the roll.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Chair Herbold.

Yes.

Or in support.

All right, great.

So the appointment will move to the full council meeting on April 17th.

You are welcome to join us and we'll be in touch to see whether or not you plan to join us and do all that stuff where you can be at the mic and we'll waive the rules and hear from you and any of your guests that you might wanna bring with you.

All right, thank you so much.

Will the clerk please read in agenda item number five.

Agenda item five, ongoing assessments and proposed consent decree agreement on sustained compliance.

Thank you very much.

The presenters can please join us at the table.

Thank you.

Okay, so I'm going to be bringing this Over here.

Okay, so why don't you share the screen?

Do you want me to just start now?

Yeah, why don't you do that?

Yes.

So,

Just left and right.

Greetings, thank you for being with us here today.

Just just some opening remarks want to give the framework for your joining us today.

We've asked you to present about 1 element of the proposed agreement on sustained compliance.

For the viewing public, it is a proposed agreement only at this point, and it requires the approval of the court.

It is possible that the city could exit the consent decree after the work items listed in the agreement are completed.

And all of that said, I think it's really important to lift up the work of the inspector general and the work that will be done under this agreement as work that the court-appointed consent decree monitor has been doing previously to review the performance of SPD on a variety of specific metrics and how that will be transitioning to being done by the Office of the Inspector General.

Again, underscore two key points.

If the city exits the consent decree, First of all, review work will be continuing moving forward.

And secondly, it will be transitioning to a city run system, which can allow for additional areas of focus beyond the court mandated areas.

So, I think that's really exciting to think about.

and exciting to hear more from you about how you plan to move into this new regime.

Really appreciate your detailed presentation.

And with that, I'll let you take it away.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good morning.

Good morning, Council Members.

I do really appreciate the opportunity to come and have what is probably the first of many conversations about this work.

The scope of it is very broad, and right now, you know, we're We've been working with the monitor to start visioning what this work might look like, but it's very much wet cement right now, as you've described with the agreement.

And so I want to talk about various aspects of it and just sort of get the conversation started.

But I would also like to take this opportunity to let my deputy introduce herself to this committee.

Thanks so much.

Good morning, council members.

I'm Bessie Marie Scott.

I'm the new deputy inspector general for public safety.

I'm just starting here with inspector general judge and coming from the last three years of the public defenders association.

And prior to that being the policy director of the CPC and the interim director of the CPC.

So it's great to be here and I'm looking forward to jumping back into this work.

Got a lot to do and I'm excited to do it.

Thanks so much.

Thank you, Bessie.

So just to get started, we really have kind of put the work ahead of us into three sort of major categories, the first one being working on the things that have been specifically identified in the agreement on sustained compliance that was filed by the city on March 28th.

And so there are a couple of discrete items that we're responsible for producing by the summertime.

And then there are some more general concepts that include developing review processes to sort of transition that role of oversight from the court monitor to the Office of Inspector General.

And those are in this bucket are kind of those main pillar areas of the consent decree, including things like use of force, supervision, persons in crisis.

You know those kinds of main issues there so we're working on developing what will be some assessments that look somewhat like the assessments that have historically been produced by the monitor, but also starting to develop ways.

to transition away from those very large, very labor-intensive assessment periods to more of an ongoing feedback loop, an ongoing system of providing input, direction, critique, and ongoing review of policies for the Seattle Police Department.

So it's going to be sort of a hybrid in that second bullet of work for us.

And then the consent decree over the last 10 years has really focused on only a few areas of the police department and really largely on patrol functions.

And so there's a whole other, there's a lot of the rest of the police department that needs attention.

And so we are in this work visioning how we create new review processes to provide that ongoing feedback loop to SPD to provide transparent oversight to community of SPD systems that have not yet been subject to the kind of oversight that was provided under the consent decree.

So just to kind of move through those, the first items that were responsible for producing under that agreement, if it is approved by the court, is working with the monitor, developing our own work plan.

We want to make sure that we're continuing robust, independent monitoring of SPD.

And we've got some subject matter areas that we have to focus on under this agreement.

The first of those that we'll be producing a report on is use of force.

As I mentioned, we also have to work on crisis intervention, stops and detentions, bias-free policing and supervision.

So that work plan will be due to be filed with the court by June 30th.

We have been working on our methodology right now.

And I think what's left to do is work with SPD and the monitor on a timeline for these work products.

As I mentioned, the use of force assessment that we'll be producing has to be provided to the court in July.

Beyond that, we've got a lot of work to do to establish what our ongoing time frame will be for these assessments.

We also have some obligations with regard to SPD reporting and data.

So we wanna make sure that we continue that ongoing assessment of the data that SPD provides to community.

They've got some pretty robust dashboards right now where this information is available to the community in an ongoing basis, but it's gonna be our job to do quality assurance of that data and to work with SPD and community to make sure that it is transparent and understandable for folks.

This first use of force assessment we're doing SPD will provide an analysis of their use of force data and we will do quality assurance testing of that and that's part of that report that will be filed on July 31st with the court.

Then in sort of a more general sense, the agreement talks about many of the obligations that we will have to ensure ongoing use of forest assessments.

So in the report that we'll be producing in the summer, we are going to have a number of components in that report.

One will be that data analysis by SPD that's quality checked by OIG.

And then some qualitative information that we want to provide.

We want to start providing real in-depth looks at some of the systems.

And so our first effort there will be producing a subway map of the investigation and review of uses of force.

So from the time that force is used through the whole process of investigation and review, we will have a subway map as part of that report and a report on the force review board process.

And right now we're still visioning what the report might include that will take a look at the force review unit, which takes a look at a little more in depth at lower levels of force that aren't type threes and also reviews and investigations by the chain of command of minor uses of force.

So that will be folded into this as well.

And that report will be produced for the court this summer.

And if anybody has any questions about this, as we move through, I'm happy to take those.

Sure, let's pause.

I have a couple that have popped up.

First, I just want to say I really appreciate that you're going to be working on the use of force assessments using the 2021 and 2022 data.

The reports that the filings rely on.

In many of these areas, including crisis incidents and Terry shot stops rely on a 2020 report that's.

2019 data.

So it's really important, I think, for the community as well as all the internal stakeholders to really understand what this data says about the current state of policing in Seattle.

And we aren't going to know that until we're looking at the more current data.

So thank you for that.

I did want to Just touch on the issue of bias policing.

It's flagged on slides.

Let's see here.

Going back slide three on the monitoring work plan and, you know, just in general, I think it's important to recognize that we do have In the context of the consent decree, we do have Terry stop data and there are dashboards and there's been regular reporting through the consent decree process on the Terry stops data.

But and that's when there's reasonable suspicion that a person may have committed a crime, but.

There hasn't been reports on traffic stops non Terry stop stops, and that is required by an ordinance that the Council passed.

I think it was back in 2017 under the leadership of then Councilmember Harold and former Councilmember Gonzalez.

And that reporting is, I think the ordinance requires that the information be made available to the OIG and I believe the CPC.

I understand that, you know, through my advocacy with the department.

There was a, there was a lot of difficulty in collecting this information, because techno technological barriers for a while, they I think they were actually working to manually collect it.

But now I understand that they're starting mid-year in 2021. They do have the information and I'm hoping that that next step has been taken in that that data has been made available to the OIG for analysis and examination.

Just want to confirm that.

Yes, that information is being used by OIG in the traffic stop work that we're doing.

And I would like to appreciate the efforts of you and your office in pushing the issue of electronic collection of traffic stop data, because it really was kept in paper format and unusable prior to the summer of 2021. And I think in large part due to your diligence and your efforts in So, emphasizing the importance of that issue SPD began collecting that data.

And that has been very useful for us in our traffic stop work that will continue on.

We've been on a little bit of a pause, trying to get up to speed on some of this monitoring transition development work.

But yes, that is going to be.

A critical piece, bias and disparity are very important components of all of the work product of OIG.

And so one of the things that we'll be doing is making sure that that information is available and transparent to the public.

Thank you.

And just take this opportunity to thank you for the work that you did convening community stakeholders around the issue of traffic stops and your success with the Seattle Police Department and Chief Diaz announcing the change in policy around traffic stops at the end of 2021. In the work group that the OIG convened, an analysis that SDOT did of court records showed that 21% of court tickets were for black individuals, three times the population of Seattle.

So really looking forward to seeing how the department's new policy on traffic stops is impacting this area of disparity because one of the One of the interesting things I think about the the path that we're taking in this new stage or proposed new stage in the consent decree is that we are we're leaning into we're embracing one of the issues that we actually have not been In 2022, we weren't officially dinged on, which is bias policing.

The court kind of walked right up to the line and did not actually have specific findings requiring us to do reporting on this.

I think it's partially out of recognition that criminal legal system disparities are The foundation for them is so vast.

But this work is, I think, is proving that there is something that we can do within the criminal legal system to minimize disparity.

Perhaps not get rid of it altogether, but work really hard to limit it and reduce it.

So really appreciate your leadership in that area.

Thank you, and thank you for your partnership in that work.

If there are no other questions up to now, I'll move on.

So a couple of areas remain of concern to the court.

One of those is use of force in the crowd management context and SPD's responses to protest situations.

And also the second item is accountability and ensuring that the City of Seattle has a robust accountability system.

I apologize, every time I turn to look at you, my voice sort of fades in and out.

And so the first couple slides here are gonna focus on the work that we need to do to demonstrate to the court that we've got effective oversight on this issue of using force in a crowd management context.

So we will be publishing the fourth and final Sentinel Event Review Report, which will cover waves four and five of the protest.

It is with community readers right now and in final edits, so I anticipate within the next week or two, we will see that with the last of the recommendations to SPD.

Once that's happened, and we've had a couple of meetings with SPD already, They have a fairly large matrix because I think we've made in excess of 200 recommendations around protests with them.

We'll be following up on implementation, and that's a requirement of this agreement filed with the court that SPD implement the Sentinel Event Review recommendations or provide rationales for not implementing some of the recommendations.

So we'll be doing that work.

We will be continuously working with them to assess their policies and their training as these Sentinel event review recommendations are implemented.

And we will be working with them to develop processes when you've got a situation where there are large-scale uses of force so that they're appropriately reported They're appropriately investigated and there's transparency around them.

I think, you know, the monitor acknowledged and everybody acknowledged that the system was so overwhelmed that there was not adequate investigation and review of uses of force during the 2020 protests.

So we're going to have to come up with a system that ensures that there's appropriate oversight in those circumstances.

Thank you.

And I did want to just lift up, um, the separate section of the agreement in the joint.

Department of justice and city filing that notes that revamped crowd management policies will be developed and considered this year.

And it goes on to say, I quote, these policies will include recent recommendations from the inspector general Sentinel event review, recent changes to state law.

and the changes deriving from ordinance 1264.22.

So that is the, those are the policies that SPD is developing to align with the less lethal weapons ordinance that the council passed in 2021.

Yes, and thank you for that.

It was a team effort from all to respond to those situations.

Thank you very much.

We are also intending to transition the Sentinel event review process Because it was such a fantastic way to problem solve with police and community into piloting a process for officer involved shootings, where there is a crisis nexus.

We think there's much to be learned by involving community members and subject matter experts in.

you know, many of the upstream factors that can contribute to, uh, a tragic situation and an officer involved shooting with someone in crisis.

So we're hoping to, um, replicate the great results that we had with our protests at an element review to better understand, you know, how we can, uh, maybe tweak things in the system.

Maybe we can better understand parts of the system that will inform system change.

So we can, uh, reduce the likelihood of, of those kinds of tragic events.

As I mentioned, we wanna make sure that we're including mental health professionals and people with subject matter expertise in these conversations, as well as like the Sentinel Event Review, including members of the Seattle Police Department from the highest level of ranks down to community service officers and folks who are dealing with these situations in real time, so that we make sure that we understand the perspectives that they have and the situations they're faced with, and that the recommendations that come out of this process are viable and implementable.

And as I mentioned, the other area that the court remains concerned with is having accountability for misconduct and having systems in place that ensure that misconduct is followed up on, officers who commit misconduct are held accountable, and that we have systems that make these processes transparent for our community.

So you may remember that we produced a discipline audit in 2021, so we'll be doing some follow-up to see what has happened with those recommendations and assessing at this point the need for additional work.

One of the things that we've identified already is there has been some legislation around decertification issues and decertification was one of the components of our audit.

So we'll be doing a deeper dive into that to make sure that SPD has appropriate systems to ensure that where decertification is appropriate, it's happening.

A quick question about that.

Really appreciated the discipline audit and the work that Dan Pitts did on it.

It's a really great piece of work.

There were a number of comments that weren't identified as recommendations exactly, but rather matters for consideration.

One example, I think, was the issue of not a specific chief, but the trend or pattern of chiefs going back.

several generations of police chiefs tending to apply the lower end of proposed disciplinary ranges.

And another one was that the OPA doesn't have an appropriate category for finding minor violations of policy.

I'm wondering whether or not you're going to be returning to those items in potentially actually making some recommendations or whether or not you intend to keep using the areas for consideration.

If so, if you are, I'm not being critical of that, just wondering if you could give us a little bit, not now, but in the future, if you're going to continue to use the term of art matters for consideration, what the expectation is?

for policymakers and the other accountability members for how we should treat matters for consideration.

Sure.

I think we tend to use those when perhaps the data is not clear enough to indicate that a recommendation is appropriate or necessary.

We use them sometimes where it's really not an area that a recommendation would be useful or appropriate, but we want to daylight and spotlight a certain thing that we want awareness.

So it's used for a variety of purposes that I hope are useful, but certainly taking in your feedback now, and we're pretty careful about making sure if we make a recommendation in an audit, it is backed up by data demonstrating that there is a demonstrable problem that can be fixed by a recommendation versus maybe a trend we're seeing where, you know, We're not quite sure yet, but it looks like it could potentially lead to problems or issues down the line.

With respect to the items for consideration that were mentioned in the discipline audit, this will be a really good time to refresh the data in terms of this current chief's trend in discipline.

And so I think that's one of those issues that we'll be revisiting for follow-up work.

Thank you.

I have asked the current OPA director to daylight that information since the closed case summaries are in fact closed case that identifying what the recommended discipline is by the committee is something that could appear on those forms and Director Betz is considering that request.

Great.

Yeah, we will certainly be working with them in that process.

So thank you.

And then I mentioned there's the rest of the department that is deserving of attention and feedback.

So some of the things that we're already working on is working with SPD and OPA to improve investigative policies and practices.

One of the big ones is the interviewing and interrogation work that we've done to adopt the peace model that's used in the UK.

Hoping to pick that work back up again and develop some policies around it.

And some of that work will involve limiting deception, using deception in interrogation.

So that's going to be really important work that will be upcoming for us.

You know, we really haven't looked at any of the practices in the Investigative Services Bureau yet.

So we'll be looking at things like their eyewitness identification procedures, you know, their case closure rates.

We had some issues that developed last summer with sexual assault cases.

So we want to make sure that we have eyes on the effectiveness of other bureaus within the Seattle Police Department, not just the Patrol Bureau.

We will continue our work on traffic stops.

We've actually got a conflicting meeting going on with the Veer Institute right now with some work that they and Council Member Mosqueda's office are embarking on.

And so hopefully that can inform this continued work that we're doing.

As I mentioned, using deception by officers has been an issue for us.

We wrote an alert letter to the chief, I think a couple of years ago, and we've convened a number of round tables and made recommendations to SPD for their roost policy that's in development right now.

And we will continue that work so that we can make sure that all of the other various ways in which officers interact with folks have attention on use of deception and when it's appropriate, when it's not appropriate.

There has been very little attention paid to SPD's collision review process.

So we will turn some attention to that.

I've talked about the Investigations Bureau already and then other audit projects and work that we'll do to make sure that constitutional policing is happening in other areas that haven't really gotten attention.

One, and this was at the request, of Council Member Herbold, thank you very much for this.

The Youth Rights Ordinance that was passed by Council, you had asked OIG to take a look at compliance and effectiveness of SPD's training and policy on making sure that they were affording young people their ability to consult with counsel before waiving rights and answering questions.

So that one is that audit is scheduled to be released probably in Q2, and that will touch on bias and disparity.

It will touch on stops and detentions of young people and shed a lot of light on the the access that young people have to meaningful Miranda rights when they're in SPD custody.

So thank you for that.

Then I mentioned already the decertification issues that we'll be taking a look at.

And I think that's about it for this conversation on substantive work on the near horizon.

I would like to thank the council, and also a mayor and their leadership for giving us some staffing to take on these additional There's quite a body of work that's going to come with assuming this monitoring work as it transitions.

So we have been given three FTEs for this, one team lead and a couple of policy analysts.

We're in the process of hiring right now.

So hoping that in the next month or so, we will be fully staffed and ready to take on all of this work.

So I very much appreciate the opportunity to come and talk about this.

And if you have any other questions, I'm happy to take those.

Thanks so much and just want to give a shout out to the executive for recognizing the staffing needs associated with taking on all of this extra work and working to approve emergency positions in order to do so.

I think it's important to note that average spending on doing this work under the consent decree has been around $80,000 a year.

And so, there will be assuming we are successful in the course forward.

There will be some savings to the city associated with transitioning to.

Yes, big thanks to the executive and to counsel.

Appreciate that.

So I think the one thing that I would like to say is the consent decree has gotten us to a certain point.

But I think that we have a tremendous opportunity to really take some of those core principles that have been applied to certain very limited aspects of Seattle Police Department operations and really expand them and have a robust, complete system of accountability for the entire police department that allows us to innovate, to have flexibility, to be responsive to the needs of communities.

So I think this is a tremendous amount of work, but a massive moment of opportunity.

for the city and it is really exciting work and I appreciate all the support.

Thank you.

And I'm excited to have both of you at the helm as we make this transition.

It's great to have been able to work with you and I look forward to working with you again more, Deputy Director Smith.

Any other comments or questions?

All right.

Excellent.

With that, Thank you so much and we'll move on to the next item on our agenda.

Will the clerk please read in agenda item six.

Agenda item six, unreinforced masonry program first quarter update.

Thank you so much.

I will do some introductory remarks as folks are joining us at the table.

Just as background resolution 32033 passed by council in 2021. guides the city in creating a unreinforced masonry retrofit program.

The resolution included a request for quarterly updates on the program design in December of 2022, both OEM and Office of Emergency Management and Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections.

attended a public safety and human services committee to introduce Amanda Herzfeld, hired to manage the development of our city's URM program.

And today, Amanda Herzfeld is returning with representatives with the director of the Seattle Department of Construction Inspections and representatives from the Alliance for Safety, Affordability, and Preservation, otherwise known as ASAP.

Thank you all for joining us.

If you could each please introduce yourselves.

And I think Seattle Department of Construction Inspections is going to kick off the presentation.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Amanda Hertzfeld, URM Program Manager with SDCI.

Good morning.

Nathan Paulsen, Director of Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections.

Good morning.

Natalie Bohol, Technical Codes Manager with SDCI.

Good morning, Peter Nitze, standing in as best I can for Lisa Nitze, co-founder of the Alliance for Safety, Affordability and Preservation and head of Nitze Stagen.

Thank you.

OK, I'm going to go ahead and kick it off.

So we were last here on January 12th before this committee, and it feels like every week.

Madam Chair.

Yes.

I don't think that microphone is on.

Sorry, Madam Chair.

Maybe just on now.

Got it.

Great.

Perfect.

We were last year on January 12 before your committee, and it feels like every week, we are reminded of the importance and the urgency of this issue.

On February 6, we saw the devastating impacts of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, which claimed far too many lives.

And then on February 28, that marked the 22nd anniversary of the Nizkali earthquake, obviously, which had an impact on our region.

Since January 12th, we have made good progress on this effort.

Amanda is going to talk shortly about where we are on the technical standard.

We know that some in our community are anxious to move forward as quickly as possible and make upgrades to their unreinforced masonry buildings, and they have the resources to do that now, but they're just waiting to know what the actual technical standard that they need to upgrade to.

For many others, they are going to need more time.

They're going to need more time to put together private resources and public resources, and that's why we have sort of a timeframe for coming into compliance, depending on the use of that unreinforced masonry building which Amanda will talk about in a minute and which we've talked about before.

Since we were last before you we have set up several working groups, made up of city staff and also many people in the community.

We have a communications working group funding working group, and also an owner and tenants group.

We really appreciate the support of Council Member Herbold on this important issue and of the Public Safety and Homelessness Committee.

And also really appreciate the work of ASAP under the leadership of Peter and Lisa Nitze.

And they definitely have the energy and the wherewithal to appropriately push the public sector forward on this issue.

And also just wanted to recognize that the Office of Emergency Management is an important co-sponsor in this effort, but we recognize our role as the regulatory agency that needs to move this issue forward.

So I'm going to turn it over to Amanda, who is going to go through today's presentation.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Good morning again.

I wanted to start by just doing a quick refresher on Resolution 32033 that was passed in December 2021. Thank you very much to Council Member Herbold for your support on that.

That was a really important step forward towards a seismically resilient Seattle.

So thank you for that.

This resolution does ask the city to develop not only the definition of unreinforced masonry buildings to and to identify the retrofit standard, a categorization system, a timeline for compliance, and an enforcement strategy.

A lot of that is part of our technical standard.

I'll speak to that in just a moment.

But the resolution also asks us to identify a variety of potential funding sources to reduce the financial burden on business owners to the extent financially feasible.

This is a very complex process.

And I'll speak to that in a few slides as well.

So to break out this work, as Nathan mentioned, we have two tracks.

We have a technical track and we have the policy development track.

And I will speak to both of those.

So the technical track is the development of the technical standard.

And we recently just shared the draft of that with the Structural Engineering Association of Washington, their Earthquake Engineering Committee, and they are currently reviewing that.

We have a meeting scheduled in a couple weeks to review their feedback.

That draft standard includes two options for building owners in the baseline retrofit standard.

So they can either do the comprehensive method, which is an alignment with the Seattle existing building code, the reduced seismic forces of the substantial alteration piece.

or they can do the alternate method.

In the past, you may have heard BoltsPlus.

This is a little bit more than BoltsPlus.

It would be BoltsPlus plus frame plus some other things.

So changing the name, alternate method.

And that requires the anchoring of the walls to the floors and the roof that we are preventing out of plane movement and that parapets and other dangerous appendages also have to be braced.

A few things on this.

One, neither of these methods will contribute to the substantial alteration.

Very, very important.

The second, this is a baseline standard.

We do want to encourage building owners to retrofit to higher levels, but we wanted to recognize that with higher performance becomes higher costs.

And so this is a life safety standard, which is what the resolution does direct us to do.

I just want to take a pause.

It's very significant, I think, that we have landed on a proposed alternate standard.

I think that was a big focus of the conversation a few years ago.

And there was, I think, differing opinions.

And so I'm really looking forward to this proposed alternate standard.

They're becoming some community consensus around this.

other path that is still safe, but potentially less costly.

Yeah, we would not have been able to develop that standard without a lot of support from our local engineering community.

There's been a lot of subject matter experts providing volunteer time and helping us develop that.

So, in order to get the standard out as soon as possible, as Nathan mentioned, we have a lot of building owners that have put on hold their retrofits because they did not want to retrofit and then have to come back later.

So, we will have that standard done this summer, and we are Eager to get a director's rule on the books by the end of the year that will establish that baseline standard in ahead of the ordinance, so that building owners don't have to wait, they, they will have the standard, they will know what they will be held to.

So moving on a bit from the technical piece, the funding component is just one layer of the URM onion.

In addition, it takes about two years to retrofit a structure, to retrofit a URM building.

And as you know, we have over 1,100 buildings with over 22,000 residents in them.

So asking folks to, Asking folks to retrofit and relocate their tenants when there is already a lack of affordable housing is a really big concern.

So we want to minimize impact on our vulnerable populations and just really recognize that obviously if there is an earthquake, our already disadvantaged populations will be further disadvantaged.

But there is a lot of complexity involved in doing these retrofits and reducing impacts.

So in order to identify solutions and pathways to overcome those, we've developed a series of working groups.

Nathan mentioned some of them.

We have the communications working group.

And this group is working on a couple of different items.

One is they're working to develop some case studies that are neighborhood specific so that we can help build local support and relationships about the benefit of these retrofits and make it a locally understood and supported effort.

We're also working on a communication strategy.

So that folks understand both the science of the hazard as well as their resources available to them to retrofit.

We have a funding working group that has 2 subgroups.

1 is focused on the ASAP proposal of transfer of development rights, retrofit credits, and we have a big meeting today to really get into the weeds.

OPCD is really helping us with that.

We have a grant and finance subgroup, and we have a meeting coming up where we're focusing on what FEMA grants are potential, what eligibility requirements are and timelines.

We also have some discussions about HUD funding as well as CPACER.

Our last group is the owner and tenant needs working group.

And that group is really focused on addressing the physical and economic displacement.

So we have a meeting coming up where we are looking at some sample real life example retrofits, how they were funded, how they handled tenant relocation, what was successful and what wasn't to help guide our work going forward.

Could we pause there for a second?

Can you just give us some examples of what you've learned from other cities that have required URM retrofits and how they've dealt with impacts to tenants in those buildings?

I mean, we have a tenant relocation assistance ordinance.

I have a feeling that we are going to need to explore other policies, and that's not going to be a sufficient approach.

But just interested to know, broad strokes, What you've learned from policies in other cities.

That's a great question.

So, we know in LA the way they rolled out their ordinance, it resulted in a lot of demolitions.

So that's one of the reasons I think our resolution is focused on historic preservation as well.

San Francisco has a, so they passed a local bond.

I know that's not an option for us, but I've actually learned it wasn't utilized.

So, surprising, but they have rent control, so they limited only 2% of retrofit costs could be passed on to tenants.

Locally here in Seattle, I've been doing some research on the Yesler Terrace project and how they supported communities, supported the community in relocating, and we're looking at some options like that.

But I mean, as far as the actual costs associated with having to move for two years, is that, are those costs that we are looking at using the tenant relocation assistance as the model half costs, half paid by the property owner and half paid by the city to sort of partner in paying what the tenant is going to need in order to relocate?

Yeah, we are looking at the tenant relocation act assistance ordinance as our model for that.

I know there's been some other recommendations for things like potential voucher programs or something as well.

So we're still in the early phase stages of really understanding what resources there are and what resources additionally would be needed.

Yeah, love the idea of a potentially looking at the right to return model for yes or terrorists.

And just want to flag.

One of the limitations I know you're aware of the tent relocation assistance ordinances under state law, there are some limitations around income eligibility.

And I think the needs will be much greater than what is authorized under current state law.

Thank you for that.

So in addition to our working groups listed here, which just really quick, the amount of external stakeholder support that we have on this is really impressive.

We've got BOMA attending our meetings.

They've been really engaged.

We've got a number of developers engaged and supportive as well as historic preservation groups.

And then we have many city departments and council staff actually attending these meetings as well.

We also have internally, an interdepartmental team, and this group includes Office of Emergency Management, OPCD, as well as many others including Department of Neighborhoods, Housing, OSE, FAS, OED.

We brought in the Department of Transportation as well because of some recommendations from some of our Pioneer Square folks.

We also have the Budget Office and we've been working with the The IGA as well.

I'm working with the state relations team.

So, we really are trying to align programs within the city and align funding streams and identify where we can break down some silos to improve processes to support building owners throughout this throughout the retrofit process.

I also, with the transfer of development rights proposal, we're working very closely with OPCD and King County, and obviously we're working very closely with ASAP as well.

So with that, looking at some of our next steps.

We've just brought on our new structural plans engineer I think that's official tomorrow.

We're excited to have him, and we're actually hiring an intern to help us with some of our data to make our data a bit more organized, I'd like to get a dashboard on our website to track progress on our retrofits.

We are working this year on that tech standard and that director's rule.

We'll continue our policy development working groups and coordinating with our IDT and continue working with the mayor's office, other city departments, city council, and external stakeholders.

And we'll deliver our next progress update memo.

I think June is when that's due.

And so with that, any additional questions?

I think I'm interested in the transport development rights work.

Are there, I know there's often a question of the market for receiving sites and having too many sending sites being an issue.

What has your initial investigation on a new eligibility for transfer development rights policy led you to whether or not that's a viable option for us to pursue.

And you mentioned also work with King County.

What's the policy link on TDRs with King County?

Yeah, great, great question.

So a few things.

So King County does have their is their rural lands transferred development rights.

And we have a meeting this afternoon, actually, to to start asking these questions that you're asking when it comes to the the market rate for this.

You know, Seattle does have a TDR program in the district and in Uptown, and it hasn't been utilized.

So I think the NITSYs have with their, ASAP has in their proposal, some things that might actually make it more utilized, but I can't, I'm not the expert on this.

We have our first meeting today.

So I think I'll have some better answers to your question next time.

Peter, you want to take the- I don't know, there were a couple of slides here that- You have your own presentation?

All right.

You have slides?

I didn't bring them with me.

I can pull them up for you.

Thanks.

So while Amanda's pulling up the slides, I would like to acknowledge and join Nathan in thanking you, Council Member Herbold, for your ongoing staunch support for this.

initiative, which has been many years in gestating.

And I'm hopeful that we can see now, finally, the successful conclusion of these efforts, not just by us or by you, but by a number of folks, a number of policymakers over the past decades, really.

I think, as is apparent from the presentation we just heard, this is inherently a very complicated issue that's going to require fairly complicated and comprehensive approach to achieve success.

But I think it's important not to forget that, first and foremost, the presence of these 1,100-plus URM buildings is a public safety issue.

And as Nathan mentioned, it isn't a question of when we're going to have the next – excuse me, of whether we're going to have the next earthquake, but But when and the consequences of that, unless we address the longstanding threat posed by unreinforced masonry buildings, Seattle faces a prospect of widespread death and destruction, like what we saw in Turkey in early February as a result of the collapse of many of these seismically vulnerable buildings.

And of course, the impact of that destruction and potentially injury and death is disproportionately concentrated in neighborhoods that are largely underserved or economically vulnerable.

So if you look at the map, in fact, Amanda's map she displayed earlier, you can readily see that many of these buildings are in neighborhoods that have suffered lack of economic investment, that have not seen really improvements in their infrastructure.

for too long.

So I think I just want to sort of mention that, that that's really the driving force behind this effort, is the desire to ensure that people don't suffer what they did in Christchurch, what they did in Turkey, and have across the world, frankly.

There have, just since the beginning of February of this year, there have been 37 significant earthquakes across the globe, eight of which took place on the U.S.

West Coast.

So those were in Alaska and California predominantly.

But given the fault structures here in Washington, it's certain that at some point we're going to experience something like it.

Um, so to set the stage a little bit to the slides that I'll go through, um, policymakers here in Seattle and actually in all seismically vulnerable areas in the country have been aware of the threat for a long time.

Um, there was an ordinance passed back in the seventies that was ultimately repealed.

But there's been a lot of work done over the last 10 years, where committees were sponsored by the city to develop the very same technical standards and policy recommendations that we're looking at now.

Years later, the draft technical standards were first issued or most recently issued prior to this effort in 2012. So a little over 10 years ago.

And in 2017, the policy committee, the city-sponsored policy committee, published its report, which was anchored by the recommendation to enact an ordinance requiring seismic upgrades.

Important to note also, as Nathan has stated, that this provides up to seven years before you'd expect to see the retrofits completed.

So this is a long runway, frankly.

If we passed it today, you'd still have seven years to prepare.

And that's only for the most vulnerable buildings.

some of which have already been upgraded through state funding.

For example, a number of public buildings, public schools have already begun the process.

So there's a relatively few buildings that would need to be upgraded within the seven years following passage of the ordinance.

The majority would be 10, 11, 12, even 13 years.

This is a long runway, as I've stated, for.

So in 2018, about going on almost six years ago, We stood up the Alliance for Safety, Affordable and Preservation.

It was formed with a number of stakeholder groups.

So it included historic preservationists, engineers, structural engineers, GCs and construction companies, affordable housing developers and operators, developers, regulatory representatives.

We drew in, as you know, Council Member Herbold, we drew in many, many folks.

There were probably over a hundred people engaged over the last five years.

with a purpose specifically of building on the work that was done, the good work that was done by the technical and policy committees that the city had established in the early teens, but to develop more detailed recommendations specifically for how a mandatory upgrade program could be successfully implemented, because the devil is in the details here.

as everybody at the table knows.

And we recognize that any successful program would need to include ways to deal with the implications of mandating seismic upgrades, including, as has been noted, the physical and economic displacement of people living and working in those buildings, expediting regulatory approval, given the already very extended timelines to get regular projects approved.

This would add an additional burden.

And identifying and overcoming the engineering challenges, including how best to apply the standards that we talked about earlier.

But the single largest hurdle we knew we'd have to clear is providing incentives and support, financial support, to property owners to offset this significant cost, because this will be expensive.

So now I turn to the slide.

I'm not going to read each bullet, but suffice it to say that sort of the germ of an idea that was formed in early 2018 was, how do we make use of a public right, if you like, or a public policy choice, which was exercised under MHA as an example, to grant upzones in a city that, in my opinion, I express this as my opinion, only desperately needs upzoning.

And how can, rather than giving those away, can we use those to address a public concern or a public issue?

In this case, preserving and protecting these often historic, extraordinary buildings throughout the city, which really form the character of the city, in my view.

Hence the P in ASAP.

It's based on the same approach as TDR, but I don't think the OPCD, our friends at OPCD would necessarily disagree, but it would broaden.

The existing TDR program is quite narrow.

It involves a number of, if you like, beneficiaries.

So green spaces, landmark buildings, daycare centers.

There are a variety of beneficiaries, if you like.

And just navigating the requirements of purchasing and using TDRs is a daunting task, I would say.

So for this to work, I think we are proposing that we need much broader upzoning that would be linked to, at least partially linked to, credits that would be used to finance URM upgrades.

So you can read the bullets.

We already, I think Council Member Herbold, in our last conversation, you mentioned the comprehensive plan is an important element of this, and we agree, and we're in the process of drafting language that would enable this kind of approach that would be included in the major comp plan update to be released next year.

Um, so, uh, starting with the last bullet here, I'll just briefly describe the concept.

And the concept is that you would automatically designate every existing U.

R. M. Building that appears on the sanctioned city inventory as a sending site.

So that sending sending sites would be scattered throughout the city based on where the U.

R. M. Buildings are located.

Um, The idea is those credits would be equal to, or the number of credits would be equal to the underlying lot times the maximum FAR for that, excluding the existing structures on the lot.

So you'd have to make provisions for large parks and other things, but essentially on a typical sort of city infill lot, you'd multiply, let's say there were an FAR of 2.5 and a lot of 10,000, you'd get 25,000 credits.

If you could, Amanda, do you mind flipping to the next slide?

Um, we agree that some form of of a public private partnership.

It could be a triple P or a P D. A. And I'll touch on the details of that in the final slide.

But we agree that some form of a bank or market maker should be set up.

I think the best type of structure would be not government, and it would not be private.

It would have to be a relatively nimble public-private partnerships, and many successful templates for that exist.

The idea then is they would sort of hold these credits, so you would automatically receive them as an owner of a, whether you're public or private, as an owner of a URM building, based on the formula I described, and they would be held by the Triple P. They would enable, and it's important to recognize this is voluntary, that the buyer or developer would have to see value in these, and Should they see the value, they would buy a credit for an extra square foot of developable floor area in the receiving site.

And there could be a variety of constraints in terms of how many additional square feet you could add, depending upon the neighborhood and so forth.

That's fine.

But the basic idea is just as with MHA, you would get bonus development or bonus floor area.

The bottom line is, and you've already touched on it, Council Member, is that for this to work, you really need sufficient receiving areas.

And that is the challenge, politically and otherwise.

And that is designating those receiving areas, sufficiently large receiving areas, that these credits will be attractive to prospective developers and buyers.

And that's what we have to overcome.

There's no question about it.

There are some early promising shoots, green shoots.

I'm using a springtime analogy here.

One being in an ordinance that will be submitted, I think, to the council shortly on maritime and industrial lands.

And embedded in that draft ordinance is a proposal within the industrial lands, the mix, the manufacturing industrial centers, that you would be entitled to some additional, it's called Tier 2 bonus density, in exchange for retrofitting a URM building in the same MIC.

It's a good first step.

It isn't enough.

There aren't enough in the contemplated up zones within the MICs.

There just isn't enough there, even around the transit stations and along the major corridors.

But it's a great step.

It recognizes the possibility of essentially trading additional density for URM upgrades.

So that's the focus.

I think that's what we'll be spending a lot of time talking about is, how can we sort of couple the broader movement, both at the state and the local level, for upzoning and providing greater density, not just in urban villages, not just in industrial and maritime lands, but frankly, anywhere potentially within the city?

And how can we use that, not give it away, but use it actually as a source of funding?

So I'll go to the last slide.

You make it sound so easy, Peter.

Sorry?

You make it sound so easy.

You make it sound so easy.

It's not easy.

And I said, there are enormous but listen, MHA I attended a West Seattle hearing on MHA and I I know how challenging it is to add density in many neighborhoods in this city.

And yet, in a funny, ironic way, I think most of Seattle recognizes we need it.

So it's a classic case of we desperately need it, just not necessarily here.

So how do we square that circle is absolutely the challenge.

But I keep coming back to saying, if we don't do it, people will die, and they will die needlessly.

So I hope, I keep bringing that up because I think it's important to recognize why.

Why are we doing this?

It's not just because it's good urban planning.

It's because we see the devastation that can be wrought if people don't take measures.

And look at the blowback in Turkey over development standards, over construction standards, over what's happening now.

The scandals, it's a disaster.

And we don't want to have to face that in Seattle.

frankly.

So I'll get off that soapbox for the moment.

So this touches on this slide, and I'm absolutely not going to read this, but it walks through a bit of the mechanics.

The notion here being that if there are sufficient receiving sites, if developers found that this represented an ability to take a development project and add an additional incremental square footage, we've done the financial analysis.

And that incremental square footage in many projects is worth to the developer over $200.

It's worth that.

There's a marginal benefit to spending a lot more than $19 or $20 or $24, which is currently the market for TDRs.

Actually, probably today, it's effectively zero.

There's a lot more, but it has to be in areas where they can use it.

There's no question about it.

I don't pretend that it's going to be easy, but it's The other point I would make is that if we don't find a mechanism like this, and I applaud the effort, there's the other subgroup working to identify FEMA grants, looking at special assessment districts, looking at historic tax credits, looking at on the debt side at CPACER loans.

I'm absolutely on board with all of that.

But if you add that all up, it isn't going to get you there.

You know, we're talking about 1.2 in 2019 dollars, 1.5 probably in current dollars, billion dollars.

That's not all going to happen at once, and not every building is going to be retrofitted for a variety of reasons, but it's a big bill.

So we need to find a way to fund it if we're going to do this.

You can see in program management how this, we would set up for every sending site, there would be a separate account.

The Triple P or PDA would maintain the records of that account.

They would sell these credits and apply the value of the proceeds from the sale of those credits to that building to use specifically for UM based on qualified proposals or invoices.

If the building owner has proceeded on their own dime, to do the retrofits voluntarily, great.

Then you could submit the invoices based on using qualified contractors, qualified engineers to make it happen.

And finally, the whole sort of bottom line here is the goal here is to use private resources, use the market to solve the public good.

And that's the point of triple P or PDAs.

How do you use a public resource, excuse me, yes, how do you use a public resource to incentivize and attract private capital to solve a problem that we all have to address?

That's the end of my speech.

Great, thank you so much.

This is, I think, a really well thought out scheme.

I'm really glad to hear that the industrial lands legislation allows us to dip our toe in the financing model with the recognition that it is not enough.

Also appreciate knowing that you are working on an amendment for the major comp plan.

update, just want to make sure from the SDCI OPCD perspective, I know for the major comp plan amendments, you're already sort of begun scoping and the EIS and all of that.

Will this addition be consistent with what is currently being scoped?

Or you're talking specifically about the comprehensive plan.

Yeah, we've been in discussions with director current don't go about this and how this can fit in with the timeline.

That's still a couple years off.

So there's definitely time right

Any other, Council Member Nelson, yes.

So this is long and coming.

I mean, I remember working in Richard Conlon's office and we were talking about this then, right after the Nisqually quake.

So what I didn't hear is how many billions of dollars we're talking about.

That helps me understand.

So surely that estimate has been performed.

It's really expensive to, to do this to old buildings.

And we want to also preserve that, you know, we're trying to balance saving lives and the character of some of these historic buildings and also just buildings that aren't necessarily designated, but will fall down.

So how much are we talking about?

And then I have some follow up questions.

Yeah, so the original estimate from the 2019 NDC report is $1.2 billion.

Again, that's 2019 dollars, and that is just the retrofit costs.

So we know that a lot of these buildings will want to do other upgrades if they're already going to be relocating tenants for up to two years.

But, but I believe I'm sorry to don't mean interrupt.

I believe Chuck and the NDC report also included the relocation costs in the estimates.

So this wasn't just art costs that this included estimates of what it would take to relocate commercial enterprises or residents.

Got it.

Okay, so your presentation says the value of the URMRCs will depend on the existence of a robust market, which in turn depends on designating sufficient receiving areas with high value to prospective developers.

You mentioned the upcoming legislation on maritime industrial lands.

The comp plan has been thrown around, but is there enough value in that upcoming legislation

No, not in the maritime and industrial, by no means.

There isn't enough land there that's proposed for the industry and innovation or urban industrial.

It's just as Council Member Herbold said, it's a dipping the toe.

Right.

And this would require, would create the authorization for other neighborhoods.

Correct.

Okay, I understand.

And then my final question is we have incentive zoning programs in downtown South Lake Union, et cetera, where developers can build higher than the zoned limit.

And that money is paid in a fee in lieu, and it goes into a pot, and it's allocated for housing or whatever.

So this is a slightly different model.

What is the benefit of this over what I just described?

Having instead of having the, you know, the whatever building is developed layered right it would be layered additional okay on top of switching out so it's not either or it's both we need both correct it's both okay thank you we're not.

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-Karen Hollweg,

um, through the 2030 district Seattle 2030 district that specifically permitted for pilot programs an additional story or two if they met certain environmental goals.

So this is a an example of how it was done, and that was on top of all the existing incentives.

Well, I just have to say I appreciate this effort because the resources have to come from somewhere.

And I appreciate that this partnership can help get us there because we've been sort of property owners bearing this burden on themselves that own these buildings.

It hasn't worked.

And so clearly we have to think creatively.

So thank you very much for this.

You mentioned that you expect to have technical standards available this summer in the form of a director's rule.

Might that align with an upcoming visit to this committee for a future report?

We're always happy to come back.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Great.

Great.

Thank you.

I'm excited to realize that perhaps the director's rule will be in place by the end of the year.

Disappointed that it is unlikely based on the program timeline that I've seen that the retrofit ordinance itself is probably not going to be ready until late.

2024, but I'm excited to see the action that we are committed to doing this year, not just the director's rule, but addressing potential TDR options in the industrial lands legislation and also just hearing more about the approach around preservation and and minimizing negative impacts associated with displacement and the needs of our low-income communities.

So I still think there's a lot of work to be done and I really appreciate everybody working on it and just really hope that future council members will carry the torch and support SDCI, ASAP and the Office of Emergency Management in bringing this work across the finish line.

Thank you.

All right, fantastic.

Not seeing any additional questions or comments.

Thank you again for being with us.

The next Public Safety and Human Services Committee is scheduled for Tuesday, April 25th, 2023. If there are any anticipated absences from that meeting, I'd love to know in advance of the meeting.

And if there are no additional comments from my colleagues, The time is 1157 am and we are adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you recording.